Category Archives: Movie Review

“Racing Extinction”: Fighting to save the planet, one caper at a time

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“It’s beautiful, but it’s disgusting.”

That’s a quote from an activist looking at footage from a special camera that can detect carbon emissions from cars and trucks, even people, depicted in clouds of brilliant blue. It is beautiful to look at, but, of course, sobering as to its effects on climate change.

That quote could also serve as a mantra for several recent environmental documentaries, including “Chasing Ice” and the new “Racing Extinction,” which played at the Sundance Film Festival and now has its premiere on the Discovery Channel this Wednesday at 8 p.m. CST. This new wave of films wants to make environmental films that aren’t just educational and enraging but poignant, exciting — and even beautiful.

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“Creed”: A graceful passing of the baton that’s anything but rocky

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“Creed” is now playing at Point, Palace, AMC Fitchburg and Sundance Cinemas. PG-13, 2:12, three and a half stars out of four.

Anyone who wants to understand how formula doesn’t dictate form should watch the new “Creed” and this summer’s “Southpaw” back-to-back. Both are boxing dramas that follow a similar arc, hitting many of the same notes. But while “Southpaw” felt forced and melodramatic, “Creed” is a hugely entertaining and rousing film. Same ingredients, different result.

It helps that “Creed” is following in the footsteps of the master, 1976’s “Rocky.” In many ways, this is the seventh installment in the four-decade-old series, and the best since the original. But it’s also very much its own movie, with its own feel and texture, its own hero, and a graceful handing of the baton from one champ to the next.

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“Victor Frankenstein”: This doc needs less time in the lab and more on the couch

Victor-Frankenstein

“Victor Frankenstein” opens Wednesday at Point, Palace and AMC Fitchburg, PG-13, 1:49, one star out of four.

In the terrible 2004 film “Van Helsing,” Frankenstein makes a cameo appearance along with Dracula and the Wolfman, swinging on a giant chain like Tarzan. “Victor Frankenstein” is only slightly less ridiculous than that.

I expected the latest iteration of the Frankenstein franchise to be bad, but would it be enjoyably bad? Then, in the first scene, we see Daniel Radcliffe capering about as a hunchback in clown makeup, and I thought, “Go on . . . I’m listening.”

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“Heaven Knows What”: Lacerating drama lets homeless junkie tell her own story

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“Heaven Knows What” has its Madison premiere at the UW-Cinematheque, 4070 Vilas Hall, at 7 p.m. Friday. R, 1:34, three stars out of four. FREE!

Brothers Ben and Joshua Safdie make films about people that we wouldn’t really want to be around in real life, and keep us uncomfortably close to them, force us to really look at them, until we see them.

“Daddy Longlegs” was a drama about a harried divorced dad so bad at parenting that his neglect borders on abuse. In “Heaven Knows What,” we’re attached to the hip of a 19-year-old homeless junkie, Harley (Arielle Holmes), caught in an endless and vicious cycle of addiction. When the movie starts, she’s panhandling (“spanging” in street parlance) to get enough money to buy razor blades to slit her wrists. You don’t get much lower than that.

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“Cemetery of Splendor”: Taking the big sleep in enchanting Thai film

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“Cemetery of Splendor” has its Madison premiere on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 227 State St. Free for non-members, $7 for all others. Not rated, 1:51, three stars out of four.

In the films of Thai director , the line between the living and the dead is not a wall, but a thin beaded curtain through which each side can see each other, wave to each other, even visit each other. In his last film, the beautiful and strange “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” a dying man is visited at the dinner table by the ghosts of his wives and son (his son having turned into a red-eyed Chewbacca-looking creature) and he welcomes them warmly, like they had RSVP’ed ahead.

Weerasethakul’s new film, “Cemetery of Splendor,” is comparatively simpler than “Boonmee” — you won’t see a princess get seduced by a talking catfish this time around. But that placid, normal-seeming exterior seems appropriate for a film that is about digging beneath the layers, digging to the past, digging to the subterranean heart of ourselves.

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“Labyrinth of Lies”: What did you do in the war, Vater?

Alexander Fehling (Rolle: Johann Radmann)

Alexander Fehling (Rolle: Johann Radmann)

“Labyrinth of Lies” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 2:04, two stars out of four.

The terrific drama “Phoenix” showed us a post-war Germany in moral as well as physical ruins, where Nazis and Jews alike longed to slip quietly back into their old lives and forget what happened, only to find that was impossible. The crimes committed were too vast, the betrayal of one countryman by another too great.

“Labyrinth of Lies” at times feels like the Hollywood version of that same theme, with a hard-charging attorney battling his superiors to uncover the truth of what happened in places like Auschwitz and bring the Nazi perpetrators, who have slipped seemlessly back into German society, to justice.

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“All Things Must Pass”: How the Tower of music came crumbling down

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“All Things Must Pass” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, 1:36, three stars out of four.

The numbers on them were usually too high, but I still miss those little yellow price stickers. Whether it was going to the two-story Tower Records on Chicago’s North Side or making a pilgrimage to the massive store on Columbus and Bay whenever I was in San Francisco, there was something special about Tower Records. While the Sound Warehouses and Sam Goody’ses felt impersonal, Tower seemed like that rarity — a successful franchise that was also your neighborhood record store.

But nothing lasts forever, especially in the music business. Tower Records was a billion-dollar business in 2001 and dead in 2006, succumbing to a combination of market forces (hello Napster!) and self-inflicted wounds. The entertaining and elegaic documentary “All Things Must Pass” by Colin Hanks (son of Tom) tells the story of Tower Records’ rise and fall, mixing testimonials from some famous customers (Elton John, Bruce Springsteen) with war stories from the guys who started it all.

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“The Wonders”: Italian coming-of-age drama is the bees’ knees

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“The Wonders” has its Madison premiere on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 227 State St. FREE for members, $7 for non-members. Not rated, 1:51, three and a half stars out of four.

“The family who best represents our traditional values will win a bag of money.” If Alice Rohrwacher’s “The Wonders” was just a satire of reality televiison, it would be pretty good for that line alone, niftily summing up the yawning gap between the professed goals and “journeys” of such shows and the greedy underpinnings beneath.

But “The Wonders,” which won the Grand Prix at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, uses its reality-TV satire as a minor ingredient in a luminous and keenly observed coming-of-age story. As Rohrwacher did with her previous film “Corpe Celeste,” she sinks so deep into the life of a pre-teen girl and her flawed but loving family that we feel like we’re immersed in a novel as much as a film.

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“Run Free”: The story of an ultramarathoner who was born to run, and never stopped

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“Run Free” has its Madison premiere on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Barrymore Theatre, 2090 Atwood Ave. Tickets are $12 in advance through barrymorelive.com and $15 at the door.

The alarm goes off before the sun goes up, and, begrudgingly, you haul yourself out of bed and into your workout clothes. While your neighbors are asleep, you hit the pavement for your morning run. It’s a pain, but once you get moving, you start to feel better.

Now imagine if the hard part wasn’t starting to run, but stopping.

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“Coming Home”: Memories become a victim of China’s Cultural Revolution

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“Coming Home” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas, PG-13, 1:51, three stars out of four. I’ll be doing a post-show Q&A after the 7:15 p.m. show on Tuesday, Nov. 10.

Totalitarian regimes don’t just tell the people they oppress what to say and do. They tell them what to think and feel, what to remember and to forget. That point gets driven home in “Coming Home,” a mournful romantic drama from acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

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