Two summer films this year received a trashing by most critics. I found myself enjoying them quiet a bit. So now that HANCOCK has arrived on DVD, This Weekend’s Film Festival looks at five genre films that deserve a better shake then they received upon their theatrical release. All five films received less than 50% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. All five films are genre flicks (there were some good dramas that could have made the list, but I save those for a future Fest). One is a LAFF (a wonderful phrase coined by Martin “Dr. Toon” Goodman meaning Live-Action Animation Feature Film). Two are period piece thrillers (kind of). One is a psychological thriller. The final film is a superhero spoof. To be warned there are some MAJOR SPOILERS in my arguments for the defense of these films. Give this week’s lineup a chance, you might be surprised with what you find.

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On paper this film seemed promising. A comedy where Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon are forced to visit each home of their divorced parents on Christmas. Their characters are afraid of marriage because of their parents. It could be a great dark satire of modern relationships. That was what I hoped to get. But just like the Christmas puppy I never got, I was reminded that Santa Claus doesn’t always deliver.

Brad (Vaughn, SWINGERS) and Kate (Witherspoon, ELECTION) have a great relationship, but they’re convinced that marriage and kids are not for them. Each year they cook up some excuse to get out of visiting their families for Christmas, while they head off to some exotic beach vacation. This year, their plane is delayed and they get caught on television in Hawaiian shirts. Of course their parents were all watching the news at that moment, so now they have four destinations for ho ho ho day.

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Serendipity sometimes shines down on works of art and they arrive at the perfect moment. Director Gus Van Sant can thank serendipity for the added poignancy for his biopic on Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to hold a major political position in America. We can thank Van Sant for one of his best films.

At the age of 40, Milk (Sean Penn, MYSTIC RIVER) was living in New York City when he falls in love with the younger hippie Scott Smith (James Franco, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS) and they decide to move to San Francisco. There they open up a camera shop in the Castro district and Milk rallies the gay community to come together and create a safe place for their own, where they can help build gay friendly businesses and protect themselves against the brutality of police. He decides that to create really change he needs to run for office, and even in San Fran in the 1970s that has a steep uphill climb for him to accomplish, losing several bids for various offices until redistricting allowed the gay community to vote in one of their own.

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This film made me angry. If you respect the values in which America was conceived then this film will make you angry too. Director Alex Gibney soberly chronicles America’s journey toward torturing suspected terrorists at Bagram, Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib, Iraq to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Much like Charles Ferguson’s NO END IN SIGHT, the horrifying document of the Bush administration’s botched invasion of Iraq, this film speaks with people in the frontlines. Those that stepped down over policies they couldn’t stand by, and even those convicted of the crimes.

The story begins in Afghanistan in 2002 where a young man named Dilawar lived. He had saved enough to buy a taxi to help support his family. One day on a route, he was stopped by Afghan warlords looking for terrorists involved in recent rocket attacks. Dilawar was taken to Bagram, where he was beaten then handcuffed to the ceiling of his cell where he’d stand for hours on end. After five days in U.S. custody, he died. An official report said he died of “natural causes,” but the NEW YORK TIMES discovered the autopsy report sent to his family, which ruled the death a homicide. Turns out the paid informant warlords where actually the ones responsible for the rocket attacks.

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Top Anticipated Films of the Fall and Summer Face-Off

Six interesting trailers hit the Net this week, which make up this week’s RFP buzz. The fall season is winding down and heating up at the same time. Most of the big Oscar buzz films have yet to hit screens. December looks packed. A movie fans’ dream. Getting Buzzed this week has our first peeks at films just around the corner and some highly anticipated films of 2009.
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The classic TV series GET SMART from Mel Brooks and Buck Henry gets a modern redux for the big screen. Having been a spoof of James Bond to start, the TV series seems like a perfect one to bring into the 21st century now that we have Bond and Bourne battling it out for box office supremacy. Peter Segal’s feature GET SMART not only takes some nice pokes at those super spies, but at modern espionage in the real world as well.

Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell, THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN) is the top analyst for CONTROL, a U.S. government spy agency in competition with the CIA. He dreams of becoming an agent like the brawny and handsome Agent 23 (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, SOUTHLAND TALES). However, the Chief (Alan Arkin, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE) likes Max right where he is. However when Siegfried (Terence Stamp, SUPERMAN II), the spokesperson for the terrorist org KAOS, obtains the identities of all CONTROL agents, Max gets a promotion and is partnered with the beautiful Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED), who recently had major plastic surgery to hide her identity. Their mission is to stop KAOS from blowing up the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. on the day that the President (James Caan, THE GODFATHER) plans to attend.

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Takashi Miike is a director I have been intrigued with for some time. I’ve liked all the films of his that I have seen, up to this point, even if they’ve left me perplexed sometimes. At least they got me thinking. He often works in extremes such as in the morally ambiguous, yet fascinating, ICHI THE KILLER, and the provocative unaired episode of MASTERS OF HORROR titled IMPRINT. You know you’re pushing the boundaries when a pay cable channel thinks your work is too risqué to air. So I was excited to see what he would have in store when tackling his first English language feature in the style of a spaghetti western with an Asian infusion. After what I was served I should have settled for SpaghettiOs.

A gunslinger (Hideaki Ito, THE PRINCESS BLADE) rides into the town of Yuta where two rival gangs have been waging war against each other. The leader of the red gang Kiyomori (Koichi Sato, RASEN) brought his men into town to raid the gold miners. Yoshitsune (Yusuke Iseya, CASSHERN) brought his white gang into town to steal from the red gang. The gunslinger is unwilling to take sides, but does take an interest in the Romeo & Juliet-like tragic story of Yoshitsune’s slave Shizuka (Yoshino Kimura, BLINDNESS). With his mysterious motives, the gunslinger can’t trust anyone especially the corrupt sheriff (Teruyuki Kagawa, HERO) and the raspy voiced bar owner Ruriko (Kaori Momoi, MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA). Other shady characters will play roles as well, including the American gunman Ringo (Quentin Tarantino).

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For those that don’t know the history of BOLT’s production, it started as a project titled AMERICAN DOG written and directed by LILO & STITCH helmer Chris Sanders. It was the second feature left over at Disney that the new Pixar heads had to work with. To make a long story short, Sanders was removed from the film and directors Chris Williams and Byron Howard were given the task of reworking the entire film in 18 months, which is ridonculously short for an animated feature. I write this as a bit of background and to make the point that this isn’t Sanders’ film; it’s Williams and Howard’s film. So that’s how it must be judged, not what it could have been in some alternative universe. Considering how BOLT was made, it’s surprising that it works so well.

Bolt (John Travolta, LOOK WHO’S TALKING) is a TV super dog. Like THE TRUMAN SHOW, he has been raised to believe that everything in the show is real. His owner is the young girl Penny (Miley Cyrus, TV’s HANNA MONTANA), who despite being an actress truly does love Bolt as her own pet. But then Bolt accidentally gets shipped off to New York City, believing that his arch nemesis Dr. Calico (Malcolm McDowell, TV’s HEROES) has kidnapped his beloved Penny. Desperate to find the evil man with one green eye, Bolt seeks out the most obvious evil collaborator — a cat, any cat. Poor Mittens (Susie Essman, TV’s CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM) fits the bill and Bolt forces her on a cross-country adventure back to Hollywood. Along the way, they meet up with Bolt’s obsessive fan Rhino the hamster (Mark Walton), which convinces Mittens that Bolt not only doesn’t have super powers, but also is delusional.

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With KUNG FU PANDA and WALL•E now on DVD, This Weekend’s Film Festival takes a look at animated genre pictures. While many believe that animation is a genre all its own, animation to others is just a technique with which a filmmaker chooses to tell their stories. KUNG FU PANDA has fun with the martial arts genre, while WALL•E is firmly in the sci-fi universe. Joining these two films in the lineup are a psychological thriller and two other sci-fi animated productions, which have been greatly influential. If you think this week’s films are kids stuff, you’re in for a surprise.

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AKIRA (1988) (***)
(First Reviewed 3/12/03)
This film has long been considered the best anime film of all-time. That’s not really saying too much about anime… I liked the idea of humans tapping into the potential of mind… However, the story that the film constructs around that idea is convoluted… Plus I’m not sure who’s supposed to be the main character. Kaneda is a dorky leader and seems more interested in getting the pretty revolutionary girl, Kei, than saving his friend or finding out what all the mystery is about… At its core it has a great idea and the visual originality is astonishing, but outside of its grand message at the end it’s a pretty thin story.

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