Drive In '77

Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest

Holy smokes!  Michael Rappaport got skillz!  This is easily my favorite documentary about hip hop ever and Top 10 for music in general.  For me, that is a statement.  I love music docs.  Music docs are an obsession and I 've watched even mediocre ones a dozen times, but Beats, Rhymes & Life makes me want to go buy the Blu Ray, hook up the stereo, and crank the dial.  It is a mix of old school hip hop history, the persistence of artistic vision, and the story of a group so influential they've become almost impossible to quantify.

Directed by the aforementioned Michael Rappaport, an actor and notorious hip hop aficionado known for his roles in flicks like Higher Learning and his time on Boston Public, this film tells the story of A Tribe Called Quest.  If you neither know nor own any of their music, chances are you will by the end of this movie.  As a drummer, it was these "Native Tongue" and early hip hop groups like Run DMC that I always gravitated towards when I was searching for grooves to lay under rock and roll.  Tribe might have been the best.  Their loops were always tight and bottom heavy but without all the over tweaked low end you get on modern rap albums.  They carried with them a soul that changed the game and transcended the genre.  They were jazz, they were R&B, they were street, they were poetry and it's about time their story was on film.

For a first dip into the feature film pool, Rappaport displays a keen knowledge of how to capture life and infuse it with history, a skill required for good documentary filmmaking.  He lets the players talk (and they do!) and tell their story all while following them through a new resurgence of performance.  They're a group that has over two decades of history, and no stone is left unturned.  The beauty of the way the collection of images, old and new footage and interviews is assembled is the power of Tribes music.  Throughout, you cannot help but bob your head and feel the flow of their tracks whether it lays underneath the scene or is cranked up in the mix.  Everything is tied together with a perfect bow as if it was that dream Christmas gift you didn't even know you'd asked for.

I don't know what else to say without sounding like some schill blowing endless smoke up this film's arse.  You have to see it.  You must do yourself the favor of seeing it.  If you grew up in the 80s it is required viewing.  A fantastic doc from beginning to end.

Grade: A+

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

The short of it?  I love Edgar Wright's take on Scott Pilgrim!!!!!!!!!!!  Although Wright is far from rookie status, a more experienced director probably would've peppered this with too much of themselves while a newbie wouldn't have been able to pull it off at all.  This property met this director at exactly the right time and I could not be more thankful.

If you are unfamiliar with the world of Scott Pilgrim I won't bore you with all the back story, but it will also be impossible for me to separate the source material from the movie while talking about the film.  It's just the way I am!  Creator Bryan Lee O'Malley began publishing the six volumes of his comic book in late 2004 and only in July of this year did the final graphic novel arrive in our greedy little hands.  In the book, we meet Scott and his friends and eventually Scott meets Ramona.  The girl, quite literally, of his dreams.  Over the course of the series, he must defeat her evil exes in order to earn the right to date her, all while trying to promote his band, Sex Bob-Omb, mooch off his cool gay roommate, and survive the harsh wilds of Toronto, Canada.  That last bit was sarcasm.

What's brilliant about Scott Pilgrim is how O'Malley takes the hyperbole of young love and translates it into reality, or rather hyper reality.  The story is accessible on the level of "nerd," providing enough pop cultural references and universal themes to appeal to a wide audience, and that is a perfectly wonderful way to access the material, but for me Scott and his world knock me out with these insane realizations of their feelings.  When you fall in love you feel like you are competing against their past, trying to prove you are better than those that come before.  SP takes that to the next level (pardon the pun) and literally pits him against each one of Ramona's exes in a fight.  When Ramona says she can't get her ex Gideon out of her head, she literally means he is inside her head, like he is actually in there!  All the power and raw emotion of the theories of love and life that feel so real in your mind are now rendered real and tangible.  That is what draws me to the material.

Enter the big screen movie!  Fans of the book will notice some omissions, but nothing I would classify as necessary to the story of Scott and Ramona when faced with time constrictions.  I would've liked more Envy, but you know, things have to be sacrificed.  The ending is also compressed and rearranged but it worked for me.  Other than that, this is a pretty faithful adaptation of the comics.  Not a shot for shot Watchmen type adaptation, but pretty close, and thanks to some amazing casting, I believed each and every character.  This is as close to a perfect mix of comics and film as I've ever seen.

The cast, as I said, is spot on.  Michael Cera is a wonderful Scott and I cannot think of any actress in Hollywood more suited for Ramona than Winstead.  She nailed it.  But it just goes on and on from there, and why I listed way more names in my closing credits below than normal.  Wallace is a big chunk of the comic relief in the story and Kieren Culkin is awesome!  Alison Pill as Kim is brilliant and Ellen Wong as the girl too good for Scott, Knives, is a revelation.  I'm actually totally Team Knives but know that Ramona is exactly the kind of girl I'd chase after too.  Can't blame Scott for that one.

The movie is funny, fast paced, action packed, romantic, silly, and heartfelt.  It is part video game, part comic book, part action film and 100% epic.  You can see it with or without reading the books (although of course I suggest you do so at some point) and it will be just as entertaining and marvelous.  I could go in depth about all sorts of things, but basically I'm in love with this move and if you don't see it in the theater, you will kick yourself for not seeing it that way once you get the DVD in your hands.  

Screened: in San Diego courtesy of a nearly 2 year old AMC gift card (film)

Director: Edgar Wright

Script:  Edgar Wright & Michael Bacall based on Bryan Lee O'Malley's Graphic Novel

Cast: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Alison Pill, Ellen Wong, Mark Webber, Aubrey Plaza, Kieren Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Jason Schwartzman, Brandon Routh, Chris Evans, Brie Larson, Mae Whitman, Satya Bhabha

Fav. Quote: "If you're life had a face I would punch it." (my fav from the book too!)

Snacks: Coke, popcorn, and a really crappy theater hot dog I didn't finish

Grade: A++

Let The Right One In

All you gushing Twilight fanatics out there, you wanna see a real vampire movie?  

Let The Right One In is it.  A plot more intricate and a thousand times deeper than your glittery emo undead, it has a truly believable love story and acres of brilliance to spare.  This film is a masterpiece.  The greatest vampire movie ever made, and I bar none from that decision.  But I wouldn't stop at just the vampire genre, LTROI is of a caliber very few movies ever achieve.  To even write words in an attempt to describe its superiority does the medium of film a disservice.  

The plot centers on a young boy, Oskar, who is bullied at school and lives the rather solitary life of a child of divorce.  One day he meets a mysterious girl his age near the jungle gym of his apartment complex.  Her name is Eli and she lives in the unit next door to Oskar, but they've never met.  The two bond immediately and you're given two stories to unravel.  The first is the slow reveal of Eli's true nature as a vampire and the second is how these two seemingly lost souls fall slowly and gently into love.

From the first reel, the mood is haunting.  Not a horror film in the sense of gore and bloody deaths, this is a thoughtful story of two lonely souls fortunate enough to find each other through their often destructive and misfortunate existence.  Let The Right One In ("Lat den ratte komma in" in its native Swedish) is a vampire movie, but nothing like any vampire movie you've seen before.  There are a couple of gruesome deaths, but the director chooses to hide most of the action in shadows or doorways etc.  In that regard, it is much more Hitchcock than any other film laying claim to that title.  Every action is accounted for, lives are complicated, it is about as real as any vampire movie could possibly hope to achieve.

The DP deserves a parade.  It is gorgeous.  From the set-ups to the lighting, they've created a haunting world impossible to turn away from.  Every second is suitable for framing.  Top 5 all time in its look and execution.  The backdrop of an eighties era Sweden is intoxicating.  There's just something about birch trees in the snow.

As for the two stars of the movie, I haven't seen kids act like this since I first saw Ellen Page in Hard Candy.  Not to take away from that brilliant performance, what these two young stars pull off is way more subtle and delicate.  You're left with no doubt in your mind that these two have fallen in love and that it is real and important.  For 12 year olds to pull off that level of adult emotion is mind blowing.

The final sequence in the pool is enough to make most filmmakers quite the biz.  It is outstanding.  Once Oskar goes under water, the visuals and emotion that overcomes the moment are like mainlining a sugary syrup of humanity.  

A Swedish film, I actually watched it dubbed cause I was feeling lazy, and while some of the minor characters suffered from some so-so voiceover work, the leads worked fine in this way, making it accessible to those of you who hate subtitles.

Honestly, this movie just completely rewrote my DNA.  To not watch this would be a crime.  When I was done with my Netflix copy, I put it in the mail, came back inside and ordered my own, shipped overnight express.  A true gift of cinema, Let The Right One In will live with me forever.  

Screened: on a cool November Saturday (Blu Ray)

Director: Tomas Alfredson

Script: John Ajvide Lindqvist (based on his novel)

Cast: Lina Leandersson, Kare Hedebrant

Snacks: too busy watching the movie

Fav. Quote: Start at page one and read through the whole script

Grade: A+++++++++++++

Children of Men

I am a nerd. Not the super smart computer wizard brand of nerd that makes tons of cash and blows it all on Xbox and www.EntertainmentEarth.com, but rather a more generalized type of dorky/geeky nerd. I'm kind of a throwback nerd. A classic sci-fi & comic book, low tech nerd. So, it goes without saying that I love me some science fiction. Star Wars, all over it. Star Trek, beam me up. I love the laser shooting, spaceship action science fiction movie as much as the next nerd in line at 3 am on the streets of Hollywood Blvd bundled up with a 25 year old Tron bedspread. But I'll tell you what really floats my futuristic boat, the films that portray a much more haunting and believable vision of the future. I'm talking Soylant Green, Fahrenheit 451, Logan’s Run, even V for Vendetta. 1984 is probably my favorite of this style, although that is more of a love for the book than the film, but the story is the same.

Alfonzo Cuaron's Children of Men is one such film. It is also the primary reason why I never got that damned "Best of" list for 2006 together because it took me so damn long to finally see it! Worth the wait. Children of Men is a haunting foot race for the survival of mankind that weaves you through a fully realized future set in the England of 2027.

The story follows Clive Owen as Theo Faron, a daily grind type of office worker who has let his life become solitary and filled with despair. He is not alone as the world mourns the death of the youngest person on the planet, Baby Diego, at the ripe old age of 18. Humanity has somehow lost the ability to procreate and facing the bleak realization that with no new babies, they will all sooner than later die out and leave the planet a barren husk of metal and concrete clues to a once great civilization.

No woman has gotten pregnant in near two decades, until Theo is introduced to the aptly named Kee. Theo's ex Julian, played by Julianne Moore, is part of an underground movement fighting the inevitable rise of paranoia and state inflicted imprisonment of the "'fugees." Julian needs Theo's help to safely get Kee to a mythical floating laboratory where The Human Project is attempting to cure the infertility that plagues the world. Hopefully Kee's baby will hold the answer they've all been looking for. What follows is an intense series of escapes layered with questions of morality. There are twists and turns, betrayals, flaming car road blocks, guns, and of course, gypsies!

I mentioned this for my Hot Fuzz review, but you really get the feeling that Cuaron left every last cent of the budget on the screen. In fact, it seems like they passed the hat around and chipped in to put even more into this movie. My brother did some work on a forgettable epic know as Judgment Night where he altered some old RVs with some new fenders etc. to look like new ones. It made me conscious then of the work done in that same arena here. The vehicles of Children of Men are very interesting. They altered cars of today to look like believable evolutions of cars of 20 years from now. It didn't stop with the cars either. Cafes, public transit, clothing, office equipment, you name it and the art department hit it out of the ballpark. The sets are amazing! They crafted a dark, gray future common in these cautionary tales, but accented it with enough believable character to suck you into the universe of these characters.

This is a beautiful film. You can really tell when those involved on set genuinely care about the product they're creating. This film feels loved, nurtured. It is complex, but not obtuse. It is a story we can all grab on to and rattle around in our brains for weeks. Children of Men is a moving picture book club, just begging to be round-tabled between you and your friends over biscuits and tea. And by biscuits I mean cookies, since this is set in jolly old England I thought I'd go with the flow.

Was this the best film of 2006? It is in my top 2. Michael Caine rocks. The motorcycle stunt is sick. And I have now seen a "live" birth in a major motion picture. Good stuff. Rent this on the way home from Hot Fuzz tonight!

Screened: at home, 4-14-07 (DVD)

Director. Alfonso Cuaron

Script: Alfonso Cuaron, Tim Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby

Cast: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor

Fav. Quote: "Pull my finger."

Fav. Credit: One-Legged Hustler - Dermot O’Neill

Snacks: Hot Tamales

Grade: A+