By Ray Pride

Novelist Barry Hannah says it well:  “I really want stories that are rippers in the old sense. Tales of high danger, high adventure, and high exploration.”

And has that been what James Cameron’s been conjuring in his fevered imagination for as long as twenty years, a true ripper? Of all the things that can and will be said about “Avatar,” is that it’s the one 2009 feature drawing from the War in Iraq that could make a mint. While his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow’s “Hurt Locker” is the best American movie about war in movies this year, and is racking up year-end critics’ nods, it didn’t blow up at the box office.

Even if James Cameron had spent $200 million-plus on a trainwreck the equal of the Icelandic economy, that would have been gratifying, even at the cost of encouraging the wisenheimers who, without seeing the film, invoked the Smurfs, “Ferngully: the Last Rainforest” and something called “Delgo.” All the pessimistic early jabber made it seem like this would be the in-flight movie that you would see on the way to become part of the Matrix. Of course, virtually no one had seen the movie until its Thursday night premiere in London and its staggered press screenings in the U.K. and North America. Then the lights went down, time passed entertainingly, the lights came up, the Twittering began, and within hours an embargo against reviews before opening day was lifted. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Ray Pride

RECOMMENDED

By Ray Pride

Jason Reitman’s Twittered (@JasonReitman) and Twitpic’d his way through dozens of cities and multiples of belly-busting meals since the Toronto debut of “Up in the Air.” (He’s even kept up a pie chart of frequently asked questions from clipboards nationwide).

He’s almost as peripatetic as his latest protagonist. In his third feature, Reitman adapts Walter Kirn’s pre-9/11 novel to his own themes and interests, about Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a road warrior who’s a man alone (but not necessarily lonely) who jets most days from small city to small city firing people he’ll never see again. His goal in life: to attain a frequent-flyer status attained by fewer men than those who walked on the moon. A bright young thing named Natalie (Anna Kendrick) has the notion of doing it via iChat, and Ryan takes her on the road to show her the face-to-face reality. Ryan also encounters fellow warrior Alex (apt, adult Vera Farmiga) who shares his statistical friskiness.

In the context of the movie, Ryan’s a regular guy holding onto his job, his status, but he is a guy who goes around firing people, liquidating them. “I don’t like to judge my characters. I dunno, I’m particularly attracted to characters who normally would be judged,” the 32-year-old writer-director tells me on his Chicago stopover. “I mean, I made a movie about the head lobbyist for Big Tobacco, a pregnant teenage girl and a guy who fires people for a living. Not only that, but he also believes you should live alone with nothing.” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano are the noms de hoax of the Yes Men, performers, writers and directors of the political provocations collected in “The Yes Men Fix The World.” Like its predecessor, “The Yes Men,” directed by Chris Smith, Dan Ollman and Sarah Price, the filmmaking makes less of an impression than the sustained gall it takes the duo to pull off the activist stunts they do. In the past week, for instance, they held a press conference, pretending to be representatives of the 300,000-strong Chamber of Commerce, making a U-turn on global warming; an actual C of C representative broke up the proceedings by demanding proof of their indentities: he wanted business cards and he wanted them now. Like rock ‘n’ roll, it’s kind of hard for even the best filmmaking to capture the sort of happening these very-merry pranksters are interested in. They’re creepily evocative in the details they come up with in the suite of six Swiftian stunts on show here, such as Bichlbaum’s impersonation of a Dow Chemical spokesman on BBC, where, as a P.R. spokesman named Jude Finisterra, announces the company’s assumption of all responsibility for the infamous Bhopal chemical plant that killed thousands. Jude Finisterra? I believe anything he says! 85m. (Ray Pride)

“The Yes Men Fix The World” opens Friday at the Music Box. At Sundance 2009, I posed the  question, “Why is capitalism funny?” to Yes Men Andy Bichlbaum and Mike  Bonanno (video at the links).

RECOMMENDED

Dipping into a few months in the life of small-town Sidney, Ohio in Fall, “45365″ is a luscious, impressionistic essay film, a dream-like patch of cinema vérité (without narration) that’s more trance than nonfiction lockstep. The film’s gentle intimacy and easy access to the town’s citizens and routines may spring from the fact that producer-director-editor-brothers Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross grew up there. Their eyes, however, offer up near-rapturous visuals: this is one of the most beautiful-looking shot-on-high-definition films to come around in recent memory. If every native son could do their patch of land and the weave of interconnection of friends and neighbors this kind of funny, tender, lyrical justice, we’d have all-American storytelling from sea to shining sea. I’d like to see more movies that are this generous and giving. 93m. (Ray Pride)

“45365″ plays Saturday 8pm at Chicago Filmmakers 5243 North Clark, Second Floor.

RECOMMENDED

“The Queen” and “Frost/Nixon” scribe Peter Morgan provides a no-fuss look at the contentious forty-four-day reign of Brian Clough as manager of the 1974 Leeds United soccer team. Using informative flashbacks, we’re shown that Clough, with the help of partner Peter Taylor, built the lowly Derby County into a contending squad, but how his mountainous ego and overwhelming inferiority complex threaten his career as well as professional, and personal, relationships. He’s earned the job of the country’s top team, but it’s a group of dirty players he loathes and tensions flare. Directed by Tom Hooper (HBO’s “John Adams”), “The Damned United” survives with the endlessly watchable Michael Sheen as Clough and Timothy Spall as Taylor, two men who work as one brain and suffer when separated. Morgan’s script, based on David Peace’s popular nonfiction novel, lightens the mood with weightless humor and an ending as sweet as pie. Easy, breezy cinema. 97m. (Tom Lynch)

RECOMMENDED

Chicago filmmakers Laura Cohen and Joe Winston’s “What’s The Trouble With Kansas?” takes off from Thomas Frank’s 2004 book of the same name and proceeds to collect portraits of Kansans with conservative beliefs, sometimes of extravagant measure. Proponents and opponents of abortion are at the center. Yet Cohen and Winston observe their succession of snapshots with empathy: the danger of caricature is skirted. Still, the uneasy intersection of politics and religion is forefront of the documentary’s concerns, where right and wrong become I’m Right and You’re Wrong. Interview footage with subsequently murdered Dr. George Tiller includes his statement, “if a stake has to be driven through the heart of the anti-abortion movement, I want to have my hand on the hammer.” Tiller’s location in Kansas led to some activists dubbing the state the “abortion capital.” “The Truth Truck,” paneled with bloody images of aborted fetuses, may still be circling. Is Kansas historically in the midst of these kinds of conflicts? The culture wars smolder.  90m. (Ray Pride)

RECOMMENDED

Director Davis Guggenheim gave Al Gore a platform to teach the world about global warming in “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006.) Now he gives three electric guitarists a venue for discoursing on their artistry: associate producer Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2) and Jack White (Raconteurs, The White Stripes). Their insightful bios–light on sex, drugs and tax brackets–contextualize their musical backgrounds in U.S. and U.K. pop culture. But this always watchable (and just as listenable) documentary looks at each musician apart from his respective bandmates. We get sit-down sessions between the three guitarists. Guggenheim art-directs these scenes as an apt homage to the finale of Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz” (1978). On a dark, vast studio set, the audience is only crew members standing at the periphery. Page, The Edge and White are great–maybe in more ways than fans can discern from their solos in concerts and recordings. About to meet his elders, White confides to the camera his intent to “trick them into teaching me all their tricks.” A tad affected in his derby, bow tie and vest, White supplies “It Might Get Loud” with a lovely opening trick of his own: in a Tennessee field, he builds a one-string electric guitar from scratch and rocks some nearby dairy cows. 98m. (Bill Stamets)

RECOMMENDED

Twenty-eight marks the calendar for sci-fi action fare of our era. First came the three zombie films “28 Days,” “28 Days Later” and “28 Weeks Later” set in the U.K. Now we go to South Africa. Twenty-eight years ago a massive spacecraft came to a stationary hover above Johannesburg. Its alien occupants were relocated to a refugee camp called District 9 on the outskirts of the city. That’s the inspired setup for the first alien apartheid action film. Produced by Peter Jackson, “District 9” is based on a six-minute short from 2005 titled “Alive in Jo’burg.” Director Neill Blomkamp and co-writer Terri Tatchell efficiently sketch a history of escalating human-alien friction that precipitates a militarized operation by a global security corporation called Multi-National United (MNU) with Springbok insignia: relocate 1.8 million stateless, second-class “non-humans” to District 10, a new ghetto some 240 km. away. Read the rest of this entry »