level—provides the vision that Wintour uses to shape the magazine, she also provides the film with the charisma and sympathy that holds it together. Without Coddington, the film would be barely human and deadly dull. Coddington is fascinating. Watching the magazine come together is interesting. The film’s purported raison d’autre of offering us a portrait of Anna Wintour, however, is ultimately shy of being compelling. Perhaps that’s the key to Wintour—the surface is all there is and her passion extends little beyond that. But even if that’s true, it doesn’t make for much in the way of drama. Rated PG-13 for language. reviewed by Ken Hanke Opens Friday at Carolina Asheville Cinema 14.
TOY STORY 1 & 2 IN 3-D DOUBLE FEATURE JJJJ
DIRECTOR: JOHN LASSETER, ASH BRANNON AND LEE UNKRICH PLAYERS: (VOICES) TOM HANKS, TIM ALLEN, JOAN CUSACK, KELSEY GRAMMER, DON RICKLES, JIM VARNEY ANIMATED ADVENTURE
RATED G
Before Christmas (1993), it’s more about depth than things popping out from the screen. This serves the sequel better, since four years of technological advancement makes for a better-looking movie, not to mention an opening sequence that looks like it was custom tailored for 3-D. The original, on the other hand, doesn’t hold up as well, especially when compared to Pixar’s more recent work, but that’s to be expected from a decade-and-a-half-old animated movie. That still doesn’t keep the human characters from looking downright creepy. But in the end, any movie is helped by being on the big screen, and these two are no different. If you’re looking for fun, solid family moviegoing, you could certainly do worse, assuming you can handle the grind of a double feature. Rated G reviewed by Justin Souther Playing at Carmike Cinema 10, Carolina Asheville Cinema 14, Epic of Hendersonville.
WHIP IT JJJJ
DIRECTOR: DREW BARRYMORE PLAYERS: ELLEN PAGE, MARCIA GAY HARDEN, ALIA SHAWKAT, DANIEL STERN, KRISTIN WIIG, DREW BARRYMORE FEMALE-EMPOWERMENT COMEDY/DRAMA RATED PG-13
The Story: A group of anthropomorphic toys—who come to life when no one is The Story: A teenage girl finds herself when she lies about her age and joins a looking—go on various adventures. roller-derby team. The Lowdown: The same sweet, solid family entertainment that you remem- The Lowdown: Thoroughly predictable ber, now polished with some not-so- and completely successful at doing what exciting 3-D work and packaged as a you want such a movie to do—but with good performances and without insultdouble feature. ing your intelligence. Fourteen years after the original Toy Story— the film that started animation-behemoth Pixar Studios—and a decade after its sequel, both have returned to theaters, this time mashed together as a double feature and gussied up in 3-D. Most likely a no-brainer for Pixar aficionados and those in search of well-meaning family entertainment, the question remains if this new double feature—intended to promote next summer’s Toy Story 3—is worth the 3-D surcharge and the three eye-straining hours of your life. Nothing about the actual movies has changed. It’s still the same adventures of a group of toys—led by a pull-string cowboy named Woody (Tom Hanks) and plastic spaceman Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen)—based on the simple conceit that children’s playthings come alive when people aren’t looking. As a premise it works well, assuming you can buy into the film’s warmed-over whimsy, complete with gooey Randy Newman songs. It’s interesting to see how Pixar itself has evolved. Both Toy Story films are very much movies for kids with the occasional nod to the adults in the audience via a pop-culture reference (though in a much more subdued manner than would be popularized later on in Shrek (2001)). Today, Pixar is still making kids movies, but with films like Wall-E (2008) and this year’s Up, which trade in adult themes. This makes a huge difference and causes both Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 2—which both fall a bit on the heartwarming, sappy side—to feel a bit slight. As far as the 3-D effects go, like the now annual three-dimensional reissue of The Nightmare
Without a doubt, Drew Barrymore’s Whip It is the finest film ever made about roller derby. It’s also movie-comfort food at its finest. By that I mean that Whip It doesn’t do one single thing that will surprise you. There is no turn of the plot (well, maybe one) that you can’t predict. But in this case, that’s not a criticism. This is a movie that’s designed to do what you want it to do—if it did otherwise, you’d feel cheated. And it does what you want very well. That it also proves that there’s more to its star, Ellen Page, than Juno (2007) is a nice bonus. The movie stars Page as Bliss Cavendar, a young woman with a mind of her own, and Marcia Gay Harden, as a mother with a mind made up for her. Mom is determined to push Bliss through beauty pageants various and sundry, despite her daughter’s notable lack of enthusiasm—not to mention her basic unsuitable mind-set regarding pageant ideals. Bliss’ father (Daniel Stern) is somewhat of a distracted figure, who isn’t interested in arguing with his wife. Bliss’s little sister (Harden’s real-life daughter Eulala Scheel), on the other hand, is exactly what Mom wants in a pageantwinner daughter, making Bliss even more of an outsider. Life is hemmed in by this and by living in the one-eyed town of Bodeen, Texas. All Bliss has going for her is a best friend, Pash (Alia Shwakat, Bart Got a Room), whom she works with at a barbecue joint festooned with the world’s ugliest giant pig statue. Everything changes when Bliss happens upon a handbill for the roller derby in Austin and
68 OCTOBER 7 - OCTOBER 13, 2009 • mountainx.com
decides to go. She’s so transfixed by the sport that she tells one of the players, Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), that these women are her heroes, to which Maggie advises, “Become your own hero,” and invites her to try out. Almost against her better judgment, she does—and soon discovers a natural talent for the game. After lying about her age, she gets on the team and helps bring them out of the basement they’ve inhabited for some considerable time. And, of course, she finds herself in the process—along with something like romance and all that goes with it, including the problems. A good deal of this is on the far side of believability. That Bliss manages to keep her parents from finding out what’s going on for as long as she does requires a significant stretch of credulity. But things like this matter little in the scheme of this kind of movie. After all, this is a story geared toward the idea of finding yourself and finding out that almost everyone is a better person than you probably think they are. It’s filled with vignettes and touches that bring that second part home, and its refreshingly unjaded look at humanity is not something I’m prepared to sneer at. Barrymore proves herself a solid, if perhaps not quite inspired, director in her first effort. The fact that she so obviously likes and respects her characters has much to do with this, but she also keeps things moving at a nice pace. More, she manages to shoot coherent action in the roller-derby scenes and make the sport reasonably understandable in the bargain. That’s more than at least 75 percent of her seasoned male counterparts seem to be capable of doing these days. Sure, you can dismiss Whip It as predictable, and you wouldn’t be wrong. You can say it’s just a movie aimed at teenage girls, too, I suppose. But when you factor in that it’s an enjoyable and intelligent film aimed at teenage girls, it’s something else again. To fully understand its worth, try comparing it to Twilight (2008), and it becomes a small masterpiece. Rated PG-13 for sexual content, including crude dialogue, language and drug material. reviewed by Ken Hanke Playing at Carmike Cinema 10, Carolina Asheville Cinema 14, Regal Biltmore Grande Stadium 15.
ZOMBIELAND JJJJ
DIRECTOR: RUBEN FLEISCHER PLAYERS: JESSE EISENBERG, WOODY HARRELSON, EMMA STONE, ABIGAIL BRESLIN, BILL MURRAY NERD-EMPOWERMENT ZOMBIE COMEDY RATED R
The Story: After a zombie plague, a group of mismatched survivors make their way through what remains of the world in search of a safe place. The Lowdown: A pretty funny zombie comedy that gets points for reveling in its gruesomeness, decent characterizations and clever touches along the way. OK, I’ll admit it: I’m pretty much over the whole zombie thing—words I may regret considering the apparent spate of vampire pictures that are on the way, thanks to Twilight mania. Nonetheless, it’s true—and nothing about the
trailer for newcomer Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland did anything to change that. The film itself, on the other hand, has a good deal to recommend it. I’m not as taken with it as some folks I know, but I liked it well enough—and occasionally found it to be inspired. That’s a lot more than I’d anticipated. The setup is simplicity itself, since the world is pretty much given over to the munching dead at the time the story starts. All the movie needs to do is introduce its main character (Jesse Eisenberg, Adventureland) and provide a scenario that causes him to hook up with the other characters that make up the human cast. The introduction is cleverly done, establishing our hero as the ubernerd—a tragically awkward young man with zero social skills, whose pre-zombie-plague world consisted of pizza, Code Red Mountain Dew and World of Warcraft. (Oh, you know him, too?) His notions of other people are sketchy. His notions of girls and romance are the far side of sketchy (something to do with a desire to brush their hair away from their ears …). The one thing he’s good at is keeping from becoming lunch on legs—something he accomplishes through basic cowardice and a set of rules for survival. The rules (which appear as often cleverly superimposed titles) are in themselves a smart touch. Here, for once, we have someone in a horror movie who has actually seen horror movies and knows all the mistakes characters in them tend to make. If you’re wondering why the character has no name, that’s because he doesn’t get one until he meets up with a professional badass zombie killer (Woody Harrelson), who has the basic rule of no attachments and insists on using apt geographical locations for names. Since the kid is heading for Columbus, Ohio, he becomes Columbus, while the zombie killer, who is heading for Tallahassee, Fla., adopts that city’s name. Soon they meet up with a couple of con-girls who become Wichita (Emma Stone, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). The film then follows their adventures—and the girls’ constant bouts of duplicity—as they make their way to a supposedly zombie-free amusement park in L.A. A lot of it doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. For example, the movie never tackles the issue of why the electricity is still working or who is generating it. But most of the movie is funny—especially the Bill Murray sequence—in its splatstick way. Zombieland is admirable in that it totally embraces the gore (this is one splattery movie) and violence of its genre, and in the way that any sentiment that accrues along the way is earned. Not much happens that you wouldn’t expect, and the film seems oblivious to the actual humor of its notion that all an awkward nerd needs to score with a hot girl is a zombie apocalypse. Still, there’s no point in complaining, since the overall results are savvier and cheekier than not. Rated R for horror violence/gore and language. reviewed by Ken Hanke Playing at Carolina Asheville Cinema 14, Cinebarre, Epic of Hendersonville, Regal Biltmore Grande Stadium 15, United Artists Beaucatcher Cinema 7.