The Rake Magazine

Wanted comes on like a batshit crazy mash up of a dozen other genre movies but manages to stand alone as something more by the time it reaches its frenetic and bloody conclusion.

It's probably (but only a little) curmudgeonly to gripe about the apparently permanent change in the visual language in action films in the post John Woo/Matrix era, and Wanted displays no shame in borrowing (well, taking wholesale) poses and sequences from these and other predecessors. Director Timur Bekmambetov refreshingly stands apart from lesser imitators, though, by going for broke from the outset, invoking a jokey, sardonic vibe that charges action confidently and unapologetically staged in an R-rated universe.

James McAvoy (last seen in Atonement) plays Wesley Gibson, a corporate minion suffering the kind of existential ennui that comes standard with shackles to a cubicle. In a telling bout of self pity, Wesley confirms his insignificance by Googling his name and returning zero results. Unknown to Wesley, however, is his status as the lone heir to a world class assassin and his latent ability to assume a role in the Fraternity, an ancient order of executioners carrying out the will of fate, killing few to save many. Angelina Jolie (Fox, a member of the Fraternity) and Morgan Freeman (Sloan, its leader) soon save Wesley from an attempt on his life and in harrowing fashion force him to confront and release his true nature as peerless killer.

Wanted is adapted from the best-selling six-issue comics miniseries (now compiled as a graphic novel) by popular writer Mark Millar and artist J.G. Jones. Producers were so enthused and eager to translate the comic to the screen that they began developing the project while Millar and Jones were still completing the series. Though not a completely faithful translation (the comic portrays a world in which villains conspire to successfully eliminate all the world's superheroes) the film retains many key characters, sequences, and elements, and the series' playful mean streak and dark wit.

Bekmambetov is known to film and horror fans as the director of the Russian blockbuster Night Watch and its sequel Day Watch. Wanted is his first English language film, and his sensibility immediately injects a swagger that has been missing from recent action fare. Though some of the movie's better set pieces and visual treats are partially betrayed in trailers, ads, and other movies from which they are borrowed, inventive and entertaining sequences abound, and the aforementioned embrace of adult-oriented mayhem is welcome and long overdue for action fans weaned on the stuff that supposedly inspires these types of movies in the first place.

Wanted will be far too outlandish and lurid for some (perhaps many), but it crashes into theaters mostly self aware and with those traits going for it as much as against it.

Wanted opens in theaters Friday (June 27)

The response from critics was so harsh it allegedly kept David Lean away from the director's chair for 14 years. Pauline Kael's oft-discussed review is so scathing it makes you wonder if Lean put gum in her hair or something. And while The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago were enormous films to follow up on, the response to the 1970s film, Ryan's Daughter, has nearly become the stuff of legend. But was the response justified? Or is this a case of critics banding together and doing their best to sully the reputation of a successful filmmaker?

A film like Ryan's Daughter is certainly unusual, especially when comparing the story to the size of the film surrounding it. A loose adaptation of Madame Bovary transplanted to WWI-era Ireland, the small story of love and adultery doesn't necessarily merit the epic scope given to it. Like Lean's previous epics, the film is gorgeously shot in Super Panavision 70 by Freddie Young and scored lushly by Maurice Jarre, both frequent collaborators of Lean's. But many critics at the time tore into the style of the film, declaring that it didn't fit with Robert Bolt's comparatively intimate screenplay.

Bolt and Lean turn Emma Bovary into Rosy Ryan (Sarah Miles), a spoiled and detached Irish lady who finds everyday life far too boring. She falls in love with Charles Shaughnessy, the local schoolmaster (Robert Mitchum, another unusual choice by Lean). Hoping that their marriage will add some excitement to her life, Rosy is disappointed when she discovers that is not the case. Her wishes come true in the form of English Major Randolph Doryan (Christopher Jones), a man scarred by the trenches who's come to take command of the local Army base. As their affair develops, political unrest in the land grows. The Irish cajole Rosy's father (a British informant) into capturing German weapons. When Ryan tells the government, Doryan is sent to stop them and the mob turns their sights on him and the woman he's been lying with.

The possibility that critics were offended by the portrayal of the Irish in the film is pretty likely. As the political angle of the film becomes more concrete, the hordes become less and less of an angry mob and more disloyal beasts, attacking the closest thing they can in their savage attempt to lash out against the British. They ridicule the soldiers and deride Rosy as "a British officer's whore." When they finally get their hands on Rosy, the results are devastating. The townspeople in Madame Bovary were never this bloodthirsty. In fact, the only relatable Irish characters in the film are placed on a higher moral ground than the rest: the conflicted schoolmaster/husband, the local priest and the village idiot. More on that last one later. Even Rosy is depicting as something other than the Irish mob — detached from her village and longing for a different life. This becomes all the more apparent by the casting of the decidedly un-Irish Sarah Miles in part.

Still, once one gets past the stereotypical raging Irish crowds, the film is mesmerizing. The epic scope, slammed by so many before, offers up the most thrilling moments of isolation the film has. Freddie Young's Oscar-winning camera work is truly something to behold, easily standing up to his other work with Lean. The image of Shaughnessy standing alone by a giant rock on the beach, with brief glimpses of Rosy and Doryan's lovemaking cut in, is absolutely thrilling. The beautiful Irish background and the wide beach on Dingle Peninsula gives the film all the visual splendor one would expect from a Lean epic. And it is completely justified. The three main characters are molded into a love triangle, lost in something too vast for them to understand. And it is only a matter of time before the world comes crashing in on them. The only epic element of the film is Jarre's curiously upbeat score, which is often far too intrusive and big for the film's more intimate moments.

The performances are a bit of a mixed bag. As stated earlier, Mitchum is an unusual choice for the quiet, conflicted Shaughnessy. While he does his best to play against type, he never seems quite comfortable in the role. By contrast, Sarah Miles is astounding. This is hardly surprising, as the role was written specifically for her by then-husband Robert Bolt. She plays with Rosy's more self-centered ways delicately, so as not to make her unsympathetic. And her final moments, when the extent of the mob's anger is finally shown, her face is a quiet masterpiece of devastation and tragedy. The film is anchored on her performance, and she is one of the main reasons it should be viewed as successful. Christopher Jones, whose voice was dubbed in the process, barely registers a blip on the radar. This is hardly a bad thing, since he's mostly required to be looked at and desired than to talk or hold a great deal of dramatic weight.

And now we come to the village idiot. Played by Sir John Mills, the character of Michael is probably the closest thing to a disaster that this film contains. Far too broad and comical for a film of such seriousness, Mills's performance is truly perplexing. It's true that his role does serve some purpose in the story, but one wishes Lean and company would have handled it with more subtlety and finesse. Instead, they've got the Hunchback of Notre Dame running around WWI-era Ireland with Rosy as his Esmeralda. However, Mills's performance makes good on Kate Winslet's words on Extras: playing a retard really can win you an Oscar.

Something must have struck a nerve with critics when Ryan's Daughter was released, and it wasn't a good one. While far from perfect, and definitely the weakest of Lean's epic film period, it hardly deserved the critical drubbing that it got. The film is not another case of style over substance; to say it is one of Lean's most thematically complex epics would hardly be a ridiculous statement. Even if its attitude towards the Irish is muddled and its inclusion of Mills's performance is off-putting, Ryan's Daughter truly is a misunderstood piece. With its epic starkness and its astonishing performance by Sarah Miles, Lean should not have felt any regret or remorse about this film. And it definitely should not have taken 14 years for him to return.

Mother of Tears is bad. Unfortunately, "bad" is a word so far past its usefulness in describing the horror genre, that I may as well call it a cherry red bicycle. I mean, are we talking bad-good or bad-bad? Good horror is an all together different animal, some unusual mixture of great execution and that elusive makes-your-hair-stand-on-end mystery that shocks you into remembering why we think fear is so fun in the first place. Suffice to say, Mother of Tears falls into that other category. The it's-so-bad-it's-good type of thing that goes down better when lubricated with all manner of hard liquor and jeering friends. The sort of thing you know you can talk through because the plot doesn't make a lick of sense. A refuge you seek with your significant other where you can watch a savage disemboweling between bouts of making out. Yeah, Mother of Tears is pretty awful, but is it bad enough to be awesome?

There isn't much reason to care, but Mother of Tears is actually part three of writer/director Dario Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy that started with Suspiria in 1977, and Inferno in 1980. The series is so old that leading lady Asia Argento (yes, his daughter) was two years old when the first one came out. The film begins when an evil urn is opened and restores powers to the Mother of Tears, a powerful witch who compels other witches to come hang out in Rome and get naked. With such overwhelming evil emanating from the young people, who have bad hair and, let's be honest, probably don't even have jobs, the locals start going crazy. But don't despair! Our heroine, Sarah Mandy, is actually the daughter of a good witch. After bumbling about in creepy derelict buildings with a revolving cast of extremely convenient, entirely coincidental, and quite often naked pals, she and the Mother of Tears battle it out in a naked, wet t-shirt, gory slug-fest. But it's OK; only the girls get naked. Duh.

The real charm of the film is how it brings you back to a time when our greatest fears were young people with bad hair, no jobs, and tongue piercings. In other words, like, 1980. I mean c'mon, witches? Harry Potter, Buffy, and Wicked have so thoroughly beaten the scary out of witches, every kid wants to be like Elphaba. Just ask Mulder, Scully, and the cast of Independence Day what happened to the aliens.

I love bad movies, but Mother of Tears doesn't have that extra zing, that twinkling of self awareness that vaults some films into cult classics. The best bad movies still have the capacity to surprise, and though it's not bad for a weekend with the gang, I'm afraid this one is doomed to slog, dribble, heave, and grunt into obscurity.

Your job is a prison, gas is expensive, you're in debt, and both your house and your SUV aren't worth the money you chuck at them. During times like these, it's hard to see the merits of the American way of life. If you're desperate for some escapism, check out Surfwise, the story of a man and his wife who, with nine children in tow, lived a utopian existence, free of material trappings and full of surfing.

A celebrated doctor and Stanford graduate, Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz upended his life after two devastating divorces and years of anxiety. Vowing to find a new standard of health and to avoid the trappings of wealth, he found his third wife, Juliette, and traveled the country in a 24-foot camper over several decades, surfing with his family. None of their children went to school, they never paid taxes, and they never stayed in one place for very long. The Paskowitz family rode the wave of surfing culture to stardom.

It's a fascinating story, but the occasionally lazy film making gets in the way. I really wanted to know the meat of the story; how they made it work financially, the consequences of the unusual lifestyle and how the sons and daughter fare after life in the camper. The film touches on those questions, but it isn't as satisfying as I was hoping for. Beneath the cacophony of the Paskowitz family wisdom ("Wash your asshole!" "Live like the animals live!" "Don't be lazy!") there are a few really great moments, but at a lightning fast 93 minutes, I wish Doug Pray did a few more interviews.

Opens Friday, June 20th, at Landmark Lagoon Cinema. 

It's easy to understand the attraction of putting the extraordinary true life of George Hogg to film. An Englishman bearing witness to and working in war-torn 1930s China, Hogg became the headmaster of a failing school and grew to succeed where his predecessors had not. Fearing the Japanese army's advance, Hogg resolved to lead his students on a perilous 700-mile journey through the mountains to safety.

Screenwriter James MacManus learned of Hogg's story while on assignment in China for The Daily Telegraph, overhearing that a statue dedicated to Hogg was being erected in a remote town on the Mongolian border. Intrigued, MacManus investigated the story. He found and interviewed Rewi Alley, a New Zealander who had known and worked closely with Hogg. MacManus's story appeared in newspapers around the world and compelled film producers to commission a screenplay.

Director Roger Spottiswoode provides an agreeable old-Hollywood-style gloss, and high production values shine throughout. Hogg's story is presented earnestly but not too cloyingly, and the film's photography (shot on location across China) is beautiful, evocative, and easy to appreciate on the big screen.

Less effective are some of the performances, saddled with clunky dialogue and the screenplay's need to expedite the passage of time from sequence to sequence, and given little room to establish themselves beyond the stock purposes they serve. Jonathan Rhys Meyers (George Hogg), great fun to watch as Henry VIII on Showtime's The Tudors, can't seem to impart the different kind of passion this material asks for; and Radha Mitchell (Lee Pearson) is oddly vacant in her role as an American nurse Hogg falls in love with. The easy charisma of both Chow Yun-Fat (Chen Hansheng, a communist rebel who helps Hogg) and Michelle Yeoh, (also in Spottiswoode's James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies) as a deposed aristocrat, is stark in comparison, and they elevate each of their scenes accordingly.

But for a few moments of startling violence, the movie feels content to create and ride a passable after-school-special vibe until the very en and through the credits sequence, which hints at the poignancy that is ultimately missing from the rest of the film.

 The Children of Huang Shi opens June 13 at Landmark's Edina Cinema.