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DVD Undertow
The dazed, dreamlike world of director David Gordon Green remains intact, although Undertow has more story than his previous gems (All the Real Girls, George Washington). In the hot, green Georgia countryside, a man (Dermot Mulroney) lives with his two sons on a farm; their existence is shattered by the arrival of the man's Faulknerian brother (Josh Lucas), a dangerous sort with an ulterior motive. The movie that follows is like The Night of the Hunter filtered through a Days of Heaven lens--there's even a Heaven-like narration provided by Jamie Bell. That's what you get for having Terrence Malick produce your movie. The plot doesn't always sit comfortably with Green's uncanny style--sometimes it feels like an intrusion on a private world of childhood--and Josh Lucas is "actory" in a way that most Green actors are not. Green is at his best when noticing some stray detail (the younger brother likes to arrange his books according to smell), not when connecting the dots of story. Still, the images will stick in your mind, Tim Orr's cinematography is superb, and Philip Glass provides a suitably mysterioso score. --Robert Horton
One of this critically acclaimed independent films that could have been told in thirty minutes. UNDERTOW touts itself as as thriller, but it's lackluster in that department. The movie moves slower than a Mississippi mudslide, and its main asset is the performance of Jamie Bell as the teenaged hero of the piece. Bell (Billy Elliott, Deathwatch) manages to convey the awkwardness of youth, a teen on the verge of manhood who finds himself in the protective role of his younger, frail brother (an annoying performance from Devon Alan). The weak plot centers on their uncle's sudden appearance (Josh Lucas in a rather disappointing performance) and the uncle's desire to find the valuable coins left to him and the boys' father (Dermot Mulroney). Murder enters the picture and a slow-paced chase scenario develops. Director David Gordon Green's artistry gets in the way of the pacing of the film and I found myself wanting the movie to end long before it fulfilled that wish. A real disappointment.
short thumbs up
if you are a fan of night of the hunter or certain films 0f the 1970s this is for you. it can be slow [comparatively to current Hollywood ADD standards] but it is filled with beauty, malice and understanding. Tough kids and heavy swamp, following the river. Hellyeah.
A forgettable movie made memorable by its oddity
Undertow is an exceedingly odd movie, yet it is its very oddness that makes it compelling. If nothing else, it makes the film memorable - and I don't think it would have been otherwise. I don't know where this is supposed to be set in the South, but it looks like the film had someone in charge of nothing else but finding the most depressing locations of squalor out there. Poverty apparently causes brain damage, judging by this film, because there is not one truly sane person to be found in the cast of characters. At its heart, I suppose Undertow is basically a human story, but it comes down to a tale of two pairs of brothers. Chris (Jamie Bell) and the younger Tim (Devon Alan) live with their pa John Munn (Dermot Mulroney) out in the middle of nowhere, a human pig sty out in the sticks somewhere. After the death of his wife, John took his sons and basically retreated from the whole world. Chris is always getting into trouble, and we first meet him running from some little hick girl's daddy and suffering a most painful injury sure to make you wince. You immediately say to your self that this kid just ain't right - and then you meet the family. It's hard to read the father; he's tough on Chris, easy on Tim, but hardly supportive in his paternal role. Tim has some health problems - although they would seem to be mental, as the boy has a tendency to eat any nasty substance he gets his hands on. Your all-American family, this is not.
Things are at least bearable - until John's jailbird brother shows up unexpectedly. Even before we learn about the issues John and Deel had in their past, it's easy to see that ol' Deel is up to no good. There's something in that run-down house that he wants, and the Munns' already unhappy home comes crashing down completely, leaving Chris and Tim on the run. The second half of the film follows the two brothers as they try to survive on their own, and survival basically means they have to keep running. Now we see even more pitiful scenes of human discomfort - some rather heart-breaking, some disturbing, and some just incredibly weird.
With such strange characters, there's some interesting dialogue interspersed throughout the film. I have no idea what the crazy mechanic kept running on about, the only truly nice people the young brothers meet up with are borderline loonies, and Tim himself delivers a whole Shakespearian-length monologue about chiggers. I wondered what kind of resolution this movie would bring to bear in the end (actually, I wondered if it would even try to resolve anything at all) - it's not entirely effective, but there is an actual ending. It's the contrast between the two sets of brothers (although one could bring a semantic argument into the definition of brother here) that stands out as a possibility for whatever the movie was supposedly about. I'm not sure I can even classify Undertow, however - I can't stretch my definition of Southern Gothic to truly fit it, and it's certainly not a thriller. Nor would I call Deel a "Faulknerian" character, as the editorial review has the temerity to do. Undertow is basically just a real oddball of a movie that somehow succeeds at being fascinating despite itself.
Deliverance goes to high school in this grim, stripped-down fable of a prank gone bad. Friends decide to teach a lesson to a teenage bully by inviting him on a canoeing trip where they will humiliate him once and for all. The prank turns seriously sour, and the kids must deal with the consequences. Writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes takes a somber look at these lives, although his low-key approach makes the central tragedy seem melodramatic when it happens. The film isn't quite new enough to be truly revelatory, but Estes neatly avoids a River's Edge rehash by allowing his characters more than dead-eyed anomie. The actors hit their notes with precision, especially Rory Culkin (another of the Culkin family, with Macaulay and Kieran), Ryan Kelley, and Scott Mechlowicz. This is... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Rory Culkin - Ryan Kelley - Scott Mechlowicz Director(s): Jacob Aaron Estes DVD Release Date: Released the 25 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Writer/director Pedro Almodóvar's dark, sexy Hitchcock homage is his best work since his Oscar-winning All About My Mother, and deepened by a sun-dappled sadness. Handsome, enigmatic Ángel (Gael García Bernal) arrives at the Spanish movie offices of director Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez) and happily proclaims that he's actually Enrique's long-lost school chum Ignacio--an announcement that is both less than convincing and more than it seems. A novice actor, Ángel pitches a semi-autobiographical screenplay in which he's determined to star, a revenge-laden reflection of the doomed love he and Enrique shared as boys before a pedophile priest cruelly intervened. The script, and the lost days it recalls, carefully unfurls into a series of brooding movies-within-movies... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gael García Bernal - Fele Martínez - Javier Cámara Director(s): Pedro Almodóvar DVD Release Date: Released the 12 April 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Sweetness that doesn't turn saccharine is hard to find these days; Finding Neverland hits the mark. Much credit is due to the actors: Johnny Depp applies his genius for sly whimsy in his portrayal of playwright J. M. Barrie, who finds inspiration for his greatest creation from four lively boys, the sons of widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet, who miraculously fuses romantic yearning with common sense). Though the friendship threatens his already dwindling marriage, Barrie spends endless hours with the boys, pretending to be pirates or Indians--and gradually the elements of Peter Pan take shape in his mind. The relationship between Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies family sparks both an imagined world and a quiet rebellion against the stuffy forces of respectability,... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 22 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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One of the best films of 2004, Kinsey pays tribute to the flawed but honorable man who revolutionized our understanding of human sexuality. As played by Liam Neeson in writer-director Bill Condon's excellent film biography, Indiana University researcher Alfred Kinsey was so consumed by statistical measurements of human sexual activity that he almost completely overlooked the substantial role of emotions and their effect on human behavior. This made him an ideal researcher and science celebrity who revealed that sexual behaviors previously considered deviant and even harmful (homosexuality, oral sex, etc.) are in fact common and essentially normal in the realm of human experience, but whose obsession with scientific method frequently placed him at odds with his understanding wife... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Liam Neeson - Laura Linney - Chris O'Donnell Director(s): Bill Condon DVD Release Date: Released the 17 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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As directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) and dimly lit by cinematographer Harris Savides, Birth is a melancholy chamber piece, its pensive mood sustained by nearly sub-sonic nuances in a fine, thematically developed score by Alexandre Desplat. All of these fine qualities are well-matched by the somber performance of Nicole Kidman, playing a still-grieving widow of 10 years, about to remarry when a 10-year-old boy (Cameron Bright) arrives to announce that he is her dead husband, reincarnated and full of convincing answers to personal marital questions. Rather than go for Sixth Sense-like chills and thrills, Glazer approaches Birth as a conundrum with no clear-cut solution, and his directorial style is so subdued, so deliberately understated, that most of the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Nicole Kidman - Cameron Bright - Lauren Bacall Director(s): Jonathan Glazer DVD Release Date: Released the 19 April 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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