"The Edge of Darkness"

Richard's Review: 3 1/3 stars

“The Edge of Darkness” may well turn out to be the most interesting films of the year for celebrity watchers. The exciting question is not “Will people respond to the story about a father who tries to avenge his daughter's death”, but “Will people respond to Mel Gibson in his first lead role since 2002's “Signs”?” Gibson was once one of the biggest movie stars in the world, but an anti-Semitic rant here, a child out of wedlock there has tarnished his reputation. By the end of the weekend we'll know, to paraphrase Joan Jett, if audiences give a hoot about his bad reputation.

Based on a 1985 British miniseries of the same name “The Edge of Darkness” sees Gibson playing Thomas Craven, a Boston cop whose 24-year-old daughter, Emma (Bojana Novakovic), is murdered in his home. Consumed by guilt --he thought the bullet that killed her was meant for him -- he becomes determined to track down her killer. The resulting investigation, however, becomes more complex when he uncovers her secret life as a nuclear energy activist.

“The Edge of Darkness” plays like a low-key version of “Taken” with more realistic action and without the happy ending.

It features a classic movie actor playing a classic movie type -- the father with nothing left to lose and on that score Gibson pulls it off. No one does fatherly rage like Mel -- see “Ransom” from 1996 -- and with his deeply lined face he looks weathered enough to be capable of almost anything. As he transforms from Melancholy Mel to Dangerous Dad he shows why he was one of the leading stars of his day. He's charismatic, can play the tender scenes with his daughter and is believable as the badass -- he tells one victim, just before pulling the trigger, “You know, deep down, that you deserve this.”-- but the Mel Factor hangs over this movie like a storm cloud.

Will audiences be able to put aside some of his loopy, offensive behavior and sit back and enjoy the film? If they can judge the art and not the artist they'll find much to like here, but if not “The Edge of Darkness” will wither and die because Gibson is in virtually every scene.

Beyond Mel it's a bit of a mixed bag. Danny Huston is playing his now trademarked oily rich guy. As the head of a big, evil conglomerate he has some fun with corporate doublespeak-“What's worse, me doing it, if anything has been done, or…” -- but occasionally dips deep into the melodramatic well.  Ray Winstone is suitably heavy as the government fixer -- think Winston 'The Wolf' Wolfe from “Pulp Fiction” -- who asks a doctor after an eye exam, “Do you see a soul in there?” Both are interesting in their way, but both are simply supporting Gibson's strong central performance.

For every moment that borders on cheese or melodrama there is, however, another really effective sequence. For instance, hours after his daughter died in his arms Thomas Craven, covered in her blood, washes the gore off his face and hands. It's a standard scene, except that director Martin “Casino Royale” Campbell focuses on the blood swirling down the drain, and Craven's reaction as he sees his little girl's lifeblood literally draining away for the second time in one night. It's a good moment and adds some emotional heft to what could have been a simple revenge film.

“The Edge of Darkness” is a well made, solid thriller with unexpected twists that takes advantage of its star's reputation for unpredictability. As a film it is successful. Whether audiences will make it successful is anybody's guess.

"When in Rome"

Richard's Review: 2 stars

The good part of “When in Rome,” the new Kristen Bell film, is that it doesn't follow the usual unlikely boy-meets-unlikely-girl romantic comedy set-up. The bad part is that just because it doesn't follow the usual rom com rules doesn't mean it isn't predictable.

Bell is Beth, a work obsessed curator at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. After her last boyfriend “ripped out her heart and fed it to the pigeons in Central Park” she lost faith in romance. But when her sister impulsively decides to get married in Italy, Beth reluctantly takes a couple of days off, where she ends up drunk in the “fountain of love” plucking coins from the water.

Little does she realize that an old legend declares that when you take coins from the fountain, you take the heart of the person who tossed the coin in the fountain in the first place. Soon she is being unwillingly courted by four men -- an artist, a street magician, a sausage salesman, a model and willingly courted by Nick (Josh Duhamel), an ex football star. The question is, “Is the love for real or just a magic spell?”

“When in Rome” is as frothy as it gets. It's a romantic fantasy with no foot in reality. In fact, the only fantasy here is that anybody thought this was a strong enough idea to carry a whole movie. There are a few laughs sprinkled throughout and the audience I saw this with laughed intermittently, but the jokes -- like an Italian priest mispronouncing “lawfully wedded wife” as “awfully wedded wife” not once, but twice! -- are more amusing than actually funny.

The movie does earn some legit laughs -- a tiny European car gag is silly fun-from the more comic savvy members of the cast like Will Arnett, Danny DeVito and Dax Shepard, (Jon “Napoleon Dynamite” Heder continues his string of more annoying than funny performances), but when the attention shifts away from them to the leads “When in Rome” flat lines.

Bell's idea of physical comedy is to smile with spinach in her teeth and while she's an agreeable screen presence she isn't really suited for this kind of comedy. Ditto Don Johnson who plays her father. The years have been kind to Johnson, but he doesn't have a natural gift for comedy. As for Anjelica Huston as Beth's testy Guggenheim head curator... well let's just say I choose to remember her glory days in films like “The Grifters” and “Prizzi's Honor.”

Josh Duhamel fares slightly better. He's the charming (but slightly goofy) single guy with the perfect bachelor pad-complete with a barber's chair, a pinball machine and neon cocktail sign-who can deliver a joke well enough but appears to me to be a modern day Tab Hunter; more male model than an interesting actor.

“When In Rome” is further proof that romantic comedy needs a shot in the arm. A few weeks ago, on the release of “Leap Year,” I suggested that someone like Quentin Tarantino should come in and completely reboot the genre. Seeing “When in Rome” didn't change my mind.

"Whip It"

Richard's Review: 2 stars

There's nothing groundbreaking about "Whip It," the directorial debut of American sweetheart Drew Barrymore. It's the dance movie where the hero or heroine learns about life through ballet or hip hop. Or it's the "Spelling Bee" movie where the main character learns self confidence at the Scripps National competition. In this case the back drop is the wild and wacky world of women's Roller Derby, but the story is very familiar.

Based on the Shauna Cross novel Derby Girl Ellen Page plays Bliss Cavendar an unhappy teenager from small town Texas who suffers from adolescent ennui. She's Juno without the pregnancy or the sharp tongue. She's tired of beauty pageants, her over protective mother and being seventeen. When she stumbles across a flyer for a female Roller Derby league in nearby Austin she sees a way out of her mundane life. Turns out she has a natural ability as a derby demon, and an equally natural ability at attracting skinny guitar players. Soon enough, though, she realizes that skinny guitar players aren't always the best dates and just because she's found a new family at the roller rink she can't throw her old family away.

The world of female roller derby is a colorful, eccentric world that should really lend itself to a rollicking big screen treatment. Unfortunately "Whip It" doesn't do it justice. First time director Drew Barrymore gets some of the details right-the women all have fun, campy names like Bloody Holly, Smashly Simpson and Babe Ruthless, and play for teams with names like the Hurl Scouts -- but the Roller Derby sequences don't have the over-the-top rock 'n' roll feel they should have. The game scenes are too genteel by half and could have used a bit more rough and tumble energy. It is worth noting however, that the actors seem to be doing their own stunts and some of their falls look quite realistic and quite painful but it isn't enough to make it feel like authentic down and dirty roller derby.

The feminist aspect of the story -- roller derby is often associated with third wave feminism -- is blunted because the game is more a plot device than the focus of the story. There is camaraderie among the women on the team and their journey is quite interesting but the film too often detours from the roller rink to Bliss's love life or struggle with her family.

Barrymore does some good work here. She does a nice job at wordlessly showing Bliss's alienation in the scene where she takes a bus to her roller derby audition. As she physically leaves the town she has come to hate you get the sense that in her mind she had really left years before. It's a nicely handled bit of business as is a touching “please don't judge me” sequence late in the film between Bliss and her parents (Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern). There's also some very funny moments and a show stopping performance from Eulala Scheel (Harden's real life daughter) as Bliss's younger sister.

But for all the well handled moments there are still the bungled derby scenes which should have added real punch to the story, but instead don't make much of an impression.

If you want to see the real deal derby check out "Hell On Wheels," a documentary about the creation of the all-female roller derby league in Austin, Texas in 2001.

"This is It" (DVD)

Richard's Review: 4 stars

This week the world gets a look at the greatest concert that never was, the film of Michael Jackson's rehearsals for his comeback tour. Is “This is It” a great film? No, but like the best concert films it works because it captures a time and performance that will never be duplicated.

Cobbled together from rehearsal footage taken as he prepared for a series of sold-out shows in London and destined for the singer's private library, it presents an unvarnished look at the creative process leading up to opening night. It's not a polished concert film like “Stop Making Sense” or “Woodstock.” It's a document of a work in process. Because this footage was never meant to be seen by anyone other than Jackson's inner circle it's rough, with raw performances and uninspired, often shaky camerawork. It isn't the usual slickly produced product we would expect from the Jackson camp, and as such has a ring of authenticity to it that you don't get in other authorized music films.

It's unlikely that MJ would have approved of the film's vision. We get to see how meticulous a performer he was, from giving his band's bass player a funky vocal interpretation of how he wanted a certain riff to sound, to the way he instructs director and choreographer Kenny Ortega on how to add more sizzle to the show's set pieces but dance wise there's nothing as awe inspiring as the unveiling of the moon walk on the “Motown Special.” He seems to be working at half speed, as though he was tired, or saving his energy for the audience or, as history shows us, perhaps not well. It's rawer Jackson than we're used to -- it's the work of a great artist who is finding his feet after a long absence from the stage.

There are some flashy moments. We see footage of MJ dropped into a montage of 40s era movies starring Rita Heyworth, Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney as an intro to “Smooth Criminal” and the 3-D “Thriller” intro is very cool, but for my money it's the simpler stuff that really sells the show; the smile that grows on his face after a successful run through of “They Don't Really Care About Us” or the way he guides the band during the “Human Nature” rehearsal. “Play it like you're dragging yourself out of bed,” he says to the keyboard player Michael Bearden. Those are the small moments that because Jackson was such an outsized performer, were often missed in the past.

Given the tabloid element that has always been part of Jackson's legacy it's impossible to watch “This is It” without noticing how painfully thin he is during much of the film, and reading some ominous foreshadowing into his opening statement: “I'll be performing the songs my fans want to hear -- this is the final curtain call.” Luckily the movie, like the best memorials isn't about Jackson's death, but his life and his talent.

It's also a reminder of what was lost. On stage Jackson was a great performer. Life may have been difficult for him but under a spotlight he sparkled and it's a shame that we'll never see the finished “This is It” live shows. From what we see in the movie it looks like it would have been part rock concert, part Broadway show part Busby Berkley spectacle --Jackson says he wanted to take the audience “places they've never been before; show them talent they've never seen before. ” It's a good movie, it would have been an incredible concert.