All Michael Bay’s “Transformers” in 3D is missing is a 40. (Take a 40, please.) Robustly cynical, “Transformers: Dark Of The Moon,” credited to screenwriter Ehren Kruger (“Scream 3,” “The Ring Two,” “Transformers 2″), serves up generous lashings of counterfactual pulp, including an Autobot-Decepticons-NASA-JFK-Nixon conspiracy with a soupcon of Chernobyl for spice. It’s like a Bizarro World Warren Report reduced to postage-stamp size. (The briefly seen JFK stand-in resembles someone who took second place in a Donald Trump look-alike contest.) “TDOTM” premiered at the Moscow Film Festival, and some of the most jazzed-up (yet largely incomprehensible) passages resemble the winningly cheesy special effects of local mogul Timur Bekmambetov’s “Night Watch” and “Day Watch,” but with less rude charm. Hope for keenly choreographed mayhem quickly fades. If not on the level of Michael Kidd and Vincente Minnelli’s work on “The Band Wagon,” say at least a few bars of “Collateral Damage,” the musical? When you’re working with Decepticons, a sentient race of mechanical beings that preceded film executives, you can hope to be the biggest and the best, but at best, you could only ever be ne plus Ultraman. (Or “Cars 3,” with eager-school-leaver Shia LaBeouf in the role of “Mater.”) Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Ever-perverse and inventive writer Warren Ellis’ satirical graphic novel is transferred to the screen as a romp of wry hams: give Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman and Dame Helen Mirren a big gun and watch them go. It’s Ellis’ “Expendables.” This genial comic thriller posits the quartet as “RED”—”Retired and Extremely Dangerous”—C.I.A. pensioners who reunite to find out who’s assassinating their kind and why. “This useta be a gentleman’s game!” is the kind of line that sounds ehh, but works in performance. Aside from its actors, “RED”‘s saving grace is its willingness to find different notes of farce for each character, such as Malkovich being fully invested in one of his looniest incarnations (which is saying something). But smaller roles—including Mary-Louise Parker as the pension clerk that Willis knows only over the phone and Ernest Borgnine as a vault-keeper of secret intelligence files—ping with enjoyable comedy notes, sultry, grown-up comic-romantic banter. And, as directed by Robert Schwentke (“Flightplan”) and shot by Florian Ballhaus, the cartoonish palette doesn’t go too far in flattering the eye. The complications of Willis and Parker’s meet-cute, which involve repeated knock-out injections, is discomfiting enough that the characters address the subject repeatedly, but when the pair banter, there’s lovely splutter instead of splatter, her superlatively sexy voice and delivery deployed to gleeful result. The action scenes, shootouts and explosion of non-sclerotic proportion, are mostly fun; the location work is indifferent, with a Toronto-shot “Chicago” likely to prompt snickers in local showings. With Brian Cox as a randy Russian agent, Rebecca Pidgeon as a mumbly superior and Richard Dreyfuss, once again incarnating a Dick Cheney-style deus ex machina. 111m. (Ray Pride)

Junky cinematography and CGI make this DC Comics-born crap hard to watch, as if it were badly inked on low-end pulp. Nor does the leaden and rusty metal score by Mastodon and Marco Beltrami do much for the ears. But it’s over in seventy-two minutes, if you skip eight minutes of blurred end credits. The title character (Josh Brolin, “No Country For Old Men”) is a Confederate Army vet who once “disobeyed a direct order” to torch a Union hospital. This prompted his sociopathic commanding officer, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), to torch Hex’s Indian wife and their son, forcing Hex to watch and then branding “Q. T.” on his cheek. All this makes Hex mad as hell. He takes up bounty-hunting so he can get back at bad guys in general. Turns out one in particular did not expire in a later fire–flames are frequent in “Jonah Hex”–and Turnbull is dead-set on terrorizing the country and toppling the government. Find Hex before the 4th of July, when the shit is scheduled to go down. “The President thinks you’re special, even magic,” a White House aide tells Hex. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

For the years-in-the-making “Which Way Home,” documentarian Rebecca Cammisa followed a rarely acknowledged class of immigrants (children traveling without their parents, alone or in bands). The kaleidoscopic portrait, filmed on the run, of tenacity and of dreams that hardly encompass obstacles to come is a study in fervent belief. As demonstrated in her 2002 “Sister Helen,” Cammisa is a gifted observer. The romance of the freight train, lost in the contemporary United States, is revived. Thrilling and terrifying. The film’s producers include John Malkovich’s Mr. Mudd and HBO. 83m. (Ray Pride)

“Which Way Home” plays Friday December 11 at 8pm at Chicago Filmmakers, 5243 North Clark Street.

RECOMMENDED

Gorgeously overwrought at times, achingly angry throughout, Australian director Steve Jacobs’ adaptation of J. M. Coetzee’s 1999 novel, “Disgrace,” is an ideal vehicle for John Malkovich’s customary mien of slightly creepy disdain, hostility and cosmopolitan snobbery. (And that’s a good thing.)  As adapted by Jacobs’ wife, Anna Maria Monticelli, “Disgrace” is impenitent in its portrait of racial relations in post-apartheid South Africa. Icy, affected Malkovich plays David Lurie, a college professor in his fifties who still approaches younger women of color; a seduction attempt with a mixed-race student takes him out of the university setting and into the rough landscape of his lesbian daughter (Jessica Haines) and her black farm boss (Eriq Ebouaney). Austere, exacting, painful: there will be no sudden grace in “Disgrace.” The succession of terrible events to come gains weight and power far beyond allegory for the country’s past, the grudges held, far beyond punishment for the hubris and privilege of Lurie. Bracing stuff.  120m. (Ray Pride)

Chilean-born, French-based director and latter-day surrealist Raul Ruiz counts 1999’s Proust adaptation, “Time Regained,” among his hundred or more features and shorts. He rejoins John Malkovich with “Klimt,” in the director’s cut of a racy portrait of the life and art of the painter Gustav Klimt. (It’s at least half-an-hour longer than an earlier version that’s been shown in Chicago.) Grizzled decadence rather than raw sensuality is the order or the day. The settings, lovely, lustrous, seem to dance on their own while the goings-on go on. 131m. 35mm. (Ray Pride)

RECOMMENDED

Or, “No Country for White Men.” It’s almost a sure bet that the Coen brothers share a chuckle when they’re not taken seriously. My first infuriation came with “The Hudsucker Proxy,” which set me off in a couple of ways, writing something to the effect that they’d finally crossed the thin but all-defining line between wise guys and assholes. But, if I were to slip it in tonight, I’d likely find some levels or elements that eluded me oh so many years ago. Seeing “The Big Lebowski” a few weeks before its release and interviewing the Coens as well, much of what I admire about it now eluded me. (If I’d only known that my then-girlfriend who I saw it with was a secret stoner: illumination might have been had on the spot.) “Lebowski”‘s become an ur-text in the decade since. Not only is the Dude’s behavior based on a real friend of the Coens, the ubiquitous producer’s rep Jeff Dowd, but also his political background. The Dude abides no lies. There’s also an undercurrent of the idea of masculinity’s reaction to generational displacement that’s as telling as anything in Eustache’s Euro-epic “The Mother and the Whore.” Similar things are at work in the genially splenetic “Burn After Reading,” which ends with the brothers’ fuck-you production company logo, but accompanies its end credits with a live performance by the Fugs, of Tuli Kupferberg singing, “Fuckin’ Amen” (the last line of the movie is “Tuli!”), a 1960s song about the CIA and CIA “men.” (“Who can squash republics like bananas because they don’t like their social manners? The CIA can.”) “Burn After Reading”‘s Coen of the realm is critiquing the alabaster reach of the high white reaches of American power. Their latest boobarama is populated with white people filled with black lies and dumb-ass dreams, white-on-white on blue sky. Whiter than Tilda Swinton’s complexion under her bright red bob, whiter than milk in snow. J. K. Simmons, a comic god of the present moment, takes honors as a high-high-up in the agency who listens to reports from fixer David Rasche about the workaholic knuckleheads, dreamers of low intelligence and limited imagination, wreaking havoc in their backyard with screw-you calm and fuck-you dispatch. His final line, a weary obscenity-blasphemy heard in variations throughout the movie, is perfect, especially with the shot that follows. Very Rumsfeldian. A profane snowflake. And explain it to me when it makes sense. As the disenfranchised CIA analyst whose troubles set the plot to pinwheeling, Malkovich plays to his Steppenwolf-style strengths as a Punchinello of verbal fuckery, and the image of this fabulous fop in carpet slippers and a dressing gown rampaging down the streets of Brooklyn (doubling for Georgetown) with a hatchet in his hand and murder on his lips is inspired. Still, McDormand’s Linda Litzke is the true anti-heroine, a resilient employee of Hardbodies Gym, of high spirits and ready frustration who wants only for four cosmetic surgeries, and like Linda Tripp, is prepared to spend any potential ill-gotten gains from blackmail on it. Simple! Focused! Brad Pitt’s turn as Chad, her goggle-eyed, ever-hydrating boob-in-arms, is better seen than described, although his blond skunk pompadour may be the first and last cinematic homage to his tresses in the forgotten “Johnny Suede.” George Clooney’s Treasury guy? The biggest idiot he’s ever played, and his sexual compulsion knows no bounds. If only he could get a run in… Dry and deadly, “Burn After Reading” is savage, cynical, sarcastic vaudeville about the powers that be. The only notable figure of color is an apparently Latino cleaning man who finds the CD that sets the story in motion on the locker room floor; presumably named after the premium brand of shoes favored by the Secretary of State. 96m. (Ray Pride)

A guilty displeasure, Santosh Sivan’s “Before the Rains,” produced by the gentility firm of Merchant-Ivory, is a genuine fallback from his punchy, pungent third feature, 1999′s “The Terrorist,” which was “presented” in the U.S. by John Malkovich. 1937 Kerala is the setting for a multiethnic affair, shot with consummate craft by Sivan, who works as his own cameraman. The genuine beauty of the filmmaking is undercut by an almost total absence of dramatic tension and sexual chemistry. With Linus Roache, Rahul Bose, Nandita Das, Jennifer Ehle, John Standing, Leopold Benedict, Indrajith Sukumaran, Lal Paul. (Ray Pride)

By Ray Pride

Glamour takes many forms.

And vanity? Is Vanity Fair. I just dropped the most obvious artifact of both on my foot and it hurts. I’d weigh these 444 pages of the March Vanity Fair, “The Hollywood Issue,” on a bathroom scale if I had one. This fat slab of perfume-stripped gloss is it, the idea of glamour in its most mercantile form; although the magazine’s annual A-list shindig was cancelled during the uncertainty of whether the Writers Guild strike would be settled, this toe-smasher is a more readily summoned definition of “glamour” than the habitrail course of awards shows that preceded the Oscars. “There Will Be Blood” has a reek of “Chinatown” on its breath; “Michael Clayton” is a sleeker edition of movies made by Alan J. Pakula, like “Klute” or “The Parallax View”; “No Country for Old Men” traffics in both nihilism and moralism like movies of another time. More old-fashioned would be “Atonement”’s tragic love story (with a well-chosen vulgarity tossed in) and “Juno” is bumptious and fractious and has three stars under 30: Ellen Page, director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody. (For the Academy, that may be the story as much as its have-your-sex-and-eat-it-too storyline, and its near-$150 million box office doesn’t hurt.)
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