Movie Nation

Deadline describes the indie film that Dustin Hoffman’s son Jake will direct as a dramedy about the consequences of the live-fast/burn out young indie rock scene of New York.

“Asthma” will star the beautiful and quirky Kristen Ritter, among others.

Pretty funny Indiewire hysteria over A) fussy old Rex Reed bothering to review the omnibus horror picture “V/H/S 2”, B) walking out after 20 minutes of this spotty, segmented collection (better at the end) and C) daring to admit it.

Not sure why he bothered. I had to go to some trouble to get to see it. Maybe the distributor begged him.

He begins like this, pitching it as an “indescribably gory, violent, plotless and deranged purloin of every horror movie ever made by amateurs with a wobbly, nauseating handheld camera, seven unknown directors hell-bent on remaining that way.”

He missed, as I said, the better stuff. But after 20, even 30 minutes, the review’s not wholly inaccurate. And it’s funny. To some.

He missed the good stuff, the shorts that could easily turn into features. And there’s the crime. You’re allowed to dismiss a movie you don’t like and hate, even in concept. But to know what you’re talking about, to be allowed to dismiss it, you have to WATCH the whole movie.  Even if it never gets better.  Which, as I said in my review, this one does.

The democratization of movie making means not just that more filmmakers are able to shoot and edit their pictures thanks to cheaper, off-the-shelf tech. It’s lowered the cost for genre pictures bond the bargain basement horror and mumblecore talking heads movies that were all many of them could see themselves making on limited budgets.

Filmmakers are taking more chances with the priciest genre of all – sci-fi.

Magnet Releasing picked up “Last Days on Mars,” a sci-fi thriller set on a seemingly doomed trip to the red planet led by Liev Schreiber, with Elias Koteas and others in a crew menaced by the life that they find there. Like “Moon” and “Europa Report,” this was a film that could be financed, cast, shot and cut without a major studio backing it, without that all-important distribution deal in place.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, with some blasts of profanity.
Cast: Jeff Garlin, Nia Vardalos, Gina Gershon, JB Smoove, Fred Willard, Richard Kind
Credits: Directed by Jeff Garlin,written by  Jeff Garlin and Peter Murrieta. An IFC release
Running time: 1:23

Sheer madness. That’s what this is, this movie that Guillermo del Toro just HAD to make, and thus abandoned “The Hobbit.”
Dude wanted to make a “Godzilla” movie. Married to a “Tranformers” picture. With a little “Starship Troopers” and “Independence Day” and “Hellboy” mixed in.
It’s the future of cinema — or the present — a movie cunningly calculated to lure Hollywood’s biggest growth market with just its title — “Pacific Rim.” That’s where this sci-fi war is fought and that’s where the audience lies — American fanboys and Asian and Australian ones too.
In the very near future, enormous alien beasts are sneaking into the ocean through a dimensional crack in the ocean floor along the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire.” The Japanese named them “kaiju,” because Godzilla was taken. And after realizing battling these monsters is a toxic disaster, the world’s governments teamed up to build gigantic, human-controlled robots called Jaegers, after the German word for “hunter.” The pairs of rangers who drive them wear armor that lets them manoeuvre them – one ranger controls the left side and left brain, the other the right side — through a neural mind-meld process called “drifting.”
In a prologue, we meet a pair of mind-melded brothers (Charlie Hunnam, Diego Klattenhoff) who drive the jaeger Gypsy Danger into harm’s way. But things go wrong and one sibling is killed. That heralds the end of this jaeger program. The world will wall off the coast along the Pacific Rim, with the rich and powerful getting the primo interior real estate and the rest of the populace stuck building the walls and living on the coasts.
Cut to years later and the jaeger program is winding down, the wall is being completed but “our best scientists” (shrieking Charlie Day of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, daft-Brit Burn Gorman of “Game of Thrones”) don’t think the wall will work. The monsters keep coming.
Returning ranger, the rebellious Raleigh (Hunnam of “Sons of Anarchy) angles to get martial arts mama Mako (Rinko Kikuchi of “Babel”) as his partner. And program director Stacker Pentecost (Elba) says “That’s not going to happen.”
Any movie that recycles the line “Don’t get cocky, kid,” for starters and progresses to “Fortune favors the brave, dude” isn’t meant to be taken seriously. The leads are bland, and the cast doesn’t so much perform as show up and give us tastes of patented shtick that we expect — Elba has his “Henry V” speech, the Bobcat-voiced Day kvetches, the grumpy Ron “Hellboy” Perlman (as an underworld purveyor of kaiju body parts) growls.
Dumb movies like this don’t invite much analysis. What’s the point of the “mind melding” if the teams are still yelling commands and punching buttons as they fight? Mind-melding should mean they think and act on reflex, turning on the robot’s “elbow rockets” to give power to the punches in an instant.
None of which subtracts anything from the stupid, over-the-top popcorn picture fun of it all.
Del Toro’s robots have weight and mass, and their epic, Hong Kong-smashing fights with the four and six-legged, clawed and horned monsters are visually coherent, unlike the messy blur of the “Transformers” movies. There’s a light, humorous feel to “Pacific Rim” because the science is silly and logic takes a flying leap.
In a cinema season where the laws of physics take a vacation (“Fast & Furious 6”), where everyone’s mad for the apocalypse — from the Biblical to the zombie-induced — “Pacific Rim” must be the maddest of all.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence throughout, and brief language  .
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Ron Perlman, Charlie Day
Credits: Directed by Guillermo del Toro. A Warner Brothers release
Running time: 2:10

Just a little holiday, a traipse through the Yorkshire countryside stopping at caverns, ruins and the odd museum — the odder the better.
Feel free to pop in on Tina (Alice Lowe) and Chris (Steve Oram). But “If the caravan’s rocking, don’t come a knocking.” After all, nothing stirs up an “erotic odyssey” like a trek through the woods, a visit to a souvenir shop — and the occasional homicide.
“Sightseers” is a darker-than-dark British comedy about a killing spree. Two annoying, impulsive and judgmental thirtysomethings set off for a week’s trip where Tina can escape her elderly mum (Eileen Davies) who has never forgiven her for the death of their Jack Russell terrier.
“It was an accident, Mum.”
“So were you.”
Chris is the first man in a while to take an interest in Tina, and she’s willing to overlook his temper, his insistence on “schedule” and everything she doesn’t know about him. A little blood on his hands, a confrontation over cleaning up after your dog that ends violently?
“You can’t do things like that. You’re going to ruin the holiday!”
Lowe and Oram have a gift for deadpan — especially in scenes after somebody dies.
“He’s not a person. He’s a Daily Mail reader.”
Tina is maddening to be around, repeating names/words over and over again to get someone’s attention, mother, lover or dog. “Mum, mum, mum, mum…” The world is used to ignoring her and she’s used to being ignored.
And Oram nicely packages resentment, hidden rage and offhanded cunning into one brutally unlikable bloke. You never know what’s going to set the would-be writer Chris off — littering, an insult, simply coveting something somebody else has like a career or a camera.
It’s more disquieting than funny and the filmmakers’ (Lowe co-wrote it) insistence on neither judging this couple nor making the victims “deserving” in the traditional dark comedy sense gives “Sightseers” — lovely scenery, by the way — a sour aftertaste, even if you’ve laughed at the lines and the daft, unfeeling cretins who’ve delivered them.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with graphic violence, sex, profanity, marijuana use.
Cast: Alice Lowe, Steve Oram, Eileen Davies
Credits: Directed by Ben Wheatley, written by Alice Lowe, Steve Oram and Amy Jump. An IFC release. Running time: 1:28

Susan “Desperately Seeking Susan” Seidelman has spent her AARP-eligible years making movies for that oft-ignored corner of the filmgoing public — her AARP-eligible peers. She tries her best to give a little R-rated edge to an audience that is too often served warmed over mush.
So “Boynton Beach Club” was a retirement community romantic comedy that was as frank about  sex as any movie Dyan Cannon made in the ’70s. And Seidelman’s latest, “The Hot Flashes,” squeezes in a sex scene and plenty of ribald remarks in between heaping helpings of formulaic sports comedy cheese.
It’s a “Best of Times” about menopausal ex-high school basketball players who take on the current crop of state champ teens in their small Texas town, all in the name of saving the local mammogram-mobile. “Flashes” is a golden opportunity for actresses who have hit Hollywood’s “hard-to-employ” age to try their hands at southern fried wisecracks.
The well-preserved Brooke Shields plays Beth, the Burning Bush, Texas housewife who ignores her hot flashes and midlife sweats when she hears that their breast cancer screening program has been defunded. Maybe she can raise the money to save it by “getting the team back together.”
Not that she was ever on this particular team. She married (Eric Roberts is her postman husband) into Burning Bush, but she played  some ball in her day. She goes through his yearbook and is rejected by one ex-baller after another. There’s Roxie (Camryn Mannheim), whose decades of “Mary Jane Mudcakes” (pot-packed pastries) have given her hips that are a lane violation all by themselves. Cowgirl Ginger (Daryl Hannah) runs a car dealership and lives with a woman, “just a roommate, you know, to share expenses” and has shared those expenses with her for sixteen years.
Florine (Wanda Sykes) is the acting mayor and isn’t anxious to remind the overwhelmingly white electorate that she’s black. Which basketball is sure to do.
Virginia Madsen is Clementine, the trashy supermarket cashier divorced from the state champ girls’ team’s coach (Carl Palmer).
Sure, all the women change their minds and suit up. And sure, Clementine’s ex will let his team play these women, so long as his ex is a starter.
“That lazy tramp smokes a pack a day!”
Brad Hennig’s script is a collection of Southernisms papering over a threadbare plot and cliched characters.
“When she hears the word ‘hoe down,’ she hits the floor.”
“She’s like a gopher in soft dirt.”
Beth has friction with her husband and with her star player daughter, an under-developed plot thread. There’s a mean girl teen player who takes after her mean fundamentalist mom. And there are games, which holding to stereotypes, reveal that Wanda Sykes is the only true baller in the bunch.
The ladies joke about Ginger being in the closet (“Burning Bush isn’t exactly Brokeback Mountain.”) and listen to inspirational wisecracks from their diminutive coach (Mark Povonelli), who isn’t shy about referencing “Hoosiers.”
“What are we waitin’ for, Gene Hackman to show up?” He never does.
“The Hot Flashes” — yeah, that’s the team’s name — plays like a Tyler Perry movie with a mostly white cast. It’s broad and low, fitfully funny with more female-friendly messages and sermonettes than big laughs.
No, these ladies don’t work enough and yes, that’s a crime. But R-rated or not, these “Hot Flashes” don’t generate much heat — comical or otherwise. A pity, since that rare menopause comedy is a terrible thing to waste.

MPAA Rating: R for some sexual content and drug use
Cast: Brooke Shields, Virginia Madsen, Wanda Sykes, Eric Roberts, Daryl Hannah, Camryn Manheim
Credits: Directed by Susan Seidelman, written by Brad Hennig. A Vertical Entertainment release
Running time: 1:39

At courthouses in some of the most infamous child abuse cases of recent history, there’s always a crowd out front, always someone with a poster that says “I Believe the Children.”
As if children don’t lie. As if adults don’t project their worst nightmares onto whatever accusations a child might naively make and wish he or she hadn’t.
And those who are falsely accused pass through a living nightmare of shame, ostracization, social, personal and financial ruin.
“The Hunt” is a Danish film about a pre-school teacher, falsely accused. The adoring daughter of his best friend gets mad when he refuses her inappropriate kisses. A word from her to the credulous head mistress at the school, and Lucas is through the looking glass of the small Danish town he calls home.
Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) is divorced with a teen son who would rather live with him than mom. Lucas and his mates are a rowdy crowd — hard-drinking, loud-singing hunters.
Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen) is his best friend, half of a less-than-deal marriage. Her parents’ quarrelling makes kindergarten-age Klara (Annika Wedderkopp, a wonder) use Lucas as an oasis. He walks her to school, teaches her with the same firm, compassionate hand he does the others. But she’s got a teen brother exposing her to sex talk at an age she doesn’t understand. And she’s prone to smooching on teacher.
“A kiss on the lips is only for Mom and Dad,” Lucas gently corrects (in Danish, with English subtitles).
“I hate Lucas,” Klara resolves, saying that in front of the cautious principal Grethe (Susse Wold). Grethe questions Klara, leadingly. Next thing Lucas knows, he’s being tried by an estrogen inquisition — accused, relieved of duties, as good as convicted by his female peers. And there are no secrets in small towns. His life unravels. He is threatened, assaulted, shunned by one and all. His son (Lasse Fogelstrom) is confused. His girlfriend (Alexandra Rapaport) wonders who she’s gotten involved with.
It’s a pretty conventional “Lifetime Original Movie” sort of story. But co-writer/director Thomas Vinterberg (“Dear Wendy”) makes it work by building a sense of frustrating unease into it all. The cause and effect is reasonably clear to us, but not to anyone involved in this story. No one person can speak up and say, “Wait, she said this because of that and that, and it’s all just a colossal misunderstanding.” Life is like that, muddying up clarity, denying closure.
The mere accusation is enough, and Lucas rarely gets his say or even a chance to fend off the whispers and physical attacks that come with this stigma.
Mikkelsen, a weak Bond villain in “Casino Royale,” but mesmerizing in everything else (he is TV’s “Hannibal”) suffers stoically and wears his confusion on his sleeve. He keeps his fury hidden. You wonder, from start to end, if he will survive this, if the truth will ever come out, if he will ever fit in there again.
And a cryptic ending keeps you wondering long after “The Hunt” ends.

MPAA Rating: R for sexual content including a graphic image, violence and language
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Annika Wedderkopp, Susse Wold
Credits: Directed by Thomas Vinterberg, written by Tobias Lindholm and Thomas Vinterberg. A Magnolia release.
Running time: 1:55

A “redneck ‘Pulp Fiction'” is such a natural idea for a grindhouse movie that it’s shocking that it took almost twenty years for somebody to come up with “Pawn Shop Chronicles.”
It’s got pick-em-up trucks and huntin’ bows, meth-heads and an Elvis impersonator. Matt Dillon goes nuts hunting whoever kidnapped his wife years before, Paul Walker attempts a Lynyrd Skynyrd Southern drawl and Brendan Fraser puts on the Elvis suit and tries to get a haircut fit for The King.
But stringing all that together is easier said than done. And for sheer ugliness, you’d be hard pressed to top the torture porn sequence that actor-turned-writer Adam Minarovich and once-promising director Wayne “The Cooler” Kramer shove in, stopping their violent yahoo comedy dead in its tracks.
Vincent D’Onofrio and Chi McBride are resident sages in the General Lee Pawn Shop, bickering over the accuracy of an African-American Santa Claus statue and the like.
Vernon (Lukas Haas) shows up to pawn his shotgun, and a comic book page illustrates “The Shotgun: The Road to White Gold” story. Turns out Vernon and his highly-strung/strung-out pals (Paul Walker  is one) need that gun to rob their favorite methamphetamine cook. There’s a lot of screeching about who they’re prejudiced against, and there’s blood — “This gurglin’. H’it ain’t normal” — on their way to carry out this ill-conceived heist.
“The Ring” kicks off when newlywed Matt Dillon sees his late wife’s custom-made ring in the pawn shop. He ditches his new bride and tears through this village of Greater Irwin to find out who had it and what happened to her. DJ Qualls and Elijah Wood figure in this episode of escalating and off-putting violence.
And then the down-on-his-luck Elvis impersonator (Fraser) tumbles into the town’s blood feud over barbershops. You are where you get your hair cut. Ashlee Simpson turns up in this one. And maybe the Devil.
Kramer uses whip-pans to comically stage pawn shop haggles over price and fixates on dilating pupils and images reflected in eyeballs as stylistic flourishes.
But as apt as the pawn shop is as a jumping off point, as much fun as the opening meth-mess is, it’s hard to hide the ugly once Dillon completes his long and tortuous quest. And the Fraser episode is one long missed opportunity, a joke that blows the punchline.
“Pawn Shop Chronicles” has plenty of random riffs and cameos (Thomas Jane shows up as “The Man”). It’s coherent enough, but entirely too long and unpleasant when it could have been one brutishly edgy hoot after another. Somebody should attempt a smarter take on this idea, because this version isn’t worth getting out of hock.

MPAA Rating: R for violence, sexual material, graphic nudity, pervasive language and some drug use
Cast: Paul Walker, Matt Dillon, Brendan Fraser, Elijah Wood, Rachelle Lefevre, Chi McBride, Vincent D’Onofrio, Ashlee Simpson
Credits: Directed by Wayne Kramer, written by Adam Minarovich. An Anchor Bay release
Running time: 1:52

The look to this Joon ho Bong film is what’s arresting. The tone of the trailer suggests “Runaway Train” meets “Brazil,” with have-nots confined to the back of the speeding train and the haves — and their security forces — all the way in the front. A little “Elysium” too, no? Chris Evans, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Alison Pill, Octavia Spencer, Kang-ho Song all star in this one.
No firm “summer 2013” release date for this one (this is the international trailer) but it looks promising.