MACHETE: The Film Babble Blog Review

MACHETE (Dir. Robert Rodriquez, 2010)

One of the most successful elements in Robert Rodriquez and Quentin Tarantino’s little seen double feature GRINDHOUSE was a smattering of fake trailers. They were funny and totally authentic recreations of ‘70s drive-in fare with the titles “Don’t!”, “Werewolf Women Of The SS”, “Thanksgiving”, “Hobo With A Shotgun” * and “Machete”.

Now MACHETE is a real full length “Mexploitation” film with many of the same actors with re-stagings of shots from the phony trailer. Danny Trejo plays the title role – a crusty ex-Federale badass who is hired by a shady Jeff Fahey to assassinate a corrupt senator (Robert De Niro) running for office on a platform of severe anti-illegal-immigration laws.

Trejo soon finds out that he has been set up and goes on the lam. With the help of Michelle Rodriguez as a taco-truck lady/revolutionary warrior and Jessica Alba as a saucy immigrations officer, Trejo set outs to track down those who did him wrong.

A nice collection of B and C-movie actors like Don Johnson, Cheech Marin, and Steven Seagal put in nice supporting turns but Lindsay Lohan as Fahey’s air-headed daughter is a really odd choice for this kind of material.

MACHETE boasts enough in-your-face action, explosions, and blood to make THE EXPENDABLES look like ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS, but it’s still not that great of a movie.

It seems that Rodriquez (and co-director/co-writer Ethan Maniquis) just can’t give up the GRINDHOUSE. It’s a genre that would be mostly forgotten if wasn’t for film geek film makers like Rodriquez and Tarantino (and in my area – the Triangle in N.C. – if not for the awesome “Cinema Overdrive” series at the Colony Theater in Raleigh), but their new fangled takes on such seedy exploitation don’t really seem to be catching on.

And again this begs the question – what is Lindsey Lohan doing here? She spends half her role nude then she’s dressed as a nun with a gun. None of it does much for the movie so I’m really stumped by her presence.

Some of the material in this movie and its tacky tone is fun at first, especially the opening, but it grew really tiresome as the body count grew bigger. Machete, the character, is just not that interesting. Trejo performs the actions with a stoical grace, but if you take away the slashing mayhem, but there’s nothing really there.

Maybe that’s a strange complaint because the men in the movies that this is a loving tribute to didn’t really have deep personas either. They were dolls thrown around or sliced and diced. They were movies that were all about pure cheap thrills.

At a budget of $20 million MACHETE is not so cheap though it tries to disguise that with fake scratches and bad splices. It should’ve just stayed being a 2 minute fake trailer for a nonexistent bad movie. Now that bad movie exists.

* Next year "Hobo With A Shot Gun" will also get the full length film treatment. Let's see how that will work out for them.

More later...

MAO'S LAST DANCER: The Film Babble Blog Review

MAO'S LAST DANCER
(Dir. Bruce Beresford, 2009)

The true story of ballet dancer Li Cunxin is told in this flashback laden melodrama. In the opening we're introduced to Chi Cao who plays Cunxin as a young man in 1981 arriving at the Houston airport, wearing a suit sporting a Chairman Mao head-pin.

Cao is greeted by a slightly flamboyant Bruce Greenwood as Ben Stevenson - an American ballet director who discovered the dancer on a trip to China.

As Greenwood welcomes Cao to his home for a 3 month stay while he attends the Houston Ballet School, Cao has many heavy handed memories of his poverty plagued upbringing in China where his education seemed to be only an enforcing of the principles of Communism.

Cao meets Amanda Schull as a fellow student and love interest who he keeps secret from Greenwood for reasons never stated out loud.

After a plea to extend his stay in America is rejected, Cao marries Schull to obtain the legal right to remain (and also for love he says), but the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China in Houston (Ferdinand Hoang) has other ideas.

Hoang has his men detain Cao and tells his lawyer – nicely played by Kyle MacLachlan * with a thick Southern drawl – that Cao is going back to China.

This heated sequence is one of the few involving ones in this overlong biopic that’s drably filmed and too simplistic and predictable in its plotting.

It has its heart in the right place and it’s unmistakably earnest, but it’s too corny and condescending to be the inspirational feel good movie it so wants to be. It's something that would perhaps be better as a "Hallmark Hall Of Fame" movie of the week than a theatrical release.

For those who enjoy ballet, the movie most comes alive in its uninhibited dance scenes though those are filmed in unimaginative long, or too close, shots that diminish any potential power.

It’s a history lesson about Chinese Communism, it’s a drama about a dancer’s ambition, it’s a love story, and it’s a bit of a political passion play. Ultimately though, its standardized simplification of all these strands makes for an unsatisfying experience.

* Joan Chen who was a fellow cast-member with McLachlan on Twin Peaks also appears as Li Cunxin's mother Niang.

More later...

THE AMERICAN: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE AMERICAN (Dir. Anton Corbijn, 2010)

Though it is being released into many multiplexes, THE AMERICAN is very much an independent film. It’s also a bit of an artsy foreign film as it takes place largely in Italy with a lot of its dialogue being in Italian.

One obvious element that makes it appear from a distance to be a big studio film – George Clooney.

That nobody else in the film is a name doesn’t matter because Clooney is one of the biggest movie stars in the world, perhaps as Time Magazine called him “the last movie star”, and his presence gives this small indie a lot of power.

When Clooney kills 3 people before the opening credits one may think we’re in for a pulsating bloody thriller, but this film is more contemplative than that with a slow yet thoroughly engrossing pace.

We don’t get a background on Clooney – we can tell he is a trained killer who is working for sinister sources, and he wants out after finishing one last job. A mysterious Johan Leysen provides Clooney with a car and a cell-phone and tells him to await further instruction. Clooney throws the phone out the window as he travels across the Italian countryside beautifully photographed by cinematographer Martin Ruhe.

Clooney finds himself staying in an Abruzzo region village where he befriends a local priest (Paolo Bonacelli) and regularly employs a prostitute (Violante Placido).

Our stoic protagonist meets with Thekla Reuten as a just as serious contact who wants him to construct a weapon for her – a machine gun/rifle hybrid.

There are only a few sequences of the action variety as most of the film affects a tense moodiness with minimal methods. A love story emerges between Clooney and Placido that is nicely handled even with what could be considered gratuitous nudity (not of Clooney, mind you).

The film was adapted from the 1990 Martin Booth novel "A Very Private Gentleman" which might have been a better title.

Oddly THE AMERICAN reminds me of THE LIMITS OF CONTROL – Jim Jarmusch’s much maligned, but much better than its reputation art-house film of last year. Both concern tight lipped assassins navigating through cryptic plot-lines in foreign locales and both may be impenetrable to a lot of moviegoers expecting fast paced action thrillers.

The posters with Clooney running with a gun, looking not unlike Daniel Craig in the last couple of James Bond movies, may be a bit misleading for that same reason, but with hope film loving folks will embrace this smart slow burner.

More later...

GET LOW: The Film Babble Blog Review

GET LOW (Dir. Aaron Schneider, 2009)

Set in depression era Tennessee, this is a whimsical tale of a mysterious old hermit who has an unusual plan for his funeral – he wants it to be a party while he’s still alive.

A grizzled Robert Duvall is the hermit, the kind who’d put up a self made wooden sign stating: “No Damn Trespassing – Beware Of Mule” on the road leading to his rustic house.

From his night sweats we see that Duvall is sick and dying. Knowing he has little time left he goes into the small town he lives on the outskirts of to make arrangements. “About time for me to get low” he tells the local pastor (Gerald McRaney).

A young funeral home employee (Lucas Black) overhears this and tells his boss – a mustached worried wart of a man played beautifully by Bill Murray – that their ailing business may have a possible client.

This is a perfect timing for Murray as he was just talking about how down the death business has been lately. Murray: “What are the odds of a funeral home going broke? We have a business that everybody on earth needs. If you can’t make that work it’s got to be you. Right? And yet, I don’t know. What do you do when people don’t die?”

Everybody in town appears to have heard rumors and gossip of all sorts about Duvall’s past. He wants it known that everybody who has such stories should come tell them at his “funeral party.” Duvall in turn will tell his story.

Sissy Spacek is an old flame who appears to be charmed by the old codger, but like everybody else she is tight lipped about what went down back in the day.

As the film began with a flashback to a burning house with a silhouette of somebody on fire jumping out of an upstairs window we have some hints about what will be revealed.

GET LOW has a lot of folksy charm, but it feels like it needed to be a lot more fleshed out. It sails sweetly on the strength of its performances largely Duvall and Murray, but it doesn’t take the risks necessary to give it the emotional power it sorely lacks.

As an African American preacher that Duvall wishes would attend his “going away” affair, Bill Cobbs unfortunately reminds us that this is a whitewashed version of the ‘30s in the South – one with no detectable racism.

The depression era really has no baring on the plot - it could've taken place anywhere at any time, but as it is loosely based on a true story that happened in 1938 Tennessee, that's how we have it.

Also the idea that the town folk would open up at the funeral party and the stories would fly never comes to pass. The climatic event contains a wonderfully delivered confessional speech by Duvall, but after that the ending peters out.

Still, Duvall is always an appealing actor and he never plays a false note as this cantankerous character, and Murray’s masterful portrayal of a broken-down-yet-still-chugging-along-salesman oaf makes every scene he’s in as absorbing as they are amusing.

Spacek and Black are fine in their roles, but both are broad strokes as supporting players which would've benefited from just one more rewrite by the screenwriters (Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell).

It’s a light drama sprinkled with light comedy that gets a little too carried away with its own whimsy. That’s okay though, I have a feeling that many audiences will get carried away with it.

More later...

MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON: The Film Babble Blog Review

MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON (Dir. Stéphane Brizé, 2009)

It’s a simple story – married man meets woman and they flirt in a restrained manner. Will they consummate their slowly budding relationship? How much will it mean to us if they do or don’t?

Unfortunately these bare bones of a premise are all there is to sift through in this extremely spare French film adaptation off a 1996 Éric Holder novel.

The man is a stoical mason played by Vincent Lindon who we often see on his job smashing walls with a mallet.

The woman is the title character played by Sandrine Kiberlain – a new schoolteacher in town (an unnamed village in France) who asks Lindon to come to her home to fix a drafty window.

After finishing the job, Lindon sees that Kiberlain has fallen asleep in her bedroom and he pokes around her apartment taking interest in the fact that she plays the violin.

When she awakes he asks her to perform the instrument for him. After some hesitation she complies, but with her back turned to him.

He is transfixed by her, but nothing romantic happens between them – yet.

Lindon’s wife (Aure Atika) gradually feels that her husband is drifting away which is confirmed at a Birthday party the family has for Lindon’s father (Jean-Marc Thibault).

Kiberlain plays the violin for Thibault and Atika witnesses her husband’s suppressed passion.
There is quiet beauty in several sequences in “Mademoiselle Chambon” but it isn’t enough to make for a vital movie going experience.

The camera lingers on too many sad shots which make the film feel padded. The characters are supposedly suffering inside, but we only get broad surfaces that never bring us inside this material.

Lindon and Kiberlain were once married in real life and there is a palpable chemistry between them especially in a tense scene in which they sit and listen to a CD of chamber music together, their hands finding each others naturally.

This scene is indeed effective and if the rest of the movie had its hold we might have something special here. As it stands however, MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON is too slight, too twee, to be a memorable experience.

MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON is now playing at the Colony Theater in Raleigh. Check the theater's website for showtimes.

More later...

Sylvester Stallone & His All Star Band!

THE EXPENDABLES (Dir. Sylvester Stallone, 2010)



This is the definition of a critic proof movie – as its rating on the Rotten Tomatometer rapidly falls (in a week it fell from 58% to 39%) its box office rises - its been #1 since it opened with a gross nearing $70 million so far.

Apparently America wants a big badass blockbuster with a crew of well known action stars. Call it “Monsters of Mediocrity” if you will, but triple threat (actor/writer/director) Sylvester Stallone has assembled a solid B-Team of action movie mavericks including Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Dolph Lundgren.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that from the trailer that Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger are on the mission too, but they only appear in one scene that tries, but fails to make much of a punch.

That could be said of the whole movie with its generic let’s-throw-over-a-corrupt-Latin American-dictator premise, but there is some fun to be had with this ‘80s throwback even if it oddly has too much downtime.

Mickey Rourke has a longer appearance than Willis and Schwarzenegger, but it’s still another glorified cameo as he never leaves his tattoo parlor. Rourke has one of the only serious dramatic moments telling a story about a woman that he failed to save from suicide that brings tears to his eyes. In a movie like this I really didn’t expect to see Rourke cry.

It’s mainly Stallone and Stratham’s show as they spend the largest amount of screen time getting each others backs in fights and shoot outs. The ending is a giant shit-storm of machine gun fire and explosions on top of explosions as expected. It’s played out in a lot of darkness and hyper cutting that makes it hard to follow, but if you like a lot of fiery explosions it should make your day.

Oh, there’s also Giselle Itié as the underwritten damsel in distress (What - An underwritten woman role in a Stallone action flick?) fighting for her poverty stricken people, her angry General father played by David Zayas (Angel Batista on Dexter), and Eric Roberts as an evil ex-CIA man agent backing the dictatorship.

THE EXPENDABLES is undercooked and overblown at the same time, but its core audience doesn’t appear to care. I shouldn’t either because this kind of mindlessness really shouldn’t be minded.

More later...

WILD GRASS: The Film Babble Blog Review

WILD GRASS (Dir. Alain Resnais, 2009)

A frizzy red haired woman (Sabine Azéma), who we mainly see from behind, has her purse snatched just after leaving a shop at the beginning of this French (comic?) drama. 

The narrator (Édouard Baer) explains that although it is an natural impulse she doesn’t call out after the thief.

Later an eccentric middle aged man (André Dussollier) finds one of the contents of the purse - a wallet – in the parking lot of a mall. After seeing Azéma’s picture the man starts to become infatuated with her.

After some deliberation Dussollier turns in the wallet to the police - Mathieu Amalric (“Quantum Of Solace”) is the attending officer – but that doesn’t stop him from phoning and writing letters to Azéma, much to her displeasure.

Anne Consigny, as Dussollier’s wife, appears to know what’s going on, yet is fascinated. When her husband finally stops the correspondence, Azéma misses the attention almost immediately. She speaks with Consigny on the phone and finds out that Dussollier is at the cinema so she goes there to wait for him to exit the theater.

After this I would be hard pressed to describe the remainder of the plot. The first two thirds are absorbing as they explore the character’s boundaries albeit in an abstract manner, but the final act is a mess of artsy imagery and an aviation diversion that finds Azéma and Dussollier in a small plane flying as far away from audience comprehension as they can get.

Every so often there are shots of weeds growing in the cracks of the street or a sidewalk and I suspect that we’re supposed to connect this to the title. It’s some symbolic comment on the characters finding love where it wasn’t originally supposed to exist, but I’m just guessing here.

WILD GRASS (French title: “Les Herbes Folles”) is a baffling bizarre mind numbing movie that loses its hold and fizzles out in a stupefying display of pretension.

More later...