TODAY'S MOVIE REVIEWS: Danny, Donnie and the dork


Today's Oregonian movie reviews -- with additional commentary here that may or may not have been cut for space in the print versions:





1. "Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut" -- Why do modern directors -- particularly modern science-fiction directors -- feel this uncontrollable urge to over-explain themselves? In its original cut, "Donnie Darko" played like an episode of "The X-Files" as directed by a toned-down David Lynch, frosted with a swell soundtrack of 1980s hits. Now, in this new "definitive" version of the film -- which is at least one letter-grade less cool than the original "compromised" version -- we have longish book excerpts superimposed over formerly enigmatic moments. Some of the changes are welcome: There's an opening-credits music substitution that shouldn't work, but does. (Who would voluntarily ditch Echo and the Bunnymen for INXS?) But still. Someone on an aintitcool.com message board put it so beautifully, so perfectly geekily, that I have to reprint it here: "The Director's Cut has a midi-chlorian problem like you wouldn't believe." (In other news, I highly recommend Dan Kois' detailed decryption of the film at Salon.com if you're in a spoilerific mood.)





2. "Danny Deckchair" -- "'Danny Deckchair' is a movie about a guy who accidentally flies several hundred miles in a lawn chair festooned with helium balloons. Believe it or not, it was inspired by a true story .... On paper, 'Danny Deckchair' sounds pretty ridiculous. Certainly, it turns on a series of lightning-strike coincidences and irrational acts. Why doesn't Miranda Otto's character inquire about Danny's past, or even ask him his name? Why doesn't anyone in the town put two and two together and realize that the guy plastered all over Australian TV is the same guy who just mysteriously insinuated himself into their lives? The weird thing is, the movie somehow works, and works beautifully, for the simple reason that everybody -- writer/director Jeff Balsmeyer, the cast, maybe even the craft-services tent workers -- seems to have shrugged their shoulders and said, 'Eh, it's just for laughs, mate.'" The movie ends up being a lovely little slice of small-town pornography and just the sort of comedy you can pretty much guiltlessly take your mother to see.





3. "Wicker Park" -- The first half of "Wicker Park" revolves around star Josh Hartnett's all-consuming search for Lisa (Diane Kruger), the lost love he thinks he's spotted -- and while Hartnett has played his boyish strengths to good effect in films like "The Virgin Suicides," he's hopelessly lost as a combination photographer/ad-man/creep.

His character, Matt, is simply too much of a train wreck to like, much less root for. He ditches his employers to follow women; he flakes out on his friends; he cheats on his supportive girlfriend (Jessica Paré); and he isn't even a talented stalker -- calling a scrap of paper "the only lead I've got" when he could have just stayed in Kruger's hotel room and waited for her to show up. It's all very handsomely shot, but utterly nonsensical; frankly, you just want to punch the guy in the snoot and be done with him, with the business suit that makes him look about 12 years old, and especially with his maudlin flashbacks to life with Lisa -- which have all the sensual depth of your better karaoke videos.

But then, about halfway through the film, Rose Byrne shows up as a fragile, voracious young woman -- and apparently slaps screenwriter Brandon Boyce awake.

With Byrne mixing it up with Hartnett and Kruger, "Wicker Park"'s narrative threads weave together in some genuinely surprising ways. The movie's snappy flashback-and-split-screen editing style suddenly makes a lot of sense: People are revealed to have agendas that spin wildly out of the orbit of rational storytelling -- we're talking endless visual footnotes and elaborate betrayals and so many overlapping chance encounters that you'd think there were only like four people living in Chicago. It gets so giddy that you wonder why director Paul McGuigan didn't shoot the script as a straight comedy. But it's simply too much too late.


Posted: Fri - September 3, 2004 at 02:39 PM        

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