CulturePulp.

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Steep'

From the Dec. 28 Oregonian....

"Steep" is a surprisingly fatalistic, way-above-average ski documentary that lays out a 35-year history of the "extreme" end of the sport. Writer/director Mark Obenhaus interviews the madmen and -women who started climbing (or helicoptering to the top of) remote peaks in Wyoming, Alaska and France so they could ski down virgin cliff faces at 50-degree angles.

The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous -- not a huge surprise, really, given the subject. But what really distinguishes it from the average ski doc (which is, let's face it, often as not a stunt and product showcase) is its clear-eyed sense of history and the way it slowly paints a portrait of collective obsession.

Most of the interviewees have lost friends in extreme-skiing accidents, and at least one interviewee will be dead by film's end. But they still calmly discuss the "creative rationalization" that keeps them coming back to push the sport's limits -- until we've moved from Bill Briggs' lonely assault on the Grand Teton in 1971 to today's less-articulate lunatics, who incorporate base-jumping chutes and aerial flips into their pursuit of a "perfect moment," in an environment where "the mountains always have the last say."
_____

B; 92 minutes; rated PG for extreme sports action and brief language.

'Steep' (The Oregonian, Dec. 28, 2007)

MOVIE REVIEW: 'The Great Debaters'

From the Christmas Day Oregonian....

If I had to pick one word to describe "The Great Debaters," it would be "nutritious."

Denzel Washington's second film as director is produced by Oprah Winfrey, and it perfectly embodies the Oprah brand: It's uplifting, handsome, well-acted, earnest, educational, socially aware and packed to the gills with good-looking, articulate men and women who struggle against racism and stretch their minds.

It's also, structurally, a completely formulaic inspirational sports movie -- albeit one with an impressive pedigree and an even more impressive vocabulary.

The film loosely fictionalizes a triumphant year in the life of the debate team at the all-black Wiley College in 1935, and all the ingredients for drama are there in the history. Wiley's debaters developed a reputation for excellence under the tutelage of radical professor/coach Melvin B. Tolson -- who tells them "Debate is bloodsport!" and picks apart every faulty premise and bad syllogism in eloquent, angry paragraphs. Wiley was soon invited to compete against white teams at big colleges, a race-relations landmark.

All of this transpired against the tensions of the Jim Crow South -- tensions exacerbated by Tolson's unionization of local farmers on the side. Screenwriter Robert Eisele also ups the stakes by adding tension among the student competitors: There's sexual heat between two composite characters -- a born orator with a taste for nightlife (Nate Parker) and Wiley's first female debater (Jurnee Smollett). Meanwhile, a character based on real-life student James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker) pines for Smollett's character and fears his scholar father (Forest Whitaker).

Washington gives himself several terrific monologues as Tolson and knocks them all out of the park; he and Forest Whitaker are excellent at conveying the rage and struggle sizzling just behind their educations. And as an actor's director, Washington gets solid work out of his kids (though young Denzel Whitaker lacks diction and gravitas in the debate scenes, especially when compared to the ridiculously charismatic Parker).

"Debaters" is a real crowd-pleaser. I do wish it delved a little deeper into fewer Big Issues; that it didn't soft-pedal Tolson's radicalism; that the Wiley kids were given something to argue other than the politically correct side in every debate; that the story didn't hew so faithfully to every single sports-movie cliché and feel at times like a series of collected speeches. But the film's charm and self-improvement message -- and its window into a crucial but seldom-filmed era of African-American history -- compensate for a lot of that.
_____

B; 127 minutes; rated PG-13 for depiction of strong thematic material including violence and disturbing images, and for language and brief sexuality.

'The Great Debaters' (The Oregonian, Dec. 25, 2007)

The 10 Best Movies I Saw in 2007 (with alternates, caveats, special awards and a hall of shame)

A "director's cut" of my Oregonian top-10 list....

This was a pretty horrible year for Hollywood blockbusters (those "threequels"! Egad!) -- but probably the best year for film overall since 1999.

My point being: The process of boiling my candidates down to a mere "Ten Best" was long and brutal and wishy-washy and borderline unhappy, but for the happiest possible reason.

Also: The bottom half of the following list could be replaced with any of a dozen other 2007 films, depending on my mood.

Anyway. After the jump, my ten favorite movies of 2007 -- with all the necessary qualifiers.

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story'

From the Dec. 21 Oregonian ....

I distrust Oscar-bait biopics about musicians. They tend to hang artistic and self-destructive impulses on cheap pop-psychological hooks. There is, almost invariably, a scene where the musician trashes a room in a fit of passion, in a way that only happens in movies. And these films are often less interested in the songwriter and more interested in what the songwriter "represents" -- and what they usually end up "representing" is generational self-importance.

"Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" gives this sort of movie a big fat well-deserved mule-kick in the face.

Produced by Judd Apatow, directed by Jake Kasdan and co-written by both, "Walk Hard" uses the "Walk the Line" template to mock the entire self-regarding history of rock n' roll. It tells the story of Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) -- a Cash-like singer-songwriter driven to drugs, drink, bigamy and the pursuit of Musical Truth by a single incident in 1946 in which he (accidentally) cut his more-talented brother in half with a machete.

Apatow and Kasdan plow Cox through every failed-marriage/rehab/career-comeback cliché in the book, as well as most of the major eras in late-20th-century pop music -- soul, country, punk, folk, psychedelia, disco and sample-heavy hip-hop -- and it's a testament to Reilly's talent that he binds all these costumes, hairstyles and chord changes into a single coherent (and hilariously stupid) character. It's terrific to see Reilly finally get the lead role in a comedy after a decade of supporting work; one of my favorite DVD extras ever is "The John C. Reilly Files," a collection of his "Boogie Nights" outtakes.

He also really sells the parody songs, which are surprisingly thorough and sophisticated. Personal favorites include an over-orchestrated sendup of "Pet Sounds," a perfectly nonsensical Bob Dylan number and a duet with the love of Dewey's life (Jenna Fischer) that contains more filthy double entendres than a Sondheim number. (The title of the song, in fact, is "Let's Duet.") I love the way characters constantly make sweeping statements about The Changing Times and work too many song titles into their dialogue and over-identify themselves when they're playing famous characters -- most hilariously when Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Jason Schwartzman and Justin Long show up as the worst-cast Beatles in history.

It should be noted that "Walk Hard" is aimed at a fairly specific sort of movie subgenre -- it's practically an extended "SNL" sketch in that regard -- and it doesn't produce belly laughs so much as steady smiles of recognition over how accurately it's nailing its target. But it really nails that target, in all the ways listed above (Dewey must rip 20 sinks out of the wall in various fits of passion) and then some.
_____

B; 96 minutes; rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language; multiple locations.

'Walk Hard' (The Oregonian, Dec. 21, 2007)

CORT AND FATBOY: 'I Am Legend,' 'Juno' and 'The Golden Compass'

On the Friday, Dec. 14 "Cort and Fatboy" broadcast, we discuss the surprisingly good "I Am Legend," which at no point contains a wacky action scene where Will Smith yells "Awww HELLLLL Nawwww!" Also discussed: the Facebook-generation comedy "Juno" and "The Golden Compass."  

Cort and Fatboy (Dec. 14, 2007)

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Juno'

From the Dec. 14 Oregonian ....

Apparently this is the year of the well-made comedy about unplanned pregnancy. On the heels of "Waitress"  and "Knocked Up" and probably a few other movies I'm forgetting comes "Juno" -- a funny and (eventually) sincere indie about what happens when an acerbic teen (Ellen Page) finds herself "in a fat suit I can't take off."

Anyone who saw Ms. Page as the cunning jailbait avenger in "Hard Candy" knows this 20-year-old is a sharp actress. "Juno" may make her a movie star. Her Juno MacDuff is a self-styled teen iconoclast who hides her turmoil under a thick frosting of wisecracks. When she seduces (and finds herself bearing the child of) her former bandmate, a studious track dork (Michael Cera), she responds by throwing up a wall of dark humor. She rails against the clinical adult description of teens as "sexually active." She complains that "being pregnant makes me pee like Seabiscuit" and walks around with an old man's pipe in her mouth and jokingly asks for booze when offered a beverage.

After she decides to put her impending spawn up for adoption, she finds a matching-track-suit couple (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner) advertising for a baby in the Penny Saver -- and one of her first questions is why they don't adopt a child from China, where "they give away babies like free iPods."

For a good half-hour, the wisecracking (from a script by blogger/memoirist Diablo Cody) is funny but relentlessly in love with its own cleverness; the movie feels like it's trying way too hard to be offbeat. Every line is something like a kid saying "Honest to blog!" instead of "Honest to God!," or a shop clerk (Rainn Wilson) saying to Juno as she shakes her pregnancy-test stick, and I quote, "What's the prognosis, Fertile Myrtle? Minus or plus?.... That ain't no Etch-A-Sketch. This is one doodle that can't be undid, home-skillet." Uh, okay. Combine this with the endless soundtrack of adorable folk songs and the funny character names, and there's a legit fear the movie is going to be exhaustingly "quirky." (Emily Gould at Gawker did an excellent job summing up why this is going to be a deal-breaker for many viewers.)

But then, with help from some light-touch direction by Jason Reitman ("Thank You For Smoking"), the movie relaxes into itself and Cody shows her cards: What makes Page's performance wonderful is the way Juno's irony-mask slowly slides off as the stakes of her pregnancy get higher.

Much of this unfolds via Juno's borderline-inappropriate friendship with Bateman's character, who bonds with her over music and horror movies. Juno clearly favors him over Garner's uptight "baby-starved wingnut," but by film's end, Cody is asking a serious question: Does a good parent necessarily have to be cool?

Page, blessed with a dry wit beyond her years, plays beautifully off Bateman, who grows quieter as the drama escalates. Cera does another riff on his "Arrested Development" persona, and may be the only actor on earth who could say ""You seem to be getting pregnanter these days" and manage to sound sincere. Best of all are Juno's parents, played by Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons; the best scene in the film is probably their deadpan reaction to the news that Juno is pregnant.

Reitman, cinematographer Eric Steelberg and editor Dana E. Glauberman do subtle work, focusing on little details and moments, and they deliver a couple of great shots: one where the students at Juno's school part like the Red Sea as she walks to class, and another lovely late-film moment -- set to an acoustic cover of the Moldy Peaches' "Anyone Else But You" -- that will probably send kids scrambling for the soundtrack album.
_____

B-plus; 92 minutes; rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, sexual content and language.

'Juno' (The Oregonian, Dec. 14, 2007)

Mr. Do and Mr. Don't celebrate the holidays in Portland

In their latest comic -- now available in its entirety on Webcomics Nation -- beloved instructional cartoon characters Mr. Do and Mr. Don't™ teach us how to properly enjoy December in the City of Roses.
_____

Mr. Do and Mr. Don't celebrate the holidays in Portland (Webcomics Nation)

Complete CulturePulp comic archives at WCN

MOVIE REVIEW: 'The Golden Compass'

Much-longer cut of a review in today's Oregonian....

"The Golden Compass" builds a gorgeous universe full of action-packed adventures. Unfortunately, those adventures are mostly happening far offscreen -- and the characters you do meet spend most of their time describing them.

The film -- adapted by writer/director Chris Weitz from Philip Pullman's novel -- concerns a passive young orphan named Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) who lives on a college campus in an alternate-universe England. The particulars of this alternate universe are realized with all the gorgeous CGI that (at least) $150 million can buy. People fly around in Jules Verne zeppelins and use all kinds of steampunk technology. There is, for some reason, a kingdom of talking polar bears to the north, living in what looks like the most barbaric Coke commercial ever filmed. And, coolest of all, people's souls manifest at their sides as talking animals called "dæmons"; children's dæmons shift shape at will, and it's all beautifully animated.

The look of the film is not the problem. No, the problem is the story. Because the thrust of the story (which stops a few chapters short of the juicy ending of Pullman's book, by the way) is this:

1. Lyra gets taken to various exotic locales by older, cooler characters who tell her their exciting stories and then promptly disappear.
2. Lyra occasionally looks into a sort of super-secret clockwork Game Boy called an "alethiometer" and catches glimpses of exciting stories involving those same older, cooler characters.

As this beautiful, boring movie wears on, this fundamental story problem starts getting kind of ridiculous. "Golden Compass" is so chatty, so all-talk-no-action, it plays like "The Phantom Menace" with the pod race and lightsaber battles removed. For example:

• Lyra talks about "gobblers" who kidnap children for "City of Lost Children"-style medical experiments. We barely see it happen.
• We pop in for a single scene on Derek Jacobi and Christopher Lee (!) as they discuss their evil ruling body called "The Magisterium." (The book's fabled anti-Catholic bent has been toned down considerably -- though it's worth noting that the Magisterium leaders are still basically a bunch of mustache-twirlers in papal vestments.)
• A gang of gypsy pirates sits around a table and talks about war and history and how the alethiometer works. In fact, the workings of the alethiometer are explained at least three times, and I still don't quite get it.
• We glimpse an army of witches flying off to a war we never see. One witch (Eva Green) shows up on a boat and tells Lyra a long story and then promptly flies away.
• A sinister socialite named Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) takes Lyra for a blimp ride and tells her a vague tale about the Fall of Man.
• Someone tells Lyra that her explorer uncle (Daniel Craig) has gotten into violent trouble in the Arctic and is bribing his captors and has set up a secret laboratory to study a mysterious substance called "Dust" that opens a door to other parallel universes.

Uh, can I watch the movie where all this referenced action is happening onscreen, please?

The movie improves a little after the late arrival of a polar bear voiced by Ian McKellen and a pilot played by Sam Elliott. (You haven't lived until you've heard Elliott growl through his mustache, "If I was on the kind of scout you're on, I'd have myself an aeronaut and an armored bear.") And there is one big battle at the end of the movie, but Weitz seems to regard combat as an impediment to further exposition: His idea of an action scene is to point the camera in a general direction and turn up the music. That "Narnia" movie was lame, but at least its final battle was vaguely cinematic.

"Golden Compass" ends up being ridiculously top-heavy -- teetering around trying to explain its vast ideas and world-building mythology without bothering to craft the focused story or lived-in immediacy of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings." If you haven't read Pullman's novel, you feel excluded from the movie's conversations, as if you're watching a "Star Trek" movie where all the characters jabber for an hour-and-a-half about nothing but rerouting the warp engines through the deflector dish to create a tachyon pulse. By film's end, I realized why producer New Line recently started talking publicly about hoping to make "The Hobbit" with Peter Jackson despite the fact that he's suing them.

Oh, and the very ending just drove me nuts. SPOILER ALERT: A promising team of oddballs has finally been assembled in a cool vehicle, and they're all flying off to a grand reunion -- and Lyra just starts talking and talking and talking about all the mind-blowing things that are going to happen, and then the movie suddenly just up and ends (again, a little short of where the book ends). It's unbelievable -- as if "Star Wars" ended the second everyone first boarded the Millennium Falcon. During her endless final speech, Lyra also recaps the story thus far and concludes, "That's an awful lot to sort out." Jesus, is it ever.
____________

C; 113 minutes; rated PG-13 for sequences of fantasy violence.

'The Golden Compass' (The Oregonian, Dec. 7, 2007)

MOVIE REVIEW: 'How to Cook Your Life'

From today's Oregonian ....

"When you're cooking, you're not just working on food; you're working on your life," says Edward Espe Brown -- Zen priest, chef and author of the much-loved "Tassajara Bread Book."

Most of the time, "How to Cook Your Life" elegantly illustrates this idea. German filmmaker Doris Dörrie follows Mr. Brown around the world as he leads small Zen cooking workshops, dispensing parables and dough-kneads, and he's a fascinating piece of work: odd and irreverent and sensitive and funny.

Brown and Dörrie do a calm, quietly inspiring job of spinning the deliberate cooking process into life lessons: slow down, be present, don't waste, do your best, embrace your flaws. The movie is maybe less successful later, when Dörrie starts abandoning Brown for short stretches to become a tract for organic vegetarianism that preaches straight at the converted. The Zen chef was compelling me plenty -- why am I suddenly meeting a lady who lives on salvaged fruit and a kid who feels bad about killing a chicken?
_____________

B; 94 minutes; rated PG-13 for brief strong language.

'How to Cook Your Life' (The Oregonian, Dec. 7, 2007)

CORT AND FATBOY: 'Awake'

On the Friday, Nov. 30 "Cort and Fatboy" broadcast, we learn what happens when a writer/director with an interesting thriller idea takes 40 minutes to set up his premise and casts two pretty but gravity-light actors in lead roles. The result, my friends, is "Awake."

(Also, learn how many great movies I have yet to see this year! Working on it!)

Cort and Fatboy (Nov. 30, 2007)