Weekend Movie Forecast: <em>The Last Airbender</em> Vs. <em>Eclipse</em> - Photo Gallery

<p>Oh M. Night Shyamalan, how long have we been trying to defend you? American film reviewers were praying you'd be the next Spielberg and fill that summer void that hasn't been quite filled since. Intellectuals sometimes even slum it and attempt to legitimize your movies ("<em>Unbreakable</em> was actually a pretty interesting portrait of the failure of the nuclear family in contemporary America"). Well, we can all stop because today sees the release of <em>The Last Airbender</em>, and it looks like it's open season for Shyamalans.</p><p></p>To say that this film is getting bad reviews is a bit generous; its reviews are closer in feel to articles on the BP Spill than your typical summer fare. Keith Phipps from <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-last-airbender,42682/">The A.V. Club</a> says: "Where to start with this one? How about this: If any movie ever warranted a class-action lawsuit against the filmmakers, it’s <em>The Last Airbender</em>. Not because it’s a terrible movie—though it is—but because its release as a 3-D film becomes false advertising a few seconds after a comin’-atcha gush of water appears behind the Paramount logo. From there, it becomes painfully obvious—even more painfully obvious than in <em>Alice In Wonderland</em>—that a few 3-D elements have been added to satisfy the current 3-D craze, and the higher ticket prices they allow. <p></p>"<em>The Last Airbender</em> isn’t that much different from the rest of this summer’s generally dire multiplex fare—from <em>The A-Team</em> to <em>Jonah Hex</em>—which started with established properties and half-decent ideas, then cranked up the volume, velocity, and effects to the point where neither sense nor tender moments could escape. But it is remarkable in one respect: It’s the worst of them."

<p>Alright Twihards, you better be up already 'cause Mom's coming by with the minivan in 20 and we don't want a repeat of <em>New Moon</em> (Jess, you better have started the make-up at like dawn, 'cause I'm not sitting in the front row again). Maddy, wear that shirt where Robert looks a little high 'cause you rock the shit out of it. Josh and Taylor said they'd meet us at the theater and Taylor's dad ordered the tickets like a month ago, so we're effin set. Tina and the rest of the sluts from Team Gaycob are probably already there so hurry your asses so we don't have to sit behind them. <em>Eclipse</em> bitches!</p><p></p>So reviews have actually been pretty positive, with some ambivalence coming from Roger Ebert at <a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100628/REVIEWS/100629977">Chicago Sun Times</a>: "The price for surrendering your virginity is so high in <em>The Twilight Saga: Eclipse</em> that even Edward Cullen, the proposed tool of surrender, balks at it. Like him, you would become one of the undead. This is a price that Bella Swan, the virtuous heroine, must be willing to pay. Apparently when you marry a vampire, even such a well-behaved one as Edward, he’s required to bite you.<p></p>"For most of its languorous running time, it listens to conversations between Bella and Edward, Bella and Jacob, Edward and Jacob, and Edward and Bella and Jacob. This would play better if any of them were clever conversationalists, but their ideas are limited to simplistic renderings of their desires. To be sure, there is a valedictory address, reminding us that these kids have skipped school for three movies now. And Edward has a noble speech in which he tells Bella he doesn’t want to have sex with her until after they’re married. This is self-denial indeed for a 109-year-old vampire, whose actions add a piquant flavor to the category 'confirmed bachelor.'"

<p>Kids today, if they even know who he is, might think of Phil Spector as a creepy old man with ridiculous hair who killed some B-list movie actress. This is one reason why kids today kind of suck. Anyone over the Miley-Age of popular culture knows that Spector is indeed a crazy old man who had a proclivity for holding guns to the heads of famous musicians (John Lennon, Leonard Cohen et al), but is a crazy old man who used to produce some of the best music in the last half of the 20th century. His love-affair with lo-fi AM style "Wall of Sound" is still reverberating throughout music. Today, the documentary <em>The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector</em> is released and if anyone deserves a good documentary treatment it's this brilliant madman.</p><p></p>The doc has been getting good reviews, with J. Hoberman from <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-06-29/film/the-agony-and-the-ecstasy-of-phil-spector-pop-mastermind-and-raging-ego/">The Voice</a> saying: "<em>The Agony</em> begins with Spector bitching about the jury ('45 percent of them wrote down they believed I was guilty and 20 percent of them wrote down I was insane' and all of them voted for Bush) and the judge (not fair that he keeps reminding the court that somebody died). Then [director] Jayanti segues—bang!—to a vintage kinescope of the Ronettes performing songwriter Spector's infectiously plaintive 'Be My Baby.' Pure ecstasy! And so it goes for the next 100 minutes, as Spector's discourse and observations of his courtroom demeanor are interwoven with his greatest hits, often played in their glorious entirety.<p></p>"To have been in junior high school when rhapsodic fugues of yearning like 'Spanish Harlem,' 'Uptown,' or 'Be My Baby' first poured from the radio is to have a sensibility, if not a fantasy life, in some way molded by this monster of self-absorption; to see <em>The Agony and the Ecstasy</em> is to be discomfitingly haunted by the specter of that long-ago innocence."

<p>Also opening today is the documentary <em>Beautiful Islands</em> which documents the effects that global warming has on <shrug> beautiful islands. The film is a PG doc that's probably very pretty to look at but beware, turtles are manhandled.<p></p>Reviews are hard to come by, with only a lukewarm review from Jeannette Catsoulis at <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/movies/02beautiful.html">The Times</a> who says: "As though mesmerized by her photogenic locations, Ms. Kana dawdles endlessly over gamboling children, picturesque beaches and endangered lifestyles. (We’ll miss you, gondolier.) <p></p>Energized by neither music nor narration, and without the essential urgency of facts and figures, the result is a series of finely polished but relentlessly dull snapshots lapped by rising tides and melting permafrost." </shrug></p>

<p>Prepare yourselves Japanophiles (is that a word?), for Japan Cuts at the Japan Society, featuring the above pictured film <em>Confessions</em>. The only synopsis available are the reviews from Aaron Hillis at <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-06-29/film/japan-cuts-like-a-very-sharp-knife/">The Voice</a> so we'll just let him handle it: </p><p></p>"Matsuko director Tetsuya Nakashima's latest, <em>Confessions</em>, opens the series with a question: What is it about Japanese culture that creates its peculiar cinematic blend of sentimentality and brutal revenge? The titular avowals are both freely offered and demanded of others, as a middle school teacher (Takako Matsu) chillingly lectures to her class about the two unnamed students who she believes murdered her four-year-old daughter, and tells of the first of many twisted retaliations she has taken with HIV-infected milk. Hopping between points of view at an unsettlingly drowsy pace, shot in depressed blue-grays and sustaining a low-lying tension through its soundtrack drone (and theme song by Radiohead), this ethereal and sinister daydream explores (unleashes?) the psychological breaking points of the aggrieved, the groupthink of bullies, and the potentially toxic outcomes of untreated mommy issues. Note to self: Don't ever become a Japanese teenager."

<p>The problem with calling a documentary <em>Great Directors</em> is that many of the directors will illicit the visceral reaction from audiences that "they're not so great!" But then again, what have you done that's so great? Either way, this overblown DVD-extra has made it to theaters and is waiting for your ten-spot. The film follows arguably great directors such as David Lynch ("<em>Inland Empire</em> was an overbloated sack of shit!") and Todd Haynes ("He hasn't made a good movie since <em>Superstar</em>!") but regardless of what you think of any of the ten directors, it'll at least start some fun conversations.</p><p></p>Reviews have been tepid, with Nick Pinkerton from <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-06-29/film/great-directors-as-asinine-as-the-title-suggests/">The Village Voice</a> saying: "Ten interviews with 10 'name' American and European directors—including Todd Haynes, David Lynch, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Catherine Breillat—diced into a documentary as asinine and fawning as its title suggests. Interviews are extended with excerpts from films, superficially tied in to anything being said, but sufficing to remind of the Great Films these Great Directors oh-so-Greatly made."

<p>FINALLY! Someone has cast the ultimate power couple we've all been dreaming about: Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci! No one's quite clear on how Mirren's real-life beau Taylor Hackford (too easy) could stand to direct this pair of imagined hotness without sobbing uncontrollably, but alas the late-night HBO sounding <em>Love Ranch</em> has made its way to theaters to turn us all on. The film follows Grace and Charlie, who are a hard-hitting older couple consisting of a brawny gangster and Helen Mirren, who decide to put money into a hot, young, boxer name Bruza, when things get a little steamy between Bruza and Mirren. Oh, oh, Pesci not pleased.</p><p></p>Stephen Holden from <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/movies/30love.html?ref=movies">The Times</a> says: "No matter how unstrung her characters become, Helen Mirren holds something in reserve. An awareness of the weaknesses of the flesh and the pleasures of surrendering to those weaknesses flickers in her eyes and in the faint half-smile that plays around her lips. She knows. <p></p>"When religious protesters picket the ranch, Charlie trots out Grace to defend the prostitutes. But <em>Love Ranch</em> gives you only a superficial, clichéd picture of brothel life. The HBO series <em>Cathouse</em> offered a truer, much more complex portrait."

<p>There's a line that goes something like: "the only people interested in a happy couple are the two people in it." That same dramatic logic could probably be applied to the documentary <em>Only When I Dance</em>, which follows two teens from Rio de Janeiro who dance their way out of the slums. Maybe it's just the reaction to films summarized as "feel-good," but we doubt this will come even close to the success of <em>City of God</em>. Reviews have been pretty good with Eric Hynes from <a href="http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/film/86875/only-when-i-dance-film-review">Time Out New York</a> saying: "The film follows a familiar, foolproof formula: Alternate between candid home footage and nail-biting dance competitions, so the viewer is primed for success and misfortune. But what’s unique to Beadie Finzi’s debut feature is what it reveals about the financial, physical and emotional costs of talent.</p><p></p>"Yet the film’s real stars are their respective parents, all hardworking clock-punchers who treat their kids’ talent as a miracle worthy of infinite sacrifice and innumerable bank loans. An instructor claims that the best dancers often come from the slums, “because they want it more.” But <em>Only When I Dance</em> shows that all the tenacity and class-jumping in the world can’t triumph within a discipline that traditionally denies diversity."

<em>There's a lotta things about me you don't know anything about, Dottie. Things you wouldn't understand. Things you couldn't understand. Things you shouldn't understand.</em><p></p>This weekend at the <a href="http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Market/NewYork/NewYork_frameset.htm">Landmark Theater</a> Sunshine at Midnight presents <em>Pee-wee's Big Adventure</em>. This epic movie directed by Tim Burton and written by Reubens and Phil Hartman is one of the unsung classics of the '80s. Go remind yourself why Paul Reubens was so great and influential and why Burton could go on and direct crap like <em>Planet of the Apes</em> and get away with it.

<p>A couple of years ago the Criterion version of <em>Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom</em> was the most expensive DVD to buy. One of the most controversial movies ever made, it's being shown at <a href="http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=2335">The BAM</a> this Sunday as a part of their Contraband Cinema series, which highlights some of the most politically charged films of the last 50 years. Go celebrate independence day by watching some of the most violently independent films ever made. </p>