Blu-ray Review: Powder Blue (2009)

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With all the '80s musical and dance film remakes either in the works or in pre-release from Fame to Footloose to, yes, Girls Just Want to Have Fun-- Powder Blue is proof that instead of an audition, if they ever decided to remake Flashdance, Jessica Biel could just send the filmmakers a screener of this film from writer/director Timothy Linh Bui.

Of course, aside from Biel's scenes as an exotic dancer which have long been the talk of the sleazier side of the internet (including humiliating leaked photos of Biel topless etc.), those imaginary producers of the possible Flashdance remake would have to endure the rest of the film which simply put is one of the absolute worst movies I've seen in a long, long time. I could just say "end of review" but if you're interested why, go ahead and read on.



For honestly, the thing is-- sadly Biel (whom I first saw in The Illusionist and felt she showed great promise) would've done much better by deciding to show her frankly extremely impressive and athletic skills as a dancer in Flashdance since (unlike that film's talented star Jennifer Beals) she completes all of her own highly stylized routines in this one.

However, in Blue she stars as a single coke-snorting stripper so desperate for companionship she comes on way too strong with every man she meets--nervously talking about Annie Hall for example which any film geek will tell you isn't a good idea. Why the coke and latching onto fantasies of men who will take her to Paris, you ask? Well, the filmmaker is only so pleased to constantly remind you that it's as a way to avoid thinking about her coma-ridden son and missing dog (yes, as if one of those plot-lines wasn't depressing enough).

Obviously, Biel is completely wasted here and to add further insult to insult, she's now been made the subject of online sleaze for believing in a filmmaker so much that she pours hot wax all over her bare chest in a pretentious film that on paper was most likely trying to become the next in a long line of Short Cuts, Crash, 21 Grams, Magnolia, Garden Party, Crossing Over, The Air I Breathe, and dozens of other hopelessly lonely movies about the bleakness of life in La La Land. And as everyone knows we can never have too many of those!

While the film's central premise as promised in the synopsis and on the back of the box is that we're going to encounter "the destinies of four people desperate for connection and redemption," in a way that "movingly chronicles the imperfect lives of people teetering on the edge of despair and the miracles that bring them back," basically throughout its unspeakably mind-numbing 106 minute running time that makes Chariots of Fire and Reds feel like "short films," Bui introduces us to an endless parade of losers. He does this in an attempt to as the filmmaker describes in the making-of-featurette (which I watched both as a critic and as a viewer just simply in shock that this picture had been made in the first place) to create "a study of loneliness in a city of 8 million people."

Inexplicably an obsession of the filmmaker for four years as he struggled to get it made-- even going as far as to live in a seedy motel he'd read about in the paper where failed dreamers and transients who'd ventured to Los Angeles all with the hopes of "becoming somebody" go to rot-- Powder Blue tries its best to dress up the devastation of the piece with religious symbolism and dialogue throughout from the opening frames of the film.



Setting it right around Christmas, Bui makes his "miracle" a bizarre one wherein at least three characters wind up dead. Oh yes, there's a happy present for you and frankly I would've preferred Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia style rain of frogs which freaked the hell out of me but did so with style!



And early into the movie we also meet a suicidal Forest Whitaker willing to pay any given stranger 50 grand to shoot him in the heart (most likely for agreeing to produce and star in this film), Ray Liotta as a terminally ill ex-con and a quirky asthmatically shy mortician so unrealistic he's named for the keyboard-- Qwerty (Eddie Redmayne). Oh and I think it goes without saying that Qwerty whose last name is actually Dolittle who has never had a real girlfriend and entertains kids with puppets.



As if that wasn't enough drama, the film also somehow manages to work in creepier subplots and wasted cameos by incredibly talented actors including Lisa Kudrow as a good-natured waitress who-- lonely but still functioning after a divorce-- provides an early romantic possibility for the suicidally depressed and grieving widow Whitaker (whose wife we see in flashbacks was played by the impressive Sanaa Lathan).

Likewise we encounter Kris Kristofferson as another underworld type who always arranges to meet Liotta on a city bus (not exactly something out of the typical wiseguy playbook), a hooker transvestite trying to raise money to undergo surgery to become a woman, and Patrick Swayze as Biel's lecherous strip club boss who-- similar to the girl playing his employee-- would've been much better off in an '80s musical or dance movie remake.

I will grant that it is intriguing indeed on Bui's part to cast Liotta as a soft-spoken against-type character who lets his eyes do most of the talking in a storyline that also involves Biel yet he ruins it as it's also one of the most predictable "gee, how are they related?" connect-the-dots of the wretchedly gritty script and to top it all, the payoff feels like a cheat.



Despite this, the sole bright spot of the film is found in Kudrow who manages to work wonders with her tiny role making us wish she not only was offered more work but that Powder Blue (by the way, I still don't get the title) would've centered around her.

Moreover, by this point I'm seriously questioning Forest Whitaker's motives (along with Liotta's actually) in never finding a role they decide to turn down as they both recently starred in equally bleak ensemble pictures like Whitaker's The Air I Breathe and Liotta's Crossing Over which you know wouldn't have garnered them a big salary at all.

Yet in the case of Powder Blue, mostly you just feel the sorriest for Biel. Not her character mind you as Biel's Rose-Johnny (again with the stupid names) could've disappeared along with the rest and we would've been fine but instead during the film, I felt incredibly badly for the actress herself.



As despite all of the online chatter about her body and beauty including quips about her acting chops by agreeing to appear in some downright silly movies like I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (although to her credit, I wouldn't have turned down a Sandler picture either)-- not to mention the endless gossip fodder surrounding her relationship with Justin Timberlake-- she's a strong onscreen presence. And much like she did given her great yet underwritten role in The Illusionist, she plunges completely into Blue with a fierce dedication and loyalty that makes you painfully aware that she should be offered the chance to prove herself in something far more worthwhile than this film.

Downright ugly and extremely unpleasant (so much so that I'd rather watch a double feature of two other contemporary horrors--Margot at the Wedding and The Savages before I'd ever watch this again), Powder Blue is the type of movie that should come with a prescription for an antidepressant or perhaps a tranquilizer so that you could sleep through its entirety.

Additionally, the work that even seems visually grainy in high-definition despite a strong sound balance goes against its tagline that "hope is found in the darkest places" by proving that it can only be found when you hit eject. Since ultimately, the only thing it makes you want to do is avoid Los Angeles like the plague, any future films by the director, and ask yourself just when filmmakers decided that the only subject to make an independent film about is devastating loneliness, suicide, terminal illness, and/or lost causes. For Bui-- perhaps realizing he'll never have the chance to make another movie-- opted to just go for the 2009 Sophie's Choice Depress-a-thon Award of the Year and put them all in the same film.

Movie Review: Observe and Report (2009)

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Unfortunately, while deadlines sometimes reign supreme-- Observe and Report is the best recent example of why I make a concerted effort not to review a film for at least 24 hours after I see it. And precisely, it's because-- well, to put it bluntly-- sometimes you need that amount of time to figure out exactly what the hell you've just seen.

Obviously, yes I grant that most of the time it’s fairly easy to exit the theater and make a snap thumbs up or thumbs down judgment but surprisingly despite the advertising strategy that this is an interchangeable, quintessential Seth Rogen comedy-- this is not exactly the type of film of which it’s possible to quickly observe and report, much to the shock of basically everyone exiting the theatre at our recent press screening.

While of course it’s great to be challenged and you have to admire writer/director Jody Hill’s courage to go to the extreme right from its start—I must say that my puzzled reaction hasn’t gone away as only a few days later, I’m still stunned.

For, who would have thought that—similar to some of the more arty fare I’ve taken in this past week at our local Phoenix Film Festival—Seth Rogen’s newest comedy would be this hard to pinpoint? Definitely not this reviewer, that’s for sure.

Yet it was as wildly unpredictable and filled with mood swings as its bipolar disorder afflicted main character as for nearly the first hour, Observe and Report is essentially fall-out-of-your-seat-funny (despite a few rough jolts from left field). However, during its overly long and unspeakably grim finale, it loses the funny in favor of Kubrickian madness as it turns wickedly dark, mean-spirited, overly violent, and bizarrely twisted in its tone to match our lead character’s pursuits following a major disappointment and decision to pull himself off of his required medication.

For, although it's the second film this year to take a look at mall security guards following actor Kevin James’ family-friendly surprise early ’09 hit Paul Blart: Mall Cop-- there is no mistaking Observe and Report for Blart no matter how similar they may appear on the surface.

Additionally, nor is it easy to lump it together with Seth Rogen’s most recent Apatow and post-Apatow box office fare that’s found the extremely busy, incredibly gifted young comical star lending his voice to animated works including Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who, Kung Fu Panda, and Monsters vs. Aliens as well as keeping up appearances as our favorite post-Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell slacker in Pineapple Express, Zack and Miri, and others.

And the reason for this can be summed up in two words or one name-- Jody Hill. Having garnered a cult following and fans in Will Ferrell and Adam McKay who helped bring his debut film The Foot Fist Way into the mainstream, Hill decided that for his follow-up effort which found him backed by Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures (the same duo that brought us The Dark Knight and Watchmen), he would avoid as the press release notes “’winking’ at the audience.”

As producer Donald De Line shares in recollection of his earliest meeting with Hill at Sundance which screened The Foot Fist Way, Jody Hill “really wanted to push the envelope... [and] to do something that didn't fit into any one box,” with a film that “pushes the boundaries of what a ‘Hollywood comedy’ is supposed to be. There’s no self-consciousness, no sense of parody about [Observe and Report].”

To achieve what Jody Hill called his goal, “to make films that are dangerous and controversial, even if they offend some people,” he sought inspiration for this work which he wrote with Rogen in mind from one of his favorite films-- Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

Wholeheartedly confessing that Observe and Report may in fact “be the only comedy ever made that was inspired by” the film that screenwriter Paul Schrader discussed on its Special Edition DVD as being about “a certain breed of white boy,” who isolates himself-- Jody Hill took the idea of a peculiar lead character who is “in a position of power but... [doesn’t] know how to deal with" it to form the basis of the plot.

Similar to Robert De Niro's character Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Seth Rogen’s character Ronnie Barnhardt is cut off from reality and filled with dangerous delusions of grandeur coupled with a hero complex (or more precisely, an antihero one).

After a flasher starts terrorizing women in the parking lot of his domain—Forest Ridge Mall—the self-important head of the mall security department decides to treat bringing down the exhibitionist “as his call to arms, to greatness.”

Taking it upon himself to throw together a special elite task force that consists of his sycophantic right hand man Dennis (Michael Pena), two gun-obsessed Asian twins (John and Matt Yuan) in addition to a youthful mall security wannabe employed at a mall restaurant—the stakes for Ronnie’s “case” which he likens to something out of King Arthur are raised when the flasher targets his cosmetic counter dream girl, Brandi (Anna Faris).

Having tried to avoid the admittedly creepy and obsessive Ronnie at all costs, the bimbo party girl Brandi becomes yet one other obstacle for Ronnie as he tries to compete against the real police, headed up by hard-nosed Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta) when Harrison flirts with and stares a tad too long at Ronnie’s crush.

Instead of working with the police, Ronnie irrationally sees them as his enemy in a strange figurative pissing contest as he tries his hardest to nail not only the perverted perpetrator but a mall robber after the shoe store gets raided during the night. Wasting Harrison’s time by endlessly pointing his racist finger at anyone and everyone including a Middle Eastern employee and a Spanish speaking janitor—when Harrison finally snaps and tells Ronnie that he’d never be able to be an actual cop and should stick to his job assignment to observe and report, Ronnie decides to try and join the local police force.

While it doesn’t take a genius to predict how well that’s going to work as the aggressive and hostile Ronnie engages in one of the most terrifying psychological screenings ever, it’s about this time that Hill drops an endless amount of razorblades into the film that you can only liken to Halloween candy as it deceptively starts like a run-of-the-mill Rogen comedy until the blood begins to let and gush like a horror movie.

While Hill tries to include some brighter spots including a likable but awkward possible flirtation between Ronnie and the sweet born-again-virgin Christian Nell (Collette Wolfe) who always gives him free coffee despite his unwillingness to realize her interest and the film’s greatest scene-stealer in his perpetually drunk, promiscuous, and blunt mother (Celia Weston), much like the funny but ultimately cringe-inducing Foot Fist Way, soon the far-darker yet still cinematically superior Observe and Report takes you into some very uncomfortable places.

These include some ridiculous hard drug use that makes absolutely no sense for the characters, senseless beating of children in the head with skateboards, and a scene that initially looks like a date-rape although the female character who has partied herself into a near coma is given one gross out moment and a line added to prevent us from walking out in the hopes we’ll assume it’s a lucid and consentual encounter (for the record, women still see right through it).

Decidedly, Hill adheres to his own vision for the work 100%-- critics, audience members, and everyone involved be damned-- in a way that definitely takes guts to use your first shot at a big studio film and not play it safe but instead to go all out in a movie that even Rogen admits contains “some shocking stuff” (this from a guy who starred in Zack and Miri and Knocked Up). Despite this, Rogen continues to share his admiration for Hill’s emphasis on “character study.”

While more often than not, I found myself laughing—especially in every scene involving Weston who proves she has the surprise comedic chops that Mary Steenburgen had in Step Brothers—and I enjoyed the concept of irresponsible characters who take their small amount of authority and go wild with it similar to David Brent or Michael Scott in both the BBC and NBC versions of The Office. However, it’s one that I still have a hard time recommending wholeheartedly since there’s just so much about the film that pushes you away to the point that you realize there’s very little about Ronnie's Observe and Report universe to like.

Still, worth it in the end for Rogen fans as he proves his deftness this time as an actor and—coming off the heels of Crossing Over—it’s great to see Ray Liotta return to the comedic territory he aced in Heartbreakers since as producer De Line correctly reveals, “just saying Ray Liotta versus Seth Rogen made everybody laugh.”

Unfortunately, I wish I could say that the film did a better job of consistently doing just that instead of going out of its way to shock and repulse by having had Hill go back and watch his favorite director Scorsese’s ability to move in and out of peril and hysteria sometimes in the same scene (i.e. Liotta’s work in GoodFellas).

Since—much to Hill’s credit—he really had us involved from the get-go in the film’s successful beginning until he began to shove. The pushes were made gently at first more in the realm of the dark humor of the Coen Brothers until we were soon overwhelmingly black and blue, making one realize that Hill’s script could’ve benefited from the way Scorsese has always managed to make us empathize with people whom we probably would avoid in real life in lieu of the rogue gallery of walking restraining order like kooks served up in Observe and Report.

Or, to go a much more lowbrow route, by taking another look at some of the films made with Seth Rogen and realizing that the strength of all of them—even when we’re sickened by some of the visuals is that deep down, there’s a heart buried beneath all of the f-bombs with which we’re far more willing to observe and report with pleasure.

Movie Review: Crossing Over (2009)

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Although I believe I only attempted quilt-making once in my life, a major lesson was learned in the process. Namely-- and despite my love of color and pattern and big and bold-- in order for everything to go together and complement each other, the designs must work in tandem as a whole.

In other words, you can't have one extremely decorative or flowery piece of fabric right next to an old beat up denim patch next to something that looks like one of those horrible reject ties given to American dads on Father's Day. There has to be a sense of harmony or fluidity as one piece of fabric melds into another and if you stare at it long enough, all you see is one ornate tapestry that draws your attention to it in its entirety rather than wanting to pick it apart piece by piece.

It's about this time I'm sure you're wondering, “What on Earth does this have to do with the new film from Wayne Kramer?” And honestly, the answer is “Everything.”

In fact, all it takes is one glimpse at the poster for Crossing Over, which follows up Kramer’s terrific indie The Cooler (starring William H. Macy and Maria Bello) which illustrates the ways that Los Angeles freeways and highways interconnect in a color scheme reminiscent of the American flag.

Of course, first you must move your eyes away from the obligatory “talent shot” at the top of the poster that shows some of the highlights in the ensemble cast headed up by a nice, understated Harrison Ford (as well as Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta, and Jim Sturgess in supporting roles) which seems overly photo-shopped into his ornate decoration below. Underneath the star power, we're presented with decorative red and white roads that-- upon first glance-- look like yarn, piping, or cords and you get a sense that that Kramer was using the idea of weaving and/or thread-work in what he aspired to be a cinematic collage.

It only takes a few moments after the film begins to immediately grasp the works that influenced Kramer which by now have echoed throughout every single film review for Crossing Over thus far-- namely it's an amalgam of Babel, Traffic, Short Cuts, What's Cooking?, Crash, and countless other multi-layered character pieces that introduce us to more than a dozen individuals whose lives intersect in a variety of ways over the course of its running time. Likewise, I’d also hazard to throw Fast Food Nation, Maria Full of Grace, Amores Perros, House of Sand and Fog, 21 Grams, and ESL into the politically volatile patchwork that takes a look at all sides of the immigration issue in the United States of America in present day.

Initially slated to run at roughly 2 1/2 hours before reportedly The Weinstein Company insisted upon roughly a half an hour of cuts (including the willing Sean Penn who bowed out of the film for political reasons of his own), the finished work seems as though it's full of jarring stops and starts that give us as much whiplash as you'd face on a Los Angeles freeway.

Moving uneasily between characters-- the film suffers when it spends an inadequate amount of time on the stories that really hit us as in the case of Towelhead star Summer Bishil’s turn as a Bangladeshi devout Muslim teenager whose speech about wanting to understand the 9/11 hijackers is reported by her principal to the office of Homeland Security and she's threatened with deportation. Yet instead of investigating that further, Kramer cuts away to endless subplots involving characters who soon begin to feel like stereotypes.

Those who are shortchanged the most and should’ve been left on the cutting room floor altogether involve a few including a Korean teenager who gets mixed up with a bad crowd just days away from his Naturalization ceremony (shades of early ‘90s South Central dramas like Menace II Society and Boyz in the Hood, anyone?) and the un-involving struggle of a young Australian actress (the otherwise talented Alice Eve) who arrives illegally in Los Angeles seeking fame and fortune only to prostitute herself for a green card.

Spending a ridiculous amount of time exploiting Eve with so many topless shots, it feels a little like a Cinemax late night movie; although most men won't complain-- sadly, it dawned on me after the film ended that only one female adult character and one minor female in the entire movie gets a happy ending.

But, forgive me as I digress and we'll move back to Eve's Claire who first wins and then loses our sympathy in an uneven handling of the cliched situation Kramer dwells far too often on, involving her decision to become a virtual sexual slave to the unspeakably sleazy and married immigration applications adjudicator Cole Frankel (Ray Liotta).

While Cole is the film’s devil, it’s his wife Denise (Ashley Judd) who is the film’s angel as a human rights crusading immigration defense attorney who fights to protect the very people her husband willingly exploits.

The film’s central storyline follows Harrison Ford’s Max Brogan-- an agent employed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement-- who witnesses firsthand the number of holes in the system, realizing that nothing is as simple as it appears every evening on Lou Dobbs' presentation of the issue as there’s good and bad every which way he turns.

When he becomes personally invested in the life in one illegal immigrant—a young mother (Alice Braga) who begs him to check up on her young son—Brogan begins calling in sick, testing out his Spanish, and trying to help make just one story end happily by returning the boy to his home in Mexico.

Of course, we know that the situations that drive people across the border are ridiculously complex and while Kramer gets bonus points for taking an unusual look at the immigration problem by trying to show it from every ethnicity (including one rather amusing subplot featuring 21 and Across the Universe’s Jim Sturgess as a British atheist who tries to pass himself off as a super devout Jew to gain a green card and hopefully a music career), ultimately he tears his own audacious quilt apart.

While not a complete failure and you’re definitely invested in the timely subject of the film-- unfortunately, as soon as we begin to feel a connection with one character, Kramer moves on. It's a work that's riddled with an over-abundance of speech-making—most ridiculously in a contrived and overly flowery confrontation during a store robbery at the end that sounds like a political campaign advertisement. And by hitting us on the head so hard instead of sewing things in gently, we're also left dazed by the overwhelming aftermath of too many loose threads that probably were ripped apart in the hasty editing process to meet studio distribution demands which cheats the final outcome for a subplot involving Brogan’s Iranian-American partner (Cliff Curtis).

Losing you in an uneasy, grainy, and awkward sea of distractions, you’re left with the realization of how much potential the film squandered in its excessive need to be big and bold. Ultimately, although the heart was in the right place for Kramer’s personal film he made as an American immigrant himself-- essentially Crossing Over is the type of quilt you’ll end up putting in the closet. For, in the times you do try to bring it out, you're faced with the harsh realization that no matter how many colors and designs are in it, instead of complimenting your furniture in a way so that things start to look new, you’re disappointed by the inevitable realization that what it mostly does is clash-- by offering nothing beneficial or interesting to a situation we face every single day in these United States.