Video review: "Precious"

Lately it seems major films are being pushed onto video in a slipshod manner. Extras are skimpy and unenlightening, as if the studio couldn't be bothered to take the time or spend the money.

(Yeah, I'm talking to you, "Where the Wild Things Are.")

So it's refreshing to see Best Picture Oscar nominee "Precious" given a top-notch release. It's got a solid commentary track and host of probing featurettes totaling nearly an hour. About the only knock is the lack of a digital copy.

Extras are identical for DVD and Blu-ray versions. In the commentary, director Lee Daniels talks openly about his own troubled youth and how it inspired him during the shooting.

Author Sapphire speaks about her experiences as an inner-city teacher, and how she was reluctant to let Hollywood film her book. She relented after seeing Daniels' "Monsters Ball."

The casting of novice Gabourey Sidibe is covered in detail, including footage from her audition. Sidibe is nothing like her character -- she's smart, outgoing and "talks like a white girl," Daniels says.

Daniels talks about de-glamorizing his cast, making nearly everyone work without makeup -- he even reveals he caught Mariah Carey trying to sneak in some blush between takes.

Oprah and Tyler Perry talk about their roles in "presenting" the film. Artistically, they had nothing to do with it. But after seeing it, they felt compelled to lend their names to get the Sundance favorite a major release.

Set in Harlem 1987, it's the first-person story of Claireece "Precious" Jones, an obese, illiterate 16-year-old who's pregnant with her second child. She's the victim of her mother, a serial abuser, played with terrifying rage by Mo'Nique, and was raped repeatedly by her father.

She's like a thousand others girls that people pass on the streets every day without seeing. Her entire life has taught her to feel worthless, like "ugly black grease."

But Precious is given a second chance when she's sent to an alternative school, where she finds a teacher and fellow female students who help her, for the first time in her life, to feel empowered. The vibrant fantasies that ping around her head start to translate into the journals she keeps for class.

"Precious" is a hard movie to watch. The brutality it depicts, of both a physical and psychological nature, are vile. The only thing worse would be failing to see it.

Movie: 3.5 stars
Extras: 3.5 stars

Bonus video review: "Hachi: A Dog's Tale"

"Hachi: A Dog's Tale" is something of a cautionary tale. Not the movie itself, which is a capable tear-jerker, but how the film's release was handled.

The drama starring Richard Gere, Joan Allen and Jason Alexander made the circuit of the film festivals, including headlining the Heartland Film Festival here in Indianapolis last fall. It had a name director, Lasse Hallström, and seemed to have all the tools for a decent mid-level theatrical run.

But the film never got a theater run. Dates in December were pushed back to January, and the next thing I heard it was scheduled for video release on March 9.

It's strange, and depressing, how worthy movies with name stars and filmmakers can get shunted aside to video, while a whole lot of drek makes it to theaters.

"Hachi" is an Americanized version of a Japanese story about an Akita dog who shows the greatest loyalty imaginable. After Parker (Gere), a middle-aged music professor, stumbles across the tiny pup lost at his train station, he takes him home for safekeeping and -- of course -- ends up bonding with him.

Parker's reluctant wife, wonderfully played by the great Joan Allen, eventually succumbs to the dog's charms.

But this is but the beginning of the story. Parker dies suddenly, and Hachi, who had been making the daily trek to meet his master at the train station where they met, keeps doing so. The years roll by, and every day the faithful canine goes to meet the human he loves, who will never come.

It's a touching, true story based on a dog in Tokyo in the 1920s, where a statue was eventually erected to celebrate the bond between man and dog.

Hallström constructs an unabashed tear-jerker, but the film is skillful enough in playing with our emotions that we begin to forget about the manipulation.

Perhaps reflecting the film's underwhelming arrival, video extras are exceedingly thin. They're limited to a single item: An 18-minute making-of documentary that tends to fall into the familiar pattern where everyone involved with the project talks about how great everyone else is.

Once, just once, I'd like to see cast and crew talk honestly about the unavoidable conflicts and flare-ups that occur in any collaborative creative process.

Movie: 3 stars
Extras: 1.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "The Sunshine Boys" (1975)

The biggest joke in "The Sunshine Boys" is that the two old vaudevillians are funnier when they're not telling jokes.

The set-up of the 1975 comedy, based on the Neil Simon play, is about the duo of Lewis & Clark, hysterically funny on stage, and horribly estranged off it. They're brought back together by an offer to do their act one more time for a big television special, if they can only stand to be in the same room.

The highlight is supposed to be when they do their old doctor sketch during rehearsals, which is the least funny time we see them together. They're still pretty damn funny, but after an hour or so of wisecracks and great comic timing, we long for them to get to arguing again.

Simon's play was a big hit on Broadway a few years earlier, so it only made sense for it to follow "The Odd Couple" from stage to screen. Jack Benny and Red Skelton were set to star, but Benny grew sick and died and Skelton pulled out. Walter Mattheu stepped in as irascible Willy Clark, and George Burns -- a real vaudeville straight man -- was brought in to tackle the role of Al Lewis.

This was Burns' first motion picture in 36 years, and it was a doozy. He won the Oscar for best supporting actor at age 80, prompting him to joke that he should only do one movie every 36 years. Offers soon came flooding in, and 60-odd years into his career Burns became a movie star with the "Oh, God" films and several others.

Lewis and Clark hate each other, though neither would give the other the satisfaction of saying so. It's more a long, cold war, with every interaction a game of one-upsmanship. Even after Clark suffers a heart attack and is bedridden, he makes a point of setting up his chair on the far side of the room to receive Lewis, and stuffs pillows beneath himself, so his old partner will have to walk as far as possible to see him, and look up when doing so.

Richard Benjamin plays Ben, Clark's hapless nephew and agent, who can't convince his uncle to show up on time and in the right place to audition for a potato chip commercial. A number of other notable actors turn in supporting roles, including a young F. Murray Abraham -- all that hair! -- as a mechanic.

Matthau was only in his 50s when they made the movie, but he was believably aged up 20 years or so through makeup and his own acting skills.

What's really funny is that the comedy duo's disagreements are so trivial. Clark insists that Lewis deliberately poked him during their performances, and spit on him when pronouncing his T's. Lewis wanted to retire and Clark didn't, and he's obviously bothered that he doesn't have any identity outside of their partnership. Lewis gets steamed when Clark changes the opening line of their routine from "Come in" to "Enter."

There's a great, serious scene where Clark is haranguing Lewis to Ben, who finally asks him why he worked with him for 43 years if he hated him so much. Clark forcefully calls Lewis "the best." He was a great actor with terrific comic timing, Clark praises. "As an act, nobody could touch him. As a human being, nobody wanted to touch him!"

The jokes come fast and furious, building in speed and intensity until the audience is rolling with laughter. It's not vaudeville, but it sure is funny.

3 stars



(Apologies... after all my talk about how the vaudeville routine wasn't as funny as the rest of the movie, that's the only video clip I could find.)

Coming this week

Oscars tonight! Joe, Jessica and I will be live-blogging the show from 7 p.m. onward. You can tune in by clicking here.

But back to the regular movie week. I'll have reviews of "Green Zone" and possibly "Our Family Wedding" and "Remember Me."

The video review is multiple Oscar nominee "Precious." I'll have classic film columns on the '70s flicks "The Sunshine Boys" and "Bang the Drum Slowly."

Review: "The Ghost Writer"

"The Ghost Writer" starts off at a slow boil, and for a long time the plot simmers without gaining momentum. It bubbles away and doesn't seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere. But then the last 30 minutes or so kick into high gear, with big reveals and satisfying twists.

It's based on the novel "The Ghost" by Robert Harris, who adapted it for the screen along with director Roman Polanski.

(Polanski was still working on the film when he was incarcerated as a fugitive from justice after raping a 13-year-old girl back in the 1970s. I won't linger on the debate about whether the Polish director is a great artist or a sexual deviant, other than to say I've never understood why people insist the two are mutually exclusive.)

"The Ghost Writer" isn't among Polanski's finest works ("The Pianist," "Chinatown") but it's certainly a worthy mystery/thriller.

Ewan McGregor plays the (unnamed) ghost, or ghost writer, for former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan, clearly enjoying himself.) Lang -- who bears a not-at-all accidental similarity to Tony Blair -- was popular but drew criticism near the end of his term for playing poodle to American interests.

Just as the ghost arrives at Lang's secluded beach mansion to fix up the dry memoirs, one of his former ministers (Jon Bernthal) steps forward with allegations that his boss aided in the kidnapping of British citizens to be waterboarded by the CIA.

After Lang decamps to deal with the charges, the ghost starts digging into the mystery. His predecessor, a longtime Lang aide, drowned mysteriously on the same island, and the ghost finds photographs and documents among the deceased's effects that don't jibe with the autobiographical history Lang provided.

Lang's wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) gave up her own political ambitions to foster her husband's, and resents how his life overshadows and restricts hers. She certainly has charismatic skills of manipulation, which she's soon exercising on the writer.

The ghost's investigation eventually leads to the secluded house of a Harvard professor (a great Tom Wilkinson) whose connections to Lang may be more than meets the eye.

Mysterious men start following the writer around, as the cat-and-mouse game gains intensity and energy.

Nowadays most movies of this sort start out strong and peter out with an illogical or unnecessary ending. "The Ghost Writer" moves in the opposite direction, dithering early on and growing stronger and more purposeful as it goes.

The biggest weakness of the film is the ghost, who never gains any substance as a character. We don't know anything about who he is, so it's peculiar that a professed political agnostic would become so obsessed in ferreting out the truth.

I won't reveal anything about the big twist at the end, other than to say it will probably bolster the mood of those contemptuous of the Bush/Blair anti-terror strategy. For Polanski, the horrors of history are an ample springboard for his distinctive, neurotic style of filmmaking.

3 stars

Reeling Backward: "Eat Drink Man Woman"

The message of "Eat Drink Man Woman" is pretty straightforward: Love and romance are as integral to one's basic subsistence as food and water.

The third film directed by Ang Lee was a huge international hit in 1994, preceded the year before by "The Wedding Banquet," and launched his filmmaking career in America the year after with "Sense and Sensibility." Lee, who also co-wrote the script, already showed a mature, humanistic approach to storytelling.

It's the tale of a Taiwanese father and three adult daughters, all living under the same roof but emotionally scattered. All have varying degrees of love trouble, even the ones who have sworn off romance.

Mr. Chu (Sihung Lung) is a master gourmet chef who's very protective of his art. In addition to his professional duties at the top local restaurant, he spends hours in his large home kitchen cooking. Every Sunday he prepares a veritable feast for the family, with a dozen courses or more.

The loving food shots are enough to set one's stomach to a high rumble, even though the food itself is mostly unfamiliar since it's authentic Taiwanese cooking. There's one shot of Chu pulling some beef spare ribs out of a simmering pot that sent me scurrying to the kitchen.

Chu doesn't allow any of his three daughters to cook in his kitchen -- even though middle daughter Jia-Chen (Chien-Lien Wu) showed a talent for it as a girl. He's further confounded by his own dying taste buds. Not only can he not enjoy his own creations, but he occasionally screws them up because he can't self-correct. He's at once prideful and dismissive of his life's calling.

"People today don't appreciate the exquisite art of cooking," Chu grouses to the restaurant manager. "After 40 years of Chinese food in Taiwan, the art is lost. Food from everywhere merges like rivers running into the sea. Everything tastes the same."

Chu is most estranged from Jia-Chen, even though he secretly harbors the greatest pride for her. She has become a top executive at a Chinese airline company. She is desperate to move out from under her father's strict control, having put down her life savings on a new luxury apartment project. She's also tempted by an opportunity to live abroad, and by a married co-worker.

If Jia-Chen's life is bursting with opportunities, oldest daughter Jian-Jen (Keui-Mei Yang) seems stuck. A plain old maid of a school teacher, she seems to have never recovered from a broken romance during college. Nearing 30 -- practically ancient for an unmarried woman in traditional Taiwan -- Jia-Chen is committed to her father and her Christian faith. A new gym teacher at her school offers a last shot at freedom, especially when mysterious love letters begin arriving on her desk.

Youngest daughter Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang) is a 20-year-old student working at a Wendy's fast-food restaurant. One of her co-workers delights in torturing her sad mope of a boyfriend before she finally dumps him. Jia-Ning tries to console the sad boy, and finds herself drawn to him.

Plot-wise, there really isn't much going on. Chu and his daughters have various low-key confrontations that halt before any genuine exchange of emotional catharsis is achieved. Chu's brother Old Wen warns that he is headed for an explosion. This seems confirmed when Jia-Chen spots Chu coming out of a cardiologist's office.

There's also a neighbor with a young daughter and an old harpy of a mother. The matron, who constantly derides the institution of marriage, nevertheless appears to have marital aims on Mr. Chu. For his part, he enjoys secretly preparing gourmet lunches for the granddaughter, which brings her a great deal of popularity at school.

I can't stress enough what a culinary delight watching this movie is. Like "Julie & Julia," the food is simply gorgeous to look upon, let alone stimulating your centers of craving. Although I must observe that everyone in the movie seems suspiciously slender to be enjoying this fare on a regular basis.

"Eat Drink Man Woman" is simply delicious filmmaking. And it was but the appetizer for the great career of Ang Lee.

3.5 stars

Review: "Alice in Wonderland"

Why?

That's my one-word review of Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland." Why does this movie exist? Does it add anything to the Lewis Carroll stories? Does it have a purpose for being beyond dollars-and-cents rationalizing? If it had never been made, would the cinematic world be poorer for it?

I've been a fan of director Tim Burton's comically twisted sensibilities for a long time, but lately he's in a rut. Rather than pursuing original stories ("Edward Scissorhands") or loopy take-offs on reality ("Ed Wood"), he's tackling big-budget revivals of well-known intellectual properties -- "Sweeney Todd," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Planet of the Apes."

Burton's gone from being one of the most vibrant, freshest voices in Hollywood to the king of the remakes. His distinctive style has been packaged and co-opted. You can practically hear the moneymen plotting:

"Hey, no one's made an 'Alice' movie in awhile, let's do it up with a lot of CG for the animals and add in some battle scenes for the teens and slather on some of that Tim Burton kookiness. And we'll get Johnny Depp to do one of his over-the-top nutty characters."

Speaking of which: The eclectic voices that call out to Depp have often aimed true -- his Keith-Richards-meets-Pepe-Le-Pew take on Captain Jack Sparrow made the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" a delectable mash-up of spectacle and spontaneity. But it had gotten old by the second go-round, and his Michael Jackson-inspired Willy Wonka was just strange for the sake of strangeness.

Ditto for his Mad Hatter, who seems to put on his personalities like he does his blue-and-pink makeup. One minute Hatter, as he's nicknamed, is speaking in a rambling, lisping spray of non-sequitors ("How is a raven like a writing desk?"), and then he switches into a strident Scottish brogue.

By the end of the film, he even gets a big ol' Braveheart sword to complete the strange ensemble.

The Hatter, of course, was only a minor player in the original novel by Lewis Carroll, but here he's elevated to sidekick/muse for Alice (Mia Wasikowska).

Carroll actually wrote two Alice books, and most movie versions have simply crammed together characters and story elements from each. This new film (screenplay by Linda Woolverton) goes one further, by essentially positing itself as a sequel.

Alice is now 19 and about to be married off to a haughty young lord, and is plagued by dreams about white rabbits and red queens. Little does she realize these are actually memories from her childhood visit to Wonderland (or Underland, as the natives insist is the correct name).

A quick dash down the rabbit hole, and a few rapid changes in size later, Alice stumbles upon the White Rabbit, Dormouse, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the Blue Caterpillar. It seems in her absence the Red Queen has usurped the crown of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), and is ordering the lopping off of heads at a prodigious rate.

Computer imagery is incorporated into many of the characters. The animals are all CG, but even the Red Queen (played by Helena Bonham Carter) has her head swelled to watermelon proportions. (Depp's eyes are similarly super-sized.)

Alice sets off on a search for the Vorpal Blade, guarded by a Bandersnatch, to be used against the fearsome serpent Jabberwocky at the climactic battle on Frabjous Day -- all bits, by the way, contained in Carroll's nonsense poetry. Oh, and Hatter will celebrate by doing his Futterwhacken dance.

Considered apart, some of these ornaments are amusing enough in their own right. But taken together, Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" is an exercise in cynical regurgitation.

1.5 stars