flawless Tagged Articles at Cinematical

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

With awards season in full bore, I thought I would go back and look at some of the year's most wonderful sleepers, the films that "fell through the cracks" and are not appearing in awards lists or on top ten lists -- one reason being that they came out earlier in the year and were not issued on "for your consideration" Academy DVD screeners. I'd like to start with one of the most overlooked great films of the year, one that was virtually ignored by both the press and the public: The Dark Knight.

Just kidding. Let's start by looking at The Violin, which is very much worth tracking down. 2006 was the year of the much-publicized "Mexican New Wave," and most writers focused on three major films (Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men and Babel), while passing over of the terrific smaller ones, like Duck Season and Battle in Heaven. Directed by Francisco Vargas, The Violin was made at around the same time, but didn't surface until 2007 in film festivals, and then early in 2008 for a tiny theatrical release. At the risk of cheapening the film with a cursory plot summary, it's the story of an aged, one-handed man who -- more or less -- helps his guerrilla son by serenading a sensitive but sinister military captain (he has to strap the violin bow to the stump of his hand). Vargas shoots in gorgeous black-and-white, cannily switching between hand-held and still shots.

In telling the story of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, director Anton Corbjin focuses on his wife Deborah (Samantha Morton) as much as the singer (Sam Riley) himself. Control hits DVD today courtesy of The Weinstein Co.; Corbijn contributes an audio commentary and a conversation. Other extras include a "making of" feature, extended live performances, and music videos from Joy Division and the Killers. James Rocchi reviewed Control and so did Christopher Campbell.

Mr. Rocchi also saw Olivier Assayas' Boarding Gate, but he noticed one problem: "The film has no motor to drive it. " Even the more adventurous and/or devoted fans of director Assayas may wish to proceed with caution. Asia Argento and Michael Madsen star. The DVD from Magnet Releasing includes interviews with Ms. Argento and a feature entitled: "Boarding Gate: In Touch with Asia."

Michael Radford's heist film Flawless inspired Eric D. Snider to write a glowing guarded recommendation; he concluded: "Michael Caine and the rest of the mostly British cast are serious enough to pull the job off, and they make the flick eminently watchable." Look for the DVD from Magnolia.

Do you really need to know what Twisted: A Balloonamentary is about? The title alone justifies a rental, but if you insist on knowing more, I refer you to Richard von Busack's recent post on the film's theatrical success. The DVD includes an audio commentary, deleted scenes, and much more.

I had a friend once who claimed that there was no point in listening to a record or seeing a movie that was merely good, that to invest the money and time, it should be great. I later caught him listening to -- and enjoying almost to the point of tears -- a CD that would never be described by anyone as great. The point is that sometimes a good movie does wonders for the soul that a great movie could never hope to replicate. Take a look at Iron Man, still on nearly 4000 screens and still raking in the returns. It's well on its way to earning $300 million and shows no signs of stopping there. It's currently the #1 highest grossing film of the year, as well as one of the top rated films at Rotten Tomatoes, with a whopping 93%. I'm one of the movie's fans, but it seems to me that this response is based more on sheer gratitude than anything else. Everyone seems to be simultaneously chiming in: thanks for the good movie!

2008 has been a lousy year for great movies, but I have seen quite a few good ones. The documentary Young@Heart (212 screens), for example, has continued to live in my memory long after I saw it, and long after any of the award-winning Iraq documentaries I've had to sit through. I suspect that it's one of those rare, word-of-mouth docs like March of the Penguins or Grizzly Man that people actually tell their friends about. I don't want to give anything away, but before I saw the movie I didn't care much for the band Coldplay, and now I can't listen to "Fix You" without getting a lump in my throat. The key to this movie is that it looked terrible before I went in, and it turned out to be a huge and happy surprise.

Among my favorite film books is Michael J. Weldon's two-volume "Psychotronic" film guide. The first was published in 1983 and the second in 1996 (Michael hopes to publish a third at some point). Unlike Leonard Maltin's annual book, Weldon doesn't update an existing guide; each new guide is an entirely new volume. If you want to read about Halloween, you need Vol. 1 and if you want to read about Halloween 4, you need Vol. 2. A "Psychotronic" movie can be fairly easy to define. It's basically any of the "lower" film genres, dealing with the more questionable elements of society: horror, sci-fi, bikers, strippers, superheroes, zombies, kung-fu, vampires, comic books, drugs, sex, action heroes, rock 'n' roll, midnight movies, monsters, witches, cults, serial killers, magic, time travel, robberies, heists, contract killers, gladiators, Spaghetti Westerns, mad scientists, murder mysteries, pimps, voyeurs, etc.

Nearly a year after its international premiere at Cannes, My Brother is an Only Child (ThinkFilm) opened at the top of the indie weekend box office returns, according to Box Office Mojo. Playing at just one theater in Manhattan, the film grossed $10,500. My Brother "follows two brothers through years of Italian history, with their personal and political travails echoing down the years," Cinematical's James Rocchi wrote last year. "Even with it's merits as a light-but-sentimental story of family in 1960's Italy, it also reminded me of the soaring, sweeping, astonishing La Meglio Gioventù (The Best of Youth) -- and wound up completely winning me over." The film will roll out to other cities over the next three weeks, per the distributor's web site.

Immigration family tale Under the Same Moon (Fox Searchlight / The Weinstein Co.) continues to perform well, earning $5,771 per screen as it expanded to 390 theaters in its second week. Leonard Klady at Movie City News commented that the film is "playing in a mix of Hispanic, art and mainstream locations but with rare exception is working best in the former venues." Also in its second week, Love Songs (IFC), Christophe Honoré's French-language modern musical, held onto most of its audience, averaging $6,800 at two Manhattan theaters.

Once again, order and logic have deserted me, left me behind like a half-eaten bag of movie theater popcorn (extra butter, of course). Try though I might, there's no common theme under which I can group five trailers, so for this week anarchy shall reign over the Trailer Park. And what better way to start out than with a movie called:

Chaos Theory
Ryan Reynolds plays a meticulously organized man. "A specific list is a happy list," he tells his wife. His life begins to slip into disarray and he finds himself embracing the madness, loving the chaos. This leads to him doing such previously out of character things as drinking too much, picking fights and streaking at a hockey game. Reynolds' best friend is played by Stuart Townsend, and considering his roles in Queen of the Damned, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Night Stalker, it's kind of jarring to see him not playing some kind of creature of the night. Martha Fischer's posting about this one from back in 2005 also mentions something about the friend being the father of Reynolds' character's son, but there's nothing about it in the trailer. This one left me with a good feeling.

My Name is Bruce
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who realize Bruce Campbell is a god, and those who have yet to learn of his greatness. We've been hearing about this one for awhile, and supposedly it will hit theaters some time in 2008. We have the trailer, though, and if you're a Bruce fan it's a little slice of awesome. Residents of a small town have unleashed an ancient Chinese demon and, mistaking Campbell for the character he played in the Evil Dead films, they enlist his aid in vanquishing the monster. As cool as Bruce is, he's far from infallible. The Evil Dead trilogy and his book If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-movie Actor veritably reek of awesomeness. On the other hand, The Man With the Screaming Brain and How to Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way just plain reek. Still, the trailer is really cool, so hopefully Bruce will be chainsawing his way into the hearts of moviegoers soon.

If you've been reading Cinematical for a while, you might remember an old news piece talking about a reunion between Demi Moore and Michael Caine. The project, Flawless, has finally been completed, and now there's a trailer to feast your eyes on above. Set in 1960, the film follows two unhappy workers at the London Diamond Corporation. One (Caine) is a janitor about to retire, and the other (Moore) is a female American executive who keeps hitting a quite-low glass ceiling. The janitor then convinces the exec to steal diamonds from the company to somehow make things better. (Oh, the flawed rationale of the desperate!) It's interesting to see the two actors together again, and it looks like an interesting film, but I'd rather have young Demi, Rio style. There's just something about adult Demi that irks me. Anyway, the caper flick goes into limited release this March

[via Ace Showbiz]

It seems like just a few months ago we were enjoying the sights, the sounds, the smells and the cinema of South By Southwest 2007, but guess what? Now that it's January, the festival's only about nine weeks away! Awesome! So today we caught some slightly early news on what SXSW is cooking up for this March, and I must say I'm pretty impressed with what they snagged for their opening night film.

And that film is: Robert Luketic's 21, which is based on the book Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. (You may remember Mr. Luketic from flicks like Legally Blonde, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!, and Monster-in-Law.) Adapted by Ben Mezrich's book by screenwriters Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb, 21 stars Kevin Spacey, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Bosworth and Jim Sturgess. (Check out the trailer right here.)

And if that world premiere isn't cool enough, festival chief Matt Dentler has also divulged the following titles for SXSW '08:

At the Death House Door (Steve James & Peter Gilbert) "A sobering and powerful story of the wrongful execution of Carlos DeLuna and the Death House Chaplain, Pastor Carroll Pickett, who spent the last day of DeLuna's life with him."

Dreams with Sharp Teeth (Erik Nelson) "A documentary portrait of acclaimed author Harlan Ellison, as he looks back on his fabled and influential career as one of the world's top science fiction writers."

Flawless (Michael Radford) "In 1960s London, a talented but overlooked diamond executive (Demi Moore) is convinced to participate in a jewelry heist when a veteran janitor (Michael Caine) hatches a plan."

Run Fatboy Run (David Schwimmer) "An out-of-shape divorced father (Simon Pegg) makes one last attempt to win back the respect of his son, his ex-wife (Thandie Newton), and the community around him. All he has to do is finish his first marathon."

Wild Blue Yonder (Celia Maysles) "Celia Maysles had no idea her father and his brother Albert were pioneers of verite documentary filmmaking. Determined to uncover the secrets surrounding her background, Celia sets out on a quest to rediscover her father by using his own artistic process."

Expect a few more flashy surprises before the full SXSW slate is announced on February 5! Until then, feel free to browse through the SXSW website and decide if THIS is the year you're finally going to take my advice and attend the dang festival. (You do know it's a movie AND music fest, right? Interactive, too, and I do believe I've mentioned the indigenous BBQ more than once.)

Remember way back in 1984, when a young Demi Moore played Michael Caine's daughter in Blame it on Rio? (Believe me, Roger Ebert does. I think he's still pissed off about that movie.) Well, the wait is finally over for all 12 of you who have been hoping against hope that they'd one day team up again: the pair has signed on to costar in director Michael Radford's Flawless - and this time, they won't be related. Nudge nudge.

In the movie, Caine plays a pissed off janitor at a jewelry store (You already know where this is going, don't you?) who spends a lot of his time dreaming about pulling a heist, and walking away with the shop's entire inventory. Lucky for both him and the movie, he runs into Moore, who is also pissed off. She's an executive whose progress upward within in her company (presumably the same one that employs Caine) has been "stymied by the old boys' network." Together, they make robbery magic. Flawlessly, of course. The film, which is set in 60s London and, as a result, suddenly sounds much more appealing, is due to begin filming later this month.