The Informant Opens Today

It always promises to be a good weekend when my favorite director has a movie opening. His latest promises to mix his trademark cinematic style with my new favorite subject matter of late - corporate criminals. The Informant tells the true story of Mark Whitacre, a top executive at the Archer Daniels Midland, who blows the whistle on his company's price-fixing only to turn around and committ some white collar crime himself. Hilarity ensued - at least in Steven Soderbergh's version, it does.

Sweetness and Community inBe Kind Rewind

I'm convinced studios have no clue what to do with Michel Gondry movies, which is why they always seem to come out in the dead time of February or March. Even his latest, Be Kind Rewind, which boasts a fairly linear plot and some reasonably major stars seems to have everyone (studios and critics and the confused boys sitting behind us at the theater) baffled. That is, if you try and think to hard about it. Sure, Gondry played a good deal with dream, reality and memory (even delving into mild science fiction) with Eternal Sunshine and The Science of Sleep, but he also has a simple, yet playful sentimental side to him as well. Gondry named his personal documentary I've Been 12 Forever, a fitting name for a man who thinks like a big kid with a huge imagination. There's also been a sweetness to Gondry's work that's been missing from that of his MTV-to-indie film contemporaries, including Spike Jonze, Jonathan Glazer and Chris Cunningham.

When he shot Dave Chappelle's Block Party in 2004 (released two years later), Gondry took a step back from the dreamworld, instead honing in on themes of community and forgotten history. While Rewind contains some of the expected Gondry quirks, it is those themes from the documentary that play so strongly in his latest creation.

The film is set in the not too distant past - the world is transitioning from VHS to DVD, and a small town rental shop is struggling to make ends meet. Mos Def is left in charge of the shop by his boss (a heartfelt performance from Danny Glover), only to have all the tapes erased by his suddenly-magnetized friend, Jack Black (how that happens is one of those classic Gondry quirks). To compensate for the loss, the two attempt to recreate requested films, such as Ghostbusters and Rush Hour 2. Their production is shoddy, and performances overly ridiculous, but something funny happens - the people of the town come to prefer their versions, and soon a following is built. Ultimately, the harsh realities of the world start to set in, but at the same time this downtrodden community is able to rally around something, and the ending reveals that same sweetness Gondry displayed in Block Party.

If you've seen the film, and would like to indulge in its world a bit more, check out the highly inventive website.

Be Kind Rewind Trailer


Rush Hour 2 Trailer


Ghostbusters Trailer

Romero Turns 68, Unleashes Diary

Film legend George A. Romero turns 68 today. Showing no signs of letting up, Romero is continuing to reinvent the genre he revolutionized some 40 years ago. It's safe to say that his finest contribution to cinema came in the form of 1968's Night of the Living Dead, a zombie film that emphasizes tension over gore, and is steeped with social commentary. Romero has always utilized the zombie genre as a format to comment on social conditions, as Living Dead took on segregation and racism.

In Living Dead's bleak ending, the film's hero - a black man who has managed to survive a horrendous night of zombie attacks - is gunned down by white authorities who have confused him - by just a glance - for one of the living dead. As they exit proud of themselves, we are left with as chilling an ending as any horror conclusion you will find. Later, 1978's Dawn of the Dead took on consumerism and the military, while 2005's Land of the Dead addressed everything from immigration to capitalism.

His films have been remade (the best being 2004's Dawn) and lovingly spoofed (2004's Shaun of the Dead), while inspiring a whole slew of films that followed (Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, for instance).

This decade has seen a reemergence in the interest for zombie flicks, shining a new light on Romero's work. February will hold the release of Diary of the Dead, which is being marketed heavily through MySpace. Romero says of Diary, "It’s the first film since my original Night of the Living Dead that I can say is completely my own."

Diary of the Dead - Exclusive Trailer

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If it were anyone but Romero, I would probably question the film-within-a-film approach. Having lived through the Blair Witch hoopla and its subsequent fallout, such cinematic attempts at postmodernism have been far less theoretical, and significantly more gimmicky. That being said, the obsessive documentation of our lives which comes with being the YouTube generation is worthy of commentary (and cinematic exploration). If there is any horror filmmaker who could intelligently engage with our current media state, I'd say Romero is that individual.

Walk Hard Spoofs Rock Biopics Quite Brilliantly, Really

Chances are, if there's a rock biopic out, I'm going to see it. And chances are, the star of the film will win acclaim and awards for their performance. But while these films can feature remarkable performances and revive your interest in brilliant musicians, they also can fall victim to the same conventions of storytelling, and frequently rely on certain cliches and embellishments of the truth. Such conventions and cliches are spoofed to hilarious effect in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Directed by Jake Kasdan, who co-wrote the film with Judd Apatow, Walk Hard is just long enough to get its point across, while never wearing out its welcome. It successfully manages to stay funny beginning to end, while never falling victim to the spoof conventions of over-the-top humor. With John C. Reilly leading a comedy-smart cast, everything about Walk Hard stays sharp. I was captivated till the end.

Walk the Line and Ray are certainly influences for the spoof, but the likes of Dreamgirls, La Bamba, The Buddy Holly Story and Great Balls of Fire are all on trial here. There's even hilarious references to the classic Bob Dylan doc, Don't Look Back, and the Beatles' cartoon experiment, Yellow Submarine. Even as Cox trips on acid and rips out sink after sink, the humor of the film never spirals out of control. It is on the strength of Reilly that the film is held so tightly together. I could easily reference a dozen memorable scenes, but I'd rather not reenact them here for you. I will say, however, that the original music does not disappoint - from the sexual inuendos of "Let's Duet," to the catchy title track, to could-be-a-hit "Guilty as a Charged" - all the way to the title track-sampling explicit rap revealed towards the film's end.

Where Walk Hard truly succeeds is that it does not ridicule the lives of the musicians it spoofs. Rather it spoofs a genre heavy on cliches - and for that, Walk Hard is a triumph.

Dewey Cox meets The Beatles: