The Ace Black Blog

Movie Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

2012-01-26T22:51:00.000-08:00

The latest adaptation of John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an immersive film: rather than just recounting a spy story, it creates a spy experience, the tale of George Smiley's pursuit of traitors unfolding through a thick and entrancing fog of war.

It's 1973, and Control (John Hurt), the head of Britain's secret intelligence services, suspects that the Russians have planted a mole near the top of England's spy hierarchy. He sends agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) to Budapest to try and uncover information that would reveal the identity of the traitor. The mission ends disastrously with Prideaux shot and captured by the Russians; Control is forced to resign and dies soon afterwards. Percy Alleline takes over as Control, surrounded by the ambitious trio of Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds) and Toby Esterhase (David Dencik). One of these four is the mole.

The Civil Service calls in retired veteran spy George Smiley (Gary Oldman) to delve into the shroud of secrecy and try to unmask the double agent. He becomes aware of a Russian spy codenamed Witchcraft, cultivated by Alleline and his friends to impress the Americans. Except that instead of feeding Witchcraft intelligence scrubbed of value, one of the British agents is happily selling top secrets. Smiley has to lay a careful trap to catch the traitor in the act.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is constructed like a thousand piece puzzle, with only a few pieces visible at any one time, and the relationships between the revealed fragments always a mystery to be understood several scenes later. Director Tomas Alfredson demands patience, concentration and trust: although at times the plot is dangerously close to incoherent, Alfredson almost always manages to pull together a more understandable picture and uncover convoluted links when needed. But he does so only at the measured pace that real-world spies have to negotiate, rather than the artificially compressed time most movies default to.

Stylistically, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is all grim greys, dark browns, reflected light, and depressing interiors. Spies are uneasy under the bright lights, and Dutch cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema allows his cameras to delve into the heaviness of deadly uncertainty that exists in the corners of the intelligence world. There is nothing in the film's visual style that can be misconstrued as cheerful.

The performances are uniformly perfect, avoiding the flashiness that would stand out like a death wish in the spy world, and focusing instead on the "suspect everyone" ethic required for survival. The British agents need to guard against each other more than they need to worry about foreign threats, in a case of the unknown unknowns being far more dangerous than the known unknowns. Gary Oldman shines as the understated master spy George Smiley, navigating the maze of internal intrigue with the smoothness of a man who helped to build the maze. Oldman's screen presence finally grows up in this role, letting go the final vestiges of his odd young man persona and fully embodying a wily veteran who has seen too much of the ugly side of silent wars.

John Hurt portrays Control as a deeply weathered man resigned to falling victim to the multitude of knives about to be plunged into his back courtesy of his own team, his only regret not uncovering one final traitor before the end of his career. Colin Firth makes an interesting choice to slip into a supportive role following The King's Speech. Along with Ciaran Hinds, David Dencik and Toby Jones, they embody all that is dangerous about ambition in the spy game: too confident in their own career ladder climbing abilities to compensate for potentially fatal blindspots.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is intellectually challenging and visually engrossing: grown men playing deadly games in the shadows of war, clamouring after personal glory under the pretext of serving the best interests of their country.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: I Am Number Four (2011)

2012-01-23T20:54:00.000-08:00

A lightweight action movie, I Am Number Four has only the most rudimentary plot elements and satisfies itself with a succession of chaotic fight scenes as a few aliens wage noisy battles in suburbia.

Taking refuge on Earth, John Smith (Alex Pettyfer) is Number Four, one of nine teens with special combat powers rescued from planet Lorien when it was sacked by the invading evil Mogadorians. Smith is protected by his guardian and mentor Henri (Timothy Oliphant), who keeps the two of them on the move to avoid the Mogadorian death squads that have already disposed of Numbers One, Two, and Three.

John and Henri arrive in the town of Paradise, Ohio, where John tries to blend in at the local high school. He befriends the local nerd Sam (Callan McAuliffe), and is immediately attracted to Sarah (Dianna Agron), an amateur photographer. John also has the usual unpleasant encounters with Sarah's former boyfriend Mark (Jake Abel) and his jock friends. It isn't long before the Mogadorians track down John and Henri, resulting in a fight to the death in which some unexpected allies, including Number Six (Teresa Palmer), join forces with John.

Based on the teen-oriented novel of the same name, I Am Number Four tries to reach for a broader audience, but the source material is severely limited. Director D. J. Caruso (Eagle Eye) can do little with humourless characters and a backstory sketched with the thickest of markers. The Mogadorians are pure comic-book level evil designed to intimidate the easily impressed, and the actors all appear out of their depth on the big screen.

The action scenes are a jumble of light, whirling bodies, glowing ancient knives and massive guns that achieve disproportionately minimal damage. The outcome of I Am Number Four is never in doubt, and the only question is how much of Paradise will be lost to wanton destruction before the credits roll.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

All Nevermore CD Reviews

2012-01-22T17:59:00.000-08:00

All Ace Black Blog Reviews of Nevermore CDs are linked below:

The Politics Of Ecstasy (1996): 7.89
Dreaming Neon Black (1999): 7.00
Dead Heart In A Dead World (2000): 7.91
This Godless Endeavor (2005): 7.80
The Obsidian Conspiracy (2010): 7.36

Average (all reviewed Nevermore CDs): 7.59

All Ace Black Blog Heavy Metal CD Reviews are here.

CD Review: Dreaming Neon Black, by Nevermore (1999)

2012-01-22T16:35:00.000-08:00

Nevermore's third album is pessimistic, drawn-out and downbeat. Dreaming Neon Black is something of a concept album inspired by vocalist Warrel Dane losing his girlfriend under difficult circumstances. He drags the band and the music through a melancholy emotional journey that bogs down in the sands of sorrow.

Only a couple of the selections deserve a mention. Beyond Within at least flexes some muscles with a heavyweight intro riff that lifts the spirits before the rest of tracks settles for undelivered promise. Title track Dreaming Neon Black is by far the best thing on the CD, exquisitely alternating soft and sad acoustic ballad elements with trudging, massive metal machinery.

The rest of the album desperately seeks inspiration but draws short, Nevermore frantically reassembling all their familiar notes into darker and gloomier structures to no avail. Tracks like The Death Of Passion, Poison Godmachine and All Play Dead shuffle ahead half-heartedly in a dreary monotone that stuffs any positive energy into a black box of despair.

In reaffirming the concept of misery loving company, Dreaming Neon Black may resonate immediately after an agonizing relationship breakup, but otherwise, it's just depressingly devoid of spirit.

Band:

Warrel Dane - Vocals
Jim Sheppard - Bass
Jeff Loomis - Guitars
Tim Calvert - Guitars
Van Williams - Drums

Songlist (ratings out of 10):

1. Ophidian - n/a (short instrumental)
2. Beyond Within - 8
3. The Death Of Passion - 6
4. I Am The Dog - 7
5. Dreaming Neon Black - 9
6. Deconstruction - 7
7. The Fault Of The Flesh - 7
8. The Lotus Eaters - 7
9. Poison Godmachine - 6
10. All Play Dead - 6
11. Cenotaph - 7
12. No More Will - 7
13. Forever - 7

Average: 7.00

Produced, Recorded and Mixed by Neil Kernon.
Mastered by Raymon Breton and Neil Kernon.

All Ace Black Blog Heavy Metal CD Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Godfather Part III (1990)

2012-01-21T12:34:00.000-08:00

Michael Corleone's journey reaches its conclusion as he strikes a deal with the Vatican and finds out that grappling with the ruthless forces behind the power of the church is not much different than sleeping with the devil. The Godfather Part III may lack the mysticism of the first two chapters, but it still delivers compelling human drama punctuated by episodes of extreme violence.

It's 1979, and Michael (Al Pacino) has worked hard to legitimize the family's business. Through charitable foundations run by his daughter Mary (Sofia Coppola), Michael doles out money in high circles to gain ever more power and influence. His sister Connie (Talia Shire) remains loyally by his side, and Michael even tries to create a civilized relationship with his ex-wife Kay (Diane Keaton). Michael is disappointed when his son Anthony (Franc D'Ambrosio) chooses life as an opera singer instead of pursuing law school, but in a sign of the evolving times, Michael does not stand in Anthony's way.

Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia) is the bastard son of Michael's deceased brother Sonny, and with Anthony not interested in the family business, Michael gives Vincent a chance to rejoin the family and prove his abilities. Despite being cousins, Vincent and Mary begin a relationship as Vincent starts to gain influence. Meanwhile, Michael designs a high-stakes deal with the Vatican: in return for saving the bankrupt papal bank, Michael will be given control of the church's mammoth real estate company, effectively making him the world's most powerful landlord.

Michael's growing legitimate wealth and influence breed resentment among his old allies in the Mafia world, but more sinister are the mysteriously powerful forces that suddenly begin to target the Corleones. With Michael's dream of global legitimacy almost within his grasp, he and Vincent must sort out friend from foe and protect the family from new and brutal enemies.

It is easy to imagine that The Godfather Part III would have been much better with Robert Duvall and Winona Ryder. Duvall refused to reprise the role of Tom Hagen, claiming that he was offered too little money. Instead, George Hamilton does a pale imitation of the new Corleone family lawyer, and the film loses one its centres of gravity.

Worse still is the loss of Ryder, who dropped out of the role of Mary just prior to the start of filming. Sofia Coppola creates a black hole every time she opens her mouth, a performance that is wooden in the worst deer-in-the-headlights kind of way. She reads her lines with the monotonous conviction usually reserved for grade school plays, and in their shared scenes, the likes of Pacino and Garcia are almost visibly aghast by her obvious lack of talent.

Other than Garcia, who lives up to the burden and legacy, The Godfather Part III is left with a noticeably weak supporting cast to surround Pacino. Diane Keaton and Talia Shire return but they contribute little weight. Eli Wallach, Joe Mantegna, Bridget Fonda, Raf Vallone and John Savage populate the middle to low reaches of the cast list in generally nondescript roles, and the absence of the likes of Brando, De Niro, Caan, and Cazale is pronounced and painful.

Despite the thin layer of available on-screen talent, Francis Ford Coppola still manages to construct a fairly engrossing conclusion to the bloody saga of the Corleone family. The forces lined up against Michael are more powerful and determined than any previously encountered by the family, Michael learning that in legitimate circles, the same ruthless laws of the jungle apply, except they are hidden behind a dangerous veneer of institutional legitimacy. By weaving the real-world death of Pope John Paul I and the events of the Banco Ambosiano scandal into the Corleone story, Coppola draws the labyrinthian lines that connect yesterday's criminals to today's centres of financial power, and infuses The Godfather Part III with additional relevance.

The focus on the next generation also refreshes the premise. Although Michael's story finds its denouement in The Godfather Part III, Coppola oversees the handing over of at least some of the reins to the likes of Vincent, who doubtless will one day make his own dark offers.

The Gordon Willis cinematography is artistic without being showy, and the famous Nino Rota theme music is used sparingly to maximize its impact.

The Godfather Part III oozes enough grandeur to overcome its faults, and is a worthy third and final chapter in the epic and bloody history of the Corleone family.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The River Wild (1994)

2012-01-19T20:50:00.000-08:00

A rapid run through the churning waters of a stressed family confronting evil, The River Wild is a rewarding adventure, made memorable by two impressive performances from Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon.

Gail (Streep) her husband Tom (David Strathairn) and their son Roarke (Joseph Mazzello) embark on a river rafting trip near the Canadian border. The relationship between Gail and Tom is strained almost to the breaking point thanks to his obsession with work and neglect of the family. Gail used to be a river guide and is an experienced river rafter, a fact that intrigues the apparently likable Wade (Bacon), also heading out onto the river with his buddy Terry (John C. Reilly) in another raft.

With Roarke angry at his dad, Wade fills the vacuum and quickly befriends the boy. But as the two rafts make their way downriver, Wade and Terry start to spend too much time with Gail's family at every stop, and both Gail and Tom sense that something is wrong. Sure enough, Wade and Terry are revealed to be criminals on the run, having committed a botched robbery that included the killing of a security guard. Using the threat of a loaded gun, Wade holds the family hostage and demands that Gail navigate them down river, through a highly treacherous section of white water called The Gauntlet.

Wade is one of Kevin Bacon's finest roles. The outward charm hiding heartless cruelty allows Bacon to play to his strengths. Roarke's immediate attraction and subsequent hero worship of Wade, as compared to his stodgy Dad, is compellingly delivered, and adds yet another life lesson to the already rich classroom that the river provides. And when Wade finally removes his nice-guy mask and reveals his true colours, Bacon switches from dangerously friendly to chillingly evil without losing his engaging personality, which makes Wade all the more depraved.

Meryl Streep did most of her own stunts in one her most physically demanding roles. But Gail's arduous journey cannot hide another terrific acting performance from Streep as Gail fights an unfair battle on four fronts: a marital battle with a husband who has checked out; a battle against falling for the charms of Wade, who initially seems to represent all that Tom does not; a battle to save her family from the raging river; and finally a battle against pure criminal evil. When she finally grasps what she is up against, Streep brings out of Gail the steely determination of a woman under mortal threat, doing what is necessary to survive.

David Strathairn as Tom suffers in comparison, primarily because his character's development is the least convincing. From a disconnected husband, uncaring father and boring office worker to a heroic outdoorsman with incredible agility and stamina, Tom's journey does not ring true, despite Strathairn's best efforts. Providing better support is John C. Reilly as Terry, Wade's sidekick and relatively dim servile follower.

Director Curtis Hanson puts the breathtaking scenery to excellent use, and combines the talent of his cast with nature's stunning beauty and power to great effect. Filmed on the Kootenai and Flathead Rivers in Montana and the Rogue River in Oregon, The River Wild may be Hollywood's ultimate salute to rafting, the water growing ever more turbulent as the dangers increase around Gail. But navigating the river is also her strength and advantage over Wade, and as the water gets more ferocious, Gail is riding into her element. The river may be wild, but for Gail the greater challenge is to try and overcome a ruthless criminal and save her family.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

2012-01-18T20:12:00.000-08:00

A love story comfortably embedded in the high-glitz world of precious art, The Thomas Crown Affair targets a mature audience with a smooth vibe, eloquent character development, and only enough action to spice the story, rather than dominate it.

New York mergers and acquisitions tycoon Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) owns everything that life has to offer, but still enjoys stealing the occasional piece of art. His psychiatrist (Faye Dunaway) is quick to pin-point the lonely hole in his heart as the one thing that he cannot satisfy with his riches. After Crown masterminds a daring theft and elegantly walks off with a precious Monet painting, insurance investigator Catherine Banning (Rene Russo) is called in to recover the painting. Banning quickly suspects Crown, but he is too clever to allow her to find the necessary proof that he committed the theft. Also trying to crack the case is police detective Michael McCann (Denis Leary), who finds himself competing with Banning in attempts to corner Crown.

Banning cozies up to Crown to try and uncover his secrets, but a strong mutual attraction gradually develops between the two. Banning is caught between her job and her heart, Crown is caught between his crime and his love, and McCann would just rather be focusing on catching real criminals rather than rich men stealing over-priced art from pretentious museums.

A remake of a classic 1968 movie starring Steve McQueen and Dunaway, The Thomas Crown Affair achieves absorbing depth through patience. The Thomas Crown character is gradually revealed to be an extraordinarily rich executive, a thief, a competitive sportsman, and a fearless risk-taker. When he finally lets his guard down and succumbs to romance with the one person able to match him, the evolution rings true as the next logical step to complete his life. Outside of James Bond, Thomas Crown may be the perfect Pierce Brosnan persona, the suave playboy with everything, but always on the lookout for the next thing.

Rene Russo as Catherine Banning almost keeps up with Brosnan. Banning is a daring jet-setter, fiercely determined to do her job and cash in the commission millions. When Banning finally understands what she up against with Crown, she unleashes her sexuality on him on the dance floor in a memorably stunning see-through dress. By pushing both of them over a forbidden threshold, Banning changes their fates and sets in motion events that neither of them control - not a situation that either Crown or Banning is comfortable with. This genuine emotional uncertainty in both main characters, triggered by unexpected passion, sets The Thomas Crown Affair apart, and keeps director John McTiernan firmly in charge as the only person guiding the outcome.

The central relationship is a perfectly constructed conundrum, Crown realizing that Banning is the woman who can fill the gap in his life that drives him to crime, but also the woman who can destroy his life by uncovering his criminal activity. He has to find a way to establish trust and create the space for love with the one person who can either save him emotionally or dismantle his empire.

Two prolonged and well-executed art theft scenes at the lush and busy museum bookend the movie, the climax particularly dazzling as Crown cleverly outsmarts all security measures with the simplest of tools. The Thomas Crown Affair maintains its measured approach to the end, and builds its drama on welcome intellect and a credible, complex romance.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Italian Job (2003)

2012-01-17T21:09:00.000-08:00

A revenge heist movie, The Italian Job tries hard but cannot elevate itself from the realm of the average. The best and most original scenes feature Mini Coopers racing around demonstrating their agility, and the solid cast maintains interest, but otherwise the movie feels like a second visit to well-worn tourist traps.

Master thief Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg) and his mentor John Bridger (Donald Sutherland), an expert safe cracker, lead a gang that includes Steve (Edward Norton) and Rob (Jason Statham) in the daring capture of a safe full of gold in Venice. But just when they think that they are set for life, Steve betrays the rest of the gang, killing John and leaving the others for a dead. But they survive and recruit John's daughter Stella (Charlize Theron), a professional safe security expert, for a revenge mission: to steal the gold back from Steve's mansion in Los Angeles. By creating traffic jams and using nimble Mini Coopers to navigate around the gridlocked city, Charlie and his buddies hope to recover the gold, avenge John's death, and escape to a better life.

Only vaguely inspired by the 1969 Michael Caine film, the 2003 version of The Italian Job can be sarcastically labelled a two-hour commercial for the Mini Cooper, and the little car does offer the best entertainment on show, zipping through traffic, diving into impossibly tight parking spots, climbing and descending stairs, and racing through sewers and pipes. To the benefit of the movie, director F. Gary Gray mercifully minimizes computer-generated gimmickry, allowing the stunts to be contained within the bounds of realism.

As for the humans, Donald Sutherland is as usual the most watchable member of the cast, but delivers his increasingly customary sage-man-killed-early routine that has become something of a trademark late in his career. Mark Wahlberg appears too likable and smart to be involved in a life of crime, while Charlize Theron fights the good fight but fails to convince that a professional security expert can suddenly join a criminal gang in a dangerous mission to avenge a father who generally neglected her.

It is left to Edward Norton as the double-crossing Steve and Jason Statham as ace driver Handsome Rob to add some much needed menace to the otherwise too-cheerful band of robbers, Norton memorable as a greedy but insecure villain, while Statham can actually be imagined as a ruthless thief in real life.

Despite some interesting locations and dynamic cinematography, The Italian Job is mostly pleasant, a curious criticism, but the lack of any kind of an edge or genuine tension simply defangs the movie, much like automatic transmission sucks the life out of a Mini Cooper.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Bad Boys II (2003)

2012-01-16T20:37:00.000-08:00

Applying the principle of go big or go home, director Michael Bay goes huge. Transforming a buddy cop movie into an outright spectacle almost 150 minutes in length, Bad Boys II is somewhat enjoyable for its sheer bravado, and outdoes the original in glitz, glamour, and extreme violence.

Large shipments of Ecstasy are being shipped into Miami. Narcotics detectives Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) are assigned to find the importer and stop the flow of drugs. After tangling with the Ku Klux Klan, the trail leads to Cuban gangster Johnny Tapia (Jordi Molla), who is establishing himself as the lord of the underworld and brutally eliminating competing criminals. Complicating matters is Sydney Burnett (Gabrielle Union), Marcus' sister and DEA agent, herself part of a separate team trying to take down Tapia.

After numerous chases and gun battles, Burnett and Lowrey achieve a breakthrough when they uncover Tapia's favoured method for transporting drugs, involving dead bodies and caskets. But Tapia won't give up his empire quietly, and he grabs a hostage and heads for the refuge of his home country, triggering a climactic mercenary raid resembling more of a military operation than police work.

Bad Boys II soars during several exhilarating, prolonged action sequences. An ultra violent car chase that starts on the street system before migrating to the freeway has bad guys commandeering a car transporter truck and using vehicles as projectiles while Burnett and Lowrey give chase in a Ferrari. Bay elevates carnage to art, and sets a new standard for adrenaline-powered wanton vehicular destruction.

A bloody shootout in the hideout of a Haitian gang achieves similar brilliance. Bay's cameras seamlessly rotate around walls, squeeze through holes in the concrete, and zoom to where the bullets are heading in a highly kinetic visual ballet of impending death, as a steady stream of banter between Burnett and Lowrey adds humorous icing to the gritty scene.

And just to add an exclamation point, the plot contrives to have a Hummer plough through an entire hillside shanty town at breakneck speed, causing all sorts of hidden drug labs to explode in the process.

As can be expected in a knowingly overblown extravaganza, many other sequences in Bad Boys II don't work nearly as well. When Burnett and Lowrey verbally abuse a teenager who arrives on Burnett's doorstep to date his daughter, the exchange quickly degenerates from comic to hurtfully cruel. Burnett suffering the consequences of inadvertently swallowing two Ecstasy pills veers into cheap slapstick.

With the tornado of non-stop action, it is a surprise that the characters are not totally short-changed. There are enough dialogue exchanges to generate some clumsy humour and awkward humanity. Will Smith hits his stride quickly as the smooth Mike Lowrey, leaving the agitation to Martin Lawrence as Marcus Burnett suffers through a full-blown crisis of purpose caused by the high likelihood that wherever Lowrey happens to be, dead bodies are sure to follow. Jordi Molla is given plenty of time to develop Johnny Tapia into an entertaining, over-the-top drug ganglord. Gabrielle Union as Burnett's sister and DEA agent Sydney places herself in the middle of the buddy relationship by romancing Lowrey and going undercover as a money launderer providing services to Tapia.

Bad Boys II is about large explosions, vivid colours, wild shoot-outs, insane stunts, high speed chases, unconstrained energy, almost gruesome violence, incessant foul language and a dash of humour. With everything louder than everything else, it delivers artistically brawny sensory overload.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: S.W.A.T. (2003)

2012-01-14T14:22:00.000-08:00

All bullets and few brains, S.W.A.T. drips with machismo but forgets to add soul. The result is a lot of hardware struggling with a marked absence of software.

Officers Jim Street (Colin Farrell) and his partner Brian Gamble (Jeremy Renner) of the Los Angeles Police Department Special Weapons And Tactics team help to subdue heavily armed robbers shooting up a neighbourhood in a botched bank hit. Gamble disobeys orders but successfully helps to end the ordeal by audaciously shooting one of the bad guys through the shoulder of a hostage. He quits the force while Street is reassigned to humiliating duties.

Six months later, with the LAPD suffering a reputational crisis, veteran Sergeant Hondo Henderson (Samuel L. Jackson) is brought back to assemble a new SWAT unit. He gives Street another chance, and recruits other misfits including Christina Sanchez (Michelle Rodriguez) and TJ McCay (Josh Charles). By the time they successfully complete their training, Hondo's unit is called into action to escort dangerous and vastly wealthy international criminal Alexander Montel (Olivier Martinez) to a federal prison. Montel offers $100 Million to anyone who can help him escape, which means that the SWAT team will face a gauntlet consisting of every gang with ambitions to cash in, as well as the threat of traitors from within.

A big screen celebration of the 1970's television show with the famous theme song, S.W.A.T. struggles to establish a reason to exist other than juvenile nostalgia. Beyond the firing and dodging of bullets, none of the characters are provided with even the most rudimentary back story. There is a brief scene of Street's girlfriend (Ashley Scott) leaving him, but otherwise director Clark Johnson is busy with the chases, fights, explosions, rudimentary evil bad guys, and testosterone-fuelled posturing behind face shields and Kevlar vests. The action scenes are functional, but with Johnson's television background clearly exposed, S.W.A.T. even lacks the big screen glitz that would have helped make the incessant spraying of bullets more satisfying.

Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Farrell are mostly grim and stone faced, playing warriors for justice from another era, adequately floating through the movie but failing to find any buddy chemistry. Both Jackson's formidable charisma and Farrell's boyish charm fall foul of the mundane script.

So the end credits roll with the theme song Samuel Jackson (SWAT) by the alt rock group Hot Action Cop, a terrific modernization of the original television series theme song. Looks like it's hot action / jammin' with Sammy L. Jackson indeed; pity that much like the TV series, the theme song is the best thing about the S.W.A.T. film adaptation.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

CD Review: Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd, by Lynyrd Skynyrd (1973)

2012-01-13T20:38:00.000-08:00

Formed under a different name back in 1964, it took Lynyrd Skynyrd nine long years to record their first studio album, and in many ways the wait was worth it. Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd is a cultured album, representing a band seasoned by endless touring and already close to their peak

The mix of southern rock with strong shadings of metal is potent. Free Bird is a remarkable track, an eternal classic and one of the earliest examples of what a metallic heaven might sound like. The instrumental back-end of the song, more than five minutes of shredding metal magic, is a cornerstone of the genre, unleashing the power of what can be created when rock drops its structures and crosses into metal's gloriously darker terrain.

There is strong support on the album in the form of the dynamic opener I Ain't The One, the soulful Tuesday's Gone, and Poison Whiskey, which exudes animated danger festering at rock's far reaches. All three are solid examples of the best elements of southern rock reaching for the solidity of metal, the vocals of Ronnie Van Zant perfectly suitable for stretching into metal, and the guitars of Gary Rossington and Allen Collins more than willing to follow.

Unfortunately, Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd does sag in the middle, the four central tracks meandering between average and annoying, Mississippi Kid finally venturing out into the black bayous and disappearing into the land of the toothless.

But the good material succeeds in outweighing the bad, and the greatness on the album is pronounced Free-Bird.

Band:

Ronnie Van Zant - Vocals
Gary Rossington - Guitars
Allen Collins - Guitars
Ed King - Bass
Billy Powell - Keyboards
Robert Burns - Drums

Songlist (ratings out of 10):

1. I Ain't The One - 8
2. Tuesday's Gone - 8
3. Gimme Three Steps - 7
4. Simple Man - 7
5. Things Goin' On - 6
6. Mississippi Kid - 5
7. Poison Whiskey - 9
8. Free Bird - 10

Average: 7.50

Produced by Al Kooper.
Engineered by Bob Langford, Rodney Mills, Danny Turbeville and Al Kooper.

All Ace Black Blog Heavy Metal CD Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

2012-01-12T21:15:00.000-08:00

A though-provoking science fiction drama examining the themes of destiny and free will, The Adjustment Bureau is smart, intriguing and visually attractive.

Congressman David Norris (Matt Damon) loses a race for a New York Senate seat when an old embarrassing photo comes back to haunt his campaign. About to concede, he accidentally meets Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt), and she inspires him to deliver a quirky concession speech that revitalises his career and sets him up for a future strong run at the Senate.

The agents of the Adjustment Bureau, including Mitchell (Anthony Mackie) and Richardson (John Slattery), are responsible to make sure that pre-determined destinies are fulfilled. But when Mitchell falls asleep on the job, David and Elise have another chance encounter on a bus, and their mutual attraction grows. Worse still, David stumbles onto members of the Bureau at work, exposing their existence. For reasons that David only gradually begins to understand, the Bureau needs to prevent the inadvertent romance from blossoming, and eventually the heartless agent Thompson (Terence Stamp) is summoned to help split the couple up.

Unfortunately, The Adjustment Bureau ends with a perfunctory foot race, Damon and Blunt holding hands and running as they chart a terrain-altering course through secret doors embedded in New York City. It's a contrived action-oriented ending to an otherwise clever film that manages to avoid most of the tiresome conventional elements of the routine thriller.

Prior to that ending, writer and first-time director George Nolfi, working from a Phillip K. Dick short story, constructs an elaborate debate about destiny and free will, David Norris a victim of a destiny that excludes falling in love with Elise, no matter how hard he tries to pursue her. The distinctively dressed agents employed by the Adjustment Bureau, with their particularly fetching hats, are an astute representation of the forces of destiny conspiring to manage events according to a pre-determined but poorly understood plan, while the passion waiting to take hold between David and Elise provides a worthy test of life's predetermined paths.

As the would-be lovers testing the bounds of free will, Matt Damon and Emily Blunt develop an immediate chemistry, his Congressman and her dancer a study in two different people immediate recognizing that they were meant for each other. Their scenes together leave no doubt that their souls are intertwining in joint readiness for a life-altering battle against the forces of normalcy.

Not unexpectedly, Nolfi ultimately manages to have it both ways by demonstrating both the strength of the pre-paved road and the courage of conviction needed to carve a new one. The Adjustment Bureau is a challenge to deal with, but then so is life.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Ocean's Eleven (2001)

2012-01-11T22:08:00.000-08:00

A slick heist movie, Ocean's Eleven makes good use of a high-wattage cast and an energetic tempo to deliver a stylish romp through Vegas.

Danny Ocean (George Clooney) is released from prison on probation, and immediately sets about planning a mega-heist. His plan is to break into the safe at the Bellagio hotel in Vegas, which conveniently also holds the cash for the Grand and the Mirage, and take off with $100 million. The three hotels are owned by Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) who has claimed Danny's ex-wife Tess (Julia Roberts) as his own. Danny is more interested in recapturing Tess' heart, but will also take the money just to spite Benedict.

Ocean and his main buddy Rusty (Brad Pitt) set about assembling a crew of eleven men to plan and pull off the theft. The team includes pickpocket expert Linus (Matt Damon), inside man Frank (Bernie Mac), explosives expert Basher (Don Cheadle), and the Malloy brothers (Casey Affleck and Scott Caan), greasy jack-of-all-trade types. They are funded by money man Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould), Benedict's rival in the Vegas hotel ownership business. On the night of a world championship boxing fight, the gang hit the Bellagio while Ocean attempts one last time to win Tess back.

Compared to the limp 1960 original, the 2001 version of Ocean's Eleven positively sizzles. Director Steven Soderbergh briskly handles the team-assembly bits and promptly places the emphasis on planning the theft. Enough clever innovation, unpredictable creativity, and shiny technological touches are embedded into the plan to make it reasonably feasible by the standards of high-budget movie fiction. The final hour is given over to the heist and its aftermath, Ocean and the gang coolly navigating the labyrinth of the Bellagio's hidden chambers to break into the best protected vault in the world, accompanied by the velvety smooth David Holmes music score.

The all-star cast play it surprisingly straight, with Clooney, Pitt and Damon graciously allowing the lesser lights plenty of screen time. Roberts has the least to do but still sparkles in her few scenes, while Garcia's beady eyes and tight jaw mercilessly capture then devour enemies.

Ocean's Eleven is star-studded, entertaining, and quick-paced, and attacks the house odds with gusto.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Book Review: The Essential Engineer, by Henry Petroski (2010)

2012-01-10T20:59:00.000-08:00

What is the difference between the scientist and the engineer, and why does the media always laud "scientific achievement" when success is achieved, while reporting on "engineering failure" when objectives are not met?

Henry Petroski, Professor of Civil Engineering at Duke University, tackles these and related issues from the engineering perspective in The Essential Engineer, making the case that engineers often do not receive due credit, and that success usually requires that the scientist and the engineer work together.

Many pages in The Essential Engineer are dedicated to try and define where science ends and engineering begins, and to argue about the relative importance of each throughout the history of progress. Petroski rejects the notion that science has to uncover natural principles before engineers can be put them to use, pointing to several examples where engineering success was achieved (for example, flying) before the science was fully understood.

In several chapters, Petroski ties himself up in arcane knots that require an engineer with a blowtorch to undo. The chapter titled Research and Development is followed by the chapter titled Development and Research, as Petroski self-dissolves into an ever tightening spiral trying to dissect the difference between the two, finally sinking without a trace in a soup of R's, D's and ampersands as he tries to make the case that maybe "Research and Development" would be better called "Research and Development and Research".

The book is much better in the chapters that focus tightly on the real threats and risks facing the planet, from earthquakes to asteroid strikes, and the past and present efforts of engineers and scientists to predict and prevent catastrophe. There are other good discussions on alternative fuels, with an excellent presentation of the unintended consequences of a host of once promising technologies. Climate Change receives intermittent attention, Petroski not delving deep into the topic but predictably calling for collaboration between scientists and engineers to manage the outcomes.

Even when he occasionally runs into the swamps of geekland, Petroski's writing remains agile, his prose accessible and stylish enough to maintain capable immersion.

Much like the profession it celebrates, The Essential Engineer is elegantly functional, sometimes drab but never unnecessarily conspicuous.

Subtitled Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems.
230 pages plus Notes and Index.
Published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf.

All Ace Black Blog Book Reviews are here.

CD Review: Destroyer, by Kiss (1976)

2012-01-09T22:46:00.000-08:00

A live band looking for album anthems that can translate to stage success, Destroyer is an unfortunate milepost on metal's road, Kiss pointing the way towards asinine hair metal with limited control over instruments, doltish lyrics that would make a seven year old proud, and impoverished vocal talent.

And with producer Bob Ezrin dumping all sorts of irrelevant sound effects throughout the album, the whole exercise becomes so much more tiresome.

The one memorable track from Destroyer is opener Detroit Rock City, although 90 seconds of arduous babble precedes the serious music. Once it gets going, Detroit Rock City carries the promise of a band that can get down and rock out with some dangerous guitar riffs, a soul satisfying solo, confident Paul Stanley vocals, and energetic drums. This turns out to be the end of the memorable music on the album, as the rest of the material is trampled in a mud field of mediocrity.

God Of Thunder finds one tune to play with and muffs it, the Gene Simmons vocals awful beyond words. Simmons also knocks Great Expectations off-key in a performance that sounds almost intentionally incompetent.

Elsewhere, things are at best routine. However, the reputation of the 1970s was not helped when primarily filler ballad Beth, with Peter Criss on vocals, became an unexpected hit.

Destroyer demonstrates how thin the crust of metal talent was in 1976, and how the detour into the dead end of image-only glam started with a band that rocked on stage with enough pyrotechnics to hide an alarming lack of talent.

Band:

Paul Stanley - Guitar, Vocals
Peter Criss - Drums, Vocals
Ace Frehley - Guitar, Vocals
Gene Simmons - Bass, Vocals

Songlist (ratings out of 10):

1. Detroit Rock City - 9
2. King Of The Night Time World - 7
3. God Of Thunder - 5
4. Great Expectations - 5
5. Flaming Youth - 6
6. Sweet Pain - 6
7. Shout It Out Loud - 7
8. Beth - 7
9. Do You Love Me? - 7

Average: 6.56

Produced by Bob Ezrin.
Engineered by Jay Messina and Corky Stasiak.

All Ace Black Blog Heavy Metal CD Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Rabbit Hole (2010)

2012-01-08T18:15:00.000-08:00

The struggle to deal with the death of a child must be the most cruel challenge that parents can face. Rabbit Hole examines the life of an anguished couple at the crossroads, months after the trauma of losing their son. It's a heartfelt, well-acted and human-scaled movie, looking for the faintest sign of light within abject darkness.

Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart) are barely hanging on to their marriage. It's been eight months since six-year-old Danny was struck and killed by a car as he chased after the family dog. Becca is keeping her emotions mostly to herself, and is unable to respond to Howie's romantic advances. Becca is also not interested in joining a support group, so Howie goes alone, and starts spending time with Gabby (Sandra Oh), who lost a child many years ago.

Becca's mental state is not helped by her mother Nat (Dianne Wiest) continuously bringing up her own lost child, while Becca's irresponsible sister Izzy (Tammy Blanchard) adds to the tension by getting herself pregnant. Without quite knowing why, Becca finds herself initiating contact with Jason (Miles Teller), the teenager driving the car that killed Danny. Depending on the very few critical decisions that they will get to make, the relationship between Becca and Howie will be either destroyed or placed on the slow road to recovery.

Adapted by David Lindsay-Abaire from his own play, and easily liberated from the confines of the stage, Rabbit Hole is an authentic essay on altered emotions post-tragedy. The outbursts are mercifully rare, while director John Cameron Mitchell lingers on the discomfort, silence and disrupted communications dominating day-to-day life as Becca and Howie struggle to cope. Guilt, blame, despair, resignation, and a soul-shaking sorrow smother the marriage, and for the couple to reconnect will require patience and a pro-active willingness to overcome instinctive reactions.

As an understated drama, Rabbit Hole demands stellar acting and the cast obliges. Nicole Kidman delivers a tender performance, a mother struggling between the natural tendency to turn inwards and the missteps that seem to accompany her every action whenever she tries to reach out. Aaron Eckhart's Howie is more stoic but equally conflicted, wanting to hold on to fragments of his son's life while wondering why his wife is not moving on as quickly as he is. Dianne Wiest as Nat is surprisingly influential in her daughters' lives, and the sometimes stormy but mostly loving relationship between Becca and Nat rings true.

Rabbit Hole seeks the seeds of new beginnings in the embers of tragedy. They are always there; it's just a matter of deciding to look, or not.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Stripes (1981)

2012-01-08T16:00:00.000-08:00

A showcase for the comedic talent of Bill Murray, Stripes is only as good as its star. Murray's laid-back sardonic style creates good friction with the motif of military discipline, but Stripes suffers from having little to offer other than Murray's attitude.

John Winger (Bill Murray) abandons his job as a taxi driver, is abandoned by his girlfriend, and has his car repossessed, all on the same day. He convinces his friend Russell Ziskey (Harold Ramis) that they should join the army, and off they go to training camp. The fellow recruits include the overweight Ox (John Candy) and an assortment of the psychotic and the dim. Drill Sergeant Hulka (Warren Oates) tries to make soldiers out of them, with limited success. Hulka's platoon muddles its way to graduation before becoming embroiled in an unexpected incursion behind the Iron Curtain.

Much of Stripes was improvised on the spot, director Ivan Reitman keeping the cameras rolling while Murray made things up and the other cast members reacted. It's a sometimes fascinating viewing experience, but the struggle to create a cohesive movie out of essentially uncoordinated comedy moments is also clear. Stripes sags and surges, meanders and regains focus, ultimately providing an interesting but bumpy ride.

When it works, Stripes delivers scenes of comic gold. Murray's speech to rally his platoon prior to the graduation ceremony is classic, as is the platoon's performance in the ceremony itself. But in the final 30 minutes featuring the unplanned invasion of Czechoslovakia, Stripes loses its way in a groan-inducing attempt to superimpose superfluous action onto a comedy, with mostly embarrassing results.

The thin ice of material that Stripes skates on is exemplified by a deleted sequence (restored in the Extended Cut) that has Winger and Ziskey hitch a ride on a military plane to an unnamed war zone, where they are captured by undefined heavily armed mercenaries and threatened with death, but save themselves when Winger starts singing Quando Quando Quando. It's a nonsensical interlude, scraping by on Murray's improvisational talent and spontaneity. A mud wrestling match between John Candy's Ox and a bevy of near-naked models is also a punch line stranded by an absence of meaningful context.

Elsewhere in the cast, Ramis proves to himself that he is no actor, his uncomfortable performance as Ziskey crossing the line from comic to incompetent. Warren Oates performs his function as the crusty drill sergeant with good intentions, while P.J. Soles and Sean Young as the Military Police officers who develop relationships with Winger and Ziskey realize early on that they need to be comely rather than convincing.

Stripes is a one-man comedy routine expanded into a military farce. It is remarkable that it works as well as it does, and this is testimony to Murray's unique talent to deliver cool humour with perfect timing.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Bad Boys (1995)

2012-01-07T10:30:00.000-08:00

Lots of explosions, lots of bullets, lost of car chases, lots of attempted one-liners, lots of nonsense. Ho hum. Bad Boys is action without soul, polished enough to be tolerable but utterly and immediately forgettable.

A ruthless criminal gang breaks into a Miami police station and takes off with millions of dollars in seized heroine. It's a massive embarrassment for the good guys, and narcotics detectives Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) are called in to track down and retrieve the stolen drugs. Burnett is a family man, Lowrey is a womanising bachelor with an inherited fortune, but despite their differences they are partners and best friends.

Their investigation leads them to Julie Mott (Tea Leoni), who has witnessed the criminals enjoying the drugs and killing her friend Maxine. Burnett and Lowrey need to keep Julie safe as they track down Fouchet (Tcheky Karyo), the grim-faced, always angry leader of the bad guys.

The actors go through Bad Boys fully knowing that they are in a mindlessly gratuitous action movie, and not even pretending otherwise. People get killed, shot, battered, and bloodied, but Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as Lowrey and Burnett are too cool to care, display any emotion or pause to take stock: no, they are too busy trading insults and trying to think up the next glib comment. It is almost ironically left to Tea Leoni to inject any thoughtfulness into Bad Boys. Although her primary purpose in the movie is to wear ever shorter skirts in each successive scene, Leoni at least attempts to display some minimal fear, anger, frustration and playfulness in among the ceaseless carnage.

Bad Boys was director Michael Bay's feature film debut, and he imports his expertise in commercials and music videos to the big screen, and forgoes all other elements required to make a good movie, such as a meaningful script, human drama, acting, and polysyllabic dialogue. The reincarnation of Michael Winner with bigger budgets, Bay is all about placing the camera to get the best angle for the upcoming explosion. He washes the film with resplendent colours, making the best use of Miami and ensuring that the screen always looks gorgeous. Bad Boys is a slick two hour music video, an exercise in parking the brain and indulging the base instincts of the juvenile eye.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Birds (1963)

2012-01-06T22:15:00.000-08:00

A chilling horror film that succeeds in infusing birds with maliciously evil intent, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds is a thrilling masterpiece, packed with unforgettable visuals and impressive subtext.

San Francisco socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) trades barbs with lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) in a pet shop. Afterwards she decides to surprise him by delivering two lovebirds to his sister, but Mitch has already left San Francisco to the small resort town of Bodega Bay. Melanie drives to the tiny community, where she meets local schoolteacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette) before making her way by boat to Mitch's house, where he lives with his younger sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright) and mother Lydia (Jessica Tandy).

Inexplicably, birds start to attack the humans in Bodega Bay. At first individual bird attacks cause minimal damage, but soon the birds start to flock together, attacking in large numbers, injuring and killing residents and terrifying children. With the attraction between Mitch and Melanie growing, the birds become more brazen, destroying parts of the town in a series of sky-darkening raids. Mitch, Melanie, and Lydia have to find a way to protect Cathy and save their lives.

In a case of quantity becoming quality, Hitchcock brings out the evil in the birds by harnessing their strength in numbers. One bird on a wire is not a threat to anyone. Thousands of birds packed onto all the wires suddenly become a fearful sight and a dominating force, and Hitchcock visually plays with this threat to great effect. Melanie at the school oblivious to the army of birds assembling on the playground equipment behind her is a classic moment in film history.

Tippi Hedren, Hitchcock's personally selected new ingenue, delivers an underrated performance as Melanie, a woman with big city savvy easily navigating her way around the less sophisticated Bodega Bay culture. Jessica Tandy and Suzanne Pleshette provide a good counter-balance, The Birds unique in providing three sophisticated central roles for women in what is superficially a horror film. Hitchcock is less fortunate with the bland Rod Taylor, who is unable to deliver sufficient charisma as Mitch.

Interpreting The Birds is as fun as enjoying it as a macabre thriller. The more straightforward metaphor involves nature fighting back, perhaps as a revenge against pollution, and deploying even the weakest troops in massive numbers to over-run the humans with sheer volume. The crows and the seagulls team up for the attacks on Bodega Bay, even the tiny sparrows cause chaos in the Brenner house, and the talkative Mrs. Bundy, the bird expert conveniently stationed at the Tides restaurant, estimates that there are 100 billion birds in the world. Without rallying any other species, the birds would win this fight and chalk one up for mother earth. The Birds may be among the earlier movies warning of nature's ultimate intolerance of insensitive human behaviour.

Even more interesting than the Nature's Revenge theme is Hitchcock's not-so-subtle placement of Melanie in the bull's eye of each bird attack on Bodega Bay. Every horrifying on-camera assault by the birds coincides with Melanie's intrusion into the community. The birds fire a warning shot on the bay when Melanie sails onto it; and follow up with another intimidating knock on the door at Annie's house when Melanie sleeps there.

But she does not heed the warnings and stays in town, so the serious offensive commences: the birds attack Cathy's birthday party when Melanie attends; the Brenner's house when Melanie visits; the schoolhouse when Melanie drops in; the Tides restaurant when Melanie takes refuge there, and finally the Brenner's house again when Melanie is barricaded in it. In this last battle the birds unleash their savage fury on Melanie in the upstairs bedroom, and succeed in driving her out of Bodega Bay. They don't attack as she leaves the community.

Melanie's presence and its consequences may represent the damage suffered by a small community when big city elements creep in. More mouthwatering is the story of a personal and catastrophic battle between women. Both Lydia and Annie resent Melanie's presence in Bodega Bay, the clingy mother and the forlorn ex-wannabe girlfriend both immediately sensing that Melanie could easily poach Mitch from under their noses. Tellingly, Melanie's first brush with the bird on the bay occurs after her initial, uncomfortable encounter with Annie: the enemy becomes aware of the incursion, and the scouts are deployed to probe the foe's resilience. Both Lydia and Annie will be hurt during the battle: once war erupts, the instigators also stand to get hurt. The Birds becomes a representation of the gruesome war between a man's mother, his potential lover, and the woman who pines for his heart, with an entire town suffering as collateral damage.

The Birds is a remarkable experience, as effective in delivering sometimes terrorizing thrills as it is in prompting more cerebral interpretive pursuits.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

CD Review: G N' R Lies, by Guns N' Roses (1988)

2012-01-05T20:37:00.000-08:00

This is what money for nothing sounds like. With Appetite For Destruction taking the world by storm, record label Geffen rush out the 8-song album G N' R Lies that delivers...nothing.

The first four tracks are muddy live recordings of nondescript selections, previously released on the Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide EP before the band found fame, and two of them dispensable covers. The last four tracks are acoustic, hastily recorded in a matter of days, including another version of You're Crazy, already featured on Appetite For Destruction, and Used To Love Her, a composition that the band admitted (on the cover) was a joke.

And it all ends with One In A Million, a song with lyrics that manage to offend everyone and impress no one. Almost slipping unnoticed in the controversy over homophobia and racism was how catastrophically horrible the music and the singing are on One In A Million, regardless of the words.

On the live tracks Guns N' Roses sound like amateurs but they are not helped by an atrocious quality recording. The acoustic tracks are simply boring, the danger stripped out of the band as Axl Rose insists on skewing the ending of every other word with an overdeployment of his trademark and mostly unnecessary yayeeyay.

G N' R Lies is an excellent example of how record companies milked customers in the pre-digital age. There is little on the album to justify a single dollar being invested in the music, and yet Geffen laughed all the way to the bank.

Band:

Slash - Guitars
Izzy Stradlin' Guitars
Duff McKagan - Bass
Steven Adler - Drums
Axl Rose - Vocals

Songlist (ratings out of 10):

1. Reckless Life - 7
2. Nice Boys - 7
3. Move To The City - 7
4. Mama Kin - 7
5. Patience - 7
6. Used To Love Her - 5
7. You're Crazy - 7
8. One In A Million - 4

Average: 6.38

Produced and Engineered by Mike Clink.

All Ace Black Blog Heavy Metal CD Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Rear Window (1954)

2012-01-04T21:25:00.000-08:00

An Alfred Hitchcock classic, Rear Window peeks into the lives of neighbours to find a potential murderer, but more importantly uncovers a changing society about to be transformed by unstoppable forces.

Photojournalist Jeff Jeffries (James Stewart) has badly broken his leg while on assignment, and he is stuck in his hot and humid apartment for another week before the cast comes off. With a crushing heatwave forcing all the neighbours to keep their windows open, Jeff whiles away the time observing from his rear window the goings on in various apartments. Jeff's nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) and his girlfriend society girl Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) visit him daily. The crusty Stella does not approve of Jeff's voyeuristic habit, while Jeff is having trouble finding a way to imagine the fashionable Lisa fitting into his rugged international photojournalist lifestyle.

One of the many apartments that Jeff keeps an eye on is occupied by Mr. Thorwald (Raymond Burr), a salesman, and his bed-ridden wife. One dark night Jeff observes Mr. Thorwald repeatedly leaving and returning to his apartment with a large briefcase. The next day Mrs. Thorwald has disappeared from her bed, and Jeff observes Mr. Thorwald cleaning a large knife and a sharp saw. Jeff is convinced that Mr. Thorwald killed his wife and dismembered her body. He calls upon his friend, Detective Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey), who is sceptical but starts a low level investigation. As the ongoing lives of the neighbours unfold and sometimes intertwine, Jeff, Lisa and Tom are drawn ever deeper into the mystery surrounding the Thorwalds.

Rear Window is only a thriller in its outside packaging. The John Michael Hayes screenplay is rich with social observation, starting with the evolving role of women. The nurse Stella is the model for the first post-war generation of working women, independent, opinionated and confident, and she may be the midpoint of the spectrum. Jeff's neighbours cover the range of rapidly evolving women's roles in society: At the extremely traditional end is Miss Lonelyhearts, a depressed widow close to the end of her rope. Mrs. Thorwald, the victim, is utterly dependent on her husband and unable to defend herself against his violence. The couple sleeping on the balcony represent the average married man and wife, content and resourceful. The newly-wed wife is sex-obsessed but turns against her husband as soon as he loses his job: perhaps the prototype of the newly independent woman, not shy about her sexual and financial needs. Miss Newlywed is unlikely to ever suffer at the hand of her husband. And at completely the other end of the scale from Miss Lonelyhearts is Miss Torso, young, exhibitionist, enjoying the company of a multitude of men, and hiding her own secret. She controls and manipulates the life of the men around her.

Jeff's own relationship with Lisa has to navigate the turbulence of women's changing role in society. Clearly in love with each other, but coming from different worlds and both financially secure, neither is immediately willing to sacrifice a valued lifestyle for the sake of the relationship. While Jeff seems to recognize that asking Lisa to fundamentally change her life is a wrong foundation for a marriage, Lisa is more brash about pushing Jeff to change his life to suit her. Lisa goes ahead and proves her willingness to be adventurous, but Rear Window ends with persistent question marks about the viability of their couplehood: the sense is that Jeff's version of adventure is too crass for Lisa's high flying, high fashion, high society taste.

Rear Window's other objective is to transform all viewers into voyeurs, as guilty as Jeff in enjoying the sordid lives of others. Oh dear, we've become a race of Peeping Toms, Stella says in her first scene. Hitchcock leaves his audience no choice: watching the movie is a Peeping Tom experience, with most of the camera angles representing Jeff's point view, and the camera movements mimicking the motion of his eyes. Jeff's behaviour can only be castigated by those who did not actively participate in it, and the film's construction makes this impossible: we are all as culpable as he is, and deserving of his fate. Hitchcock anticipates an era when watching will become a lot more popular than doing, and few complain about it.

Rear Window is a participatory masterpiece, a multi-layered film that elegantly represents its society with sharp commentary woven into an arresting mystery.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Carnage (2011)

2012-01-03T20:00:00.000-08:00

A four-person character study, Roman Polanski's adaptation of the stage play God Of Carnage benefits from excellent performances but remains stage-bound and hand-cuffed by the necessity to extend a single meeting long enough to make a movie. With a few creaky moments, Carnage squeezes out 79 minutes of enjoyable and sometimes comic drama.

A schoolboy argument at a local New York City park results in Ethan Longstreet receiving a hefty stick in the face from fellow 11-year-old Zachary Cowan. The parents meet for a supposedly mature and cordial discussion about the juvenile dispute. Nancy (Kate Winslet) and Alan (Christoph Waltz) Cowan visit Penelope (Jodie Foster) and Michael (John C. Reilly) Longstreet with the intention of apologizing and planning a reconciliation between the kids.

The meeting shifts through a sequential gearbox: polite, tense, confrontational, and hostile, finally finding its level of comfort as a debacle. While the fault lines between the Longstreets and the Cowans are immediately apparent, it is the internecine conflicts within each couple that are more delightfully revealed.

Foster gets the showiest role as Penelope, an unapologetic liberal seeking high-minded solutions to every problem, comprehensively melting down upon being intellectually abandoned. Waltz has fun with Alan, a slippery and sarcastic corporate lawyer continuously distracted by his cell phone and greatly contributing to the carnage while adding mounting humour to the dysfunctional visit. Reilly's Michael is just one of the guys, the problem being that Penelope wants him to be so much more. Winslet delivers the most polished performance as Nancy, a professional woman simultaneously proud of her husband and disgusted by him.

Alcohol is introduced halfway through the visit, and it's a disappointment that a mind altering substance is allowed to trigger the more blatant abandonment of polite behaviour. The script by Polanski and Yasmina Reza (who wrote the play) does not show faith in the characters to honestly evolve and let loose without lubrication.

There are a few other rough spots in Carnage, as on several occasions the dialogue clumsily stretches to prolong the visit and retrieve the Cowans back from the elevator hallway and yet again into the Longstreet apartment. Polanski does not attempt to liberate the proceedings from the stage, with the film confined almost entirely to one room.

Carnage is more about the acting than the messaging, four performers enjoying a sparring session, their words sparkling with a hidden electricity when they collide in the New York air.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Artist (2011)

2012-01-02T11:30:00.000-08:00

A loving tribute to a bygone era of filmmaking, The Artist makes everything old new again. The black and white, silent story of a career lost and a love gained strips down the art of the movies to its essence, and demonstrates that when the core is polished to a stunning shine, not much else needs to mater.

It's the late 1920s in Hollywood, and George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is enjoying the adulation that comes with being the most popular movie star of the silent era. Charismatic, talented, living in a mansion and with the world at his feet, George can ignore his brooding wife Doris (Penelope Ann Miller), and he allows his eyes and heart to stray towards young adoring fan and aspiring extra Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo).

George helps Peppy get her start in the movies but soon the industry is thrown into turmoil: sound has arrived, and studio boss Al Zimmer (John Goodman) redirects all resources towards the new technology, and starts the search for fresh new stars whose voices will be heard. George refuses to adapt, and stubbornly persists with silent movies, even self-financing a grand silent epic. But audiences are no longer interested in mute movies, the film is an expensive flop, George's career is left in ruins, and the Great Depression further bites into his fortune. Grace leaves him, and only his faithful canine co-star and his butler / chauffeur (James Cromwell) remain by his side.

Meanwhile, Peppy emerges as the sweetheart star of the exciting new era of talking movies. With their careers in opposite trajectories, it's Peppy's turn to extend a helping hand to George, but a stubborn and proud man does not easily accept charity from others.

French director and writer Michel Hazanavicius tenderly eulogizes the silent era, The Artist teasing drama and love out of joyous acting, cinematography, music, and clever humour. Dujardin and Bejo (Mrs. Hazanavicius) give expansively expressive performance that recall all that was good when acting had to convey both actions and words, Dujardin's megawatt smile illuminating the screen and Bejo's more understated elegance embodying women's emerging glamour in the 1920s.

Cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman plays with shadows, mirrors, and clever angles to create a masterpiece of blacks and whites, the screen sharply alive at all times with the energy of artistic composition.

The Artist does not pursue profound messages. The story of George and Peppy is a simple slice of life recounted with heart-felt affection, and the reinvented storytelling method is a large part of the exquisite message. The remarkable achievement of The Artist is that the need for spoken dialogue and colour are quickly forgotten. When a story can be told with this much style artistry and elegance, additional aural and visual stimulation are just so much clutter. George Valentin's attitude is validated in the movie that chronicles his downfall.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003)

2012-01-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

While the first episode of the unfortunate Charlie's Angels brand revival was almost tolerable, this truly unnecessary sequel is not. Full Throttle is one tiresome stuntfest, and at 106 minutes, it's about 101 minutes too long.

There is no plot, just a couple of bullet points on a greasy napkin: the Angels need to retrieve two titanium rings that together reveal the identity of every person ever placed in the witness relocation program. Cue contrived action sequences in Mongolia, on the motocross track, at the harbour, and at a Hollywood premiere of a fake movie called Maximum Extreme that sounds awful but still promises to be much better than Full Throttle. There is a minor complication related to one of the Angels revealing herself to be a protected witness originally named Helen Zaas, this being about the beginning and end of the wit on display.

Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore are back as the Angels, already going through the motions of wiggling their well-toned derrières in between the CGI sequences. Demi Moore is the main villainess, a former Angel gone bad, mainly because she believed herself too good to require teammates, although Moore's main motivation to appear in the film must have been to display her bikini body at age 41.

A parade of supporting performers including John Cleese (wasted), Shia LaBeouf (lost), Matt LeBlanc (clueless), Luke Wilson (ignored), Crispin Glover (underused), Justin Theroux (taking his role way too seriously), and Bernie Mac (as Bosley) get limited screen time in amongst all the computer processing power busy whirling away to create impossible leaps, jumps and somersaults.

The stunts are so over the top that they are much more laughable than thrilling, director McG losing control of the distinction between inspired and insipid, and going all out to prove that more is less.

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle has the pedal on the floor, but the gear is firmly stuck in reverse.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Country Strong (2010)

2011-12-31T17:00:00.000-08:00

A musical drama in the vein of The Rose and A Star Is Born, Country Strong hits a few high notes but also offers up some blank measures containing little that is memorable.

Country music superstar Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow) is released prematurely from her latest stint in rehab. Her husband / manager James (Tim McGraw) is eager to get her back on stage to try and salvage her career and reputation, damaged due to an abortion caused by excessive drinking. To open for Kelly on a quick tour of Texas, James selects up-and-coming Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester), a former beauty queen with potential but little experience, and rough-and-ready Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund), a down-to-earth singer who prefers the realism of Saturday night performances at the local watering hole to the glamour of performing in packed arenas.

James wants Beau to make sure that Kelly stays away from the bottle to get through the tour, but Beau and Kelly are already entangled in a relationship that prevents them from acting rationally. Beau also thinks little of Chiles' talent, but gradually she proves herself to him. With Kelly struggling to pull herself together, Beau and Chiles emerge as the new darlings of the country music scene, and James has to struggle to save his marriage and source of income.

Country Strong deserves recognition for steering clear of obvious endings. Not much goes right for Kelly Canter throughout the movie, and it would have been most predictable to reward her with a promise of a better future. Similarly, Chiles and Beau find the country music world at their feet and clamouring for more as events unfold, and the requisite denouement is to lavish them with increased grand adulation as the credits roll. Writer and director Shana Feste avoids the facile crowd-pleasing ending, and stretches instead for echoes of the heartbreak that lies at the core of every country music song.

But Country Strong does struggle with a long, saggy middle. Once the four main characters are introduced and established early, the film lurches along re-emphasizing what has already been said. Developments are stunted and slow, and the performances mixed.

Garrett Hedlund leans on Beau to carry the musical component for most of the movie with a series of concert performances mixed in with a pre-set angry-at-the-world stare. The wait for Gwyneth Paltrow's Kelly to belt out some emotion-filled music is unnecessarily long. Leighton Meester allows Chiles Stanton to go through the film with a coquettish look-at-me-I'm-a-Southern-belle batting of the eyelids, trying to attract the attention of any male in the general vicinity. Tim McGraw's James Canter is only interested in his wife as a source of income, and his eyes carry the desperate intensity of a man frantically trying to milk the last few dollars from a struggling venture.

Country Strong features passable music, and a story that, if not realistic, has reasonable approximations of reality. The film sometimes stumbles, rarely soars, but never falls down either, and most surprisingly impresses with an ending more dour than triumphant.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Natural (1984)

2011-12-31T14:30:00.000-08:00

The Natural ends with contrived fireworks and a shower of sparks, a case of blatant celebratory self-congratulation that has the potential to cause nausea. But accepted on its terms as an unapologetic baseball fairytale, The Natural is a feel good movie that survives the gallons of sweet syrup dumped onto the screen. The screenplay unfolds like a child's bed-time story, but there is enough talent on display to touch the heart of more mature sensibilities.

It's the 1920s. Young baseball pitcher Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) appears to have superlative talent, and is called for a try-out by the Chicago Cubs. Leaving behind his sweetheart Iris (Glenn Close), Hobbs is seduced on his journey by Harriet Byrd, an unstable woman who shoots and severely wounds him in her hotel room, apparently ending his professional career.

Sixteen years later, now well into his thirties and having converted from pitching to hitting, Hobbs joins the struggling (and fictional) New York Knights after being spotted by a minor league scout. Hobbs struggles to convince coach Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley) and his assistant Red (Richard Farnsworth) that he deserves his shot in the majors. When he is finally given the opportunity, his incredible hitting ability revitalizes the Knights, who go on a winning run. Journalist Max Mercy (Robert Duvall) starts snooping around to uncover Hobbs' past, while team owner The Judge (Robert Prosky) deploys the sultry Memo Paris (Kim Basinger) to distract Hobbs, as The Judge needs the Knights to lose in order for him to gain full control of the team.

The script conjured up by Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry cleans up the harder edges of Bernard Malamud's novel, and strips down the story to the simplest good versus evil narrative, with the King Arthur legend providing the base inspiration. Director Barry Levinson plays along, bathing Glenn Close as the good Iris with white light straight from heaven, with only the singing angels and spiritual harps missing from her scenes. The evildoers, meanwhile, hatch their devious schemes from literally dark caves, Robert Prosky's The Judge refusing to even turn on the lights in his cavernous office, and Levinson just barely managing to resist adding prolonged maniacal laughter to his scenes.

Fortunately, Robert Redford and Robert Duvall are around to add some adult-worthy entertainment. Redford's natural wholesomeness shines through, and fortunately he is susceptible to the dangerous charms of first Harriet and then Memo, otherwise Roy Hobbs would have been fully expected to walk on water. It is left to Duvall to bring forth the crustiness of the baseball observer, his Max Mercy able to look past Hobbs' heroics and search for the hidden story behind the hits, baseball being nothing if not a sport that values legacy.

Also contributing to The Natural's charm are Wilford Brimley as coach Pop Fisher and Richard Farnsworth as his assistant Red, two baseball men well past their sell-by date and living out the closing days of an abandoned dream. Fisher is so busy lamenting lost opportunities that he needs Red's help to notice Roy Hobbs as the gift from the gods, dropping into his lap for a final drive at glory.

For once three women get crucial roles in a sports movie. Hershey sinks her stinger into a short but unforgettable turn as black widow Harriet Byrd. Kim Basinger is adequate as the resident distraction deployed by The Judge to gain control of the team, while Glenn Close makes the most of the glow that Levinson bequeaths onto her, Iris unwittingly controlling Hobbs' destiny across the years.

The Natural may have surrendered opportunities to deliver a darker, more thoughtful story. But it does achieve its admittedly less ambitious objective: pure mythological escapism centred on the baseball diamond.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

CD Review: Chaotic Beauty, by Eternal Tears Of Sorrow (2000)

2011-12-31T10:59:00.000-08:00

The third album from Finland's Eternal Tears Of Sorrow, and the first recorded with the support of a label, Chaotic Beauty features mature melodic symphonic death metal, music that can be imagined in a concert hall, emphasizing melody and tight delivery above all.

Chaotic Beauty is all about well-rounded compositions, with no single element from the band's arsenal dominating: the guitars and keyboards take turns at point and rarely unleash uncontrolled bolts of lightning, while Altti Vetelainen's growl vocals are mixed low and to the rear, emphasizing the doom shadings that make regular and welcome incursions from the dark alleys behind the theatre.

The introduction of overly prominent and melodramatic female vocals courtesy of Kimberly Goss on tracks such as Bride Of The Crimson Sea is unnecessary and distracting from the core strength of the band. Fortunately her segments are generally short and survivable.

Eternal Tears Of Sorrow sprinkle Chaotic Beauty with short catchy tunes that belong either in nightmarish children's fairy tales (the opening of Nocturnal Strains introduces a folk legend that can only end badly), or symphonic flourishes that require an energetic conductor in coattails (the opening of Bhean Sidhe deserves a royal audience). Occasionally the guitars of Puolakanaho and Talala team up for animated but bloodless duels.

The best elements of the band are pulled together on opener Shattered Soul, an up-tempo tune that charges confidently across the frozen landscape of northern Finland, powered by a relentless but compact riff.

Chaotic Beauty is a lot more beauty than chaos, Eternal Tears Of Sorrow positioned firmly on the more artistic side of melodic death metal.

Band:

Altti Vetelainen - Vocals and Bass
Jarmo Puolakanaho - Guitars
Antti Talala - Guitars
Petri Sankala - Drums
Pasi Hiltula - Keyboards

Songlist (ratings out of 10):

1. Shattered Soul - 10 *see below*
2. Blood Of Faith Stains My Hands - 8
3. Autumn's Grief - 9
4. The Seventh Eclipse - 8
5. Bride Of The Crimson Sea - 7
6. Black Tears - 8
7. Tar Of Chaos - 6
8. Bhean Sidhe - 8
9. Nocturnal Strains - 9

Average: 8.11

Produced by Eternal Tears Of Sorrow.
Recorded by Ahti Kortelainen and Mikko Karmila.
Mixed by Mikko Karmila. Mastered by Mika Jussila.

All Ace Black Blog Heavy Metal CD Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Unknown (2011)

2011-12-30T17:00:00.000-08:00

A slick and nimble thriller with all the requisite chases and stunts, Unknown distinguishes itself with a cunning story that gets progressively better as the film peels away the outer layers of characters and events.

American scientist Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) and his wife Liz (January Jones) fly into Berlin to attend a high profile international conference on biotechnology, hosted by Dr. Bressler (Sebastian Koch) and sponsored by Prince Shada (Mido Hamada). Upon arriving at the Hotel Adlon, Martin realizes that he forgot his briefcase at the airport. The ride back to the airport ends in disaster: a multi-vehicle crash launches the taxi off a bridge and into a river. Martin is saved from drowning by the taxi driver Gina (Diane Kruger), but loses consciousness and wakes up in hospital a few days later.

Martin rushes back to the Hotel Adlon and is shocked to find Liz insisting that she does not know him. Furthermore, Liz is with another man (Aidan Quinn) claiming to be Dr. Martin Harris. Thrown out into the street in a foreign city, Martin has to struggle to re-establish his identity, and he seeks the help of Gina as well as local private investigator Herr Jurgen (Bruno Ganz) and colleague Professor Cole (Frank Langella). Before long, Martin also finds himself the target of brutal assassins.

Unknown is a clever, high intensity thriller. It starts out on familiar stranger-in-a-strange-land territory, with many elements borrowed from movies like Frantic. But once the intricate plot behind the case of lost identity starts to reveal itself, Unknown is elevated to that unique sub-set of action movies where all the pieces of the puzzle fall smartly into place, and even the wilder stunt scenes are provided with context.

The script by Oliver Butcher and Stephen Cornwall makes the most of Berlin, with a specific tip of the hat to the history of the city as a Cold War cauldron, as Jurgen openly reveals himself to be a former Stasi agent, a cue for Unknown to take a pleasurable journey that links vintage spy methods with modern-day economic challenges and terrorist threats.

Liam Neeson is excellent in a role that would have been offered to Harrison Ford a decade earlier. Neeson is better at expressing tortured frustration, and conveys Martin's boiling emotions as he doggedly sets out to reclaim his identity. January Jones only needs to be the icy blond and she does it well, while Diane Kruger builds on her role in Inglourious Basterds with an affecting performance as an illegal immigrant who finds herself unwillingly pressed into service as Martin's guardian angel.

As it hurtles to an explosive climax, Unknown nails a most difficult stunt: the thriller that is thoughtful, exciting, and unpredictable.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Anniversary Party (2001)

2011-12-30T15:00:00.000-08:00

A fictional peak inside the private lives of Hollywood's elite, co-directors and co-stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming invite everyone to have a look at what happens at a house party for the rich and famous. The Anniversary Party has a fine ensemble cast and sizzles in patches, but cannot fully sustain the thrust of its intriguing premise.

Hollywood couple Sally (Leigh) and Joe (Cumming) are throwing a party to celebrate their sixth anniversary, although they only just got back together after Joe's latest rehab stint. Sally is an actress, although her age is beginning to work against her, and Joe is a best selling author who is embarking on his first directing assignment to transform his novel into a film. The tension between them is already high, since Joe selected young emerging starlet Skye Davidson (Gwyneth Paltrow) instead of Sally to play the leading role in the film -- and to make matters worse, Joe invited Skye to the party.

Other invitees include neighbours Ryan and Monica, who are not part of the Hollywood social scene but very much a thorn in the side of Sally and Joe due to their complaints about the incessant barking of Joe's dog. Actor Cal (Kevin Kline) and his wife Sophia (Phoebe Cates), director Mac (John C. Reilly) and his wife Clair (Jane Adams), and photographer Gina (Jennifer Beals) are among the many other guests. Cal, an aging actor himself, is Sally's latest co-star and struggling to still be considered for younger roles. Sophia is Sally's best friend and quite content at having abandoned an acting career. Cal is directing Sally's latest movie, and his wife Clair appears to be strung out on something. Gina is Joe's close confidant, and clearly her simmering presence makes Sally uncomfortable.

As the evening unfolds, everyone tries to pretend to be having a good time, but a strong current of tension crackles under the surface. When Skye unpacks Ecstasy tablet for the enjoyment of all, most inhibitions are lost and many hurtful truths are unleashed.

In a nod to the close ties between fact and fiction that permeate through The Anniversary Party, Phoebe Cates pretty much plays herself. She is Leigh's close friend in real life, and like her character Sophia, Cates left the acting industry early and came out of retirement for this role.

The first half of The Anniversary Party provides a glimpse into the social life of Hollywood's rich and famous, and unsurprisingly, they are an unrefined, vacuous, catty and self-obsessed group, which means plenty of fun. Arguments about a dog barking, rehab, and the latest ego-inflating projects dominate the conversation, with some overly pretentious discussion of Russian literature doing nothing to break through the dense superficiality.

Once the Ecstasy comes out, The Anniversary Party loses its way, and the second half of the movie stumbles around looking for a purpose. The attendees scatter into aimless groups and the delicious discomfort of the earlier encounters dissipates. A contrived near-drowning and the search for a missing dog further dilute the remaining energy, although the film does regain its nerve in enough time to allow Leigh and Cumming to enjoy a cleansing shouting match. The final act features an off-camera tragedy that revives the pulse of the movie, but it's a bit late to recapture the emotional momentum.

The always delightfully unpredictable Jennifer Jason Leigh avoids placing herself fully in the middle of her own movie but still emerges with the best performance from a crowded field. Leigh's dark expressions provide ample warning that although Sally starts the party in a bad mood, it's only getting worse as the evening unravels, as both her relationship and career receive rude awakenings before dawn.

As her husband Joe, Alan Cumming absorbs the fakery of Hollywood's fleeting obsession with the latest boy wonder, a man who is today's toast of a town that celebrates recovering heroes while eagerly anticipating their next crash.

The Anniversary Party is a voyeuristic invitation that is difficult to resist. As with most parties, some parts of the evening do drag, but the gathering is certainly worth dropping in on.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Book Review: The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

2011-12-30T10:00:00.000-08:00

A classic of American literature, The Great Gatsby flows like a mystical dream, author F. Scott Fitzgerald creating unforgettable characters living passionately turbulent lives.

It's early in the summer of 1922, and narrator Nick Carraway moves to New York to train for a job in bond sales, renting a house in the community of West Egg, Long Island. Nick knows few people in the New York area, but visits the radiant and soft-spoken Daisy Buchanan, his second cousin once removed, who lives in the more upscale community of East Egg with her husband Tom, a former athlete. Tom hardly makes a secret of keeping a mistress on the side, a lady named Myrtle Wilson, herself married to garage owner George.

Nick's next door neighbour is the mysterious Gatsby, who lives in a grand mansion and throughout the summer throws the most lavish night-long parties, attended by the elite of New York's society despite few of them knowing what Gatsby looks like and none of them knowing his background. Gradually, Nick befriends Gatsby, and finds out that Gatsby has set himself one mission in life: to regain the love of Daisy, whom he knew before the war. Gatsby's parties are an effort to attract Daisy's attention, and as the summer progresses, Gatsby makes his bold move to pry Daisy away from Tom.

With his depiction of the parties at Gatsby's mansion, and indeed the frolicking lifestyle of Daisy and Tom, Fitzgerald captured the Roaring Twenties among the elite, a world propelled by a booming stock market and illegal smuggling that would eventually crash headlong into the Great Depression. The Gatsbys and Tom Buchanans of this society seem to have no need to work, their wealth streaming in through the market or other undefined self-propelled ventures. While the money lasted, the descriptions provided by Fitzgerald became the template for those who wanted to share in the dream.

With the Roaring Twenties came a new role for women in society, and one of the progressive themes in The Great Gatsby is the shifting balance between men and women. Gatsby, Tom Buchanan and George Wilson are emotionally miserable. Gatsby will measure his success or failure in life based on whether he can win back Daisy's love. Tom is so emotionally lost that he is looking past the beautiful Daisy and seeking emotional fulfilment in Myrtle's coarse arms and George has already lost Myrtle and has few other prospects.

Meanwhile, Daisy is the central object of desire, Myrtle is stomping all over George, and Jordan Baker, Daisy's friend who becomes Nick's companion, is an independent, confident professional golfer. Although the men are the source of financial muscle, it is the women who hold the real power in The Great Gatsby.

Fitzgerald's writing style breezes with rich yet well-toned prose, sometimes pausing to describe at length a single smile, while at other times breathlessly racing to recount life-altering events. In about 170 pages, Fitzgerald creates everlasting portraits of people and places embroiled in a high intensity human drama. Gatsby may forever pine for his great love, but in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found his great novel.

171 pages.
Published in paperback by Penguin.

All Ace Black Blog Book Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Eight Men Out (1988)

2011-12-29T22:00:00.000-08:00

The story of the 1919 Black Sox, Eight Men Out is a tale of greed and corruption eating away at all that is good in sports. Director and writer John Sayles recreates with considerable flair the world of baseball in the early 20th century, and an ensemble cast has fun portraying the heroes and villains of the sportsworld in more innocent times.

The 1919 baseball season is drawing to a close, and the Chicago White Sox are the dominant team in the league, and considered to be one of the best teams ever assembled. Featuring the likes of pitcher Eddie Cicotte (David Straithairn), "Shoeless" Joe Jackson (D.B. Sweeney) and shortstop Buck Weaver (John Cusack), and coached by Kid Gleason (John Mahoney), the White Sox are expected to easily win the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. But the White Sox players are unhappy with team owner Charles Comiskey (Clifton James): he is tight-fisted and less than generous with perks and bonuses. Resentment festers, and it is ripe for exploitation by unscrupulous criminals looking to make a killing by betting against the Sox.

New York's shadowy master gambler Arnold Rothstein (Michael Lerner) is finally convinced that several players are open to a cash payout in exchange for losing, and he organizes the fix through intermediaries. Players such as Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg and Lefty Williams eagerly go along with the plan and recruit several other Sox. Cicotte is at first hesitant but later joins in, while Jackson goes along but can't read or write, and is unsure what he is agreeing to. Weaver is approached to join the fix but refuses to participate, although he also doesn't alert anyone that trouble is brewing. Gleason can sense that something is wrong with his team, but has no evidence of wrongdoing. Chicago perform poorly and lose the World Series; the players eventually face the consequences, in the court of law, the court of public opinion, and the court of baseball's newly appointed commissioner.

With no single character or actor dominating Eight Men Out, it is David Straithairn's Eddie Cicotte who best represents the mind space of underpaid athletes unable to resist a cash injection worth more than a season's wages to throw a few games. Straithairn portrays Cicotte as never enthusiastic about the fix, but upset enough about his treatment by team owner Charles Comiskey that he is eventually willing to forgo glory for cash.

John Cusack as Buck Weaver is also memorable, a man who rejected the cash and played for the glory of winning, but paid with his career for not bringing the fix to light when he had the opportunity. Charlie Sheen in a small role as player Happy Felsch and Christopher Lloyd as colourful moneyman Bill Burns animate the supporting cast.

Sayles' writing is sharp, the dialogue filled with zingers and deft jibes as reporters, ball players, gamblers, and shadowy criminals circle each other looking for a story, an edge, or a payday.

But Sayles' exceptional achievement in bringing the story to film is his embrace of uncertainty. There are numerous legends and various versions of the truth that swirl around events such as a fixed World Series, and Sayles avoids the temptation of tidying up all the factoids. While Eight Men Out does sometime meander to the outskirts of what appears relevant, the film is brave enough to capture a story without nailing down every last detail.

Hence, the film suggests that the players were unsure if they were throwing a few games or the whole series; Shoeless Joe Jackson, portrayed as quite dim, never seems aware of what he is getting himself into, and appears to play hard despite accepting the cash. Several layers of corrupt money men were involved, from masterminds like Rothstein to local goons, and the dots between them are not cleanly connected; and the players never received all of what they were promised, yet were intimidated enough to continue with the fix, or ironically bound by the code of wanting to finish what they started.

With elite athletes in all sports arenas still on the lookout for illicit methods to get rich almost a hundred years after the Black Sox scandal, Eight Men Out is a sad reminder that the lure of the dollar for personal gain has always been the most corrupting force in professional sports.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Precious (2009)

2011-12-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

A story of horrific inner-city abuse, Precious places domestic violence under the magnifying glass but fails to offer a credible narrative for the unexplained heroism of its central character.

Claireece Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is a 16 year old obese girl living in a filthy New York apartment with her domineering mother Mary (Mo'Nique). Claireece is the target of Mary's unrelenting physical and emotional abuse and humiliation, and has already given birth to one child after being raped by Mary's boyfriend.

Claireece quits public school after she becomes pregnant with her second child, after again being raped by the same man, and despite strong opposition by Mary enrols in an alternative school. She joins the class of teacher Blu Rain (Paula Patton), and also starts to meet with social worker Miss Weiss (Mariah Carey), who insists that Claireece disclose her home situation in order to receive welfare checks. The teacher and the social worker provide a steadying influence, but Claireece still faces the challenge of escaping from her mother's house of horror.

Precious, based on the novel Push by Sapphire (Romona Lofton), was boosted from a small film into a widespread success by the Oprah Winfrey marketing machine, and while there is always the potential for good in publicizing the issues associated with domestic abuse, the film itself struggles to live up to the hype. Precious is a simple story about triumphing, somewhat, over severe social adversity, but precious little is revealed about how and why Claireece is so strongly motivated and inspired to break free from the suffocating orbit around her mother. A girl brought up on a steady diet of physical, emotional,and sexual abuse needs powerful opposing forces to summon the inner strength and courage to change her destiny, but the Geoffrey Fletcher screenplay offers no clues about what drives Claireece to seek a better future.

This weakness in storytelling does not take away from a chilling performance by Mo'Nique as Mary, an awful and monstrous woman hiding her utter failings by unleashing on her daughter a torrent of devastating negativity wrapped in a thick coating of manufactured guilt.

Gaboury Sidibe, plucked from obscurity for the film, is less successful at giving life to Precious, her performance generally consisting of glaring, shuffling and mumbling.

Mariah Carey (in an inspired piece of casting) and Paula Patton have the easy roles of portraying social workers and teachers in a glowingly positive light. The slightly worrying message is that all an abuse victim needs to do is reach out for help, and larger than life, supremely confident women will ride to the rescue.

Precious is a hopeful, well-made film tackling a most difficult subject. But it is precisely because the issues associated with domestic abuse amidst abject poverty are so complex and serious that Precious stumbles on its own simplicity.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Jerk (1979)

2011-12-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

An attempted comedy about an idiot, The Jerk is simply awful. Making fun of a moron is bad enough. Not even succeeding in being funny about it is just distressing. Steve Martin can consider himself most fortunate that his career somehow survived this foul-smelling turkey, a box-office hit that proved the occasional profitability of the braindead denominator.

Navin Johnson (Martin) is a white man, raised by a black family but too much of a simpleton to realize that he must have been adopted. He leaves home to strike it on his own in life, and finds jobs at a gas station and then a travelling carnival. His misadventures include becoming the target of a crazed sniper, the stud lover for a motorcycle stuntwoman, and striking it obscenely rich by inventing a nose support for eyeglasses. He also meets and falls in love with the sweet Marie (Bernadette Peters). Clueless enough to get into all sorts of trouble, Johnson is also oblivious enough to walk out of every conundrum almost unscathed.

The Jerk is not slapstick, it's not witty, it's not tongue in cheek, and it's not satirical. It's simply dumbfounding in its lack of any sharp edge or actual meaningful comedy. Any laughs generated are plain uncomfortable, mostly consisting of laughing at someone rather than with him. Director Carl Reiner gives the film a decrepit look that makes it appear older than its era, and Steve Martin, who co-wrote the screenplay, simply tries too hard at playing the fool and achieves no refinement.

Only Peters emerges with any credit, adequately delivering her persona of breathlessly soft-spoken passion.

The Jerk is an impudent clown re-directing his humour from children to adults, and wondering why the big red nose is somehow not so funny.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Elephant Man (1980)

2011-12-25T20:30:00.000-08:00

The true tragic story of Joseph (John) Merrick, a horribly disfigured man who lived in London of the late 1800s, The Elephant Man is a movie that finds tenderness deep within abomination.

Dr. Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) tracks down the frighteningly distorted Elephant Man, a freakshow owned by the brutal Bytes (Freddie Jones). The Elephant Man is actually John Merrick (John Hurt), born with a disease that caused extreme enlargement of his skull, skin outgrowths, a uselessly overgrown right arm, and a mangled spine. After initially examining Merrick purely as a medical exercise, Treves delves deeper and discovers that Merrick is intelligent and can actually talk and read.

London Hospital's Governor (John Gielgud) eventually agrees to make a room available to house and care for Merrick. Gradually London's upper classes, including theatre star Madge Kendal (Anne Bancroft) hear about The Elephant Man and start to visit him, although the hospital's night watchman continues a side-business of profiteering. Bytes has plans to regain control of Merrick as a meal ticket, and Treves has to deal with the guilt of continued exploitation.

Ironically, The Elephant Man was one of the more mainstream films created by director and co-writer David Lynch. Staying close to historical facts, Lynch introduces Merrick with masterful artistry. For the first 30 minutes of the film Merrick is only seen in glimpses, under a shroud or from behind a curtain. Only once the context is set, the locales established, Merrick's suffering outlined, and the characters of Treves and Bytes introduced is Lynch ready to reveal The Elephant Man. It's a mature strategy of patience that works brilliantly in building anticipation and humanizing the subject prior to foisting him upon the screen.

Lynch and cinematographer Freddie Francis make excellent use of the black and white photography to recreate the seedy London back alleys where sleaze thrives, and to capture the earliest days of industrialization and nascent medical progress.

A still svelte Anthony Hopkins gives a complex performance as Dr. Treves, a man who initially just sees in Merrick an opportunity to advance his status. Hopkins allows Treves his pompous moment of bluster in front of his London medical establishment colleagues, but soon steers the character to a much more distinguished role as Merrick's gateway to society. But the doctor's journey not yet over, as Hopkins has to convey Treves' mounting revulsion that he may have only succeeded in helping Merrick move from one freakshow to another, albeit a high class one.

John Hurt performs admirably underneath a mountain of make-up, and projects emotion with physical gestures and through a monstrously disfigured face. It does not take long for Hurt's eyes to channel trauma, joy, pain and longing. Hurt completely overcomes Merrick's deformation and releases the human within.

In the support roles, Freddie Jones, John Gielgud, Anne Bancroft and Wendy Hiller provide serious depth to the outstanding cast.

Society's response to tragic suffering brings out the best and the worst of human behaviour. The Elephant Man captures the base instinct to stand, stare, and profit, as well as the noble ability to bend down and help. The film leaves no doubt as to which course of action causes civilization to move forward.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

CD Review: The Somberlain, by Dissection (1993)

2011-12-24T15:06:00.000-08:00

Dissection's first album, The Somberlain features dark, ambitious and sometimes uneven black metal. Several of the tracks make a lasting impression, but all of them demonstrate a refreshingly high professional quality for a band so young.

Jon Nodtveidt, Dissection's troubled leader, was all of 18 years old when The Somberlain was created, and the album demonstrates the maturity of a mid-career talent rather than a neophyte. The best tracks stand the test of time as prime examples of the powerful forces that could be unleashed by the channelled intensity of black metal.

Black Horizons launches the album and establishes Dissection's sound with over eight minutes of brooding clouds melodically gathering in dark greys and gaining momentum in the distant skies. The guitars of Nodtveidt and fellow axeman John Zwetsloot create an impressively impenetrable wall of sound, supported by Ole Ohman's controlled drums.

The title track The Somberlain continues in the same vein, a thematic sequel of sorts to Black Horizons as the riffs gain energy and the black rain starts to pour down, creating a running stream thick with light-absorbing sludge. In The Colds Winds Of Nowhere brings Peter Palmdahl's bass to the forefront to shake any remaining life signs off the tree as Dissection unfurl a gloomy shroud of sound to obliterate the remaining faint light.

Most interesting is Mistress Of The Bleeding Shadow, which borrows the main theme from Trouble's The Tempter, places it in an abandoned citadel, surrounds it with shuttered windows, padlocked doors and musky furniture, and paints the whole morbid scene in black.

In as far as blackness can shine, The Somberlain occasionally sparkles.

Band:

Jon Nodtveidt - Vocals, Guitars
John Zwetsloot - Guitars
Peter Palmdahl - Bass
Ole Ohman - Drums

Songlist (ratings out of 10):

1. Black Horizons - 9
2. The Somberlain - 8
3. Crimson Towers - n/a (short instrumental)
4. A Land Forlorn - 7
5. Heaven's Damnation - 7
6. Frozen - 7
7. Into Infinite Obscurity - n/a (short instrumental)
8. In The Cold Winds Of Nowhere - 8
9. The Grief Prophecy / Shadows Over A Lost Kingdom - 7
10. Mistress Of The Bleeding Sorrow - 9
11. Feathers Fell - n/a (short instrumental)

Average: 7.75

Produced by Dissection.
Engineered by Dan Swano.

All Ace Black Blog Heavy Metal CD Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Vanilla Sky (2001)

2011-12-24T12:30:00.000-08:00

In a remake of the 1997 Spanish film Open Your Eyes, Tom Cruise disfigures his face in a bizarre science fiction romance that alternates between magical moments and utter incoherence. Vanilla Sky ultimately pulls itself together, but cannot fully discard an annoying aura of irritating smugness.

David Aames (Cruise) has inherited the vast riches of his father's publishing empire, and he is enjoying the playboy life of being young, handsome and wealthy in New York. Model Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz) is David's friend with benefits who wishes that she was more, while author Brian Shelby (Jason Lee) is perhaps David's one true buddy.

Brian shows up at one of David's parties with new acquaintance Sofia Serrano (Penelope Cruz), and a connection immediately takes hold between Sofia and David. They spend the night talking and falling in love with an unfamiliar intensity, but the following morning David gets into Julie's car, and she intentionally drives off a bridge, killing herself and horribly disfiguring David.

The rehabilitation of David involves depression, re-constructive surgery, wearing a face mask, sessions with psychologist Dr. McCabe (Kurt Russell), and the technology of cryonic suspension through the services of the mysterious Life Extension corporation. Although he appears to salvage the relationship with Sofia, David's dejection, guilt and paranoia start to severely affect his mind, and sorting out reality from imagination becomes increasingly difficult.

Director Cameron Crowe leaves behind his normal emphasis on small human moments and overcomplicates Vanilla Sky by mixing David's flashbacks with scenes of his reality and others manufactured by his imagination. While the unhinged structure and highly artistic style maintain interest, the film is a puzzle that gets progressively more annoying rather than challenging. Just when Vanilla Sky threatens to collapse in a heap of fragmented bombast, it is rescued by a solid and emotionally fulfilling final 20 minutes that deciphers David's ordeal in a futuristic package.

Tom Cruise co-produced, and the intention of highlighting his acting talent by hiding behind a hideous facial disfigurement could not have been too far from his mind. Cruise's career will always be remembered more for his looks than his acting, a curse that handsome stars have to live with. He is a more than adequate performer, but his concentration and talent simply cannot compete with his natural charisma and the megawatt smile. His non-disfigured scenes with Cruz generate the genuine warmth of two souls falling in love that no amount of acting behind scars or a mask can match.

Cruz and Diaz bring their attractive personalities to Vanilla Sky, Cruz all coquettish Europeanisms and Diaz brash blondness dancing on the perimeter of the self-destruct button.

Vanilla Sky captivates and enthralls, agitates, bewilders and baffles. The journey is worthwhile, but it is not without some unfortunately befuddling moments.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: To Have And Have Not (1944)

2011-12-23T17:00:00.000-08:00

The debut of Lauren Bacall and her first teaming with Humphrey Bogart are the highlights of To Have And Have Not, a story of romance and intrigue during the early days of the Seconds World War. Almost a remake of Casablanca, To Have And Have Not is distinguished and enlivened by the sharp sparring between Bogart and Bacall playing two self-centred characters unable to resist falling in love in a foreign land.

It's 1940, and the French Caribbean island of Martinique is feeling the shockwaves of the war in Europe. The Nazi-friendly Vichy government is in control, and looking for skulking Free France agents. American Harry Morgan (Bogart) minds his own business running a fishing boat while living at the Hotel Martinique, but in one day his neutral life is severely disrupted: Marie Browning (Bacall), a young American travelling alone, arrives in Martinique and moves into the room next door, and Frenchy, the hotel owner, seeks Morgan's help to smuggle some Free France activists.

Morgan calls Marie "Slim", she calls him "Steve". Sparks fly between them. Initially reluctant to help Frenchy, Morgan finally agrees to undertake the smuggling mission, primarily to make enough money to help Slim leave Martinique. But she decides to stay with him and they both become involved in helping Free France agents, as the local authorities close in.

Director Howard Hawks and screenwriters Jules Furthman and William Faulkner did not leave much of Ernest Hemingway's novel intact, which is likely a good thing, Hawks claiming that Hemingway himself said that the book, set in Cuba, was "a bunch of junk" .

Instead, Hawks set out to recreate as much of Casablanca as he could. Fort de France, Martinique is a fine alternative setting for an exotic port city during the war, and most of the other To Have And Have Not plot elements are not-so-subtle imitations of the legendary story of Rick's Cafe Americain. From the busy lounge to the piano player to the French resistance seeking Bogart's help all the way down to the local French lawman's name (Renard as opposed to Renault), To Have And Have Not aims for flattery by close imitation.

Despite lacking in freshness, fortunately this retelling of essentially the same story does stand strongly on its own thanks to the talent involved, and the strength of the one main original component: the relationship between Bogart's Captain Morgan and Bacall's Slim. Bogart was 44 at the time of filming, Bacall was 19, and remarkably, Slim became the first female screen character to equal the cool arrogance and inexhaustible self-belief of the Bogart persona, and Bacall the first actress to match Bogart's sheer captivating screen presence.

The two were made for each other on and off the screen, and in To Have And Have Not, it does not take their characters long to find this out. The film sparkles during the many scenes in which Morgan and Slim match wits, as they jointly arrive at the conclusion that they belong to each other despite both possessing forceful streaks of individualism.

The rest of To Have And Have Not gallops along with a well-rehearsed agility, Bogart's magnetism overcoming secondary characters that are game but not as sharply defined or as memorable as their Casablanca counterparts. There is too much of Walter Brennan's drink-obsessed Eddie and not enough of Dan Seymour's sturdy Renard, nor does Dolores Moran get enough to do, several of her scenes apparently excised in favour of shining a brighter spotlight on Bacall, despite Moran carrying on an affair with Hawks during filming.

To Have And Have Not is Casablanca through a just slightly distorted mirror, but emerging through the smoke and on the screen is a simmering love story between a young ingenue and a grizzled legend, with a passion that both overshadows and elevates the film that spawned it.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

CD Review: The Sound Of Perseverance, by Death (1998)

2011-12-22T14:00:00.000-08:00

The seventh and final studio album by Florida's death metal pioneers Death threatens to catch fire on a few occasions, but ignites just once. To Forgive Is To Suffer arrives late in The Sound Of Perseverance songlist, and ties up all the loose ends with a harrowing melody that serves as the theme for the next black night of evil, riffs pregnant with menace to harm most painfully.

At under six minutes, To Forgive Is To Suffer is among the shorter tracks on the album, and more of the selections could have benefited from trimming. Spirit Crusher stretches itself to almost seven minutes, but would have been sharper with a couple of minutes lopped off. An awkward start and a meandering middle section dilute some terrific power and fury. Similarly Flesh And The Power It Holds (8+ minutes) and Moment Of Clarity (7+) include catchy segments featuring the assured guitar work of Chuck Schuldiner and Shannon Hamm, but suffer from not insignificant stretches of wilderness.

The bonus track cover of Judas Priests' Painkiller does everything right and adds a soulfully interesting wrinkle to one of the solos, Death paying tribute to one of metal's transformational tracks.

After The Sound Of Perseverance band founder and main influence Schuldiner suspended Death and evolved his sound under the name Control Denied, but he soon passed away from brain cancer at the end of 2001. The Sound Of Perseverance may not be a masterpiece, but it's a good testimonial to Schuldiner's essential contribution to metal.

Band:

Shannon Hamm - Guitar
Chuck Schuldiner - Guitars, Vocals
Scott Clendenin - Bass
Richard Christy - Drums

Songlist (ratings out of 10):

1. Scavenger Of Human Sorrow - 7
2. Bite The Pain - 6
3. Spirit Crusher - 8
4. Story To Tell - 7
5. Flesh And The Power It Holds - 8
6. Voice Of The Soul - 7
7. To Forgive Is To Suffer - 10
8. Moment Of Clarity - 8
9. Painkiller - 10 (bonus track)

Average: 7.89

Produced by Jim Morris and Chuck Schuldiner.
Engineered, Mixed and Mastered by Jim Morris.

All Ace Black Blog Heavy Metal CD Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Adaptation (2002)

2011-12-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

A film about the struggles of writing the script for the film is a desperate attempt to break through a severe case of writer's block with flashes of genius. Adaptation sparkles in parts, infuriates in others, until it loses its nerve and fizzles meekly into contrived skulking around the swamps.

Writer Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) has been commissioned to create a screenplay out of The Orchid Thief, a book by Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) chronicling the adventures of John Laroche (Chris Cooper), a maverick Floridian involved in the collection of rare orchids with Seminole Indians.

Charlie finds it impossible to squeeze a screenplay out of Orlean's book, which mostly consists of lyrical statements about the beauty of flowers. Not helping matters is Donald Kaufman (again Nicolas Cage), Charlie's twin brother, who is also a screenwriter and crashing at Charlie's apartment. Donald gets on a roll writing a routine serial killer screenplay, inspired after attending a seminar by screenwriting guru Robert McKee (Brian Cox).

Donald's completed script is immediately snapped up for a large sum, heaping more pressure on Charlie. He finally succumbs and seeks the help of McKee, and together Charlie and Donald make contact with Orlean to try and understand her motivations for writing the book. The brothers uncover much more to the story of the orchid thief than what Orlean included in her best seller, leading to a messy confrontation in Florida.

Charlie Kaufman, Susan Orlean, John Laroche, and Robert McKee are all real people, and The Orchid Thief is a real book. Donald Kaufman and the convoluted post-book relationship between Orlean and Laroche are not real. Kaufman inserts himself into his own adaptation, and vigorously mixes reality with fiction to produce an intriguing if disorienting narrative.

As a story of the heavy emptiness that can crush a writer struggling to create, Adaptation is a welcome homage to the art of finding the right words to convey less obvious experiences. Cage provides a voice-over as Charlie Kaufman's thoughts race in all directions except the useful one, and his stream of jumbled ideas often reflects what has already transpired on the screen.

Adaptation does lose its way in the final half hour, chucking most of the writer's-block discourse overboard and careening into a climax that involves drugs, infidelity, shotguns, swamp chases, car crashes and alligators. It may be Kaufman's attempt to sharply poke Hollywood's insistence on inserting empty thriller elements into even the most cerebral of films, but the phony action just undermines most of what preceded it.

The weak conclusion does not, however, diminish from three terrific central performances, four when accounting for Cage's incredible double role. Cage appears to effortlessly gives Charlie and Donald separate yet linked personas, Charlie a borderline neurotic but still trying to be more responsible than the carefree and almost reckless Donald. In most of Cage's scenes he acts opposite himself, convincingly enough that the gimmicky aspects of the dual role are quickly forgotten and replaced by sheer admiration.

Streep's performance is powered by a mischievous undercurrent of barely concealed sensuality that hints early and often that there is a lot more going on in her life than just flowers. The Orlean character is victimized by the film's ending, but Streep survives the muddle. Cooper won the Supporting Actor Academy Award for a long-haired, gap-toothed performance as John Laroche, a man comfortably at ease with his outside-the-lines path in life.

In a final ironic acknowledgement of Adaptation's successful blurring of the lines between reality and fiction, both Charlie and Donald are credited as screenwriters, and the film is dedicated to Donald. The script was nominated for an Academy Award, making Donald Kaufman the first fully fictitious person nominated for an Oscar.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Mildred Pierce (1945)

2011-12-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

A classic film noire, Mildred Pierce ensures that after endless struggles, none of its characters enjoy a happy ending. Fortunes are squandered, loyalties betrayed, businesses ruined, love lost, and shots fired in a delicious cocktail centred around all-too-human failures. Joan Crawford in the title role dominates a cast of characters dripping with barely disguised devious self-interest.

The film starts with the murder of Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott), shot multiple times by an unseen assailant at a beach house. Monte's wife, Mildred Pierce Beragon (Joan Crawford) tries to frame long-time friend and frustrated suitor Wally Fay (Jack Carson) for the murder, but the police don't buy it: they arrest Mildred's first husband Albert Pierce (Bruce Bennett) and accuse him of being the shooter, motivated by jealousy. Upon hearing this, Mildred claims to have murdered Beragon herself, and recounts her story in flashback.

Mildred's marriage to Albert fell on hard times when he lost his job, and they separated. Mildred struggles to make something out of her life, and sacrifices everything for the pleasure of her daughters Veda (Ann Blyth), a spoiled teenager who wants the best of everything and thinks her mother classless, and 10-year old tomboy Kay. Mildred works her way up from a lowly waitress to a restaurant tycoon, with help from Wally's business acumen and the management know-how of friend Ida (Eve Arden).

Katy dies from pneumonia, but nothing is good enough for Veda. Mildred's troubles escalate when she falls for useless philanderer Monte Beragon, eventually marrying him in the hope that his pleasure-seeking ways will make Veda happy. But Veda is self-obsessed, mean-spirited, and insists that all planets revolve around her, resulting in a descent to tragedy.

After more than twenty years at MGM, Joan Crawford's career seemed to be on an irreversible downward trajectory. Mildred Pierce was her first movie for Warner Bros, and her captivating performance was rewarded with the Academy Award for Best Actress. Crawford infuses Pierce with steely determination undermined by the fatal flaw of smothering her daughter with a love of unchecked materialism, launching Veda into an orbit of doom. Mildred is a perfect tragic heroine, doing everything in her power to serve her daughter and being rewarded with a succession of disasters.

Ann Blyth is every parent's worst nightmare as Veda, a rotten apple fallen at the base of the tree and as evil as a manipulative teenager can get. Veda learns all the wrong lessons from her mother, filtering out the love and sacrifice and only internalizing an ever-growing need for status. Blyth's ability to switch from hateful schemer to tearful victim is all too chilling. Among the men, Jack Carson delivers an honest performance as Wally Fay, a man who always makes it clear where he stands, open about his relentless pursuit of Pierce and trading sharp banter with Ida.

The screenplay (co-written by William Faulkner) simplifies the James M. Cain novel in a classic example of edgy adaptation that breaks past the need to include every detail from the book. Director Michael Curtiz keeps Mildred Pierce moving at a brisk pace, making effective use of his trademark artistry with shadows and contrasts.

Mildred Pierce is a cautionary tale about the blind spot that parental love can cause. The monster that feeds on devotion grotesquely decomposed into materialism just grows bigger with every meal.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Parallax View (1974)

2011-12-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

With the high-profile assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in the previous dozen years, the attempt on the life of Governor George Wallace in 1972, corruption oozing out of the Nixon White House and deep mistrust of the government over the Vietnam War, conspiracy theories were mainstream in the early 1970s. The Parallax View is a botched attempt to confirm that, indeed, government-sponsored assassin teams are crawling all over the landscape killing people to serve some unstated but clearly evil purpose.

Newspaper reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) is covering Independence Day celebrations at the Seattle Space Needle when Senator Charles Carroll is assassinated. A judicial commission concludes that the gunman acted alone. Three years later fellow reporter Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss) visits Frady and insists that her life is in danger: six other people who were also present at the Space Needle have since mysteriously died. Soon enough, Carter herself is dead.

Frady, a former alcoholic, starts to investigate despite the misgivings of his editor Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn), and travels to the small town of Salmontail, where a judge who witnessed the Carroll assassination supposedly drowned while fishing. After tangling with the local sheriff's department Frady uncovers evidence of something called The Parallax Corporation, seemingly a recruitment organization for assassins. As Frady delves further into the events surrounding the Carroll murders and Parallax, he becomes a target until he fakes his death and applies to Parallax himself under an assumed identity.

The Parallax View stumbles badly and early as any semblance of an intellectual approach is quickly ditched in favour of abject and random mayhem completely at odds with the film's premise. Supposedly surgically precise killing teams get sloppy in a hurry. Explosions become common: both a boat and an airplane are destroyed by messy bombs that don't seem to raise any interest from police authorities. A plot to murder Frady is hatched and clumsily bungled at a remote dam site. And The Parallax View suffers from reporter-becomes-superhero syndrome: Frady can out-punch a sheriff's deputy, drown the sheriff, tail a professional assassin all around town without being noticed, and survive three separate attempts on his life, almost comically reappearing unscathed at the office of his newspaper editor after every brush with death.

The film does not even begin to offer theories on what is motivating all the killing. A lot of screen time is invested working up the six other murders related to Senator Carroll's assassination, but no explanation is ever provided for any of the actual or attempted killings. This is a likely intentional underlining of the all-powerful-dark-forces-getting-away-with-anything premise, but it also smacks of lazy film-making: allow the bad guys to kill at their leisure without the burden of explaining themselves.

In amid the dropping bodies and gaping plot holes, Warren Beatty meanders through the film attempting to act cool but appearing mostly disinterested. His lack of emotional reaction to all the violence comes across as a robotic detachment from the evil supposedly surrounding him, and combined with his remarkable survival skills make Joe Frady a character that can only exist on paper.

Director Alan J. Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis almost succeed in keeping the film interesting with some excellent framing, dynamic angles and some terrific camera placements, the scenes at the Seattle Space Needle, on-board the threatened airliner and at the auditorium where the film climaxes being particular highlights.

Conspiracies only work when less is known about them. The Parallax View attempts to keep the shrouds dark, dusty and menacing. Instead, it stumbles on cheap carpet and falls flat into the harsh light.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Johnny English (2003)

2011-12-20T09:00:00.000-08:00

Rowan Atkinson throws Mr. Bean, James Bond and Inspector Clouseau in a blender to create Johnny English, a secret agent comedy with extremely familiar ingredients but mixed in the right proportions.

Incompetent British secret service agent Johnny English (Atkinson) is inadvertently responsible for the death of England's top spy, Agent One. English then flubs his security assignment at Agent One's funeral, allowing a bomb to kill most of MI7's other top spies. As one of the few surviving agents, English is pressed into field service to investigate a plot to steal the Crown Jewels.

English teams up with Agent Blough (Ben Miller) to investigate flamboyant French prison magnate Pascal Sauvage (John Malkovich), who appears to have a nefarious plan to take control of England. Interpol Agent Lorna Campbell (Natalie Imbruglia) eventually joins forces with English and Blough as they race between England and France to stop Sauvage having himself appointed King and turning all of England into a prison.

Almost every set-piece scene in Johnny English is derived from another movie. The car chase, the cocktail party, the high-rise break-in, and the mansion infiltration are basic components of the genre, and director Peter Howitt lines them up and methodically checks them off, often with just enough of a funny twist to maintain the comic momentum. With three screenwriters sharing the credit, hard work went into punching up the script, but it still defaults to exactly what can be expected if Mr. Bean takes a run at James Bond.

Satirizing a series that rarely takes itself seriously is a risky business, but Atkinson makes the better moments of Johnny English work well, milking his ability to fake authority and project unconvincing confidence for all its worth, as he falls into every possible car-sized pothole on his way to becoming a national hero. Ben Miller gets the dubious privilege of playing the straight man to English's bumbling fool, and Natalie Imbruglia does her best impression of Barbara Bach in The Spy Who Loved Me as the exotic agent who teams up with English.

John Malkovich enjoys the compounded pleasure of letting loose with bucketfuls of villainy while portraying the French as the slimiest enemies of England in a performance that is all hair and dismissive European uppityness.

What Johnny English lacks in originality it makes up for in well-intentioned laughs and sharp delivery. English never figures out how to fire his handgun, but he nevertheless hits most of the intended targets.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Muppets (2011)

2011-12-19T10:00:00.000-08:00

A wafer thin exercise in nostalgia, The Muppets celebrates the frantically positive attitude of the 1970s critters, but fails to add anything new or worthwhile to remember.

Walter, a muppet, and Gary (Jason Segel) are brothers growing up in Smalltown. When Gary and his long-term fiancée Mary (Amy Adams) invite Walter along for a trip to Los Angeles, he is thrilled to finally have a chance to visit the Muppet Theater. But when they get there, they find the place abandoned and decrepit, and Walter overhears a plan by evil developer Mr. Richman (Chris Cooper) to buy the place, raze it to the ground, and drill for oil.

Walter races to find Kermit and convinces him to reunite the old gang, put on a Muppet Show telethon, and raise the required $10 Million to buy back the Muppet Theater. A road trip follows, and Kermit tracks down the likes of Fozzie Bear in a Reno dive struggling as a stand-up comic, Gonzo as a successful plumbing tycoon, drummer Animal undergoing anger management therapy in a group that includes Jack Black, and Miss Piggy as a fashion magazine editor in Paris.

The reunited muppets convince television executive Veronica (Rashida Jones) to broadcast the telethon. As preparations for the show get underway, Kermit and Miss Piggy try to sort out their feelings for each other, Walter struggles with his destiny, Gary has to decide if The Muppets or Mary are more important in his life, and The Muppets have to overcome Mr. Richman's attempts to disrupt their efforts.

While it's always great to enjoy time with Kermit and the gang, the generally forgettable songs and production numbers are directed at the very young, and the script (co-written by Segel) is utterly predictable and lacking in anything that can be construed as wit or genuine laughs. There are some self-depreciating moments, but they smack more of desperation than confidence.

Jason Segel channels Dick Van Dyke at his least convincing, an actor not able to move beyond portraying the role as anything more than entertainment at a party for six year olds. Amy Adams goes through The Muppets almost openly wondering what on earth she is doing.

A long list of names make cameo appearances, including Whoopi Goldberg, Alan Arkin, Emily Blunt, Neil Patrick Harris, Selena Gomez, Mickey Rooney and Judd Hirsch, in a case of too many well-wishers suffocating the party.

The Muppets is a reunion with long-lost friends: some warm memories are shared, but ultimately the experience does emphasize that yes, the world has firmly moved on.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Simone (2002)

2011-12-18T21:00:00.000-08:00

A satirical look at the rampant power of movie stars and the diminished emphasis on artistic creativity and directors with vision, Simone (also known as S1m0ne) is engaging without ever rising above its basic premise.

The latest project of film director Viktor Taransky (Al Pacino) is falling apart: his leading lady Nicola Anders (Winona Ryder) throws a fit and quits the movie prior to completion. For his failed efforts, Taransky is fired by studio head Elaine Christian (Catherine Keener), who also happens to be his ex-wife. Hank (Elias Koteas), a trenchcoated creepy tech geek about to lose a battle with cancer, provides Taransky with sophisticated software that can create a lifelike virtual movie star. Taransky puts it to use, creates an alluring actress that he calls Simone (Rachel Roberts), a short form of Simulation One, and inserts her into his film in place of Nicola. No one notices that Simone is not real; the film is a huge success, and Simone becomes the newest movie superstar, albeit a rarely seen one.

Taransky's reputation is restored and he proceeds to place Simone in several movies, her popularity growing to international levels despite her rare public appearances, always remotely and tightly controlled and manipulated from behind the screen and keyboard by Taransky. Elaine rediscovers a sudden romantic interest in her ex-husband, and develops an insane jealously of the non-existent Simone. Eventually all the lies make Taransky's life as miserable as dealing with the likes of Nicola, but he finds that extinguishing Simone's career is much more complex than he could have imagined.

Although technologically Simone was quickly surpassed with the rapid evolution of sophisticated animation in real movies, its two messages do continue to resonate: fantasy may be easier to deal with than reality, and beware the most idealistic dream: it may just become real.

Taransky's initial intolerance of diva behaviour is understandable, and his virtual creation appears to satisfy all his wishes: Simone is perfectly compliant, and says only what is on Taransky's mind. Fantasy has its immediate attractions, and as much as director and writer Andy Niccol is applying this concept to dealing with stars carrying overinflated egos, the same is true for society as a whole, most notably in the escapism provided by the movies themselves as well the world of hide-behind-the-screen digital entertainment.

Also true is the power of creations to take over the world of their creators. In a story as old as (Victor) Frankenstein's monster, Simone eventually dominates Viktor Taransky's life to an extent that no self-obsessed human actress could have managed. It proves easier to unleash the fantasy than control its impact, and the virtual Simone creates overwhelmingly real trouble for Taransky.

Al Pacino does not need to stretch to bring Taranski to life, filled with faux victimization and grandiose ideals of his artistic merits. Simone carries a biting undertone of self-directed satire: Viktor is as insufferable as the stars that he complains about. Evan Rachel Wood as his daughter does well to ride the line between pleasantly precocious and annoyingly perfect, while Winona Ryder gets just two scenes, but is captivating in both.

The rest of the supporting cast is relatively bland, Catherine Keener's studio executive sticking close to stereotype and Rachel Roberts understandably remaining mostly a pretty face with a pixilated smile.

Simone entertains and poses interesting questions about the impact of virtual reality, but does not necessarily always find the most interesting of real-world answers.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Requiem For A Heavyweight (1962)

2011-12-18T18:00:00.000-08:00

Once the final fight is lost, boxing lives still need to be lived. Requiem For A Heavyweight is a depressingly clear-eyed story of frequent defeat leading to abject despair.

Long past his glory years, aging boxer Louis "Mountain" Rivera (Anthony Quinn) is being pounded in the ring by a young Cassius Clay. After losing the lopsided fight, Rivera's boxing career is declared over: any more punches to his eye would cause permanent damage. Rivera takes the news hard, but it's even worse for his manger Maish (Jackie Gleason): he has mounting debts with loan sharks, and Rivera is his only meal ticket. More circumspect is corner man Army (Mickey Rooney), who sees the writing on the wall, but is equally loyal to Maish and Rivera and cannot break from either.

Rivera has no life skills to turn to, but employment office worker Grace Miller (Judy Harris) connects with him and sets up a job interview for Rivera to mentor children at a summer camp. The shrewd Maish has other plans: he needs to push Rivera into the crude world of professional wrestling to try and make enough money to pay off his debts. Rivera's fate hangs in the balance, but having no track record of good decision making, the odds are stacked against him.

The Rod Serling story oozes pessimism. Once Rivera's fists are no longer adequate to provide him with a career, he has nothing else to fall back on: neither the intellect to avoid being duped by Maish into getting drunk ahead of his interview, nor the resolve to break free of his past and cut links with Maish and Army. Although life opens a window of opportunity and provides a helping hand in the form of Grace, Rivera's slide towards being a freak show performer is rapid, sad and irreversible.

In a strong and affecting performance, what Anthony Quinn does provide Rivera is a deep sense of pride and self-awareness, capturing a man realizing that in the past, he had a shot. This will need to sustain the once proud contender into a future that promises only a downward spiral of increasing humiliation.

Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rooney give sweaty presence to the desperate characters who live in boxing's filthy corners, trying to hitch a ride to success on the back of a dim boxer but neither talented enough to actually guide his career nor smart enough to avoid the deep financial crises that come to dominate Maish's life. Julie Harris as Grace is the shining beacon of light bravely cutting through the gloom of Rivera's darkening destiny. Salvation is there for the taking, but Rivera is heading away from it too fast to hold on.

A young Cassius Clay makes an appearance as himself, pummelling Rivera in an impressive point-of-view sequence to open the movie and close out Rivera's career. One real boxer on the way up to the highest peak of the sports world, another fictional boxer on the way to the sports dustbin. The rest of Requiem For A Heavyweight is about life immediately after boxing delivers a knock-out punch, and unsurprisingly features no action in the ring. Director Ralph Nelson makes excellent use of black and white cinematography to portray the grim underbelly of the sport, a world of men uselessly dreaming of championships while living in near-squalor.

Requiem For A Heavyweight is a story of what happens when the dream of sports glory shatters, an all too common occurrence in real life but a rare and welcome entry in the typically rousing world of movie escapism.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Being There (1979)

2011-12-18T10:00:00.000-08:00

A biting satire about the blank intellect that passes for political discourse, Being There was clever in its time but more prescient than even writer Jerzy Kosinski could have imagined. Since 1979, the game of politics has become ever more about the meaningless slogan and the trivial soundbite. It turns out that Chauncey Gardiner wasn't mocking politicians: he was foreshadowing what they would increasingly become.

Chance (Peter Sellers), the elderly gardener at a nondescript house on the tough side of Washington DC, appears to have been born in the house and never stepped foot outside it. His only human contact is the maid, who brings him his meals. Otherwise, Chance watches television, tends to the garden and has little human contact.

When the home's owner dies, the house is closed up and Chance is forced to leave, facing the world for the first time. Impeccably dressed but aimlessly wandering the streets, Chance is accidentally bumped by the limousine of Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine). She misinterprets his name as Chauncey Gardiner, and takes him to her estate for treatment: Eve is the wife of the ailing Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas), one of DC's most powerful back-room political king-makers. Ben takes an immediate liking to Chauncey, whose slow speech and deliberate mannerisms are mistaken for a deep intellect.

Ben introduces Chauncey to the President of the United States (Jack Warden), who quotes on national television Gardiner's trite homilies about managing the national economy being the same as tending to a garden. As Eve finds herself hopelessly attracted to the mysterious Chauncey, a storm of publicity is unleashed with the media, national leaders and international diplomats scrambling to cozy up to the man who appears to have no background but enormous power and insight.

In his penultimate film role, Sellers reminded audiences that his acting skills extended well beyond the superficial laughs of the Pink Panther movies. His Chauncey Gardiner is all about a vacuous adult applying artificially learned behaviour in a magnificently controlled performance, the gaps between action and reaction speaking volumes more than anything he says. A cast of veteran white men, including Douglas, Warden, Richard Basehart and Richard Dysart throw their own sharp darts at Washington DC, where macho posturing has barely progressed from the days of the musket.

Shirley MacLaine doesn't spare the women of DC from Being There's raging satire, her Eve Rand falling hard for Chauncey simply because he is mostly silent and mysterious, and Eve doesn't bother to explore if his mystery is a result of abject stupidity or searing genius. In her efforts to gain Chauncey's attention, MacLaine delivers a memorably comic self-fulfilment scene that matches Meg Ryan's deli theatrics in When Harry Met Sally...

Hal Ashby exposes all that Washington DC has to offer, starting Chauncey's journey on the gritty side of town before transporting him to a world of lavish luxury in the Rand mansion. Ashby keeps the film's focus rightfully on Sellers, drawing a performance that was deservedly nominated for an Academy Award.

Being There holds up a mirror to the power elite and reflects a self-obsessed monster consuming itself with all the wrong priorities. With the passage of time, the mirror has also proved to be a crystal ball.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Descendants (2011)

2011-12-18T00:20:00.000-08:00

Families can be torn apart by accident or on purpose. In the soulfully moving The Descendants, both calamities befall Matt King (George Clooney), and he needs to confront and pacify his tortured emotions while learning the basics of parenting to try and stitch together a family survival plan.

Matt is a lawyer based in Hawaii, and the family trustee for a large and valuable piece of pristine real estate. Matt's life is knocked out of balance when his wife Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) suffers severe head trauma in a boating accident and enters a coma from which she will not recover.

Matt suddenly finds himself the sole parent of two girls. Ten year old Scottie (Amara Miller) is acting all bratty as a reaction to her mother being close to death. 17 year old Alex (Shailene Woodley) has more significant reasons to be upset: just before the boating accident, Alex discovered that her mother was having an affair with real estate agent Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard).

Alex brings in her laid-back friend Sid (Nick Krause) to help her cope, and he is inadvertently a stabilizing influence on the struggling family. Matt breaks the news of Elizabeth's impending death to her father Scott (Robert Forster), and tracks down Brian, whose wife Julie (Judy Greer) is the other victim of the affair. Despite losing a wife and a marriage, Matt must hold on to the remnants of his family and come to grips with a real estate transaction that will have far reaching consequences for his family and Hawaii as a whole.

Every character in The Descendants is dealing with severe loss. Alex and Scottie are losing their mother and the facade of a happy marriage between their parents. Brian, once exposed, is in danger of losing his family and a big commission. Scott is losing his daughter to an accident and his wife to a disease. Julie is losing her marriage. Matt's cousins, who stand to benefit from the land sale, are in danger of losing the opportunity for a big pay day. Even Sid is suffering the after effects of his own family loss.

Matt, at the centre of the maelstrom, is facing losses in every direction: losing his wife, suddenly realizing that he has already lost his marriage, fighting to avoid losing his daughters, losing the respect of his father-in-law, and about to lose his family heritage through a pressure sale. Matt will need to stumble his way out of a maze of sorrow to find a life that holds any remaining meaning, and The Descendants becomes a journey of salvation for a man who refuses to stop looking for life's fire escape.

George Clooney is excellent as a father befuddled by what fate has decided to simultaneously dump on him, and ever so gradually rising to the challenge of making the difficult decisions required to retake control. Clooney is surrounded by a colourful supporting cast with some sharp edges. Shailene Woodley as Alex demonstrates some evolution to graduate from a rebel terrorizing her father to his greatest ally. It's a tender, if relatively jarring, transition.

Judy Greer briefly - but memorably - appeared with Clooney in Three Kings. Her appearance in The Descendants is also relatively brief but most compelling, as the other injured party in a sordid affair. Greer conveys through her eyes a woman's instinct to sense the sharks moving in to kill her marriage long before she can see their beady eyes.

The rest of the characters in The Descendants do their part in full Hawaiian shirts and sandals glory, Beau Bridges (as one of the cousins) and Robert Forster particularly dominant in their scenes but not bothering with any attempts at nuance.

Director Alexander Payne, who allowed a seven year gap to pass since his celebrated Sideways, keeps life's realities at the core of the film. Humour mixes with pathos, fun with frustration, love with fury, family with business, and nature with human legacy. The Descendants ultimately gets on with what families are meant to do: overcome to the best of their imperfect abilities the most immediate challenge; emerge stronger from the experience; and await the inevitable next test.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)

2011-12-14T21:44:00.000-08:00

Based on a Michael Connelly novel, The Lincoln Lawyer tries to sizzle but quickly fizzles into an unsatisfying and improbable courtroom drama.

Los Angeles lawyer Mickey Haller (Matthew McConaughy) operates out of the backseat of a Lincoln Town Car. Specializing in defending low-life criminals that even he believes to be guilty, Mickey is surprised when spoiled rich kid Louis Roulet (Ryan Philippe) selects him to defend a charge of assaulting a high-priced prostitute. Roulet and his powerful mother Mary Windsor (Frances Fisher) are among society's elite, and far from the riff raff that make up Mickey's typical client list.

As Mickey starts probing the Roulet assault charges with the help of investigator Frank Levin (William H. Macy, wasted in a throwaway role), he uncover links to one of his previous murder cases in which Mickey was too hasty to convince the accused (Michael Pena) to plead guilty. Mickey realizes that Roulet is a manipulative criminal enjoying a cunning game in which Mickey himself is being played for a fool. He sets out to rectify matters in the courtroom and on the street.

As hard as it tries to be something more, The Lincoln Lawyer never offers much beyond a poor television episode of Law And Order, injected with some star power. The plot quickly gets too convoluted and is immediately punctured by the most tiresome of coincidences, from Mickey having to deal with a prosecutor who is also his ex-wife (Marisa Tomei), to his incredible abilities to manipulate a hardened jailbird at long distance. And there must have been a good reason why Mickey didn't immediately quit the Roulet case once he understood the web that he had walked into; that reason is never explained.

The ending is hastily wrapped up with little logic, the John Romano script celebrating as Mickey resorts to gang violence, and the final act of justice - and a death penalty punishment, no less - improbably succeeding on the flimsiest parking ticket evidence that any good defence lawyer could have discredited in minutes.

A hunky Hollywood star cruising in the back seat of an impressive black Lincoln is far from enough to save a movie that trades away intellectual content for some paltry style.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Lost In Translation (2003)

2011-12-11T15:30:00.000-08:00

An unexpected encounter that verges on a possible romance in a foreign land, Lost In Translation is a delightful and melancholy story of a potential love that could have blossomed under different circumstances, or that may have never happened except in the most unusual of surroundings. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson are unforgettable as the travellers who cross paths, and pause to jointly explore a certain dead-end.

Bob Harris (Murray) is a once-famous action movie star whose career has been reduced to endorsing alcoholic beverages for the Japanese market, where he remains unjustifiably popular, in return for large cheques. Arriving in Tokyo for a few days of filming commercials and utterly over-run by jet-lag, Harris goes through the motions, mostly hanging out at his hotel bar in between shoots where he struggles, in as far as he cares, to understand what the Japanese director wants him to do. Bob's domestic life appears to also be falling apart, his long distance communication with his wife reduced to trite and tired emotionless exchanges.

Also in Tokyo and staying at the same hotel is a young American couple, Charlotte (Johansson) and John (Giovanni Ribisi). He's a photographer on assignment shooting local music bands; she's suffering through all the warning signs of a wife emotionally and physically abandoned. When John bumps into an airhead starlet (Anna Faris) at the hotel, he never even bothers to introduce Charlotte.

Bob and Charlotte both find themselves unable to sleep and with many hours to kill, and they start to bump into each other in and around a hotel. Charlotte invites Bob to join her on outings to explore the Tokyo nightlife, and they develop a companionship that evolves into a caring friendship, and finally a deep albeit platonic intertwining of forlorn souls.

The two main characters of Lost In Translation are rudderless ships floating in a strange ocean, passing very close to each other, but coming from different directions and heading to unknown destinations. Sofia Coppola writes and directs a most poignant and beautifully photographed film, a heartache encounter between two deeply dissatisfied souls who find fleeting happiness in the unlikeliest of surroundings. Both Bob and Charlotte know that their their lives are in utterly different trajectories, and their relationship has nowhere to go; yet they offer each other an irresistible glimpse of nutritious light in an otherwise gloomy, sleep-derived reality.

Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson deliver deeply affecting performances, both playing against their typical personas. Except for some flickers of wit, Murray leaves his comic days far behind, and creates in Bob Harris a man deeply troubled by his superficial success, watching his decision to chase the cheesiest dollar sink any remaining potential for continued artistic satisfaction. An aura of deep sadness surrounds his every motion, Murray able to project his dark mood on the flashiest of Tokyo surroundings.

Johansson is stunningly deglamourized, her Charlotte a woman staring at the sudden realization that her marriage offers nothing to fill her soul, her self-obsessed husband far from understanding even the basics of what the relationship requires.

Coppola keeps Lost In Translation away from melodrama by injecting doses of life's quirky reality and humour, and while her jokes are mostly at the expense of Japanese society, she paints the world as seen through jaded, confused and bleary eyes, where cultural differences are understandably exaggerated.

Lost In Translation ends with a memorably brave piece of film making, Bob's final words to Charlotte audible only as far as it matters, her reaction a devastatingly beautiful moment of realization that while her future is uncertain, she will always have Tokyo, and life does offer up searing happiness under the most improbable of circumstances.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies of Donald Sutherland

2011-12-10T14:59:00.001-08:00

All Donald Sutherland movies reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

The Dirty Dozen (1967)

Kelly's Heroes (1970)

Animal House (1978)

Ordinary People (1980)

JFK (1991)

Cold Mountain (2003)

The Italian Job (2003)

The Mechanic (2011)

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.
The Index of Movie Stars is here.

The Movies of Natalie Portman

2011-12-10T14:28:00.001-08:00

All Natalie Portman movies reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones (2002)

Cold Mountain (2003)

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith (2005)

Brothers (2009)

Black Swan (2010)

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.
The Index of Movie Stars is here.

The Movies of Samuel L. Jackson

2011-12-10T13:52:00.001-08:00

All Samuel L. Jackson movies reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

Coming To America (1988)

GoodFellas (1990)

Patriot Games (1992)

Out Of Sight (1998)

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

Changing Lanes (2002)

Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones (2002)

S.W.A.T. (2003)

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith (2005)

Inglourious Basterds (2009, voice only, uncredited)

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.
The Index of Movie Stars is here.

The Movies of Robert De Niro

2011-12-10T13:35:00.001-08:00

All Robert De Niro movies reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

Mean Streets (1973)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

Raging Bull (1980)

The Untouchables (1987)

GoodFellas (1990)

Analyze This (1999)

Limitless (2011)

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.
The Index of Movie Stars is here.

The Movies of Kevin Bacon

2011-12-10T13:11:00.001-08:00

All Kevin Bacon movies reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

Animal House (1978)

Footloose (1984)

JFK (1991)

He Said, She Said (1991)

The River Wild (1994)

Apollo 13 (1995)

In The Cut (2003)

Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.
The Index of Movie Stars is here.

Movie Review: The Mechanic (2011)

2011-12-10T11:58:00.000-08:00

A remake of the 1972 Charles Bronson flick, the 2011 version of The Mechanic adds plenty of panache to no great effect. The gaping holes in the plot breed rapidly to create undignified and tattered shreds where the idea of a good movie once resided.

Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) is a professional assassin working for a shadowy organization headed by Dean Sanderson (Tony Goldwyn), in the business of eliminating assorted high-level targets for profit. Dean's partner and Bishop's mentor and confidant is the elderly Harry McKenna (Donald Sutherland), confined to a wheelchair but still sharp of mind, although always neglectful of his black sheep son Steve (Ben Foster).

After dispatching a drug lord, Bishop is startled when his next assignment proves to be disposing of Harry. Dean confirms that Harry is double-crossing the organization, and Bishop proceeds to dutifully execute his one friend in the world. Steve does not know who killed his father, but decides to enter the business, and Bishop takes him under his wing. As they develop into a tandem duo of death, Steve starts to suspect that Bishop did indeed kill his dad, while Bishop uncovers evidence that Dean played him for a fool to justify Harry's assassination. Revenge becomes top of mind for both men.

Whereas The Mechanic's opening sequence meticulously tries to create the aura of assassinations planned with care to the last detail, the rest of the movie quickly disintegrates into wild shootouts and messy killings to which no enforcement authorities ever respond or follow-up. Bishop is always remarkably several steps ahead of everyone else, and easily dispatches hordes of well-armed assassins in action sequences designed for the non-discriminating market. Ben Foster is no match for Jason Statham, and disappears into the contrived shell of a man failing miserably to appear intent on avenging a father who never cared for him.

Donald Sutherland rolls in on a wheelchair, adds undeserved weight to a few scenes, and cashes in his cheque before the halfway point, doubtless happy not to have to hang around as the rest of the humourless mayhem mechanically plays itself out.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

CD Review: Devoid, by Dark Lunacy (2000)

2011-12-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

Metal meets its maker as Italy's Dark Lunacy meld the old with the new in a stunning achievement. Devoid, the band's full-length debut, features a string quartet seamlessly integrating with melodic death meal in a remarkable demonstration of the commonalities between the two genres, and conclusive evidence that metal is the closest spiritual descendant of the most noble form of music.

Dark Lunacy's sound is built on astute melodies, with delightfully complex arrangements and thematic variations within each track to bring out the full texture of instruments that suddenly sound intensely compatible. Two violins, a viola, and a cello from the basis of the guest musicians, while Laura Belli provides the female vocals. The classical music weaves in and out of the metal in mesmerizingly organic arrangements that seem as natural as a blossoming flower.

The highlights are many, but the stand-out tracks are often devastatingly excellent. Dolls sets the tone with the violins introducing the album with the simplest of themes before the drums come thundering in to announce an alluring marriage. Forlorn starts in the narrow back alleys of old Europe with the sounds of traditional folklore Russia filtering in, soon to be joined by a massive guitar riff. Frozen Memory is more than six minutes long, and the final three minutes are simply breathtaking symphonic metal that demands the volume at 11 and the spine at shiver.

December starts with howling winds across the icefields before exploding into the most nimble metal on the album, with frequent pace changes to recount a lost journey into the blowing snow. And late in the album Fall adds an exclamation mark with another seven minutes of soulful holding of the hands between diverse worlds, ending with a choir emanating from the most brooding of shrouded towers.

Devoid is a grand bridge between two cultures, a towering achievement that spans centuries.

Band:

Mike Lunacy - Vocals
Enomys - Guitar, Piano
Harpad - Bass
Baijkal - Drums

Songlist (ratings out of 10):

1. Dolls - 10 *see below*
2. Stalingrad - 8
3. Forlorn - 10
4. Frozen Memory - 10
5. Cold Embrace - 9
6. December - 10
7. Devoid - n/a (short instrumental)
8. Varen'Ka - 8
9. Time For Decay - 7
10. Fall - 10
11. Take My Cry - 7

Average: 8.90

Produced by Mike Lunacy and Enomys.
Engineered by Sighinolfi Simone. Recorded and mixed by Sihinolfi Simone and Ferrari Simone.

All Ace Black Blog Heavy Metal CD Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Ali (2001)

2011-12-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

An earnest biopic of boxing's greatest championship, Ali captures the entertaining circus surrounding the man and the wider social context of his achievements, but not the essence of the human being.

Starting in 1964, and set against the backdrop of the turbulent 1960s and the rise of the Civil Rights movement, the story of Ali is told through a series of episodes capturing the key struggles of his life: his fight to change his name and be accepted as Muhammad Ali rather than Cassius Clay; his shady and prolonged relationship with the Nation of Islam and notorious leaders like Malcolm X; his various relationships with a succession of women; and his multi-year fight with the United States government after his refusal to be drafted into the army, a struggle which went all the way to the Supreme Court and robbed him of more than three prime fighting years.

Sprinkled amongst the personal history are excellent recreations of some of Ali's key bouts including, at age 22, his 1964 defeat of Sonny Liston to gain the world heavyweight title for the first time. The 1971 "fight of the century" against Joe Frazier also receives prominence, but more for the build-up rather than what happened inside the ring.

The final 45 minutes of Ali settle down to recount the tale of the epic Rumble in the Jungle, the 1974 fight and media event hyped by the flamboyant Don King and sponsored by President Mobutu in Kinshasa, Zaire, in which Ali adopted the rope-a-dope tactic and ultimately defeated the brutal George Foreman to regain his title.

Despite the film's length of close to 160 minutes, and an excellent Will Smith performance, Ali's core and motivations remain mostly hidden behind the superficialities. The well known quotes such as "your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see" and "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee" receive plenty of exposure, as does Ali's adamant rejection of the name Cassius Clay, on the basis that it was imposed on his family by a slaver. But otherwise, Ali's personality is reduced to endless taunting of his opponents, and an acknowledged lack of self control with the ladies. The origins of the fires that drove him to success and the building blocks of his personality and boxing talent are conspicuously absent.

Michael Mann directs with respect for his subject and plenty of patience to allow the key chapters of his life unfold, while Will Smith gets into Ali's skin and picks up his distinctive expressions and mannerisms. But the movie is hampered by the absence of any compelling secondary characters, the committee of four screenwriters having to pump-up sportscaster Howard Cossell (Jon Voight) into an unlikely main figure in Ali's career. Cornerman Drew Bundini Brown (Jamie Foxx) and Malcolm X (Mario Van Peebles) also receive undue attention without ever connecting, while Angelo Dundee (Ron Silver) unfortunately remains a peripheral figure.

Ali, much like its subject matter, enjoys many highlights and suffers through some lulls. The overall decision is a victory, but not quite a knock-out.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Stand By Me (1986)

2011-12-08T06:16:00.000-08:00

A nostalgic ode to the innocence of childhood friendships based on a Stephen King novella, Stand By Me is a trip down memory lane enlivened by a willing young cast.

It's 1959 in rural Oregon, and the small community of Castle Rock is buzzing with rumours about a missing teenager. Four 12-year-old friends stumble onto crucial information: the teenager is dead, his body lying by the rail tracks, a two-day walk away. Street-smart Chris (River Phoenix); intellectual Gordie (Wil Wheaton); eccentric Teddy (Corey Feldman) and overweight Vern (Jerry O'Connell) decide to embark on an unlikely trek to find the body and gain the resultant perception of fame.

The dead body is a classic McGuffin and this is of course a journey of self-discovery, with the boys finding themselves and awakening to each other as human beings. The trip along the rail tracks represents the boys' struggle to overcome the travails of childhood and learn the responsibilities of adulthood, while engraving into their psyche a memory of a life-time.

Gordie is haunted and traumatized by the death of his football star older brother Denny (John Cusack). Gordie is sure that his parents would have preferred him to to be dead instead. Gordie is also carrying the hopes of his friends: he is the only one among them expected to go to college and achieve anything in life. Chris is cocky and self-confident, but has already decided on his destiny: he comes from a tough family, and a challenging future is all he sees ahead, although his self-awareness provides him with a remarkably sharp perspective on the world.

Teddy is physically and emotionally scarred: his abusive dad held his ear to a stove, and Teddy hides behind a facade of eccentric bravado. Vern is surprisingly timid and pushed deeper into his shell the more he is bullied about his weight.

Rob Reiner extracts mature and honest performances from his young cast, and keeps most of Stand By Me focused on the kids. The film is very much a perspective on life at age 12, and older teenagers are the dark forces: Kiefer Sutherland is at his snarliest leading a gang of thugs racing to beat Gordie and his friends to the site of the dead body. There are hardly any adults in the movie, with Gordie's parents portrayed as detached and cold hearted, while Richard Dreyfuss mails in a cameo as the grown-up Gordie narrating the story. The soundtrack of classic 1950s tracks increases the wistful sentimentality of the simple story.

Being a pre-teen may be all about simplifying life's complexities down to a tussle among friends; Stand By Me recognizes that at age 12, friendships are the essence of life.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: As Good As It Gets (1997)

2011-12-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

A story of romance between two people on the edge, As Good As It Gets is a thoughtful look at what it takes to uncover the warmth beneath complex, harried and damaged souls. Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt shine as agitated New Yorkers wrapped up in their lives, not looking for love but finding it flickering under the unlikeliest of circumstances.

Melvin Udall (Nicholson) is a New York-based writer. He is also intolerably obsessive-compulsive, racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic. Melvin lives in an apartment building, where his neighbour is gay artist Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear), who has a black marketing agent Frank Sachs (Cuba Gooding, Jr.). Simon and Frank take the brunt of Melvin's insufferable behaviour, as does Simon's dog Verdell.

Melvin's fanatical routine includes eating breakfast daily as the same restaurant, sitting at the same table, and getting served by the same waitress, Carol Connelly (Hunt). A poor single mom of a sickly child, Carol in the only person who can tolerate Melvin, and in turn, he recognizes that he is dependant on her. When Carol starts skipping work to look after her son Spencer (Jesse James), Melvin arranges to pay for high quality medical care to stabilize Spencer's condition, so that Carol can return to work and serve him breakfast.

Simon is brutally mugged, and Frank insists that Melvin take care of Verdell, but Melvin's growing fondness for Carol prompts him to start taking his medication to improve his social skills, and he starts to cope better around people (and dogs). Melvin's relationship with Carol evolves slowly, with his deeply ingrained suspicion of people clumsily colliding with her desperate need for intimacy. Eventually Melvin, the battered Simon and Carol head out on a road trip to visit Simon's parents, and both Melvin and Carol need to confront their true emotions towards themselves and each other.

Under the direction of James L. Brooks, As Good As It Gets shines as a study of two desperately lost souls whose destinies collide over bacon and eggs, with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt both receiving best acting Academy Awards. Nicholson pulls out one of his most memorable performances to bring Melvin to life, a man deeply aware of his failings but standing just short of being able to address them, until he sees first in Verdell and then in Carol a reason to risk radical change. Nicholson makes impressive use of pauses, his eyes beaming with what he needs to say in order to join humanity's norms, but his mouth only able to spout the poison that creates a lonely vacuum around him.

Hunt is impressively equal to Nicholson, and rises to the challenge posed by the script (co-written by Mark Andrus and Brooks): it would have been too easy for Carol to be all-good opposite Melvin's radical offensiveness. Instead, Carol has deep-rooted issues of her own, and her desperation for companionship and a true partner in life allows her as many opportunities as Melvin to take painful missteps in their stuttering relationship.

Greg Kinnear and Cuba Gooding, Jr. add memorably chaotic New York life to Melvin's surroundings, while Shirley Knight as Carol's mom is instrumental in steering her daughter towards some painful but necessary decisions.

As Good As It Gets suffers from some bloating at close to 140 minutes for a romance, and Brooks could have benefited from sharper decisions in the editing room. Some realism is also sacrificed with the speed of Melvin's transition from reclusive and repugnant to half-way cuddlesome. But whenever either Nicholson or Hunt are on-screen the momentum is maintained, and As Good As It Gets proves to be plenty good enough.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Book Review: The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood (1985)

2011-12-04T07:37:00.001-08:00

A bleak vision of a suffocating near-future dystopian society, The Handmaid's Tale is a street level view of what may happen to women in an extreme Christian fundamentalist United States. Margaret Atwood puts forward a disturbing if high unlikely fictional scenario, but the good ideas are undermined by an overly descriptive writing style that spins its wheels in fractured sentences that rarely arrive at satisfying destinations.

The story is told in the first person, as a diary of a Handmaid, the name applied to fertile women who are forced into a life of servant sex surrogacy and assigned to Commanders of the new society, whose Wives are barren. The book imagines a near future where human rights and the US constitution have been suspended, the extreme right has assumed full control of government, authoritarian rule has been imposed, and diseases and toxic poisoning have rendered most of humanity unable to recreate. Women who can still get pregnant and who are deemed to have lived promiscuous lives (according to the broadest definition of lewdness) are arrested and pressed into service as sex servants, suffering through systemic rituals of impregnation by the Commanders.

Atwood paints the society outside the Handmaid's tight existence in the broadest strokes, imagining group titles but leaving most of the details unresolved. There are Eyes and Guardians, who apparently serve as internal spies and security services respectively. There are Marthas (domestic servants) and Aunts (disciplinarian indoctrinators of the Handmaids). There is a Wall where traitors to the regime are hung in a gruesome display of what happens to dissidents. There are group rituals such as Salvaging and Particicution, introduced too late and in the last twenty pages of the book, to demonstrate the savagery of the new rulers.

Unlike George Orwell's 1984, there is little in The Handmaid's Tale to convince that the monstrous new regime is viable, and Atwood resorts to a contrived Historical Notes chapter that fills in some of the more interesting details about her imagined world.

Most of the book is otherwise occupied with the unfocused ramblings inside our Handmaid's head as she goes through the mundane business of living, with whiny recollections of her previous life, her former lover Luke, and her missing daughter. The Handmaid is drawn into illicitly spending more time than necessary with her Commander, although these encounters lead nowhere, and is finally convinced to have sex with the Commander's driver Nick, with whom she develops a complicating relationship. These plot developments are spottily spread over a field of thick non-events, and struggle to maintain momentum.

Atwood uses as much text as possible to say very little, and many of her passages consist of run-on paragraphs constructed from the tiniest of sentences interrupted by an army of commas. It is a tiresome and rarely effective style, which collapses entirely when Atwood's Handmaid starts to cheaply toy with describing events that did not even occur.

The Handmaid's Tale contains the germs of interesting if far fetched ideas, stifled by a writing style more suited to a draggy and tragic romance than a thoughtful examination of a fearsome future.

Published in softcover by Seal Books.
293 pages including Historical Notes.

All Ace Black Blog Book Reviews are here.

CD Review: Chaos Born, by Catamenia (2003)

2011-12-03T19:07:00.000-08:00

Finland's Catamenia go about delivering melodic black metal with minimum fuss, touching all the necessary bases, occasionally injecting some flash but generally avoiding excessive limelight. The band's sixth album, Chaos Born is high on consistency, the latest incarnation of the ever-changing line-up emerging as an integrated six-piece, with Mika Tonning's vocals to the fore, the guitars of Riku Hopeakoski and Ari Nissila energetically supportive with incessant tremolo picking.

There are a couple of highlights on the album. Opener Kuolon Tanssi may be in Finnish, but it builds from an impressive military beat to a melody that sweeps across the icy landscape to meet a clever lead guitar theme. Much later on the album, One With Sorrow brings together folk with death metal for a happy marriage in a remote but vibrant village, the main riff thriving despite a sustained assault from Veikko Jumisko's drums.

The Fear's Shadow is another strong if not as prominent example of Catamenia's sound, the twin guitars creating an impressive wall of sound that derives its main beauty from the proud starkness against which smooth melodies evolve.

The rest of Chaos Born is professional and workmanlike, Catamenia putting on their hard hats and forging honest onyx.

Band:

Mika Tonning - Vocals
Riku Hopeakoski - Guitar
Ari Nissila - Guitar
Timo Lehtinen - Bass
Veikko Jumisko - Drums
Tero Nevala - Keyboards

Songlist (ratings out of 10):

1. Kuolon Tanssi - 9
2. Calm Before The Storm - 7
3. The Fallen Angel Pt. I (Astaroth and Astarte) - 7
4. The Fear's Shadow - 8
5. Mirrorized Thoughts - 7
6. Lost In Bitterness - 7
7. The Era - 7
8. The Fallen Angel Pt. II (The Rising) - 7
9. One With Sorrow - 9
10. Hollow Out - ChaosBorn - 7

Average: 7.50

Produced, Recorded, Mixed and Mastered by Kakke Vahakuopus, Immu Ilmarinen and Catamenia.

All Ace Black Blog Heavy Metal CD Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Limitless (2011)

2011-12-03T17:20:00.000-08:00

A stylish pharmaceutical thriller, Limitless offers plenty of points to ponder and debate, but is ultimately limited by a plot that throws too many underdeveloped ingredients into the chemical mix.

Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is a struggling writer living in New York, close to being down-and-out and incapable of creatively penetrating his computer's blank screen. Dumped by his girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish), Eddie has a chance encounter with his shady former brother-in-law Vernon, who offers him a mystery pill that enhances mental abilities. Eddie takes the pill, and is immediately turbo-charged: his intellect is sharpened beyond comprehension, his energy is limitless, and he develops remarkable powers of connecting information and drawing conclusions that effectively predict the future.

Vernon is soon murdered and Eddie fortuitously gains possession of a large supply of the pills, now labelled NZT. Not surprisingly, shady characters start to stalk him. Fuelled by the chems, Eddie starts and finishes his book in days; regains the attention of Lindy; borrows money from a ruthless loan shark; makes a fortune on the stock market; and gets noticed by energy tycoon Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro). NZT proves to have addictive, dangerous, and potentially lethal side-effects, and Eddie's life effectively spirals out of control. As Van Loon seeks Eddie's exceptional analytical skills to close a major merger, it becomes obvious that a tornado of NZT-induced mayhem is about to touch down on Eddie's life.

A metaphor for modern society's obsession with instant gratification, Limitless is a lesson in the hazards of life's short cuts. The Leslie Dixon script would have packed a greater punch with a more honest conclusion to the perils of skipping achievement on the road to the illusion of success, but nevertheless the pitfalls of taking the least safe road to the end of the rainbow are starkly portrayed.

Another more interesting theme explored by the film is the true potential of the human intellect. Ethics of the drug aside, Limitless explores how much more could be achieved if the remarkable properties of memory, analysis and deduction are harnessed and hitched to boundless energy. The film offers answers confined to greed and self-advancement, but shies away from more adventurous possibilities.

Director Neil Burger unleashes the style in limitless quantity. The film is peppered with plenty of impressive camera shots zooming endlessly forward, and multiple Eddies frequently appear on the screen in the same shot, busy in different corners of the same room. The visual gimmicks suit the subject matter, and enhance the intensely hyper-active, sharply defined multi-tasking effects of the mythical NZT drug.

Burger cannot prevent Limitless from stumbling awkwardly in its final third, as a corrupt lawyer and a tycoon rival to Van Loon are suddenly introduced and merged with the loan shark and his goons to create an unwieldy triple-threat against Eddie, while a hotel room encounter that left Eddie's brief sex partner dead is all but forgotten in the rush to an ending strewn with dead bodies.

Bradley Cooper takes a break from his hangovers to portray Eddie as a man welcoming the competitive advantage that life suddenly hands him. Cooper is convincing as man with a failed marriage and a career rapidly heading in the same direction, grabbing the opportunity to suddenly exceed all expectations thanks to a small transparent pill. The supporting cast leaves little impression, and even Robert De Niro is dangerously close to predictable. Anna Friel and Abbie Cornish as Eddie's ladies, past and present, are given limited screen time to make any meaningful contribution.

Limitless enjoys moments of rousing intensity, but ultimately the high wears off and the experience is limited by the intrusion of more conventional thriller elements.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The African Queen (1951)

2011-12-03T15:24:00.000-08:00

A romance set on a ramshackle boat in Africa of 1914, The African Queen is a classic tale of attraction slowly developing between opposites under extreme stress. Humphrey Bogart finally won a deserved and long-overdue Best Actor Academy Award, while Katharine Hepburn and director John Huston were nominated.

In German East Africa, the rumblings of an outbreak of a great war in Europe is bad news. The British Reverend Sayer (Robert Morley) and his sister Rosie (Katharine Hepburn) have established a mission at a tribal village deep in the jungle. Their only contact with the outside world is through the uncouth Canadian Charlie Allnut, who captains the African Queen, an ageing river supply boat. Allnut stops by the mission every few weeks to deliver mail and supplies.

An agitated German army unit soon arrives, torches the village, rounds up the natives, and hastens the demise of the ailing Reverend. Abandoned in the village ruins, Rosie has no choice but to team up with Charlie to find a safe shore. The prim and proper Rosie and the unkempt Charlie awkwardly navigate around each other in the confined quarters of the African Queen, and Rosie increases the tension by suggesting that they travel down a dangerous stretch of river and use their on-board explosives to ram and destroy a large German gunship patrolling a strategic lake. But slowly, Rosie and Charlie find the common warmth below their incompatible exteriors, fall in love, and jointly continue their implausible mission.

Bogart dominates the film with his sweaty, dirty, but resourceful performance as Charlie Allnut. Not quite as self-centred as many of Bogart's other characters but still looking mainly after his self-interest, Bogart plays Allnut as none-too-sophisticated but world-weary enough to know which direction his boat needs to point in. Allnut is repeatedly manipulated by Rosie into doing what she believes is right, but he always eventually comes around to her way of thinking, several hours or days later.

Katharine Hepburn's Rosie puts on an aura of cold colonial detachment, but it does not take her long to reveal a calculating mischievous personality, followed by a willingness to passionately surrender to Allnut's charms. Rosie is always several steps ahead of Charlie in her thinking and plotting, but she is also patient enough to allow him to catch up, knowing that she needs him in more ways than one.

The third star of the movie is the African Queen herself, a river supply boat beautiful in her ugliness. A perfect companion to Allnut, the African Queen is a direct reflection of his personality: outwardly dishevelled but hiding a large reservoir of inventiveness, and capable, when kicked and pushed, to achieve the unexpected.

John Huston directed most of The African Queen on location in Africa, a risky proposition in 1951, and one of the earliest major productions to venture outside the safety of the Hollywood studios. Huston masterfully confines most of the action on-board Allnut's boat without allowing claustrophobia to creep in. The boat chugs along, hosting the drama unfolding between Charlie and Rosie, navigating through and around the dangers posed by the river, and doggedly making its way to a date with destiny, and movie immortality.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: He Said, She Said (1991)

2011-12-01T18:48:00.000-08:00

A lightweight romantic comedy plays with an interesting premise, achieves little, and walks away leaving a mildly irritating impression. He Said, She Said is a talented cast mostly wasted with a dearth of ideas.

Dan (Kevin Bacon) and Lorie (Elizabeth Perkins) meet as young and competing reporters working for the same newspaper. He is a wild womanizer with shoot-from-the-hip opinions, she is seeking a more mature relationship and has more considered opinions. Opposites attract, and eventually they embark on a romance while gaining increased career fame as duelling columnists and TV personalities. But their differing levels of willingness to commit to a common future catches up with them and the relationship crashes publicly with Lorie throwing a mug at Dan's head on-air.

Script writer Brian Hohlfeld has spent a career writing material for various children's Winnie The Pooh type movies. With real humans and adult emotions he is unfortunately out of his depth. He Said, She Said is rarely funny, only tepidly romantic, and the challenges faced by Dan and Lorie and bland in the extreme: she doesn't wash her coffee cup! He doesn't want to commit! It's all fascinatingly unoriginal, and faced with a script lacking in any spark, co-directors Ken Kwapis and Marisa Silver can inject little life into the proceedings.

The one gimmick is in telling the relationship story, all in flashback, twice over: the first half of the movie represents Dan's viewpoint, while the second half replays the same events but from Lorie's perspective, with sometimes not so subtle differences in their respective recollection of events. While the technique is somewhat engaging, the sad truth is that there is barely enough of a story here to be told once, let alone twice.

Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins do their best, but they come across as more likely to be friendly work colleagues than lovers, and neither can bring any conviction into the romance. Sharon Stone does a fly-by as one of Dan's more serious and durable of many sex partners, but she is really just playing Sharon Stone, able to crush any competing woman with a single cold stare.

He Said, She Said, but nothing interesting was actually said.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Footloose (1984)

2011-11-29T19:30:00.000-08:00

A musical comedy-drama celebrating the healing powers of music and dance, Footloose bounces on its own giddy energy, propelled by a joyous soundtrack and a cast of talented young actors. Directer Herbert Ross assembles the film with one eye on maximizing the fun quotient and the other on maintaining the colourful characters at the centre of the drama.

Teenager Ren (Kevin Bacon) relocates from Chicago to the small rural town of Bomont. Ren is an athletic dancer with a positive outlook on life, but he finds Bomont seething under the domineering influence of Reverend Shaw Moore (John Lithgow), who delivers fire and brimstone sermons banning dancing and popular music throughout the town. The Reverend has taken it upon himself to save the soul of Bomont, after a car crash killed a group of partying teenagers, including his son.

Neither Moore's wife Vi (Dianne Wiest) nor his teenage daughter Ariel (Lori Singer) are keeping up with him. Vi is concerned that the town is taking his message to extremes, and indeed there are rumblings of impending book burnings. Ariel is in full fledged teenage rebellion mode, running wild with her group of friends, including the fun-loving Rusty (Sarah Jessica Parker), and sleeping around behind her father's back with the local no-good redneck.

Ren makes a few good friends, notably the slow but well-meaning Willard (Christopher Penn), and attracts the attention of Ariel, but otherwise finds himself a misfit in the crusty community. He decides to shake things up by organizing a school dance in defiance of the Reverend and all the town elders.

Written by Dean Pitchford, Footloose never attempts to take its superficial context too seriously. But the film does connect interesting dots on the perils of extremism, and Ren gets to use Biblical passages that support dancing to argue against the zealots running the town.

Footloose does have a few weaknesses, notably a couple of ugly fights that appear utterly contrived. Arial comes out of one brawl pretty badly bruised and battered, but her previously ultra-concerned dad does not seem to notice. However, the weak moments do not take away from an overall mood of infectious exuberance.

Ross inspires his cast to deliver terrific performances. Kevin Bacon, in one of his most memorable roles, shines as Ren, a cool cat of a character, full of optimism and bright ideas, and a refreshing, positive personality. Lori Singer smoulders as Arial, compensating with a brooding sexuality what she lacks in talent. Christopher Penn gets the most memorable supporting role as the dorky but game Willard, and the montage of Ren teaching Willard how to dance to the tune of Let's Hear It For The Boy became a much imitated classic.

The adults add substantial weight to the talent on display: both John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest bring a serious tone to their roles. As Reverend Moore, Lithgow rumbles through Footloose imposing his own version of the commandments, but gradually comes to realize that he is simultaneously losing his daughter and unintentionally driving the community to the dark alley of self-defined intolerance.

The soundtrack of Footloose displaced Michael Jackson's Thriller from the top of the charts and stayed there for 10 weeks. The title track Footloose, Let's Hear It For The Boy, Almost Paradise, and Holding Out For a Hero, among others, embedded themselves in the soundtrack of the 1980s. The music, much like the movie itself, left a lasting and upbeat impression on the cultural landscape.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

CD Review: Heartwork, by Carcass (1993)

2011-11-27T21:23:00.001-08:00

A transitional album that laid some of the foundation stones for melodic death meal, Heartwork was the last Carcass record to feature Michael Amott on guitar. The album is filled with the nucleus of ideas that would grow up into better songs within the Arch Enemy context; Heartwork itself is caught between two worlds, melodic shadings sprouting from a wall of dissonant grindcore sound, and the end result is interesting mostly as an archaeological dig.

Almost every track on Heartwork has a few moments of classical-inspired harmonies that Amott would later develop with Arch Enemy. The opening minute of Buried Dreams; the closing minute of No Love Lost; the main theme of Death Certificate. But on Heartwork the overall sound remains that of a band more interested in brutality than artistry, and the more creative moments are rarely cultivated to their potential.

Two selections bring the album closest to where melodic death metal would flourish in a few years time: the title track Heartwork is a true discovery of a sub-genre, combining the energy of Carcass with a strong melodic structure that, although limited in ambition, is actually sustained. This Mortal Coil is more monotonous, but also enjoyable for its commitment to both the past and the future: there are undoubted shading of Maidenesque galloping guitars in the main riff, happily wearing a newly pressed death metal jacket.

But elsewhere, tracks such as Carnal Forge and Arbeit Macht Fleisch default back to grinding away at a stone that will yield nothing, Carcass holding on, in patches at least, to their grindcore origins of underground metal that snubs anything other than dedication. Heartwork is more interesting for the path it pointed to, better exploited by others, than for the intersection of styles that the album itself occupied.

Band:

Bill Steer - Guitar
Ken Owen - Drums
Jeff Walker - Bass and Vocals
Michael Amott - Guitar

Songlist (ratings out of 10):

1. Buried Dreams - 7
2. Carnal Forge - 6
3. No Love Lost - 7
4. Heartwork - 8
5. Embodiment - 7
6. This Mortal Coil - 8
7. Arbeit Macht Fleisch - 6
8. Blind Bleeding The Blind - 7
9. Doctrinal Expletives - 7
10. Death Certificate - 7

Average: 7.00

Produced by Colin Richardson. Engineered by Keith Andrews.

All Ace Black Blog Heavy Metal CD Reviews are here.