Taken

‘Taken’ with Liam Neeson well worth the ride

LIAM NEESON and Famke Janssen in “Taken.”

Ever multitask while watching a movie at home?
You know, maybe you have the computer on your lap and you glance at the TV and then read e-mail, or play solitaire or read the letter from Aunt Ethel.
I was checking out Facebook when I started to watch the action roller-coaster film “Taken.”
The great Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a retired superagent for the government. Today, he works security for rock stars and wonders what he will buy his daughter, Kim, played by Maggie Grace, for her birthday.
Bryan has all the right moves when it comes to knocking the knife out of the hand of a would-be killer but is clumsy when it comes to a relationship with his 17-year-old daughter, whom he loves dearly but really doesn’t know.
She lives with her mother (Famke Janssen) and rich stepdad.
Bryan frets over a birthday gift, deciding to buy a karaoke machine because she’s interested in singing. Daughter is pleased until she sees what Stepdad bought her: a horse.
We see Dad that evening, pasting the latest birthday photo into a scrapbook.
He clearly loves his daughter and when she wants to spend the summer in Paris with her cousin, played by Katie Cassidy, his immediate response is no. He’s seen the dangers of the world and doesn’t want his daughter exposed to it all just yet.
But pressured, he signs papers, and the cousins are off to France, where they quickly meet a boy who invites them to a party.
Except there’s no party. He’s part of a group that kidnaps young girls, dopes them up and sells them into sexual slavery.
In an exceptionally chilling scene, Kim is on the phone, talking to Dad when she sees through a window, kidnappers grab her cousin.
Dad tries to calm her down and tells her what to do. He directs her to hide under the bed. What is really chilling is he says she will be found and kidnapped. He tells her to leave her cell phone on and yell out any descriptions of the kidnappers as they take her.
At this point, I was in for the ride, and my Facebook was left unattended.
Forget subplots; forget strong characterizations. The dye has been cast. The explosive story unfolds at breakneck speed as the Neeson character tracks down clues in search of his daughter. If he doesn’t catch her quickly, she will be gone from him forever.
Being this is a particularly heinous crime, we can forgive the Neeson character for the way he dispatches bad guy after bad guy to their doom.
Some scenes will have you gasping as he does what needs to be done to get to the next point in the puzzle to find his daughter. When he barges into dinner at an old friend’s home but the friend won’t cooperate, the Neeson character simply shoots the wife in the shoulder to force his hand.
Despite the heavy action scenes and the body toll, there is little blood or sex, and the film is not particularly bad when it comes to language.
At 93 minutes, it’s just the right length for a good, solid popcorn movie.
French director Pierre Morel does an outstanding job pacing the film.
After it was over, I was hoping for a director’s commentary as an extra, something I rarely look for. Unfortunately, the Blu-ray copy I rented didn’t include one.
But “Taken” is well worth the ride. Just put it in your DVD player and take off.

TAKEN
• Directed by Pierre Morel
• Written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Karmen
• Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence, disturbing thematic material, sexual content, some drug references and language.
• Runtime: 93 minutes
• 4 stars out of 4

A Christmas Tale

‘A Christmas Tale’ won’t get you in spirit

MATHIEU AMALRIC and Catherine Deneuve in "A Christmas Tale."

A little way into “Un Conte de Noel” (”A Christmas Tale”) I commented outloud, this isn’t any Griswold family Christmas story.
It does take place around Christmas and it does deal with a family.
But there’s nothing funny about it. It conveys no warmth of the season and it certainly lacks any humanity.
But it does have Catherine Deneuve, who at 66 definitely doesn’t look that old. No, she doesn’t look like the Catherine Deneuve of “Belle de Jour: or “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” but she looks pretty good.
In fact, the actor who plays her aging husband, Jean-Paul Roussillon, just doesn’t look like he would be married to someone who looks like Deneuve. Roussillon in reality is 12 years older anyway.
It’s the story of the Vuillard family. Deneuve’s character, Junon, and her husband, Abel, are hosting daughter Elizabeth ( Anne Consigny) and her son, Paull ( Emile Berling) ; another sibling, Henri (Mathieu Amalric) and his girlfriend and wife and sons and a cousin.
Six years before all of this, irresponsbile Henri purchased a theater to produce plays and it quickly went under.
Elizabeth bails him out under the condition they never see each other and have no communication and he cannot visit their parents again.
Oh yes, and another son died at a young age back in the 60s that still impacts everyone and Elizabeth has a son, Paul, 16, who has mental problems and attempted suicide.
So there you have the backdrop. Gives you a nice, warm, holiday feeling, right?
The story centers on Deneuve and a serious illness she acquires. She requires a bone marrow transplant or she will die within months. Paul and Henri are compatible donors.
Directed by Arnaud Desplechin, he makes it clear this is a dysfunctional family with lots of problems, both emotional as well as drugs and booze and everything else.
Only the husband,Roussillon, seems to be stable and have a brain in his head.
Everyone else has a grudge to bear or an addiction or harbors resentment.
There are lots of ugly scenes and selfish people.
And just why Henri is banished from the family for having acquired debts really isn’t made clear.
It is difficult to care about any of the people in this film. Christmas, in better pictures, is almost a character in itself. Not here.
This film really could have taken place at any time of the year.
All of this would have been more tolerable in a shorter film, but this thing is 2 1/2 hours long. Spending that much time with people you don’t like involved in situations you don’t care about means just one thing: You just want the movie to end.
And with no real conclusion to the dilema, the film credits start rolling and we can bid adieu to this mismatched family forever. The Vuillard family will not become a part of the Christmas season as have the Griswolds and Ralphie and his BB gun.

A CHRISTMAS TALE • Directed by Arnaud Desplechin • Story by Desplechin and Emmanuel Bourdieu • Runtime: 150 minutes • In French with subtitles • Not rated but with definite adult content • 11⁄2 stars out of 4

Gone With The Wind

‘GWTW’ Blu-ray set looks gorgeous

CLARK GABLE and Vivien Leigh in "Gone With the Wind."

Video Viper for Dec. 11, 2009

Most of the time, this column reviews movies.

This week is a little different because the movie I’ve chosen is “Gone With the Wind.”

Even if I wanted to, how could I slam “GWTW?” I mean, it’s one of the top 5 films of all time.

I first experience the film as a student at Kent State University and was absolutely mesmerized by the scale and scope of the film.

When I ran a WEEKENDER contest a few years ago, asking people what their favorite movie of all-time was, “GWTW” won, no contest.

That’s not bad for a movie that was released 70 years ago. How many movies that are that old can people even name these days?

My reason for discussing this landmark film is the fact it was just released in Blu-ray in a beautiful 70th anniversary package.

The first disc contains the four-hour film and is breathtakingly beautiful. It is really a step up and being on Blu-ray, it has a higher capacity so the whole film fits on one disc without any compression. It also contains an historical commentary of the film.

Disc 2 has “The Making of a Legend: Gone With the Wind,” an really interesting look at the history of the film. You wonder how it ever got made in the first place. The documentary comes in at 123 minutes.

The disc also includes the 33-minute “Gone With the Wind: The Legend Lives On,” which tells about the film’s legacy.

Another documentary, at 68 minutes, describes what a great year 1939 was for movies.

There’s also a biography of Clark Gable. Another about Vivien Leigh. Reminiscing about the film by survivor Olivia de Havilland is another extra. She describes how Leigh and Gable played Battleship while waiting to do their scenes.

There’s yet another documentary about supporting players and another on film restoration.

There’s also a 97-minute television movie, “Movieola,” with Tony Curtis playing David O. Selznich.

There’s also trailers and other shorter films on the disc.

Disc 3 includes “When the Lion Roars,” a three-part, six-hour documentary hosted by Patrick Stewart about the history of MGM.

Then there’s a CD of Max Steiner’s unforgettable score.

The set includes a recreation of the program movie goers got as their entered the theater to see the film back in 1939-40 and another book of pictures and stories about the film.

A little “GWTW” video history. Back in the early 1980s, VCRs were primarily for adult entertainment, but the powers-that-be realized for the industry to survive, it must move more into mainstream movies.

Movies quickly were released on home video, but not “GWTW.” It was too big of a film to ever be released to the home audience.

The home video industry would not come of age without “GWTW.”

Somehow, a version was released on Japanese Laserdisc, but you had to order an expensive import and it had Japanese subtitles. Also, you needed a Laserdisc player, which few people had. (The format died with the advent of DVD, which was a smaller, more compact version of the same thing.)

MGM relented and released a two-disc specialty version of the film on both VHS and Beta at $89..95 in 1989, complete with certificate of authenticity and no discount.

Years later, a scaled-down, two-tape version was released on VHS for $19.95.

The first DVD version was a two-sided disc with no extras and quality not much better than the VHS.

A few years later a feature-filled DVD set was released, but it sort of floats in the middle of the screen of today’s 16:9 ratio high definition televisions.

That’s why I was happy to see the Blu-ray version released.

How many copies of the film have I collected over the years? First off, I recorded off of CBS when it aired it over two nights, cutting the commercials out and fitting the whole thing on one Beta VCR tape in the 80s. Quality: Adequate for its time.

I upgraded to the Beta box set with certificate of authenticity when a wholesale Beta catalog store discounted the set from $89.95 to $7.99. How can you pass that up?

Then I got the two-disc VHS set, followed by the plain vanilla DVD (what was I thinking when I bought that?) to the original DVD set and finally the beautiful Blu-Ray box set.

The set is also available on standard DVD, but last I looked, deepdiscount.com offered Blu-ray for $1.50 LESS than standard definition. Discounted to $45, it is a much better bargain than the original videotape version at $89.

Maybe the next version will be in 3D or super high definition?

Whatever it is, I’ll probably be there with my wallet out.

For tomorrow is another day.

GONE WITH THE WIND

• Directed by Victor Fleming and others

• Written by Margaret Mitchell (novel) and Sidney Howard

• Runtime: 238 minutes

• Rated G for all audiences

• 5 stars out of 5

In Cold Blood

A good time to revisit ‘In Cold Blood’

VIDEO VIPER for Dec. 4, 2009

ROBERT BLAKE (left), John Forsythe and Scott Wilson in "In Cold Blood."

I read the book “In Cold Blood” back in junior high school.

I’ve seen the original 1967 film many times, the most recent being last month.

I was surprised three days later to see an Associated Press story noting it has been 50 years since the shooting of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kan.

“In Cold Blood,” by Truman Capote, is the novelization of the story of the well respected, Christian-based farm family.

Herbert Clutter (played by John McLiam) was the family patriarch. His infirmed wife, Bonnie, was played by Ruth Storey. Daughter Nancy is played by Brenda Currin. Paul Hough played Kenyon Clutter. Currin and Hough were University of Kansas theater department students

This was truly the all-American 1950s family. Daughter’s boyfriend comes over to watch the grainy, reception-challenged black and white television on Saturday night. Plans are made for church the next morning.

The son is experimenting with smoking, despite Dad’s objections.

It’s actually the mundane things families do, but it proves pretty compelling because we already know this is their last night alive.

A parallel story involves two ex-convicts, Perry Smith, played by Robert Black, and Richard Hickock, played by Scott Wilson.

Both appear to be man children. Perry talks about pulling a heist to make enough money to go to Mexico and buy a boat and look for buried treasure.

Richard hears stories from a convict still in prison about a rich farmer named Clutter and the fact he keeps $10,000 in a safe in his house. Easy pickings.

So there are the two stories, Perry and Richard hooking up again and the Clutters spending their last night at home.

Director Richard Brooks does an excellent job of building suspense.

But suddenly the plot shifts. It is the next morning and friends arrive to take daughter to church and are knocking on the door. When nobody answers, they walk in and stumble upon the grisly seen.

Detective Alvin Dewey, played by John Forsythe, is the lead detective.

There are two breaks in the case. One involves a bloody shoe print. The other the prisoner who told Hickock about the Clutters who hears about their massacre and realizes who did it.

The movie was made in 1967, a time when most pictures were filmed in color. The chlling horror that was these two misfits works much nicer in black and white.

It’s almost like we are seeing the world through their distorted eyes.

We learn the details of the murders through Perry’s flashbacks. He tells a detective, “I thought Mr. Cutter was a very nice man. He was a real gentleman. I though so up to the moment I cut his throat.”

The film pulls no punches and you aren’t looking forward to the murder scenes, even though there is little blood and it is black and white.

We follow the two murderers right up until their executions by hanging.

The movie, just like the book did, leaves the viewer grieving for this innocent family. Their sin, they didn’t have a safe full of money.

The movie is so real, so authentic. Blake, an actor dating to childhood as a member of Our Gang, had psychological problems after playing the part.

He was accused in 2001 of murdering his wife but was later acquitted.

This is a tremendous crime movie, well acted, well directed. It is almost like a documentary. If you haven’t seen it for awhile, it’s worth another look.

And by the way, my most recent screening of the film comes from Netflix movie streaming. Netflix has been providing Internet streaming of movies for a few years now, but a big breakthrough came last month with Sony’s Play Station 3 in the picture.

If you have a Netflix subscription, even if just the minimum, you can order a special disc you insert in the player. The first time you do this you get a code you type into your Netflix account on your computer. Suddenly, all movies in your que that are available for streaming are listed and you can watch as many as you have time for. You can pause, you can rewind. It is a real plus The only question is: How long before Netflix charges extra?

Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains

‘Stranded’ looks at survival, death
ACTUAL SURVIVORS in 1972 of the crash which became the documentar, "Stranded: I've Come From a Plane that Crashed in the Mountains."

VIDEO VIPER IN WEEKENDER for Nov. 27, 2009

The tagline to this film is: Could you eat human flesh to survive?

Surprisingly, this isn’t a horror move. Under the cumbersome name title “Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains,” it’s a documentary about those who survived the 1972 Andes plane crash.

The film was put together by Gonzalo Arijon, a neighbor and friend of some of the survivors.

This film tells in fairly graphic detail what it was like to live for months in the cold, with minimal food and the dead and dying all about them.

My only complaint is the film goes on too long, more than two hours.

The filmmaker had his challenges. About the only real media he had to work with was one photograph taken on the plane in flight, another of the rear of the crashed aircraft, bleak and frozen.

The rest is recreations of events using actors, as well as footage of the survivors today.

Still, he is able to paint a white-knuckled story of death and survival.

They were young, sports-minded Uruguayan rugby players who climbed on a plane, laughing, throwing a ball about, having a good time. They were 19 and naive.

But a terrible storm over the Andes changed all of that. It crashed with 45 aboard, breaking in two.

Survivors talk about the dead bodies surrounding them and the soon-to-be dead. They talk about people dying in their arms.

They talked about search planes overhead that looked in vain for the wreckage. The plane was situated in such a way, it was impossible to spot.

The fact that anyone survived at all is a miracle. What helped them to survive became sensationalistic, but is treated with subtlety and decorum.

Arijon spent hours interviewing each survive, asking probing questions.

The days drifted by. Hunger subsided. Going outside took a great deal of effort.

It seemed whatever they did brought new adversities, from setting off to find help to eating the flesh of those who died.

And the survivors do go into some detail. They discussed the possibility of eating the dead. They knew they needed sustenance to live, to attempt to find help.

First, they made certain they didn’t know which of the deceased they were consuming. They talked of retching when they took a bit of flesh.

We hear about how they sat around and gave each other permission to consume their flesh to sustain life if some survivors should die.

The eating of the flesh was done with respect and reverence, almost a spiritual or communion act, which became sensationalized when they were rescued.

This real-life experience was made into a fictional film “Alive”

You respect the survivors who matured so much during their months in isolation. You understand why they did what they did.

You put yourself in their position and wonder how and what you would do. Nature was very unkind to this group, putting up roadblock after roadblock.

But somehow, after months of deprivation and cold, two were able to move out and rescue themselves. Those who saw them initially said, “They smelled of the grave.”

You wonder how much pain there was reliving their plight more than 30 years later.

STRANDED: I’VE COME FROM A PLANE THAT CRASHED ON THE MOUNTAINS

• Written and directed by Gonzalon Arijon

• In Spanish with subtitles

• Runtime: 130 minutes

• 2 1/2 stars out of 4

The Uninvited

EMILY BROWNING (left) and Arielle Kebbel in "The Uninvited."


‘Uninvited’ great thriller, great ending
VIDEO VIPER IN WEEKENDER for Nov. 13, 2009

Halloween is over but that doesn’t mean you have to put off seeing the thriller “The Univited” for another year.

The movie opens with young Anna, played by up-and-coming actress Emily Browning, who has been in a mental institution and is prone to having graphic and disturbing dreams.

She is released to the custody of her dad, played by David Strathaim. Mother died in an explosion in the cottage by the lake, that had been converted into a sickroom..

Anna doesn’t appear to be cured of her mental problems, but her analyst, played Dean Paul Gibson, says she has conquered her demons and can go home.

On the way home, she learns her mother’s all-too accommodating nurse, played by the alluring Elizabeth Banks, has become Dad’s new companion.

The Banks character just wants to be friends and have a warm, loving family. Ah, but Anna is immediately suspicious and when she decides to go for a swim, meets up with her older sister, played by Arielle Kebbel.

They catch up on what’s going on, they swim, they laugh. When Sister asks Anna why she didn’t respond to her letters, Anna says she didn’t get any.

Did Dad stop the letters. Did Nurse?

Dad is oblivious to the dark side of the Banks character and won’t hear criticism. Banks invites Anna to go shopping, have lunch.

But Anna knows better. The sisters go snooping and come up with some startling information.

Much of this well-crafted, suspenseful film keeps your adrenalin going. You enjoy the horror and supernatural aspect so much, you just wonder how it is all going to end.

One reason Anna knows there is something wrong with the nurse is she gets a vision from her dead mother.

Before the plot has a chance of slowing, Anna has another dream or vision that has you rivited to your TV screen.

Who is the Banks character really? What are her designs? What dark secrets does she have and what happens when she is confronted?

And then, what happened at the boathouse? What caused the explosion?

We see snippets through Anna’s nightmares, but we really aren’t certain the details.

Often movie directors and screenplay writers work to set the mood, make sure there are exciting scenes from the previews but run out of steam for the ending.

Whoa! I doubt if you will see this ending coming. At least I didn’t. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Kudos also goes to Strathairn, who plays the concerned father who stays in control and tries to mediate the situation and not be critical. You might remember him being very real as Edward R. Murrow in “Good Night and Good Luck.”

And Browning, the 20-year-old Australian actress, well, I would see a movie just because she’s in it. She doesn’t play the part as a screaming, annoying kid.

Her work is subtle and believable.

It is a horror film and some of it is disturbing, but it’s a great movie to watch, whether it is Halloween or not.

THE UNINVITED

• Directed by Charles and Thomas Guard

• Screenplay by Craig Rosenberg and Doug Miro

• Rated PG-13 for violent and disburting images, thematic material, sexual content, language and teen drinking

• Runtime: 87 minutes

• 3 1/2 stars out of 4

Civic Duty

Peter Krause, Kari Matchett in "Civic Duty."

Krause nicely unbalanced in ‘Civic Duty’

Peter Krause, best known as Nate Fisher on HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” plays a chillingly unbalanced laid-off accountant in “Civic Duty.”
Krause plays Terry Allen, who faces his own problems after his company downsizes. He’s a boring, dorky kind of guy. When an annoying, overenthusiastic bank clerk reminds him he could use the “ATM machine” in the lobby, he gives her a lecture about how ATM stands for automatic teller machine, so she is telling him he can use the automatic teller machine machine.
Kari Matchett plays his wife, Marla, who goes off to work while he stays home and broods. He becomes mesmerized by a 24-hour news channel and its post 9-11 reports of terrorists and paranoia.
At the same time, Terry gets a new neighbor. He is Gabe Hassan, played by Khaled Abol Naga, a Middle Eastern student obtaining his masters degree, sponsored by an Islamic organization at an American university.
The new neighbor has little furniture. He keeps getting odd-sized packages. He looks suspcious at the trash Dumpster early in the morning.
Terry’s suspicions grow and grow. Wife becomes concerned about her husband’s mental health.
Terry sees President Bush on TV churn the waters, describing how there are thousands of terrorists and many are wealthy and educated.
The Krause character becomes more and more paranoid. He contacts the FBI with his suspicions.
The agent, played by Richard Schiff of “West Wing” fame, is underwhelmed by Krause’s suspicisons.
Terry breaks into the student’s home, looking for evidence. He thinks the man has broken into his home as well. He finds odd-sized bottles and test tubes. Records show the Middle Easterner is getting an awful lot of money to go to school.
And nobody, not his wife, not the FBI, agrees with his suspicions.
He becomes so crazed, he starts taking things into his own hands.
Jeff Renfroe is a novice director but does a nice job building the suspense as the Krause character continues to lose it.
The story premise is different and timely, mixing the aftermath on the attacks on the United States with the downsizing of the U.S. job market.
Matchett is effective as the wife who tries to bring her husband back to reality, knowing she is doomed to failure.
Krause keeps his character in check and methodical until he falls over the edge. It’s effective but I can’t help thinking how a younger Jack Nicholson could have played the role.
It’s a different kind of story line and for the most part it works. I especially enjoyed the climax and epilogue to the story.
The film will remind you some of “Disturbia,” about the boy with the broken foot who spies on his neighbors, and, of course, the Hitchcock classic, “Rear Window.”
So pull you head in from the window, stop spying on your neighbors and give “Civic Duty” a look.

Published in the Star Beacon Nov. 6, 2009.