Movie Reviews: Fame, Pandorum, Surrogates

GO  EVANGELION 1.0: YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno co-directs the first in a planned tetralogy that reboots (and spiffs up with gorgeously soft-lit 3-D CGI) his beloved mid-’90s anime series, which was seminal enough to earn more than $1.4 billion in revenue and, perhaps more tellingly, has been referenced by Homer Simpson. Set in Japan’s last surviving city, Tokyo-3, this apocalyptic action-drama focuses on the key players within NERV, a paramilitary force armed with piloted war machines (“mecha” to you anime novices) that protect their retractable metropolis by battling giant monsters called Angels. In the first 10 minutes, naive high-schooler Shinji is summoned by his long-estranged father, wanders into a firefight, is rescued by a flirty field commander, survives a bomb from inside a flipping car, and faces an ultimatum from NERV’s grand poobah (yep, Dad): Suit up in a prototype mecha, or civilization will be lost. This is mighty perplexing nerd kibble, its highfalutin philosophical and psychological banter way too outlandish to seriously engage. Yet as a visceral experience, it’s entrancing, especially during Shinji’s fight sequences, when his anxieties are cruelly exacerbated by having his body and mind symbiotically bonded to his father’s combat toy. (Sunset 5) (Aaron Hillis)

FAME Baby, look at me. Gone are Leroy’s cornrows, short-shorts, and leg warmers: The anodyne adolescents in 25-year-old Kevin Tancharoen’s directorial debut (written by Allison Burnett) suggest not the charismatic, street-smart pupils at Performing Arts, but the Up with People squares. Don’t you know who I am? Like all good drama queens, the students in Alan Parker’s 1980 original, which unfolded during an unmistakably Koch-era New York, took up space (blocking traffic on West 46th Street) and disrespected authority (dropping f-bombs in class, smashing school property). They also did drugs, had sex (and abortions, if necessary), and stayed up past midnight. The new class at P.A. is strictly PG, sharing a chummy coffee with the vocal instructor (Megan Mullally) who takes them on a karaoke field trip to Lucky Cheng’s, where not one drag queen is visible. Light up the sky like a flame. Though his gayness was awkwardly shoehorned in, carrot-topped Montgomery was at least undeniably out in Parker’s film. His closest analogue — many of the kids in the remake are race and/or gender inversions of the original characters — merely alludes to homo leanings through emo, Efronesque bangs and a slightly swish carriage. Members of the class of ’80 struggled to stay in school despite homelessness and crime; the greatest crisis in ’09 finds a student’s Sesame Street work-schedule affecting her GPA. The sanitized moppets in the new Fame sing the body generic. (Citywide) (Melissa Anderson)

Related Content

• Sundance 2013: Sex with James Franco, Sultry Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Radcliffe's Jew-Fro, and a Great Film From Jordan
  January 19, 2013
• They Are Women, Hear Them Roar
  February 28, 2013
• Taverna dei Fori Imperiali: When in Rome, Dining with Movie Stars Astronauts
  May 13, 2013
• The Hunger Games Rages Against Our Stupid Culture, But It's Part of the Problem
  March 23, 2012
• Ten Movies Coming Out This Weekend, Including Thor, The Beaver, Something Borrowed and Jumping the Broom
  May 6, 2011

More About

• Josh Harris
• Clive Owen
• Vadim Rizov
• Coco Chanel
• Anne Fontaine

I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL Tucker Max got famous through a Web site detailing how being an asshole to women constantly got him laid, making him a hero to frat boys and a demon to everyone else who noticed. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, adapted from his magnum opus/blog, is pretty damn odious, mostly because it wusses out. Hell seeks to deflect preemptive attacks on Tucker’s misogyny by basically ignoring him for the first half. Though he’s there as the party instigator (played by Matt Czuchry, who redeems the character’s written smugness not one bit), the focus is on nerdy pal Drew (Jesse Bradford). After a bitter breakup with a cheating ex, Drew randomly threatens to carve a “fuck-hole” into any and all women who approach him until he meets a stripper (Marika Dominczyk), who can beat him at Halo. In the second half, Max realizes his sins (against his friends, not women) and redeems himself by hijacking another buddy’s wedding for a long, rambling confessional. Hell — Bob Gosse’s first film in 11 years since Niagara, Niagara — is visually incompetent to a painful extreme and almost never funny, but, worst of all, it doesn’t have the courage of Max’s unadulterated convictions. If you’re going to offend the easily offended, at least go big. (Citywide) (Vadim Rizov)

GO  THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS Daniel Ellsberg was an ex-Marine, trusted analyst and Cold Warrior under Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who, “from the entrails of a bureaucratic war machine” — per a latter-day peacenik cohort — converted to antiwar dove. Leaking 7,000 Xeroxed pages of the Pentagon Papers study to newspapers, Ellsberg gave the world an alternate history of five administrations’ policies in Southeast Asia, and spurred a breached White House into paranoid espionage ending in presidential resignation. Ellsberg has been resurrected as an “Eternal Left” hero in recent times, publishing a memoir in 2002 and being played by James Spader in a 2003 TV movie. Filmmakers Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith approach their subject as though burnishing an icon — he withstands the homage well. In old age, Ellsberg is still an articulate interviewee; seen in his years of infamy, he resembles a wiry amalgam of the Cassavetes regulars. The impressive roll call of assembled talking heads includes “Plumber” Egil “Bud” Krogh, who authorized the burgling of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office; and Anthony Russo, Ellsberg’s recently deceased accomplice and RAND Co. co-worker. Most Dangerous Man makes a few distracting embellishments — reenactments (some shabbily animated), melodramatic cloak-and-dagger scoring — but in the main, it’s a professional job, standing above the crowd of politico documentaries that proliferate like kudzu over arthouse screens. (Monica 4-Plex) (Nick Pinkerton)