Son Durak 1 - Final Destination 1 - Son Durak 1 Türkçe Dublaj

 Filmin Diğer Adı: Final Destination
 IMDB Puanı: 6.8/10
 HD-Full-Film-İzle Puanı : 7.0/10
 Yapım Yılı – Ülke: 2000 – ABD, Kanada
 Türkiye Gösterim : 17 Mart 2000
 Türü: Korku,Gizem,Gerilim,Psikolojik
 Yönetmeni: James Wong
 Oyuncuları: Ali Larter,Seann William Scott,Kerr Smith,Tony     Todd,Devon Sawa,Amanda Detmer,Lisa Marie Caruk,Brendan Fehr, Christine Chatelain,Kristen Cloke, Chad Donella
 Senaryo: James Wong,Jeffrey Reddick,Glen Morgan
 Süre: 95 Dakika
 Filmin Özeti: Asla kaçamazsını “Son Durak” Ölümdür!.. Alex ile arkadaşı Paris’e gezmeye gitmeye karar verirler ancak Alex uçağın düştüğünü ve öldüklerini görür ve arkadaşını uçağa binmeyeye ikna eder.Gerçektende uçak düşmüştür ancak o gün uçağa binmeyen kim varsa tek tek ölmeye başlar…



 Uyarı: Tek Parça VK alternatifini izlemek için DNS Ayarlarınızı 8 8 8 8 8 & 8 8 4 4 Yapınız!
Dns değiştirmek nedir yardım için tıklayınız




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Tek Part VK

TED: For Seth MacFarlane Fans Only

TED (Dir. Seth MacFarlane, 2012)







“I don’t sound that much like Peter Griffin!” protests the profane protagonist of Seth MacFarlane’s first full-length feature film, but obviously that’s a hollow claim.

MacFarlane, of course, voices Ted, the teddy bear that magically comes alive to a little boy that grows up to be Bostonian man-child played by Mark Wahlberg, and, yes, he sounds exactly like his famous Family Guy character.

That does a lot to call out what this movie essentially is: a collection of gags that were too R-rated for basic cable, decorating a flimsy plot.

It’s a plot everyone should recognize from many movies and sitcoms - a man-child’s girlfriend, in this case played by Mila Kunis, begs her beau to grow up, but he’s too attached to a lifestyle of juvenile high jinks, in this case embodied in a stuffed plush talking toy.

Come to think of it, it was a scenario even used in last year’s THE MUPPETS, with Jason Segel asking himself the musical question is he a “Man or a Muppet,” after being left by Amy Adams.

But at least in that film it was just a silly subplot, and not the full narrative as it is here. An attempt to create conflict between Wahlberg and Kunis by having Joel McHale (Community, Talk Soup) as Kunis’ slimy corporate boss constantly come on to her, doesn’t raise any stakes because of how her character is set up we never believe she would go for him over Wahlberg.

But back to the talking Teddy Bear part, I mean it’s his movie, right? Ted is an aimless comedy archetype – a hard drinking, drugging, foul-mouthed party animal just like last year’s PAUL (which was stupid, sure, but much funnier than this).

With the sheer volume of jokes, one-liners, and pop culture pot-shots, there can’t help but be some humorous moments, but TED gets tiresome really quickly (two 9/11 jokes, really?). The CGI used to animate the bear is flawless, but to what avail with this lazy material?

That is, I suppose, unless you’re a die-hard Family Guy fan, or a big American Dad fan, or even just a casual The Cleveland Show fan (I'm none of those things), and you’re way into folks making fun of crappy movies, celebrities, and music mostly from the ‘80s.

For some reason there’s a lot of focus on the infamous 1980 sci-fi flop FLASH GORDON (it’s the movie Ted and Wahlberg watch the most while getting high, you see), including a lengthy cameo by Flash Gordon himself, Sam Jones in a wildly typical party sequence.

At the screening I went to, plenty of people laughed, but how many folks in the audience really knew that 32-year old film? Sure, it’s got a classically kitschy theme song by Queen and it may qualify for the so bad it’s good factor (like Wahlberg says at one point), but is it really worthy of this kind of satiric attention?

MacFarlane takes what feels and looks like a warmed-over Farrelly brothers project, and interjects it with his distinctive smarmy tone. However there is little a bit of a heart within purely because of Kunis’ invested performance. But next time she does a movie like this, she really ought not to waste so much energy.

Oh yeah, there’s also the third act action climax involving a creepy Giovanni Ribisi kidnapping Ted for his rotund son (Aedin Mincks), but, hey, it’s an ending consistent with the uninspired rest of the film.

The not terrible but tedious TED is really a film for MacFarlane fans only, but even they might want to wait to get the inevitable unrated DVD or Blu ray, because I bet it and all the bloopers, gag reels, and outtakes will be much funnier on the small screen.

And as cheap as the humor is in TED, people should really get their money’s worth.

More later...

New DVD Review: SOUND OF NOISE

SOUND OF NOISE (Dirs. Ola Simonsson & Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, 2012)

This film about a group of avant-garde guerilla drummers who take the Swedish city of Malmö by storm with a series of illegal public performances really took me by surprise.

I wasn’t expecting such a funny stylish ride, but SOUND OF NOISE delightfully delivers with its satisfyingly inventive spirit.

It’s partly told through the police procedural point of view of Bengt Nilsson, a tone deaf cop who hates music, and partly through the four movements the chaotic percussionists are playing in such places as a hospital operating room, a bank (“This is a gig! Everybody keep calm!”), outside an opera house, and finally hanging from high tension power cables.

The rogue gang, lead by Magnus Börjeson (who composed the music for the film) and Sanna Persson, usually leaves a metronome behind at the scene of the crime, er, gig, so that helps Nilsson to follow their trail.

There’s a surreal element here, where Nilsson can’t hear anything the drummers have played on - he tries to make a metal bedroom clang against the wall in the hospital but he hears nothing. It’s sort of the reverse of what Jean Dujardin went though in the dream scene in THE ARTIST.

Börjeson drops away as a major character pretty early on, and the movie mostly concentrates on Nilsson and Persson.

Persson has a priceless back story in which she was expelled from the music academy for flooding their concert hall during one of her experimental recitals.

When Persson says “Listen to this city contaminated by shitty music…it’s time to strike back” she sounds like she really means it, and I don’t speak Swedish so I think that’s impressive.

Nilsson’s anti-music/anti-any kind of noise stance comes from being from a family of musicians. As Nilsson’s famous composer brother, Sven Ahlström, at first appears like a condescending jerk that the movie will make fun of, but thankfully screenwriters Jim Birmant, Ola Simonsson, and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson had better ideas.

Once one gets the hang of it the narrative may seem a bit transparent (and there may be too many convenient coincidences), but there’s a lot of pure amusement here.

As recent comic thrillers go, I sure liked the sound of this noise.

More later...

A Bill Murray Coloring Book? Yep, That's Right

Get this - a new Vancouver, Canada-based publisher, which is also a record label, named Belly Kids is releasing a Bill Murray coloring book in August called “Thrill Murray.”

From their press release: “Be it in ‘Groundhog Day,’ ‘Ghostbusters,’ ‘Rushmore’ or ‘Lost in Translation’ Bill Murray has become a diamond of the modern screen, the heartbeat of any worthwhile DVD collection.”

Can't argue with that. So, why not honor the icon with a colouring-in book (as the Canadians call it)?

The images they've released, selected from the over 20 different artists who contributed, are funny and well detailed, even if Murray looks skinny in films he was chubby in, and fat in the films he was fit in (i.e. “Lost in Translation”).

“Thrill Murray,” which is credited to author Mike Coley, will be available on August 13th. You can pre-order it here. Also available will be prints of a few of the images, and a tote bag.

So, stock up on crayons so you can fill in all the Bill you can.

More later...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER: The Film Babble Blog Review

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER (Dir. Timur Bekmambetov, 2012)

Later this year, the 16th President of the United States will get the epic biopic treatment by Steven Spielberg in his adaptation of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bestseller “Team of Rivals,” titled simply LINCOLN.

But if you can’t wait until then to see Honest Abe on the big screen (and you want a longer more convoluted title), here’s a movie, also based on a bestseller (by Seth Grahame-Smith), that attempts to spice up the historical record by adding supernatural elements to it.

Unfortunately it’s not a successful experiment, mainly because of its lack of charm and humor, and its dull formulaic storyline. With its premise, one might expect some outrageousness – like the tongue-in-cheekiness of a Bruce Campbell project, but there’s no BUBBA TO TEP-type fun to be had here.

Benjamin Walker, who resembles a young Liam Neeson (actually played a young Liam Neeson in KINSEY), plays Lincoln, who when not studying law and working in a general store, is out killing vampires with a axe/gun contraption.

It takes a stylized montage for Walker to be trained for action by his mentor Dominic Cooper, who appears to be channeling Tim Curry, then the film rolls from one set-piece to another – none of which provide any excitement. The pacing is so off that not one of the supposed to be sudden shots revealing in-your-face fangs is the least bit scary.

The special effects factor is underwhelming as well, with the 3D conversion muddying up instead of enhancing the imagery. The blustery Civil War battles between the mortal humans of the North, and the slave-owning vampires of the South are too messy to allow any tension, likewise the literal train wreck climax.

Then there’s the awful dialogue. Whether spoken by Walker, Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Mary Todd Lincoln, or Rufus Sewell as the film’s lead vampire villain, the overwrought over-simplistic lines are laughably bad throughout the entire overlong movie.

It feels weird to say this about a film entitled ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, but it takes itself way too seriously. I mean I guess it’s cool that Bekmambetov and crew want to pay so much respect to Lincoln’s legacy, but, c’mon, have a little fun with the concept, why dontcha?

As it stands, this film joins this year’s Edgar Allan Poe thriller dud THE RAVEN, and last year’s Shakespeare-was-a-fraud fiasco ANONYMOUS as incredibly misguided movies that screw with history and end up screwing their audiences too.

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THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND: The Film Babble Blog Review

This indie film, made for the low budget of $175,000, is now making the film festival rounds. Later this week it will be shown at The Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, early July at the at the Northwest Ohio Independent Film Festival, and July 24th-29th it’ll be in competition for several awards as one of only 9 selected feature films at the Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival in Palatine, Illinois.






THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND
(Dir. David Spaltro, 2012)

In the New York-based David Spaltro’s second full-length feature, Molly Ryman stars as a 20-something aged graduate student who is obsessed with the subject of her thesis about what happens after we die. So much so that she attempted suicide as an “experiment,” she tells us (and we see) in her dryly spoken opening voice-over.

Ryman lives with 2 arty room-mates (Hugo Dillon and Melissa Hampton) in a Brooklyn loft above a bar, where she has a crush on the bartender (Aaron Mathias).

Her therapist (Lisa Eichhorn) tells our sardonic protagonist that her father wants her to change her lifestyle habits, specifically that she “needs to stop drinking and whoring herself every night.”

“But I’m so good at it.” Ryman replies with a smirk.

Now, this is coming from somebody who works in bookstore retail because she considers it a “pressure-less expectation-free zone.”

Although she’s interviewed many “near-deathers,” as she calls them, Ryman doesn’t quite make a real connection until she meets Grace Folsom as a woman dying of cancer in Catholic hospice. A connection is something Violet needs, as she and her room-mates are having trouble raising money to pay their rent, the brooding bartender is ignoring her passes, and she’s burned out by too many one-night-stands.

Spaltro’s well-written film has a naturalistic pace. It doesn’t feel like we are caught up in plot mechanics, no, we are hanging, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beers, with Ryman and her friends in their beloved dank bar and drab yet utterly hip dwelling, which are dark, yet sharply shot by cinematographer Gus Sacks.

Ryman and Folsom’s exchanges are the heart of the film, and they are as witty as they are moving. 




At first snark meets snark, but these two souls – more confused than lost – have plenty of both witty and moving insights to share with each other and us. Folsom steals the film from Ryman in one scene in which she sobs saying that she doesn’t want to go.

There is not a trace of emotional manipulation in that moment, a testament to Folsom’s performance and Spaltro’s deft direction.




This is not to sell Ryman short - hers is an honest and affecting depiction of a jaded woman on the edge of hardcore depression, but aware, even if hesitant, of the possibility of enlightenment. As she says in her intro: “Okay, maybe there’s a light.”

There may be some heavy handiness, a few superfluous subplots (as likable and invested as Dillon and Hampton are - they appear to be simply muted comic relief), and some of its one-liners may fall flat, but THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND gets personal with its characters and themes in a refreshing and extremely engaging way.

People say when you are young you are the most questioning, but maybe becoming an adult is realizing that the questioning never ends. We’re always going to have to deal with death, and that’s always going to be an unanswerable question.

At her most exasperated, Ryman warns, “Say ‘things happen for a reason,’ and I scream.” Folsom quips: “I’m not that clichéd.”

Thankfully, Spaltro’s thoughtful film isn’t either.

More later...

ROCK OF AGES Left Me Hair Metal-ed Out

Opening today at a multiplex near you:



ROCK OF AGES (Dir. Adam Shankman, 2012)

Back when I was a teenager in the ‘80s, I hated the music this movie celebrates.

When I think of great ‘80s rock, I think of R.E.M., The Replacements, The Pixies, Hüsker Dü, Psychedelic Furs, The Cure, The Smiths, et al.

The bands whose music (sung by the cast) makes up the soundtrack of this movie - Foreigner, Bon Jovi, Journey, Poison, Guns N' Roses, Def Leopard - were the commercial sell-out arena rock enemies to me.

Over time, I started to appreciate some of the output of the latter contingent, but in an ironic way. I wouldn’t listen to this music on my own, but it sure sounded good when it blasted out of Tony Soprano’s stereo.

For a bit of the screen time of ROCK OF AGES, which is based on the 2006 Broadway musical, the gimmick of ‘80s power-ballad-anthems being sung by stars like Tom Cruise (as a very Axl Rose-ish rock star), Alec Baldwin, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Russell Brand, is comically enjoyable.

But before it even got to the half-hour mark, I was more than a little hair metal-ed out.

I can’t complain that the film is cheesy, garish, and utterly ridiculous because it’s purposely packaged to be that way. The cliché-ridden plot is by design too - small town girl (Julianne Hough) comes to LA to become a singer, and meets a city boy (Diego Boneta) - yes, just like the Journey lyrics - and they pine for fame while working at a popular club, the Bourbon Room, which is in danger of being shut down because of unpaid taxes.

Of the cast, only Cruise, who swaggers through the movie, stands out (everybody, especially Baldwin is just peddling their same old shtick), but he’s not given much of a character. In a movie like this, I know that doesn’t matter; it only matters that Cruise can sing.

But the concept’s charm is diluted by the numbing overabundance of ‘80s music video tropes, and whatever fun I was supposed to be having was gets buried under noisy annoying mash-ups like when Zeta-Jones’ Tipper Gore-esque character (whose back story is instantly guessable) and her Christian cronies sing Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” while Brand and the Bourbon Room crowd respond with Starship’s “We Built This City.”

Director Shankman, did a much better job with handling the music and choreography in HAIRSPRAY a few years back. But much like that film, ROCK OF AGES looks like a over-lit television show - it’s not cinematic looking at all. Shankman has had his hand in directing a few episodes of Glee (go figure - he did the “Rocky Horror” one), so that’s no surprise.

All of this would be easier to take if it didn’t run for over 2 hours (okay, only 3 minutes over, but still).

Maybe if they cut most of the crappy dialogue out and kept it to the length of a mix CD (80 min.), then folks not partial to this music, like me, wouldn’t get so unbearably overpowered by the excess of icky ‘80s power-ballad-anthems on glitzy display.

Actually, even then, this would be pretty hard going.





More later...

Pascal Santschi's very indie film THE ARRIVISTE is now available on DVD

Now out on DVD:

THE ARRIVISTE (Dir. Pascal Santschi, 2012)

Now *this* is an independent movie!

First time feature film-maker Pascal Santschi wrote, edited, scored, produced, and shot THE ARRIVISTE guerilla-style on the streets of Brooklyn on 35 mm with an extremely low budget – less than $10,000. You can’t get anymore indie than that.

The film centers on Eamon Speer as a young man on parole, whose hardened criminal brother (P.J. Cross) is missing, and from what we gather in the first few minutes - he has been chopped up into pieces for blackmailing the wrong people.

This leaves Speer as the sole beneficiary on a life insurance policy that he’s told by a slimey agent (Tom Morewick) could get him a “nice chunk of change.” Of course, there’s the issue that all of Speer’s brother’s body has to be found for the money to come through.

Despite Morewick’s pressure, Speer hesitates to sign the papers because he sense something isn’t right, especially because there’s an obnoxious police detective (Gary Devirgilio) snooping around. There’s also a novelist (Mark Fernandez) hoping to capitalize on the situation in a sensationalistic true crime book.

As Morewick tells Speer, “It’s all a bit complicated and confusing, so I won’t go too deep into it.”

Santschi's twisty dark narrative has nary a likable character in sight, yet is an involving film with some sharp writing.

The stiff acting and bad lighting (some night shots were so dark and grainy that sometimes it’s hard to see what’s going on) can be forgiven obviously because of the budget. Many directors’ debuts are saddled with the same issues, but Santschi’s raw talent definitely shines through the often muddy presentation.

While it’s impressive that Santschi wrote and performed the jazzy background music, I wish it wasn’t so bippy and intrusive in some scenes, and it often sounded a little too comic and silly for this material’s tone.

Not to say there isn’t humor, some of it in the form of a loud homeless germophobe (Raymond Turturro) who Speer keeps encountering on the street, and some amusing Tarentino-esue scuffles and gunplay.

THE ARRIVISTE shows a lot of promise for the directorial debut of the ambitious Santschi, and it has something that many much more expensive films can’t even dream of having - true grit.

More later...

Moonrise Kingdom (Sunday, June 3, 2012) (53)

Wes Anderson is basically the most accomplished director working today at making really symmetrical shots in movies. I can't think of another director who puts as much effort into creating each and every shot and filling the screen with "a look"that evokes some sort of phantom nostalgia -- that is, nostalgia for something that has never really existed and only comes through in a simulacral least common cultural denominator. He makes beautiful movies that are technically perfect. Seriously. The problem is that his movies are frequently so denatured, so dehumanized that it's hard to connect to tehm. All the doors seem to be sealed from the inside with a rich, battery goo that we'd like to lick, but can't break through.

Moonrise Kingdom is probably his most form-forward film to date. The story is particularly banal, but the art direction, colors, lighting and sounds are overwhelming. The film opens in 1965 with a gorgeous title sequence (Wes loves titles) that makes the Bishop family house (located on some New England island that doesn't really exist, but seems like it really could) seem like a doll's house. We casually meet Suzy (Kara Hayward), 12, the oldest child and the only daughter. She has a precocious mind and is always reading and doing non-kid things.

We then meet Sam (Jared Gilman), 12, a boy at the local boy scout-like camp across the island, who is an orphan being passed from one foster family to another when he's not alienating himself from his peers who see him as a nerd, and overachiever and a freak. Both Sam and Suzy are outsiders in any nuclear family and connect (during a community theater pageant) over their mutual weirdness. The agree to run away together and explore the island together. They claim to deeply be in love with one another and seem to see the world more clearly than the gray adults who surround and dominate them.

There is what seems to be a superficial examination of "authority" and "childlike wonder" and how the two ideals do not relate. Clearly the scout camp has some connections to the Vietnam war that is lurking over the shoulders of each boy (although the fact that they all seem to be white and upper-middle class could possibly suggest a bitter attack on the "rich man's war, poor man's fight" reality of the conflict), or even related to the present wars the US military is in. But then I have to ask, so what? How does this banal attack on war bare any relevance on the twee love story we see between Sam and Suzy?

Formally, Anderson is very interesting, though I'm not sure why he chooses to do what he does. Almost every set-up in the film is a short interior or an exterior with a short depth of focus. (The two long shots of the film seem to be accidents, or the exceptions that prove the rule.) These mostly normal to short-lens shots give us an uncanny feeling of unease, making this whole world a doll's house (like in the titles). This is an interesting effect, but I'm not sure what to do with the information.

Is Anderson making an anti-Jean Renoir film, where humans are stage-settings for some bigger kabuki story? (Are we merely playthings of the gods?) Why? This doesn't really seem like a political movie - and it seems to be politically moderate or middle, if anything - but this could be an interesting window to see the world (somewhat reminiscent of the implied Marxist polemic in Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman). I love taking theory and critical thought (like that of French film thinker André Bazin) and turning it on its head, but I don't really understand why Anderson is doing that -- and I'm not sure if he knows either. At least there's not evidence in the text that these questions lead anywhere but into a deep chasm of uncertainty.

Is he intentionally trying to make it difficult for us to connect to the characters and the story or is he just looking to make a movie that alienates on a superficial level, not knowing it is incredibly hard for us to make any visceral connection? Are the impossibly symmetrical shots a critique of a world that is in fact incredibly lopsided? Is Anderson a formal polemicist who is sneakily assaulting our political traditions through overindulgent stylistics? I don't know if the answers to these questions are really present in the film. This isn't really ambiguity or obliqueness; it's just under-developed.

Taking away all the theory, this is a great looking and sweet, if unfulfilling love story between two presexual kids. That's nice. But so what? Why should I love this movie? What is its point? I really don't get it.

Stars: 2 of 4

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Saturday, June 2, 2012) (52)

Oy vey iz mir. The Best Exotic Merigold Hotel. Oy vey. I'm not sure who was asking for this movie, though it's not at all a surprise that it was made. In an era when we celebrate old people just simply for being old and celebrate brown people just simply for being poor, this movie was bound to come about at some point. John Madden, the sentimentalist who brought you Shakespeare in Love and Captain Corelli's Mandolin, directs what is sure to be his most beloved movie in the years to come. Because it's so nice. Pardon me while I wipe the vomit from my t-shirt.

This ensemble piece has every old actor in London (all of 'em) come together to show us how just because people live around the poverty line in a developing country doesn't mean that they don't have love in their heart (in case we were wondering about that). So a listing of the case would take up six pages here, so I'll just say you have a bunch of cranky or nice Englishfolk over the age of 70 who all decided to move to a hotel that's being advertised online. They all go for different reasons (some of which are totally unclear) and all end up living next to one another in what turns out to be a ramshackle lodging (what a surprise! and - that's so funny!). They slowly help to make their world more nice (because they're white and rich) just as the hotel owner and his mother fight about his future with his girlfriend (hmm - that seems random and disconnected...). Then all the old people find love and happiness or die in peace.

I'm really over this cultural fetishization from a very Western, white point of view. Isn't it nice that white people can visit these places and bring their money and help these people? Isn't it nice that a untouchable warms the cockles of the cold woman's heart? Isn't it wonderful that homosexuality is not a death sentence in a developing nation? The answer to all these questions is, of course "no" in the real world, but in the universe of this soft-focus kingdom, economics and social mores mean nothing. As long as we can pat ourselves on the back when driving out of the multiplex parking lot. We are modern and liberal and understanding and warm to all peoples. Yes we are.

There's no real substance to this film. It's mostly loathsome because of how reluctant it is to offend anyone and how rosy a picture it paints. Yes, India is a land of bright colors... and so what? Does the untouchable's life get better after her brief interaction with the mean white lady? Does the growing service-economy middle class in India really have much more room to grow and does it train its workers in skills that are at all transferable? What sort of security net do most entrepreneurs have in such a place? Clearly this isn't a political movie, but then what is it? A sweet romance? Eh - that's not really that interesting... and not really that romantic or heartfelt.

This is the most maximalist superficiality you might ever seen in a movie. It generally looks good (photography by Ben Davis), but that has more to do with the setting and the wide aperture than anything particularly interesting or more than one would expect. It's just that this movie really is just about the surface of things. Relationships are defined in metonymic terms where one untouchable symbolizes the suffering underclass of society, unable to ever reach the middle class and where one love affair between a black sheep son of rich people and a successful yuppie woman equals the difficult love the white people have for this non-white country. It's all deeply boring and trite and mildly offensive in it's tone-deafness.

Stars: 1 of 4

Bernie (Saturday, June 2, 2012) (51)

Bernie is a very clever and funny comedy by writer/director Richard Linklater (co-written by Skip Hollandsworth). In era when auteurist theory dominates film thinking in the critical and popular world, I really appreciate Linkater's oeuvre as it seems like he makes movies that he likes and always tries to tell good stories. This is not to say that I love everything he does. I don't. In fact, I probably don't really connect to most of what he's made, but I recognize that he's very technically daring and accomplished. I also like that fact that he seems to have a more "blue-collar" way of approaching his craft, rather than making movies that are necessarily going to be popular or art-house darlings. I think there is some line from Sam Fuller (or was it Billy Wilder?) who once said something about how directing is a job and you have to go and do it. Linklater does it well and doesn't get bogged down in his cult of personality or his auteurist canonizers.

Bernie is based on a true story about the eponymous guy (Jack Black) who moves to the small town of Carthage in East Texas in the early/mid-'90s to work in a funeral home. It seems he is a bit of an eccentric for this tiny place, but also a multi-talented ball of energy. He's basically the best undertaker anyone has ever seen, brilliant at up-selling people on bigger and better caskets and more elaborate ceremonies. He's a singer in the funeral services he oversees as well as in the church choir. He's also involved in the town's community musical theater. He's probably gay, though in in East Texas in the '90s that's something that's only whispered about.

One of his biggest impacts on the community is that along with his standard work-related duties, he takes it upon himself to continue to look after the widows of the town after he buries their husbands. All the old ladies love him, and, like a world-class walker, he loves them back. One widow, however, is a bit harder than the others. Marjorie (Shirley MacLaine) is a bitter old crow who hates everyone, including her own family. Her husband was the richest man in town (oil money) and she has a team of people looking after her at all times.

After awhile, she starts to spend more and more time with Bernie and he becomes her main caregiver and helper. Meanwhile, she's a mean woman and treats him terribly. He decides one day to kill her, not because he's a bad person (he's quite the opposite), but really out of self defense from the psychological trauma. He then has to face the D.A., Danny Buck (Matthew McConaughey) when he's tried for her murder.

The film is mostly told through interviews with the townsfolk of Carthage. Linklater scripts their dialogue, but they are by and large people from that town who truly knew Bernie. These are generally funny and silly interludes between stretches of narrative, but really do effectively and efficiently move the story along and set a bright and fun tone. All these people really loved Bernie when they knew him and really hated Marjorie, so it's interesting to see how what they say directs our view of the story.

Bernie is a totally lovable guy -- in large part because Jack Black is really great in the role. In most of his movies, I find Black to be a bit too big for life. His outsized temperament is generally too big for the films he's in and he falls back too frequently on cheap physical comedy. Here he's much more restrained and really gives us a lot of soul with the comedy.

Bernie is clearly a lonely and nice guy who sorta doesn't belong where he is (perhaps he would have done better in a bigger city or not in Texas). He's somewhat pitiful, which also adds to the humor of the story. When he gets dressed up to sing "76 Trombones" in a local production of The Music Man, it's silly because the costume doesn't fit well around his weird body, but there's also a sadness and desperation to his situation that's implied.

I also have to mention that Shirley MacLaine is really wonderful in this role. She's totally bitter, mean and unlovable... and yet we're weirdly attracted to her still... just like Bernie is. MacLaine's body of work is really amazing and over the years she's really mastered a keen ability to play straight characters in dark comedies. Yes, this role is not the same as her Fran in The Apartment or her Ginnie in Some Came Running, but we get a similar sense of a character at the end of her rope, and again, a deeply sad context.

This is a really good movie. It's funny and sad, it's efficient and original. I'm not sure how it will hold up over time, as it sorta feels small, even compared to other Linklater films, but it's really well made and well acted.

Stars: 3.5 of 4

Tragedy + Time = BERNIE

BERNIE (Dir. Richard Linklater, 2012)

Is it really true that comedy is tragedy plus time? Or is that just something Alan Alda’s loathsome character pretentiously pontificated in Woody Allen’s CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS?

Well, Richard Linklater’s latest, BERNIE, takes the true story of a Texas mortician who kills a wealthy widow, and makes a matter-of-fact comic docudrama out of it that really works.

It’s not a case of “too soon” as it happened over 15 years ago, but even back then the facts surrounding the murder were more than just a little amusing.

Jack Black, in maybe his finest performance, reunites with his SCHOOL OF ROCK director Linklater to portray the title character, Bernie Tiede, who was the most beloved man in Carthage, Texas back in the mid ‘90s. And by a lot of accounts, he still is much loved in that tiny town, despite the fact that he, you know, shot an 81-year old woman 4 times in the back.

Bernie’s tale is told in large part by a number of actual Carthage town folk, in interview segments that frame the dramatized version of events. We are told, time and time again, what a good Christian, and respected figure of the community Bernie was. Folks often speculated about his sexuality because of his effeminate nature (which Black nails), and what exactly was his relationship with his later victim, Marjorie Nugent (sharply depicted by Shirley MacLaine), who he doted on.

Bernie’s reputation for being a standout gospel singer in the church choir is brought to life by Black’s sincere vocalizing, as is Tiede’s staging of local productions of Broadway musicals.

As the mean old Marjorie (one of the interviewees says: “there were people in town, honey, that would’ve shot her for five dollars”) MacLaine is also well suited. She’s played many surly acerbic characters like this, but here it’s a better fit than in the rom coms and melodramas she has been appearing in as of late.

The murder itself is shown in the film as a momentary lapse for an otherwise all-around decent man. But his handling of the situation by putting her in a freezer, and spending tons of her money in the months following, is where one can’t help but nervously giggle.

Especially when it takes nine months for Bernie to be found out, because, well nobody, except her accountant, missed Marjorie.

The reason for the killing, one that he blurts out while sobbing, is that Marjorie was cruelly monopolizing Bernie’s time. She orders him around, even getting him a pager, and insults his manhood. Still, he could’ve just walked away – he wasn’t obligated to take care of this old woman – but as one of the town folk says, he didn’t want to forsake his meal ticket.

A slick as always Matthew McConaughey (like Linklater a real Texan) plays Danny “Buck” Davidson, the self-promoting lawyer trying to convict Bernie. His bemusement at how the Carthage people stand behind Bernie is amply humorous, as is gung ho determination to win (he has to move the trial 50 miles away to St. Augustine in order to avoid acquittal).

With this kind of material, and with Black on board, they could’ve really gone over the top, but Linklater and crew never lose their grounding. The film sets a tone and stays with it, largely because of Black’s dialing back on his famous funny man persona.

The only complaints I have are iPhones weren’t around in the ‘90s, and that when they show pictures of the real people at the end (vacation photos of Tiede and Nugent together mostly), they don’t show us a picture of Danny “Buck” - presumably because he looks nothing like McConaughey.

Apart from that, BERNIE makes a solid case for the tragedy + time equation.

And stay through the end credits to see a brief glimpse of Black with the real Bernie, and film of James Baker performing his song “Bernie, What Have You Done?”

More later...

Polisse (Monday, May 28, 2012) (50)

Movies and TV shows about cops make it clear that police work is really hard. Totally unrelated to that is the fact that kids are really cute. If you could somehow combine these two elements (kids and cops) you'd have a movie about how hard it is for cops to help kids (particularly those who are being molested and raped). Well, there is such a movie and it's writer/director/actress Maiwenn's Polisse.

This cinema-verité-style look into the Parisian police's Child Protection Unit (that also deals with the white slavery part of Vice) feels very much like a number of cop shows we've seen for years on TV (Homocide, The Wire, the "law" part of Law & Order) and doesn't have any more through-line plot than six episodes of any of those shows strung together one after the other.

The structure of the film basically has a child or parent visit the police station to introduce a case and meet with some members of the CPU team (there are about eight officers in the unit, a very diverse group of men and women). We then see how the team takes down the perpetrator or organization that's doing whatever it's doing to the innocents. Each of these sequences ends with the group of cops going out to blow off steam as a group, in bars and clubs or at the homes of one another.

They each battle small demons of their own (one is anorexic, one is getting a divorce, one is already divorced, although she regrets it, two are interested in dating, despite the fact that one of them is pregnant with her husband's baby) and seem to take the interactions with the kids very personally and hard. Maiwenn herself plays a photojournalist who is documenting the team for an art project... and trying to stay objective as she falls in love with one of the cops.

There are some wonderful moments of comedy (dark comedy, but funny) and tragedy, supported by some really wonderful acting. Karin Viard plays Nadine, one of the senior members of the team, is particularly good, although she's helped by her character being the most deeply developed. Frederic Pierrot plays Baloo, the leader of the group, and does it beautifully. Still, the film feels much more like a list of situations than a single particular story. There no connection from one episode to the next and kids who we get to know briefly and seemingly deeply vanish once their situation is solved.

Clearly this is a commentary on cinematic plot structure and a way of getting the audience to identify more with the cops. Maiwenn is specifically putting us in the position of the cops who can't totally remain connected to any individual kid because they will be gone soon and a new case will come up. The main problem with this is the the cops do seem to connect deeply to the kids, forcing us to connect in a rather forced situational way. Kids being cute make us immediately love them -- they're total proxy emotion devices. That the cops in the film connect to them is not really the same thing as when we connect to them. In principle they're connecting to the human being, while we're connecting to the idea of a "kid in trouble". This dissimilarity in our relationships to the children only goes to shed light on a major flaw in the film.

I am predisposed to hate movies about "kids in trouble" because they're cheap and emotionally insincere. This, however, is a good movie with some great stuff in it. I wish it had more structure to help guide our connections and feelings in a more purposeful way. What we get is really just a substitute for deep relationships that makes everything annoyingly superficial.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

DARLING COMPANION (Dir. Lawrence Kasdan, 2012)

Lawrence Kasdan’s, newest film - his first since 2003’s DREAMCATCHER is his slightest yet.

All it’s about is a group of people looking for a missing dog. Okay, a few themes are broached - aging, love, the needs of family - but those are just brought up and discarded as these folks go through a few days worried about where their shaggy mutt (named Freeway) ran off to in the Colorado Rockies.

It’s mainly Diane Keaton that’s worried, her self-asorbed surgeon husband Kevin Kline acts like he’s just trying to appease her, especially since he’s the one who is responsible for the dog’s disappearance - the dog runs off chasing a dear while Kline was on his cell phone on a walk in the woods. This is something we have to endure Keaton over-emotionally whining about for a lot of the film’s running time.

Keaton and Kline had just hosted the wedding of their youngest daughter (Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss who pretty much phones her part in) at their vacation house, when this traumatic world-stopping event happened. Some family stay behind to help them with the search: Dianne Wiest as Keaton’s sister, with her son (Mark Duplass), and as her new boyfriend (a way too goofy Richard Jenkins).

Then there’s Gypsy caretaker (Ayelet Zurer) who claims she has the gift of psychic powers. Though the gang is initially skeptical of Zurer’s, uh, visions, they still take it to heart. Just when I thought my eyes couldn’t roll any more, Keaton has a nightmare which is done in animation - a completely misguided move as it tonally doesn’t fit at it all, and is, well, just weird.

Another silly addition is Sam Shepherd as a crusty sheriff. I actually can’t remember if he helps the search or if he’s as useless as the psychic - both as a character and as a plot device.

It’s sad to see Kasdan, the man who wrote and directed many popular (and good) titles including BODY HEAT, THE BIG CHILL, GRAND CANYON, and my personal favorite THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST, (not to mention his screenplays for THE EMPIRE STRIKES AGAIN and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK) have so little to say.

I knew before I read it in the credits that this was based on a true story, because it was so boring that it just had to based on something from the everyday existence of Kasdan and his wife Meg (who co-wrote).

Keaton comes off flightier than usual; she puts a lot of effort into her performance, but try as she might she can’t elevate the weak material that she’s given.

Kline should’ve lived up to his nickname “Kevin Decline” and passed on this (he really doesn’t put as much effort as Keaton into his character), but since he’s Kasdan’s go-to guy (he’s starred in 6 of Kasdan’s movies now) he was probably just doing it as a favor.

In Kasdan’s 1991 drama GRAND CANYON (also starring Kline) - not a great film, but it sure looks like a masterpiece compared to this - Steve Martin plays a slick movie producer who tells Kline that his problem is that he hasn’t “seen enough movies - all of life's riddles are answered in the movies.”

Well not one riddle is answered in the miserable DARLING COMPANION.

More later...