Spango Dips

WALL•E ★★★½

Pixar’s perfect record remains intact with this gorgeous piece about a lonely janitorial robot on a trash-covered, uninhabitable Earth in the distant future, who sets off with a sleek, super-advanced recon probe to discover, almost by accident, how such a terrible fate befell the planet. Remarkable for its elegance in doing so many things at once: it’s a persuasive and bitingly germane green parable—so palatable and so entertaining that it hardly feels preachy at all—it’s a deeply involving love story, it’s almost a throwback to the silent era with its emphasis on action and extremely low dialogue quotient (a very brave choice indeed in this day and age), and it’s riotously funny. Proudly different and yet utterly universal; stellar work from the FINDING NEMO team, led by writer-director Stanton. A career-best score from Thomas Newman and wonderful titles by Jim Capobianco only bolster the movie’s uniqueness.

(2008) C-103m. D: Andrew Stanton. W: Andrew Stanton. FRED WILLARD; VOICES OF BEN BURTT, ELISSA KNIGHT, JEFF GARLIN, JOHN RATZENBERGER, KATHY NAJIMY, SIGOURNEY WEAVER. Digital Widescreen. [G]

“Brutal” here meaning, by my own conception, “arousing ugly feelings.” I just tossed this list off with very little rigor or forethought, so let me know if I’ve forgotten anything.

1. Big Black: Kerosene
2. Suicide: Frankie Teardrop
3. Eminem: Kim
4. Nirvana: Big Long Now
5. Slayer: Angel of Death

One thought that occurs upon my first glance is that I should’ve listened to The Melvins more.

The Happening ½★

I seriously don’t even know where to begin with this one. I’ll give it a shot though. Take the silliest B-movie idea since ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES!, then take it deadly seriously, then paint over its ridiculousness with a double-coat of fulsome, didactic allegory. There’s your treatment. Then get a sixth-grader of below-average intelligence to think up the characters and plot, providing him with tapes of All My Children episodes as templates. Then get his even-dumber little brother, who is also deaf, to write the dialogue. Then, good as it already is, tweak the script to make the characters a little more despicable and immune to logic. Bam, ready to shoot. Then hire Mark Wahlberg to lead the film emotionally. Then fill out the cast with robots. Then, when one of the robots malfunctions during rehearsal, and can no longer move, and it’s clear it can’t perform in the cast after all, show your kindness by making it the director. Make sure it understands the concepts of close-up and slo-mo; that’s all it will need. Then edit the film with a lawnmower and some double-stick tape, score it with the Orch. Hit voice on your Casio, slap together a title sequence with a Video Toaster… have I made my point? Either M. Night suffered a head trauma, or he really had a movie this spectacularly dreadful in him all along; either way, this is a truly special, once-in-a-career failure. My extremely generous half-a-star rating is sheerly for the movie’s prodigious, accidental comic power.

(2008-US-India) C-91m. D: M. Night Shyamalan. W: M. Night Shyamalan. DP: Tak Fujimoto. MARK WAHLBERG, ZOOEY DESCHANEL, JOHN LEGUIZAMO, ASHLYN SANCHEZ, BETTY BUCKLEY, SPENCER BRESLIN, FRANK COLLISON, JEREMY STRONG, ALAN RUCK, VICTORIA CLARK. [R]

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ★★½

The disappearance of a colleague among ancient South American ruins sets Indiana Jones (Ford) back on his adventurin’ way, reuniting him with his old flame Marion Ravenwood (Allen), and… no one else from the old films (where’s Sallah?), as they venture to unlock the titular kingdom and solve the mystery of the titular skull. While, of course, staying one step ahead of the Soviets, who would use the skull’s arcane power to… spread the message of communism, apparently. So it’s not without problems, and as a friend suggested, it does feel at times like a comeback tour where the band can’t play the songs quite like they used to. Regardless, I still had a good deal of fun getting caught up in the action sequences (a domain in which Mr. Spielberg is still without peer among directors), and savoring the flavors of the 1950s, which are omnipresent not only in the production design, but in the performances and camerawork as well, and which really are as well captured (I can only speculate) as were those of the 30s and 40s in the original trilogy. Story credited to George Lucas and Jeff Nathanson.

(2008) C-124m. D: Steven Spielberg. W: David Koepp. DP: Janusz Kaminski. HARRISON FORD, CATE BLANCHETT, KAREN ALLEN, SHIA LABEOUF, RAY WINSTONE, JOHN HURT, JIM BROADBENT, IGOR JIJIKINE. Panavision. [PG-13]

Iron Man ★★★

Wealthy playboy industrialist Tony Stark (Downey), taken prisoner following a weapons demonstration in Afghanistan, uses his tech savvy to fashion himself a metal exoskeleton, and in so doing births one of the unlikeliest superheroes in the pantheon. The Marvel people strike gold here, turning what was inarguably one of their lesser comic book products into one of the better superhero movies of this glutted decade. Particular applause for the movie’s first hour, which lays out the backstory exposition with a remarkable deftness and sense of fun, and does an especially good job of nesting the myth—inoffensively!—within a contemporary political/military context. The second hour introduces the movie’s only clichés as the villain emerges, but Downey’s brilliantly light touch (this is the role he was born to play; how often do you say that about a performance in a summer blockbuster?) and the admirable tightness of its script still keep it well ahead of the genre’s drab norm. Kudos to director Jon Favreau, who has come a long way indeed!

(2008) C-126m. D: Jon Favreau. W: Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway. DP: Matthew Libatique. ROBERT DOWNEY, JR., TERRENCE HOWARD, JEFF BRIDGES, GWYNETH PALTROW, LESLIE BIBB, SHAUN TOUB, FARAN TAHIR, SAYED BADREYA, BILL SMITROVICH, CLARK GREGG. Panavision. [PG-13]

Redbelt ★★½

A principled Los Angeles Jiu-Jitsu instructor (Ejiofor), with deep contempt for the Mixed Martial Arts competition circuit, is forced to consider it after circumstances lead to his financial ruin. Mamet parlays his own recent interest in Jiu-Jitsu into a melodrama—half-Samurai film, half-Sidney Lumet-type noble-individual-battles-corrupt-institution deal—which stays compelling enough despite elaborately silly plot contrivances (done better in each of Mamet’s numerous other con-artist movies), and the fact that the man has no clue how to frame a fight scene. Ejiofor’s performance is utterly regal, and deserves most of the credit for the film’s success.

(2008) C-99m. D: David Mamet. W: David Mamet. DP: Robert Elswit. CHIWETEL EJIOFOR, TIM ALLEN, ALICE BRAGA, EMILY MORTIMER, JOE MANTEGNA, RICKY JAY, MAX MARTINI, DAVID PAYMER, REBECCA PIDGEON, JOSE PABLO CANTILLO. Super 35. [R]

Am I insane, or is it in fact possible—and evident, no less, all these years after the fact—that Washing Machine is one of Sonic Youth’s best records?

Everyone do me a favor and give it a fresh spin. I’m thinking right now I might put it sixth.

I love how Hillary says she “will be making no decisions tonight.” See, that’s the beautiful thing about this, Hillary: we’ve made the decision for you.