Reviews

When Shrek first appeared on the big screen, many people were pleasantly, uproariously surprised at how funny and accessible the film was for all ages. Bathroom humor blended with cutting wit and good-natured silliness, upending quite a few fairy tales. Four films into the franchise, however, Shrek Forever After is encumbered by a preposterous preceding film and the simple fact that nothing stays fresh forever.  

It's been less than a year in Shrek's life since we last him, yet he's already feeling the strain of domestication. With a twist on It's a Wonderful Life-esque stories, Shrek's "happy ever after" is just a little too domesticated, so when Rumplestiltskin offers to give him a day before his life changed, Shrek gets more than he asked for. Suddenly he's thrown into a world where ogres are underground, fighting for their lives, and his beloved Fiona has had a very different life.

You can read more of contributor Laurie Coker's reviews and features at True View Reviews.

Throughout the screening of MacGruber at SXSW this year, the audience laughed riotously and cheered. Afterwards we had the pleasure of meeting the cast in a Q&A session and hilarity abounded. Admittedly, I chuckled during the film, based on a Saturday Night Live sketch that spoofs one of my favorite old televisions shows, MacGyver. Still, I am not into silly, sometimes sick, stupid, over-the-top humor like my husband, so some of the film had me head in hand, thinking "Are you kidding me?" To be fair, I am not familiar with the skits on SNL created and made famous by comedians Will Forte and Kristen Wiig, so I went in not knowing what to expect, but if the audience reaction says anything, I most definitely was in the minority that night.

Forte plays MacGruber, a pseudo-MacGyver character who sports a mullet-like haircut and a cherry-red muscle car and seems permanently trapped in a particularly terrible 80s action movie or sitcom. In the SNL sketches, MacGruber's entire life consisted of trying to defuse something, only to be distracted just long enough for the bomb to go off and kill them all, but this would not do in a feature-length film, especially one hoping to garner sequels. So in the movie, he is a sort of uber-commando hired to stop an evil plot by a villain named Cunth (Val Kilmer) – yes, Cunth. The villain's name basically speaks volume to the kind of humor that makes up the rightly R-rated MacGruber.

For much of the last decade, most films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan failed to find audiences or garner much critical praise. From The Situation to Home of the Brave to Stop Loss, war-related films usually opened to tepid reviews and disappeared with little notice. As America's two wars dragged on, filmgoers showed little interest in seeing the carnage at their local multiplex, and critics dismissed most of the films as clichéd or unrealistic.

And then, of course, The Hurt Locker changed everything. A brilliant multi-Oscar winner and solid box office success, Kathryn Bigelow's harrowing tale of an Army bomb squad proved that an exceptionally well made Iraq war film could indeed satisfy critics and audiences.

Unfortunately, somewhat lost in the glare of Oscar-season hype surrounding The Hurt Locker was another glowingly reviewed, Oscar-nominated, must-see Iraq war film released late last year -- The Messenger, available today on DVD and Blu-ray. Directed and co-written by Oren Moverman, the film first screened locally during Austin Film Festival in 2009.

A rawly emotional and yet thoughtful story, The Messenger follows two Army officers assigned to what is perhaps the military's toughest duty: casualty notification. It is their mostly thankless job to tell the next of kin, face to face, that their loved ones have been killed.

The younger of the two officers is Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster), freshly returned from a tour in Iraq and still recovering from serious injuries from a bomb blast. With only a few months left in his enlistment, Montgomery is understandably unhappy with his final duty assignment. He also takes an immediate dislike to his new partner and mentor, Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), a career soldier whose by-the-book mentality and emotional detachment make Montgomery's job all the more unpleasant.

Street art fascinates me -- although I can't recall seeing an artist in action, I've often wondered about the process of late-night tagging and wheatpasting. How did someone manage to paint the Roman symbol of Venus on the train trestle over Lady Bird Lake? The most well-known street art in Austin has to be Daniel Johnston's "Hi, How Are You?" mural with Jeremiah the Frog on the Drag, and the Flickr: Austin Street Art documents the vast and diverse street art on our city streets. Many people discredit this art as street vandalism, but a new documentary shows a different view of this fringe art form, including the hypocrisies and controversies surrounding street art.

Narrated by actor Rhys Ifans (Greenberg, Pirate Radio), Exit Through the Gift Shop is the first film from infamous street artist Banksy from the Bristol underground scene. Although his name might not be familiar to most, his reputation has spanned the globe. In 2004 in the Louvre, Banksy hung a picture he had painted resembling the Mona Lisa but with a yellow smiley face. In June 2007 Banksy created a circle of plastic portable toilets -- nicknamed "Portaloo Sunset" -- to resemble Stonehenge at the Glastonbury Festival, not far from the "sacred circle." Deemed inappropriate, his interactive installation itself was vandalized before the festival even opened. Most recently, an artistic feud developed between Banksy and his rival King Robbo after Banksy painted over a 24-year-old Robbo piece on the banks of London's Regent Canal. "Team Robbo" retaliated by painting over several Banksy pieces in London.

Filmmaker Ridley Scott clearly wants to repeat the success of Gladiator with another military actioner helmed by Russell Crowe -- this time, Robin Hood. Unfortunately, he chose a much beloved legendary character and gave it the "legend begins" treatment and recycled elements of other movies to make an overlong, uninteresting mess.

It's not just the start of the Robin Hood legend, it's a lot of backstory full of Hollywood "re-imagining" and gritty "accuracy" that strips away most of the romanticism and interest.  Brian Helgeland's script takes too many cues from David Franzoni's Gladiator script: battle-weary soldiers too long at war, an aging ruler, a morally (and otherwise) bankrupt heir and a beautiful headstrong woman caught up in her circumstances, all balanced by a charismatic man of the people other men want to follow, and who reluctantly ends up leading. Helgeland also borrows heavily from his own A Knight's Tale script as well, with bittersweet memories and impersonating a lord. The new twists to the story are improbable, distracting and often ridiculous. 

It's little wonder that the stunning crime thriller The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos) won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Argentine import, opening Friday at the Arbor, is all at once lyrical, brutal, poignant and provocative, an intimate and personal journey with much broader implications about the nature of justice.

Equal parts police procedural, psychological thriller and love story, The Secret in Their Eyes is the story of recently retired criminal investigator Benjamín Esposito (Ricardo Darín), who in 1999 decides to write a novel based on a 25-year-old rape and murder case that still haunts him. The story is told largely in flashbacks to 1974, following Esposito and his colleagues as they investigate the crime.

Like many horrific crimes, the murder claims many victims beyond Liliana Coleto (Carla Quevedo), the young woman who is brutalized and killed. Her husband, Ricardo Morales (Pablo Rago), lives with long-term grief and emptiness that drive him to irrational behavior; for months, he deludes himself into thinking he'll find the killer by waiting for him every day in a train station. Esposito and his alcoholic partner, Pablo Sandoval (Guillermo Francella), may be hardened cops, but they develop an obsession with the case that jeopardizes their careers as they break rules to find evidence and clash with superiors to keep the case open.

When I was in high school, I saw Hannah and Her Sisters and had such a crush on Michael Caine. That was my gateway drug to Caine movies, and led me to Sleuth and The Wrong Box and Mona Lisa and a lot of bad movies I hate to mention (The Swarm, sadly, and Sweet Liberty). So I experienced a moment of shock in the first scene with Caine in Harry Brown, when he shuffled out of bed and looked surprisingly like my grandfather. That's what having crushes on older men in films gets you. I don't even want to talk about Harrison Ford in the last Indiana Jones movie.

After recoving from my little moment of shock and mortality, I found Harry Brown an absorbing combination of melodrama and vigilantism. Caine plays the title character, who as he is growing older finds himself increasingly alone in the world. His wife dies of an unspecified long illness, his daughter is long dead. His best friend Leonard (David Bradley) has been complaining about the young people in their housing project who continually plague him ... and when Leonard tries to fight back, tragedy strikes.

Harry Brown, on the other hand, is ex-military, and he plots his attacks on the neighborhood gang with more finesse. Meanwhile, police detective Alice Frampton (Emily Mortimer) is trying to see justice done through legal channels, but to no real effect. She visits Harry and treats him like a child ... and yet, when Harry's vengeful acts catch the attention of the police, Alice is the only one who wonders if he might be a suspect.

The story of Nobuyuki Tsujii is truly inspiring. Blind since birth, the Japanese classical pianist has not let his disability prevent him from becoming a renowned musician who has won accolades the world over for his amazing talent.

The new documentary A Surprise in Texas chronicles Tsujii's stellar performances at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas, one of the world's most prestigious musical competitions. The film, which opens Friday at the Arbor, follows Tsujii and a half-dozen other young competitors during the grueling three-week event. Produced and directed by veteran documentarian Peter Rosen for the Van Cliburn Foundation, A Surprise in Texas is a pleasant enough peek into the world of the Van Cliburn competition. But while it captures the power of the concert performances, it's far less successful at humanizing most of the performers or turning a compelling subject into a compelling film.

Sequels are dicey choices for movie fans; either they're following up a bad movie so they aren't given a fair chance or an unexpected good one, so the expectations are too high.

Iron Man 2 falls into the latter category -- there was a lot of noise about it likely being a bad film, and surprisingly it won over many audience members. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has managed to master his suit, defeat the bad guys and become an international hero. Unsurprisingly, Iron Man has become a pop icon since there are no bad guys left to risk the wrath of Iron Man. He cockily dismisses government attempts to take control of the technology, especially after rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) fails miserably in replicating similar suits. Only all is not well, especially when someone else (Mickey Rourke) has the original technology, and is out for Stark's blood. 

Stark is perhaps one of the most vainglorious characters on film, with hubris and brains to back it up. Downey again proves he's more than capable of making Stark equally aggravating, entertaining and sympathetic. In fact, the entire cast is full out outstanding actors a lot of people would pay just to read the phone book, but luckily for us, they do a lot more than that. Don Cheadle has taken over the role of Lt. Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes and Cheadle has always had the knack of standing up to larger than life co-stars.  Along the same lines, Gwyneth Paltrow again has to balance exasperation with adoration as she tries to keep her boss and unrequited crush from ruining his company. 

When an environmentally conscious friend told me that he and his wife planned to follow a primitive cultural practice of not using diapers on their firstborn son, I was intrigued -- how is this done? Award-winning French filmmaker Thomas Balmes and writer/producer Alain Chabat shed some light on this question and many other cultural habits in the documentary Babies, originally titled Bebe(s), opening in Austin theaters today. This amusing and inspiring film provides a charming cross-cultural vision of one year in the life of four babies from around the world, from Mongolia to Namibia to San Francisco to Tokyo.

Babies simultaneously follows the wee ones from birth to first steps: Ponijao, who lives with her family near Opuwo, Namibia; Bayarjargal, who resides with his family in Mongolia, near Bayanchandmani; Mari, who lives with her family in Tokyo, Japan; and Hattie, who resides with her family in the United States, in San Francisco.