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August 28- September 3, 2008
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Dwight Shrute rocks!
by Michael Phillips
Death rides a big-ass car
by Michael Phillips
 Dwight Shrute rocks!
by Michael Phillips
I don’t want to oversell The Rocker, but in a summer of erratic, assaultive comedies all up and down the budget scale, this Rainn Wilson vehicle — a kind of “Home School of Rock” — stakes out its own corner of the market. It’s a lot of fun. Its spirit is genuine and, even with the odd vomit gag, fundamentally sweet.
Wilson’s mug, dominated by a significant expanse of Van Heflin forehead, is famous thanks to The Office, on which Wilson plays paper pusher Dwight Schrute. The actor has registered strongly in movies as well, notably as the convenience store clerk in Juno. Directed by Peter Cattaneo, who brought a working-class edge to The Full Monty, The Rocker allows Wilson a chance to play to his strengths and dine out on a wild-eyed dork.
Back in the 1980s, Robert “Fish” Fishman, thrashed the drums for a rising hair band called Vesuvius. Just before the band hit it big, Fish was bounced. Cut to the present: Fish lives, bitterly and in a state of perpetual ax-grinding, with his sister (Jane Lynch), her husband (Jeff Garlin) and their teenage son Matt (Josh Gad). Matt’s in a band. The band loses its drummer; Fish steps in, eagerly, hitting the road with the kids.
Here’s an example of where The Rocker goes right. Matt is a plus-size kid with zero social skills, counterbalancing his charismatic young band mates Curtis (Teddy Geiger) and Amelia (Emma Stone, of Superbad). But Gad works in a lower key than Jonah Hill in Superbad; each sleepy-eyed utterance arrives slightly behind schedule, so that even standard-issue dinner-table trash talk directed at his sister — “If you don’t stop annoying me, I’m going to shave your head in your sleep” — sounds like a real teenager talking, rather than a Neil Simon alum “delivering.”
The script, spiced with stranger and fresher pop-cult references (Miss Saigon, anyone?) than the norm, is by Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky, whose credits together and separately include The Larry Sanders Show, The Tracey Ullman Show and The Simpsons. Anthony B. Richmond’s cinematography whizzes straight past Midwestern ordinariness to flat-out unsightly, but director Cattaneo keeps the tone steady and the mugging to a minimum. Do you buy the romance between Fish and Curtis’ mom (Christina Applegate)? Not really. Is Wilson a memorable physical comedian? Not yet: At this point, he’s all face and voice. But he’s a real actor. And he doesn’t look like anyone else on the planet, which never hurt anyone
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 Death rides a big-ass car
by Michael Phillips
Nothing in director Paul W.S. Anderson’s schlock drawer — not Mortal Kombat, not Event Horizon, not Resident Evil, not Alien vs. Predator — prepares you for the peppy, good-time nastiness that is Death Race. It’s a loose remake of Death Race 2000 (1975), which imagined a bloodthirsty nation crazy for a cross-country rally full of flying, dying spectators and ruthlessly sociopathic drivers, not to mention Mary Woronov as the most fearsome thing on four wheels. Anderson’s version goes its own frenetic way, and it’s one of those vicious larks that just plain hit the spot. It hits the spot, throws ’er into reverse and hits the spot again, before machine-gunning it and ramming it head-on for the fun of it. Sadistic? Yessir. But our hero, a seething kettle of violence played by Jason Statham, is a devoted father of a sweet little girl who needs him, so it’s sadism with a heart.
The ’75 version veered wildly from camp to slapstick to gore. This one’s a more even-toned affair, heavy on the gun-metal-gray color palette and the abandoned-foundry aesthetic. The year is 2012. Economy’s ruined. The prison system lies in the clutches of private enterprise, and the most maximum of all maximum-security prisons is Terminal Island, where rough men lead rough lives and the bravest of them compete in the nation’s most popular sporting event: Death Race.
The warden, who apparently grew up catching Brute Force at every available prison-film retrospective, controls everything about the murderous affair: who gets to deploy weaponry, and when, and who might win his freedom. Joan Allen plays this authoritarian witch with a steely, implacable air. Despite what appear to be dangerous levels of forehead-freezification (hope it’s temporary!), Allen’s quite good. In his 1.3-note way, so is Statham, whose abs have already signed up for the Death Race sequel, along with his glower.
Ian McShane has a high old time as Statham’s grizzled Robert Duvall-esque racing coach. Tyrese Gibson brings the full seethe to the role of Machine Gun Joe, chief rival of Statham’s Jensen Ames. And as Ames’ cohort, track adviser and cleavage administrator, Natalie Martinez really knows how to get out of a tricked-out vehicle in slow motion while removing her sunglasses.
I’m making the movie out to be a different sort of cheese than it is, I fear. Anderson, who wrote the script, lays out the big frame-up (Ames takes the rap for his wife’s murder) in a way that’s efficient and effective. Aping the conventional three-act screenplay structure, the story’s three races provide natural off-track breathers for... well, for various other ways to kill somebody, or nearly.
Anderson’s visual-spatial skills are limited at best: You never get the crucial establishing shot of the damn track, for one thing; for another, Anderson never seems to quit moving the frame in that NYPD Blue-derived whoopsie-daisy-can’t-hold-still style. Yet I came out of Death Race strangely satisfied. It’s just junk and noise and blood lust and decapitations plus Wacky Races gimmickry. (Let’s amend that: It’s Wacky Bloodthirsty Sadistic Races gimmickry.) But the audience whooped it up when the Statham and Gibson characters conspired to destroy that souped-up prison truck with the flamethrower in Race 2.
Of course it’s like a video game. So was Shoot ‘Em Up, which I hated. So was Wanted, which I didn’t like much. I like this one. I admire its purity of heart and frankness of intention, and even though Anderson has a lot to learn about shaping an extended action sequence, when that big truck flipped up in the air, vanquished, I was, like, wow. Cool.
—MCT
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