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Archive for the ‘Movie Reviews’ Category
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Even the simplest idea can spin a complex web of possibilities. It grows in the mind, consuming our every thought and invading our hopes and dreams, explains Inception's troubled hero, Cobb (Leonard DiCaprio), when he's not running from a dreamer's subconscious security team, wrestling with his own projected mental demons, or diving deeper into the dream within a dream within a dream. Yes, Inception is a complex thriller, but it's much more than an inventive crime caper, especially in a world where multiplexes are stuffed with rehashed sequels and movies that rely on new technology to create spectacle. Inception is a new cinematic idea and a fresh story that is executed with a precision and energy rarely dreamed of in Hollywood.
Before you can understand Inception, you have to understand extraction. It's when one person enters another person's mind through a dream and steals an idea or information. (Extraction is such a potent threat in big business espionage that high-level CEO-types train their subconscious to seek out and eliminate the threat of a foreign extractor.) Inception is the opposite of that - an outsider planting an idea and convincing the dreamer that he created it. It's rare, if not completely unheard of, and that's exactly what Cobb has to do if he wants to clear his name to return home.
If your head is already spinning with questions, you won't have time to ask them before an entire city block twists and collapses on itself or the perspective shifts, altering your entire perception. Inception is more about the answers than the questions. Writer-director Christopher Nolan knows to illustrate his answers with actual situations in the film -- so that our doubts and uncertainties are given visual proof.
The pace is rabid and the inception rules become more complex as Cobb and his dream team brave the recesses of energy-market monopoly heir Richard Fischer's (Cillian Murphy) subconscious mind to plant the idea of breaking up his family's business. To avoid being swallowed by theoretical questions, Nolan combines his clever Memento writing chops with his ability to direct thrilling action scenes (after cutting his teeth on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight), creating a poetic montage of energy that never lets you question what's happening, let alone take your next breath.
Make no mistake, the action scenes in Inception are unlike anything you've seen. Nolan juggles upwards of four story lines, while cinematographer Wally Pfister wows us with surreal slow-motion shots juxtaposed with frantic, perspective-shifting fight scenes, all of which are rooted in a reality we understand and the dream world rules we've come to believe in. These scenes will undoubtedly draw comparisons to The Matrix, but the tension and story weight in Inception's scenes make these moments more than a barrage of slow motion bullets.
Though Inception may leave a few lingering questions, it doesn't leave behind any nagging plot holes or character inconsistencies. Its smart writing lets the imagination of the audience come up with the answers. And while we dream about the possibilities, we can only hope that its originality inspires a creative cinematic renaissance that seeks out new ideas instead of re-creating what we've already seen.
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Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Inspiration comes from the strangest places at Walt Disney Pictures. Recent films released by the studio can trace their roots back to classic works of literature (Alice in Wonderland, A Christmas Carol), video game franchises (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time), and a popular theme-park ride (Pirates of the Caribbean).
Yet even in this potentially limitless realm of adaptable, creative ideas, Jon Turteltaub's kid-focused fantasy The Sorcerer's Apprentice boasts a unique muse. It owes its existence to an eight-minute animated sequence found in a 70-year-old film. Granted, both the film and the clip are famous in their own right. We're talking about Mickey Mouse's magical "Sorcerer's Apprentice" routine from the 1940s classic, Fantasia. But it's still an odd clip to use as a springboard for an effects-laden 21st century summer blockbuster.
Not so odd that it doesn't work, however. Turteltaub and his screenwriting team start deep in the past, where apprentices of the legendary Merlin find themselves in a battle with Morgana (Alice Krige), a vicious foe. Former ally Horvath (Alfred Molina) has gone rogue, siding with Morgana in the fight. Balthazar (Nicolas Cage) tries to stop them, but doesn't act fast enough to rescue his beloved, Veronica (Monica Bellucci), from an elaborate prison. Our distraught hero is told only one person -- the Prime Merlinian -- has the power to defeat Morgana, so Balthazar spends centuries looking for this fabled individual.
Having established the mystical elements, Apprentice quickly modernizes its story. Stepping in for Mickey is the mousy Jay Baruchel, the lanky guy from Tropic Thunder and Knocked Up, who stammers through the part of Dave, a book smart teenager with a nose for science and a knack for magic only Balthazar can see. Together, they dance through a traditional formula of teacher and student combining talents to defeat a greater power.
Apprentice succeeds because Turteltaub rarely forgets the age-range, and attention span, of his target audience. Cage tailors his gonzo riffs to the film's family-friendly antics and finds sizable laughs. Perhaps inspired by his cartoon source material, the star makes for an animated master tutoring an eager Baruchel in all things sorcery. Neither he nor Molina unleash their inner scene-chewer, allowing Turteltaub the freedom to fill his canvas with vibrant effects. Showing a good eye for grand spectacle, the director brings a dragon to life in a memorable parade scene, conjures villains made of creepy crawly cockroaches, morphs vicious wolves into adorable puppies, and soars over Manhattan's skyline on an iron eagle ripped from the side of the Chrysler Building. The requisite Fantasia tribute -- complete with dancing mops and buckets -- feels forced. But it's not long before Cage is piloting a sports car through a floating mirror, and Apprentice is right back in its turbo-charged, entertain-at-all-costs mode.
It's safe to say that imaginative kids who felt deflated after trudging through M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender will find the movie-making magic tricks they've been waiting for here. Parents may find certain sequences loud and overbearing. That, of course, will make the kids like it even more.
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Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Nicknamed the "French Hitchcock," Henri-Georges Clouzot was responsible for two of France's best post-war pictures, The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques. Yet, not long after his intriguing documentary The Mystery of Picasso, his relevance hit a sharp decline -- even as Hitchcock himself, and the suspense genre in general, became more and more popular. But now we are suddenly confronted with evidence of what might have been Clouzot's magnum opus in Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea's mesmerizing new documentary hybrid, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno. Sparked by an unexpected meeting between Bromberg and Clouzot's widow in a stalled elevator, the film goes about the task of filling in the gaps between, surrounding, and caused by the 15 hours of footage (mostly rushes and screen tests) that are left of L'Enfer, Clouzot's immensely ambitious and unfinished 1964 production of a psychological-thriller-cum-acid-trip. Fascinated by Fellini's 8 ½, according to assistant director Costa-Gavras, Clouzot meant to blow out a relatively simple tale of an innkeeper (Serge Reggiani) and his obsessive jealousy over his young wife, Odette (Romy Schneider), with all matter of hallucinatory audio and visual effects. Much of the footage that Bromberg, a film archivist, and Medrea, a lawyer, plumb involves cherry bomb Schneider modeling outfits, smoking and testing reactions under pulsing colored lights, covered in glitter and fluorescent make-up. Enthralled by modern art, Clouzot subjected his imagery to rhythmic zooms, fetishized close-ups, and cascades of visual effects, one of which literally involves a cascade of water rippling over images of Schneider and Reggiani. What the hell was he up to? Clouzot certainly had a vision of where he wanted L'Enfer to end up and, given an "unlimited budget" by Columbia Pictures, did not want for lack of fiscal security. Rather than studio interference, it was Clouzot's own (denied) pathology that plagued the production. A notorious insomniac, Clouzot would hound his crew at all hours of the night, ran his cast ragged and demanded reshoots at nearly every turn. Following Reggiani's abrupt exit from the film -- the role was briefly recast with Jean-Louis Trintignant -- Clouzot suffered a near-fatal heart attack while shooting an encounter between Schneider and co-star Dany Carrel on a boat, effectively aborting the project. Indeed, Bromberg and Medrea do a far more chilling and terrifically fascinating job by arranging the remnants of Clouzot's smashed centerpiece, rather than tangling with the beast on a purely narrative level. While adding a soundtrack to several scenes and uncovering Clouzot's own experimental sound tests, the directors also rebuild key scenes via readings, recasting Jacques Gamblin in Reggiani's role and Bérénice Bejo in Schneider's. What sounds like a mess eventually emerges as a daring, fractious dual portrait of pathology run amok and the frustration inherent in attempting to perfectly realize any imagined narrative, whether it be a film or a future with another. It would be foolish (my kind of foolish) to imagine that Inferno will remind the wider public of Clouzot's admittedly extreme but astonishingly effective talents. More pointedly, Bromberg and Medrea have presented the doomed project as an entity refracted and rearranged through countless perspectives and dismantled parts, getting to the dark heart of the artist's obsession, over 30 years after his death. Compared to Claude Chabrol's tedious 1994 version of L'Enfer, Inferno suggests that certain projects are simply more captivating in their incompleteness.
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Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Jorge, the elder of the two subjects of Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio's lovely new documentary hybrid Alamar, makes his living catching fish, stingrays and lobsters in Banco Chorrico, an atoll reef off the southeast coast of Quintana Roo, Mexico. A lean and tan man of Mayan heritage, Jorge, as the film's prelude informs, enjoyed an intense but ultimately short-lived romance with an Italian woman named Roberta. The result was Natan who, at five years old, is told that he will spend a week with his father in the wilds of Banco Chorrico before moving back to Rome with his mother.
Roberta and Jorge's separation creates a structure for Alamar but from the moment Natan and Jorge step onto a small fishing vessel piloted by Jorge's elderly friend and fellow fisher Nestor, it is clear that the pains of broken home are far from what Gonzalez-Rubio's film is fascinated by. In fact, from the moment they leave her home, Roberta is only spoken of near the end of the film and not negatively, though it should be said that her presence is felt when, in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, Natan takes out a handheld video game for a moment.
Rather than focusing on the situation they have been forced into, Gonzalez-Rubio stays towards the unspoken moments that Jorge and Natan are connected by, amplified generously by the splendorous, colorful surroundings of Banco Chorrico. For Jorge, bonding includes a coral dive to spear lobsters, fishing for barracudas without reels, lessons on how to properly snorkel, washing Nestor's boat and eating fish both fried and boiled in a stew. A lesson on how to properly handle a cattle egret, that comes to be known as Blanquito, speaks more clearly to the inherent bonds between man and animal than a dozen guilt-trip eco docs have been able to muster.
Indeed, even more than depictions of father-son or man-animal connections, Alamar is a film full-to-bursting with vitality and generosity, one that could have so easily tipped into either a sterile Discovery Channel special or a hokey portrait of familial bonds at sea. Neither of said scenarios would allow for moments as natural and genuinely joyful as Nestor and Jorge's discussion on effects of coffee or Natan drawing fish with markers and, without warning, pointing out that he will remember the Gonzalez-Rubio's camera along with the sea life. These instances, not to mention some spectacular images of friendly crocodiles and writhing barracudas, give Alamar a lived-in feeling yet the film remains surprising and only minimally sentimental throughout.
The film ends with a cut from the clear waters of Banco Chorrico to the dirty canals of Rome, where Roberta and Natan look out on the great city from a high spot. The story of Natan in the urban world is one that might be interesting but Alamar is not a film of balances, nor is it all that interested in the realities of Roberta's world. Banco Chorrico might seem as normal as anything else to Jorge, which the press notes describe as "part Johnny Depp, part Peter Pan," but for Natan and the audience, it's The Jungle Book with Jorge recast as a fatherly Balloo, attempting to reinforce unspoken principals of life that may get lost by the wayside when he returns to the "real" world.
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Thursday, July 15th, 2010
The spark that lit Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, his wonderful follow-up to The Gold Rush, was actually rather minor. It began with a note about a gag that had yet to be filmed or performed on stage: A man, elevated high, beset by a group of monkeys that nearly cause his demise. Henry Bergman, a close friend, warned him that the gag would never work on stage but gave him the idea to set it under the big top. Bergman would later teach him to walk a tightrope in under a week. As in nearly all of his work, Chaplin came up with the set-pieces and drive of The Circus, which is being screened in a new print as part of Film Forum's Chaplin retrospective, through a series of notes (what he referred to as "suggestions") on gags that he dreamt up while walking around his dual homes of Los Angeles and New York with his co-star and assistant director Harry Crocker. Around the dozen or so gags, Chaplin went about constructing both a love triangle and a meditation on the art of comedy and how self-awareness, success, and ambition refract and inform a performer. The end result had the director deploying his classic alter-ego, The Tramp, as the unknowing savior of both a fledgling big top and the step-daughter (Merna Kennedy) of a heartless ringmaster (Al Ernest Garcia). The opening gag ranks with one of Chapdin's best: Unknowingly wrangled into a pickpocket scam, The Tramp finds himself evading the cops, the thief and the mark in a funhouse inside a mock Jonah's Ark. In terms of sheer physicality, this is as challenging a gauntlet as Chaplin ever dared himself to come out of with his mustache intact, and the image of him recreating the precise movements of a wooden figurine is reward enough. The chase concludes in the center ring of the humdrum circus, a fact that infuriates the ringmaster until he realizes that the crowd is eating it up. Hopelessly unaware and falling for the hunger-stricken step-daughter, The Tramp eventually realizes his talents and becomes demanding towards the ringmaster, an act that coincides with a decline in the reception of his performances. All seems on track for The Tramp to win his beloved's heart until he is upstaged by Rex (Crocker), a well-groomed tightrope walker. What might have been a genteel parable, concluding in a sort of B-grade alternative to City Lights' miraculous ending, becomes something more complex as The Tramp plans to become a tightrope walker to win back the stepdaughter, leading to the gag which The Circus was meant to encapsulate. Though the film went into production in January of 1926, some eighteen months before The Jazz Singer began shooting, The Circus bluntly allegorizes the fickleness of the motion picture audience and, by extension, the elusive nature of popularity and stardom. Rex, for both the audience and the stepdaughter, becomes the new show and The Tramp, despite attempts to catch up with the new wave, eventually faces the fact that the art, at least for him, has met its expiration date. This is how The Circus ends, but it obviously made little difference to Chaplin. His two subsequent films, City Lights and Modern Times, continued to evade sound and (rightly) remain his best-regarded works. Released through a raging typhoon of personal turmoil -- his second wife, Lita Grey, filed divorced and released an unprecedented 52-page summation of their turbulent marriage, including sexual proclivities -- The Circus will perhaps always be considered minor, eclipsed by the films that directly followed and preceded it. Minor or not, the film remains, by all means, a refined and personal work by a great artist.
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Thursday, July 15th, 2010
 The film sub-genre of Mumblecore has been around since 2002. They are characterized by improvised scripts spoken by un-proven actors on shoestring budgets. The plots are simplistic, people talking about what people talk about as they would normally talk. Nothing particularly spectacular happens and it’s okay. Slowly, the directors of these films have been getting noticed and given acclaim. Last year, the film Humpday was a huge critical success for writer, director, producer Lynn Shelton. Now, Mumblecore has come to a theater near you with actors you have probably heard of. The brothers Duplass, Mark and Jay, were given the go ahead to work the magic they brought to their previous works, The Puffy Chair and Baghead, into something with a bigger budget. What they have given us is Cyrus – a comedy that keeps its independent vibe and does not skimp on the quirk; yet by the end, if you stay with it, will surprise and charm you.
 John’s (John C. Reilly) social life is at a standstill and his ex-wife is about to be remarried. Still single after seven years after the breakup of his marriage, he has all but given up on romance, but at the urging of his ex-wife and best friend, Jaime (Catherine Keener), John grudgingly agrees to join her and her fiancé Tim (Matt Walsh) at a party. To his, and everyone else’s surprise, he actually manages to meet someone; the gorgeous and spirited Molly (Marisa Tormei). Their chemistry is immediate. The relationship takes off quickly but Molly is oddly reluctant to take the relationship beyond John’s house. Confused, he follows her home and discovers the other man in Molly’s life; her son Cyrus (Jonah Hill). A 21-year-old new age musician, Cyrus is his mom’s best friend and shares an unconventional relationship with her. Cyrus will go to any lengths to protect Molly and is definitely not ready to share her with anyone, especially John. Before long, the two are locked in a battle of wits for the woman they both love. It’s a new twist on the old love triangle plot.
 This film was made in an unconventional way. Instead of blocking the scenes – preplanning where the actors would stand when they say their lines so that they can be lit properly – the Duplass brothers lit the entire set so that their actors could move about freely and spontaneously thus encouraging the natural feel of their mumblecore entrees. Unfortunately, what it also does is confuse the cameraman. Since they do not know where the actors are going to be at any particular time, the camera work becomes shoddy, zooming in and out wildly, going out of focus when the actors get too close or too far from the camera. It almost looks like they are shooting a documentary. It was this unrefined style that initially turned me off to the whole mumblecore genre. It just isn’t something I dig. To me it comes off as being sloppy and uncaring. I also can’t stand slice-of-life type of films. If I want to see natural (read: boring) people do regular (read: extremely boring) things, I could stay at home and save my $12 and my two hours. That said, I really wasn’t looking forward to this film. On top of that, the trailers didn’t really sell this film properly. It was pushing an all out comedy, but I knew enough to know not to expect it. So I came into this film with all that prejudice of mine, and yet the acting and how delicately the directors handled the situations quickly pulled me out of my funk. It became just a change in style, neither good nor bad, just different.
 John C Reilly is a master actor and a joy to watch in anything he does. His relationship with Catherine Keener is interesting to say the least. As exes, they act far more friendly and supportive then any separated couples I’ve ever met. John takes advantage of his ex’s friendship and, as Cyrus starts butting his way into Molly and John’s relationship, John starts becoming the Cyrus in Jaime and Tim’s relationship. Seeing him in this film, as a lead actor was an inspired choice, however he was shown up in the improvising area by Marisa Tormei. His delivery is short and choppy, he stammers constantly. Her delivery is smooth and polished and feels far more professional then either of her male counterparts. She lifts the entire film into a higher caliber. Jonah Hill has, with the Apatow troupe, gotten a lot of improv training in comedy and most of the all out gut-busting moments belong to him.
 There are three moments in the film that really brought everything together for me, where the emotions completely congealed and I seriously fell in love with the characters and this movie. In these scenes two characters are talking, however the scene starts on the two people talking to each other, and as we continue to hear them talking, it cuts away to the same two people in other, disparate but related, scenarios and back again, all of this over a great piece of heartfelt music. It was in these times where I could see glimpses of how these directors really had a grasp on how to manipulate the cinematic art to do their bidding. I hope to see them continue to grow.
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Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
Inception writer-director Christopher Nolan tells AMC News that the premise of his multilayered story revolves around a shared universal experience that most of us have when we sleep, namely that "dreams feel real while we're in them." Bringing that experience from the mazelike depths of the human mind to the big screen required building and shooting on massive moving sets to create zero-gravity effects and embarking on a global trek to bring faraway dreamscapes to life. Instead of shooting his actors against a green screen and adding in location footage during postproduction, Nolan, cast, and crew endured extreme wind, rain, snow, and heat while shooting sequences in Tokyo, Carlington, Paris, Tangier, Calgary, and Los Angeles. The Dark Knight director feels he achieved the creation of those tactile experiences in our dreams where everything is real to us, no matter how unusual or unfamiliar it is, until we wake.
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Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
What would happen if multiple people could share the same dream? That's the high-concept idea at the center of Christopher Nolan's action thriller Inception -- a story that, Nolan told AMC News, he occasionally got lost in himself. But, he says, that's a good thing, because the film is about getting lost in the layers of the mind. Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Cobb -- an "extractor" who can join in the dreams of others, steal secrets from the darkest corners of a person's subconscious, and plant ideas within dreams. DiCaprio told AMC News that Nolan and his "highly ambitious film" about the power of the mind motivated him (and, sometimes, confused him) during shooting. While working on the film, Inception co-star Joseph Gordon-Levitt said he became more intrigued by the mind's ability to create visually and sonically lush dreams and wondered how much of that ability we could harness for use in our waking lives.
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Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
I was talking with an old friend of mine about the summer releases this year and our general feeling of utter blah-ness about the whole summer season, when I said to him, "Well, look at it this way: at least you have Inception to look forward to," naming the upcoming film in which Leonardo DiCaprio takes a stroll through other people's dreams, directed by Christopher Nolan.
"Oh, that," he said. "I don't get that one at all. It's the same basic concept as Dreamscape, and I already saw that. I don't know why anyone would get excited about what's basically yet another remake."
One reason, of course, is that Dreamscape came out 25 years ago, i.e., at a time when a lot of Inception's opening-weekend audience was still in a haploid state. In that respect, it's similar to asking why tween girls are excited about the Jonas Brothers when there's already been the New Kids on the Block.
I have a tween-age daughter here at home. Every time I point out to
her that there's an earlier analogue of every single piece of music she
likes, she looks at me as if to say, You poor, sad, balding little
man. You just don't get it, do you? She does it with love, mind you.
But she still does it. Likewise, telling a 21-year-old guy that he can
get pretty much the same experience with a quarter-century-old flick
starring Dennis Quaid and directed by the guy who did The Stepfather
that he'll get with a Leonardo DiCaprio movie directed by the guy who did The
Dark Knight is likely to get you a similar result.
But
beyond that, I would take exception to the argument that Inception is
basically a remake. What the two films have in common is a central
conceit, or plot point -- in this case, both films feature a man who can
enter other people's dreams and, in doing so, learn things about them or
change the course of their lives. It's a pretty specific plot point, to
be sure. But it's also like saying that, because the film 9 features a
main character made out of bits of cloth that tries to rescue a fellow
living doll from the clutches of evil, it's a remake of Toy Story.
Anyone who's seen both films knows that's not the case; despite certain
thematic elements, they're different stories. Heck, Dark City and
The Matrix have so much in common -- including production dates --
that the latter used the leftover sets of the former. And yet, for all
their similarities, they are two very different viewing experiences.
I've
been pretty consistent in my opinion that Hollywood goes a little too
often to the well of sequels and remakes, but, philosophically, I don't
really have any problem with filmmakers dipping out of the same well of
inspiration or playing with the same basic ideas and running variations
of those themes, especially when the filmmakers themselves have wildly
divergent perspectives. As an example of this, I give you Michael Herr's
Vietnam War memoir, Dispatches, which served as a partial
inspiration for at least two films. In the hands of Francis Ford
Coppola, it was transmuted into Apocalypse Now. In the hands of
Stanley Kubrick, Full Metal Jacket. That's not a bad spread
there.
Inception doesn't have similarities just to Dreamscape,
of course. You could spend a merry day name checking influences from a
number of cinematic predecessors, including the aforementioned Matrix and Dark City and, of course, director Christopher Nolan's
own Batman movies. But for me, as a viewer, the question isn't whether a
filmmaker uses the same basic ideas as one film or borrows other ideas
from another film and outright steals them from a third. The question
for me is what the filmmakers do once they start putting those ideas
together as a film. Do it poorly as a filmmaker, and you'll be told
you've created a cheap knockoff. Do it well, and you'll be told you've
breathtakingly reinvented the concept.
And this, to my mind, is a
fine reason for my friend to check out Inception, even if he's
seen Dreamscape: to watch a filmmaker either master his
influences and predecessors or be swallowed up by them. In that
respect, my friend has access to a joy that the 21-year-old who's never
seen Dreamscape does not: the excitement of watching something
that's been done before get done again -- possibly (and definitely, in
this case) even better.
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Monday, July 12th, 2010
From Jennifer Aniston's latest attempt to create a film career -- otherwise known as The Bounty Hunter -- to Noah Baumbach's clever Ben Stiller comedy, Greenberg, here's our take on all that's coming out this week on DVD and Blu-ray. The Bounty Hunter  Jennifer Aniston is bounty hunter Gerard Butler's ex-wife, and -- wouldn't you know it? -- he's been hired to catch her. Let the fun -- not commence. Our very, very unimpressed critic said, "A romantic comedy is built from the relationship of its leads, and all The Bounty Hunter has to work with are blank stares." Chloe  Sweet Hereafter director Atom Egoyan's latest tale of sexual mores and oddities stars Julianne Moore as an insecure wife who's so convinced that her husband (Liam Neeson) is having an affair that she hires a hooker (Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him, as a test, only to become enamored of Chloe herself. We thought that it ended as a letdown but that the film's "Hitchcockian overtones and apt pacing mark a welcome return to form for Egoyan."
Greenberg  In this urbane drama from Margot at the Wedding filmmaker Noah Baumbach, Ben Stiller plays a surly misanthrope house-sitting for his much more successful brother in Los Angeles, when he enters into a curious relationship with his brother's young nanny. We thought this off-key story to be "perceptive and very beautiful." Formosa Betrayed Dawson's Creek's James Van Der Beek resurfaces to star as an FBI agent who gets in way over his head in this politically tinged Taiwan-set suspense thriller that we found "directed with skill and precision." 8: The Mormon Proposition  When California passed Proposition 8 to keep same-sex couples from getting married, the fact that the Mormon church was one of the proposition's biggest supporters riled many people, including the makers of this incensed documentary. While we appreciated the film's subject matter, some "overwrought and saccharine" passages undermined an "otherwise strongly worded piece of issue cinema." Saint John of Las Vegas  The ever-reliable Steve Buscemi plays a gambling junkie on a road trip to (where else?) Las Vegas in this low-budget drama. Our critic thought the cast was one of the film's strongest points (Buscemi, Sarah Silverman, Peter Dinklage, among others) but disliked the "paper-thin story" that was only "good for a quick laugh." Our Family Wedding  Everything you need to know about this new wedding comedy (starring Forest Whitaker, America Ferrera, and Carlos Mencia) is summed up by our critic, who asked, first, whether the film was made because somebody lost a bet, and then noted, "Never have 100 supposedly laugh-filled minutes felt more like a death in the family instead of a marriage."
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