raves reviews revelations

STEP BROTHERS

After back-to-back missteps of vacuity, i.e Blades of Glory, Semi-Pro, Will Ferrell gets it on like he should with Adam McKay, their 3rd whimsically vulgar collaboration following Anchorman and Talladega Nights, drag-assing the indomitably ethereal John C. Reilly along for some ebullient, wide-eyed and high-hearted bumpus time. With Step Brothers, McKay and Ferrell again use the built-in genre excesses of frat-row comedy to deftly probe what's steadily becoming their intaglio MO: monochromatic social congeniality and formality as cultivated and disillusioned by cultural susceptibilities to submit to the stagnancy of comfort and convenience as manifested from economic and consumptive disenfranchisement and fear of change, as well as the bungling and sophomoric American expression of male bond and sexuality. Mouthful.

Step Brothers was one of the most solid and entertaining comedic chestnuts of the last couple years and a tender keeper. But, as much as I regret to say this to a fellow alum, Will Ferrell's brand of wide-eyed, trusting, irreverently spirited comedic sentiment is nearing its course's end. Maybe within the next half-decade there'll be a tangible transition toward a sense of comedy elaborating on Ferrell's ironic search for sincerity, something that strokes with more focused self-awareness and resolve while sustaining that cherub wonderment. Step Brothers, the title suggests a yearn beyond cynical irony, a near-genuine yearning for brotherly unanimity.

Will Ferrell is the most important comedian of the 21st century, at least. Steve Carrell gets honorable mention.


WALL-E

Pixar delivers another gem, possibly the studio's masterpiece so far. Apart from Cars, Pixar Animation hasn't miscued. What makes Wall-E particularly brilliant and revelatory is its ability to communicate with enduring simplicity its universals of Love, Purpose and Responsibility, all basically without the crutch of talk and rhetoric. This is what children's high-fantasy and Horror as polarized genres can achieve, the purity and universality of the eternal laws governing us, of the potentials we have to ascend and of the temptations which cause us to fall.

I'm searching for my Eva...


MIRRORS

Splat Pack members Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur return with their 3rd gore galore (High Tension, Hills Have Eyes), and it's a studiously adept if underwhelming massacre. I applaud them, at the very least, for attempting to construct and examine the social and perceptional ramifications of mirrors as literal and symbolic artifact for vanity, consumer culture and existential distortion. But generally, the French haven't got the eyes for real, raw horror. Their experienced, fluid narrative romanticism works against them in this genre, aesthetically and sentimentally. Some of these directors included loosely in the Splat Pack don't make the grade; of the ones listed on Wiki (Aja, Darren Lynn Bousman, Neil Marshall, Greg McLean, Eli Roth, James Wan & Leigh Whannell and Rob Zombie) I would in all generosity drop Bousman, Wan & Whannell. The Saw series is like all the insulting sequels to Friday the 13th and Halloween packaged into something slightly and modernly less inane. Wolf Creek by McLean was frenetic and a skilled orchestration, but all aesthetic. Neil Marshall's a solid commercial director and The Descent was one of the best Horror films of the past few years, but Doomsday was a huge letdown. I liked Zombie's Devil's Rejects, but he's obviously limited. Of this list, Eli Roth is the only true auteur. He could potentially be one of the finest auteurs in cinema's future, if he doesn't let the celebrity get to his creative virility, which is very viable risk with Eli.

Speaking of the Horror genre, look out for the writer/director of Transmission 1 from The Signal.



HANCOCK

I felt cheated. Rather, my feelings were voided. So po-mo. Similar to Iron Man, Hancock was just a fragmented, postmodern collage of scenes brusquely and clumsily strung together to construct some undercooked narrative of coolness. In another potential-unrealized flop by Will Smith (the other being I Am Legend), Hancock was particularly a frustrating disappointment because there were many flowers which under the brass knuckle direction of Peter Berg weren't able to blossom. Hancock was the epitome of manufactured sincerity and the aesthetic cover-up of a film under-conceived. This hearkens back to the Iron Man comparison because Berg and Favreau are both comedic actors-turned empty flash directors and were co-stars in Very Bad Things. Now, as directors they suffer from the same postmodern symptom, overstatement and lack of fluidity. There's more to say, especially about the amateurish subterranean commentary on true masculinity, but I'm over this blog. I will give props Jason Bateman, as well as Vincent Ngo, my fellow Vietnamer, for writing the script 12 years ago.