Saturday, October 13, 2012

Finding Nemo 3D (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets
by Ian Brockway

Finding Nemo 3D

The 3D version of "Finding Nemo" has arrived at The Tropic and it seems like Christmas in October. Nemo (Alexander Gould) has never looked better; he's just as orange and glowing as you would expect. And he has been given a new crystal clear life, courtesy of Pixar's virtuosic 3D effects. "Finding Nemo" is nothing less than a smile on the water and with its diverse and lively characters that roll across your eyes like music, the story unfolds like an aquatic "West Side Story".

Other than Nemo, the inimitable Ellen DeGeneres is here as Dory, an angelfish with ADD. Not to mention Albert Brooks as Nemo's neurotic and fussy clownfish father. And who can forget the scheming aquarium fish Gill, voiced by Willem Dafoe who comes across as a New York cabbie. The action and laughs are non-stop and the visuals have such a painterly yet sharper than sharp quality, that we actually feel we are deep under the water. Objects rise up in liquid ferocity, while others recede in a wavy chiaroscuro. This is nothing less than a maritime Dali painting overlaid with transparencies by Disney. Never has human anthropomorphism---a usually annoying convention--- been so unabashedly earnest or as classy.

"Nemo" makes the sentimental sophisticated. Nemo is lost, helpless under the sway of human intervention and ignorance and his father vows to find him. The jokes are at least at a rate of one a minute and they are frequently irreverent and always on point with frequent jabs at the lack of human interest regarding conservation. My favorite segments are the dentist office scenes. Both the inhabitants of the aquarium and the pelicans seem to have more knowledge of dentistry and a cosmopolitan grasp of events than the bourgeois dentist.

One by one, species by species, the fish and birds relate the story of the clownfish father looking for his son. Each creature makes their own Homeric story and you get the feeling that it is these creatures and not the shallow humans who matter in this world. This revelation is the film's most iconoclastic and honest gift and it deserves praise. Please delve into "Finding Nemo" if you haven't already seen it once before. As a complete film experience it rivals the pop culture of the Beatles' film "Yellow Submarine" and Disney's epic "Fantasia". Associations aside, it is also simple swimming fun. Write

Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Compliance (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets
Compliance

To see "Compliance" is to be confronted with life as it may be at times. Meaning, it is 90 minutes spent with everyday people: creepy people, self-absorbed people and one person in particular with nothing good about him. As most films have a safety net, do not look for one here. This is life at its most bare and basic and there is no fanfare or resolution. We are placed in a fast food restaurant at peak season. A policeman caller (Pat Healy) informs the manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) of a server the Britney Spears-like Becky (Dreama Walker) and her undoubtable theft of a customers cash and cell phone.


 Chaos ensues.


Becky sincerely and repeatedly claims that she is innocent and she doesn't recall any such altercation with any customer. But the voice of Officer Daniels is adamant and speaks with an unquestionable authority. So much so, that the voice gets Becky to concede a vague, conciliatory apology, as if to say "Gee, I'm sorry, I may have shortchanged someone..."


That is the only opening that Officer Daniels needs to get going. He proceeds to work on Sandra with veiled threats, telling her that there are serious allegations against Becky, that she is being investigated, but that unfortunately their detective staff is tied up. Sandra must do her best to stand up for what's right. The officer speaks with such gravity that Sandra is convinced and begins to act as a proxy cop, convinced that the theft is of national importance.


What follows is an unprofessional situation that goes from bad to worse. Becky becomes more and more stupefied and rightly so. The camera here is a literal fly on the wall and it is the primary character in the film. We feel the time passing in the small fast food restaurant with most of the action occurring in a supply room and it is something to see.


The camera moves back and forth and sideways, a bit like a dark reinterpretation of Tv's "The Office" without the guffaws. We receive abstract snippets of information: the back portion of a head, part of a finger, a calling card, a grimy notebook, a pencil, the side of a naked thigh engaged in forced intimacy and an over-used fryolator. Director Craig Zobel turns every mundane object into updated objects from a sinister Paul Klee painting. The inanimate objects become anthropomorphized and sociopathic as evil and lacking in empathy as any Ted Bundy tie or collared shirt.


This is not a fun film but it is a striking and provocative one and you won't believe how far it goes. Everything about the dark side of human nature is in "Compliance". It is as arresting as it is unbelievable at times and it even out-does the films of Michael Haneke. And it contains more amoral hijinks than a Patricia Highsmith novel.


One wishes that Sandra had taken a minute and just stopped reacting out of impulse and fear. After all, how much trouble has mankind got into when people just move on "following orders"? And one also wishes that the story wasn't based on a true case, but sadly it is. And you can bet there are more incidents in life as depicted in this film than we realize. Often, all it takes is a mere sound of authority.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Looper ( Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Looper

In what seems like a hybrid of "High Noon" and "The Terminator", here is Rian Johnson's "Looper", a sci-fi Spaghetti Western film that could have been a bit silly were it not for the honest and wry performances that beguile and entertain with tension and a Saturday Matinee suspense. Johnson is no stranger to these hard edged, pot-sticker stories. He directed the interesting dog-eat-dog druggie thriller "Brick".

In "Looper" we are in America in the year 2044 and society is in a state of collapse. There are tent cities everywhere but the landscape is more like "Road Warrior" than "The Hunger Games." All elements and objects are oxidized and worn. Even Jeff Daniels' beard is unkempt. Guns jam and people eat food that is both meager and dirty.

There is one shiny red sports car but that is the only exception.

Time travel has just been invented and is instantly outlawed. It is soon the domain of organized crime. Various low-lifes and black jacketed techies, presided over by Jeff Daniels, have lists of various people they want put out of commission. There is one single way to get out of contract and that is to somehow dispose of your older self. This doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense to me, but I don't think it matters. This is pulp sci-fi that never loses its revolution and it is ultimately satisfying no matter where the story wanders. At first, I was a bit confused by the switching back and forth in locale and time, but you are given little bits of information at a stretch so as not to be overwhelmed. By the midway point, the explanation and action reach a harmony and all is pure fun.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Joe, a young mercenary hit man who collects on men with prices on their heads. He's fed up and wants out. Somehow, an older version of himself arrives in a cornfield, an older Joe: squinty-eyed and somewhat weary (Bruce Willis). The exchanges between Willis and Gordon-Levitt are the best parts of the film and are nothing short of a fast paced, Internet-punk version of "Pale Rider", "Westworld" or "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966).

True, the dialogue is minimal at best, but a Bruce Willis squint with a mouth that is classically puckered is worth a quantum load of dialogue. Joseph Gordon-Levitt holds his own with his stern Billy The Kid aloofness for the IPad epoch. Even his black, painted-on eyebrows, which at first appear corny, are an homage to The Silent Screen cowboy: a Tom Mix fusion of Burt Reynolds edged with an uncanny mimic of Bruce Willis' trademarked sour stare.

The always interesting Emily Blunt gives a fine, although familiar role as a caring guardian for a cute telekinetic boy (Pierce Gagnon) who is America's most wanted toddler, and also bears a resemblance to the young Danny Lloyd in "The Shining" (1980).

As far out as "Looper" is, the film is chock full of haunting silent imagery. The cornfield reminds one of a Capote crime exposé, and whether intentional or not, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's posture with his weapon echoes Lee Harvey Oswald. Young Joe is both a sociopathic cypher and a saint, a marked man and martyr.

This is a chase film with a nod to the noir, laced with a desire for the exotic Far East. These preoccupations recall the Robert Mitchum classics of the 40's, if not in shadow than at least in substance. It is a riveting, on - edge amphetamine jaunt and even if you don't enjoy "wanted man" stories, your other self will leave logic to the wind and ricochet back into the lobby to see "Looper".

Write Ian at redtv_2006@yahoo.com

Ruby Sparks (Rhoades)

“Ruby Sparks”

Sparks Question

About Reality

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

One of my favorite sci-fi writers was Philip K. Dick, a strange man who was always questioning reality in his short stories. I’m going to have to add Zoe Kazan to that list of inside-out thinkers.

Zoe not only wrote the screenplay for a new movie called “Ruby Sparks” about a writer whose fictional character comes to life, she also co-stars with Paul Dano in the film.

“Ruby Sparks” is currently questioning what’s really real this week at the Tropic Cinema.

Here, a young writer named Calvin Weir-Fields (Dano) is wrestling with writer’s block. Having penned a successful novel at 19, he’s under pressure to prove he wasn’t a one-hit wonder. It’s been ten years. Even his shrink (Elliott Gould) isn’t helping.

So he writes a few pages about a made-up character he calls Ruby Sparks, the kind of woman he’d find attractive. Well, you can image his shock when he wakes up one morning to find the flesh-and-blood Ruby making breakfast for him in his kitchen.

What’s more, she’s not just a product of his fertile imagination – other people can see her too.

But somehow she’s still a product of his writing. He proves this to his brother (Chris Messina) by typing out that she can speak fluent French and – voilà! – she does.

This cute little romantic comedy is really about a more serious topic than what’s real and what’s not. It’s about relationships and the control we try to exert over other people.

Writer-actress Zoe Kazan has the perfect DNA for this breakout film. She’s director Elia Kazan’s granddaughter, and her parents are screenwriter/playwright Nicholas Kazan (Oscar-nominated for “Reversal Of Fortune”) and screenwriter Robin Swicord (Oscar-nominated for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”).

As an actress, you’ve seen her in “Revolutionary Road” and “Meek’s Cutoff.” Now she makes her mark as a screenwriter.

Zoe Kazan explains Ruby. “I really wanted her to feel as real to the audience as she feels to Calvin. I don’t think Calvin is a sociopath. I think he’s a normal person. So I think it would be sociopathic for him to fall in love with her because he can control her. I think he falls in love with her because she feels real to him. She sort of arrives to him. Almost like he meets her. And she is a product of his imagination, there are things he devises for her to be, or to be like, but I think she’s mysterious to him.

“And that’s what I wanted the audience’s experience of her to be, and that seems like a challenge to me, to play somebody who is really specific and feels like a whole person, but is also obviously unfinished in some way, because he can continue to manipulate her.”

If you want to blur the lines between fiction and reality, turns out that co-star Paul Dano is Zoe’s real-life boyfriend.

I won’t give you any spoilers, but “Ruby Sparks” has a happy, uh, hopeful ending. But why wouldn’t it?

Zoe Kazan wrote it that way.

srhoades@aol.com

Looper (Rhoades)

“Looper” Delivers

Back-to-the-Future

In Deadly Reverse

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

You get the message that Bruce Willis is aging when he appears in a movie about old action heroes called “The Expendables” and when his latest role is a character listed in the credits as Old Joe.

Turns out, there’s a Young Joe too – for this is a sci-fi movie about time travel.

“Looper” is kinda like “Back to the Future” backward. Or “Time Traveler’s Wife” Meets “The Terminator.”

In it, an assassin called Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) works for the Kansas City mob, knocking off troublesome guys sent back from the future by the big bosses in Shanghai. Problem is, one of the targets from the year 2074 turns out to be his future self – i.e. Old Joe (Bruce Willis).

How do you outsmart yourself?

This cat-and-mouse game between Present Joe (well, 2044) and Future Joe is the basis for this thriller.

“I work as a specialized assassin, in an outfit called the Loopers,” explains Gordon-Levitt. “When my organization from the future wants someone to die, they zap them back to me and I eliminate the target from the future. The only rule is: never let your target escape ... even if your target is you.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. “Looper” is currently playing at the Tropic Cinema.

“At the crux of it is a story about what you would say to your future self, or to your past self, if you could actually meet them and have that conversation,” continues Gordon-Levitt. “Obviously that can never happen in real life, and that’s the beauty of science fiction.”

“This time-travel crap fries your brain like an egg,” says one of the Mafia guys in the film.

Nonetheless, director Rian Johnson makes it all work, despite certain paradoxical plot points. This is only Johnson’s third feature-length film, unless there are more that he made in the future but we just don’t know about yet.

Bruce Willis is an old pro, having had his day in action films (those “Die Hard” flicks most notably, as well as a few sci-fi outings like “Surrogates,” “The Fifth Element,” and “Twelve Monkeys”). And in some of them he did a little time skipping.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the new kid on the block (“Premium Rush,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and that sci-fi television sitcom “Third Rock From the Sun”).

A younger version of Bruce Willis? Even though Rian Johnson wrote the role with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in mind, he was worried. “I stood back and said ‘Oh my God, what have we done, they look nothing alike, we’re in a real pickle here!” So he hired a makeup designer to adjust Gordon-Levitt’s face very subtly to look more like Bruce Willis’s, added a few prosthetics, delivered some good acting … and voila.

“I studied Bruce Willis,” the Gordon-Levitt says. “I’d rip the audio off his movies and listen on repeat.”

Emily Blunt (she did her sci-fi apprenticeship in “The Adjustment Bureau”) provides humanity to the movie’s plot. She plays a single mother who harbors the man from the future in her farmhouse.

“All the sci-fi that I love uses those elements to get at human stuff,” Johnson explains. “For me it kind of has to do with Emily Blunt’s character in the movie. Her love for her son ends up being a big part of that. Hopefully it’s an emotional element that you wouldn’t expect from a sci-fi film that hits you at the end.”

My friend Marc knows Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s parents. Once their actor son joined them for a play in New York. “He seemed joust like a regular guy, not some big-deal actor,” Marc observed.

A correct description, it turns out. Gordon-Levitt has launched a website that puts creative people together (hitrecord.org). On it, he identifies himself simply as RegularJOE.

But back to his new movie. For some reason, “Looper” opened in Australia a day before it played in the US. Was that a difference in time zones or a time loop from the future?

srhoades@aol.com

Looper (Wanous)

'Looper' will throw you for a loop

By CRAIG WANOUS

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a younger Bruce Willis. Or is it older?

Trying to keep up with the paradoxes inherent in any time-travel story is confusing, but to enjoy this movie, you have to forget logic (or the lack thereof) and let the plot unfold without too much analysis.
If you try to reason out the time travel and the life trajectories that loop back and forth, you'll only end up confused and with a headache.
As Bruce Willis explains to his younger persona in the film, "I don't want to talk about time-travel s**t. Because if we start, we're going to be here all day making diagrams with straws."
Rian Johnson directed "Looper," which stars Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels and Emily Blunt.
Johnson's two previous big-screen efforts were "Brick" and "The Brothers Bloom," both respectable. "Looper" continues in Johnson's quirky but entertaining cinematic style.
The premise, from Rotten Tomatoes:
"In the futuristic action thriller 'Looper', time travel will be invented -- but it will be illegal and only available on the black market. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target 30 years into the past, where a 'looper' -- a hired gun, like Joe (Gordon-Levitt) -- is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich and life is good ... until the day the mob decides to 'close the loop,' sending back Joe's future self (Willis) for assassination."
This is the third time his character has gone back in time and run into a young version of himself, so Willis must like these mind-bending time-travel themes.
Blunt ("The Devil Wears Prada") is excellent as Sara, a tough single mom trying to raise her 10-year old son, who seems to have issues of his own, while running a sugarcane farm alone. Daniels steps out of his usual character type to play Abe, a soft-spoken yet evil gangster.
You may have trouble recognizing Gordon-Levitt (TV's "Third Rock from the Sun") because he doesn't look entirely like himself, thanks to makeup artist Kazuhiro Tsuji. Johnson wanted Gordon-Levitt to more closely resemble Willis and, though the process succeeds to some degree, it does leave Gordon-Levitt looking a bit strange.
The film is rated a well-deserved R, mostly for violence. An example: The torture scene, where the younger version of one of the loopers is having body parts lopped off and the resulting injuries show up immediately on his 30-year-older persona. It's a fascinating concept.
And here's a challenge for viewers: There's something featured early in the film that will have astute viewers wondering. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the plot and simply seems part of the futuristic background.
But it will make a dramatic and violent reappearance near the end of the film and explain a lot about both Blunt's character and the mysterious Rainmaker. See if you can spot that early clue.
The film also addresses themes of lost love and regret, addiction, the consequences of our decisions and whether a mother's love can determine her child's path in life.
"Looper" is an exciting and unique take on time travel and the future, reminiscent of "Blade Runner" and "Terminator." With this film, Johnson shows promise as a major talent in Hollywood and I will probably go back and see it again.
But wait: By going back, in the future, will I somehow close my own loop? I'm so confused.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Ruby Sparks (Brockway)