CulturePulp.

MOVIE REVIEW: 'The Express'

Review in the Friday, Oct. 10 Oregonian....

"The Express" is an uplifting, high-minded, nice-looking, well-intentioned, expertly performed and pleasantly inspiring football movie with one big problem:

Its hero is blandly awesome and unstoppable and flawless. And he's blandly awesome and unstoppable and flawless for nearly the entire movie.

The title refers to the overpowering winning streak enjoyed by the Syracuse Orange in 1959, on the road to the racially charged 1960 Cotton Bowl in Texas. This winning streak was thanks almost entirely to the staggering athletic prowess of running back Ernie Davis -- a pioneering African-American football player who did his part to smash racial barriers in American sport.

Director Gary Fleder -- working from a screenplay by Charles Leavitt and Robert C. Gallagher (who wrote the source book "Ernie Davis: The Elmira Express") -- follows a decade-and-a-half of Davis' life. In an early scene that's way too on the nose, 10-year-old Davis dodges racist bullies gridiron-style while carrying a bag of bottles like a football. A few years later, Davis is a high-school sports prodigy, recruited by Syracuse grid coach Ben Schwartzwalder (a scowly Dennis Quaid) with help from departing Syracuse football legend Jim Brown (Darrin Dewitt Henson).

In their few scenes together, Jim Brown and Ben Schwartzwalder aren't on the best of terms. They're smart, angry, flawed men who grudgingly respect each other -- but the African-American Brown just spent four years butting heads with the coach, who's more interested in winning games than fighting for civil rights. (I'm a huge fan of the real-life Jim Brown's post-Cleveland Browns acting career, which includes "The Dirty Dozen" and "Dark of the Sun.")

As "The Express" left Jim Brown behind to focus on Ernie Davis' relentless march to victory, I realized that I'd much rather be watching a Jim Brown biopic -- because his story sounds like it would be a lot more dramatically interesting than the story of Ernie Davis, who's depicted as being so perfect, he's frankly kind of boring.

"The Express" version of Ernie Davis (played by "Finding Forrester" star Rob Brown) is polite. He's noble. He's ridiculously good-looking. His family loves him. His opponents are cartoonish cracker bullies who get their comeuppance. He has a smart, cute girlfriend and they never argue. He bears every burden with grace and wins over his racist teammates and takes Terminator levels of punishment and ends every argument with his scowling coach by delivering a magnificent eye-opening speech that inspires the coach to deliver scowling eye-opening speeches of his own.

In other words, movie-Davis affirms the very finest ideals of our culture, and provides "message movie" uplift -- much like The Rock in "Gridiron Gang," or every character in "The Great Debaters" (which "The Express" resembles to a surprising degree). But Davis is also so one-dimensionally wonderful, he doesn't get to participate in any sort of deeper human drama; his internal conflict is nonexistent.

Maybe the real Ernie Davis really was this perfect. (I just got a terrific letter from a reader who says he was; I've reproduced it in the comments below.) But the movie plays as if the filmmakers didn't want to offend his family.
_____

C-plus; 129 minutes; rated PG for thematic content, violence and language involving racism, and for brief sensuality.

'The Express' (The Oregonian, Friday, Oct. 10, 2008)

CulturePulp 79: Nice Day for a Fake Wedding.

 

In the latest CulturePulp comic, I attend an eventful role-play "wedding" featuring a surprising amount of swordplay.

Portland comics scenesters may be amused to note that the nuptials were the brainchild of cartoonist Barry Deutsch, and starred webcartoonists Dylan Meconis and (the very pregnant) Jenn Manley Lee as the "groom" and "bride," respectively. Also, there's a ninja.

CulturePulp 79: Nice Day for a Fake Wedding (Webcomics Nation)

Complete CulturePulp archives at WCN

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Appaloosa'

From the Friday, Oct. 3 Oregonian....

"Appaloosa" starts out as a low-key Western for grown-ups with a story so simple, you could almost describe it as minimalist. In a perfunctory opening scene, a corrupt rancher (Jeremy Irons) kills a marshal and two deputies. Terrified city leaders recruit two wandering guns for hire -- Virgil (Ed Harris) and Everett (Viggo Mortensen) -- to take over law-enforcement duties, arrest Irons and protect the citizenry from Irons' gang of nasty ranch hands.

There's funny, terse dialogue, lifted right from Robert B. Parker's fantastic source novel. There are standoffs. There are lightning-quick shootouts. The faces of Harris and Mortensen and Irons and Lance Henriksen (as a rival gunfighter) constitute a Mt. Rushmore of perfectly grizzled Old West mugs. And Harris and Mortensen create a singularity of buddy-movie tough-guy cool. I could watch these two actors have wry conversations for hours (and "Appaloosa" is the first in a planned trilogy of novels, so maybe I'll get a chance to do exactly that).

But what's really fascinating about "Appaloosa" is the way the film turns from a stripped-down variation on "Rio Bravo" into something more complicated and surprising and maybe even a little strange over the next couple of hours -- without the movie ever getting any less entertaining or losing its sense of humor.

The trouble begins with the arrival of a widow (Renée Zellweger) with a knack for trading up. She fixates on Virgil, a professional man with only the barest comprehension of his own feelings, and the characters start evolving into something more than icons. Mortensen in particular reveals Everett as a thoughtful fellow who quietly acts as Virgil's support system and peacemaker. Mortensen mostly reveals his character's nuances without saying a word.

I could see "Appaloosa" being a little underwhelming for someone expecting a more action-packed Western. The movie builds to confrontations that are important but end quickly -- just like real violence -- and Harris tells his story at a lopey, visually conservative, character-driven pace. It's the sort of movie in which coffee-drinking gets as much attention as any shootout. But Harris rewards your attention: He clearly loves these characters and gives them plenty of room to talk plain and screw up -- and he quietly complicates matters until the story has become a clever meditation on friendship, professionalism, sacrifice, love, corruption and the difference between legality and justice in an evolving Old West. If you're an actual adult who likes old-school Westerns, this won't disappoint you.
_____

B-plus; 114 minutes; rated R for some violence and language.

MOVIE REVIEW: 'Religulous'

From the Friday, Oct. 3 Oregonian....

Bill Maher thinks faith is dangerously overrated. In fact, in an era when mankind has the technology to destroy itself (no "act of God" required), the comedian and talk-show host thinks divisive religious beliefs hasten our demise as a species.

And so, with the documentary "Religulous," Maher and "Borat" director Larry Charles travel the globe to mock the logic of Jews, Christians, Muslims and assorted fringe cultists -- including one Dutch fellow who founded a church of pot-smoking.

Maher preaches smugly to the un-converted, as it were. He spends most of "Religulous" making sport of relatively meek American Christians. He also kicks around the least intellectually rigorous faith-based leaders he can find (would it have killed him to chat with just one liberal theology professor?). Charles intercuts it all with clips from cheesy Bible epics. Atheists should find it good for an easy, self-affirming laugh.

That said, as Maher travels further east into genuinely dangerous territory, refusing to back down, the movie builds undercurrents of dread under its cheap shots. Maher's furious closing argument -- which calls for an end to anti-rationalism, intercut with apocalyptic imagery from the world's warring religions -- has a shocking anger and force.
_____

B-minus; 101 minutes; rated R for some language and sexual material.