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MOVIE REVIEW: 'The Russian Dolls' ('Les poupées russes')

"The Russian Dolls" ("Les poupées russes") is a bright, sexy, globe-trotting and very French romantic comedy that asks a tough question:

Has globalization destroyed the myth of True Love?

The movie follows a bunch of gorgeous twentysomethings as they commute endlessly around Europe, tending little bonfires of lust and angst. And as bullet-trains, telecommunication and macroeconomics shorten the distance between them, the film seems to argue that young adults can always find sexual partners more desirable than their current lovers. (The film's title is a metaphor for the discovery of romance after romance after romance.)

But the movie also asks a follow-up question: Do all these sexual options make choosing to stay with just one person even more special?

"Dolls" is a sequel to "L'Auberge espagnole" ("The Spanish Apartment"), a 2002 comedy by writer/director Cédric Klapisch about a Parisian student named Xavier (Romain Duris) living with an international mix of co-eds in Barcelona. You don't need to see the first film to get the gist of the new one, which catches up with Xavier on the cusp of 30.

He's an aimless emotional wreck -- perpetually distracted from his literary ambitions by a freelance-writing career that has him hacking out vapid feature stories and TV scripts. He enjoys awkward friendships with his activist ex-girlfriend (Audrey Tautou) and his lesbian roommate (Cécile De France).

"Don't forget to write important things," Xavier's grandfather tells him -- but who's got the time? Tautou puts it more bluntly: "Your work is a load.... You're a parasite."

Anyone who lusted after Duris' New Wave sex-bomb character in "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" may be shocked and awed by the actor's forays into dorkiness here. As Xavier narrates the film and awkwardly juggles lovers -- including his TV-co-writer (Kelly Reilly) and the supermodel (Lucy Gordon) whose memoirs he's ghostwriting -- Duris does everything from silly dances to running nude down the street. It's another tour de force, but totally different from "Beat."

By the time the movie reunites most of the characters at a St. Petersburg wedding, "Russian Dolls" has become a sort of wandering rom-com epic -- kicking romantic fallacies in the ribs while capturing something essential about the solipsism and dreams of young urbanites.

And Klapisc works overtime to make his movie a gorgeous confection. He jam-packs the screen with visual collages and dream sequences and candy colors. The laid-back lounge-pop soundtrack is collection-worthy. Drama meshes beautifully with decadent wackiness. There's some beautiful writing. (Reilly gives a heartbreaking little speech about "loving what's not perfect.") And the movie just sort of tingles with playful lust; this 21st-century romance is one of the sexiest movies I've seen in ages.
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The dally of the 'Dolls' (The Oregonian, June 30, 2006)

MOVIE REVIEW: 'The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift'

Movie review in today's Oregonian:

Wikipedia defines "drifting (motorsport)" as the tire-shredding power-slide that happens "when the rear wheels [of a car] are slipping at a greater angle than the front wheels.... The rear end of the car appears to chase the front end around a turn, [and] the driver utilizes both front and rear tires to control the actual direction."

It's a balletic, controlled skid, in other words -- a driving technique largely refined by Japanese pro- and street-racers in the 1970s. "Drift racing" is also the current craze among Japanese gearheads -- with drift-racers (and their wee, Matchbox-lurid, rear-wheel-drive cars) turning up in commercials, comics and cartoons.

In real-world drift-racing, points are scored based on grace, precision and speed. In "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" -- a dumb, fun movie set in Japan's drift-racing subculture -- points are scored based on grace, precision, speed, smirking, collateral damage, pedestrian-dodging and the ability to steal your opponent's girlfriend while causing him to flip his car as screaming girls film the whole thing with their cell phones.

"Tokyo Drift" is a sequel in name only to the previous two "Fast and the Furious" movies. It follows an all-new white-bread doofus named Sean (Lucas Black), a big-mouthed, country-boy high-schooler who's shipped off to live with Dad in Tokyo after wrecking one too many cars stateside. Within minutes, he's running errands for a charming crook named Han (Sung Kang), trying to steal an insanely hot schoolgirl (Nathalie Kelley) from the local Yakuza heir (Brian Tee), and wrecking everyone else's cars while teaching himself to drift in silly parking-garage races.

The movie's utterly stupid, of course. Sean's a total blank -- and with the beginnings of male-pattern baldness and a tuft of chest-toupee poking out from under his shirt, Lucas Black looks about as much like a high-schooler as Christopher Meloni. This is the sort of flick where people say things like, "It's not the ride, it's the rider"; where engines that worked great in fiberglass drift-cars are effortlessly transplanted to steel Mustangs; where Yakuza scores can be settled with races officiated by Sonny Chiba; and where we're meant to get insanely pumped-up by underground race gatherings that look like crosses between car shows and anime conventions. (When it comes to Kelley and her friends, the movie's practically a study in naughty-schoolgirl cosplay.)

Still, as idiot car-crash movies go, "Tokyo Drift" is pretty fun. (It's certainly a more-than-decent entry in this particular franchise.) Director Justin Lin ("Better Luck Tomorrow") pumps the races up nicely, even if they all feel the same after a while. There are a couple of truly wicked crashes. It's fun to see shots mimicking the opening of "Lost in Translation" turn up during a car chase through downtown Tokyo. And Sung Kang is ridiculously charismatic as Han; I love how he always has a snack or beverage in his hand as he calmly watches Black turn cars into crumpled pop cans.

Plus, you can only get so annoyed with a movie that choreographs a line of cars drifting down a mountain pass with such hilarious precision, you'd think the stunt coordinator was Esther Williams -- only to cut to the inside of one of the vehicles, where Black and Kelley are talking as calmly as if they were sitting in a Wendy's drive-thru.
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'Tokyo Drift' skids into dumb fun (The Oregonian, June 16, 2006)

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story'

From today's Oregonian.... 

Like "Dodgeball" and "Wet Hot American Summer," "Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story" feels like it was made by thirtysomethings who want to put some ironic distance between themselves and the movies they loved in junior high.

It's a fake documentary, shot on video, following disgraced paintball legend Bobby Dukes ("The Daily Show"'s Rob Corddry) as he attempts a comeback -- 10 years and several hair follicles past his prime.

He builds a patented Ragtag Team of Misfits? that includes his adorably mousy sister (Dannah Feinglass), the referee who ended his career (Paul Scheer), a dithering coward (Curtis Gwinn), a Canadian New Ager (Seth Morris) and a bloodlusty rageaholic (Rob Riggle).

As this pack of idiots heads to the Hudson Valley Paintball Classic -- and an inevitable showdown with the sport's reigning egomaniac (Rob Huebel) -- "Blackballed" tone-checks everything from Ramis to Guest to "This is Spinal Tap" to the very cheesiest inspirational sports movies (with just a dash of "Saving Private Ryan" during the paintball combat).

Which is fine. Except that, in execution, "Blackballed" is more amusing than funny.

The cast is packed with Upright Citizens Brigade refugees, all of whom apparently improvised their dialogue within a story by director Brant Sersen and co-writer Brian Steinberg. This can be laugh-out-loud funny when Feinglass goes all squeaky, or when Riggle's yelling "Second place is first place for losers!" while going off on one of his roughly eight billion rants about wanting to drink the blood of his enemies. (Be sure to watch how Corddry can't keep a straight face whenever Riggle's onscreen.) And D.J. Hazard, playing the drill-sergeant head of the Classic, has a scary knack for coming up with metaphors like "The world was thirsty for a miracle, and you were the bartenders of whup-ass!"

But too many other characters fail to spark, including Corddry, who couldn't seem any less like a man trying to shrug off a decade of public shame. But even that could be forgiven if the story didn't drag a bit, but it does -- especially during a protracted training montage and during the deeply uninteresting paintball fights.

"Blackballed" is never actively unfunny. The cast is far too smart for that. But it never quite pops like it would if it were whittled down to something just a little longer than an SNL Digital Short.

Caution: wet paint (The Oregonian, June 9, 2006)