a strikingly fierce day the excellent adventure of the matrix stood point break: denver premieres for 12/12

"Actually, Timmy, the thing is, it's a bit private..."


Is there a blogger alive who loves movies more than our man Pike Bishop? Here's his round-up of this week's openers in Denver:


Frost/Nixon- Scripted by Peter Morgan (The Last King of Scotland, The Queen, The Other Boleyn Girl) based on his own stage play and directed by Ron Howard (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man), Frost/Nixon is a dramatic take on the 1977 interview of disgraced former President Richard Nixon conducted by the British television personality David Frost. Nixon and his staff chose David Frost to do the interview knowing that his reputation was one of a non-confrontational lightweight. Their belief was that, through series of softball questions, Nixon could reassert his righteousness and begin to rehabilitate his public persona. This gambit might have worked for Nixon if it were not for the elephant in the room- Watergate. Conducted over twelve days, the Frost/Nixon interview produced 4 90-minute episodes showing the most secretive and guarded American president in history slowly slipping into the most candid. In this film adaptation, Frank Langella (Nixon) and Michael Sheen (Frost) reprise their roles from the stage production while actors Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Rebecca Hall and Oliver Platt fill out the second tier. If Ron Howard has proven himself too middle-of-the-road for you but are interested in the subject matter, then check out the DVD of the actual interview, Frost/Nixon: the Original Watergate Interviews, which was released last week. If you find yourself completely bored by all of this, but want to see Monty Python ripping into their old boss, David Frost- I mean “Timmy Williams” - then watch the Youtube clip. The film opens at the Landmark Theatre at Greenwood Village on Friday.

The Day the Earth Stood Still- This unnecessary remake is directed by Scott Derrickson whose past work includes The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Hellraiser: Inferno and stars Keanu Reeves. Do you need more proof that this will be a piece of shit? Alright chief, then how about we look at the Rotten Tomatoes rating for this thing? As of this morning, it stands at 24%. I think that this mouth breather over at Bloody-Disgusting.com gives us a good idea of who is in that 24%. If you don’t want to read it I’ll give you his best lines:

Something has always pissed me off about the original was Michael Rennie ‘s performance as Klaatu, an alien sent to Earth to save mankind from their magnetism to war. Klaatu I supposed to be over our feeble emotions, omnipotent if you will, yet he walks around Washington with his nose in the air completely arrogant and annoyingly cocky. He’s a flippin’ know-it-all and it makes absolutely no sense why he’s be the one to judge our society. Scott Derrickson and co. fix this problem in the remake where Keanu Reeves plays the news and improved Klaatu, who plays the role strikingly fierce.

Note to President-elect Barack Obama: Read the paragraph above and realize that our public school systems have failed us. Fix our schools before it is too late.

JCVD- Jean-Claude Van Damme takes a self reflexive look at his life as well as his career in this film and finds the human being underneath the veneer of a B-grade action star. Jean-Claude (playing a role that is the bizarro-world version of himself) returns to Brussels after losing a custody battle for his daughter in L.A. Here he is up to his neck in debt and having a hard time finding any worthwhile film work. In need of a cash wire transfer to pay off his lawyers, Van Damme enters a bank that is being held up and finds that he is caught in a Dog Day Afternoon-like hostage situation that is reminiscent of the plots from his straight-to-video movie career. JCVD is Jean-Claude Van Damme coming to terms with himself, and he supposedly gets right at the heart of the matter with a single shot, 10 minute monologue scene in which he knocks it out of the park with a partially improvised public atonement for his botched life. I think it was Richard Corliss that said it was the “finest, most scab-pulling” performance he saw at the Toronto Film Festival. I don’t think that any of Van Damme’s old action star peers (Segal, Dudikoff, Lundgren, Norris, or Stallone) could pull off such an act of self effacement with such ease in such a public way. So for that I give congratulations to “The Muscles from Brussels” for he has with one film moved away from being the easy punch line he once was. The film opens at the Mayan on Friday.

How About You- This 2007 Irish dramedy starring Vanessa Redgrave opens Friday at the Starz FilmCenter. Their synopsis reads:

How About You tells the story of Ellie (Hayley Atwell), a footloose and fearless young woman who is left in charge of a residential home owned and run by her older sister Kate (Orla Brady), over the Christmas period. Her youth and inexperience bring her into bitter conflict with the four grumpy old residents known as the “hardcore”: retired screen beauty Georgia (Vanessa Redgrave), spinster sisters Hazel (Imelda Staunton) and Heather (Brenda Fricker), and a reformed alcoholic judge, Donald (Joss Ackland). The film deals with the at times hilarious antics of these uncivilized seniors, the gradual solidarity that develops between the residents and Ellie and an unlikely romance.

Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine - This documentary about the influential sculptor, Louise Bourgeois, opens at the Starz FilmCenter on Friday. Their synopsis reads:

Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine is a cinematic journey inside the life and imagination of an icon of modern art. As a screen presence, Louise Bourgeois is magnetic, mercurial and emotionally raw. There is no separation between her life as an artist and the memories and emotions that affect her every day. Her process is on full display in this extraordinary documentary. As an artist, Louise Bourgeois has for six decades been at the forefront of successive new developments, but always on her own powerfully inventive and disquieting terms. In 1982, at the age of 71, she became the first woman to be honored with a major retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In the decades since, she has created her most powerful and persuasive work that has been exhibited, studied and lectured on worldwide. Filmed with unparalleled access between 1993 and 2007, Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine is a comprehensive and dramatic documentary of creativity and revelation. It is an intimate, human and educational engagement with an artist’s world.

Returning to the Big Screen this week is Vicky Christina Barcelona. This film opened early in the year but now that it is getting some general recognition from the Golden Globes and specific notice for Penelope Cruz from the L.A. and New York film circles, Woody Allen’s third European venture, Vicky Christina Barcelona, is being trotted out again for the obligatory Oscar race. That said, it is supposed to be the most enjoyable of Allen’s recent output and Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz are said to put in notable performances.

Also of note, a film spotlighted last week, A Christmas Tale by Arnaud Desplechin, moves over to the Starz FilmCenter on Friday, December 12th.

and after the nukes, the only thing left will be roaches and music biopics: denver premieres for 12/5

Jeffrey Wright and Adrien Brody watch the approaching mushroom cloud, confident in the knowledge they will outlast us all.

Our man in Cap Hill Pike Bishop boldly goes so you don't have to:

Cadillac Records- By turning the colorful lives of American R&B, Blues, Country and Rockabilly icons into so many portraits in beige, Hollywood has, for the last thirty years or so, worked hard to Disneyfy the history of our country’s musical heritage with the dreaded subgenre of the music biopic. Due to the fact that most of these movies are written and directed by Baby Boomers (or their sycophantic children), it is hardly surprising to note then, that an insidious undercurrent in all of these biopics is the idea that the music of say a feisty hillbilly hero or a urban/rural negro bluesman will soon find its way to a young and hip white kid from the city (read: suburb) and influence the most perfect form of musical expression ever- Rock and Roll, preferably the late 60s British variety. So when we watch the trailer for the new film Cadillac Records and a see the snippet of the young Rolling Stones approaching the nonplused Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright) at the door of a South Side bar and tell him, “We are big fans. We named our band after one of your songs… ” we know in what context the filmmakers want us to view the characters up on the screen. They might as well have had some classic rock dork stand in front of the actors, point and say, “Psssst. That’s Muddy Waters. He made Rock and Roll possible!” To that end, Cadillac Records will do the same for some of the Chess recording artists as say, What’s Love got To Do With It did for (Ike and) Tina Turner or Ray did for Ray Charles or Walk the Line did for Johnny Cash- it will push a couple more best-of compilation albums out the door to the curious only to be brought back again some time later as used-bin fodder for cash or trade.

The stunt casting (and the thinking behind it):

Beyonce Knowles as Etta James (She does what she wants because she is the producer and don’t you forget it.)

Mos Def as Chuck Berry (This one is obvious- He’s the Chuck Berry of Hip-Hop.)

Cedric the Entertainer as Willie Dixon (He’s fat. Get it, Willie Dixon was fat too.)

Eric Bogosian as Alan Freed (He wrote and starred in Talk Radio so he’s perfect for the role of a disc jockey!)

Tony Bentley as Alan Lomax (Well he played Hal B. Wallis, the guy that produced Elvis’ first movie, in that Made-for-TV Elvis movie. Muddy Waters is the Elvis of Blues. So why don’t we get this guy to play Alan Lomax, the guy that produced Muddy’s first field recording. It would be like karma or something.)

The rest of the cast:

Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters
Adrien Brody as Leonard Chess
Gabrielle Union as Geneva Wade
Columbus Short as Little Walter
Eamonn Walker as Howlin' Wolf
Kevin Mambo as Jimmy Rogers
Valence Thomas as James Cotton

The Punisher: War Zone- When a comic book movie is dumped onto the market at either end of the summer release schedule, an alarm should go off in your head that says “crap movie.” If you learn that said comic book movie is a 2nd time reboot (as in a third stand-alone movie, for you kids without the math skillz) of a franchise whose only rewards are watching rounds of ammo being fired into the bad guy’s faces and some wicked cool ‘splosions, then that alarm should no longer be necessary. From here on out you are on your own. The word out in the intranets is that The Punisher: War Zone is nerdy hipster manna in that it is so, so very bad that it is good. I love the first line of Roger Ebert’s review where he writes, “You used to be able to depend on a bad film being poorly made. No longer.” There is a sense of pathos and of fear in his proclamation, almost like he has seen what’s coming over the horizon and knows that it can’t be stopped.

Antarctica- Opening at the Starz FilmCenter is this dramedy from Israel. The synopsis they give reads:

Director Yair Hochner gives us a wacky comedy that ignores politics altogether while focusing on its characters’ domestic and romantic problems. And no one has more problems than gay siblings Shirley and Omer. Omer is almost thirty and still hasn’t found himself — or the man of his dreams. A series of disastrous blind dates hasn’t helped. Shirley is a little younger and has already nabbed her dream woman, Michal, owner of the hippest café in town (and Shirley’s boss). But the thought of settling down scares Shirley, who wonders if she’s ready to give up her long-held plan of traveling to Antarctica.

As the siblings sort through their feelings and prepare for adulthood, friends and relatives chime in with their advice and problems of their own. No one has more of either than their “Jewish mother from hell,” Shoshanna, played, in what Hochner describes as a tribute to both the films of John Waters and the late great Divine, by Yoam Huberman, one of Israel’s most talented drag artists.

They Killed Sister Dorothy- Also opening at Starz FilmCenter is this documentary. The synopsis they give reads:

They Killed Sister Dorothy chronicles the legal proceedings that followed the execution-style murder of Sister Dorothy Stang. At seventy-three, the Catholic nun and activist had lived in Brazil for thirty years, collaborating with the government to establish sustainable development in a remote corner of the Amazon. But along the way, she had made enemies among the ranchers who stood to benefit from the exploitation of the rainforest and its natural resources. In 2005, she was shot six times at point-blank range. Two men were arrested for the killing, but it quickly became clear that her death was part of a much greater conspiracy.

A Christmas Tale- Opening last Friday but continuing on this week is A Christmas Tale, the critically-praised French film about a dysfunctional family gathering together for Christmas after the family matriarch learns she is dying from leukemia. It looks like the ensemble cast of character actors is the big draw for this film along with the pleasant structure of vignette-like scenes adding up to an emotionally satisfying whole. It stars Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny, Melvil Poupaud, and Laurent Capelluto. Directed by Arnaud Desplechin (Kings and Queen)