Category: Reviews (Page 63 of 120)

Heroes 3.6 – Wise Men at their End Know Dark is Right

October 20, 2008 /

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…tonight’s episode of “Heroes” was really good.

I’m not even going to limit my praise to calling it the best episode of the season (although it was), because it deserves more love than that; it was legitimately enjoyable across the board, with only a few moments which gave me pause.

Hiro and Ando: Clearly, we knew Hiro hadn’t really killed Ando, but doing a flashback which showed Hiro visiting a joke shop was pretty funny. As aware as Papa Petrelli and his secret society of super villains are, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out that Ando isn’t really dead, but since Ando doesn’t have super powers, then the only person who’d really care about it one way or the other is Knox, and his ability isn’t one that lends itself to him finding out the truth. It was a nice touch that, when Daphne left, Ando pointedly released the breath he’d been holding. Why was it so nice? Because it showed that someone behind the scenes at “Heroes” finally realized, “Hey, the fans are actually noticing stuff, so we’d better start covering our asses a little better.” If Ando hadn’t released that breath, someone would’ve said, “Didn’t Daphne notice he was still breathing?”

When Hiro and Ando tried to catch Usutu the precog in Africa, it was a little bit like watching Austin Millbarge and Emmett Fitz-Hume at work, but, c’mon, who didn’t laugh out loud at the caption of “One minute before Hiro got hit”? The sequence was funny, but the writers actually had fun with the notion of Hiro going back in time…and, again, I have to think that was in response to all the moaning about FuturePeter not choosing a better time to go back in time to change the past. If I didn’t love Usutu already, watching him smack Hiro over the head with the shovel would’ve cinched the deal. His otherwise Zen-like manner makes him my favorite new character of the season, so it should be interesting to see how things go when the villains attempt to make him for them.

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Paranoid Park

October 16, 2008 /

Watching “Paranoid Park” and knowing that it’s made by Gus Van Sant, the
same man who gave us fare like “Good Will Hunting” and the carbon copy
remake of “Psycho,” is a disconcerting experience. It doesn’t look at all
like either of those films. Instead, it feels more like the work of a
gifted, first-time director who’s all of 20 years old. Van Sant is clearly
tuned in to the sort of malaise that can affect certain types of teenagers
in this day and age, which is a remarkable feat for a man in his mid-50s. In
this case, he uses skater subculture as the backdrop for a darker story told
as a disjointed series of journal entries written by skaterboy Alex (Gabe
Nevins), who may or may not be responsible for the tragic death of a
security guard. The kid is hounded by a detective (Daniel Liu) for
information, by his girlfriend (Taylor Momsen, “Gossip Girl”) for sex, and
by life in general. The film is structured like a sort of murder mystery,
but when the murder is “solved” about halfway through, you realize that it
was just a dramatic red herring; as a result, “Paranoid Park” is about
something else entirely, and I have to admit I’m not exactly sure what that
something is. This is the sort of fare that could probably hold different
meanings for different viewers. It’s strange and unsettling and will likely
stick with you long after the credits roll – far more so than Van Sant’s take
on “Psycho,” anyway.

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4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days

October 14, 2008 /

Sometimes simple, ordinary life can be more terrifying than any horror or suspense film – especially if you’re living under a dictatorship that seeks to manipulate the personal lives of its citizens. Christian Mungiu’s remarkable film won the top prize at Cannes and multiple critic’s prizes, wowed international audiences and created a small uproar when the Academy failed to shortlist it for the Foreign Language Oscar, and it’s obvious why. While “4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days” only alludes to the extreme Cold War-era anti-contraception and anti-abortion policies of ultra-Stalinist Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, the film details with bird’s eye view directness its destructive consequences on two college students (Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasiliu), when one becomes pregnant and they circumnavigate the emotionally and physically dangerous road to an abortion before Ceauşescu’s bloody 1989 downfall.

Using very long takes and no music at all, Mungius’ film draws the viewer in with the simplest and most relatable of situations and the purest filmic minimalism, milking suspense and something like abject terror via convincing, seemingly banal dialogue, and remarkably low-key performances from its two young female stars alongside an astonishingly believable ensemble cast. Generating unbearable tension and suspense from a situation which feels utterly real, this is not necessarily a film for everyone and it’s not necessarily always easy to watch for any of us. Still, once you start watching it you’ll have a hard time stopping. Nothing here plays out as expected and few films in recent years have generated such tension from the mundane details of life in a political and social pressure cooker, which, it turns out, has more in common with life here in the mostly free world than any of us would like to think.

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Click & Clack’s As the Wrench Turns

October 14, 2008 /

If you’re someone who’s prone to have his car radio turned to NPR as often as not, then the Tappet Brothers are likely well known to you. Tom and Ray Magliozzi started their radio show, “Car Talk,” way back in 1977, but they’ve been a part of the National Public Radio family since ’87, making their voices and their often-awful jokes instantly recognizable to NPR listeners. After 20 years on the air, someone at PBS apparently decided that they were ready to make the transition to TV…in animated form, at least. “As the Wrench Turns” takes the guys’ radio show and makes it the center of the series, first giving them a producer named Beth Totenbag, then introducing us to the guys who work at the brothers’ garage: Fidel, Crusty, and Sal. (Actually, Sal’s a woman, but you get the impression that she could take on anyone else on the show and come out victorious.) While it might’ve been fun to see Click and Clack taking on car problems in cartoon form, with the solutions animated on the screen for educational purposes, what we get instead is light political commentary and mainstream sitcom shenanigans. There are moments when you imagine what creators Howard Grossman and Doug Berman were going for, but mostly you’re reminded that the Tappet Brothers are at their best when they’re solved car problems…and while they’re nice guys, their humor has always been more groan-worthy than legitimately funny. Unfortunately, that feeling translates to much of their animated series.

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Heroes 3.5 – There’s a Peacefulness and a Rage Inside Us All

October 14, 2008 /

Okay, so Linderman isn’t real.

After this week’s twist that Daphne could also see him, I really thought for sure that maybe he wasn’t just some twisted creation of Nathan’s psyche, but now we know that he’s actually nothing more than the work of one of Papa Petrelli’s minions. That’s right: we finally got the big reveal of Robert Forster this week, which I’ll get to in more detail in a bit. First, let’s talk about some of the other goings-on from this episode.

Sorry, but Moninder has reached the point of ridiculousness now. I was accepting the similarities to “The Fly,” but…really? He’s taking down people in the park, dragging their bodies home in a manner so careless that he’s literally leaving a trail of blood behind him, and then he’s…cocooning them? Give me a break. The only possible up side to the storyline at this point is that we may soon see the last of Maya, but somehow I suspect that we couldn’t possibly be that lucky.

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