Fatso.co.nz - August DVD Reviews

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STRANGE CULTURE
* * * * (4 Stars)

A damning reminder of how messed-up the US have become since 9/11, Lynn Hershman-Leeson’s meta-documentary Strange Culture observes the nightmare of an innocent man finding himself ensnared in the government’s ludicrous web of paranoia. Imagine the scene: Steve Kurtz, an artist whose work aims to increase public awareness of genetically modified organisms, wakes up to find his wife dead. He calls 911. They arrive, see petri dishes lying around, get suspicious and call the FBI, who then swoop in and detain Kurtz on grounds of bioterrorism. It’s just the start of this outrageous, deeply disturbing injustice. Fleshed out with dramatisations by Tilda Swinton and Thomas Jay Ryan (Kurtz is unable to speak about events prior to his arrest), Strange Culture is both a sharp critique of the Patriot Act and an intelligent discourse on the place of art and freedom of expression in our current political climate. Scary Culture would’ve been equally appropriate.

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MAD DETECTIVE
* * * 1/2 (3.5 Stars)

This playful, irreverent, darkly comic, and at times plain weird toying of the police procedural is as stylish a work as you'd expect from Hong Kong director Johnnie To, but it might polarise those only recently familiar with him through the Election films or Exiled, both which are more immediately accessible. In tone, Mad Detective is probably more akin to the offbeat charms of Throw Down or Running on Karma, whose co-director Wai Ka Fai is reunited here with To. When the film opens with Lau Ching Wan, in an endearingly off-kilter performance, stabbing a pig, being thrown down a flight of stairs in a suitcase, before lopping off his ear, you know you'll be in for a cop thriller that's anything but conventional. Lau plays Bun, a mentally unhinged former detective who solves crimes with his unorthodox method of seeing into people's "inner personalities" - an effect which To portrays visually with disorienting effectiveness. Although the entire thing doesn't gel as much as you'd like, it's an entertainingly loopy psychodrama that climaxes with one of To's best set-pieces to date: a Mexican standoff in a Lady from Shanghai-like hall-of-mirrors setting.

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HORTON HEARS A WHO!
* * * * (4 Stars)

Thinking too much about Horton Hears a Who!'s rich subtext can lead to one serious mind-melt: Religion, mental instability, alternate worlds, intolerance and the apocalypse all figure in this Dr. Seuss tale of a lovable elephant named Horton (Jim Carrey) who discovers there’s an entire microscopic existence called Whoville living inside a speck. Run by Ned the Mayor (Steve Carell), a father to 96 daughters and 1 son, Whoville are clueless to the fact they are germ-sized particles in a larger picture, happily prepping away for a centennial celebration. But being a speck in the wild, they’re on the verge of disaster, and Horton must transport the city to safety while facing the disapproving taunts of Kangaroo (Carol Burnett), who thinks the pachyderm’s imagining things and damaging the impressionable minds of the jungle’s young ‘uns. Originally published in 1954 and animated by Chuck Jones into a very good TV version in 1970, Horton Hears a Who! marks the first completely CGI-ed Seuss, and it maybe the best adaptation yet, leagues above the brutally obnoxious The Cat in the Hat and The Grinch. Carrey and Carell provide terrific voicework with their respective comic styles, and the film's translation of Seuss’ vision is both faithful and gorgeous: the trippy contours of the architecture and the cheerfully odd characters all gain weight and wonder in CGI form.

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VANTAGE POINT
* * 1/2 (2.5 Stars)

The latest mutilation of Rashomon’s oft-pillaged multi-POV structure, Vantage Point is a head-smackingly overblown thriller about the assassination of the US President (William Hurt) at a major international summit in Spain. Basic thrust of the story involves the 23 minutes leading up to the assassination being replayed from the perspectives of several characters, which include guilt-ridden secret service agent Dennis Quaid, TV producer Sigourney Weaver, HD-cam-waving tourist Forest Whitaker and dodgy-seeming Spanish cop Eduardo Noriega. Vantage Point is sporadically entertaining, but with each groansome rewind-and-reveal, proceedings get more ridiculous until logic vaporises in a deafeningly stupid climax which features one of the crassest uses of the little-girl-in-peril trick ever. Director Pete Travis’ frenzied whip-pans and shaky zooms try hard to emulate the white-knuckle action of the Bourne thrillers but end up resembling something like In the Line of Fire spazzing out on meth.

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MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION
* * * * * (5 Stars)

If you've never experienced a Douglas Sirk melodrama, Magnificent Obsession might be the best place to start. Generally considered his best (maybe alongside Imitation of Life, which is great too), this adaptation of Lloyd C. Douglas' novel, previously filmed in 1935, displays all those wonderful Sirkian touches in their full lurid glory, from the sublime Technicolour cinematography to the swooning, slushy performances full of longing, yearning and heartbreak. The film was a breakthrough hit for Rock Hudson, who stars as a millionaire playboy who discovers he inadvertently caused the death of Jane Wyman's respected doctor-husband and spends the rest of the story being haunted and trying to obsessively make amends. Magnificent Obsession is grade-A corn turned into high pulp art, its deliciously unreal plot turns eventually reaching a level that's more fever dream than soap opera.

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