Stop-Loss

a review by Sam Osborn

In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, Redacted, Lions for Lambs, and now Stop-Loss. It’s been proven over the last year with the failures piling higher and higher: these films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan just aren’t very good. None of them are particularly bad, which makes it all the more mystifying as to why we don’t care for them. It’s maybe a symbol of this generation’s bland annoyance with the government’s blunders. Previous generations would be enraged by America’s current foreign situation. We find it blandly obnoxious. Put a bumper sticker on our cars? Sure. But hold a sign at a rally? I’d rather just vote for somebody new when November rolls around.

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21

a little review by Sam Osborn

March is a fine time to dump off mini-blockbusters like 21. Last year saw Disturbia, brandishing a similarly rising star in Shia LaBeouf as 21 has with Jim Sturgess. Not likely to rake in as much coin as other Summertime tentpoles, these medium-sized studio pics serve up medium-sized entertainment. They’re mild and standard, passable and pleasing.

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Horton Hears a Who

a little review by Sam Osborn

Each Winter, as Christmas draws near, my family blows the dust from our VCR and settles in to Chuck Jones’ 1966 TV special “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” The glow of Christmas’ past roll out with this twenty-six minute animation, but it’s sincerity that opens the floodgates of nostalgia. Sincerity–genuine, heartfelt sincerity–is no longer paramount to animation. Projects like Shrek and Cars, Surfs Up and Robots, they rely on suggestive jokes or complicated pop culture references to entertain their adult audiences. They defect from their own storylines, scared of boring an over-stimulated young adult generation, copping out with easy one-liners. Pixar can still spin the occasional gem of sincerity, harking back to the Disney 2D pictures from that wondrous era. But Cinderella can no longer pine for the Prince and twirl in her glass slippers. The slippers have turned to stilettos, her dress to Prada, and now she’s worried about her virginity, conveyed through the overt imagery of cherries.

But Dr. Seuss is the very definition of sincerity. Zany and insane, his works play towards the expansion of the reader’s imagination, rocketing so far from reality that pop culture references are as gassy and lame as the swizzled clouds above. Horton Hears a Who understands this principle well enough—which is lucky, since this might have been the third strike for Dr. Seuss adaptations. The Elephants and Whos of Whoville are lovingly rendered, tracing all the whimsical lines and colors laid out in the book. Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul, the screenwriters, have stretched the story reasonably, keeping to appropriate Seussical whimsy. And the cast pulls through admirably, Steve Carell and Seuss veteran, Jim Carrey, flexing their comic muscles for their vocal performances as the Mayor of Whoville and Horton the elephant. But it’s all not quite Seuss. Horton breaks it down to a rap beat, one of the Mayor’s daughters wants a cell phone. The story is stretched by an anime sequence to elbow out 88 minutes of running length. It’s fine and often hilarious, charming in its zany colors, but we still don’t buy it as a Seuss creation. It’s not as genuine, not as original. Not as insane.

                                                                                                                                                                Sam Osborn

Chop Shop reviewed by Jason Blevins

It’s a shame for a deserving film to go unrecognized or overlooked by cinemagoers. Instead, films with predictable plots, overpaid actors, and uninspired premises, like Music and Lyrics and Vantage Point, make millions at the box office. The argument is that general audiences do not go to the cinema to think, but be entertained. But why must the two be mutually exclusive? And further, it is a misconception that the real world is not exciting therefore films must manipulate reality to make it more engaging. But those who believe this have not seen Ramin Bahrani’s recent feature film, Chop Shop (2008). (more…)

City of Men

reviewed by Anu Valia

Note to viewer: Do not be confused. Although City of Men is shot in the same style, within the same favelas, have the same theme, and even the same first two words as its predecessor, it is NOT City of God. Nor is it a sequel to the critically acclaimed 2002 hit. It actually has nothing to do with City of God. So try to ignore the nagging urge to lean over to your friend in the first five minutes and whisper, “This isn’t as good”. I lasted twenty.

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Paranoid Park

reviewed by Sam Osborn

The tangle of story that’s unraveled in Paranoid Park is as wandering, lush, and explicit as any teenaged diary entry. Which is just as well, since the film is a recollection of a sixteen year-old’s painful memory of murder as transcribed in his confessional letter to a friend.

As Alex–the film’s narrator and lead character–warns us at the beginning, what we are about to see is not in order. He didn’t do so well in Creative Writing class. But sitting at his bedroom desk or at the isolated bench near a Portland lake, Alex will recount his story to us in its entirety. Scenes will be repeated, dialogue crossed and criss-crossed, stories changed, and revelations put on hold. This is the way Paranoid Park unfolds. It is evasive and uncompromising, expansive and tangential. It is teenaged. But only in this way is it truthful.

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