Uncle Boonmee welcomes you to an "odd and beautiful world"

The N.Y. Times has an exclusive video clip and an A.O. Scott review of Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul's upcoming Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. I generally don't give too much creedence to individual reviews, but Scott does a beautiful job of capturing the (presumed) magical realism of the film. More than even the trailer, which I previously posted, his review has me psyched to see the film.

Loretta Devine has a real dead love for Tyler Perry now

For Colored Girls is more interesting as an artistic statement than an actual work of art. For better or worse, Tyler Perry is the modern-day Douglas Sirk. He brings a very particular (read: peculiar) world view to every project, even, apparently, his adaptations. He perplexes film critics today, but I have a feeling that in 50 years he’ll have the same cult following that Sirk has posthumously enjoyed.

That said, how do I feel about Colored Girls? Remember that particular world view I was talking about? Even as a white twenty-something male, I can safely assume the black female experience is far removed from Perry’s conception of it. It’s not that anything that happens in his film is beyond belief. Iraq War veterans do abuse their wives and children; and they sometimes kill them, too. Promising young dancers do sometimes go to back-alley abortionists. And some black, male professionals do lead alternate lives “on the down low.”

It’s not that what happens in Perry’s film is so ridiculous. The problem is the way Perry stages his high drama and the pat catharsis he strives for. Everything that happens fits neatly inside his Southern Baptist sensibilities. Yes, all these bad things happen, but if the women can come together, stop being promiscuous, and take their own share of the blame, all will be good again. Finally, Perry’s daytime TV conception of city life and the “ghetto” is about as enlightened as a very special episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s.

All those issues aside, the impressive cast strives valiantly to breathe life into Perry’s stilted dialogue. The opportunity to see Loretta Devine, Kimberly Elise, Phylicia Rashad and Kerry Washington — four of the most criminally under-utilized black actresses working today — shine in one film is golden. And, in a limited role as a broken down abortionist, Macy Gray packs a punch, too.

How could Perry produce such utter crap given such a talented cast? Short answer: He’s a true auteur. He couldn’t do it any other way.

Review: Angels & Demons

It's an angel! It's a demon! It's the camerlengo flying a CG helicopter!

Like the trite Dan Brown novel it was based upon, Angels & Demons has a lot of important-sounding things to say but very little in the way of real insight. It wants to sound profound. It wants to bridge the gap between science and religion. It wants to show that belief and logic are just two sides of the same coin. Most of all, it wants the audience to think that it wants all these things. The only thing Brown and director Ron Howard want are the up-front salaries and back-end deals.

Despite giving Tom Hanks' Robert Langdon a more conservative haircut and making the female lead—at least superficially—more intelligent and headstrong, Angels & Demons is actually more ridiculous than it's cinematic predecessor, The Da Vinci Code.

The CG visual effects, the true barometer of a good summer popcorn flick, are terrible. It seems the closer we come to virtual perfection, the more unreal it all seems. Call it the uncanny valley of digital imaging. St. Peter's Square looks good enough, populated with a mix of real human extras and digital fascimiles, but it doesn't have the gravity of the real thing. It looks a little distant, a little warped, like a meticulously constructed 1/16 scale model. The same can be said for all of the familiar landmarks that Tom Hanks didn't have permission to dash through, but does so anyway with a little movie magic.

Thematically, the film is a mess. And not a good, moral-ambiguity-explored-artfully mess. Early on, it presents a character who espouses the virtues of both science and religion. It is time, he says, for the two warring philosophies to unite. And then, after his breathless proselytizing, he calls science the "younger brother" of religion. Another priest is steadfastly against science while quietly campaigning for his chance to become the new pope. Which one is the ideal man of faith and which one is the villain who's scheming to bring down the Vatican? The answer isn't all that surprising.

The acting, on all fronts, is actually an improvement on The Da Vinci Code, where the performances were either wooden or overwrought with little middle ground. Ewan McGregor gets a lot of mileage out of the Camerlengo McKenna; right up until a last-minute plot twist robs his character of any realistically human motivation. Armin Mueller-Stahl succeeds as a cardinal whose self-interest is thoroughly realistic. I get the feeling that there's a lot of depth yet to be mined in Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer (Eric Bana's wife in Munich). The screenplay asks only that she say stupid things ("Isn't it cold in here?") smartly, but she brings more emotion to her scenes than are dictated by the vapid dialogue she's forced to recite. Tom Hanks is...Tom Hanks, and you can't really argue against that.

The Vatican was right to ignore this thoroughly unincendiary film. The audience will leave the multiplex with nothing more or less than what they came in with. Well, except 138 minutes they can never retrieve.

Rating: 3 / 10

Review: The Hangover

Although I spent the weekend away from the web (with limited wireless access, I didn't even try), I did catch three recent popcorn flicks at the movieplex—an admitted rarity for me. Here's some thoughts on the first of the three... Spoilers follow.

The Hangover is what it is. If you've seen the trailer, you know precisely what you're in for. Two frat guys and an oddball brother-in-law take their friend on a bachelor party in Sin City. Bad shit happens. None of the survivors of the bender can remember what they did when they wake up the next morning to a chicken, a tiger and no sign of the would-be groom. It's a story told at backyard barbecues and reenacted on sitcoms that you suspect has never actually happened.

The jokes come so fast and loose that the duds don't really factor. Ed Helms' Stu is a variation on Andy Bernard: cuckolded by his fiancee and repressed by his middle-class life. Bradley Cooper is a little too convincing as douchebag Phil. Zach Galifianakis (from the short-lived Comedy Central show "Dog Bites Man") is particularly well-suited to the role of an infantile pedophile, Alan, who doesn't know the difference between Ecstasy and Rufinol. Despite some truly disturbing "quirks," Galifianakis manages to make Alan seem harmless. He just wants to be one of the guys, after all.

There's never any real suspense in The Hangover. In a different film—not necessarily better, but more serious-minded—Alan's desperation for acceptance, his naivete and his hinted-at pedophilia would lead to something worse than short-term amnesia. Going in, the audience knows nothing truly dire will happen to these guys. Tiger maulings, run-ins with sociopathic drug dealers and heat stroke won't be fatal events here.

In that sense, The Hangover falls neatly into the fantasy Las Vegas of the ad campaigns. Bad things may happen to you there but, as a tourist, you can expect to leave relatively unscathed and with a really awesome story to tell your friends. The Hangover's conclusion falls right in line with the endings of Indecent Proposal, Vegas Vacation or last year's 21. As refreshing as it would be to see this familiar story get a perverse twist—imagine if the groom died after 2 days of exposure to the wild temperature fluctuations of the desert city—the film was never meant to be anything other than a funny retread of a familiar story.

On it's own relatively modest terms, The Hangover works. It's the funniest straight comedy I've seen in a long time. Watch it with a few of your bros and make sure to stay for the credits.

Rating: 7 / 10