HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS
I’m kind of a sucker for violent fairy tales. If you liked ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER (and I actually did), you may enjoy this lowbrow, weirdly entertaining, hodge-podge exploitation extrapolated loosely from the Grimm brothers. Director Tommy Wirkola (DEAD SNOW) whose stock in trade is the gore/joke juxtaposition. One of the producers here is Will Farrell, so I did expect stronger emphasis on the joke factor. Most attempts fall rather flat. Jeremy Renner (always good) and Gemma Arterton (always easy on the eye) have matured from their childhood fairy tale gingerbread experience into full-fledged witch-hunters. But now they must face more than they expected when an evil from their childhood looms on their path. There may be an abundance of cliché´s but there are also a few clever twists and surprises. Thankfully, the look of the movie is better than you might guess. Nice craftsmanship and a just enough bloody scares add to the fun of what I think is in fact an intentional parody that never quite lives up to the original premise – whatever that might have been. Amazingly, Renner now has a lead in multiple potential movie franchises that include MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, BOURNE, and AVENGERS. What? Is there a shortage of actors we haven’t heard about? Now showing in theaters.
New for the home theater:
PINA
This excellent 3D tribute to Philippina “Pina” Bausch (1940-2009), the late German modernist dance teacher and ballet director was a huge hit at last year’s Palm Springs International Film Festival. Criterion has mastered a magnificent hi-def 3D transfer that is stunning to behold and makes excellent use of the extra optical dimension, an over-used gimmick I usually disdain both in theaters and on home video.
Bausch was an innovator of the Neo-Expressionist form of German dance known as Tanztheater. She served as director of the Wuppertal Dance Theater in western Germany.
Even if you have no interest in dance, this movie should be seen for its eye-opening celebration of human movement in time and space. It is a vibrant metaphor for our lives that embraces all the terror, joy, anger, grief and awe we dance around — and through as we live out our short span. This transcendent, sensual, visually startling journey moves off the stage to the streets of Bausch’s beloved city of Wuppertal and beyond. It’s hard to imagine a more vivid epitaph than this for one of the supreme creative spirits of our age. Criterion. Blu-ray.
IVAN’S CHILDHOOD
By any measure, the late Andrei Tarkovsky (1932 – 1986) is among the very small handful of master world cinema craftsmen. This, his first film, was a test he gave himself to see if he could make a movie and if he liked the process. This newly re-mastered transfer is as fresh and timelessly stylistic as if it was just completed. IVAN’S CHILDHOOD is a visually dense, highly poetic account of 12-year-old Russian Ivan (Nikolai Burlyayev) who is orphaned after the Nazis destroy his village and he finds himself in a prisoner of war camp. The film is widely recognized as a haunting masterpiece that makes emotionally vivid the devastating impact of war on children. It is also a tone poem of pure cinema that does not shy away from surreal compositions and unexpected but appropriate hand-held camera work.
Bright and clever, Ivan escapes and is adopted Captain Kholin (Valentin Zubkov), who plans to send Ivan away to a school. But instead, Ivan starts spying on the hated Nazis. Because he’s a kid, he gets away with passing back and forth across enemy lines – for a while, anyway. This extraordinary black and white film that shimmers like pewter on black velvet won the Golden Lion Award, the top prize at the 1962 Venice Film Festival and also won the Grand Prize at the 1962 San Francisco Film Festival. Criterion. Blu-ray.
CELESTE AND JESSE FOREVER
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this fresh, bittersweet romance about a divorcing couple. Co-writer Rashida Jones becomes a bona fide star and Andy Samberg shows he can act. The hipster tinged comedy drama set in Los Angeles is about a couple that split after six years with the hope of staying good friends. Celeste (Jones) is fun and smart with a good job — she brands products with the latest trends — and Jesse (Samberg) is a sweet, talented but unmotivated artist going nowhere. Celeste thinks divorcing now would be better than doing it later. Jesse kind of agrees. And he’s grateful to remain living in the studio behind the house they once shared. Soon enough, things get complicated and lessons are learned. No spoilers here. Great writing, acting, directing (Lee Krieger) and a fine soundtrack make this overlooked title one worth finding.
Also available and recommended: THE SESSIONS, SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS, HELLO I MUST BE GOING, and PARANORMAN.
