Directed by: Liam Lynch
Starring: Jack Black, Kyle Gass, Jason Reed
Rated: R for pervasive language, sexual content and drug use.
Parental Notes: This is an over-the-top film full of foul language and heavy metal insanity. A head explodes on screen, a main character uses his erection as a tool, and there is plenty of sexually-themed profanity and pot smoking.
Ingredients: one cocky ball of comedic energy (Jack Black), one talented guitarist straight man (Kyle Gass), Sasquatch, Satan, rockin' musical numbers, and a liberal smattering of fart and penis jokes. Stir together and bake, and you get "Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny," a movie that most certainly is not for everyone but which will rock your socks off if you let it.
Black and Gass started the band Tenacious D back in the 1990s, and it has gathered enough of a cult following to put out an album and star the two in an HBO mini-series. The appeal of the duo comes in part from the fact that we all know the stereotype of the guys who want to rock out but only have a cheap acoustic guitar and Tenacious D seems like just another group like that -- until you realize that Gass is an amazing guitar player, Black is the ideal front man, and between them they rock more than most bands out there.
The plot line of the film is a rambling mishmash: part buddy movie, part epic quest parody, part stoner flick. The story, such as it is, revolves around the formation of the band and the guys' quest to find the Pick of Destiny, a guitar pick which was carved from the Devil's tooth, so they can use it to win an open mic night and get enough money to pay the rent.
There are more references to movie and metal cliches here than you can shake a stick at. JB dreams of being a rock god complete with chain mail and black eyeliner. KG, when we first meet him, is a long-haired, batik-wearing, beach musician. His first night in LA, JB is attacked by a gang of Clockwork Orange style droogs. Most of the cliches get taken to the next level with an odd twist or a goofy flavor that makes them suited to the D, whether it's JB using his cock-pushup-strengthened erection to deactivate security lasers or the open mic host giving a heartwarming and inspirational speech about how there's a little piece of Satan inside us all.
Jack Black has always had an astonishing amount of energy and talent, and here he is in his element. JB is a larger-than-life, cartoonish character, a wannabe rock god whose utter self-confidence can never be shaken, a guy who dreams about being able to make people's heads literally explode with his singing. It's a lot of fun to watch him rampaging around in this good-natured, goofy story.
Kyle Gass, meanwhile, is an excellent counterpoint to Black's manic comedy. More laid-back than Black and perfectly willing to play a rock-solid second banana, he plays guitar brilliantly and is willing to look like an idiot in service to the music and the comedy. KG is much more human than JB is, and he offers us someone to sympathize with.
One definite plus to "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny" is that it hasn't got a mean bone in its cinematic body. This is the story of two wannabes who make it on their own terms: they go one better than their original goal (winning open mic night) and survive a rock-off showdown with Satan himself (Dave Grohl, in one of the many cameos dotting the film).
Whether you will enjoy "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny" is hard to guess. If you love the D, you will love the movie; it's simply more of the same on a much, much bigger scale. If you don't, you can be sure of one thing: you will almost certainly either love it or hate it. With movies like this, there is no middle ground.
Directed by: Martin Campbell
Starring: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench
Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of violent action, a scene of torture, sexual content and nudity.
Parental Notes: That this movie is rated PG-13 highlights the idiocy of the MPAA. The torture scene involves a man's genitals being beaten with a large rope while he screams in agony. This is not appropriate for youngsters.
Rebooting familiar movie franchises may well become the new thing in Hollywood. Last year we had the superlative "Batman Begins," which did a fantastic job restarting the dark knight's tale, and now we have "Casino Royale," in which we get to see James Bond receive double-0 status and go on his first mission for MI6.
Unfortunately for Bond, his first action upon earning his license to kill is to engage in a chase and shootout in an embassy. The phenomenal chase sequence features Sébastien Foucan, one of the founders of the sport of Parkour. Parkour is known in the US as Free Running, and has been featured in numerous documentaries and the French film "District B-13." It consists of sprinting, vaulting, leaping, and otherwise moving around, over, or through obstacles in an urban setting, and the chase sequence in "Casino Royale" is utterly spectacular -- especially since Bond isn't nearly as good at this sort of thing as the terrorist Foucan is playing.
It's a lot of fun to watch this earlier, less-refined Bond at work. He's not quite so suave, and definitely not as good at his job. Not that the film is full of him doing stupid things or making pratfalls -- it's not. But he has little slips of judgment or ability that one wouldn't normally expect. Craig does a spectacular job showing Bond's gradual shift over the course of the film as he grows more and more like the Bond we know from the later stories.
M gives Bond an earful for his behavior, and tells him to go somewhere and keep his head down. He can't leave the case alone, however, and before long is assigned to take on the man behind the terrorist he'd originally been chasing, Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen). Le Chiffre, it seems, is staging a high-stakes poker game in a desperate attempt to get the money he needs to pay back one of his clients, whose money he lost on the stock market. Bond is MI6's best poker player, so even though he's out of favor, he is sent to win the game and leave Le Chiffre bankrupt and ripe for turning state's evidence.
A Treasury representative is assigned to go with Bond and keep an eye on the government's money: Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) is Bond's match in nearly every way. She's cool, aggressive, and reads people very, very well. Although at first they are at each other's throats, this is a Bond movie after all, and they wind up falling for each other. By the time the poker game is over, Bond is head over heels and ready to settle down with Vesper, but there's an hour left in the film so we know that's not going to work out.
What follows is a "Mission: Impossible" style series of false endings and double-crosses, to the point where one wonders if anybody in this film but Bond is trustworthy. Worse, the film steps over its violence threshold by having our hero be tortured in a scene that is far too uncomfortable for a PG-13 movie. The rest of the film contains standard chases, explosions, hand-to-hand combat, and gunshots -- nothing graphic -- but here a naked Bond is chained to a chair whose wicker seat webbing has been removed, and the villain swings a heavy, knotted rope up and under his legs to smash into his genitals. Repeatedly. In between wrenching screams of agony, Bond does his best to remain manly and cavalier, but it is not a pleasant scene. This reviewer firmly believes that torture should not be included in this kind of lightweight entertainment, and the scene was a large blemish on an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable film.
There are a handful of other issues in the film, including a rather disappointingly elementary error in the poker game (which is otherwise masterfully shot). Even so, it's a fun ride -- provided one goes out for sodas or to use the bathroom when Bond winds up getting captured by the bad guys.
Directed by: Mark Forster
Starring: Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Queen Latifah, Dustin Hoffman
Rated: PG-13 for some disturbing images, sexuality, brief language and nudity.
Parental Notes: This is an interesting, thought-provoking film which teens and preteens may well find fascinating. It is a solid PG-13, which makes it unsuitable for youngsters.
Filmmakers seem to have a passion for stories about storytelling. "Stranger Than Fiction" is another film in this tradition, but it adds an existential element to the story of a writer struggling with her novel by having her main character turn out to be a real person, whose life seems to be governed by what she writes.
Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is an IRS agent who lives a very ordered life. He brushes of his teeth the same number of times, knows how many steps he takes per block, and can multiply large numbers in his head, among other things. One of the more charming visual motifs of the film is the way maps, graphs, grids, and numbers come up around Harold to show us how he perceives the world. Ferrell's performance solidifies this and establishes him as a dramatic actor in addition to his known stupid-human-tricks comedian status. Harold's well-ordered life is brought crashing to a halt when he not only finds himself hearing a voice narrating his life but hears the narrator say offhandedly that he is going to die.
Harold has no real friends, lives and eats alone, and the closest thing he has to a romantic prospect is Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a baker whom he is auditing. Ana is an idealist. Last year she carefully calculated how much of the government spending was on projects she doesn't approve of, and deducted a corresponding amount from her tax payment. She gives away food to needy folks at her bakery, and believes in improving the world one cookie at a time. She and Harold are about as opposite as two people can be, so of course they become romantically interested in each other as time goes by. This is a comedy, after all. Gyllenhaal is an old hand at playing charming oddballs, and she makes Ana both peculiar and accessible. The script has Ana's opinion of Harold change a bit suddenly, but Gyllenhaal is able to make it believable.
Harold goes to Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), an expert on literary theory, for help figuring out how to survive his narrator's plan to kill him. Jules plunges into the project of solving this mystery the same way he might plunge into a complex literary work. Screenwriter Zach Helm must have attended some high-level English Literature classes, because English majors will instantly recognize Jules as a classic English professor, right down to the organized chaos of his office bookshelves. Hoffman's performance is spot-on as ever, bringing out both the humanity and the eccentric world view of a man whose entire world is colored by literature.
As Harold is trying to solve his difficulties, across town bestselling author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) is dealing with problems of her own: she has no idea how to kill off the main character of her book. Her publishers, fed up with her writer's block, hire Penny Escher (Queen Latifah) to be her assistant and help her get the book finished. Thompson is a brilliant actress, and she brings Karen and her neuroses to life. Latifah makes an excellent foil, her no-nonsense approach to Penny contrasting perfectly with Thompson's fearless portrayal of Karen's eccentricities. Their scenes together are both touchingly real and utterly hilarious.
"Stranger than Fiction" is not a perfect film: there are plenty of quibbles to be brought up from continuity problems to ignored alternative solutions to Karen's problems near the end of the story. However, the performances and dialog are so strong that the film is a success in spite of its flaws. Its ending is a lovely compromise between the needs of good storytelling and ethical human behavior, and is sure to provoke much thought even in those who find the film unappealing.
Written and Directed by: Jim Jarmusch
Starring: Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni, John Lurie
Rated: R
Parental Notes: This film includes a dollop of violence, quite a bit of swearing, some nudity, and plenty of unsavory characters, and thus is probably not suitable for youngsters.
This week, courtesy of the lack of new movies I am willing to review at the local cineplex, your humble movie reviewer brings you a DVD review of the Jim Jarmusch classic, "Down By Law." Released in 1986 and available on a spiffy Criterion Collection DVD, the only signs this film was made twenty years ago is that its stars look significantly younger than they do today and the ladies have surprisingly big hair. It is a charming, thoughtful story about three men who get a second chance.
Jack (John Lurie) is a pimp. Zack (Tom Waits) is an unemployed DJ. Zack's girlfriend (Ellen Barkin, in fine form) dumps him as the film opens, telling him she can't stand the way he messes up his future all the time. While Zack is out on the street drinking, a local criminal hires him to drive a car across town -- which would be fine except there's something in the trunk the police are very interested in, and Zack winds up in jail. Somewhere else in town, one of Jack's ladies tells him that he keeps making big plans for tomorrow because he is screwing up today. She adds that if he were a "good pimp," he would hit her instead of letting her disrespect him. Not only does he not hit her, he walks right into a set up by an enemy of his, and winds up in jail with Zack.
They immediately rub each other the wrong way, but find themselves united when Roberto (Roberto Benigni, in his first American feature film), an friendly Italian tourist, gets put in the cell with them. He is irrepressibly cheerful, childishly pleased with himself, and as happily chatty as Zack and Jack are sullen. He grows on them a bit as days pass, and when he reveals that he has figured out a way to escape, they decide to give it a try.
"Down by Law" is packed with plenty of cliches, but somehow in Jarmusch's capable hands they don't seem at all tired. Jack and Zack are classic pulp: tired, everyman-like antiheroes, they've messed up their lives but good and just need a chance to start over. Roberto is a cheery small-time criminal who had a moment of bad luck, and he just needs the opportunity to get past it. There are visuals replete with images we've seen before: Louisiana swamps full of dripping trees and knee-deep muck, shadows streaking a pale sidewalk as a man down on his luck sits on the curb, even men hanging around in prison, their arms stuck through the bars of their cells. And yet, somehow, these old, familiar moments work. They are as unforced and natural as Roberto's camaraderie.
The expert black and white cinematography by Robby Müller suits the slow, thoughtful film perfectly. It's something between a nightmare and a fairy tale, and the shades of gray greatly outnumber the spots of black and white on the screen, just as the central characters themselves are shady fellows. The lighting brings out so many different tones of gray that it becomes easy to forget there aren't any rainbow colors on the screen.
"Down by Law" is a top-notch film for a quiet evening when you're not quite sure what to watch. It's for when you don't want a mindless shoot-em-up, but you do want a happy ending; when you don't want crass, stupid humor but do want to laugh. It's a strange little film, but a very good one, and if an oddity is the sort of thing you are looking for, it will definitely hit the spot.