Friday film roundup: Nothing to Crowe About
This week’s film roundup from Past the Popcorn:
This week’s big release is the much-anticipated Western remake 3:10 to Yuma from award-winning director James Mangold (Walk the Line) — and starring Christian Bale and Russell Crowe. Bullets fly copiously in this one, from start to finish, even while the heart of the story is a father’s struggle for his son’s respect. Though worthy themes are explored, says Greg Wright, the film’s script is weak. “I seriously doubt that Yuma will turn a new generation of filmgoers on to what makes the Western a great genre,” he says. “As meandering and narratively disjointed a chase as Seraphim Falls earlier this year, this Western just seems too much like Neo Goes West. Lots of weapons, shooting bullets. Big deal.”
Wright is even less enthusiastic about Shoot ‘em Up, an “action” movie about thugs out to kill an infant. The hyper-efficient killer who defends the child with the help of a hooker wetnurse is played by Clive Owen (yes, whose character in Children of Men had a similar task). But this film, which is rated R, should easily have been rated NC-17, says Wright. The violence is all played for laughs, and the sexuality includes, among other things, a villain who fondles corpses. “I rarely see a film that causes me to re-evaluate my previously high opinion of specific films,” says Wright, “much less the entire body of work of certain actors.”
The other major release this week, The Brothers Solomon, gets a rather better review from Kathy Bledsoe. The R-rated comedy “could satisfactorily define cheesiness in any dictionary in any language,” says Bledsoe. “The amazing thing is that this seems to be the writer’s unabashed intention.” That may work for some audiences, she says.
Meanwhile, Henry Jaglom’s low-budget Hollywood Dreams “is just well-informed enough, and just loving enough,” says Greg Wright, “to either make one laugh gleefully at how satirically sharp Hollywood is here skewered” — or confirm one’s worst fears about the decadence of the place. The bottom line, though, is that the film is too much the exponent of the weakness of improvisational filmmaking.”
On the upside, you might be interested to learn about next week’s release of the indie film Chalk. Mike Brunk talked this week with the film’s director, Mike Akel.
