Movie Reviews, April 27

All Over the Place (Printable Version , E-mail to a Friend )
From a cool rockumentary to a semi-cool video game-based flick, cinema is in full bloom

This past weekend, I decided to try something a little different. Thought I’d get out of the house and write the column from a coffee shop or something.
 
For whatever reason, I ended up at Borders.
 
Let’s say this. Borders, you and T-Mobile can kiss my backside.
 
Why offer wi-fi if you’re not doing it for free?
 
There are dozens of businesses that offer free wi-fi as a perk for their customers. They don’t make you sign up for a T-Mobile pass or pay a subscription fee.
 
What? You think people will abuse it? Maybe one or two who can’t afford their own wi-fi will haul the laptop to your lousy café every day. Maybe. I hardly think a couple like that would be of much inconvenience to you.
 
Yes, I know wi-fi costs you money. So what? You’re making enough on your mark up to offer us some freebies as a consolation prize.
 
I shouldn’t expect things for free? With this, yes. There are whole cities that either offer free wi-fi or are working on offering free wi-fi to the public. Yes, I expect it.
 
But whatever. There are other bookstores. There are other coffee shops.
 
The whole experience was a giant pain in the ass for me. I use the internet, specifically Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb to get information about the films I watch. And as I went to the bookstore to actually write my column, it turned out to be pretty much a wasted trip.
 
I ended up at Panera, who incidentally has coffee and wi-fi, and discovered there’s also something called Tulsa Metro Net, which is also a free wi-fi connection.
 
Borders, ditch the T-Mobile crap.
 
Enough of that.
 
So, hey, the Beastie Boys are playing Tulsa this weekend and it’s only going to cost you $8 to see them.
 
I’ve never written a concert review, and technically speaking, this isn’t one either. Only it kind of is. It’s a movie of a concert, but it’s not like other concert movies.
 
Still with me?
 
It’s called, Awesome; I F@#kin’ Shot That!
 
On October 9, 2004, The Beastie Boys handed out 50 hand-held video cameras to audience members and turned them loose. They were free to shoot whatever they wanted. The only stipulation was that they had to keep the camera filming the entire length of the concert.
 
Did they all know what they were doing? No, of course not. But that didn’t matter. A slick, polished concert video isn’t what the Beasties were after. They wanted you to feel what it’s like to go to one of their shows. Far as I’m concerned, it worked.
 
You see the concert from the back and front rows. You see it backstage. You see it from the men’s bathroom (honest, I couldn’t make that up; I guess the guy had a small bladder).
 
Here’s a word of caution: you’re not going to be able to avoid kind of grooving in your chair just a bit. I saw it in a theatre by myself and I was kind of happy about that. There were several times I know someone would’ve been laughing at me had they been watching. Sorry, just couldn’t help myself I suppose.
 
I don’t think, prior to seeing this, I quite understood Mix Master Mike’s role in the Beasties’ music. I mean, he’s a guy with two turntables.
 
He was like watching a lead guitarist solo. Guy is amazing.
 
If you’re looking for a track list, they played all the good stuff. Trust me on that. Sabotage, Root Down, Paul Revere, Hello Brooklyn Pass the Mic, Ch-Check It Out. Pretty much everything I wanted to hear.
 
And if the visuals were grainy and shaky, the sound was pristine. Which you’d expect, really. You can’t do a concert movie without awesome sound.
 
If you’re at all scared by the amateur camera operator thing, don’t be. You won’t get motion sickness or anything like that. The director, Nathanial Hornblower, did a good job of editing the footage. He even did a bit of mixing on his own, which was cool.
 
That said, if you’re not of the MTV generation, beware. The edits are quick and they can’t, they won’t and they don’t stop.
 
I wouldn’t call myself a rabid Beastie Boys fan. I have most of their albums. I listen to them on my iPod. I won’t change the station if they come on.
 
But prior to seeing this film, I never really considered it a priority to travel, if need be, to see them. Now? If they come within five hours of here, I’m making the trip.
 
If you’re a fan of the Beastie Boys, this one’s a can’t-miss no-brainer. Don’t skip it. Like the title says, it’s Awesome.
 
I gotta get away from that word. Last week awesome was kind of a joke. Now, apparently, it’s stuck in my vocabulary. I need to get rid of it.
 
From sublime to ridiculous
 
Next up is Friends with Money. If I could use one word to describe it, it’d be “morose.”
 
The trailers for this flick look funny. And I guess it is kind of funny. There are lots of those deadpanned moments where you can’t help but laugh. But I sure wouldn’t call it a comedy, if for no other reason than when I see a “comedy,” I kind of expect to come out, you know, happy.
 
And you won’t be coming out of Friends with Money happy. Unless you’re weird. Yeah, I’m talking to you.
 
Olivia (Jennifer Anniston) works as a housekeeper. She used to be a school teacher but couldn’t, somehow, handle it. So she quit. Olivia’s a bit on the flaky side and she likes to get high. I wouldn’t call her unmotivated, but maybe I should.
 
All her friends are loaded. David (Jason Isaacs) and Christine (Catherine Keener) are successful screenwriters. Aaron (Simon McBurney) owns his own business and Jane (Frances McDormand) stays at home. Matt (Greg Germann) and Franny (Joan Cusack) have enough money that they are considering a $2 million donation to their kids’ school.
 
Olivia is also single, which helps her cause. And that’s what all her friends view her as--a lost cause.
 
To be honest, she is pretty desperate. She’ll spend whole afternoons visiting different department stores to collect samples of a really expensive hand lotion she likes. For whatever reason, she’s broken.
 
Not that her friends, in spite of their money, are any better off. Jane, despite being a successful clothing designer, is obnoxious and angry at the world. She’ll think nothing of insulting anyone who even thinks about offending her. And she has no idea Franny, Christine and Olivia all think Aaron might be gay.
 
Franny is a stay-at-home mom and seems mostly oblivious to the rest of the world’s problems.
 
Christine and David just don’t get along. They’re in a perpetual argument. She’ll think nothing of going for his throat. He forgets to care. It’s an ugly situation.
 
So you put all that together and spin it for just short of a couple hours and you’ve got a really odd, sad but sometimes funny picture of a bunch of dysfunctional people. Dysfunctional is, of course, code for “normal.”
 
In some ways, Friends with Money kind of felt like a Woody Allen movie. By that, I mean it was biting, sometimes scathing, sometimes uncomfortably funny, but ultimately unfulfilling.
 
I kind of liked it, but I really don’t think I can recommend it. Does that make any sense? Ah well. That’s the way it is. Sometimes, it just goes that way.
 
Next up is Silent Hill.
 
From ridiculous to virtually good
 
First off, if you don’t know, it isn’t just another horror movie. It’s another horror movie based on another videogame. Normally, that’s a death sentence. You can just automatically write off most movies based on video games.
 
I never played the games. My brother-in-law did and enjoyed them. I think he said they were kind of freaky, but I could be misquoting him.
 
If I’m not misquoting him, then his description applies to the movie version. It’s kind of freaky, but not always in a good way.
 
Here’s the set-up:
 
Rose (Radha Mitchell) and Christopher (Sean Bean) adopted a girl named Sharon (Jodelle Ferland). Sharon likes to sleepwalk and while she’s sleepwalking, she keeps saying the name of a town: Silent Hill.
 
When one of Sharon’s somnambulant episodes ends up with her just about jumping off a cliff, Rose decides to take Sharon to find Silent Hill. As though taking her to the town that haunts her dreams will be somehow cathartic. They leave without telling Christopher where they’re going.
 
When they’re almost to Silent Hill, Rose gets pulled over. She opts to make a break for it. Don’t ask me why. Most people wouldn’t run from a cop just to get their sleep-challenged child to an abandoned town. But then we’re dealing with “movie logic” here, not real-world stuff.
 
She crashes through a gate, speeds down a curvy road and almost hits a child who just happens to be crossing ahead of her in the middle of the night. Rose bonks her head and passes out.
 
When she awakes, the world has changed. It appears to be snowing, but the snow is ash from the perpetually burning coal mine fires beneath Silent Hill.
 
Sharon is missing.
 
Rose heads into town and discovers she’s not in Kansas anymore. Well, West Virgina, anyway.
 
Silent Hill stands abandoned, corroded.
 
But she keeps seeing glimpses of Sharon, or a girl who looks like Sharon. So she follows her into hell, more or less. She ends up in a basement somewhere. An air-raid siren sounds and then the world changes. Rose finds herself lost in the dark and surrounded by small, creepy mutant hell babies.
 
Things get worse from there. There’s a group of religious fanatics, a giant dude with a big sword and a pyramid for a head, and possibly the devil.
 
There are a lot of cool parts to the movie. It looks awesome and I love the transitions from the burning town to the dark, hellish night that randomly occurs. I even like the story, to an extent, and it actually manages to end all right.
 
But . . . it’s kind of slow and boring. And dumb.
 
So, the final tally: partly cool with a high dose of dumb.