Latest Reviews May 1-7, 2008

Anamorph

This thriller from director H.S. Miller – who cowrote with Tom Phelan – starts out looking like a clone of the Al Pacino bomb 88 Minutes: A pre-credit sequence about a serial killer investigation is followed by Det. Stan Aubrey (Willem Dafoe) teaching a class. Aubrey has been promoted out of investigations after unnecessarily killing the suspect in the “Uncle Eddie” murders. But similar crimes are happening again; either there’s a copycat killer or Stan killed the wrong guy. The current murderer stages elaborate tableaux including his victims’ corpses and paintings done with their blood. Stan is naturally called back to investigate but refuses to cooperate with ambitious, young up-and-comer Uffner (Scott Speedman).

Sure, it’s better than 88 Minutes – what isn’t? – but it’s still pretty pointless, with unclear exposition and murky plot developments. Miller recycles visual and plot elements from Seven, Suspect Zero, the 1999 Korean thriller Tell Me Something (Korean title Telmisseomding, I kid you not), and God knows where else. The title refers to the old artistic technique, popular in the Renaissance, of hiding a second image in a painting, which could only be perceived by viewing from one unlikely angle. Unfortunately, that means a lot of crucial clues here are shown in still-partly-distorted form, which makes the whole hard to follow. Part of the problem may have been because I was sent a screener that, ironically enough, wasn’t anamorphically enhanced. (Andy Klein) (Laemmle’s Sunset 5)

Baby Mama

With a problematic uterus and an aging biological clock, 37-year-old career woman Kate Holbrook decides to fulfill her maternal yearnings through surrogacy, only to end up paired with nightmarish white-trash couple Angie (Amy Poehler) and Carl (Dax Shepard), who call it quits halfway through the process. With no choice but to take Angie in, Kate is soon plunged into the predictable chaos of Odd Couple-dom, faced with problems, decisions and conflicts – including an unexpected romance with an enterprising juice shop operator (Greg Kinnear) – that make natural childbirth seem easy by comparison.

In the maternity comedy subgenre, former SNL writer Michael McCullers’s directing debut falls somewhere solidly in the middle, a few notches below Knocked Up but well ahead of Nine Months. And with firm SNL bonds connecting him to his two stars, and them to each other, the whole thing feels just sincere enough to be consistently and awkwardly funny. Ironically, it’s the supporting players – notably Steve Martin as Kate’s health-food-guru boss and Sigourney Weaver as the exceptionally fertile head of the surrogacy operation – who walk away with the film’s funniest moments. (Wade Major) (Citywide)

Fugitive Pieces

Poland, 1942: An old Greek archaeologist unearths a piece of living history – an orphaned Jewish boy hiding in the dirt. Athos (Rade Serbedzija) cleans up Jakob (Robbie Kay) and takes him first to the island of Hydra, then (after the war) to Canada. There they take root in a book-crammed apartment, from which, 30 years later, middle-aged Jakob (now Stephen Dillane) refuses to move on – physically or emotionally.

How the child who wouldn’t talk about his war trauma became an adult who wouldn’t talk about anything else is one of the mysteries of writer-director Jeremy Podeswa’s drama, adapted from Anne Michaels’s novel. Sliding from past to present without an overt purpose, Jakob’s story has the grand and aimless sweep of a miniseries; it’s less a narrative than a tone poem on grief. While it’s hard to invest in Jakob’s self-imposed misery (which Podeswa lightly chides him for), the love between him and Athos – and, later, soulful second wife Michaela (Ayelet Zurer) – radiates from the screen. Rosamund Pike as wife No. 1 – a grinning Valkyrie blonde who represents his halfhearted attempt at distraction – is missed when her character splits for happier places. (Amy Nicholson) (Laemmle’s Royal, Laemmle’s Town Center 5, Laemmle’s Playhouse 7)

Hats Off

Documentary filmmaker Jyll Johnstone specializes in old ladies. (To date, her youngest subject is 87.) So does impeccably groomed 93-year-old Manhattan actress and model Mimi Weddell, who insists she’s a nonagenarian in number only; in gymnastics class, she flips around on the parallel bars. Mimi’s what your great-aunt would call “a character,” as Johnstone’s shallow portrait confirms. The film is determined to portray her as a starving spitfire, but how broke can she be when she’s shot commercials for Nike and guest-starred on Sex and the City? Johnstone isn’t so slipshod as to miss the tension between Mimi and her live-in (and leeching?) daughter Sarah, who readily admits to feeling too “schlumpy” for her mother, but these are confessions without insight or dramatics. Despite one’s admiration for the glamorous granny (and gratitude that she’s not your mom), the doc is nothing more than a series of underplayed moments, as when Mimi lands in Florence, Italy, to die in style, but shows up back in Central Park scenes later without so much as a grand adieu. (Amy Nicholson) (Laemmle’s Sunset 5, Laemmle’s Town Center 5, Laemmle’s Playhouse 7)

Iron Man

Brilliant billionaire industrialist and inventor Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), the second-generation CEO of the government’s top weapons contractor, gets kidnapped following an overseas weapons test, but escapes from his terrorist captors by building a massive suit of armor. Upon his return Stateside, this erstwhile lord of war is emotionally transformed and, after a few cybernetic and proprietary repulsor-ray upgrades to his suit, sets out to right the wrongs created by his company’s complicity in humanitarian crises. This puts him at odds with longtime aide Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), who wants to maintain the double-dealing status quo.

Director Jon Favreau is handcuffed only slightly by a screenplay that eventually dictates conflict in the form of a more direct, larger-than-life antagonist, but the comfort with special effects that he displayed in Zathura is more fully realized here, without distracting him from eliciting strong performances from Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow (as Stark’s devoted assistant), and Terrence Howard (as an exasperated military liaison). Then there’s Downey, who’s rakish and wry, but also gives us grace notes of a deeper reservoir of private pain. Slick and playful, Iron Man works in large part because the extremely hands-on nature of the character – he builds all his own gear, thank you very much, and brashly, publicly embraces his alter ego – helps separate him from a lot of his otherworldly or accidentally gifted superhero brethren. By film’s end, you can easily see the potential of the character, and you want more. (Brent Simon) (Citywide)

Redbelt

Mike Terry (an awesome Chiwetel Ejiofor) runs a cash-strapped L.A. jiu-jitsu academy where he preaches the non-confrontational doctrine that “competition weakens the fighter” – a bad idea if you’re in a movie written and directed by David Mamet. When attorney Laura (Emily Mortimer) accidentally shatters the school’s front window, the result brings Mike into contact with two men in vocations not known for their codes of honor – a fight promoter (Ricky Jay) and a movie star (a bracingly serious Tim Allen). Together, they conspire to drive Mike to the edge of ruin and force him to consider entering a mixed martial arts tournament.

Mamet’s plots are always carefully constructed, yet this one edges towards convoluted, with a poorly conceived climactic confrontation. And, although his acidic dialogue makes only sporadic appearances, Redbelt still bestows plenty of rewards. Mamet, himself a blue belt in jiu-jitsu, cleverly extracts the most exploitable aspects of Mike’s teachings – jiu-jitsu’s economy of energy and notions of honor – and uses them against him. He draws parallels between his hero’s professional and personal creeds, while the inevitable con is craftily employed to test the integrity of the main character’s moral foundation. Mike’s reverence for jiu-jitsu’s lofty principles will waver, but Mamet’s will not. However, Mamet’s distaste for Hollywood’s entertainment machine comes through loud and clear. (Mark Keizer) (The Landmark West Los Angeles, Pacific’s ArcLight, Pacific’s The Grove)

Son of Rambow

After a protracted rights hang-up that saw its release delayed more than a year from its Sundance 2007 bow – until after the recent Rambo sequel – this canted coming-of-age comedy finally hits theaters. Set in small-town Great Britain in the 1980s, the movie centers on floppy-armed pre-teen Will (Bill Milner), a fatherless member of a puritanical religious sect in which recorded entertainment is strictly forbidden. When Will sees a pirated copy of First Blood, however, his imagination takes off in sugar-rush fashion. After being blackmailed by rascally ne’er-do-well Lee Carter (Will Poulter) into helping out on a stunt reel, Will convinces his new pal they should make their own action epic. When disenchanted French exchange student Didier (Jules Sitruk) catches wind of it and demands a part, suddenly everyone wants in.

Written and directed by Garth Jennings (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), Son of Rambow is at its best when capturing the explosion of adolescent imagination, seducing us with its handcrafted feel and madcap, visually inventive style. Will and Lee Carter are types, though, and their relationship runs a bit hot-cold; I wished the movie had shown more of them actually bickering and working things out. It’s also a bit unrealistic with regards to Will’s mother’s slow slide away from the hermetic existence they’ve lived for so long. Still, the two lead performances – one salty, one sweet – give this movie lift, and it has an undeniable pinch of that same comic-tinged nostalgia that has made A Christmas Story (1983) de rigueur holiday viewing for all the alt-cool Christian families out there. (Brent Simon) (The Landmark West Los Angeles, Pacific’s ArcLight)

A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory

In the mid-’60s, Harvard grad Danny Williams became involved with the scene at Andy Warhol’s Factory, as well as with Warhol himself. As he was falling out of favor with the artist, he went to visit his well-to-do family, borrowed his mother’s car, and disappeared. Since the car turned up near the ocean, Williams was presumed dead, though no body was ever found. Decades later, Danny’s niece Esther Robinson accidentally discovered that the Carnegie Institute’s Warhol collection had a trove of films with Danny’s name on them and that curator Callie Angell had been trying to find out about him. So Esther, too young to have ever met her uncle, started trying to unravel the mystery of his disappearance – suicide, murder, or decampment to a new identity?

Robinson interviews surviving members of the Warhol scene, including Brigid Berlin, John Cale, and Gerard Malanga. Paul Morrissey comes off particularly badly, pooh-poohing Danny’s work in what seems like a still-simmering competition over credit for various Factory accomplishments. Documentarian Albert Maysles, whose first feature Danny edited, remembers him more fondly. Even more intriguing are the excerpts from Danny’s rediscovered films: Much more carefully shot and lit than most of the Factory output, they do suggest a talent and intelligence that might have led somewhere interesting. (Andy Klein) (Laemmle’s Grande 4)

Also Opening This Week

The Favor. Eva Aridjis directed this indie drama about a pet photographer (Frank Wood), who takes charge of a troubled teenager (Ryan Donowho) after the latter’s mother, a former girlfriend, dies. (AK) (Laemmle’s Grande 4)

Made of Honor. British TV director Paul Weiland helmed this comedy about a ladies’ man (Patrick Dempsey) who realizes that he’s in love with his platonic best friend (Michelle Monaghan), right before she announces she’s engaged to someone else. (AK) (Citywide)

Swimming in Auschwitz. Sixty years later, six Jewish women recall their experiences at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp during the Holocaust, in this documentary from Jon Kean. (AK) (Laemmle’s Music Hall 3)