New Releases

Several years ago I travelled through the South Island of New Zealand with a group of close friends and was amazed by the diversity and stark contrast between eco-regions. Sadly we didn't have time or plans to make it across to the North Island, but I vowed to go back especially to see the Maori inhabitants in their rural setting. The East Coast of the North Island has a reputation for unemployment, poverty and isolation. Academy Award nominee and writer/director Taika Waititi (Eagle vs. Shark, Two Cars, One Night) uses this location as the setting for the bittersweet comedy Boy, which has won several awards including an AFI Fest Audience Award and the Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk Grand Prix at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Boy weaves a complex narrative both whimsical and tragic, relying mostly on the imagination of two brothers -- 11-year-old Boy (James Rolleston) who exaggerates his life and confides his innermost secrets to a pet goat, and younger brother Rocky (Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu) who believes he has magic powers so strong that they were responsible for the death of their mother during his birth.

I'm happy to tell you about a free preview screening for the documentary Bully next week, before it opens in Austin theaters on Friday, April 13. Bully is a movie about children and teens who are the targets of seriously bullying in and around schools, and what they and their families are doing to try to deal with the problem. The film, partially shot in Fort Worth, previously screened in Austin during Austin Film Festival last year, when it was titled The Bully Project. You can read my mini-review from AFF at Movies.com.

Bully has been in the news lately because the MPAA originally gave the documentary an R rating, which would have made it difficult for teenagers to see the movie. However, on Thursday, the MPAA rated the movie PG-13 after some minor cuts for language were made. An intense scene on a bus that director Lee Hirsch thought was pivotal to the movie (he's right) was able to remain with the new rating.

Slackerwood has 25 sets of passes to give away to a preview screening on Wednesday, April 11 at 7 pm at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar. To get the passes, click this link and log into Gofobo or create a user account. (You do need a Gofobo account to get the tickets.) If prompted, enter the code SLACK993T. You will receive a pass via email that you must print and bring to the theater.

But wait ... there's more. If you are an Austin Film Society member, AFS is also giving away passes for the Wednesday night screening. Visit the AFS page for the event and log in to the AFS website to get the link and code to obtain passes. (Again, you need a Gofobo account.)

Please bear in mind that more passes are given away for preview screenings than there are available seats -- you are not guaranteed a seat with your pass. I recommend getting to the theater no less than an hour early to ensure you get into the movie. Each pass admits two people, so find a friend to take with you.

Now you have two ways to get a chance to see Bully next Wednesday night for free. What other reason do you need?

In The Salt of Life (with an Italian title better translated as Gianni and the Women), Gianni (Gianni Di Gregorio) is a sweet sadsack of a man, nearing 60 but already "retired" for nearly a decade. He is lonely but not alone, since he has a lovely wife, college-age daughter, concerned friend Alfonso (Alfonso Santagata), a sweet dog, and a nonagenarian mother. But it is the latter, played by Valeria de Franciscis, whose imperious manner and spendthrift ways are increasing the size of the Gucci bags drooping under Gianni's tired eyes.

If she has any "problem," large or small, Mama calls her only child and complains that she isn't feeling well and that he must come over right away. Once he arrives at her beautiful estate with a lush garden and rooms full of valuable art, Gianni quickly discovers that she simply needs champagne and sandwiches served to her ancient friends playing poker. With no job, Gianni is the go-to man for family shopping, for walking the dog, for picking up the laundry, for buying curtains from Ikea, and for adjusting the picture on Mama's TV. Apron strings were never so long or unbreakable.

Two years after the 3D reboot Clash of the Titans, another filmmaking team has taken liberty with the 1981 screenplay centered on the legend of Perseus in Wrath of the Titans. With The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning under his belt as well as the forthcoming reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, director Jonathan Liebesman has no fear of sequels or re-inventions. Clash of the Titans lead actors Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and Danny Huston reprise their respective roles from the 2010 movie as Perseus, Zeus, Hades and Poseidon.

Wrath of the Titans finds son of Zeus and demi-god Perseus living the life of a simple fisherman with his son Helius (John Bell), widowed after the death of his wife Io. Perseus' father pays a visit to ask for his help -- as faith in the gods diminish, most of the gods are gone, leaving Hades and Ares to seek their revenge on Zeus and free the giant Kronos. Hades resents Zeus for having banished him to Tartarus, and God of War Ares (Edgar Ramirez) is vengeful against his father and half-brother Perseus.

Not wanting to leave his son, Perseus refuses Zeus' pleas and shortly thereafter, Zeus is captured and imprisoned in the heart of Tartarus. By draining Zeus of his divine powers, Hades and Ares attempt to free the giant Kronos, leader of the imprisoned Titans and father of Zeus, Hades and Poseidon, and leader of the likewise imprisoned monsters known as the Titans. Poseidon is destroyed by Ares as well, but not before he tells Perseus how to rescue his father and defeat Kronos -- by enlisting the aid of his son Agenor (Toby Kebbell) and locating the Fallen One, Hapheastus (Bill Nighy). As architect of the underworld labyrinthic prison Tartarus and creator of the gods' weapons including Zeus' thunderbolt, Hades' pitchfork and Poseidon's trident, Hephaestus is vital to Perseus' quest to save his father and mankind from the Titans' wrath.

Sometimes a romantic story can come from a strange place. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen proves that if your character exhibit a mutual passion towards a specific goal, a blossoming romantic relationship is an easy sell at the movies. Adapted by Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) from Paul Torday's novel, the film is obviously comfortable with its dramatic bits, but it's the characters involved that were carved out incredibly. They were written well, but also directed well. Lasse Hallström did a wonderful job crafting the chemistry shared onscreen with leads Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt. Given the filmmaker's history, though (Dear John, Chocolat), directing romance isn't a stretch for him.

British Government fishing expert Dr. Alfred Jones (McGregor) leads a very mild-mannered life. One day he gets a very polite letter from a Ms. Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Blunt) describing a project conjured up by her client, a rich sheikh from the Republic of Yemen. The sheikh's dream is to build a river in the middle of the Yemen desert and fish for salmon in that river. Thinking this proposition is a joke, he declines the request and doesn't give it another thought. When faced with a plethora of negative headlines from the Middle East, the Prime Minister searches for a feel-good story and comes across word of this project. Needless to say, Dr. Jones then gets a friendly nudge to help the project come to fruition.

Simply stated, that is the plot of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and its main driving force, but as the best-laid plans of mice and men proverbially go, obstacles stand in the way. The people in Yemen don't want outsiders building something so massive on their land, Ms. Chetwode-Talbot's boyfriend is missing in action in Afghanistan, and Dr. Jones's marriage is falling apart, leaving him no one to talk to but his koi fish. The improbability of the success of the project notwithstanding, the main characters each have their own internal conflict to deal with. At times this extra conflict was a little off-putting and seemed to pad the story too much. For the most part though, it's handled well enough, that you're only ever taken out of the film's story for a small amount of time.

Every year there are films that receive a lot of hype. Sometimes these films live up to the hype and and sometimes they disappoint. I recently saw one of these highly hyped films, The Raid: Redemption, and let me say it right now this movie lives up every bit of the hype.

The Raid: Redemption received a great deal of attention at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, and word quickly spread that this was a must-see film. A lot of us hoped that that The Raid: Redemption would be a last minute addition to Fantastic Fest 2011. But luck did not shine on our screens as Gareth Evans's Indonesian action film was unavailable from the studio. This simply added to its mystery. A lucky 1,200 filmgoers did get to see the movie at the Paramount during SXSW this year, spreading still more good buzz.

The Raid: Redemption tells a story of a police raid gone wrong. A small team of Indonesian police officers descends on a drug lord's compound -- a high-rise, low-rent apartment complex with the head honchos at the very top. This small team quickly finds itself overrun and outgunned by the drug lord's hired army of thugs.

This film is an excellent mashup of themes developed in some of my favorite genre films. We have a group of police officers outgunned and trapped, a la Assault on Precinct 13. We have a high-rise slum used as a drug lord's castle, a la New Jack City. And finally we have shootouts and kung-fu battles, a la Shoot em Up and Fists of Fury. This movie seeps action from every pore.

This movie works on numerous levels. The cinematography immerses the viewer into the cold dinginess the tenants occupy. Life under the control of drug-dealing thugs is not pleasurable and The Raid: Redemption shows that. The choice of color palette highlights this cold dinginess.

I'm not sure I can eat sushi again. Or at least not for a week, until the afterglow from Jiro Dreams of Sushi wears off. And certainly not any of the upscale-grocery-store sushi I sometimes rely upon for a quick lunch. I have seen some of the most gorgeous sushi in the world, and it makes the stuff in a refrigerated display case look like cat food.

But Jiro Dreams of Sushi's appeal shouldn't be limited to foodies or sushi fans. This documentary from David Gelb is about a master of his craft, pushing himself and his apprentices to greater heights, achieving creations that look deceptively simple but have hidden depths of complexity. Someone could make the same movie with the same structure about a painter, scupltor or architect.

The first half-hour of Jiro Dreams of Sushi is so complete and well contained that I thought it could have been a documentary on its own, and wondered what was left for the movie to show. Jiro Ono is 85 years old but still follows his daily routine as the owner of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seat sushi restaurant in a Tokyo subway station that has earned three Michelin stars despite its size and the fact that it only serves sushi. His oldest son Yashikazu (age 50) works at his side and is in charge of buying the seafood. His younger son Takashi owns another sushi restaurant that is the mirrored twin of his father's.

Viewers who haven't read the novel on which the movie The Hunger Games is based will not find themselves in unfamiliar territory. The concepts in the film are as old as science fiction.

Fans of the series by Suzanne Collins will already know the setup for the story. In a post-world-war setting, one boy and one girl from each of 12 districts are chosen to compete in a live televised fight to the death. In poverty-stricken District 12, which includes the coal mines of the former Virginia, the candidates are chosen by random drawing. Starving children can purchase food at the cost of additional entries in the drawing.

Primrose Everdeen (Willow Shields), having just come of age, has only a single entry in the drawing but is unlucky enough to be chosen. Her 16-year-old sister Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) steps up as the district's first-ever volunteer so Primrose will not have to compete and inevitably die.

If the ensuing story seems familiar, it may be because you are familiar with another work, L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, wherein Dorothy (Katniss) accompanied by her dog Toto (Peeta Mellark, the most convincing role Josh Hutcherson has yet to play) is whisked along the yellow-brick road (high-speed maglev train) where she encounters the Cowardly Lion (Elizabeth Banks' Effie Trinket), the Tin Woodsman, and The Scarecrow (combined here in Woody Harrelson's Haymitch Abernathy).

At the end of the road, they reach the Emerald City (the capital) where the Wizard (Stanley Tucci's Caesar Flickerman) gives the brave heroine the task of killing the witch (the other contestants) ... and after that, the good witch (Donald Sutherland as President Snow) can send her home. Elements of the story are laced with political satire, and her actions start the ball rolling for a regime change. Nothing exactly new, but lack of originality doesn't hurt a movie as much as making it generically bland, so it can gain an all-important PG-13 rating to capture the target audience like flying monkeys captured Dorothy and her companions.

Realize that The Hunger Games is about a world where people watch children murder each other on live TV, but is made for children. Director Gary Ross and writer Billy Ray had a challenging task to adapt this property. Any science-fiction novel adapted for the big or small screen must have elements cut or altered often if only for time. Unfortunately in a 142-minute film about a competition that takes about 75 minutes to get to that competition, they dropped elements like character development and emotional build-up.

Films serve many purposes. Some movies are meant for pure simple entertainment, others provide a means of escape from reality and some are used to shine a light on the human condition. Being Flynn falls into the latter category. This film shines a light on many facets of the human condition: the relationship between fathers and sons, the problem of self medication in the form of substance abuse, and finally how quickly you can go from being fully employed with a roof over your head, to sleeping on a park bench. Being Flynn does a good job of this without senseless pandering.

Being Flynn is the story of Nick Flynn (Paul Dano). Nick is a struggling author (aren't we all) whose entire existence seems to revolve around being abandoned by his father Jonathan (Robert de Niro) at a young age.

The first act of the film is filled with imagery illustrating both Nick's and Jonathan's current battles with their demons. We see Nick's failed relationships with women, his flirtation with the bottle and of course the struggles that seem mandatory in every aspiring author's life. In Jonathan's case, we see a self-proclaimed master storyletter, who drives a Yellow Cab while sipping screwdrivers from an orange-juice container.

Amadeus Warnebring (Bengt Nilsson) is the unfortunate tone-deaf offspring of a concert pianist and a famous conductor. His grandfather was a world-famous musician, and his younger brother is a childhood prodigy who began playing violin at four and wrote his first symphony at 12.

But Amadeus, a police inspector and head of the anti-terrorism division, has absolutely zero musical ability and in fact hates music. It is therefore sad irony when he must chase down a group of terrorist musical protestors who hate traditional music as much as he does. While they act out a citywide performance art piece like a miniature flash mob, he draws ever closer, and the scope of each piece gets bigger.

Sound of Noise, like its characters, refuses conventional description. It is quirky, fun, surprising, and charming, but it suffers from an emotionally detached ending that neither fully satisfies nor entirely disappoints. The use of everyday objects as musical instruments is not at all new. Stomp has been performing for over 20 years. The idea of performing such pieces as musical protest, and on such a grand scale, however is novel. Though Sound of Noise won a jury award for Best Fantastic Film at Fantastic Fest 2010, it has a few flaws that make it fall flat.

The largest issue is the terrorist characters. They're self-absorbed, unsympathetic and generally unlikeable (aka drummers ... kidding). They come off as snobbish thanks to their bad attitude toward music and other musicians. There is no personal interaction between any of them, and they are in short generic bad guys. Somewhat like the nihilists in The Big Lebowski, their goals and message are unclear. As an audience you want to see their cool performance, but its anarchic nature obfuscates their message. Maybe they don't have a real message; they just want to make cool music.

The music itself throughout Sound of Noise is entertaining and catchy, moreso the first two of the four movements. As the scale of the performances increase, the complexity decreases, so the finale is somewhat less spectacular than had been anticipated. So to summarize, Sound of Noise was fun, but not GREAT fun, grand, but not spectacular, funky and quirky. The movie dances to the beat of its own drum.