A testbed for a new generation of 3D technology, U2 3D is no gimmick. One of the trailers was for the upcoming Scorsese-directed Rolling Stones concert movie and the difference was clear. Another trailer, by the way, was for a new 3D version of Jules Vernes’ classic SF novel Journey to the Center of the Earth and from the few minutes shown looks likely to be a bigger result than would be expected from yet another normal remake, even with Brendan Fraser as the star.

The 3ality technology made a qualitative difference for me, analogous to the difference between analog and HD TV. There were a few times, primarily when the overhead camera flew towards the stage over the crowd, that I was a bit overwhelmed, but in general the large,  spacious stage worked well. Their setup for this tour was a two level primary stage, mainly for The Edge’s electric piano setup at the left, with two long arms curving in towards each other 80 feet or so out from the main stage. Bono and Adam Clayton went out the arms into the heart of the audience the most but even Larry Mullen, Jr., got out their with a simple snare and cymbal kit for Sunday Bloody Sunday. The Edge, well, he’s an amazingly creative guitarist who rarely turns up in discussions of six string greats, though he ought to. I was quite amused to see him changing guitars for every song, with no repeats until at least the sixth song, and apparently believing that stomping his leg improves the output.

U2 don’t add any other musicians or backup singers, why should they when between them they create a huge walloping sound, and after 30 years have a quality relationship very few outfits can match–can you think of another band that has the exact same membership as the day their first record came out and is still producing the same high quality music?

The biggest negatives about U2 3D are that at 85 minutes the show is just not long enough–TS1 and I are big, big fans and 13 songs were about four or five too few–and there are no backstage scenes or anything but Route One performance footage. I would have liked to see a few minutes of what the band does immediately before running onto the stage.

The movie’s set list has few surprises; it was shot during the Vertigo tour (TS1 and I saw the San Jose show), in seven locations across South and Central America and Australia, though primarily in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1. Vertigo
2. Beautiful Day
3. New Year’s Day
4. Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own
5. Love and Peace or Else
6. Sunday Bloody Sunday
7. Bullet the Blue Sky
8. Miss Sarajevo
9. Pride (In the Name of Love)
10. Where the Streets Have No Name
11. One
12. The Fly
13. With or Without You

recommended

Another quality collaboration between director Steven Soderbergh and star George Clooney following the Oceans Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen flicks plus Out of Sight and the less than stellar scifi outing Solaris. This 2006 movie was a very high profile ‘quality’ production shot in black and white with archival footage providing very realistic sets into which the cast were green screened but it only got one Oscar nomination, Thomas Newman for original score. Though Newman did win, so there’s that.

The Good German is set at the time of the Potsdam Conference, between the German and Japanese surrenders at the end of WWII, where Truman, Churchill and Stalin met to divvy up the post-war map. Clooney plays Jake Geismer, a military journalist, in fractionated Berlin to cover the conference; pre-war he’d been the Berlin office head for Associated Press.

Lena Brandt, played by a very dark-haired Cate Blanchett, was Geismer’s stringer and lover in those days, despite being married. Now she lives with a real American army rat called Tully (Tobey Maguire), allowing him to pimp her out and treat her like shite in order to survive. And in a strange coincidence Tully, who nominally works in the motor pool when he isn’t profiteering in the black market, is assigned as Geismer’s driver.

Brandt’s husband Emil (Christian Oliver) supposedly dies a year or two before though other than Jake no one seems to believe it. And everybody in positions of power want to get their hands on Emil. Even his wife wants little more than to get out of Germany as long as she can get Emil to safe (i.e., American) hands as part of the trade. TPTB don’t care about her but for sure are not willing to see the husband, who was the right hand of the scientist at the heart of the Nazi rocket program, captured by another power. This puts Geismer into danger since he, of course, cannot resist trying to save the one woman he apparently ever loved.

For me Good German was Soderbergh and Clooney making another throwback flick. Where the Oceans trilogy recaptured the Rat Pack magic and formalized Clooney as the (non-singing) Sinatra of the new millenium, here they went, reasonably  successfully, for the Howard Hawks and Cary Grant mantles.

The script by Paul Attanasio, from Joseph Kanon’s novel, was also quality stuff, not surprising since Attanasio also wrote Donnie Brasco and Quiz Show and was showrunner of one of my favorite TV series, Homicide: Life on the Streets. Although the politics were surely revisionist, the plot, pacing and dialog were reminiscent of some of the best ’40s war noir efforts like The 39 Steps and Notorious.

recommended

This is a cute little movie starring Heather Graham and Tom Cavanagh as sister and brother who are also best friends and flatmates and Bridget Moynihan as the woman who turns their lives upside down. If you wonder how come you don’t remember it from being in the cineplex last year that would be because other than a few short art house showings it was essentially straight to DVD.

Sam and Gray Baldwin are very happy with their lives; Gray Matters opens with a dinner party where a couple of the other guests who don’t know them too well mistakenly get the idea their a married couple. Having recently passed 30 they decide it’s time to get out and find loves, which starts with a trip to the singles heaven that is the local (Manhattan) dog park. They see Charlie Kelsey (Moynihan) and Gray makes an excuse to introduce herself, then point out her cute brother.

The three meet up later at a Spanish place for tapas, drinks and dancing. Both Baldwins find her extremely attractive but it’s Sam who stays up all night with her. Then  turns up home that afternoon with the news that he and Charlie are getting married in Vegas Saturday and would Sis very kindly come along as maid of honor/best man.

All good time is had by all but certain events during the Friday night bachelorette party trigger the main conflict of the movie. Back home Gray is forced to confront the truth of her desires, reconcile with Sam and Charlie, and find a new path to happiness. All of which she does, with some assistance from her officemate Carrie (Molly Shannon in one of her few mature, non-annoying roles) and new bet pal Gordy (Alan Cummins, allowed for once to be himself, or at least a heterosexual version of himself).

Written and directed by Sue Kramer (her only IMDB credit, though she bears a striking resemblance to the also-lesbian Heather Matarazzo), Gray Matters is a sweet post-modern coming of age story that is smart and believable, wastes little time on poorly though out ‘character development’ and (sadly, because Graham is hot) avoids the easy allure of cheap lesbian sex scenes.

recommended

A family movie trying to cross the appeal of Harry Potter and ET and succeeding somewhat, judging by the writing and directing credits this 2007 movie was the pet project of some Hollywood studio execs who decided the time was right for them to get creative.

In the The Last Mimzy young brother and sister Noah (Chris O’Neill) and Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) Wilder uncover a trove of toy treasures at their vacation home on the beach of one of the many small islands off the Seattle coast. Right away, though, we see that despite appearances these treasures are far more than toys; instead they’re tools sent back from future humans desperate to save themselves from a pollution-caused extinction.

Jo (Joely Richardson) and David (Timothy Hutton) Wilder get concerned over the changes the toys cause in their kids and have some high-end diagnostic testing done, which produce nothing conclusive. Noah’s teacher (Rainn Wilson) and his fiance, both knowledgeable in Eastern religions, get involved when the boy starts drawing amazingly obscure, complex and accurate mandalas.

The real action starts when one of the devices draws enough power from the electricity grid to knock most of Seattle into darkness. Post-9/11, that draws the notice of the regional Homeland Security crew, lead by Nathaniel Broadman (an appropriate name for the large and determined Michael Duncan Clarke). Even though the offending device was never plugged in or otherwise directly connected, Broadman traces the cause to the Wilders’ home and comes calling. Hard, with geared and gunned up troops since, of course, they were expecting terrorists and not a mild mannered family of four.

Time is running out for the future and Broadman refuses to understand the situation. Fortunately those toys have a few tricks up their sleeves…

Based on a classic science fiction story Lewis Padgett (a nom de plume of husband/wife team CL Moore and Henry Kuttner), the script was done by Bruce Joel Rubin, who wrote a number of human side of sci-fi movies like Deep Impact, Jacob’s Ladder and Ghost, and Toby Emmerich, an executive with New Line Cinema whose only previous writing credit was the 2000 oddity Frequency. Robert Shaye, Emmerich’s boss at the studio, directed Last Mimzy, the first time he’s sat in that chair since 1990 romantic fantasy Book of Love which, coincidentally, was written by William Kotzwinkle, who wrote the novel for ET many years ago.

Despite being on the business side of things for so many years, I think Shaye, Rubin and Emmerich did a good job with this film. The plot didn’t strain credulity or come across as dumbed down for eight year olds, the soft and colorful visual provided a warm level of comfort to counterbalance the dramatic tension and Shaye got quality performances from the two young leads.

recommended

Hollywood used to turn out political potboilers on a regular basis but after Watergate and All the President’s Men the studios got all serious. Movies like The Insider and Syriana play it on the straight and serious and films like City Hall (1996) are rare throwbacks, dramas that run on melodrama and depend on ripping the innocence away from a key character who should already know better.

In this movie that character is New York City Deputy Mayor Kevin Calhoun (John Cusack), a good old Louisiana boy who moved from Washington to work for Mayor John Pappas (Al Pacino) after an inspirational day of testimony on the Hill. Back home in Faraday, he explains at one point to lawyer Marybeth Cogan (Bridget Fonda), politics was a disease every boy caught and Calhoun had a particularly bad case. Bad enough to believe that he could take Pappas to the White House in short order.

The reality the gets in the way is a Homicide detective off the radar taking a meeting with a small time hood–whose uncle is very much the mafia capo–and rather than talk the two trade bullets on a busy Brooklyn street corner. That wouldn’t be so bad, even though both men ended up dead, except that a six year old boy, being walked to school by his blue collar, black father, takes a stray round and also dies.

In the firestorm it turns out that the hood should have been upstate in prison except the mayor’s old law partner (Martin Landau) inexplicably signed off on a probation deal. Calhoun and Corgan, representing the deceased detective’s widow, dig deep and track the corruption through Brooklyn councilman/party boss Frank Anselmo (Danny Aiello).

More people die, though not anyone we really care about. The romantic tension between Cusack and Fonda though obvious never gets any energy. Pacino is terrific at playing characters like Pappas, serene on the surface but letting us know with a metaphorical wink darkness lurks nearby. Aiello is smooth to the end but seemed more excited during the scenes he got to sing snatches of show tunes with an old waiter than where he had to be the greasy pol.

The script originated with with Ken Lipper, a Wall Street exec who spent a few years as a New York Deputy Mayor (and in 2002 had his own financial scandal), and longtime journalist Nicholas Pileggi (who’d previously written the books that Goodfellas and Casino were based on) and then was worked over by Hollywood vets Bo Goldman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Flamingo Kid, Scent of a Woman) and Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Mosquito Coast). With all that greatness and experience, well, I expected more and frankly I don’t blame the cast except Aiello and he has a relatively small part.

A possible clue is that City Hall was directed by Harold Becker, whose career rarely rose above the above average: Paul Newman in Malice, Pacino and Ellen Barkin in Sea of Love, and the then very young Tim Hutton, Sean Penn and Tom Cruise in Taps. IMDB says this has a run time of 111 minutes but 50 years ago the studio would have cut at least 15 minutes of flab.

recommended

A surprisingly positive, funny movie that’s enjoyed great critical success including Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Jason Reitman for directing, Diablo Cody for the script and Ellen Page for Best Actress. This is only Reitman’s second feature, Cody’s first and Page’s first leading role, which make all the nominations quite surprising as well.

Juno is an offbeat 16 year old high school junior living in suburban Minnesota who decides one fall day she’s ready to find out what sex is really like and so climbs atop meek boyfriend Paulie Bleeker. Two months and three home pregnancy tests later Juno cannot deny her experiment worked all too well. She tries to get an abortion but can’t go through with it.

Dad (J.K. Simmons) and stepmom Bren (Allison Janney) are unhappy at the news but supportive as soon as they hear she intends to give the baby up for adoption. Juno may be offbeat but she is smart enough for a 16 year old. Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) and Mark (Jason Bateman) are pretty good as the yuppy couple she decides should have her offspring despite some struggles of their own. Michael Cera, Bateman’s son on the late lamented series Arrested Development, puts in another good performance as Paulie and Olivia Thirlby is Leah, a goofy cheerleader who’s Juno’s best pal.

Diablo Cody is famous for working as stripper to support herself before making a living writing and she gives the characters very realistic attitudes and words. Reitman, who learned at the foot of his father, the great comic director Ivan Reitman, and Reitman pals like Bill Murray, does better here than in his previous film, Thank You For Smoking, helped by the not nearly as dark nature of Juno. He adopts a nice visual language using camera angles and more sunlight than expected for a Minnesota winter.

recommended

This was a highly regarded movie that I should have been eager to see once it hit cable but due to the subject matter, the brutally insane Ethiopian dictator Idi Amin, I was reluctant. Despite giving The Last King of Scotland a 4, which is pretty rare for me, my misgivings were correct.

The film filters our view of Amin through a young Scottish doctor (played by the terrific James MacAvoy) who sees a few years working at a clinic in the boonies of Ethiopia as a lark and an escape from his dour, domineering physician father. Unfortunately for him he meets up with Amin (Forrest Whittaker, who won last year’s Best Actor Oscar) in the days after the 1970 coup that bought him to power and Amin, who was after all literally insane, saw something he liked. Not knowing any better Garrigan reluctantly accepts an offer to be the President’s personal physician.

Up close he learns the truth, never more clearly than the time he gets back to his apartment to find it tossed over and his UK passport gone, replaced with a Ugandan one. Amin never asks permission for anything and always assumes everyone wants whatever he wishes to give them; his reign was brief–though not brief enough for the more than 300,000 countrymen killed in those nine years–as even the strongest supporters were unable to stomach the man’s increasingly horrific behavior.

Kerry Washington (Ray), David Oyewolo (who was also excellent in HBO’s 5 Days and BBC import series MI-5) and Simon McBurney (Golden Compass) have key supporting roles while Gillian Anderson, demonstrating the freedom starring in a TV series for 10 year can give an actor, has a nice cameo as the frustrated, sexy wife of Garrigan’s clinic superior.

I think part of my attitude has to do with the way director Kevin Macdonald and writers Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock slowly remove the veil from Garrigan’s eyes. At first (like many others) he thinks Amin is a strong man of the people who can root out the corruption of the previous regime, which is why the doctor decides to take the job offer, and LKoS has may laugh-provoking scenes. Even after many others have come to see the truth he still doesn’t. Finally the truth slaps him in the face, at which point he barely escapes with his life and even that costs a friend his life.

recommended

Pre-Friday Night Lights, pre-We Are Marshall, pre-Glory Road, Varsity Blues (1999) is nonetheless a step in their direction with its depiction of a snarky, proto-intellectual backup QB (James Van Der Beek) who dethrones a throwback, Neanderthalish career high school football coach after the starter goes down with a nasty broken leg.

In Texas, as in many parts of the American Midwest and South, high school football is just about a second religion and one which gets much more attention than their first. Players are given passes on every transgression and West Canaan even built a statue of Coach Bud Kilmer (Jon Voight) out front of the ball field. Jon Moxon (Van Der Beek), despite signing up to be the second string quarterback, mocks the adulation and yearns to escape to the Ivy League.

In this season the Coyotes are closing in on a 23rd division title in Kilmer’s 25th year in charge when Lance Harbor (Paul Walker) gets creamed after Billy Bob (Ron Lester), an effective yet massively overweight lineman, has a near heart attack as the ball’s snapped. Harbor’s done and Moxon must come on to finish the game and season. He can’t stomach the masochistic, racist Kilmer and his success gives him the leverage to ignore him. Also, there’s a hot scene where the boys spend the night before the Big Game at a strip bar where one of their younger, hotter teachers picks up some extra cash.

mildly recommended

Chris Cooper and Ryan Phillipe face off as a young FBI investigator, not even yet a full Special Agent, and a 25 year veteran of the Bureau in a very dramatic retelling of the takedown of the worst betrayal by an American spy ever, Robert Hanssen. Sadly, as with so many fact-based films, this 2007 release isn’t quite able to deliver the suspense and dramatic tension of most made up stories.

Breach is intriguing but lacks the kind of heartpounding I generally want to get from thrillers. Throw in a difficult to accept subplot, pressure from Phillipe’s character’s wife about his assignment, and I think this movie just squeaks over the line to…

recommended