September 16, 2011 - 2:54pm
Weekend Movie Guide: Gosling drives, 'Lion King' roars in 3-D
BY TIMOTHY RABB
Top of the bill this weekend is “Drive” by Ryan Gosling. I say “by” Gosling because he chose his own director, which doesn’t happen all that much in Hollywood, even with the A-list acting titans. The story’s about a stuntman who has to put his day job to good use when a bank robber puts a hit on his head. It’s already gotten raves from early reviewers and a standing ovation at Cannes, so not much more needs saying.
Next in line is “The Lion King” in 3-D, which deftly circumvented the usual “Disney’s capitalizing on old work again” complaint by taking advantage of the embellishments of 3-D tech. Fresh or not, it’s much preferred to this week’s busy mom rom-com “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” a film whose title fits Sarah Jessica Parker’s overwhelmed protagonist almost as well as it describes her own paltry acting career.
Then there’s the modernized (or is it bastardized?) remake of the Sam Peckinpah classic “Straw Dogs,” which brings to mind some of the chilling anecdotes that characterize the late Peckinpah’s irascible demeanor. I’m sure if he was here to see mainstream minds running roughshod over his old work, he’d live up to his reputation for violence.
As for the limited releases, two showings at the Michigan Theater look quite promising. “Point Blank” is a French film with the flair of a Western thriller in the vein of “Taken.” It’s about a nurse who saves the life of a wanted thief, the thief’s henchmen kidnapping the nurse’s pregnant wife and the nurse going postal and giving chase. Foreign interpretations of worn-out American genres tend to imbue a little native culture into the mix, so it’s definitely worth a watch.
On Sunday, the Michigan Theater will also screen the time-capsule documentary “Life in a Day,” a collage of user-submitted YouTube videos that attempts to capture the global zeitgeist of July 24th, 2010. The logline “Filmed by You” emphasizes the innovative concept and the diligence it took to edit the tens of thousands of videos into a comprehensible whole.
