"The Great Buck Howard"
(Credit: Jaimie Trueblood/Bristol Bay)
But we've got five more movies to run down so let's get to it.
"The Great Buck Howard," arrived at the festival with a superstar producer—Tom Hanks, who also plays a cameo role—but no distributor. That should change fairly soon, since "Howard" is an excellent good-natured comedy with marketable mainstream appeal. It's the story of an aimless twentysomething (Colin Hanks, son of Tom, both on screen and off) who goes to work for Buck Howard (John Malkovich), a washed-up "mentalist" (he refuses to be called a magician).
There's a lot to love in this movie, beginning with Malkovich's towering comedic turn as Howard. It reminds us just how entertaining the actor can be with the right material. There's also a reliably sharp supporting performance by Emily Blunt, as a publicist who clashes with Buck and falls for the younger Hanks.
Writer-director Sean McGinly demonstrates a comic sensibility worth nurturing, and with careful handling by the right studio "The Great Buck Howard" could be one of 2008's sleeper hits.
As for those zombies... I'm very pleased to report that "George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead" is the best "Dead" film (and probably the best zombie movie of any kind) since 1978's landmark "Dawn of the Dead." It's rare to see a film that makes the horror genre feel fresh, but "Diary" does just that. Plus it has the added bonus of sharp social and political commentary and jaw-dropping gore effects.
"Diary" actually reboots the "Dead" franchise, starting from scratch with the concept of recently deceased people unexpectedly rising from the grave. This time the horror is captured from the first person perspective of handheld videocameras and presented as the construction of one of the film's characters. Although it was certainly unforeseen by Romero, his film will now have to face comparisons to the weekend's big hit "Cloverfield." Look for more on "Diary" when it opens in limited release Feb. 15.
At the screening of existential gay zombie romantic comedy "Otto; or, Up With Dead People," the film's creator Bruce LaBruce noted he was "thrilled to be in the [festival's] Midnight section with George Romero," adding that "Otto" was partly inspired by Romero's "Martin." But don't look for LaBruce's film at a theater near you anytime soon. Despite the unique concept, this clunky work is destined for the very fringes of the art house circuit due not only to a handful of pornographic scenes but also a wearisome experimental approach.
Zombies of a different kind populate "Blind Date," a painfully protracted two-hander about an emotionally crippled couple who repeatedly meet on staged "blind dates" with different fake identities. The reason they do so should probably remain a secret, since it's about as much story as the film has.
Stanley Tucci takes on double duty as director and star, and proves equally uninspired in both roles. It falls on his consistently excellent co-lead Patricia Clarkson (last seen to great effect in "Lars and the Real Girl") to provide some spark. She's up to the challenge, but the movie—considerably inferior to the last remake of a film by the late Danish director Theo van Gogh, Steve Buscemi's "Interview"—lets her down. Viewers started flocking for the exits less than fifteen minutes in and the audience dwindled to less than half its original size by the time the movie finally came to its (very) bitter end.
On a better note, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" has been stirring up plenty of positive reaction for its impressively detailed examination of the sex scandal that caused the famous film director to flee America. Filmmaker Marina Zenovich talks to nearly all the key players, save Polanski himself, for a strikingly well constructed and fairly even-handed account of Polanski's rise to fame and ensuing downfall, laying heavy blame on a publicity-hungry judge and an over-zealous media. Fortunately, there are enough details on Polanski's crimes that he's never let completely off the hook either. An American distribution deal looks imminent.
