Untraceable

Untraceable is a film that made me cringe, not with horror but with repulsion. Honest folks, Diane Lane has never been in a this much of a shitbird film. Lane plays an FBI agent in Portland, evidently the only town in America that has 108 on its FM dial.
Lane and Colin Hanks cruise porn on the Internet so they can catch the evil doers. Actually not a bad job until they raise the wrath of a psycho killer who kills people live on the web. The killer (Joseph Cross last seen in Running With Scissors) doesn't just wake up before dawn, he has such electronic expertise that he can string together a series of slave servers around the world to handle 30 million hits on his death website at once, by wireless remote no less. This is a film for people who mumble when they read and who think that My Space is the Sodom of the web because they heard somebody say so on a talk show.
I'm not through slamming Untraceable, although the one sheet with a mylar mirror is kind of cool. First, Cross looks more like the offspring of Tom Hanks than Colin, and that's just wrong. Next, the killer's website kills its victim incrementally faster as more people log on. So naturally at the FBI office every computer is turned onto the website including the largest fucking monitor in the world in the conference room. Do I need to continue, please say no? Untraceable also features gross torture death sequences that are so relentlessly stupid they wouldn't even be found in an Eli Roth Hostel movie.

Persepolis

You will fall for this film instantly. It's a French feature length cartoon based on a graphic novel that observes the coming of age of a young girl, Marjane voiced by Chaira Mastroianni, in 1980s Iran. After living through the reign of the Shah, Marjane's family finds the religious government of the Ayatollahs even worse. Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi co-directs with Vincent Paronnaud and the animation never strays from a black-and-white graphic novel aesthetic. Additional voices are provided by Catherine Deneuve and Danielle Darrieux, which means that there's three generations of French sex symbols all wrapped up in one snuggle bunny of a film.
The official Gaul entry for foreign film Persepolis made the cut for an Oscar nom. If you've seen the trailer it seems to emphasize the song "Eye of the Tiger" being sung by pre-teen Marjane, but that's more of a comment on the 80s during which most of the story is set. There's a lot more than a song from a Rocky movie on display here such as when grade schooler Marjane wanders into the black market of Tehran to buy a bootleg cassette of Quiet Riot. As Marjane matures her revolutionary attitude to Iranian society requires that her parents have her educated abroad in Vienna. Time for punk rock, late nightclubbing and other recreational assistance in growing up.
For domestic audiences Persepolis presents an eye-opening chance to see how a typical middle class family that could be living anywhere tries to live a normal life under a repressive government.

Teeth has bite, leaves mark

Wow, a film about vagina dentata. The myth of a sex organ with teeth sounds like perfect fodder for a horror film, a genre that constantly plays with cautionary themes. Here the message gets a twist by having high school student Dawn (Jess Weixler) trying to organize her classmates towards abstinence friendly afternoons (no R-rated films) while fighting off certain impulses common to all teenagers.
This is an interesting myth on its own but Teeth takes it into contemporary areas which give relevance to the idea. In all fairness the trashiness of the other characters - cruel schoolmates, perverted brother - make Dawn a very sympathetic character, even if her, ah, malady makes her a freak. When Dawn attempts to masturbate in her bed she freezes and recalls the giant ant from the movie Them, its mouth a gaping orifice ablaze with sharp teeth. And when the love twitch dominates even Dawn can't resist, but will her newfound abilities lead her to go on a dick-cutting-off rampage at the expense of her innocence?
When the horror moments come they pay off - just what you'd think given the subject matter. The various cutting sounds in Teeth are worthy of foley honors. In many ways Teeth has some of the strongest castration imagery in a horror film since the Exorcist, you know that devil film about male fear of female puberty. But the scares aren't laugh proof and they also lean away from the torture type inflictions used by lesser films (think Saw IV, Hostel II). Teeth will click with smart femmes, submissive dudes and horror fans. The film may not be a grand monster movie like The Mist or Cloverfield, actually more of a lark along the lines of Black Sheep. Make a sacred promise and see Teeth in it's exclusive run at the downtown Angelika starting this Friday.

U2 in 3-D

We preserve the cool things in our mind as if they happened yesterday. Long live cinema, only ask yourself when the last time you actually cheered out loud in a movie theater as if you were at a sports event was. Well that was too long. Welcome to the new millennium and please deliver 3-D cinema soon so that those of us who actually enjoy going out to the movies have something to look forward to.
Case in point: the exclusive IMAX film U2 in 3-D, currently playing at the IMAX house at the Edwards Marqe off I-10. This feature length concert film utilized 3-D effects in a manner that made the effect itself meld into the experience so that you forget you are watching a 3-D flick. There are repeated shots from the crowd so you get used to seeing people’s heads in front of you. At one point you will find yourself leaning to the right or left to see around one of the projected images. U2 in 3-D was shot using IMAX 3-D equipment and that makes a difference when it's eventually projected. You become immersed in the crowd and you will see more cell phone cameras being pointed at the camera by concert goers than you can imagine. You begin to actually look at the individual cell screens.
The film makes good with diverse angles and a spacious mix. I kept looking to see who was playing tambourine on two songs, which led me to wonder if there were overdubs. Concert footage was taken from five venues in Mexico, South America and Australia. U2 plays their brand of rock and then make their political statement with a couple of songs. In many ways Bono was thrust into his current position of rock diplomat to the world, a post more spiritual than actual and previously held by John Lennon or Bob Geldof.
U2 in 3-D will play best to fans of the Irish band but it’s smooth production values (it’s not cut too fast like a lot of concert films) provides a good sit for interested film-goers. You can see the frets of the guitar The Edge is playing during One Love and the clarity of the detail just grabs your attention. And the guy never strums the same guitar twice. The glasses you wear for the effects were comfortable without any noticeable headache or eyestrain and you only see a minimum of ghosting to the image, and that’s when you turn your head. Isn’'t that what we really look for in a 3-D movie?

Cloverfield in hindsight

Now that Cloverfield has debuted there are some questions or comments that have come to light. We will now attempt to pull back the lid on the Cloverfield phenom
How can the head of the Statue of Liberty go bouncing down the street after its been sheared off by a monster? Well, the head itself is about 17 feet tall so yes, it could easily roll down a street like a bowling ball.
It's not believable that the Army commander would give Rob the time of day much less listen to him whine about his girlfriend being stuck inside a building. It's a small point not worth nit-picking over. We're talking about a monster running amuck here.
How would the camera work on batteries for an entire day? Hud doesn't video everything - just about an hour's worth of footage, so yes that would fit on one videotape and the battery would last if it was freshly charged. Besides how do we know that Hud didn't snag an extra battery when he was with Rob looking for a cell phone battery in the electronics store?
What is that killer music playing over the end credits? Michael Giancchino composed a kind of orchestral mash-up of the original Godzilla soundtrack, called "Roar" that plays during the close.
Somebody said in the last scene of the movie you can see something falling into the ocean off Coney Island? Great now I have to go back and see that to see what the hell they're talking about. Of course considering Cloverfield was made by the company that makes Lost it's likely to anticipate some hidden clues.