TheState.com: Movies

Whoa, Mamma! Musical full of color, fun and charm

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:35 EDT

As colorful as a peacock feather and just about as insubstantial, “Mamma Mia!” bounces along on the music of ABBA and a cast of pros who sell like there’s no tomorrow.

Yeah, the plot and characters are onion-skin thin, but you can’t help singing along. And in bringing her stage production to the screen, first-time film director Phyllida Lloyd has retained the show’s goofy charm and mostly breathless pacing.

The story unfolds on a Greek island where one-time rocker chick Donna (Meryl Streep) has lived for 20 years, running an edge-of-insolvency hotel and rearing her cute-as-a-button daughter, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried). Now Sophie is getting married and, desperate for answers about her paternity, has pored over Mom’s old diary for clues.

Without telling anyone, the bride-to-be has sent wedding invitations to three men who were Donna’s paramours the summer Sophie was conceived: Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Harry (Colin Firth) and Bill (Stellan Skarsgard). One of them, Sophie is sure, must be her daddy.

And that, folks, is pretty much all the story you’ll get.

Chuckles for kids, inside jokes for parents

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:48 EDT

If you’re old enough to read this review, you aren’t the target audience for “Space Chimps,” a movie about chimpanzees sent in search of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

“Chimps,” from the animation studio that gave us “Valiant,” is one of those cartoons parents at least won’t mind sitting through while little Miss or Mister 8-and-under gets his or her chuckles at the cute talking primates.

And chuckle they will. With adorable critters and icky monsters and oodles of potential toy accessories (to say nothing of a video game tie-in), this movie looks for that sweet spot in every 7-year-old’s heart for chimpanzees and movies about them. And the script manages the occasional wisecrack or movie lovers’ inside joke to keep the grown-ups awake.

A space agency probe has slipped through a wormhole and found evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. Let’s send astronauts! Wait, through a wormhole? They might not survive. Let’s try it on chimps first!

Thus, the remnants of the chimp training program are given the job. And to drum up publicity, the grandson of the original space chimp, Ham, is added to the crew. He’s been living out his days in a circus act, letting himself be fired out of a cannon.

A fun and adventurous ‘Journey’ ... for kids

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 02:11 EDT

“Journey to the Center of the Earth” is cinematic sci-fi proof that the Earth’s core is made of cheese. Who knew?

Mercifully, it’s old-fashioned family-friendly B-movie cheese, served up in this Brendan Fraser/Jules Verne action epic for kids.

Seek out this “Journey” in a theater showing it in 3-D. You’ll want the T-Rex, with his snapping teeth, the bio-luminescent birds, the gigantic Venus flytraps and that mouthwash Fraser spits down his sink all right in your face. Or lap. This is 3-D the way it used to be — playful, used for effect, but not really a technology that can lift a middling movie much beyond tolerable.

Fraser stars as a Trevor Anderson, a teacher of “tectonics physics,” a man who has studied the deep geology of the Earth and its relationship to the drift of continents. His brother did the same. But Max, that brother, went missing 10 years ago. When Trevor baby-sits Max’s 13-year-old son, Sean (Josh Hutcherson), they stumble across Max’s annotated copy of Jules Verne’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” Max, it appears, was a “Vernian,” somebody who took the 19th century sci-fi writer’s fiction as fact. And he disappeared looking for a way into the center of the Earth.

Opening July 18

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:24 EDT

“The Dark Knight”: Batman (Christian Bale) joins forces with Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and newly appointed Gotham district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to rid the city of crime. But The Joker (Heath Ledger) throws a wrench in their plans.

“Mamma Mia!”: Young Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is about to get married and wants to find her real father. The problem is he could be one of three of her mother’s (Meryl Streep) past suitors (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard). Set to the tunes of the ’70s group ABBA.

“Space Chimps”: A group of NASA chimps travel the galaxy to rid a faraway planet of an evil leader.

Cue the Bateman

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:12 EDT

The part reads, “mild-mannered, middle-aged white guy, kind of idealistic, sort of a cheerleader, not the utter pushover he seems.” And — oh, yeah — “Make him funny.”

Sounds like a job for an acting Every Man, a superhero among supporting players. It sounds like a job for ... duh duh duuuuuh ... BATE-man!

Jason Bateman, who will wear “Arrested Development” as a career highlight to the end of his days, plays a lot of those movie average Joes — the guy who doesn’t really want to grow up and raise a child in “Juno,” the nerdy accountant seemingly immune to the magical pull of “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium.”

“I’m the Everyman, the straight man, the middle-aged white guy who isn’t overly skinny, overly tall, overly short, somebody who reacts to the funny things around him,” Bateman, 39, says from Los Angeles. “My mother’s British, so I kind of come by this reactionary comedy thing by default. It’s in my genes.”

His most Jason Bateman-ish role ever just might be in “Hancock,” the new superhero action comedy starring Will Smith. Bateman plays Ray, a do-gooder public relations man who wants to save the Earth, feed the hungry, house the homeless and maybe fix the wrecked image of the drunken superhero title character.

USC smoking doc opens at Nick

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:18 EDT

“Why We Smoke,” a documentary completed over two semesters by media arts students at USC, explores the many reasons smokers light up.

Given a grant by the South Carolina Tobacco Collaborative, 14 undergraduate filmmakers set to work researching the subject of smoking and videotaping interviews with smokers, health and scientific professionals.

The completed documentary will receive a screening at the Nickelodeon on Thursday, July 10, at 3, 6 and 8 p.m.

Call (803) 254-3433 or visit www.nickelodeon.org for tickets and information.

Sweet, touching ‘WALL-E’ a lesson in humanity

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:20 EDT

“WALL-E,” a savvy sci-fi Pixar comedy, has almost no dialogue. But with images and sound effects alone, it touches, it teaches and it tickles. It’s the best Pixar film since “Finding Nemo.”

If “Kung Fu Panda,” which riffed on martial-arts movie conventions, was clever, “WALL-E,” which absorbs, recycles and re-invents elements of “2001,” “Silent Running,” “Star Wars” and other sci-fi, is genius.

Some 700 years in the future, Earth is a vast wasteland. Literally. Garbage clogs the ruined streets of ruined cities, from the sewers all the way into orbit (space junk). Humans have so trashed the joint that they’ve abandoned the planet for a gigantic spaceship, leaving robots behind to clean up the mess.

And the last one working on this project is WALL-E, a cute little Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-class. He’s a trash compactor with eyes, gears, a fading finish and a job, a “directive.” He compacts the trash cubes that he then stacks into vast obelisks of junk.

WALL-E has a pet roach (roaches will survive the apocalypse) and a curiosity about the people who left all these Frisbees, toasters, VHS tapes, cigarette lighters (and Luxo Pixar lamps) behind. And WALL-E is lonely.

Seniors inspire optimism singing through old age

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:26 EDT

Time revises every taste and closes every gap. To observe the Young@Heart Chorus, a fluctuating group of about two dozen singers whose average age is 80, perform “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees in Stephen Walker’s documentary “Young@Heart” is to be uplifted, if slightly unsettled.

When they perform punk classics like “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash or “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones, the notion of a generation gap begins to crumble. Apart from the rebellious attitude behind the songs’ creation, these are elementary meat-and-potatoes tunes: “Sing Along With Mitch” material but with a hip credential.

The movie concentrates on the rigorous two-month preparations for a 2006 concert at the Academy Theater in Northampton. Guided by the chorus’ demanding longtime director, Bob Cilman, the members are learning new material, including “Yes We Can Can,” the Allen Toussaint hit for the Pointer Sisters, whose lyrics repeat “can” 71 times in intricate, staccato patterns; Sonic Youth’s enigmatic, equally demanding “Schizophrenia” and the Coldplay ballad “Fix You.”

Late during the making of “Young@Heart” two members of the chorus, Bob Salvini and Joe Benoit, died within a week. Although neither death was a complete surprise, occurring so close together, they come as shock to a group dedicated to living in the present as fully and exuberantly as possible. The upbeat realism of everyone connected with “Young@Heart” might be summarized in six words: Life goes on until it doesn’t.

Like action? You want to see ‘Wanted’

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:17 EDT

Blend the killer-in-training elements of “La Femme Nikita” with the physics-defying stunts of “The Matrix,” whip in the Oedipal angst of “The Empire Strikes Back” and sprinkle liberally with “Fight Club’s” bad attitude.

That’s the recipe for the tart-but-tasty “Wanted,” a cinematic confection guaranteed to raise moviegoers’ pulse rates.

With a star-heavy cast, mind-blowing visuals and more blood than a vampire flick, this modern-day fantasy about an ages-old brotherhood of assassins is an over-the-top guilty pleasure.

Those familiar with the earlier work of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov — the supernatural epics “Night Watch” and “Day Watch” — know that he’s a visual genius who can be something of a narrative nincompoop. Happily, “Wanted” (it’s based on a comic book) is mostly coherent (if wildly improbable).

The tone is set immediately with an astonishing high-rise shootout between a lone gunman and a squad of snipers. Bullets travel at super-slow speeds, drill into bodies and emerge on the other side in graceful spirals of gore. A man heaves himself 100 yards from one skyscraper to another.

Make outdoors movie magic

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:09 EDT

IT’S BEEN 36 YEARS since South Carolina’s outdoors starred in one of Hollywood’s most infamous adventure movies.

It’s time to put “Deliverance” behind us and come up with some outdoors-oriented films with more pleasant endings. It’s time for the Reel Action Festival of Film and Outdoors.

The Palmetto Conservation Foundation and Nickelodeon Theater are asking amateur film-makers to create short films and submit them for a juried competition. The best will get the star treatment with premieres at Nickelodeon on Oct. 11.

The five-day festival will offer parties, music and demonstrations at hiking, biking and paddling venues in the Columbia area. But the films are the heart of the event.

The rules for the contest are simple: Films must be 12 minutes or less and set in the outdoors.

Super summer heroes (PDF)

Sat, 03 May 2008 00:51 EDT