Random DVD Round-Up - ABOUT CHERRY / CHERRY

ABOUT CHERRY is a movie that deals in cinematic cliche. A ruthlessly hipster soundtrack, handheld camerawork and nonchalant dogma-esque cutting.  We know the heroine, Angelina, is a good kid because she works hard at the laundrette and hold her friend's hair back while she vomits. But we also learn that she's so passively naive as to be irritating.  Her vapid wannabe rockstar boyfriend urges her to take pornographic photos and she agrees. Why? She's doesn't do it out of economic desperation. Neither is she making a political point about feminist empowerment a la Sasha Grey. At one point a casting agent asks her point blank why she wants to do porn, and she says "because I want to try something new." I mean, WTF?!  Angelina seems upset when her mum won't let her speak to her kid sister afterwards but why didn't she expect any ramifications?  I guess it's the same lack of awareness that leads her to ignore her best friend's obvious crush on her.  

By this point of the film I'd pretty much lost all interest in the movie despite the fact that we hadn't yet gotten to the big name cameos: Dave Franco as a sleazy lawyer who frequents the strip club that Angelina works in, and Heather Graham as the porn director who first shoots her.

The shame is that this movie, being co-written by a real fetish star, could've genuinely shed some light on how the porn industry works and how girls get brought into it.  Maybe it really as bland as all this but somehow I doubt it. This is exploitation cinema without the exploitation. As it is, ABOUT CHERRY feels about as authentic as a cheesy mainstream Hollywood coming-of-age movie, except that this time instead of a "hooker with a heart of gold" we have a "porn star with a brain of marshmallow".

ABOUT CHERRY aka CHERRY has a running time of 98 minutes and is rated R in the USA.  the movie played Berlin 2012 and was released on demand in the USA in 2012. It was released in the UK in 2013.

Preview - BOOGIE WOOGIE

BOOGIE WOOGIE is a highly enjoyable, acerbic satire on the contemporary art world, directed by debutant Duncan Ward and based on the novel by Danny Moynihan. Both are art-world insiders and the film has the feel of authentic anecdotes on speed.

The film has a large cast and many sub-plots, but these all coalesce around the gallery of Art Linson - a Jay Jopling like art-dealer who stands at the centre of the London art scene. Art is played in trademark oleaginous, sinister mode by Danny Huston, who needs to seriously worry about typecasting. Three main stories whir around Art. First, his main clients - art collectors Jean and Maclestone (Gillian Anderson and Stellan Skarsgard) are fucking a young artist and a gallery assistant (Amanda Seyfried) respectively, and are engaged in a bitter battle over who gets the art. Second, naive Dewey (Alan Cumming) is trying to promote his best friend, video artist Elaine (Jaime Winston) who ditches him for Art's assistant Beth (Heather Graham). Finally, ageing collector Alfred Rhinegold (Christopher Lee) is being manipulated by his wife (Joanna Lumley) and her butler (the ever brilliant Simon McBurney) to sell a valuable painting, at a price manipulated by art dealer Art Linson.

In short, the majority of characters are self-involved, sexually promiscuous, and care more about jockeying for money and fame than about art itself. Only a few - Alfred Rhinegold and Dewey - have a genuine passion for the work - and they basically get screwed over for their pains. It's not that the art world is indifferent to their pain, but that characters like Beth and Elaine will actually exploit it. After all, in the era of reality TV and constant self-exposure, pain is just another means to create a sensation.

The movie moves quickly; finely balances humour and disgust; assuredly handles its large cast; and is sharply photographed by John Mathieson (HANNIBAL, GLADIATOR). Art aficionados will appreciate the fact that the art was curated by Damien Hurst. I presume that when this finally gets released, it will be very limited. But this flick is definitely worth seeking out.

Additional tags: Joanna Lumley, Christopher Lee, Alan Cumming, Duncan Ward, Danny Moynihan.

BOOGIE WOOGIE played Edinburgh 2009 and will be released in the UK and US in April 2010. It is, rather improbably, currently being shown on British Airways long-haul flights.

THE HANGOVER - dude, where's my groom?

THE HANGOVER is basically a rip-off of the Ashton Kutcher vehicle, "Dude, Where's My Car?". Except this time, the drunken idiots are a thirty-something bachelor party in Vegas and they've misplaced the groom, stolen Mike Tyson's tiger, and gotten married to a hooker. The morning after they have to piece together the events of the night before, rescue the groom and get him to the church on time.

Problem is that THE HANGOVER is only sporadically funny in a "mild chuckle" manner. Sure, the fat, weird guy is funny to look at, but mostly because he reminded me of THE BIG LEBOWSKI. And dear god, do we really want to milk comedy out the drunken-hooker-marriage plot? A Mike Tyson cameo is utterly wasted and after a while, I really started to miss the superior comic stylings of Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn et al. Overall, while I didn't have a bad time watching the film, it's certainly nowhere near the level of raucous hilarity of ROLE MODELS. Neither does it have the genuinely affecting camaraderie of PINEAPPLE EXPRESS.

The best things I can say about THE HANGOVER, is that it is definitely funnier than Todd Philips' efforts like SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS. And second, that Ken Jeong is screamingly funny in his cameo.

THE HANGOVER is on release in the USA, Canada, Iceland, Australia, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Slovakia, the Ukraine and the UK. It opens next weekend in Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Estonia, Italy and Norway. It opens on June 24th in Finland, France and Sweden. It opens on July 10th in Denmark, Romania and Turkey. It opens on July 24th in Germany and Austria and on July 30th in the Czech Republic, Israel and Malaysia. It opens on August 7th in Bulgaria and South Africa. It opens on August 14th in Argentina and Spain and on August 28th in Brazil.