McLovin

by Michael Bergeron

Another film broke during its initial preview screening. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry snapped during a scene where Dan Aykroyd was lecturing Adam Sandler and Kevin James. When the film started again about five minutes later there was Jessica Biel in a montage shopping for clothes. Chuck and Larry is typical Sandler fare, partly based on a clever long-in-the-can script by the team of Taylor and Payne that was reworked for Sandler. Example: Rob Schneider as an Asian minister and David Spade in drag. The film was rated R but was re-rated PG-13, which merely portends dual DVD versions. There are a few chuckles here but the groaners outweigh them. Lest you consider the film offensive in nature consider that gay icon Richard Chamberlain (the original Jason Bourne), absent from the big screen for nearly a decade, plays a crucial role in the third act.
The AFI is up to their old tricks. It’s a worthy org that has been the training ground for many great directors; David Lynch certainly bows down to no movie studio and he trained at AFI in the 70s. That was then, this is now. The AFI came out with a revised Top 100 American Film list. For instance, in the new list (the last one was ten years ago) Dances With Wolves and Amadeus are gone while other cinema classics shifted in position. (The Third Man, a great film by all accounts pops up on a lot of critic’s lists and it is a British film, thus foreign. By that standard there are about five Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger films that belong on a top American list since they too are in English.)
So should any such list be called the top one hundred films that you can rent at Blockbuster/Greencine/Netflix?
Compiling my own list of top 100 American faves I found verily with some minor exceptions they can all be found on video or DVD. We’re talking cinema classics that don’t skewer the current mainstream like Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1945 Detour; Tod Browning’s 1932 Freaks; the films Preston Sturges helmed between 1941 and 1944. They’re all available. Perhaps now’s the best time to be a movie maven, so many treasures can be seen at your convenience. Just when it looked like forgotten gems would fall by the wayside the National Film Preservation Foundation (funded by the Library of Congress and NEH) has been releasing more obscure works that take on social and political issues. Two series are available and a third volume comes out in October as a 4-DVD set. Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film 1900 – 1934 should satisfy the needs of those who live in a world outside of top 100 lists. (A complete list of their collections can be found at Filmpreservation.org).


If you’ve not been impressed by the comic book super dudes or pirates or autobots there are still some big blowouts coming your way. Consider Rush Hour 3 or the third installment of the Matt Damon starrer The Bourne Ultimatum, or better still the big screen version of the Broadway remake of the John Waters classic Hairspray. More than Chicago, and more than Dreamgirls, Hairspray commands a hyper kind of screen attention. Walken and Travolta, as graceful as they move, actually have the least interesting dance routine in the film. Oddly enough a lot of the composer Marc Shaiman’s score has a Phil Spector sound for this story of rebellion set in the early 60s. One character says “You can fight the future or you can rock out with it.” Sentiments with which I’m sure we can all agree.

ALSO PLAYING
Arctic Tales
An okay guide to life north of the arctic circle but not sophisticated enough for adults while pandering to kids, Arctic Tales offers G-rated docu fare. Do you know or care about the difference in global warming and global dimming? Every time Arctic Tales starts to get informative and environmental it also shifts into kid drive. Cute animals and a couple of fart jokes. The location shooting was accomplished over a period of several years and involves the life story of a polar bear mom and daughter and a similar couple of seals. Starbucks is promoting the film, their second such venture after Akeelah and the Bee, which was not a financial success in terms of theatrical. You will be seeing a lot of cute baby polar bears.

Sunshine
You will be talking about this Danny Boyle directed sci-fier afterwards. That's because you will be asking the same people you saw it with: What just happened?
There are space operas that are metaphysical like 2001 and Solaris (Tarkovsky) and then there are the borderline bastard genre attempts at star glory like Event Horizon or Supernova. Sunshine falls comfortably in the middle of those two extremes. Sunshine has a warm pulsing momentum. Scientists are traveling to the sun in a spaceship called Icarus to set off a nuclear explosion to re-ignite its core and save the Earth. The multicultural and handsome cast debate whether to proceed to their goal or divert to investigate the fate of the previous failed attempt at the same mission.
Sunshine throws a curve ball during the last act and keeps the audience guessing what the hell just happened with subjective shots. Thinking back on the film it becomes clear that certain clues are given but they may only be in one shot. It’s no problem to pay attention, the effects demand that much.