Hot Tickets for 2010

By Steve Evans

It’s never too early to handicap the slate of pictures coming this year to a theater near you. Here are 11 films in order of release date that either look promising or promise to lure massive crowds. The ineviotable blockbusters can be found among one or two smaller pictures that I suspect will find an audience and become sleeper hits.

Edge of Darkness (Jan. 29) Mel Gibson makes his first appearance in front of a camera since the po’lice took his mug shot after the middle-aged Lethal Weapon was popped for drunken driving and making inappropriate remarks about Jews. In his upcoming thriller, Gibson plays a homicide detective investigating the murder of his daughter. He’s also looking on the chunky side these days. Screenplay by William Monahan, who penned The Departed for Martin Scorsese.

Shutter Island (Feb. 19) may be the most anticipated movie of 2009. That’s right, Martin Scorsese's new thriller from the Dennis Lehane novel was slated for an Oct. 2 release last year in time for Oscar season, but Paramount bumped the picture back 4 ½ months claiming the studio had no money for a proper promotional campaign. Whatever. Scorsese works for the fourth straight collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, as a U.S. Marshall sent to the titular island to investigate a missing person. Shutter Island is the home of Ashcliffe, a hospital for the criminally insane where DiCaprio and his partner (Mark Ruffalo) begin to suspect sinister psychiatric practices are underway. The perfect cast includes “Sir” Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams and Max Von Sydow. Helluva trailer for this one:



A Prophet (March 5) explores prison life in France by director Jacques Audiard ("The Beat That My Heart Skipped"). Expect a Foreign Film Oscar nomination. This film is reputedly so realistic and sobering in its portrayal of the French penal system that the government has responded with legislation to reform the country’s prisons.

Chloe (March 19) Director Atom Egoyan helms this adult drama about seemingly happy-loving couple Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson. When the wife develops a jealous streak, she tests her hubby’s love by placing him on a collision course with call-girl Chloe (doe-eyed Amanda Seyfried) to see if her husband can keep his pants cinched around his waist. This may not be the best pick for a first-date flick.

Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (April 23) Director Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas reunite in this sequel to the 1987 paean to greed that won Douglas the Oscar for best actor. Love him or hate him, you gotta admire Oliver Stone’s timing. Here’s hoping he scores a direct hit on all the illegitimate MBA sonsofbitches roaming Noo Yawk’s financial district after the dismal failure of his last picture, W. Douglas returns as money obsessed Gordon Gekko, fresh from a prison stretch for playing shell games with arbitrage investments. He joins a young financial hotshot (Shia LaBeouf, to broaden the demographic for this picture) and together they try to warn The Street about a looming financial crisis. The plot clots when the younger man gets hot and heavy with Gekko’s daughter (Carey Mulligan from An Education). Despite the ridiculous subtitle, Wall Street 2 has all the right socio-economic conditions working in its favor.

Iron Man 2 (May 7) Okay, so Batman is too damn brooding, Superman too square and the Hulk is just a rambunctious pain in the ass. If the question is, “do we really need another summer superhero move?” the answer has got to be, yep, if it’s Iron Man 2, the eagerly awaited sequel to the 2008 hit. Robert Downey Jr. as alcoholic playboy/billionaire Tony Stark, who sometimes toots around in a metal exoskeleton, gets off some terrific hipster dialog without once making his audience impatient. Lots of explosions in the trailer, of course, but it’s Downey’s show all the way. Watch how he addresses a U.S. senator on a congressional committee that wants Iron Man to give up his military secrets, and you’ll be standing in line for a ticket, too. Gwyneth Paltrow returns; Scarlett Johansson and Sam Rockwell give support. Mickey Rourke looks suitably menacing as main nemesis Whiplash. Check out the trailer:

Robin Hood (May 14) Russell Crowe won an Oscar for prancing around in a toga a decade ago in Gladiator and his work since then has been a mixed bag at best. No surprise, then, that the angry Aussie would pull on a pair of green leotards and take to Sherwood Forest for this umpteenth retelling of the English legend. Of course, Ridley Scott hasn’t had a hit since he directed Gladiator, so he’s reteamed with Crowe to helm this tale of a young Robin in the service of King Richard, the Lionheart. Cate Blanchett plays love interest Lady Marion.

Sex and the City 2 (May 28) Carrie and Mr. Big got married at the end of the last installment of this would-be franchise about the joys of sex and shopping (though not necessarily in that order). Expect Carrie and Mr. Big to get into a squabble so they can get back together again, since the plot demands it. Expect Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda to gab at length about shoes and skirts while sipping tall Cosmopolitans.

Toy Story 3 (June 18) Pixar returns to the well with Buzz Lightyear, Woody and the rest of the toy gang in a 3D computer-generated tale of loss, nostalgia and longing. Tim Allen and Tom Hanks return with principal voice-talent duties. Michael Keaton, Timothy Dalton and Joan Cusack are in there somewhere as well.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I (Nov. 19) Warner Bros. plans to burn maximum mileage out of J.K Rowling’s final installment of the boy-wizard saga by splitting the film adaptation into two parts separated by a year. Harry, Hermone and Ron face ongoing peril from the Death Eaters and Ralph Fiennes without a nose shows up as malevolent Lord Voldemort, he whose name must not be spoken, but often is, anyway. This series delivers amazing special effects and endearing performances by the young actors, although the sense of wonder is waning with the increased emphasis on hormones and tiresome romantic subplots that bring the Potter pictures to a crashing halt until the magic picks up again.

The Tree of Life (No release date announced) Director Terrence (Badlands) Malick is about as prolific as the late Stanley Kubrick, but the five films he’s managed to release (in a career spanning nearly 40 years) are as analyzed, dissected and discussed as the work of the great Kubrick himself. Set in the 1950s, Tree of Life follows the split story of Midwestern family (Brad Pitt and newcomer Jessica Chastain), and some years later their adult son Sean Penn who (surprise!) is a tormented man. The film juxtaposes Penn’s childhood family life with his contemporary conundrums. Expect a stately, meditative film from the cerebral, wildly inconsistent and always-interesting Malick.

Copyright © 2010 by Cinematic Cteve // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.

Nuclear Meltdown

The China Syndrome: Special Edition
Sony // 1979 // 122 Minutes // Rated PG

Reviewed by Steve Evans

“Today, only a handful of people know what it means…Soon you will know.” ~ From the promotional poster.

Opening Shot
An eerily prescient look at big business, politics and nuclear energy, The China Syndrome remains as exciting (and perhaps even more relevant) today as it was a quarter century ago. It’s still astonishing to recall that this film about a malfunctioning nuclear power plant opened less than two weeks before a major accident at a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. The movie plays beautifully both as a taut thriller and social commentary, with inspired work from a perfect cast.

A Bit of Plot…
Jane Fonda stars as an ambitious TV reporter relegated to covering fluff stories in Southern California—until she discovers a massive cover-up at a nearby nuclear power plant. While doing a routine profile on the plant with her rebellious cameraman (Michael Douglas), Fonda witnesses an emergency in the control room. Technicians misread critical monitors, and the core of the plant begins to tremble and quake. The plant engineers barely avoid a nuclear meltdown, although structural flaws in the facility suggest that a much greater problem is waiting to erupt. The TV crew captures the incident on video, but the station owners suppress the footage, fearing a lawsuit from the powerful corporation that owns the nuclear facility.

The plant shift supervisor, Jack Lemmon, realizes there is something terribly, fundamentally wrong with the cooling systems that prevent the reactor from overheating and melting straight through the planet. A reluctant whistleblower, Lemmon at first refuses to talk to Fonda for a story that would expose the plant as a ticking bomb. But he soon has a crisis of conscience that compels him to speak before another accident engulfs Southern California with a lethal cloud of radioactivity. Problem is, the corporation behind the plant is not going to let an inflammatory and expensive issue like public safety get in the way of the bottom line.

Lemmon is the heart and soul of the film, offering a portrait of an anguished man struggling to do the right thing in spite of corporate bureaucracy, and threats to his career and life.

The film veers into thriller territory as shadowy thugs stalk plant employees and threaten the reporters, who are determined to uncover an explosive story of corporate negligence, graft, and corruption.

Historical Context and Significance
The China Syndrome (directed by James Bridges, Urban Cowboy) turned into a must-see phenomenon when the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred in Pennsylvania 12 days after the movie opened in March 1979. The movie is a fascinating product of its time because of the frightening (and from the producers’ perspective, fortuitous) similarity to the actual accident.

In the film, plant operators rely on an erroneous reading from a malfunctioning meter to gauge the water level used to cool the nuclear core. They come close to triggering a meltdown. This is virtually identical to what happened in Pennsylvania at Three Mile Island, based on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s report:

“The accident began about 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979, when the plant experienced a failure in the secondary, non-nuclear section of the plant. The main feedwater pumps stopped running, caused by either a mechanical or electrical failure, which prevented the steam generators from removing heat. First the turbine, then the reactor automatically shut down. Immediately, the pressure in the primary system (the nuclear portion of the plant) began to increase. The accident was caused by a combination of personnel error, design deficiencies, and component failures.”

Because adequate cooling was not available, the nuclear fuel overheated to the point at which the metal tubes holding the nuclear fuel pellets ruptured and the pellets began to melt. Investigators later discovered that about half of the core melted during the accident. But plant operators managed to avoid the worst-case scenario: the melting of nuclear fuel could have breached the walls of the containment building and released massive quantities of radiation into the environment.

Tellingly, the NRC concedes that the accident caught state and federal regulators off guard. New regulations and security measures were put in place following Three Mile Island. Here is the juncture where art uncannily imitates life, as characters in The China Syndrome advocate some of the same safety procedures that federal regulators would later introduce. Perhaps inevitably, it took a real nuclear accident to put more stringent regulations in place.

What’s on the Disc, Steve?
I’ll tell ya. The China Syndrome is presented in a vibrant 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. It is a gorgeous print, rich in color and texture, with zero noticeable artifacts (although it is difficult to look beyond those ghastly 1970s fashions when the transfer offers such rich detail). Grain is evident in key scenes, a clear illustration that the film has been remastered in high definition. Audio options include a choice of remixed Dolby 5.1 or the original mono soundtrack in English or French. The 5.1 embellishment is well done, but offers little sonic benefits to the rear channels, as is often the case for older films that have been tricked out with a new sound mix.

Extras are solid, if not overwhelming, for a special edition package. Two documentaries, each running about 30 minutes, offer recollections from every major surviving cast and crew member. The filmographies are a handy reference. The disc also includes a trio of deleted scenes. Two are superfluous, and were wisely left on the cutting-room floor.

Cinematically speaking, Three Mile Island turned The China Syndrome into a blockbuster. If the film received favorable reviews on initial release, that praise paled in comparison to word-of-mouth buzz following a real nuclear accident. Producer-actor Michael Douglas seems to be the only person involved in the making of the film who doesn’t believe the Pennsylvania accident helped the box office. He is disingenuous, at best.

The Contrarian View
Though dated in its left-leaning politics, fashion, social mores and depiction of nuclear technology, The China Syndrome is a riveting thriller with a conscience. It may bleed liberalism (skeptics need look no further than the casting), but the film’s heart is in the right place. No intelligent person can doubt the overpowering influence of greed on business decisions, whether those decisions stem from Enron, Worldcom or the owners of a fictitious nuclear plant in California.

Coda
The China Syndrome remains provocative entertainment 30 years after its release. This special edition DVD is a recommended upgrade for those who purchased the original disc in 2001.

Copyright © 2009 by Cinematic Cteve // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.