DVD Pick: Bruno

In what must be the most shocking and audacious American film in recent memory, Sacha Baron Cohen solidifies his status as gross out comedy’s golden god, and rare intellectual auteur. The brainiest, bawdiest, most jaw-dropping-est festival of dirty jokes and cultural satire since Borat broke, Bruno is like nothing else since, and certainly equal to its predecessor. There are more gasps per frame than any film I can think of and at least a handful of moments so drenched in muckraking social satire that you wonder how a single mind could conceive both the crude slapstick and observational humor which define the film. Director Larry Charles (Borat) is once again at the helm documenting Cohen’s outrageous behavior, partly scripted and partly improvised with real (unaware) participants in the fiction. Hewing close to the Borat mold, Bruno, the flamboyantly gay Austrian TV host, makes the exodus to America to learn how to become a big time celebrity. The result is an absolutely hilarious and uncannily perceptive piece documenting the hell of American celebrity media and the nation’s ongoing discomfort and homophobia.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

In his first foray into animation, Fantastic Mr. Fox, director Wes Anderson breathes fresh life into his familiar quirks. Adapting Roald Dahl's work of the same name, Anderson creates a vibrant underground world in which animal's combat a trio of food tycoons whose chickens, turkeys, and cider are too tasty to resist. The titular fox (voiced by George Clooney) betrays his contented family life with a wife (Meryl Streep) and son (Jason Schwartzman) to start up again with his old life of crime. In many ways he's not too far in pluck and deceptive spirit from scheming yet short-sighted Dignan from Anderson's breakthrough, Bottle Rocket. The multi-layered sets and deeply detailed frames that have become Anderson's visual trademark reappear here in stunning stop-motion imagery. The director finds ways to turn mineral deposits and running sewerage pipes into gorgeous set pieces and make rats, foxes, and opossums as engaging and vivid as all of his neurotic and vulnerable protagonists from film's past.

If anything, Wes Anderson's hyper-stylized, some say "cutesy" tone works all the more given the creative license of animation. The director's patented imagination runs wild. His bright gloss and busy sequences will simultaneously engage young children and astound adult audiences. This is one of the most visually spectacular and original animated film in a long while.

Grade: A

Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire

The much-hyped little indie which took the festival circuit by storm is not exactly the feel good story big shot executive producers Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey would lead you to believe. It's a grueling, unrelenting cinema experience in which director Lee Daniels, a man who seems to know no restraint, bombards his audience with abuse after abuse against one innocent Harlem teen named Precious Jones. Make a list and check it twice. Incest! Beatings! Chicken theft! Nothing is off limits in this realer than real indie that all but begs you to cry and use the word "empowering" as you exit the theater. The film opens in the midst of violence and despair and very slowly lifts the burden until a pseudo-release arrives, but not with any sense satisfaction. There are no victories, no reliefs. As powerfully real as physical and sexual abuse might be, it's still a question of whether an audience will submit to being force fed shocking visuals without mercy for the full length of a feature film. Be assured, Precious will not be a fun or pleasant experience to view.

The film's central figure, Precious Jones (played with great presence and confidence by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe) is an illiterate teen, pregnant with her second child by her sexually abusive father, and living with her physically abusive mother, Mary (Mo'Nique in a role that's unquestionably startling and difficult to watch). She's aided by a new teacher at an alternative school (Paula Patton), the school's secretary (Sherri Shepherd), a generous nurse (Lenny Kravitz), and an invested social worker (Mariah Carey) in establishing new goals and finding her self worth.

The film's greatest virtue truly is its graphic, unflinching nature. The central topic is bold and there are moments in which the film mesmerizes not only with its brutality but with the way it captures the nuances of everyday life, humor and all. It is when it is in its simplest, purest form that the film really works wonders. It's director Lee Daniels' decadence of despair which clouds the moving central narrative with heavy-handed attempts to turn life into art. Consider the ridiculous amount of cheap looking montage that accompanies the very early revelation of Precious' rape by her father. Or the film's most emotionally draining moment: Mary's final assault on her daughter, which is made saccharine by ridiculous cutaways to childhood photos. If only these moments had stood alone the power would be felt more fully. Chopped up with film school instincts, they are significantly less than what they should be.

There's also the ever present issue of integrity vs. capital. At no point did I get the impression this was a film honoring those who have been abused in a similar fashion to Precious. Most times it felt like an ego stroke to fabulously wealthy talent so proud of themselves for flirting with "realness."At what point filming Mo'Nique's unshaven body hair or Mariah Carey's unmade-up face stops being a self-flattering exercise in capturing "real life" and starts becoming a serious film is sometimes hard to decipher. There are miraculous scenes of unflinching truth here made stronger by uniformly exceptional performances (even by Carey, dare we admit to it). There are just a few too many times in which reality (not "reality") shine through and the weirdly mocking sense of "Hey, let's play poor ugly people!" chews up the beauty of the film at hand. You can imagine the endless conversations had about exactly how "real" Carey should look. The kind of cheap clothes they could get her so she could be "real." How do "real" people talk (like Fran Drescher, apparently)? The attempts to strip away all artifice are so pronounced that they becomes equally artificial.

You cannot deny the power of so much of this material. I honestly believe the film works overall and has many great successes. Unfortunately, sometimes the packaging of this project, the tone and style set by director Lee Daniels, takes away from the power of the narrative and the vivid performances at the core of the film. Precious is a good film with a lot to say, but I do not think it is a great one.

Grade: B-

The Box

Despite the popular opinion that The Box would be writer/director Richard Kelly's safe commercial sell-out film after producing two consecutive divisive cult gems (Donnie Darko and Southland Tales), the film actually fits very snugly within the emerging Kelly oeuvre. It's as weird or weirder than either of his previous films and despite a $30 million price tag and a trio of movie stars (Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, and Frank Langella) Box is exactly the weird little movie with overtones of apocalypse and science/religion slippage that Kelly might have produced working on a shoe string budget with an unfamiliar cast.

While the outcome is 100% Kelly, it's still a bit of a blah film. The most somber of his works, The Box clunks along somewhat groggily at times unwilling to spill narrative secrets yet unable to remain gripping in the face of ambiguity. The basic story (a couple is provided with a button by a mysterious stranger which, if pushed, will end the life of someone they do not know and reward them with $1 million) lasts somewhere around 30 minutes and every moment after that is another in which Kelly keeps the wheels turning but always with the faintest hint of desperation.

The film is bona fide B material, and Kelly may have wanted it that way. Despite moral implications and a few very well written speeches, The Box lives up to its "Twilight Zone" roots as a freak out paranoia fable that's good fun but no masterpiece. There are refreshingly old-fashioned elements to the story's suspense. It approaches horror from the realm of a drama rather than from a place of slasher exploitation. In the end, there's not a bit which is out of place. It's a clearly conceived vision from Kelly which is implausible and utterly bizarre but very comfortable at being exactly what it is, no more and no less. A home run, grade A film this is not but it is a solid, enjoyable thriller that will ironically end up being yet another Kelly cult fave.

Grade: B

DVD Pick: Up

The latest from Disney’s unstoppable Pixar, Up, is by far one of its most exciting adventures. Not quite the meditative masterpiece that Wall-E was, the film is more story-driven and plumped with action. A few very welcome juvenile touches (talking dogs!) make it feel like kid fare but there are so many adult ripples that one wonders how much of this children would understand or appreciate. In classic Disney fashion, we open with a tragic death. And it is perhaps the truest and least candy-coated cartoon fatality. Neither animal, nor spectacle, it is a quiet and sophisticatedly rendered human death from natural causes.

We then speed ahead to the present where Carl Frederickson, still grieving the loss of his darling wife Ellie, has blossomed into a first class lovable curmudgeon. A former balloon salesman specializing in making things take flight, Frederickson chooses to adorn his rooftop with a bundle of helium floaters and take off into the sky to avoid a bleak nursing home fate. Having promised his wife in childhood to take her to South America, he decides this new adventure is the perfect opportunity to plant the house on the spot they had discussed for their whole lives (one involving the legend of an old-time adventurer who recurs in truly strange ways). Along the way, he accidentally picks up a boy scout named Russell, who nobly attempts to earn his “helping the elderly” badge. Together they somehow end up on a totally enjoyable yet utterly incomprehensible South American adventure involving a renegade explorer, an endangered bird, and an army of dog soldiers. All the while having the floating house tied to their backs. Quite a feat.