Film Reviews: First Snow, The Last Mimzy, Dead Silence

Related Content

• River Phoenix's Dark Blood: Not the Epitaph He Deserves
  February 21, 2013
• When Director Abbas Kiarostami Left Iran, He Lost a Home but Gained a Planet
  February 14, 2013
• Our 2012 Film Poll: Movie Critics Nationwide Pick the Year's Best
  December 20, 2012
• Jafar Panahi's This Is Not a Film Review
  March 1, 2012
• 10 People Who Mattered in Movies this Year
  December 20, 2011

More About

• Nathan Lee
• Oreet Rees
• John Malkovich
• Ella Taylor
• Yoav Shamir

BOY CULTURE Boy Culture is a film made by people just smart enough to acknowledge that the tropes of modern queer filmmaking have been reduced to cliché, but who themselves lack the courage to push beyond tried-and-true box-office formulas. Early on, lead character X (Derek Magyar) announces, “If you’re smart, you’ve guessed I’m a hustler. If you haven’t, here are two clues: I’m gay, and they’ve made a movie about me.” That glibness defines the script, in which cutesy phrases (“nuclear-reactor family”) and pop-culture references (a trick describes X as being “very Klute”) are used as character-sketching shorthand. X shares his sprawling apartment with grating young queen Joey (Jonathon Trent) and studly black jock Andrew (Darryl Stephens) — a triangle of unrequited love, missed signals and mixed messages complicated by X’s job, Andrew’s family matters and Joey’s horny-wounded-drugged puppy shtick. The performers are attractive and competent; the actors color right up to the lines of their characters, but none go beyond that, in large part because director Q. Allan Brocka (who also co-wrote the screenplay) doesn’t demand that they do. Upsides to Boy do exist, chief among them the colorblind casting of Andrew (in the novel that the film is based on, he’s white) and its nonstereotypical depiction of a black man in a largely white queer setting — he’s not a sassy queen or a one-note trick. All told, this is a harmless, well-packaged bit of overfamiliar fluff. (Sunset 5) (Ernest Hardy)

CLOSE TO HOME With at least the virtue of novelty on its side, Vidi Bilu and Dalia Hager’s debut outing as writer-directors may be the first feature to tackle the claustrophobic world of Israeli women soldiers who work out their mandatory military service patrolling the streets and buses of Jerusalem — a job as tedious as it is dangerous in a divided city vulnerable to Palestinian attacks. Nothing if not detailed, Close to Home follows two conscripts still in their teens — one a born conformist, the other an instinctive rebel — as they write up Arab passersby, goof off for falafels, dance with strangers, protect each other from the ire of scary female officers, and go home to Mom and Dad. Though it clearly means to call into question the legitimacy and futility of the soldiers’ work, the movie is awkwardly mounted and formlessly episodic as it meanders from one day to the next, finally losing itself in a forest of coming-of-age clichés. Absent a guiding idea, the neatly inserted bomb that makes these two ambivalent friends grow up and grow together feels more like a squib than an incendiary dramatic device. (Fallbrook; Music Hall) (Ella Taylor)

COLOR ME KUBRICK Being John Malkovich reaches new heights of mincing, self-indulgent madness in Color Me Kubrick. That’s no mean feat, but it comes with something of a mean streak here. Malkovich plays Alan Conway, a self-loathing alcoholic weirdo who hustles his way through London’s gay bars, rock clubs and B-list celebrity scenes pretending to be the famously reclusive filmmaker. Based on a true story, this sneering would-be comedy was written by Anthony Frewin, Kubrick’s former personal assistant, and directed by Brian Cook, one of his assistant directors and co-producers. They may have known the man, but they’ve got a flimsy grasp on his doppelgänger. Conway’s fraudulent picaresque would seem the ideal vehicle for satirizing celebrity obsession, punking the Kubrick mystique and rooting into the theatrics of identity. Malkovich musters a brand-new accent (always ridiculous) and body language (always virtuoso) for each new mark — an impressive, if unexamined, act of invention. It’s hard to believe that Conway bamboozled half of London by simply announcing his name, and regrettable that the filmmakers premise their picture on such improbable gullibility. The real Conway was assuredly slier than his biopic incarnation; he ought to have been played by Sacha Baron Cohen. (Nuart) (Nathan Lee)

DEAD SILENCE Terror takes a drink of water and talks simultaneously as the makers of Saw bring you the ultimate in ventriloquist horror! Director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell announce they’re kickin’ it old-school right from the James Whale–era Universal logo: The movie is a throwback to old-dark-house chillers with the merest splash of gore, as a grieving widower (Ryan Kwanten) traces his wife’s grisly demise back to his hometown, which consists of a spooky mansion, empty streets, an eerie motel, a funeral home and, oh yeah, that creepy old theater once run by the evil ventriloquist with the 101 lifelike dummies. Dolls are innately unnerving, but the movie’s semi-menacing Charlie McCarthys never live up to their potential; the same is true of the filmmakers’ two clever William Castle–style gimmicks — a visual scheme leached of its color except for lurid reds, and a soundtrack that mutes the ambient noise whenever mayhem lurks. As creaky nonsense goes, though, this is chock-full of corny goodness down to its hilarious sense-shredding “twist,” which the movie reveals like a magician proudly unveiling a dead rabbit. (Citywide) (Jim Ridley)

FIRST SNOW Held aloft by great acting and pretty good writing by director Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, this neo-Hitchcockian indie thriller lacks only something new and interesting to say about the interplay of destiny and free will. Guy Pearce, doubtless cast for his ambiguous performance in Memento and his sharp little nose, cunningly blends repellent and endearing as Jimmy, a cocksure salesman in a terrible suit with plans to get rich quick as a supplier of restored jukeboxes to bars and restaurants. A true American, Jimmy is so convinced that he’s a master of his own destiny that he becomes undone when the prophecies of a New Mexico roadside psychic (J.K. Simmons) start coming true. Obsessed with something awful that the psychic won’t tell him, Jimmy spirals into reactive paranoia, exacerbating already-compromised loyalties to his live-in girlfriend (Piper Perabo), his friend and partner (the excellent William Fichtner), and his employee (Rick Gonzalez). Shot by Eric Alan Edwards, First Snow has a fine sense of place and a small but terrific turn by veteran actress Jackie Burroughs as the mother of an ominous figure from Jimmy’s past. But other than some instant messaging about living well as the best revenge on the certainty of death, it doesn’t have much on its mind. And in the last half hour, the movie becomes lost in a thicket of signs and portents, before leading us where we always knew it would go. (Sunset 5, NuWilshire) (Ella Taylor)