Review – Legendary Sin Cities

Rather than a movie, this is three hour-long “documentaries” produced for Canadian television. The subjects are the three supposedly most decadent cities of the 1920s: Berlin, Paris and Shanghai. Actually, I wish I’d watched the episodes in reverse order. Shanghai was depressing, Paris was boring, but Berlin was actually at least somewhat interesting (and I’ve always been a “save the best for last” sort). But for the most part all three programs were fairly terrible. The archive footage was terrific, but it seemed to occupy a relatively small percentage of the screen time. As usual with shows of this sort, a lot of the production is devoted to talking heads, here even more aggravating than usual in that the “experts” selected for the most part come across as stuffy intellectuals who snicker nervously through their discussions of sex and drug abuse. Honestly, if the words “hedonistic” and “demimonde” were banned from the presentation, most of the interviewees would have been struck silent. Were I to watch this set over again, I’d probably do it with the sound off. Mildly amusing

Review – Hotel Rwanda

If nothing else, this production deserves to be commended as one of the few (if not in fact the only) American movies about Africa that actually has a black character for a hero. This is particularly apt given the subject: the brutal genocide of a million people almost completely ignored by American and European governments and media. Don Cheadle gets a career-making role as the Hutu manager of one of Kigali’s luxury hotels. The picture chronicles his efforts to save his family (including his Tutsi wife) and other refugees from the marauding militia. Though more than a little uncomfortable to watch, this is one of those stories that needs to be told. Worth seeing

Review – Shoah

This may be the all-time record holder for movies that take immense potential and run it right into the ground. The Holocaust as a subject is a virtual guarantee of an interesting production, but the execution of this documentary is so painfully inept that it wrecks the experience. I actually found myself losing interest in the middle of interviews not because the subject wasn’t fascinating (it almost always was) or the interviewees were off-putting (they weren’t; even the ex-Nazis were fascinating in an appalling sort of way) but because the audience is forced to sit and listen to lengthy passages of non-subtitled Polish or Hebrew, only finding out what’s being said when the French interpreter translates (and don’t even get me started on the problems with the translations and the subtitles). Technical problems aside, much of this production plays less like a documentary and more like a string of depositions. For example, at one point on the third disc we’re treated to a lengthy discussion of train schedules. As evidence of atrocity, it’s solid enough. It helps build a legal case against the Nazis. But it’s not particularly captivating viewing. All of which goes a long way toward explaining how this ends up being a nine-hour-long experience that spans four DVDs. As a historical document I’d give this three or even four stars, but as a movie it receives a substantially lower rating. See if desperate

Review – Godsend

A couple (Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn) lose their eight-year-old son to an auto accident. Enter Robert DeNiro as a well-intentioned but creepy doctor who offers to clone the kid. But when Offspring 2.0 reaches the age where the original was killed, strange things start to happen. So far so good. Unfortunately, at this point the film-makers decided to start tossing in a bunch of pointless complications. The worst of it is the turn-of-the-screw explanation for everything that’s happening, a resolution that proves to be both predictable and unsatisfying. Despite the story, this might have been a slightly better picture if the young actor playing the kid had a bit more range. He plays innocent and evil with the same deadpan smirk, and that makes it tough to build up much of an emotional response to the character one way or another. Mildly amusing

Review – A History of Violence

Last time around (Spider) David Cronenberg appeared to be trying to re-invent himself as David Lynch. When that didn’t work out, I guess he decided to try for Quentin Tarantino. This is a little better, but still not as good as if he’d just be himself. Viggo Mortensen stars as a small-town diner owner who foils a robbery attempt by killing the would-be bandits. The unwanted publicity that results draws the attention of a one-eyed mobster (Ed Harris) who comes to town insisting that our hero is actually someone other than who he claims to be. The story isn’t all that interesting, and the characters are stiff and awkward throughout; that’s something unwelcome that managed to survive from Cronenberg’s early career. However, the director’s skill with blood and guts serves him well in the spots where some gore is needed to punctuate a thought. Mildly amusing

Review – Memoirs of a Geisha

Early on this picture started to remind me of Gone with the Wind. They both feature young women straining against rigid social structure, elaborate and expensive pageantry, and (here’s the real kicker) how wonderful things were before the war came and destroyed everything. The repeated references to Manchuria are as disruptive to this story as the Confederacy is in the Mitchell movie. The plot and characters are also straight out of a Harlequin romance. That notwithstanding, the technical quality (particularly the cinematography, art direction and costume design) are impressive stuff. The final product is thus a lot like the geisha themselves: beautiful and enigmatic, but not really designed for a long-term relationship. Mildly amusing

Review – Dark Water

Here we have yet another American clone of a Japanese horror movie. Dead, drowned girl. Lots of heavy filter work. Does this Ring a bell with anyone? This time around the frights are few, and in the end the whole thing turns into more of a bummer than anything else. Jennifer Connelly plays a recently-divorced woman who has to move into a sub-standard high rise on Roosevelt Island. Her daughter almost immediately develops an imaginary friend, and you can pretty much imagine where things go from there. This isn’t the worst ghost story I’ve ever seen, but it might have been an easier viewing experience if so much of the plot early on hadn’t centered around apartment maintenance hassles (particularly leaky plumbing and water damage). Anyone who’s ever rented a place in a run-down building is likely to find this stuff more annoying than intriguing. Mildly amusing