Be Kind Rewind
dir. Michel Gondry
Watching Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind placed me in the
same state of mind that Trinculo is in when, in The Tempest,
he comes across something that overwhelms his reason. “What have we
here?” he wonders. “A man or a fish? Dead or alive? A fish: He smells
like a fish; a very ancient and fishlike smell; a kind of not of the
newest poor-John. A strange fish!” How else can I describe Be Kind
Rewind than as a very strange fish? I do not know if it is dead or
alive, new or ancient, and there is something oceanic about it. Oceanic
in the sense that its images and rhythms are not produced on the
surface of the sensible, in the daylight of the consciousness, but
entirely in the depths of a dream. This movie has almost nothing to do
with reality.
Be Kind Rewind is directed by the man who gave the world
the wonderful Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The
story, which was written by Gondry (and not by Charlie Kaufman), is
about a video store in Passaic, New Jersey. The store only rents VHS
tapes. It’s located on the ground floor of the building that legendary
jazz pianist Fats Waller was born in. Mos Def works in the store; Jack
Black hangs around the store. Believably, the old building is about to
get knocked down for a new condo. Believably, Jack is electrocuted
while trying to sabotage a power plant. Unbelievably, Jack becomes
magnetized. Unbelievably, his magnetized body erases all the VHS tapes
in the video store. To stay in business, and to save the building Fats
Waller was born in from the developers, Mos Def decides to make
homemade versions of the films that were erased by Jack Black’s
magnetized body.
No, a human cannot be magnetized. Yes, Black’s electrocution
would have killed a normal human being. No, we can never imagine Mos
Def and Jack Black as best friends. None of this makes sense, none of
it is bad, and none of it is as impressive as Eternal
Sunshine. What can we call this kind of movie? A very strange
fish. CHARLES MUDEDE
Charlie Bartlett
dir. Jon Poll
Once noted for farts, food fights, and the occasional thoughtful
moment, the teen-movie genre has since settled into an MTV-approved
rut, with all traces of hormonal confusion and rebellion erased in
favor of squeaky-clean stereotypes intent on solving their problems
through dance. The unusually ambitious Charlie Bartlett isn’t
a great movie—it’s too slight and unfocused for that—but
its wobbly quality and refusal to concentrate too hard on target
demographics make it awfully welcome. In this era of the slick,
soundtrack-propelled high-school movie, it’s refreshing to see one
that tries to chew too much.
The nicely unpolished Anton Yelchin plays the title character, an
attention-craving prep-school reject who lives in a huge mansion with
his
boozily oblivious mother (Hope Davis, relishing the chance to
drop her usual hemorrhoidal persona). Trying to endear himself to his
new public-school classmates, he hatches a scheme to sell off his
bottomless supply of prescription meds to the student body, a move that
boosts his popularity exponentially while tripping the radar of his
recovering-alcoholic principal (Robert Downey Jr., who should really
play the straight man more often).
The shambling plot may lose its way occasionally, but debuting
writer Gustin Nash scores some unexpectedly witty points about the
current state of uncomprehending parents and psychiatrists serving as
vending machines. His greatest coup, however, may be in the creation of
the title character, who comes off as a throwback to the genre’s glory
days: smart without being preternaturally wise, cool without seeming
forced, and endearing without skimping on the vaguely dickheaded
tendencies that made the likes of Ferris Bueller and the kid brother
from Just One of the Guys so iconic. Only God and John Hughes
know how this will play in the instant-gratification Zac Efron regime,
but a rediscovery somewhere down the road seems assured. ANDREW
WRIGHT
Vantage Point
dir. Pete Travis
Vantage Point aims to add a little Rashomon to the
standard political-thriller template. It misses the mark badly,
resulting in a clunky, unnecessarily complicated thriller that never
earns the gimmick of endless repetition it forces the audience to sit
through.
The story takes place in Spain, where the U.S. president (William
Hurt) has organized a worldwide summit on combating terrorism. “GNN”
has an army in place to televise the momentous occasion; the Secret
Service is on full alert due to substantial threats. Meanwhile, agent
Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) is returning to the job after taking a
bullet for the president during an assassination attempt. Shaky and
medicated, Barnes is nonetheless assigned to cover the POTUS during the
summit’s opening ceremony—and then shots ring out, bombs explode,
and the film rewinds right before our eyes to 30 minutes before, when
we’re taken through the assassination again (and again and again) with
a different character.
These characters run the gamut from local police to
camcorder-wielding tourists to the assassins themselves, with each new
thread revealing more and more of the plot. But as the film lumbers
along, the gimmick quickly becomes tiresome. This sort of conceit
requires a certain amount of finesse to pull off successfully, but
Vantage Point has all the subtlety of a dump truck, with
director Pete Travis using the same footage over and over to rapidly
diminishing effect. (The film’s big pyrotechnic bang is especially
overused, shown to us from the exact same angles each time it
detonates.) And while the assassination plot is well thought out, its
unraveling is so obvious and simple-headed that it renders the entire
setup laughable. Not even a semitwist of a climax can rescue this
sliced-‘n’-diced schlock.
BRADLEY STEINBACHER
Honeydripper
dir. John Sayles
A John Sayles movie has a distinctive rhythm. It is neither the
rhythm of Honeydripper‘s hypothetical old South, full of
cotton fields and racism and moonshine-wetted blues (the first half of
the movie), nor the rhythm of an equally abstract new South, with its
cotton fields and racism and whiskey-soaked rock ‘n’ roll (the second
half). A John Sayles movie is slow and deliberate and it does not
swing. He’s good at magnifying details until they look the size of
legends, but he’s no good at lengthening moments until they feel like
sweaty Southern afternoons, thick with insects and resentment.
Honeydripper is long (over two hours), but it doesn’t feel
spacious. It feels hopelessly crammed.
In the rural Alabama of 1950, Tyrone (Danny Glover) is the
proprietor of a run-down, electricity-compromised roadhouse called the
Honeydripper. As the film opens, he’s losing all his customers to a
competing bar, complete with newfangled jukebox, that’s situated across
the street. (We never meet the proprietor of this establishment, which
makes it easier to cheer when Tyrone swipes his liquor delivery.) We
know Tyrone is virtuous because he believes in the power of live music,
and we know that he’s a smart businessman because he fires his longtime
blues crooner in favor of an itinerant hotshot known (lamely) as Guitar
Sam.
Meanwhile, another guitar whiz named Sonny (Gary Clark Jr.) is
passing through town; and Tyrone’s wife is considering taking up
Pentecostalism; and their daughter is frail and saving for beauty
school; and there’s a wise blind guy and a bad white sheriff and a
lecherous fat lady and cotton to be picked and back rent to be paid.
The plot unfolds at its stately Saylesian pace with exactly zero
surprises. Guitar Sam isn’t coming? You don’t say. ANNIE WAGNER
The Signal
dir. David Bruckner, Dan Bush,
Jacob Gentry
At its heart, The Signal is a stunt—a cheap horror
flick told in three segments by three different directors. Set in the
fictional city of Terminus, the movie spins around a simple, and
genuinely unnerving, premise: What would happen if our televisions and
phones suddenly started broadcasting a signal that turned man brutally
against man?
It’s a great idea, one that preys on our fears of both technology
and isolation—communication as the starter pistol for the
apocalypse. And for the first segment, at least, the result is
terrifying. Directed by David Bruckner, the film’s initial moments are
beautifully paced, told from the POV of Mya (Anessa Ramsey), an
unfaithful wife whose husband, Lewis (a truly menacing AJ Bowen), is
one of the first to be affected by the noise coming from the TV.
Suspicions lead to confrontation, confrontation leads to a baseball bat
meeting a skull—while outside, the entire city is starting to
lose its shit.
From this setup, The Signal then switches to another POV,
with director Dan Bush taking the reins. And it’s here that the film
begins to falter. Making an uneasy shift into black comedy, the second
segment—this time following Lewis in search of the fleeing
Mya—is so tonally different from the opening that it kills the
tension the first section had earned. Black comedy may play to Bush’s
strengths as a director—the segment itself is certainly
entertaining—but it feels like it’s from a completely different
movie. The shift is made even more jarring once the third and final
director, Jacob Gentry, tries to muscle the film back in line with its
opening. The Signal is never boring, and at times it’s even
outright terrifying. But watching it, you can’t help but wish the
directors had abandoned the three-director stunt in order to maintain
the near-perfection established in the first act. BRADLEY
STEINBACHER
