Video review: "Maggie"

Arnie does indie? Well, sorta.

You may have heard that “Maggie,” the tiny-budget movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a zombie flick. That’s true but not the whole story. It’s set in an apocalyptic future where the human race is being slowly wiped out by a disease that turns people into man-eating undead.

The difference from most zombie movies is that this transformation doesn’t take seconds, but weeks or even months. Schwarzenegger plays Wade, a tough old farmer whose teen daughter (Abigail Breslin) has become infected. He brings Maggie home to care for her during her final days.

His second wife (Joely Richardson) isn’t happy about the threat Maggie poses to them and their younger children. Meanwhile, the local authorities drop by to warn Wade that they’ll be coming to collect her for quarantine when the time comes … with the strong hint that maybe he should just take care of things himself.

Wade’s an old-school kind of guy, who drives the same truck for decades and believes family takes care of its own, no matter what. Faced with inevitability, he harries and fumes at his dilemma, knowing what he must do but unable to summon the courage.

It’s a great concept, and Schwarzenegger shows that after 40 years on-camera he’s got some dramatic acting chops he never got to display before. But director Henry Hobson and screenwriter John Scott III needed to take the idea further. It feels like the movie is missing a second act, the bridge to an ending we know is coming.

“Maggie” ends up as more a slow character study than a compelling tale.

Bonus features are pretty good. There’s a commentary track with director Hobson. That’s nice, but it would’ve been terrific to have Schwarzenegger on there with him talking about tackling this kind of role at this stage of his career. There are cast and crew interviews, a making-of featurette and a single deleted scene.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "August: Osage County"

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tracy Letts, who also penned the screenplay, “August: Osage County” is the sort of movie that shows its stage roots.

The action -- and by “action,” I mean people talking -- takes place in more or less a single location. There’s a certain showiness to the dialogue and performances, as if broadcasting to the back of the room. And it relies on two or three big, booming plot twists to carry the narrative, which by itself is rather meager.

This is the sort of movie that has close on to a dozen important characters, and every single one of them has at least one look-at-me moment where they get to have a big speech to deliver or an emotional crisis in which to wallow. For the minor characters, it practically feels like a checklist: “OK, here’s the timid son’s time in the spotlight.” The major players enjoy several of these.

All this isn’t to say “August” isn’t a thoroughly enjoyable cinematic experience. It is. It just doesn’t hold a grand sense of newness about itself. It feels like latter-day William Faulkner with a wink.

The film skates by on some pretty tremendous performances by some pretty amazing actors, starting with Meryl Streep. As family matriarch Violet Weston, Streep is like an Oklahoma tornado sweeping through her own house, hurling things this way and that. Suffering from mouth cancer and constantly addled by the many drugs she takes to address it, Violet feels no compunction about saying perfectly horrible things to anyone and everyone around here.

She saves her most venomous bile for her own clan. As the story opens her husband, Beverly (Sam Shepard), a noted poet, has died under mysterious circumstances, probably a suicide. As the family gathers to lay him to rest, it’s also an occasion to hash any number of squabbles, secrets and recriminations.

Oldest daughter Barbara (Julia Roberts) loathes the vindictive creature her mother has become, and fears she’s treading down the same path. Separated from her husband (Ewan McGregor) and estranged from their teen daughter (Abigail Breslin), she’s not spoiling for a fight with Violet, but she’s not about to back down from one, either.

The other two daughters are Karen (Juliette Lewis) and Ivy (Julianne Nicholson), both sporting man problems. Karen, brittle and self-deluded, has shown up with her latest beau, a glib sports car-driving business type (Dermot Mulroney). Ivy, the lonely child who stuck around to care for their parents, is resentful and reticent to share news about a new love.

I really enjoyed Margo Martindale as Violet’s sister, Mattie Fae, who has fewer sharp edges but hides a steely, mean streak underneath, and Chris Cooper as her husband Charles, a man with a tendency to smile through the pain. Their son Little Charles is played by Benedict Cumberbatch, a grown man with a childlike disposition and challenges.

Director John Wells is a TV guy whose only previous stint helming a feature film, “The Company Men,” was seen and appreciated by myself, and few others. He more or less hangs back and lets the actors rip, shrewing and harping and haranguing.

“August: Osage County” is a perfectly serviceable drama that’s worth a ticket, if only to see Meryl Streep’s latest masterwork. Even if she’s not always in the best movies, it’s hard to debate her status as the best film actor working today. She racks up Oscar nominations with astonishing regularity, and there’s a reason why.

Review: "Ender's Game"

Give Hollywood credit for tackling a science fiction novel that contains few of the easy entry points the genre usually provides for cinematic endeavors. In "Ender's Game" there are no cute robot sidekicks, no cool aliens as allies, not even the lightspeed spaceships, laser weapons and other cool hardware that populate the background of such movies.

Instead, it's a grim and bleak look at a future where humanity is facing extinction at the hands of a hive-like race of creatures known as the Formics. Asa Butterfield plays Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, a young boy who is also a brilliant strategist, finding himself being trained to lead Earth's defense against the invaders.

(According to the film's narration, children make for better commanders because their ingenuity is not bogged down by straitlaced adult thinking. It's a storytelling conceit; just swallow it and move on.)

The film, based on the novel by Orson Scott Card, largely plays out as a long game of psychological warfare and simulated combat, with Ender attending the elite off-world Battle School, where he must go up against his fellow child recruits, his gruff and demanding commander, and eventually the aliens himself. He is forced to hone his instincts for warfare while balancing them against his human compassion, exemplified respectively by his psychopath brother and his compassionate sister (Abigail Breslin).

If you think just because the movie stars a cast of mostly kid actors that it's a good fit for young audiences, think again. While the violence is rather tame and there's no swearing, the mental duress placed upon Ender is quite extreme. Audience members under high school age would likely find it dreary.

(Incurious adults, too.)

As a cerebral exercise, though, I found the film challenging and complex, supplying many questions and few easy answers about the morality of waging war. Ender's tactics are genius, but his willingness to sacrifice allies to achieve a win earn him the grudging respect of his teachers and fellow students alike.
(I'm not surprised to learn the book is recommended reading for U.S. Marines officer training.)

As Colonel Graff, Harrison Ford tackles a much darker role than we're used to. Graff sees Ender as his shining star, potentially the savior of humanity, and if that means putting a tender boy through the crucible of harsh lessons, he's more than willing to do it. Viola Davis plays a psychiatrist chartered to nurture Ender's psyche, so naturally she finds herself butting heads with Graff.

Ben Kingsley has a small but vital role as the last of Ender's instructors, a man with a tatooed face and mysterious past. Hailee Steinfeld plays Petra, a fellow cadet who stands up for Ender when he's abused by their team leader.

"Ender's Game" will not suit everyone's tastes. Writer/director Gavin Hood's plotting is sometimes suspect, and the story bogs down a few times. And if you go in expecting a light, action-heavy ripping space yarn, you'll likely walk away disappointed. For me, the moral complexities of the tale were tantalizing and way more ambitious than expected. This is thinking man's sci-fi.

Video review: "The Call"

I’m not sure what’s harder to watch: a movie that starts out well and then flushes itself down the toilet, or a film that never had any idea how to be good in the first place.

You’d think the truly awful flick would be torturous. But it’s the good-movie-gone bad that tends to be more disappointing, since at least for a while it was on the right path. That’s the case with “The Call,” a tightly-coiled thriller that is really suspenseful through the first two acts and then rolls off a cliff during the last half-hour.

Halle Berry plays Jordan, a veteran 9-1-1 operator working at the Hive, the massive emergency response station that handles all of Los Angeles. Night after night she receives calls from people in distress. Usually it’s just a stumblebum blathering intoxicated come-ons or routine disturbances.

But on one fateful night Jordan receives the most harrowing call of her career – and she blows it. A serial killer brutally slays a young woman, and Jordan believes it’s her fault.

Six months later she’s finally back on the job, and relives the same scenario over again. This time, Jordan will do anything to save the girl’s life. Staying in contact with an abducted teen (Abigail Breslin) throughout her ordeal, Jordan tries to thwart the killer from afar.

Things go great, until director Brad Anderson and screenwriter Richard D’Ovidio take a left turn into disaster.

Instead of continuing the restriction of Jordan trying to prevent a crime from her work station – much like a laid-up James Stewart in “Rear Window” -- she ventures out into the world to take on the mastermind herself. The result is a lot of silly boo-gotcha moments and other horror-film tropes.

After an hour of terrific storytelling choices, “The Call” makes exactly the wrong one.

The DVD is decently stocked with extras, including a commentary track that includes the filmmakers, Berry and Breslin, and a making-of documentary.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo edition and you add deleted/extended scenes, an alternate ending, on-set tours, a featurettes on stunts and Michael Eklund’s audition for the role of the creepy killer.

Movie:

Extras: 

Review: "The Call"

Like with Hitchcock's "Rear Window," "The Call" is challenged by having a protagonist who is more or less stuck in one place. Unlike "Rear Window," this new thriller manages to siphon off dramatic tension instead of building it, taking a strong opening and leeching away anything resembling suspense during an ill-thought-out final act.

Instead of being lamed by a broken leg like Jimmy Stewart, Halle Berry's Jordan Turner is tied to her desk. As a 9-1-1 operator for the city of Los Angeles, she spends hour after hour sitting in front of a high-tech station receiving emergency calls, some of them truly frightening, but most routine and rather dull.

For instance, there's a drunk who seems to get thrown into jail every single night and uses his one free call to dial up his "sugar" to purr come-ons and lament his fate. (Even though The Hive, the massive L.A. emergency center, has dozens of operators, his calls mysteriously always come straight to Jordan.)

At first, director Brad Anderson ("The Machinist") and screenwriter Richard D'Ovidio use the main character's immobility to great dramatic effect. Jordan's job entails hearing all the gory details of a crime, but without a police officer's resolution of finding out how things turn out.

One fateful night she gets a call from a teen girl whose house is being broken into, and it's a terrifically tense sequence as Jordan talks to the hysterical young woman, keeping her calm and using a clever ploy to make the intruder think she's escaped. But then Jordan makes an error in judgment, the killer is alerted to her presence and the girl ends up dead.

The situation gets repeated six months later when another teen named Casey (Abigail Breslin) is kidnapped by the same man.The first part of the chase is quite engaging, as Casey talks to Jordan via cell phone from the trunk of her assailant's car. Jordan comes up with all sorts of clever ways for Casey to alert other drivers that something's amiss -- though it doesn't turn out so well for one Good Samaritan (Michael Imperioli).

Meanwhile, Jordan's (boy?)friend cop Paul (Morris Chestnut) leads the chase from the ground, always one step behind. It's good dramatic intercutting of the different urgencies, with the girl's frantic pleas for help, Jordan's calm advice with an undercurrent of panic about blowing it again, the twitchy kidnapper (Michael Eklund) trying to avoid detection and the police on the hunt.

But then, well...

Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that the filmmakers take the exact thing that was working for the movie and flush it down the toilet. As if this weren't bad enough, they do it in a totally artificial and unbelievable way, with a huge sequence of ridiculous events that strain the credulity of the audience.

What had been a fairly zippy crime thriller suddenly devolves into a ham-fisted horror movie, with the audience compelled to shout directions at sub-moronic avatars: "No, don't go in there! Turn around! He's right behind you!"

Watching this movie is a reminder that, if one day in real life you are being hunted by a relentless killer, and against all odds you manage to incapacitate him, your job is not finished until you have observed vampire protocol -- aka stake in the heart, head comes away form the neck, and a little holy water wouldn't hurt. (If the police ask questions, just tell them "I really wanted to be sure...")

Berry is smart and effective in her role, at least until things go screwy. Breslin is forced to spend a good chunk of the movie half-clothed, which is a bit off-putting for people who mostly remember as the precocious tyke in "Little Miss Sunshine." Eklund has a few effective notes as the seemingly bland white dude with a Buffalo Bill thing on the side. But the rest of the actors are constrained by characters who only exist to service the plot.

It's too bad "The Call" went off its wheels, because if you swapped out the final third or so you could actually have a decent thriller on your hands. Alas, this movie mis-dialed the ending.

2 stars out of four

Video review: "Rango"

I can't think of a movie I had more fun at so far in 2011 than "Rango," a loopy, occasionally psychedelic animated flick starring Johnny Depp as a bug-eyed lizard. A domesticated pet who lives in a terrarium and invents companions and theatrical productions to amuse himself, he's literally a chameleon, and not just when it comes to the shade of his pebbly skin.

He ends up lost in the Mojave and stumbles into the town of Dirt, populated by every manner of desert critter imaginable. Things are tough in Dirt -- there's a gang of tunneling thieves waiting on the edge of town, a local crime boss looking for newcomers to squish, and the rumor of a slithery gunslinger named Rattlesnake Jake heading back their way.

Through a combination of wild circumstance and his own even more far-fetched boasting, the lizard finds himself appointed sheriff of Dirt, dubbing himself Rango to better suit his new role. Of course, there are all those aforementioned troubles that he's now expected to tackle.

Although kids will surely enjoy it, "Rango" is really a cartoon for adults, stuffed with highbrow humor and sly pop culture references.

Please note, "Rango" hits video outlets on Friday, July 15.

Video features are quite impressive, and you don't have to spring for the top-of-the-line edition to get good stuff.

The DVD version includes both the theatrical version of "Rango" plus an extended cut. To accompany both versions is a feature-length commentary track by director Gore Verbinski and several of his key crew members. There's also a collection of 10 deleted scenes, including an alternate ending, and an educational short about desert animals.

Opt for the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack and you add a number of other goodies, including a digital copy of the film. There's also a virtual tour of Dirt, a doc about this first foray into feature-length animation by Industrial Light & Magic, and a picture-in-picture feature where you can watch the movie in storyboard form.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Rango"

A neon-colored, sun-baked fantasia that's part Western spoof and part surrealist jag through the desert with Johnny Depp as our theatrically unhinged, reptilian tour guide, "Rango" is anything but your standard kiddie animated flick.

It's hard to believe this is the same team behind those "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, which by the first sequel had devolved into formulaic schlock without a shred of story structure. But director Gore Verbinski, Depp and screenwriter John Logan have joined forces for one of the daffiest and most original animated features in a long, long time.

Maybe it's because "Rango," the story of a domesticated lizard who stumbles into a spaghetti Western, didn't issue forth from one of the animation giants like Disney/Pixar, DreamWorks or Blue Sky. It's a partnership between Nickelodeon, Verbinski's production company and George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic, a special effects outfit making its first foray into computer-generated cartoons.

All I can say is, based on everything from the dazzling details on the numerous critters' parched faces to the multihued splendor of the arid landscapes to the crisply-paced action scenes, the ILM gang has announced themselves with authority. The animation in "Rango" -- which doesn't fall back on any cheap 3-D tricks, by the way -- is as good as, or better, than anything Pixar and the gang are doing right now.

Depp voices the lonely lizard passing his days inside his terrarium, imagining himself up some friends for his theatrical productions, in a scene that recalls Jack Sparrow trapped in Davy Jones' Locker in "PotC: At World's End." The film is filled to the brim with references to other movies, including a drive-by homage to "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

After a mishap leaves him by the side of the road in the Mojave, our scaly friend with a penchant for changing identities as easily as he can shift colors winds up in the town of Dirt.

The townsfolk, comprising every manner of reptile, bird, arachnid and mammal native to the desert, are suffering through a horrid drought and an even worse funk. When our lizard friend accidentally sends a local marauder to boot hill, he's given the job of sheriff.

He dubs himself Rango, and quickly creates the persona of a Clint Eastwood-esque Man from Nowhere. Rango is delighted at his new status -- not to mention the attentions of Miss Beans (Isla Fisher), a local rancher who has a tendency to freeze up when flustered.

As he bedecks himself in increasingly flamboyant gunslinger garb and spins outrageous tales about killing the evil Jensen brothers with one bullet -- all seven of them -- we begin to wonder if the attention-craving Rango's noodle wasn't already cooked before he ever set a three-toed foot in the desert.

Of course, bigger challenges await. There's a local bully (Ray Winstone) in need of standing up to, a pack of tunneling varmint thieves on the outskirts of town led by a blind mole (Harry Dean Stanton), and a power-hungry Mayor (Ned Beatty) who appears to have been lifted directly out of "Chinatown," right down to the white 10-gallon hat and watery schemes of John Huston's iconic Noah Cross ... except now he's a turtle.

Even worse is the rumor of a dead-eye outlaw named Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) slithering back into town with the tumbleweeds.

It's a loopy, fun ride as we follow Rango on his (mis)adventures, including a posse hunt that culminates in an epic chase sequence complete with mounted bats and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" arranged for banjos. Even more unexpected is the hallucinogenic amusement of several dream-slash-vision-quest scenes so bursting with colors and freaky-deaky images, I half expected melting clocks to ooze onto the screen.

A wild mishmash of Sergio Leone and Salvador Dali with an all-critter cast, "Rango" is what happens when animators forget about borders and just ride off into whatever sunset their imaginations take them.

3.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Zombieland"

There's always been a comedic element to zombie flicks, at least in their modern incarnation. George A. Romero had several moments of dark humor in 1968's seminal "Night of the Living Dead," and the laughs have shambled side-by-side with the flesh-eaters ever since.

If other movies have dipped a toe into humorous waters, then "Zombieland" dives head-first into comedy, with often uproarious results.

The set-up is similar to a hundred other films: The zombie apocalypse is upon us, and it's up to the few remaining humans to survive. Our foursome of heroes take the names of the cities they're from: Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a video game dweeb; Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin), a pair of butt-kicking sisters; and Tallahassee (a hilarious Woody Harrelson), a redneck who was born to eradicate the undead.

The filmmakers seem to know and love every convention of the zombie genre, tweaking them for comic effect while still delivering a satisfying helping of gleeful violence. At one point, Tallahassee takes out a grocery store full of walkers with a banjo.

Whether you're horror fan or just want a good laugh, "Zombieland" offers plenty of biting humor.
DVD extras cover a nice scope of material, though they're not as engrossing as you'd like.

Two making-of featurettes total about 30 minutes, but there's nothing really new other than the revelation the project was originally conceived as a television pilot. Seven deleted scenes are similarly underwhelming.

Better is the feature showing how the special effects were achieved, combining live action with layers of CGI.

I was glad to see a commentary track that actually has the participation of the stars: Harrelson and Eisenberg are joined by director Ruben Fleischer and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

The boys keep the banter flowing at a nice pace, although the constant complimenting each other gets to be a little much.

In addition to these, the Blu-ray version also comes with a "Beyond the Grave" picture-in-picture track with storyboards and animatics, plus a digital copy of the film.

Movie: 3 stars
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Zombieland"

Zombies have become a powerhouse franchise. Movies starring the walking dead, already popular for decades, have seen a resurgence, and zombie literature is on the rise with books like "World War Z" and even classic literary spoofs like "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."

The next logical step was zombie comedy films. "Shaun of the Dead" got the ball rolling, but "Zombieland" immediately leaps to the front spot of an admittedly nascent genre.

Hip, ironic and often raucously funny, "Zombieland" will have you holding in your guts with laughter almost as often as the zombies try to rip the viscera out of their onscreen prey.

I mean, what other zombie flick would pair two of indie film's young rising stars, Jesse Eisenberg ("The Squid and the Whale") and Abigail Breslin ("Little Miss Sunshine"), both known for their shy, introspective roles, as post-apocalyptic ass-kickers?

Well, not quite: Eisenberg's still pretty dorky as Columbus, a lonely dweeb who spent most of his days playing "World of Warcraft" before the undead outbreak. He's come up with a list of rules for surviving what he calls Zombieland.

The first one is "Cardio" -- as in, maintain your ability to run fast. As the droll prologue narration notes to a scene of an obese guy getting run down and feasted upon, the fatties were the first to die.

Other rules include the "Double Tap," which instructs that even when you think a zombie is dead, put another bullet in its brain just to be sure. When the world is infested with creatures that want to eat you, now's not the time to get stingy with the ammunition.

Columbus soon happens upon a guy writing his own rules, which all boil down to kicking walking corpse butt in as many inventive ways as possible -- baseball bats, chainsaws, even a banjo. Tallahassee (all the characters go by the name of the city they're from) figures that everyone was put on earth to be really good at one thing, and his just happens to be killing zombies. It's Woody Harrelson's best roles in years.

This intrepid pair meets up with a pair of sisters, Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Breslin), who pull a con on them and steal their guns and ride. Soon enough, though, they've joined forces, with a love struck Columbus making plans to invade Kansas.

Director Ruben Fleisher, in addition to showing a good eye for the action scenes, keeps the tone goofy and light. Screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick seem to have watched every zombie movie ever made, and joke around with the conventions while clearly reveling in them.

So when the boys stumble across a Hummer loaded up with assault weapons, Tallahassee shouts to the heavens, "Thank God for rednecks!"

The movie reaches its full stride of daffiness when the foursome arrives in Hollywood, and they decide to crash in a celebrity mansion, only to find the one belonging to Bill Murray still occupied by its owner. In a short but rich stretch of screen time, Murray plays "Ghostbusters" with his guests and even delivers an apology of sorts for those awful "Garfield" flicks. (Stick around after the end credits for some more fun.)

Based on "Zombieland," I'd say the undead comedy genre deserves to rise again.

3 stars