By Roger Moore
FILM: The Inevitable Defeat Of Mister & Pete
CAST: Skylan Brooks, Ethan Dizon, Jennifer Hudson, Jeffrey Wright
DIRECTION: George Tillman Jr
The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete is a rough-around-the-edges tale of children growing up on the mean streets of the wrong side of Brooklyn. It’s a coming-of-age story of a self-absorbed, downtrodden punk with a dream who learns about the love that comes with responsibility.
“Mister” Winfield (Skylan Brooks) is a movie buff and a skateboarder, but not an easy kid to like. Sullen, foul-mouthed and scrawny, he must be the smallest kid in his class. He’s just failed eighth grade, and his response is to lash out at the one caring teacher who gave him the lowest grades.
Mister has issues. And he’s got real problems. That graffiti scrawled on the bathroom wall - “For a gud time, call Misters Mom”? It’s accurate. She (Jennifer Hudson) is a junkie and a hooker who can’t keep him fed, spending her hustled money on drugs, tattoos and clothes.
She shoots up right in front of him, and right in front of Pete (Ethan Dizon), the son of a fellow hooker whom she’s babysitting. Mister doesn’t care for Pete, feuds with the mini-mart owner and scowls in hatred at mom’s pimp, played by Anthony Mackie in a Mohawk and King Nebuchadnezzar beard.
When mom is busted, Mister resolves to keep himself and Pete fed and afloat until she gets out. Then, he’ll go to a kid-actor casting call where fame, fortune and Beverly Hills are his for the taking.
“We can’t tell anybody,” he says. “We’re on our own.”
Director George Tillman Jr and screenwriter Michael Starrbury hurl every temptation and impediment in these kids’ paths that you can think of — petty theft and illness, burglary and starvation. The story staggers from bleakness to bleakness as Mister struggles to keep both of them out of the dreaded children’s detention centre.
The best scenes feature young Brooks swapping bitter lines with the Oscar winner, Hudson, or Mackie or Jeffrey Wright, playing a panhandler the kid also feuds with. Jordin Sparks plays a character set up as some sort of guardian angel who pops up, from time to time, to rescue Mister.
It’s a film as untidy as its title — with slow transitions separating the winning moments of tension, drama or just kids being kids. Brooks, whose character memorises lines from Trading Places and Fargo, has more to play and is a far better actor than young Dizon, and that imbalance works against the film.
But as “inevitable” as this tale of woe sometimes feels, there’s just enough novelty in the script to let us see what all these very good supporting players saw in it. And that makes us root against the Defeat of Mister & Pete, which is all this modest film asks for.- MCT
Sweet and touching
By Rick Bentley
FILM: Instructions Not Included
CAST: Eugenio Derbez, Jessica Lindsey, Loreto Peralta
DIRECTION: Eugenio Derbez.
Instructions Not Included (No se Aceptan Devoluciones) provided one of the biggest box-office shocks in the US when it took in $10mn during its opening weekend. What makes that number so staggering is that the film opened in only 347 theatres and it’s in Spanish.
Most films open on more than 1,000 screens. For example, The Getaway opened the same weekend as Instructions on more than 2,100 screens but took in only half as much at the box office.
What the opening numbers for Instructions Not Included show is that a movie that’s made with heart and love and seasoned with a touch of humour speaks volumes in any language.
It has been years since a film has been able to move so seamlessly from humour to sweetness without coming across as pandering to the audience.
The film works because it starts with a simple story. Valentin’s (Eugenio Derbez) carefree playboy life comes to an end when his ex-girlfriend Julie (Jessica Lindsey) drops off the baby daughter he didn’t know he had and heads back to the US. The only recourse Valentin has is to travel from Acapulco to Los Angeles to find the missing mom.
Through a series of light comedy events, Valentin ends up staying in the US, where he has a newfound job as a stuntman. Things seem perfect until Julie returns.
Derbez, who also directed the film, gives the movie a strong core through his expressive face. It’s easy to believe this is a man — despite deep fears — who would jump off a building for his child. He’s equally comfortable in the lighter moments that keep the film from becoming an emotional bottomless pit.
His biggest asset is young actress Loreto Peralta, whose performance as daughter Maggie is the emotional equal to the sterling work by Derbez. She lifts our hearts with a smile and breaks it with a tear. There are veteran actors who have never come close to such a wonderful performance.
Their story lovingly shows that life doesn’t need instructions as long as you have boundless love. This is why moviegoers made Instructions Not Included such a big hit last week. It’s a response that should only grow stronger in upcoming weeks.
A major theme in Instructions Not Included is facing fear. Don’t let concerns about seeing a film with subtitles keep you from this sweet movie.— The Fresno Bee/MCT
DVDs courtesy: Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha
Bodies galore
By Betsy Sharkey
FILM: Shaolin
CAST: Andy Lau, Nicholas Tse, Wu Jing, Jackie Chan
DIRECTION: Benny Chan
Shaolin, with its feuding warlords and fighting monks in ’20s era China, is a sprawling popcorn blast of action kept spinning with crazy cool kung fu, tonnes of fake spurting blood (I think everyone had a packet clinched in their teeth) and slacker improvised, or inspired, US subtitles.
How else to explain the warlord who growls at his No 2, “You just don’t get the drift ...” while he’s choking him. Maybe to death.
This is, however, exactly the drift you can expect when Hong Kong action impresario Benny Chan, with 20-plus very energetic fighting flicks under his black belt, is in charge. The director has never met a battle sequence he didn’t want to extend — the better to slice and dice a few more bodies. Sharp-edged blades come in all shapes and sizes in Shaolin, but machine guns, mortars and the rest are making their brutal, cultural debut.
There are bodies galore littering a battlefield to open the film, as the monks of Shaolin Temple pick through the carnage, sending the dead off to their next life and looking for the living.
The devastation has been wrought by Gen Hou Jie, with Andy Lau wonderful to watch per usual. Hou has more than a little help from his eager-to-please No 2, Cao Man, a brooding grudge holder well played by Nicholas Tse.
To set up the conflict to come, Hou’s rival has survived that first battle and is seeking shelter with the Buddhist monks of the legendary Shaolin temple, which gives the film its name and its inspiration. Chan chose a different page from history, setting his film more than 1,000 years after 1982’s The Shaolin Temple, which starred Jet Li and unfolded during the Tang Dynasty, and a few decades before Quentin Tarantino started visiting in Kill Bill: Vol. 2.
The monks are an eclectic group that range from the ancient and wise to the young and reckless with martial arts movie master Jackie Chan as a very amusing baking buffoon in the middle. Theirs is a life of peace but also preparedness — hours each day spent training in Shaolin Kung Fu, a super-fast brand that the monks teach at their World’s School of Martial Arts.
The standoff between Hou and his rival on the temple grounds proves to be only the first of the film’s fateful turning points. The general teaches his cruel acolyte Cao a lesson. But then the worm turns, and there are a series of betrayals and comeuppance that send Hou on a journey of enlightenment.
Lau is responsible for most of the film’s emotional depth, to which he brings a captivating introspective intensity. There’s a secondary story line designed to lighten things up, when a few of the monks undertake a steal-from-the-rich plan to aide hungry peasants. But it doesn’t really pay off, instead becoming a distraction from the main event.
DVD courtesy: Kings Electronics, Doha