AWN Blogs

With the 15th anniversary edition of GROUNDHOG DAY arriving on DVD this week, the first thing that came to mind was that the film was one of the best modern comedies… and it's smart too. So this week's lineup is dedicated to five smart comedies. Along with Harold Ramis' best film, we have two classics and two recent underrated comedies. Prepare to laugh without having to shut down your cerebral cortex.

GROUNDHOG DAY was a moderate hit when it came out in 1993, but has since grown in appreciation on DVD much like SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell make a good pair, who start out as enemies and come to fall for each other. However, this doesn't happen quickly, because Murray's Phil Connors must live Groundhog's Day over and over again until he discovers his humanity. As I said in my original review, "The film obtains an almost spiritual quality, which comes from its themes of redemption, time and selflessness." Ramis and Danny Rubin's ingenious screenplay doesn't bother drumming up some lame explanation for the fantasy elements, allowing the premise to simply touch on grand issues such as the meaning of life. Every time I see the film I am forced to think about what I would do in the same situation. It changes upon each viewing depending on my own mood. So we can relate to Connors when he tries to woo MacDowell's Rita one day and wants to step in front of a car the next.

Robert Benton won an Academy Award for this film's screenplay, which is actually the weakest element of the production. Loosely based on his own experiences, he develops a solid central story and then leaves it for a subplot that is less interesting and never connects back to the main story or themes.

Edna Spalding (Sally Field, NORMA RAE) is a widow in the Depression era South. If she doesn't find a way to make money soon, she will lose her house and possibly lose her two children. A black, day laborer named Moze (Danny Glover, THE COLOR PURPLE) comes to her door looking for work and suggests that she plant cotton on her 40 acres of open land. Banker Albert Denby (Lane Smith, THE MIGHTY DUCKS) hounds her about her bi-yearly house payments and uses her situation to pawn off his blind brother-in-law, Will (John Malkovich, DANGEROUS LIASONS), to her as a border. In the subplot, Edna's sister Margaret Lomax (Lindsay Crouse, THE VERDICT) works as a beautician to play the bills as her out-of-work husband Wayne (Ed Harris, THE TRUMAN SHOW) sleeps with the married schoolteacher Viola Kelsey (Amy Madigan, FIELD OF DREAMS).

The legendary director Stanley Kubrick has several films on his resume that would be the singular achievement of almost any other director. Of all his films, DR. STRANGELOVE is my favorite. Ironically, it was a film I disliked when I first saw it in college. After seeing it a second time, with a little more life experience under my belt, the film washed over me like a revelation. When it comes to black comedy, this is one of the best and one of the subtlest.

Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden, 1956's THE KILLING) has gone rogue, launching a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. As Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers, LOLITA) listens to Ripper ramble on about the Ruskies plan to poison Americans' precious bodily fluids, he tries to convince the insane general to hand over the abort code. Meanwhile, President Merkin Muffley (Sellers) is briefed on the situation by Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott, PATTON), who wants to reserve judgment on Ripper's actions exceeding his authority until all the information is in. Baffled and astonished by the news, the President invites the Russian ambassador Alexi de Sadesky (Peter Bull, DOCTOR DOOLITTLE) to the War Room while he makes the difficult call to the Russian leader Kissoff to tell him that four bombers, one flown by Maj. T.J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens, THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE), are on their way to unleash the bomb. Then Sadesky reveals the clincher, if one of the bombers succeeds, it will automatically trigger the Russian's Doomsday Device, which will wipe all living things off the Earth. So the President turns to former German scientist Dr. Strangelove (Sellers) to find a solution.

With Brad Renfro's death last week and Heath Ledger's surprise death this week, I thought the latest This Weekend's Film Festival would be a good time to look back on the work of actors who died too young. Two of the actors died in tragic accidents. Reckless actions played a role in the deaths of at least two of the performers. With wild young stars in the papers on a daily basis, I wonder if these tragedies open any eyes to how living on the edge is an unbalancing act.

The Friday night slot celebrates the iconic performance of Brandon Lee in Alex Proyas' THE CROW. As I stated in my original review, "Before this film Brandon Lee was being cast as his father Bruce Lee or was given parts in third rate Steven Seagal rejects." I also said that if he hadn't died in a reckless on-set tragedy, this film would have made him a star. His slim figure bound tight in leather with a long black trench coat, wearing black and white face make-up, fits his avenging angel character, who is granted the chance to come back from the dead to seek revenge against the gang that murdered him and his fiancée. But the look only goes so far; Lee's intensity and sense of the ironic humor set the character apart. In this, one of the best film adaptations of a comic book, Lee, who gives the best performance of his career, is honored by reminding us of the potential that was lost.

This modern adaptation of Sergei Prokofiev's musical created using details puppets captures the perfect tone for the famed work, mixing heart with darkness. This tale has been done in animation before, but it has always been softened for the smaller tykes in the audience. Director Suzie Templeton respectfully keeps true to the original, making the difficult life lessons that the title character learns all the more complex and powerful.

Peter is a sad young man, who lives in a makeshift fortress on the outskirts of a rundown city in Russia. His paranoid grandfather has them walled off from the forest, forbidding the boy from playing near the frozen lake behind their home. Peter's only friend is a goose, and during a trip to town, he is bullied by a duo of hunters. Upon his return home, Peter encounters a crow that has a bum wing and wants to use the boy's balloon to get a little lift. This leads to Peter and the goose making it to the other side of the fence and getting a chance to have some fun. However, a hungry wolf has other plans for Peter and his feathered friends.

In 1969, then 14-year-old Beatle fan Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced the rock icon to do interview with him. Thirty-eight years later Levitan enlists director Josh Raskin to transform that reel-to-reel interview into a visual poem, using various animation techniques to bring the words of peace to life.

Throughout the film, Lennon rifts on various topics especially the need to bring about world change through peaceful means. With his endless wit, Lennon questions rebels that destroy the government when all they want is to be in power themselves. Why blow up buildings when they might be useful to have when you're the Establishment? The imagery slyly mirrors and comments on the spoken words. Images flow and blend effortlessly, creating a visual dream. As Lennon says, "Piss for peace, smile for peace, go to school for peace, don't go to school for peace" then images of a dog peeing to a smile to a school to a boot smashing to school flip by like cue cards. The images pops up so quickly it feels like visual improv, working off the cues of the three-decade-old recording.

Every year the new animated shorts from the NFB are always a reason to celebrate. It is a rare year when a film from Canada's National Film Board isn't in the running for the Oscar. As their work has done time and time again, MADAME TUTLI-PUTLI continues the organization's tradition of innovation. This stop-motion short is an astonishing visual treat. Filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowsk had real human eyes combined with their detailed puppets, in a process created and painstakingly carried out by artist Jason Walker, creating an eerie and evocative style that is totally original and mind-boggling.

Madame Tutli-Putli, with all her Earthly possessions in tow, boards a night train where she encounters a host of strange individuals, including a menacing Chinese boy, two intense men playing chess in the overhead baggage bin, and a lecherous pro tennis player. During the trip, strange trench-coat-clad men enter the train and the young woman's trip turns into a Hitchcockian nightmare.

Set in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, this touching coming of age story deals with the bridging of the sexual threshold. Centering on the quinceañera, or the coming out party for girls in the Latino community, the story honestly portrays the developing sexual curiosity that teens deal with. Though this film is set in a poorer section of the city, the directing/writing team of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland break down assumptions about their characters, painting an original tale that does not wallow in gang or ghetto clichés.

Magdalena (Emily Rios, upcoming VICIOUS CIRCLE) is approaching her fifteenth birthday and what she really wants for her quinceanera is a Hummer limo. Her father Ernesto (Jesus Castanos), a storefront minister/ security guard, thinks the idea is blasphemous. They are not a wealthy family, so Magdalena has to wear an altered hand-me-down dress from her cousin. However, when Magdalena can't fit in the dress only a few weeks after she was measured, her mother Maria (Araceli Guzman-Rico) suspects that her daughter is pregnant, which turns out to be true. Magdalena's father is devastated, even more so when his daughter insists that she never slept with her boyfriend Herman (J.R. Cruz), who is supportive about the pregnancy, but is afraid to tell his mother about. Magdalena is kicked out her house and goes to live with her great-granduncle Tio Tomas Alvarez (Chalo Gonzalez, BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA), who has already taken in her ostracized cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia, THE COMEBACKS). The three form their own family, living in the guesthouse of a gay couple named Gary (David W. Ross from the boy band Bad Boys Inc.) and James (Jason L. Wood, TV's MARTHA BEHIND BARS).