Posts Tagged ‘Jack Black’

BE KIND REWIND: 2 ½ STARS

Michel Gondry, the French director best known for fanciful films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and eye-popping videos for Bjork, Massive Attack and The Chemical Brothers has, with Be Kind Rewind, made his most conventional movie to date. That’s not to say his sense of whimsy has disappeared—any film that recreates Fats Waller’s life using human hands for piano keys (more on that later) isn’t exactly blockbuster material—but the storyline seems more rooted in reality and not so much in dreamland this time around.

Passaic, New Jersey video store clerk Mike (Mos Def) and bumbling junk dealer Jerry (Jack Black) are longtime friends. Jerry jeopardizes Mike’s job and the future of the shop when he accidentally becomes magnetized (!) and erases the store’s entire inventory of VHS tapes. To prevent their most loyal customer, Ms. Kimberley (Mia Farrow), from telling the store’s owner, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) that the store’s entire stock is worthless, they decide to make their own versions of the store’s most popular titles.

Armed with an ancient looking video camera and homemade props they re-create or “Swede”—Jerry nonsensically tells a customer the tapes are imported from Sweden—a number of well-known films including The Lion King, Rush Hour, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Driving Miss Daisy, Robocop and, my favorite, When We Were Kings and in the process become local heroes. The tapes become so popular they attract unwanted attention from a Hollywood studio who accuses the pair of illegally bootlegging the movies. Faced with bankruptcy and the loss of their beloved store, the duo makes one last film. With the help of the entire community they produce an epic biography of Mike’s hero, Fats Waller.

Gondry’s signature style is all over Be Kind Rewind. The film is a treasure chest of inventive visuals from the strange piano with white and black fingers substituting for keys—even Salvador Dali would be knocked back by that image—to a breathtaking real time montage of the best bits of their homemade movies. Gondry’s work here, as always, is a treat for the eyes. Luckily the film’s visual inventiveness makes up for the lapses in the story.

I love the ideas at play here—that film can be a unifying, communal art form which bridges race, religion and can even soften the hearts of bureaucrats (see the film’s final two minutes) that a movie with heart trumps Michael Bay’s expensive bombast every time. I love all that, sentimental as it may be, it really plays to my inner film geek, but      Be Kind Rewind’s Achilles heel is the difficulty Gondry has in switching from the magic realism of the piece back into the more earthbound aspects of the story. Still, despite the awkward storytelling the movie has a gentle, heartfelt vibe that is hard to resist, particularly if you’re a movie fan.

BERNIE: 3 STARS

“Bernie” is a true crime story that falls into the stranger than fiction category. Based on a true story, the details are so strange, the characters so colorful that it feels ripped from the pen of a Hollywood screenwriter rather than the pages of the Panola County Newspaper.

Jack Black is Bernie Tiede, a portly and courtly Southern funeral director. He is beloved by the folks of the small east Texas town of Carthage for his work with the church, his community involvement and general sunny demeanor. He is particularly loved the little old ladies of the town, many of whom trusted Bernie with their husband’s final … One elderly woman, Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine), took Bernie under her wing, making him her travel companion and beneficiary of her will. Their relationship confounded many in town. Marjorie was the town shrew, an unpleasant woman who ran the local bank and refused many townspeople loans in their time of need. Soon, despite Bernie’s calming influence the relationship turned sour. “Basically it was like Bernie was her property,” says Bernie’s old boss. Then the unthinkable happened.

To say any more would ruin one of the pleasures of this movie. Director Richard “School of Rock” Linklater lets the strange docu-drama unfold in a leisurely way, through reenactments and talking heads. Broken into sections—Who Is Bernie? Was it Romantic? Was Bernie Gay?—the film provides an interesting portrait of Bernie and the town of Carthage.

Black hands in a nuanced and subdued performance, and Texas native Matthew McConaughey is a live wire as the local DA, Danny Buck, but it is the talking heads that really bring the story alive.

They are the docu part of this docu-drama. Each of them actually knew Bernie, and were supporters of him, even while he was on trial. Their lively colloquialisms—like  “There’s more tattoos than teeth on that jury.”—brighten up the movie, helping to create a fully rounded picture of who Bernie was and why he did this terrible thing.