Battle: Los Angeles [film review]

* Released theatrically in March; DVD and Blu-Ray release TBA

I figured it best that I write a review of this one as soon as possible, as Battle: Los Angeles (known overseas as World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles) felt like one of those movies that slides from your brain within a day or two of seeing it. No, I did not have high expectations for the film, but I was in the mood for some mindless entertainment and it aptly served its function as a decent sci-fi action flick.

The plot, such as it is, centres around a small Marine platoon that is deployed when aliens start dropping from the sky off the coast of Los Angeles and numerous other highly populated coastal cities worldwide. The aliens need our water for some unspecified purpose and apparently it's a scarce commodity in the rest of the solar system. The platoon is given a mission to rescue civilians trapped inside a police station in Santa Monica, before the military carpet bombs the crap out of the area in an effort to contain the invasion.

An obligatory introduction to the platoon members and some of their backgrounds is kept mercifully short at the beginning of the film (just 10 minutes), providing an early confirmation that yes, your instincts were right: this one will most certainly not be up for best screenplay at next year's Oscars. The characters practically roll off of a worn out war/action movie character assembly line, compiled from some element of the following clichés: the green rookie, the green platoon leader (who practically has "will die before the end credits roll" tattooed on his forehead), the mentally fragile soldier, the guys who are either about to get married or whose partners are about to have a baby (meaning they have everything to live for!), the grizzled veteran who is just about to retire, the guy in search of redemption, and hey, it's a multicultural group, too! Add in Michelle Rodriguez to balance out the PC quotient, as she turns in yet another badass-chick-who's-as-tough-as-the-guys role. Star Aaron Eckhart, as Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz, certainly looks the part of a soldier and action hero, with his square jaw and cleft chin. He acts as a solid anchor for all the nonsense he's surrounded himself with, which is exactly what the film needs.

Director Jonathan Liebesman and the script he's working from cling safely to the genre guidelines as required, relying heavily on special effects (which are quite good) and loud explosions to distract us from the fact the movie has precious little more to offer. There are some clumsy, ill-advised attempts at injecting an emotional core into the proceedings with a subplot involving a civilian and his son, as well as an overload of jingoistic "hoorah!" Marine-pride moments that will make you question whether or not the U.S. Marines had a role in bankrolling this film. Liebesman uses the now-standard documentary-style handheld camera technique, which can be annoying with its constant movement, but not so much it takes you out of the movie. He also borrows a page out of Spielberg's Jaws book, initially playing coy with how much of a full view the audience gets of the aliens. Unfortunately, when we do get a clear look it's somewhat of a letdown, since they're faceless creatures which turn out to be rather lacking in the personality department.

Want a well-told story with a semblance of logic? Look elsewhere, like Cloverfield, District 9, or even the recent War Of The Worlds remake. I'm still trying to figure out how a big budget movie with "Los Angeles" in the title managed to provide such scant visual representation of the city it's supposed to be taking place in (there's nary a glimpse of a crumbling Capital Records building or even the Hollywood sign).

Rating: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

What I'm watching at the upcoming 2011 Hot Docs festival...

The 2011 edition of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival runs from April 28th through May 8th and here's what I'll be checking out:

Eco Pirate: The Story Of Paul Watson

The Hollywood Complex

Family Instinct

Inside Lara Roxx

Despicable Dick & Righteous Richard

Love Shines

Superheroes

Reviews (hopefully for all) to follow...

Best Buy takes a bath on 'Chinese Democracy'...

A story last week on Hennemusic.com caught my eye. Seems Best Buy, who signed on to be the exclusive U.S. retailer for the November 2008 release of Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy album (which took almost 15 years for frontman Axl Rose to release), have so many copies of unsold product that they've, uh, slashed the price of the album to just $1.99 on their website.

The infamous album, which was arguably one of the most highly anticipated rock albums ever, has sold just 614,000 copies in America to date, according to Nielsen Soundscan. The Recording Industry Association Of America, which issues gold and platinum album certifications, awarded it a platinum certification shortly after its release, based on shipments of over one million units. When I read that fact I was shocked because I thought this practice had long ago been done away with. That it continues only demonstrates what a useless organization the RIAA is (these are the same people, after all, who sued kids for illegal downloading). Wasn't the whole point of the implementation of the Soundscan system in 1991 to give more accurate sales figures based on actual scans at retail point-of-purchase, thereby eliminating the shoddy guesswork and inflated sales numbers the music labels were guilty of for decades? Apparently not.

This news is just one more black mark on an album that deserved much better (read my review here). Its anemic sales performance was due to it being a victim of too much hype, both too much time passing between GNR releases and too radical a shift in sound, which alienated fans, and, of course, Rose himself. Bizarrely, he did almost no press when the album came out and refused to have a tour ready to support the album upon its release. Clearly, a further sign of the man's massive ego and tenuous grasp on reality.

The American [film review]

* Released theatrically in September 2010; now available on DVD and Blu-Ray

The American strikes me as one of those love-it-or-hate-it type of movies, based on its unhurried pace and European-style minimalism. Frankly, I'm amazed that it didn't tank at the North American box office, where it pulled in $35 million. That figure may be considered poor by star George Clooney's standards, but everything's relative. Really, it's a testament to his star power that an uncommercial, borderline art film with mixed reviews and absolutely zero in the way of another recognizable name in the rest of the cast (unrecognizable on this continent, anyway) performed at the level it did.

An adaptation of Martin Booth's 1990 novel A Very Private Gentleman, The American is beautifully directed by Anton Corbijn, who made his name as a photographer and video director for some of the biggest names in music (including U2, Metallica, Johnny Cash, and The Rolling Stones), as well as the Hollywood and fashion world elite. His first foray into feature films was 2007's Control, a highly praised biopic on Joy Division. I love rock films, but had next to no interest in Control, due to my complete lack of interest in the band, not to mention I've always found Corbijn's work highly overrated (as I touched on in my review from last year of the documentary Shadow Play: The Making Of Anton Corbijn). Based on the director's superb work here, however, I believe I may have to revisit my decision to skip his directorial debut.

An inspection of Clooney's movie resume actually reveals a surprisingly weak track record. Of the 25 or so films in which he's been the main star since his breakout role on TV's ER in 1994, only about four are, in my opinion, strong pieces of work (including Out Of Sight, Three Kings, Michael Clayton, and Up In The Air). The rest are average (such as the first Ocean's Eleven, The Perfect Storm, and From Dusk Till Dawn), noble failures (like Syriana, The Good German, and Burn After Reading), or just outright garbage (Good Night And Good Luck, Batman & Robin, Solaris, and Leatherheads, to name just a few). O Brother, Where Art Thou? might seem conspicuously absent from that rundown...label that one exceedingly overvalued from my viewpoint.

Now you can add one more notch to Clooney's emaciated "strong" cinematic column with his performance here. His character, known first as Jack (he subsequently also uses "Edward" as a pseudonym), is a skilled assassin with additional expertise in the field of custom-designed firearms building. Worn out by the gruelling mental toll his occupation has inflicted on him, he decides to take one last job before getting out. His contact hooks Jack/Edward up with the beautiful Mathilde (played by Thekla Reuten), a hitwoman who needs a custom-designed sniper rifle for her next assignment. While set up in a small town in the Italian countryside, Jack/Edward, a man who feels his past transgressions place him beyond the loving grasp of God or any other higher being, finds himself surprisingly befriending Father Benedetto (played by Paolo Bonacelli), who has a few skeletons in the closet of his own. Jack/Edward also finds himself falling for a local prostitute named Clara (played by Violante Placido). The nudity and other eye candy scenes, such as the one featuring a lingering rear silhouette shot of Reuten in a tight skirt, or even a couple with a shirtless Clooney working out, feel a little gratuitous, yes. But what the hell...I mean, Placido is categorically jaw-droppingly beautiful and, despite the title, it is basically a European film.

Clooney does a superb job of conveying the oppressive weight his character carries around, underplaying the role with deft touches of paranoia and moroseness and setting the emotionally subdued tone that flows throughout the film (aided nicely by an effective score from Herbert Grönemeyer). The script, adapted for the screen by Rowan Joffe, employs a refreshing economy of dialogue that puts more demands on the actors (especially Clooney, who is in virtually every scene), a task which the entire cast is up to.

A sort of lo-fi Bourne movie, The American goes heavy on mood and sparse on the action, which will turn off many viewers. Those looking for something a little more thoughtful and higher-minded will be rewarded, however.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★☆

Please excuse our appearance...

Clearly, there's been some serious inactivity on this blog the past couple of months, mostly due to a beginning-of-the-year residential move that ate up a lot of my time.

New reviews will be resume sometime in late March. Thanks for your patience and continued readership.

Bruno Mars - Doo-Wops & Hooligans [album review]

* Released in October

Other than one not insignificant bump in the road from a September arrest in Las Vegas for cocaine possession, it's been a pretty sweet year for pop singer/songwriter/producer Bruno Mars. Born Peter Gene Hernandez in Hawaii, Mars co-wrote, co-produced, and sang on massive summer hits "Nothin' On You" and "Billionaire" (by B.o.B. and Travie McCoy, respectively), co-wrote one of the biggest songs of the year with Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You", released his critically and commercially well-received debut album (Doo-Wops & Hooligans) that landed a number one single ("Just The Way You Are") in multiple countries and has a follow-up ("Grenade") headed in the same direction, and received seven Grammy nominations. So how was your 2010?

I first noticed Mars a few weeks back on Saturday Night Live, with his two song performance managing to capture my attention. I DVR SNL most weeks, but find little, both musically and comically, that doesn't have me going heavy on my remote's "FF" button. Before I'd heard a note, it was Mars' live presentation that gave me pause. The singer and his guitarist, bassist, and drummer were dressed in identical suits with skinny ties...throw in a pompadour hair style on Mars and it successfully completed the 50's doo-wop group visual homage. Add in the fact that Mars also played guitar, a rarity for an artist of colour (which sounds so bloody un-PC, but it's just a fact). Those refreshing visual elements, combined with well-executed renditions of his two aforementioned chart-topping singles, led me to check out his debut, which is an unabashedly commercial collection of songs that dips its feet into numerous musical genres, including pop, hip hop, rock, reggae, r & b, and soul.

Mars blows his wad early, with the two opening tracks on the album comprising its best material: "Grenade" mixes a marching floor tom drum beat with heavy keyboards and Mars' smooth vocal style, augmented by some tasteful Motown-style background vocals, and "Just The Way You Are" takes much of the same formula, speeds up the tempo a little, and ends up with a very different sounding song, which I'd have to call one of the best pop tunes I've heard this year. About half of the rest of the album's songs (there are ten in total) fall somewhere within the "very good" level of quality: "Runaway Baby" is a high energy 60's throwback, "Marry You" also borrows liberally from that decade with its highly melodic song structure (love the use of the wedding bells, too), "Talking To The Moon" is a solid ballad that probably best shows off Mars' impressive vocal ability, and then there's the album's final track, "The Other Side". It originally appeared back in May on Mars' It's Better If You Don't Understand EP, along with a couple of other songs that appear on Doo-Wops & Hooligans. The song (featuring Green, who it actually sounds like it was written for, and B.o.B.), while strong, feels somewhat out of step with the rest of the tracks, which is probably because it's the most modern sounding one of the bunch. It was written much earlier than most of the songs on his full-length player and, according to Wikipedia, has eleven (!) songwriters accredited to it (three of those names are Mars, Philip Lawrence, and Ari Levine, who make up the unfortunately named songwriting/producing team The Smeezingtons). How eleven people are needed to write a 3:47 song is beyond my scope of comprehension, I must admit.

At a lean 35 minute running time and ten songs, there's little room for filler, but Doo-Wops & Hooligans has its share. Most glaring is the atrocious "Our First Time", which is the kind of slowed down/sexed up Usher and R. Kelly-style r & b that has me running screaming in the opposite direction. "The Lazy Song", which is almost oppressively lightweight, lyrically celebrates the pleasures of lounging around doing nothing, set to an instantly forgettable laid back musical accompaniment that wouldn't seem out of place on a (*shudder*) Jack Johnson or Jason Mraz album. "Liquor Store Blues" isn't much better, amping up the reggae sound touched on during the aforementioned track and getting a credibility assist from Bob Marley's son, Damian. The result just isn't my cup of tea, though. "Count On Me" is another slight number that borrows again from Mraz and Mars' fellow countryman Israel Kamakawiwo'le, with its stripped down acoustic guitar and light percussion. The nice string arrangement on the song's back half does redeem things, but only slightly.

Mars is a hugely talented young artist (did I mention he also played most of the instruments on Doo-Wops & Hooligans?) who needs to refine his musical focus a little and stick to his obvious strengths, plus his lyrics need a lot of work. Even the album's potent songs are marred by overearnest, soppy wordcraft that one expects will improve as Mars matures.

Rating: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Inception [movie review]

* Released theatrically in July; released on DVD and Blu-Ray today

A common complaint with most of today's movies is that they don't challenge the audience enough. Inception is the exception...almost to a fault. On more than one occasion, I heard feedback from moviegoers along the lines of "I liked it, but I couldn't quite figure out what was going on". That ability to impress (even while managing to somewhat alienate) translated into powerful word-of-mouth buzz, which, combined with strong reviews and repeat business derived from the gotta-see-it-again-to-suss-out-the-plot's-complexities factor, led to huge box office for the film. Many critics just downright hated it because of its labyrinthian storytelling (sprawled out over an also demanding 148 minutes), the best of which has to be Rex Reed's hilariously scathing review here.

Clearly, it's writer/director Christopher Nolan's recent strong track record at helming films that make a boatload of cash for their studio (like The Dark Knight) that convinced Warner Brothers to cough up the reported $160 million budget for such a high-risk project, which Nolan has been working on since 2002. Despite its over-ambitious narrative leanings, Inception does look quite amazing, between the numerous globe-trotting backdrops (New York City, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Tangiers, London, Paris, and Calgary, subbing for the Alps) and impressive, original special effects. Nolan's dream world allows for mind-bending visuals like shapeshifting landscapes and a trippy one-on-one battle in a hotel in both inverted and zero gravity. The director insisted on keeping CGI to a minimum, leading to the building of three sets alone that were used for the hotel scenes, including one set that housed a rotating 100-foot hallway.

As much as I can sum up the multi-layered, high-concept story in one paragraph, here it is: Don Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is an expert hired by captains of industry to infiltrate the dreams of other corporate heavyweights to steal their ideas. His team consists of long-time associate Arthur (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a man skilled in the arts of deception named Eames (played by British actor Tom Hardy), a chemistry wizard (played by Dileep Rao) who oversees the placement and extraction of the team into the dream realm, and Ellen Page's character, Ariadne. She's the newest recruit, a young and gifted architecture student for Cobb to mentor who is taught how the dream-hijacking world operates (which, in turn, helps school the viewer) and who will instill her expertise to help create the layouts of the dreams. The outfit is hired by Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe's character) to slip into the dreams of one of his corporate rivals (played by Cillian Murphy) and not extract information already present, but implant an idea that will ultimately benefit Saito financially. The catch: such a feat (known as "inception") has never been successfully accomplished. If Cobb and his team can pull the job off it will also allow him to reunite with his family after a forced exile from America due to circumstances I won't disclose. Tied into that subplot are Cobb's periodic encounters with his unstable wife, Mal, played by Marion Cotillard in full-on femme fatale mode. Oddly, there are incredibly coincidental elements of the relationship Cobb has with his wife in this movie as there were with DiCaprio's character and his spouse in his last film from earlier this year, Shutter Island.

Good performances all-around and a surprisingly liberal use of action help to dilute the mildly abrasive effects of the movie's high-minded plot machinations, which, at one point, is balancing four concurrent stories involving a dream within a dream within another dream. Inception isn't quite as wholly original as critical and public reaction might have lead you to believe, with Nolan employing several well-worn movie ideas: the use of a team of thieves, each with their own specialty, is heist movie 101, there's Cobb's "one last big job before I retire" offer, and the scenes in the Alps are straight out of a James Bond movie. Films such as Blade Runner, The Matrix, and Fight Club also have their fingerprints all over this one. As mentioned, many feel a second (or more) viewing is necessary to digest all that Inception has to offer. I liked it well enough, just not enough to devote another two-and-a-half hours of my life to sitting down with it again.

Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆