plus 3, Movie review | 'Cop Out' - Courier-Journal

Movie review | 'Cop Out' - Courier-Journal
Movie review | 'The Crazies' - Courier-Journal
'Green Zone': An Iraq war movie with a 'Bourne' feel - Los Angeles Times
Cinematical Movie Club: Heathers - cinematical

Movie review | 'Cop Out' - Courier-Journal

Posted: 27 Feb 2010 12:01 AM PST

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The 10-word review : Semicompetent detectives botch everything but still save the day, somehow. "It's not stealing," protests NYPD Detective Paul Hodges as he readies for his "performance" interrogating a suspect. "It's called homage ...

Movie review | 'The Crazies' - Courier-Journal

Posted: 27 Feb 2010 12:01 AM PST

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The 10-word review : Contagion is loosed and terror engulfs a town in Iowa.

"The Crazies" is a lean, little thriller that doesn't mess around. Adapted from George A. Romero's 1970s zombie-movie-without-zombies, this new "Crazies" brings horror home to the heartland as a small Iowa town copes with an outbreak of homicidal maniacs and the shoot-first military sent there to contain them.

The sheriff (Timothy Olyphant, "Hitman") and his wife not only have to worry about which neighbors are murderous monsters and which are worth saving, they must dodge the trigger-happy troopers.

After "Zombieland," "The Crazies" struggles to find novelty and laughs, and must battle the sense that we've been here, seen this too often to experience any real surprises.

— Roger Moore,

Orlando Sentinel

Recommended if : You've never seen "28 Days Later" or "Outbreak" or "The Andromeda Strain" or "Shivers."

Not recommended if : You have no idea who George Romero is or why he would matter.

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'Green Zone': An Iraq war movie with a 'Bourne' feel - Los Angeles Times

Posted: 27 Feb 2010 12:08 AM PST

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The English estate that director Paul Greengrass took over to make his Iraq war thriller "Green Zone" is hardly humble. The 40,000-square-foot Updown Court mansion outside of London has 103 rooms, a 50-seat cinema and five swimming pools. Listed for some $140 million, the never-occupied property practically asks aloud: Who needs restraint?

Greengrass is making a slightly less immodest -- yet far more provocative -- statement with his new movie: Everybody might say pricey movies about combat in the Middle East are a fool's errand, but ultimately one of them has to work.

FOR THE RECORD:
An article in Saturday's Calendar section said "Green Zone" would be released March 16. It will be released March 12.

The $11-million "Hurt Locker" has proved that a low-budget war story in limited distribution can bring in significant praise and modest receipts. There are few such economies on "Green Zone." With a budget of $100 million, Matt Damon in a starring role and a wide national release on March 16, it is Hollywood's biggest bet yet on modern conflict, an ambitious amalgam of political drama and popcorn diversion.

"I don't accept the proposition that cinema can't look to Iraq and bring people to it," Greengrass said in one of the mansion's many colossal bathrooms during filming nearly two years ago. While he spoke, the film's art department re-dressed the estate that was doubling for a palace inside Baghdad's U.S. military-controlled Green Zone.

If there's any filmmaker who can reverse Hollywood's history on the subject -- the commercial underachievers include "Stop-Loss," "Rendition," "Body of Lies" and "The Hurt Locker," which for all of its awards has grossed just $12.7 million -- it's Greengrass.

The former documentarian transformed Ireland's deadly 1972 civil rights march into the powerful "Bloody Sunday," and in between his last two kinetic Robert Ludlum blockbusters -- "The Bourne Supremacy" and "The Bourne Ultimatum," both of which starred Damon -- the British director was able to craft a riveting (and surprisingly successful) drama about an event few filmmakers would dare tackle: the 9/11 attacks in his "United 93."

An intuitive artist who improvises on the set and shoots miles of film, Greengrass doesn't follow the usual, linear sequence of moviemaking -- develop a screenplay, film it, edit the footage together -- preferring instead to discover the story through the process itself. The contours of his movies don't fundamentally change from start to finish, but there are countless journeys down dead ends along the way, and "Green Zone," which was shot in England, Spain and Morocco, was rushed into production in early 2008 (to finish before a threatened actors strike) with an unfinished script (thanks to an actual screenwriters strike), intensifying the consequences of his method.

While many directors consider extensive re-shoots an admission of failure, to Greengrass they're as essential as costumes. "You could be halfway through making a dinner of beef stew, and he'll walk through the door with a chicken and say, 'Maybe we shouldn't have beef stew tonight,' " said "Green Zone" screenwriter Brian Helgeland ("L.A. Confidential") in explaining the director's method. "He plans things out, but he also plans not to stick to his plans."

Said Damon, who was allowed to improvise within 30-minute action scenes: "His cameras are always responding to what's happening. They are never predicting what's happening. As an actor, it's an absolutely exhilarating experience."

What might be exhilarating for actors and energizing for screenwriters, though, are the very things that steer studio executives toward antidepressants. While Universal Pictures, which pushed the movie from an awards season slot in the fall to the spring, says it is eager to work with the director again, the studio and Greengrass both say making "Green Zone" was far from easy.

"I have to say," Greengrass said, "it was a long, hard road."

When Greengrass six years ago first considered making a movie about the American-led invasion, he wasn't certain what specifically he wanted to explore. He toyed with a movie about extraordinary rendition -- capturing, interrogating and sometimes torturing terrorism suspects -- before focusing on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

"It was a pivotal subject in why we went to war and how the war was sold," Helgeland said of WMDs.

Greengrass and Helgeland crafted a character loosely based on Chief Warrant Officer Richard Lamont Gonzales (and played by Damon in the film), who in Iraq led a Mobile Exploitation Team charged with finding WMDs. The hunt for the nonexistent weapons gave "Green Zone" its narrative foundation, but it wasn't until the literate and loquacious Greengrass read Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone" that the movie found its thematic shape.

The book focuses on the ruinous decisions made by Paul Bremer and his Coalition Provisional Authority as the United States tried and failed to bring order to Iraq. Greengrass found the book captured perfectly the messy postwar collision of idealism and reality, a central component to the film.

Damon's Roy Miller is an idealistic Army warrant officer mystified that he never finds WMDs where intelligence reports says they should be. Working with a reluctant local civilian ("United 93's" Khalid Abdalla), he is quickly drawn into a political duel between a neoconservative government official (Greg Kinnear) and a CIA agent (Brendan Gleeson). As Miller searches for answers instead of WMDs, he runs into a journalist (Amy Ryan) who bears a strong resemblance to Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter whose articles about Iraq's WMDs proved erroneous.

Greengrass, Helgeland, Damon and Universal were all very intentional about what "Green Zone" was not: a teachable moment bearing an ideological agenda. The goal, Damon said, was to pitch the movie toward "Bourne" fans "and see how much of that audience would come to see a movie with a similar aesthetic and similar action -- but with a story set in the real world."

That edict consequently meant that as the movie came together, its makers concentrated on action-driven intrigue rather than dialogue-heavy exposition (even the signage on the film's set called the production "Green Zone Thriller" rather than "Green Zone"). Because Damon had to leave to do to "The Informant!" earlier than Greengrass wished (there were also some complications in filming "Green Zone" at night), much of the film's third act had to be reshot months later at a cost of multiple millions of dollars.

"We never had a third act that felt like it fit the movie," Damon said of the film's original ending. "It kind of petered out." Said Helgeland: "We could never make up our mind on who lived and who died and who should kill whom."

The film's new conclusion feels much more like a "Bourne" film: energetic action, helicopters, gunfire, explosions. "The mission statement going into this film was always to make a broad film with commercial appeal," said Donna Langley, Universal's co-chairman, "a propulsive, paranoid conspiracy thriller."

Back at Updown Court, Greengrass said that too was his goal, even as he discussed the subject matter's liabilities.

"Will it work? Who knows?" he said. "I am a born optimist. . . . Nobody is insulated from the pressure. But in the end, if you can craft a compelling story with a clearly defined central character and the biggest possible stakes, then you have a chance."

john.horn@latimes.com

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Cinematical Movie Club: Heathers - cinematical

Posted: 27 Feb 2010 12:01 AM PST

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The Cinematical Movie Club is a new weekly feature where we pick a film, watch it and then discuss it. Feel free to read our introduction for more info.

Heathers is near and dear to my heart. It marked the first step towards my adult preferences, as I broke out of the kiddie fare and slowly journeyed into the world of more discerning taste. (My pre-teen self thought Grease 2 was a superior film to the original in all ways, people!) I rented the VHS because of my Christian Slater fandom born out of The Legend of Billie Jean and Gleaming the Cube. The Metropolitan trailer tugged me into the world of Whit Stillman and conversational features while the film itself allowed me to discover my deep love of black comedy and well-written banter.

To be fair, the first time I watched it, my friend and I were professing our love for Jason Dean, hoping to keep him from going further down that dark path. But when she went home, I rewound the tape and watched it again. And again. It stuck with me like no other film had. When I was 17 and driving around in my own car, I recorded the entire audio track and would listen to it daily, quickly learning every. single. line. It wasn't, however, mere teen adoration. I was simply enamored by the flow of the words, which may be passed off as merely weird, but rang in my ears like modern, satirical Shakespeare.

I know -- that's a pretty big stance to take. Shakespeare? But think about this: Heathers sounds like no other film out there. Daniel Waters created a wholly unique dialogue -- were you saying "cooze," "Swatchdogs," or "You're such a pillowcase"? -- but rather than simply throwing strange word bombs in a regular script, each piece bled into the next, each word carefully chosen and delivered so that they all counted. The banter thrived between people, but also between groups, shots, and scenes. The initial lunch room scene is the perfect example. After one of the most colorful journal entries cinema has ever seen (especially for a teen), we're taken to the head Heather, introduced to her latest evil deed, and then to the whole school -- the do-gooders, jocks, rich kids, nerds, stoners, you name it. Nothing about this introduction, or any scene for that matter, seems obligatory or forced because it's all well-placed and considered.

There are no definite changes in tone or pacing, plagues that infect many of Hollywood's comedies -- especially when the finish line is in sight and the story has to be wrapped up. Each bit dances to the next, each line sounds lyrical, but still natural. And this is why I call it modern, satirical Shakespeare. It's crescendos and diminuendos are timeless. Many films have tried to do banter with funky catch-words and silliness, but usually failed. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was overflowing with alterna-speak, didn't have the same flow, and the phrasing was quickly abandoned after the pilot episode of the television series. A more modern example -- Juno.

But even the words are only as strong as the voices who relay them and the environment that surrounds them. Winona Ryder and Christian Slater were made for these roles. And while we might like to tease Slater for his overt Jack Nicholson mimicry, lines like "Greetings and salutations," would've fallen flat without that tired drawl. By now, my kind words are running rampant, I know. I can't help it. Heathers is the one film where I don't have a favorite character, I don't wait for preferred, favorite scenes. There's no cheering a character who could never win (Duckie), or griping over a wrong choice. Each character is respected and gets their due, whether its social isolation, revolt, or death.

But enough about me. Now it's time to see if you agree or disagree. Some questions and food for thought up for discussion:

In his review, Roger Ebert asked: "Is this a black comedy about murder or just a cynical morality play?"
Daniel Waters originally planned to use The Catcher in the Rye as the meaningfully marked up book for Heather Duke's fake suicide. Would that have worked better than Moby Dick?
Due to the time of its release, Heathers often gets compared to the films of John Hughes. Is this a fair comparison? Which was best at relaying the high school experience?
Daniel Waters originally intended to have everyone die and meet again in heaven. (Remember? "Let's face it: The only place that different social types can genuinely get along with each other is in heaven.") Everyone is at a heavenly prom, intermingling, from Heather Duke and Rodney to JD and Kurt. New World Pictures thought it was too dark and wanted something more upbeat.
Many films have been linked to Heathers over the years, from the Waters follow-up Sex and Death 101 to Mean Girls. Do any films actually live up to the comparison?

Sound off below with your answers, and any questions/comments you might have. There's also some fun commentary at #cinemovieclub and #heathers on Twitter from a live-tweet on Wednesday.

And now it's time to look to next week:

NEXT FILM: The Graduate | Add it to your Netflix queue

I will livetweet again this Wednesday, 10 P.M. Eastern time. You can follow me at MBartyzel, and join in on the discussion using both #cinemovieclub and #thegraduate.

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