A Couple Of British Flicks And Idi Amin Too!

"I thought it was hysterical."
- Jack Valenti talking about THIS FILM HAS NOT BEEN RATED - the doc that was highly critical of Valenti and his ratings board tactics. That is - according to the commentary for said film.

OKAY! I got some reviewing to be doing. Got some British flicks to cover both on the big screen and DVD so here goes -

HOT FUZZ (Dir. Edgar Wright, 2007) Actor-writer Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright's follow-up to the cult classic in waiting SHAWN OF THE DEAD trades the zombies and relationship squabbles for cop action movie cliches and we all should so be thankful. Especially when the recent state of American film satire comes in the form of EPIC MOVIE that is. Pegg turns the tables on his stoner slacker character from SHAWN (actually more Spaced - the BBC TV show that is not available yet on DVD but you can find Youtube clips here) and portays Nicholas Angel - a straight-laced hero policemen transferred to a small British country town named Sandford. A town so old fashioned and idyllic that the Kinks "Village Green Preservation Society" plays on the soundtrack.

Before he's even settled in, he finds a strangely suspect death toll, a drunken over-fed on pastries police force (sorry, "service"), and a evil supermarket mogul played by 2-timer James Bond Timothy Dalton (THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, LICENSE TO KILL) who puts in a wickedly confident performance. Fellow policeman-officer Nick Frost (also from SPACED and SHAWN...) schools Pegg in old-school action cimema like BAD BOYSPOINT BREAK while Pegg schools Frost in sober law enforcement procedre. Though the first hour lagged and dragged a bit eliciting only mild chuckles and giggles, the last act pulls out the hilarious over-the-top stops. HOT FUZZ may be awfully titled, but that like all the cringe inducing fake-out endings and the over abundance of wired wit that makes ones eyes roll repeatedly while smirking is precisely the point.

I never made a "Best of 2006" list because there were many notable movies I didn't see. Here's a few I finally caught up with because of their recent release on the popular DVD format :

NOTES ON A SCANDAL (Dir. Richard Eyre, 2006) I deliberately avoided reading or listening to any plot description of this film since it was released late last year and I'm so glad I did. So juicy is each development in this story that I'll try to refrain from spoilers as well. In a career-best performance Judi Dench sears in every scene as an almost retired strict-as-sin schoolteacher - Barbara Covett who immediately takes a shine to new art teacher Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett - who funnily enough cameos in HOT FUZZ).

Sheba appears at first as an oblivious babe in the woods or "the arctic wilderness"as Barbara would say in the lengthy acidic comments she makes in her journals. A shattering secret (see - no spoiler) brings them close in a sort of manipulative bond. That's all you'll get from me plot-wise. Otherwise the script is tight and sharp and remarkably convincing. "Oh, Jesus wept. The specter at the feast" - and that line was spoken by Sheba's 16-year old daughter Polly (Juno Temple) too! Blanchett and Dench (also the always spot-on Bill Nighy * must be mentioned) put in flawless performances and there's not a wasted moment leaving me with the same self-satisfied smile that Barbara has when she believes things are finally going her wicked way.

* Who also cameos in HOT FUZZ

THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND (Dir. Kevin MacDonald, 2006)

Sometimes when already established actors play real-life historical figures they become so absorbed in the role with all the aestitics and recreations that it's hard for me to separate them one from the other - they are forever linked. When I think of Jackson Pollack I think of Ed Harris. Randomly mention Gandhi and an image of a fully decked out in draping Indian duds Ben Kingsley pops into my noggin. Capote = Phillip Seymour Hoffman and so on. So now adding itself to my cerebral hard-drive is Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin. This ain't a biopic - it's a fictional tale told around real events in 70's Uganda. A Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) who's part idealist part party animal in disguise befriends Amin and an odd but weirdly touching friendship is started.

Amin appoints Garrigan his personal physician and even refers to him at times as his "closest advisor." The first half of the film is pure drama set up for the second half which is tension thiller time. The last half hour is pretty hard to watch - there's a torture scene that made me look away repeatedely. I mean I'm pretty de-sensitized to the violence and gore in flicks like HOT FUZZ and GRINDHOUSE but in the context and tone of this film the last bit was hard to stomach. Anyway it's nice to see Gillian Anderson return to A-list cinema and I liked McAvoy much better than his cheeky performance in STARTER FOR 10 but of course the obvious real reason to watch this movie is Whitaker's powerful and scary portrayal of Amin. He definitely deserves every molecule of the gold-plated brittannium in that best actor Oscar he won for it.

This post is dedicated to Jack Valenti (1921-2007) - long time president of the Motion Picture Association of America. That's him crouching behind the flowers on the left in that phenomenally famous photograph of LBJ getting sworn after the Kennedy assassination. Farewell Mr. Valenti - if anybody can charm Satan's pants off it's you.


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New Movies On Both Big & Small Screens

Time for some reviews of recent release movies, both on the big and small screens that I can't wait to babble about.



Now showing at a theater near you:

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (Dir. Jared Hess, 2004)

Funny or just funny looking? Hard to decide about a movie made by Mormons about a high school geek oddball (Jon Herder) in Idaho and his quirky misadventures. Quirky humor seems to be the rage in recent independent comedies so much so that one critic (Sean Burns from the Philadelphia Weekly) said that this felt like the work of "a lousy Wes Anderson cover band." I'm not sure I'd quite say that, but it's an amusing line. It's at least a good-hearted flick that a lot of displaced kids will take to, but it's also like a smirking breeze that just blows by. 

SHAUN OF THE DEAD (Dir. Edgar Wright, 2004) 

A British romantic comedy/killer zombie thriller that's like a spirited mixture of  28 DAYS LATER and HIGH FIDELITY (both the Nick Hornby book and the Stephen Frears/John Cusack movie), especially in the scene where slacker Shaun (Simon Pegg) and his deadbeat flatmate Ed (Nick Frost) throw old vinyl records at the blood thirsty undead. Ed: "Stone Roses?" Shaun: "Definitely not." Ed: "The Batman soundtrack?" Shaun: "Throw it." 

More hilarity than horror, with an infectious amount of energy and wit by the cast (mostly from the BBC sitcom Spaced), and Wright's inventive camera work all make this a comic blast. Some critics are predicting this may become a cult classic in years to come. They might be onto something. It's nice to see Lucy Davis and Martin Freeman from the brilliant BBC program The Office make appearances too.

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW

(Dir. Kerry Conran, 2004)



More a cinematic display of the world that yesterday thought tomorrow would look like, Kerry Conran's debut feature film positions itself as the ultimate in retro cinema. Or maybe it's what Harry Shearer called "nowtro" in A MIGHTY WIND. 

Old school sci-fi ideals mingle with new school computer generated imagery to make a 2004 movie look like it could have come from the '30s or '40s. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow star as the hero and heroine who go through a narrative as cribbed from old Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy as it is from James Bond and STAR WARS. 

For a number of amped-up sequences, SKY CAPTAIN works and is a fascinating experiment, but unfortunately it drags horribly in places and the sense of innocence it tries to evoke is so long gone that it may leave viewers puzzled. Still though such an ernest while overblown concept movie is hard to dismiss. Long live Nowtro!

Now out on DVD:

BADASSSSS! (Dir. Mario Van Peeples) 

Movies that are about making movies hold a certain interest but the claim that some critics have made that finally blaxploitation has it's DAY FOR NIGHT seems to miss the point.

This is about the making of a real movie, SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG (Dir. Melvin Van Peeples, 1971), so the whole 'movie within a movie' cliche doesn't really ring true. This is more interestingly about the struggle and satisfaction of the film making process as told by the son of the original film maker (and based on Melvin Van Peeples' book: "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song: A Guerilla Filmmaking Manifesto"). This completes a circle of sorts as Mario Van Peeples as a child had a small part in his father's film.

Funny, intense, and emotionally endearing in its last half hour this is exactly what it what it claims to be, that is, BAADASSSSS. It's also without a doubt the best project that Mario Van Peeples has ever been involved in.

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND 

(Dir. Michel Gondry)

A nearly flawless existential comedy with a Philip K. Dickensian kick! I don't need to recount the plot as just about everybody reading this has surely surely seen this flick. So now what's maybe the best movie of the year gets a splendid DVD release.

Commentaries, deleted scenes, and featurettes augment this disc, and they're all worthwhile, but the movie by itself would make a splendid DVD. Charlie Kaufman, while working with well trodden egghead memory erase concepts, wrings an imaginative free form story out of every day truths and it gets better with every viewing.

A thinking man's rom com, ETERNAL SUNSHINE is a delight in every way. Jim Carrey puts in the restrained every-guy performance that comes off as more impressive than his 'in-your-face' persona of the past while Kate Winslet gives a greatly confident spin to her impulsive artsy book store slave gal with her ever changing hair colors. 

Gondry's inventive visual style along with a wonderfully chosen cast supports Carrey and Winslet, that includes Kristen Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson, David Cross and Elijah Wood. So check it out, and consider giving your own existence a jump start, why doncha?!!?

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