A romp, a giggle and tickle, a little of the old wink wink nudge nudge with American accents. From the writers of Scary Movies I & II, comes Not Another Teen Movie, sendng up teen romance flicks the way their other film did the teen horror genre. Perhaps not quite as successfully, but still worth 90 minutes of lifespan on cable. Mix together the following and add some Mike Myers influence: She’s All That, Can’t Hardly Wait, Varsity Blues, the American Pies, plus every ’80s John Hughes movie you can remember. In fact, the high school in the film is actually named for Hughes, Molly Ringwald makes a cameo, and Paul Gleason reprises his Breakfast Club role and detention room riff. Lots of laughs.

Recommended

If you enjoy soul music, especially coming from a pack of slum-raised white Irish teenagers, witha bit of comedy thrown in, then you’ll enjoy The Commitments–it’s been one of my favorites, watched over and over, since the initial release in 1991. The soundtrack, much of it provided by the young Irish kids who play the bandmembers, is terrific; I’m truly surprised that more of them didn’t become known as actors or musicians.

Andrew Strong, for example, is the closest thing this film has to a bad guy, he plays the lead singer and is amazingly arrogant but the others put up with him because he can sing soul like no white boy should. Since this came out, he’s made a string of records but never achieved any real success which is too bad because he really does have the voice.

Robert Arkins plays Jimmy Rabbitte, the focal character in this ensemble as the band manager, but this is his first and only acting part as far as I can find. In the movie Arkins is all ideas and energy but doesn’t sing or play, while in real life he’s primarily a singer with his own band.

The movie sort of plays out like the film of an imaginary rock opera album like Tommy or Quadraphenia, if that makes any sense. First are a bunch of scenes with wheeler-dealer Rabbitte gathering the players together, including some very strange blokes that show up for advertised auditions at his house. Most of the selected musicians aren’t much good with their instruments (except the medical student piano player and Strong) except for Joey “The Lips” Fagan, the one older member who’s toured with a long list of great American soul singers, yet the band comes together as tight and nearly professional in a matter of weeks. Rehearsals, kids, are really important, you see.

They play their first gig, a couple of songs at an anti-drug benefit at the church’s community room, and everyone is at the top of the world. Time to introduce some troubles: Fagan, who is twice the age or more of the others, sleeps with two of the three Commitmentettes. Strong pisses everyone off with his unearned arrogance and the drummer so much that he quits. A couple of more gigs are arranged, though, and the overall momentum is upwards; Rabbitte even arranges a nice review in one of the local newspapers. Then comes the night Wilson Pickett is supposed to jam with the band after his own show. And it all falls apart, so quickly that we’re into the epilogue almost before one realizes just what’s happened. Terrifically paced ending unlike so many other films.

Which isn’t too surprising when you remember that the movie is based on a novel by Roddy Doyle, one of the top novelists of the last 25 years, and he co-wrote the script and that the director is Alan Parker (Midnight Express, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and, another personal favorite, Bugsy Malone). These guys drop you into a place you’ve never been and show you some great characters going through a true episode.

Note: Doyle wrote two more novels, The Snapper and The Van, which with The Commitments make up his Doylestown Trilogy (referring to the section of Dublin where the people live). Each of them was made into a very good movie, each very different than this one.

Definitely recommended

1937 was a difficult year in the United States (and elsewhere as the Nazis and Imperial Japanese began using the power accumulated in the first part of the decade) but offered artists a window to create works with challenging, personal visions. I hardly want to go overboard in praise for Dead End yet this film demonstrates many qualities we are hard pressed to find these days in films featuring teenagers.

For a start, director William Wyler, working with screenwriter Lillian Hellman, crafted a nearly documentary look at life in a changing Manhattan where the poor folks where really poor and the rich folks were completely divorced from that reality, uncomfortable when it came in contact with them, and as always taking whatever they want from their lessers. In one scene, to illustrate, a woman seeking a comfortable life fell in love with a poor but noble guy from the neighborhood and was even thinking she could give up her easy life for him until she saw the huge cockroaches crawling on top of the garbage bin in the hallway of his tenement building; she raced out of there fast as her legs would run down the staircase.

Humphrey Bogart, Joel McCrea, and Sylvia Sidney are the adult stars and each has a strong performance. McCrea and Bogart grew up as part of an age group in the neighborhood but while Bogart left to become a big time hood and killer, McCrea scraped through college for a useless (due to the Depression) degree in architecture–he’s the noble guy I mentioned–and Sidney, very young and beautiful, is simply trying to earn enough to keep her and her teenage brother fed and under a roof. She loves McCrea but until just before the end, he sees her as the little girl she was growing up and not the adult beauty she’s become.

The key characters in this film, though, are the teenage boys around whom most of the action revolves. In subsequent movies, most of the crew became known as the Dead End Kids, but this was the first to feature them. I’m talking about Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall, Billy Hallop (he plays Sidney’s brother), the whole gang, which sometimes was called the Bowery Boys. These kids were kids, spitting at authority because they knew there was nowhere lower to go and reform school was little different from a life where their clothes were always torn and they had nothing better to do than fight each other or the gang two blocks over.

Definitely recommended

Last Summer we saw the Al Pacino/Robin Williams version of this movie, so it was a no-brainer to watch the subtitled Norwegian original when it came across a movie channel. I thought it would be interesting to see the difference between European and American perspectives on a twisted detective flick and I was right.

Insomnia stars Stellan Skarsgaard in the role Pacino played, as the big rep city detective flown into a small Arctic community to solve a teenage girl’s murder; none of the other actors have a name in America, though they are reasonably good nonetheless. Skarsgaard, though, has appeared in a number of US films including the recent cable miniseries Helen of Troy and the cool Frankenheimer/DeNiro hit Ronin. His detective is even more out of place than the American version: called up from Oslo, he’s only come over from the Swedish police a year before after embarrassing his chief while Pacino only had to deal with the flight to Alaska from LA. No one, of course, plays tired as well as Pacino and so I’m not surprised Skarsgaard didn’t match him on that score.

Director/writer Erik Skjoldbjerg has crafted a more complex, subtle version than Christopher Nolan could squeeze through the American studio filter. I’m not quite sure why this is so, but American films always need to have circumstances and dialog more explicit than films I see made in other parts of the world and the difference shows up in this film as not wasting 10 minutes of screen time. Characters don’t need to be so decidedly good or bad, which means our detective can collaborate with the real baddie (Williams’ character in the American version) even though the novelist meets the same end.

Recommended

What a great film! So much fun and just beautiful animation. Finding Nemo is a terrific addition to the Pixar list, possibly the best since their first eight long years ago. Excellent casting of the voices, a range of different and interesting actors even in the supporting roles like Brad Garrett, Geoffrey Rush, and good old Bill Hunter Of course John Ratzenberger is in it, he’s Pixar’s so-called good luck charm. The software geeks over in Emeryville haven’t been sleeping at their workstations either, as Finding Nemo has even better rendering than Monsters Inc.. The story itself is funny, creative, touching, and works on levels for both children and adults; we saw a weekday evening screening with only other adults in the audience and everyone was having a blast.

Absolutely recommended

Just pretend the last 40 years haven’t actually passed by and you’re right in time for cool comic movie Down with Love. The script is so filled with double entendres that it couldn’t have possibly been made in 1963 as it pretends except that in those years just before the Summer of Love perhaps real conversation was filled with them. Either way, makes for a whole lot of laughs.

Investigative reporter Ewan McGregor stars as the Manhattan bachelor who every gal will sleep with and Renee Zellweger as the out of nowhere writer preaching a beyond Helen Gurley Brown philosophy of “Down With Love” so women put aside (romantic) love in favor of empowerment. Her book becomes a bestseller and ruins McGregor’s fun, pushing him to turn his celebrated journalistic skills on her. If the overnight sensation can be conned into falling in love, she’ll be discredited and he’ll have all the female fun desired.

Director Peyton Reed really does recreate the early ’60s, visually, sonically, and stylistically, going so far to have a big “Filmed in Cinemascope” credit in the opening credits. The soundtrack adds a very hip, cool element with Sinatra and bossa nova tunes plus a video featuring the two stars singing and dancing next to the end credits. The clothes, especially the women’s fashions, are just over the top, as are the set decorations (such as the amazing temporary housing Zellweger is set up in on her arrival).

David Hyde Pierce and Sarah Paulson head up a strong supporting crew as the respective best friends/co-workers; they also, of course, fall in love. Pierce plays the role Tony Randall specialized in, back in the day, while Randall has a decent cameo as the owner of the publisher where Zellweger and Paulson work. Most of the supporting roles, in fact, are filled by people we know best from TV: Jeri Ryan from Star Trek: Voyager is the most visible of McGregor’s playfriends, Jude Ciccolella (24), and Saturday Night Live supplies Rachel Dratch as Paulson’s secretary, Chris Parnell as a TV host, and Laura Kightlinger as a receptionist.

The plot swerves and twists in the last 20 minutes, ending up where you expect but after taking you for a different ride. Zellweger, in fact, has a very impressive soliloquy that threw me and the bud for a loop, to which McGregor reacts in sheer shock.

Definitely recommended

Based on a trusted friend’s recommendation, we saw The Italian Job today even though we thought the trailer showed so much plot it was spoiled. But…that’s true and still not true. I mean, the trailer shows a lot more of the plot than I think is a good idea but the acting and execution is so good that it’s worth $6.25 to see.

Mark Wahlberg is the lead in this film, though I’d have to say it’s more of an ensemble outing than a star turn. Charlize Theron, Edward Norton, Seth Green, Mos Def, and Jason Statham all have almost as big parts, it’s just that Wahlberg plays the leader of the gang is the focus of the decisions taken. As my friend who recommended this said, Charlize Theron is the most perfectly beautiful woman in the movies these days, an added bonus. Norton is of course not the most attractive male actor of his generation but even so he ought to work more closely with the makeup department when he uses facial hair; here his mustache and soul patch are just cheesy and diminish his performance which is not at all a dairy product.

Director F. Gary Gray is having a decent year; Italian Job is his second major release following Vin Diesel’s A Man Apart. He really does a nice job with the pacing here, tightening the action well but leaving room for humorous bits from Statham, Mos Def, and especially Green. Husband and wife writing team Wayne and Donna Powers took minimal help from the original 1969 version starring Michael Caine, creating memorable characters and set ups. The soundtrack has a terrific updated version of Pink Floyd’s Money, though I can’t find a listing to see who’s done the recording.

I’d compare this movie quite favorable to the two other major recent heist films, The Score, also starring Norton, and Heist. Both of those films (to be blunt) sucked, despite the superior casts, lacking a slightly important element called dramatic tension.

Recommended