Gomorrah

A mob film that's as far from the genre's standard operating procedure as could be imagined, Gomorrah paints a bleak and impressionistic picture of a society not just riddled with gangsters, but crippled by them. Not only are the gangsters shown here resolutely unglamorous, they're disloyal, cowardly, and frequently downright stupid; if there were any cops around in this world, these guys wouldn't last a day. But the Neapolitan towns the film sets itself in seem hardly the kind of place capable of mustering a vigorous law enforcement response to the random brutality and open-air drug markets. Instead, the society appears little more than a host body for the Camorra (the particularly thuggish Neapolitan version of the Mafia), existing only to provide more euros for the weekly take and bodies for the slaughter.

Based on the nonfiction book by Roberto Saviano, Matteo Garrone's film -- a huge hit in its native Italy and Gran Prix winner at Cannes -- doesn't try to establish any empathetic connection to its characters, rare for journalistic cinema of this kind. Instead, Garrone works overtime to distance the viewer from the sadistic toughs and clueless young recruits he portrays, which helps the film's 100-proof venom to go down straight.

Split into five different narratives that share little but a general setting, and shot in a disconcertingly spooky docudrama manner (if there were such a thing as gothic cinema verite, this would be it) Gomorrah is a fractured experience right from the beginning. Characters are hurled at the viewer in such a tangle, utterly shorn of context or even background music, that one is a good half-hour in before the storylines begin to unravel. They're mostly the kind of stories about day-to-day Camorra life that one might expect. There are the two young punks obsessed with Scarface (the international criminal-artistic common denominator) who start pulling their own scams, only to fall afoul of the local boss. Or the young innocent who tragically graduates from grocery delivers to gang lookout.

But while these plots have a dirty poignancy of their own, it's the screenplay's more offbeat stories that are the most affecting. In one, a tailor whose boss owes money to the Camorra, freelances at night teaching in a factory full of Chinese workers busy turning out designer knockoffs. Another has a young initiate being schooled by a gentlemanly older gangster on the fine art of procuring toxic waste and dumping it in resolutely unsafe sites -- not only a huge money-maker for the Camorra but a massive, ticking, cancerous, environmental time bomb for Italy -- at one point even using clueless young children to drive the contaminated trucks.

Most other films would utilize the courtly man to symbolize some false image of an idealized earlier gangster, holding the line against the barbarians of today. But as Gomorrah makes clear over and again, this is not an organization with any need for romantic notions of honor. They exist only to make money off anything possible, whether it's fake designer goods, drug dealing, robbery, extortion, or hurling barrels of carcinogens into the ground where they can leach into the water supply. It's a million dirty little scams that, all taken together, appear to squeeze out the opportunity for any legitimate society to function.

Gomorrah is the mob movie as postapocalyptic warning, shot with dark precision inside dingy and overcrowded apartment complexes whose crumbling concrete and peeling paint make a mockery of the beautiful landscape outside. There's an echo here of J.G. Ballard's fiction, with dead-eyed little street punks making life-or-death decisions with a shrug amidst the rubble.

The film's sprawling length and stately pacing can make some parts of it tough going. But Garrone builds his momentum in masterful fashion, building towards the film's sad, devastating finale with jabs of jolting bloodshed and arbitrary tragedy. The fact that he does it all without for a second exploiting, City of God-style, any of the violence depicted, is all the more impressive.

Aka Gomorra.



The new Cosa Nostra.

Cargo 200

The lone indie release to butt heads this weekend with Edward Zwick's shallowly-scripted Defiance -- a revival of Nicholas Ray's lost technicolor opus Bigger Than Life not withstanding -- Cargo 200, the latest from Russian crime artisan Aleksei Balabanov, trades in the hired-gun thrills of the director's popular Brother trilogy for a highball of venomous gallows humor and satiric perversity.

Left in the dense thicket of Brezhnev's sanctioned invasion of Afghanistan, the term "cargo 200" was given to soldiers who found their way back to the motherland in zinc-lined coffins. Fitting, then, is the opening scene which sees a discussion of the cultural climate between two phantoms of a de-Stalinized USSR: two brothers, one a high-ranking member of the Party (Yuri Stepanov) and the other a professor of scientific atheism at a local university (Leonid Gromov). It's the latter's trip to Leninsk that finds him on the side of the road, garnering help from God-lovin' distillers (Aleksei Serebryakov and Natalya Akimova) and their Vietnamese servant (Mikhail Skryabin).

As the professor goes ten rounds with the distiller over the existence of the Almighty, Valera (Leonid Bichevin) steps out on his fiancé with her friend Angelica (Agniya Kuznetsova). A few spins at the discotheque, a long swig of booze and a quick hook-up later, the two are on their way to Valera's uncle's house to get "the good stuff." In classic interlocking fashion, the uncle happens to be the Commie-baiting distiller who has just sent the professor on his way home. Valera passes out on the floor while all the men begin to leer at his lady fair. It's the farmer's friend Zhurov (Aleksei Poluyan, a natural, plain-faced deviant), a Captain in the Party, who shoots the servant only moments before he forces poor Angelica to get on all fours and penetrates her with an empty bottle.

What at first appears to be a moderate Red remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is quickly impregnated with satirical lunacy so grim that one might call it Russia's answer to American Psycho. Valera, an embodiment of yearning bourgeois ethos with his CCCP t-shirt already looking vintage, ditches the scene while Angelica becomes a "love" slave for Zhurov and the distiller goes down for his servant's murder. One of film's culminating images, a naked Angelica wailing, handcuffed to a bed and surrounded by a swarm of black flies and rotting corpses, is so bleak and horrifying that you might think Francis Bacon served as DP.

Merciless in his eccentric brutality, Balabanov pirouettes on the line between dissent and patriotism. Made as a reaction to a burgeoning nostalgia for the days of wine and Bolsheviks, Cargo 200 is minor and discombobulated by its own outrage, but it is that very same outrage that gives it its rabid urgency. That the film flourishes from controlled dread to flailing hysteria and finally lands at its ominous (or is that hopeful?) coda is thanks to Balabanov's focus even in the most hectic of scenarios. More engaging and effective than its French equivalent (Frontier(s)), Cargo 200 sees the emergence of wicked days to come in the eyes of the erstwhile Union that, between Brezhnev's death in 1982 and Gorbachev's mid-'80s perestroika, found itself without leaders, hope, or conscience.

Aka Gruz 200.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

To a film critic, the mainstream is like a ravenous shark with a defective hypothalamus. As long as Hollywood seeds the entertainment waters with chum, the masses will feed and feed until their dead, lifeless eyes roll back in their head. Examples of this baffling binge and purge are released every year -- inexplicable, unexplainable crowd-pleasers like Wild Hogs, Norbit, and Night at the Museum. Now comes Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, the even louder, more obnoxious sequel to Dreamworks' loud, obnoxious CG original. This is a film about more: More already dated pop culture references, more digitally-rendered eye candy, more abject pandering to a seemingly easy-to-satisfy demographic.

After being stranded on the tiny, titular African island, our four heroes -- egomaniacal lion Alex (Ben Stiller), hypochondriac giraffe Melmen (David Schwimmer), smart alecky zebra Marty (Chris Rock), and lovelorn hippo Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) -- are finally headed home. On a junk airplane refurbished by those pesky penguins, self-proclaimed King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen), along with his right-hand advisor Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer) will take the quartet back to New York. Of course, things don't go as planned, and everyone ends up in the middle of a wildlife preserve in Africa. There, Alex meets up with his dad (Bernie Mac), mom (Sherrie Shepherd), and conniving Uncle Makunga (Alec Baldwin). When the fun-loving feline fails at the tribe's right of passage, however, it's clear these big city critters need to get back to Manhattan, and fast.

Like being beaten over the head with a bag of frosting-covered baby bunnies, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa is so cutesy pie relentless it puts the Terminator to shame. This is a big screen experience so kid-oriented it should come with a pacifier and a selection of Huggies. It goes for the easy, unimaginative laughs and then barely succeeds at finding said funny business. Instead, it supports the cackles from chaos theory of comedy. Just scream and yell a lot while offering a great deal of visual busy work and baby's tiny brain will bray with manipulated happiness. As part of this year's pack of computer generated cartoons, it can't compare to Kung Fu Panda or Wall-E. In fact, it doesn't even compete with The Lion King, the 2D Disney delight from which Escape 2 Africa cribs most of its plot.

And this doesn't even begin to address the inappropriate nature of some of the material. The sexualization of cartoon animals hasn't been this blatant since Bugs Bunny gussied up to seduce Elmer Fudd, and do we really need to see a female hippo get horny over a possible hunky partner? Or how about a penguin's unnatural lust for a dashboard ornament? Even worse, danger is everpresent here, whether it's from poachers, volcanoes, drought, misguided sea creatures, or a little old lady who beats the living snot out of the characters every chance she gets (the most deplorable element of this shrill spectacle). Why PETA wastes its time protesting the Olsen twins and not taking on Madagascar's animal bashing is a mystery.

Still, if it makes the wee ones happy and keeps their parents at bay, no one will really complain. Madagascar 2 will make money, and the cast will reconvene in a couple of years to make the already unnecessary three-quel. At least there is no questioning the visual approach; the movie looks amazing. As an example of the technological leaps and bounds the genre has experienced, the images are astounding. But this is a movie relying on its wit, not its vistas, to keep audiences interested. In that regard, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa plays it safe. It's the viewer who'll be sorry.



Your table will be ready in 15 minutes.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Zack and Miri Make a Porno is the latest film by Kevin Smith and, for better or for worse, it's the same movie the 38-year-old New Jersey native has been making for the last 14 years. That isn't to say there aren't changes. The setting is no longer his beloved hometown and the characters, though certainly of the same mindset, are not members of the director's View Askew universe. There is also the matter of Seth Rogen who constitutes, with the lone exception of Ben Affleck, the only bona fide movie star Smith has cast in a leading role to date. That being said, I'm sure Rogen would let out a chuckle at the thought of himself as any sort of star.

As with most of the filmmaker's oeuvre, all you need to know is in the title. Zack (Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) are best friends, living together and working crap jobs in Pittsburgh. They barely make rent and often substitute frivolous pleasures like sex toys and hockey skates in lieu of water and heat. It's at a high school reunion that they reconnect with Miri's high-school crush Bobby Long (Brandon Routh of Superman Returns) and his lover (Justin Long), both gay porn stars earning six-digit incomes in Los Angeles. At a bar afterwards, Zack realizes that a similar career path would solve Miri's and his financial troubles.

Employing his co-worker Delaney (the great Craig Robinson) as a producer and his hockey teammate Deacon (Jeff Anderson) as DP, Zack begins casting his film with the likes of stripper Stacey (real life porn starlet Katie Morgan), a theater actor (Ricky Mabe), a woman who can blow bubbles out of her nether regions (Traci Lords), and Lester (Jason Mewes), a man who can reach full erection in three seconds. Trouble lurks its head, though, when Zack and Miri do a scene together and things get all warm and gooey. For clarification, I'm talking about emotions.

Smith has said many times that a recurring theme in his films is the difference between having sex and making love. Zack and Miri boldfaces that thesis, but it's also a scrappy fable about independent filmmaking, both in perception and production. Making movies has always been a dirty business, but it looks clean in the end. Independent features aren't afforded the luxury of the buff and shine. By equating it with the lowest and cheapest (not to mention most profitable) form of filmmaking, Smith debases the self-importance of independent filmmaking while simultaneously creating a very entertaining indie rom-com.

As a filmmaker, Smith can be earnest and hectic, but he's an extremely talented screenwriter and he's always picked able comic talent to smooth out his heart-on-sleeve mannerisms. Rogen, who came to Hollywood as a Smith fanboy, brings along many of the tropes of his Apatow clan, but he fits with Smith's crew beautifully; his sharp, chummy sarcasm fits just as well with Mewes and Anderson as it has with Peter Segal and Jonah Hill. But, with the exception of chronic scene-stealer Robinson, this is Banks' show. The soon-to-be Laura Bush (in W.) has a lush, fickle voice that accents her sharp timing and emotional range. She matches Rogen's sailor's mouth, note for note, but she also possesses a graceful subtlety that is vital to Miri's growing feelings for Zack. Though she tends towards flighty characters, Banks's talents reach beyond levity.

Though it tends towards the inconsequential, Zack and Miri finds Smith more consistent than many of his contemporaries, especially in terms of focus. There are some minor problems: his wont to crank '90s alt-rock at every given moment often dismantles his tone, and the film's penultimate gross-out (you'll know it when you see it) seems oddly out-of-place. These are things that trouble his craft but Smith's greatest asset has always been his sincerity, and underneath all the bodily fluid, Zack and Miri are the porn-loving, alcoholic lovebirds we all hope still exist. Just, ya know, without the stains.



What do you mean, "Herpes"?

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

Among the many fascinating things about the HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired is its withering scorn for the jackal-like press packs that surrounded Polanski throughout the legal ordeal he went through in Los Angeles in 1977-1978. What's fascinating is how positively quaint and charming it all seems compared to the world we live in today. What would happen if an A-list movie director drugged, raped, and sodomized a 13-year-old girl in Jack Nicholson's Jacuzzi in today's media environment? It would be all TMZ, Perez Hilton, and cable punditry all the time.

Of course, the press wasn't Polanski's biggest problem at the time. The documentary indicts the legal system itself, and especially the presiding judge, Laurence Rittenband, whose reputation is dragged through the mud here. It would be fascinating to hear his response were he still alive. In his place, we get detailed recollections from police investigators, attorneys from both sides, and the victim herself. (Polanski, however, did not participate.)

It was young Samantha Gailey who agreed to do the Jacuzzi photo shoot with Polanski, and her report of what happened that day is what got him arrested. Initially laughing it off as a prudish reaction from a girl who seemed "to know what she was doing," Polanski was soon deep in it as the press villainized him, explored the various "perversions" of his life and films, and reopened old wounds about the shocking murder of his lovely wife Sharon Tate by the Manson family eight years earlier. What was up with this short, creepy European with the beady eyes and the funny accent?

A Holocaust survivor who had found salvation through film and had become the hottest director in town with such hits as Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby, Polanski was soon persona non grata, bouncing from hearing to hearing as Judge Rittenband looked for a way to get him into prison as soon as possible, eventually accepting a guilty plea on a single charge as a go-ahead to commit Polanski to 90 days of psychological testing to see if he had a social disorder. The documentary lets both the district attorney and Polanski's lawyer expound in depth on Rittenband's treacherous tactics and his concern about protecting his reputation above all else. So dismayed were the two opponents that they eventually found themselves meeting in the courthouse hallway to discuss ways to get Rittenband thrown off the case.

Fearful that the spiteful Rittenband had even more incentive to lock him away with a stiffer sentence when he was released after just 42 days and enjoyed the freedom to travel to Europe to work on a new picture, Polanski eventually ditched his last courtroom appearance and flew off to France, never to return. He's been there ever since, flourishing and even winning an Oscar for directing The Pianist.

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired doesn't forgive Polanski for his crimes. Instead, it makes the case that no matter what happened, it was clear from day one that with that judge and in that environment, Polanski could never have gotten fair treatment. That being the case, the film goes easy on Polanski for running away and choosing exile over uncertain justice. It's a great and somewhat Kafkaesque story that Polanski might have enjoyed directing... had it been fiction.



Dead or alive!

My Bloody Valentine 3-D

When slasher films dominated the local theater chains way back in the '80s, holidays seemed to be the sensible starting place to develop your fear franchise. Halloween had proven profitable, and Friday the 13th definitely scared up big bucks. So why not milk the rest of the festival calendar and see what transpires? Sadly, for every April Fool's Day, there was a Happy Birthday to Me.

For a long time, a cult has centered around one of the era's most talked about titles: My Bloody Valentine. With most of its violence cut out and a "blue collar" perspective on the carnage, it remains for many a good time guilty pleasure. Now Lionsgate has seen fit to remake the movie, using an old '50s gimmick as a selling point -- and you know what, it works like a blood-spattered charm.

The setup is familiar. Ten years ago, the only survivor of a horrible mining accident -- a man named Harry Warden -- went on an inhuman killing spree. When it was all over, 22 people were dead, with only good friends Alex (Kerr Smith), Sarah (Jaime King), Irene (Betsy Rue), and Tom (Jensen Ackles) left to tell the tale. Now, bodies are piling up once again, and ex-sheriff Burke (Tom Atkins) and local businessman Ben Foley (Kevin Tighe) think that Warden has returned. But Axel, now the current lawman, has a different theory. He's targeting Tom, recently returned from nearly a decade in self-imposed exile and desperate to sell the mine and having rekindled his romance with Sarah, who oddly enough, is married to his old buddy. Still, the visage of Warden looms large.

My Bloody Valentine 3-D is shameless. It panders. It exploits. It hits below the belt and keeps delivering cheap shots deliciously. It is one of the most blatantly gore-filled fright films in recent memory, starting off insane and just getting nastier from there. A lot of credit has to go to writers Todd Farmer and Zane Smith, as well as director Patrick Lussier. They have remained faithful to the 1981 original while recognizing the need to update the entire slasher genre for a 2009 audience. This isn't some film filled with stunt-inspired, Rube Goldbergian deaths. Instead, our killer metes out punishment with a pick axe and nothing else. But the brutality of his efforts, matched by the amazingly graphic special effects, excuses any lapse in slice and dice mythos.

This is a craven crowd pleaser, the kind of old school scarefest that should have teens tweaking in their seats while shouting back at the screen. Lussier and the gang leave nothing to chance. One sequence features a good five minutes of nearly continuous full frontal female nudity, including the standard slayer square off and butchering. Another finds Atkins wandering through a collection of hacked up corpses, offal strewn everywhere. And just when it looks like things will calm down and the script will focus on characterization and formulaic love triangles, our gas-masked fiend shows up and starts swinging again. This version of My Bloody Valentine must have the highest body count of any recent fright film -- maybe ever.

The 3-D also helps. The feeling of depth, plus the lack of restraint employed in using the dimensional device, really adds to the excitement. We don't get too many of the obvious Dr. Tongue moments, and the effect aids in giving the inevitable false shocks added emphasis. Still, Lussier knows what gets butts in theater seats and there is sure to be some buzz about the ample arterial spray on display. My Bloody Valentine 3-D actually rivals several of the Saw films in the amount of vein juice spilled in pursuit of a plotline -- and it's infinitely more fun. All remakes should follow this unapologetically in-your-face effort.

Aka My Bloody Valentine 3D.



Thank God it's not Arbor Day.

RocknRolla

Here's some good news for Guy Ritchie fans. RocknRolla gives off the impression that the once-heralded filmmaker isn't trying so hard any more to jolt, confuse, stimulate, and entertain his demanding followers. As a result, he delivers his most jolting, confusing, stimulating, and flat-out entertaining picture since Snatch in 2000.

RocknRolla is sexy, fast, loose, smart, and extremely funny. It's crammed with colorful criminals, which Ritchie and cinematographer David Higgs backlight to great effect. It chokes on delightfully screwy schemes, which the director and his editor James Herbert slice, tape, and test drive at breakneck speeds. And that's the key. It keeps moving, hardly caring if you are keeping up.

Archie (Mark Strong), our narrator, works for London kingpin Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson), who double-crosses charming thugs One Two (Gerard Butler) and Mumbles (Idris Elba) on, of all things, a semi-lucrative real estate deal. As can be the case with Ritchie, this deal is the tip of a filthy, dirty iceberg that sweeps up Russian money-man Uri (Karel Roden), crooked accountant Stella (Thandie Newton), and One Two's loyal crew, the Wild Bunch.

Ritchie, who wrote the Rock script, keeps us guessing which game will eventually take center stage. Will it be the house One Two and Mumbles hope to acquire? Or will it be the Euros Lenny owes to Yuri? How about Yuri's missing painting, which we're never shown, a la the glowing whatever-you-think-it-is in Marsellus Wallace's briefcase)?

Or will Ritchie's focus fall on Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell), Lenny's oft-mentioned rock star son-in-law with a debilitating drug habit? Ritchie has said in interviews it wasn't his intention to tell Johnny's story, but Kebbell so effectively steals this show that the director had little choice. We're witnessing the birth of a star in Rock, as Kebbell unleashes a wild-card performance from his gnarly gut. When he's on screen, it's impossible to look away.

And that's impressive when you consider the eye-catching insanity Ritchie attempts in Rock. One Two and Mumbles pull off the most gentle carjacking you'll see on screen this year. Later, they endure the longest (and strangest) footrace, as they are relentlessly pursued by unstoppable Russian war veterans. It's one of many scenes played for big laughs.

Ritchie has gone back to writing lyrical dialogue, tough-guy poetry delivered by a hardened but extremely polished cast. And for the first time in a long time, you can understand almost every spoken word. Butler's quite at home in Ritchie's underbelly. Newton manages to be more than eye candy, and Kebbell's an exhilarating treat.

Near the end of the film, I realized I was going to miss these original characters. So, apparently, is Ritchie. A brazen title card dropped before the credits promises more adventures with Archie, Johnny, and the Wild Bunch. Even more good news for fans of Ritchie and RocknRolla.

Aka Rock N Rolla.



We're gonna rock thiis tunnel, rock it inside out.