Tag: Digital Media

It’s too early in the year to be making predictions about next year’s Academy Award nominations for Best Animated Feature, but let’s go ahead and put The Lego Movie at the top of the list. In a time of lackluster animated films (see—or don’t: The Nut Job) it’s refreshing to watch animation that works on three levels: Kids will dig it, parents will enjoy the jokes and remember fondly what it was like to play with Legos.

It may seem odd that a movie based in such crass commercialism—whether it means to be or not, it’s a 101-minute advertisement for Legos—would, at its heart, be a tribute to a free imagination. But that’s what it is. Co-writers and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, along with co-writers Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman, have made a movie that feels like a perfect representation of what it’s like to play with Legos at an age when your imagination runs everywhere with no regard for rules and regulations.

This is what I mean: Remember when you were a kid and you were playing with a toy? And then, for some reason, you wanted Batman to show up? And then you wanted an Old West theme off in the corner for no reason other than to have one? The Lego Movie remembers, too, and runs with it.

Emmet (Chris Pratt, a riot) is an ordinary construction worker with no imagination. He likes to go to work, build stuff, hang out with his co-workers (when they remember him), and sing “Everything is Awesome,” the irresistible song each Lego person sings at work.

Little does Emmet know, President Business (Will Ferrell) has found the Kragle (a tube of Krazy Glue with a couple letters scratched off), and he’s getting ready to freeze every Lego in place to keep order in the universe. Emmet sees Wildstyle (Elizabeth Banks) sifting through debris at his construction site, follows her, and before long he’s found the Piece of Resistance, a piece that can free the Legos from President Business’ oppressive plans.

Emmet is completely unsuited to the task, Wildstyle thinks he’s a dope, and Batman (Will Arnett) seems to be great at everything Emmet is not. But Emmet’s so dull and unimaginative, he may have a few tricks up his sleeve.

The action moves at a fast clip and the jokes do, too. In fact, there are so many jokes you’ll miss some. The kids will miss a bunch of them, too, but that’s because they may be too young to get them.

One problem The Lego Movie has is the fairly standard you-can-do-it theme that’s shown up in kids’ movies in the last decade, but everything else is so delightfully goofy and fun it doesn’t matter. And at times, the action moves so quickly that it’s difficult to tell what’s going on, but pay attention to the jokes and you’ll be fine. Listen for other celebrity voices (Morgan Freeman is great, and Alison Brie is a hoot as Unikitty) and stay through the credits for an unplugged “Everything is Awesome.”

Playing this week

12 Years A Slave
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

American Hustle
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

August: Osage County
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Dallas Buyers Club
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Frozen 3D
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Frozen Sing-Along
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Gravity
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Groundhog Day
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Her
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

I, Frankenstein
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Inside Llewyn Davis
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Labor Day
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Lone Survivor
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Nebraska
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Nut Job
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Philomena
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Ride Along
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Saving Mr. Banks
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

That Awkward Moment
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Wolf of Wall Street
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Don your bowling shirt and pony up for White Russians at a screening of the 1998 Coen Brothers’ classic The Big Lebowski. Jeff Bridges stars as L.A. slacker “The Dude,” who seeks recompense from his millionaire name-twin when angry thugs mistake his identity and urinate on his rug. The laid back bowling enthusiast becomes enmeshed in a scheme involving trophy wives, porn tycoons, angry nihilists, and a suitcase of cash (or is it underwear?). The celebrity-studded flick is a must-see dose of dark comedy—because you really haven’t started 2014 until you’ve watched John Turturro lick a bowling ball.

Saturday 2/1. $6, 4 and 8pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., 979-1333.

The story told in Labor Day, about Adele (Kate Winslet), a divorced and depressed mother to young teenager Henry (Gattlin Griffith), and their long holiday weekend with stranger Frank (Josh Brolin), is absurd. See, Frank is an escaped convict who politely but firmly takes Adele and Henry hostage. Then somehow he changes their lives for the better.

In actuality, it’s not a bad set up for a story. Joyce Maynard’s 2009 novel on which the movie is based is highly regarded, and a movie’s source material isn’t all that important.

But something is lost in the translation, because what’s on screen is not believable for a second. It’s made harder to believe by the acting. Griffith does well enough, but Winslet and Brolin seem lost as they spout the world’s most earnest dialogue in a story that demands a nod to how ridiculous it is—or considerably more time to develop characters that are this complicated. Flashbacks to Adele and Frank’s lives hinder instead of help, and the voiceover by the older but somehow younger-sounding Henry (Tobey Maguire) really doesn’t help.

It’s 1987. A few days before school starts, Henry and Adele take a trip to a local store to buy Henry new pants. When he goes to peruse the comics, he’s approached by Frank, who’s wearing what looks like a store employee’s apron, a recently blood-stained T-shirt, and a grimace that suggests seriousness.

Before long, he’s talked Adele into taking him home with them. It’s a gentle kidnapping—her depression has left her unable to put the car in gear without help, so being kidnapped doesn’t seem a stretch. In fact, it’s one of the movie’s few honest moments, but it’s also hopelessly contrived. What are the chances the escaped convict will find the woman who, literally, can’t defend herself or her kid?

When they get to Adele’s home, Frank ties her to a chair so it will look like she’s been abducted, and soon he’s making dinner for her, even blowing on the food before he spoon feeds it to her. It’s supposed to be a charming act that humanizes a convict, but the sincerity with which Brolin blows on the food—because it’s so hot!—and the manner in which Winslet takes it—the food is so hot!—is distractingly silly (and just wait until you learn the reason Frank was in prison).

Adele is untied and Frank begins fixing things in the house. Then he teaches Henry to throw a ball. Then he and Adele are in love and plotting a move to Canada.

A lot can happen in three days, especially when you’re severely depressed and need medication. A 13-year-old with a nice but distant father (Clark Gregg) can be influenced. But because each story beat feels contrived, and because each story beat is directed with the gravity of a Bergman drama, Labor Day begins to feel like a parody of itself and convict-with-a-heart-of-gold stories. By the time Frank teaches Adele and Henry how to make a pie—complete with all three kneading the dough together—you’ll wonder whether this is a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that got cut before the broadcast.

Playing this week

12 Years A Slave
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

American Hustle
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

August: Osage County
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Dallas Buyers Club
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Devil’s Due
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Frozen 3D
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Gravity
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Her
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

I, Frankenstein
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Inside Llewyn Davis
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Invisible Woman
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Lone Survivor
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Nebraska
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Nut Job
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Philomena
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Ride Along
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Saving Mr. Banks
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Wolf of Wall Street
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Poetry might be the least ostentatious of the arts. It’s a private affair conducted between a writer and a blank piece of paper. Michelangelo was said to seek out the hidden shape within the stone when he was creating a sculpture. What reserves of patience and focus do you need to find the hidden words within an 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of emptiness? You’d have to be a page whisperer.

Out of her solitary communion with the page, Rita Dove has built a big, public career with an extravagant set of accomplishments and accolades. She arrived in Charlottesville to teach at the University of Virginia in 1989, with a Fulbright Scholarship and three books of poetry already under her belt. One of those books, Thomas and Beulah, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. She served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995, and as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Clinton in 1996, and the National Medal of Arts by President Obama in 2011. Her complete list of honors and awards (and the inevitable obligations that accompany them) would easily fill this article. But even in the past 20 years, when the demands of her public role have been at their highest, she’s managed to continue to publish sustained, important, substantial works of poetry: On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), American Smooth (2004), and Sonata Mulattica (2009), along with a collection of short stories, a collection of essays, a novel, a play, a song cycle, and an anthology of poetry.

How can one successfully work both ends of a demanding, high profile career that is built on the quality of one’s most quiet and private moments? In a recent conversation, I had the chance to ask Dove. When we talked, she was in the throes of reading through 200 manuscripts—submissions to the UVA Creative Writing Program and candidates for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, an annual prize for which she serves as a jury member. “I do feel torn,” she said. “A lot of my life is taken up with trying to find the uninterrupted time to just forget all of that and let the world drop away. That means saying no sometimes to things that are absolutely worthy.”

She did not, ultimately, say no to filmmaker Eduardo Montes-Bradley whose film Rita Dove: An American Poet premieres on January 31 at the Paramount in an event honoring her. But she did try. “It took some convincing. At first I said no. But we did meet, and I liked him. I liked what he was doing. I liked his eye. I liked the way he looked at the world. He had a real sensitivity to the artistic.”

Montes-Bradley, who hails from Argentina but has lived in the U.S. for 30 years, has had a long career as a writer, photographer, and filmmaker documenting the life and work of artists and public figures here and in Latin America. He confirmed that Dove set up a high hurdle: “She’s tough,” he said. “But you understand. She has to be cautious. I think what intrigued her was that my line of questioning was different than what she’s probably accustomed to. Not better or worse. Just different.”

The film pays Dove the compliment of exploring her life and her work on her own terms. Much of her poetry operates like a montage, especially the book-length works like Thomas and Beulah, about the lives of her grandparents, and Sonata Mulattica, about a forgotten black musician who was a protégé of Beethoven. These books are made up of what Tennyson called “short swallow-flights of song,” bursts of poetic exploration that build up, layer by layer, into a narrative. The film does something similar. It uses family photos and home movies to give us snapshots of a lived life. It weaves those together with archival footage, interviews with the author, and passages from her poetry, to achieve its own kind of cinematic lyricism—a visual poetry that pays homage to Dove’s own techniques.

Montes-Bradley calls the film a “biographical sketch” and said that, rather than trying to tell the whole history of her life, he tried to tell the story of “the making of the poet.”

“It’s always partial views, right?” said Montes-Bradley. “Glimpses into the inner fabric of a certain individual. You can’t go beyond just glimpses, flashes.”

“What I love about the film,” said Dove, “is that it manages to maintain some mystery. It resists the stamp of ‘this is Rita Dove.’ And his attention to the influence of music in my life—I am just extremely grateful for.”

Dove’s work adroitly plays big themes—race, history, death, art, reputation—against the smaller-scale textures of daily life—food, clothes, books, work, family. She is constantly burrowing, exploring, unraveling, and sussing out the ways in which the big and the small are really one and the same. And music is very often the go-between that mediates them.

In Thomas and Beulah, her grandfather, like her, is musical, and mired in the laborious demands of work. Music is his release.

“To him, work is a narrow grief/and music afterwards/is like a woman/reaching into his chest /to spread it around.”

In the poem “Gospel,” peppered with snatches of lyrics from “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” the music that came out of slavery and lifted the black church and the civil rights movement is “a humming ship of voices/big with all/the wrongs done/done them.”

“From a fortress/of animal misery/soars the chill/voice of the tenor, enraptured/with sacrifice.”

It’s as good an image of how her poetry works as any. Exploring the narrow griefs of work, home, family, or the broader griefs of history and race. And responding the only way a songbird can. With song.

Switchfoot

Fading West/Atlantic Records

Switchfoot has long been known as a maverick of modern Christian rock because of its thoughtful writing as well as its faith-inspired content. After the gritty, soul-searching 2011 album Vice Verses, Fading West feels like a deep exhale. The latest release is a slight, though pleasant, curveball, both sonically and lyrically. The echoing pop rock of “Love Alone Is Worth the Fight” is uplifting and energetic, and “Who We Are” is a joyous proclamation about embracing your inner self. “Let It Out” is a lively number that practically begs you to scream along, and “When We Come Alive” is an engaging rocker about living life to the fullest. Inspired by the band’s 2012 world tour, the album holds some nice surprises like “BA55”’s ambient, fuzzy departure, and Jon Foreman appears emphatic on “The World You Want” when he sings “Is this the world you want?/Every day you’re making it.”

Josh Matthews

A-Sides/Self-released

On his debut album, A-Sides, singer-songwriter Josh Matthews reveals the precocious heart of a street poet. Whether delivering spoken word treatises in poetry slam style about owning the day (“Lockdown”), busting out with hip-hop infused lyrical delivery (“Two Ton Feet”), or even singing in traditional cadence, Matthews demands your attention. His deep, gravelly voice, give the sinister Americana track “Battle Inside Me” added rawness and power, and the pointed questions in “The Game” become more meaningful as a result. A-Sides is loaded with musical variety— songs are augmented by organic percussion, whistling, spoons and the accordion. On one track, a fan leaves Matthews a crazed voice mail, while “Lockdown” has an odd Vincent Price-like laughter in the background, giving the record a slightly unhinged feeling at times.

Billie Joe + Norah

Foreverly/Reprise Records

At first glance, this seems like an odd pairing, but a good listen proves that Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and Norah Jones are a match made in heaven. Foreverly is a series of covers of classic songs by The Everly Brothers, and is especially poignant in light of the recent passing of Phil Everly. The album has a largely folk bent to it, with everything from easygoing, ambling tunes like “Long Time Gone” and Americana tracks like “Kentucky.” Jones goes solo on “I’m Here to Get My Baby out of Jail,” and Armstrong starts off the beginning of “Barbara Allen,” but it’s when they harmonize—as on “Long Time Gone”—that the duo shines. It’s daunting to cover the Everly Brothers, but Armstrong and Jones do a fine job.

The buddy cop movie is a familiar trope with many variations. You could have a cop and a crook (48 Hrs.); two cops and a fish-out-of-water cop (Beverly Hills Cop); a straight-and-narrow cop and a by-the-book cop (Lethal Weapon); the villain-is-the-sidekick-in-spirit gag (Die Hard); and the send-up/homage flick (Hot Fuzz).

What do the first four movies in the above paragraph have in common? Answer: They were all made in the 1980s when the buddy cop picture was a new-ish (or at least appropriately remodeled) kind of blockbuster. These days, if you do the cop movie, it had better have some originality (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which was original, fun, and no one saw it), or it had better star Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy (The Heat).

Whatever the approach, chances are better than average that the resulting cop movie will be worse than average. Enter Ride Along, a comedy that has, in 100 minutes, three solid laughs. That’s a woefully shitty batting average. How does a film starring Kevin Hart (arguably one of the best stand-up comedians working today) and Ice Cube (an actor who, for all his limitations, knows how to be funny) fall short at every turn? Weak script, leaden pacing, dull cinematography, cliché-filled story.

And just to round things out, how many times will I ask a question just so I may answer it? Three.

Story-wise, it’s a lame twist on a standard set-up. Cube (he has a character name, but it’s just Ice Cube doing his thing) is a renegade cop and Ben (Hart) is about to propose to Cube’s sister, Angela (Tika Sumpter). Ben was just accepted into the police academy but Cube hates him. See, apparently Ben set Cube on fire at a barbecue.

So in order to get Cube’s blessing for Ben’s upcoming proposal to Angela, Ben accompanies Cube on a ride-along to prove himself. Thankfully, the antiquated gesture proves to be just a gesture when Ben says he’s marrying Angela, blessing or not. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

There’s a surprisingly heavy amount of plot in Ride Along, and the movie makes the mistake of sticking to the story instead of letting two fun actors be fun. All the comedy—“comedy” used advisedly—involves Hart quickly spouting lots of dialogue that isn’t remotely comedic, but it happens so quickly it may trick you into believing it’s a larf-fest.

Then there’s Cube, who’s left to play the straight man. It’s something he does well (see: Friday), but when he’s working with the unintentional anti-humor of Ride Along’s script and miscalculated ad-libbing, he just looks pissed off, which is kind of his resting state anyway.

About those three laughs: One of them involves Hart’s height. If there’s one thing you can count on here, it’s lots of gags about Hart’s wee-ness. You know, because being short is funny or something.

But maybe if the audience treats Ride Along as a spot-the-creaky-story-points exercise and ignores its self-conscious references to Cube’s music, it could still be fun. Count all the clichés in the script, follow the story beats, and see if you can figure out what’s going on before the characters do. You’ll solve things before Cube and Ben, for sure.

Playing this week

12 Years A Slave
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

American Hustle
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

August: Osage County
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Dallas Buyers Club
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Devil’s Due
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Frozen 3D
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Gravity
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Her
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Inside Llewyn Davis
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Legend of Hercules
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Lone Survivor
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Nut Job
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Philomena
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Saving Mr. Banks
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Wolf of Wall Street
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

If you were a cinephile or an aspiring filmmaker in 1994, the influence of Pulp Fiction was impossible to ignore—especially if you were a 13-year-old boy. Throughout that year, Tarantino’s sophomore effort became more or less gospel in the worlds of independent film and popular culture, which were fast becoming synonymous in the mid-’90s. This endlessly discussed, highly quotable film catalyzed that process significantly.

It was a hot topic not just in dorm rooms, but in critical circles, talk shows, newspapers, and on playgrounds as well, to the point where I had heard and read repeatedly about the film by the time I saw it.

Pulp Fiction’s plot stays true to its title: John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson play a pair of unlucky hit men (it was a huge comeback for the has-been Travolta, and a star-making turn for the once-versatile Jackson, who has essentially been playing the same part ever since); Bruce Willis is a boxer on the run from the mob, and a wig-wearing Uma Thurman is their employer’s flirtatious wife.

It’s not only rude, shocking, and funny, it’s also wildly unpredictable, a film which dictates its own unusual narrative structure from moment to moment, taking weird left turns, unpredictable digressions, and often letting itself relax and stretch out for many minutes at a time before a shocking bit of happenstance sends it off on a new tangent.

The film also, somewhat famously, contained long, uninterrupted stretches of dialogue, which, unfortunately, became the director’s calling card, and an often imitated trait (his scripts easily get dragged down by pretentious tough-guy rhetoric, and could be trimmed by half). The rest of the decade was littered with imitators like Kevin Williamson and Christopher McQuarrie, who juxtaposed careless violence with vacuous, off-hand pop-culture references. Even today, the vast majority of action, crime, and horror films produced in the Western Hemisphere contain stylistic touches that can be traced back either to this film, or to David Fincher’s Seven from the following year.

Revisiting it now, it reminds me of nothing so much as a slavish imitation of one of the more thoughtful and slow-moving films by Godard or Fassbinder minus any hint of politics, sex, or interpersonal tension, which were often the things that made those films worth watching in the first place. With the benefit of hindsight, Pulp Fiction now seems hokey and affected; it would almost be charming now, were it not for the films’ persistent presence as a film jock/frat go-to cultural reference.

Tarantino took a long time to follow it up, instead pursuing collaborations and side projects that kept him in the public eye, but only directing one film in its entirety over the next decade—the understated, underrated Jackie Brown.

He’s since abandoned much of what made Pulp Fiction a smash. Five of his last six films have featured female protagonists, he’s largely jettisoned his famous non-
chronological plot structures, and his cinematic style veers closer to the Italian “spaghetti” Westerns or the Japanese Yakuza-themed noirs of the 1960s and ’70s, styles he’s been much more capable at approximating (and whose soundtracks he has more or less stolen outright).

In retrospect, Pulp Fiction is clearly Tarantino’s weakest film. Nevertheless, it is certainly, in the words of the Library of Congress, “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Michael Moore’s Roger & Me (1989) made a comparatively smaller splash, but in the long run it may prove to be more influential than Pulp Fiction. Before Moore was a household name, a muckraking liberal hero, and scapegoat for conservative pundits everywhere, he was an anonymous schlub from the Midwest whose sense of humor was as keen as his sense of outrage.

Roger & Me takes as its subject the closing of the GM plants in Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan, and while the topics of outsourcing, evictions, and corporate greed remain as relevant as ever, the true staying power of the film is due to its sly, irreverent tone.

Moore, in his trademark vest and trucker hat, interviewed ordinary working people, aloof millionaires, and has-been celebrities, mixing it in with vintage stock footage, television clips, and self-deprecating narration, all of which is perfectly juxtaposed with his knack for capturing bizarre moments that are too strange to be fictional.

Moore’s style is not without precedent; Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, and David Letterman are obvious influences, but it was his ability to cement everything together, finding his own cinematic voice through perfectly balanced sarcasm and outrage, that made Moore a working-class hero.

At the time, Roger & Me was the most successful documentary film in history (a record he’s broken himself several times over the years), and while his style was once unprecedented, his resourceful, ironic, personalized brand of everyman filmmaking has become the default for filmmakers of his ilk, and his influence can be felt everywhere from mainstream news broadcasts to the furthest reaches of the internet.

Roger & Me is not only an entertaining film, it’s a valuable snapshot of the cultural tone at the tail end of the Reagan era, and a crucial document for understanding how our media got to be the way it is now.

Both Pulp Fiction and Roger & Me will be shown this weekend at the Packard Campus Theatre in Culpeper.

Roger & Me screens on January 23 at 7:30pm and Pulp Fiction screens on January 25 at 7:30pm. Admission is free and open to the public. Both films have an R rating. More information can be found at www.loc.gov.

What other recent films have greatly influenced pop culture? Tell us in the comments section below.

Mark Wahlberg is a bad actor. There are movies when he’s passable (Date Night; Ted), but most of the time he’s inexplicably praised (his wretchedly unbelievable performance in The Departed) or he makes bad movies worse (The Happening; Broken City; The Lovely Bones; I Heart Huckabees).

It’s particularly distressing that he’s no better than usual in Lone Survivor, a worthy story that’s given the jingoism treatment by director Peter Berg, whose last big screen endeavor was Battleship. (It’s been a long time since Friday Night Lights, Pete.)

Based on the true story of Marcus Luttrell (Wahlberg), a Navy SEAL who is literally the lone survivor of a mission gone horribly wrong in Afghanistan, Lone Survivor squanders its biggest asset: It has sympathy built into it. No one wants to watch American servicemen get killed in combat, whether they’re on Omaha Beach in World War II, on the front lines in Korea, somewhere deep in Vietnam, or in an Afghan province so tiny it’s not even on the map.

But Lone Survivor is so rah-rah guns and dicks that it forgets to make these guys full-fledged human beings on the screen. Not every military movie needs to fold in PTSD, stop-loss, and traumatic brain injuries, but Lone Survivor thinks hazing and charming small talk make for character. That—along with a lack of context in the screenplay for the military objective, and the movie’s demand for blind audience acceptance—makes the whole thing feel a little too much like church, and the pictures are the last place I want to feel proselytized.

As for plot, Luttrell and fellow SEALs Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), Dietz (Emile Hirsch), and Axelson (Ben Foster) get pinned down by Taliban fighters in a remote region after a mission goes badly. While hiding above a mountain village, goat herders—some of whom may be Taliban—wander through the SEALs’ perch.

Murphy, who’s in charge, decides to let the herders go. Before long, one of them is leaping down the mountain—in slow motion, no less—and Taliban fighters are coming from all directions. Luttrell, Murphy, Dietz, and Axelson try to escape, but are soon diving behind rocks, ducking behind trees, and shooting lots of people in the head.

There are plenty of war movies with similarly bald plots, and the battle scenes are compelling. Each time one of the SEALs falls down a rock face, it’s heart stopping (until it’s repeated so often it seems like a gag in an Austin Powers movie). When Axelson dies, it’s particularly heartbreaking because he’s already survived one bullet to the head.

But watching Wahlberg threaten to kill everyone near him with a grenade comes off like sketch comedy, which isn’t Lone Survivor’s purpose. Its purpose is to show that these SEALs died for you. There hasn’t been a movie that preaches this much since The Passion of the Christ.

Playing this week

American Hustle
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

August: Osage County
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Book Thief
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Dallas Buyers Club
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Frozen 3D
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Grudge Match
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Her
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Inside Llewyn Davis
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Legend of Hercules
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Nebraska
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Philomena
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Princess Bride
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Saving Mr. Banks
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Tyler Perry: A Madea Christmas
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Wolf of Wall Street
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

When the Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestlers held its first match in the back room of the Blue Moon Diner in February of 2008, few dreamed it would become a nationwide movement.

CLAW began as an all-women’s arm wrestling competition, initiated by Jennifer Tidwell and Jodie Plaisance, in which the stereotype of women as weak is upended by a traditionally masculine activity. The result? A spectacle of self-assertion, physical strength, and solidarity through competition.

As CLAW has grown, so has interest in the movement, which is captured beautifully in a recent documentary by local filmmakers and photographers Billy Hunt and Brian Wimer. The CLAW doc debuted with a sold-out premiere at the Virginia Film Festival last November, winning the festival’s Audience Award, and it will show again at The Paramount Theater on Saturday before embarking on a tour of screenings in the spring.

The filmmakers have been part of CLAW since the beginning, and much of its history has unfolded on camera, but the film’s strongest moments—outside of the documentation of dozens of matches, for those who have never been—are the ones in which the participants speak out-of-character about their lives outside of CLAW and their experiences in the movement.

In-depth interviews with organizer and emcee Tidwell, the wrestlers, including local Kara Dawson, a.k.a. The Homewrecker, (who held the champion title for much of the first year and represented Charlottesville in the national championship), several organizers from other cities, and peripheral figures like former referee Jude Silviera, and Laura Galgano and Rice Hall of the Blue Moon Diner provide compelling backstories.

CLAW grew quickly and soon moved to a large tent in the Blue Moon Diner’s parking lot, with each event raising thousands of dollars for a variety of charities. It was a monthly event for the first year or so, and now occurs semi-annually. By 2010, ladies’ arm wrestling had grown into a wider DIY movement, much like women’s roller derby, with matches taking place in Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Durham, and Austin.

Due to expansion, the league is now the Collective of Lady Arm Wrestlers, and the loose coalition held a national summit entitled SuperCLAW at Charlottesville’s Jefferson Theater in June 2012, featuring eight participants from collectives around the country squaring off and comparing muscles.

The atmosphere at a CLAW match is wild and carnivalesque, with a fervent energy that was present from the very first event. Though the actual matches are often brief, there is a tremendous amount of build-up and presentation, recalling an illicit boxing match and a burlesque show.

The wrestlers take on outlandish personas in the spirit of professional wrestling or Halloween. Their names come from puns, parodies, and historical figures—Josephine Baker, Rosie the Riveter—or combinations, such as the Virgin Mary/pop singer Madonna Ciccone.

The film is less Charlottesville-obsessed than other local productions, but many of the city’s memorable characters and musicians made the cut including Barling and Collins and Accordion Death Squad, as well as the CLAW house band We Are Star Children, who wrote the collective’s theme song and also scored the film.

In addition to offering an accurate and well-crafted overview of a fun and fascinating phenomenon, the film isn’t afraid to get its hands dirty, delving into some of the trickier aspects of its subject matter.

For instance, CLAW events are often sexualized, a problematic paradigm for a feminist project. But it’s to the credit of the participants that they discuss it openly and thoughtfully, and the filmmakers investigate the subject at length.

The film also questions the degree to which some of the wrestler’s costumes portray irresponsible racial stereotypes. But the toughest scenes are in the footage of wrestlers’ arms getting broken in competition, which is incredibly gruesome and upsetting even for the non-squeamish. (The second break is tougher, because you know it’s coming.)

The costumes play with clichés, sometimes reinforcing tired stereotypes, but more often as brilliant inversions of expectations. Some of the characters are highly sexualized, some wrestlers are masculine, some feminine, some are absurd, and many are all of the above. The competition is as much a celebration of the diversity of womanhood as a display of strength.

Hunt and Wimer have managed to honestly capture many crucial or difficult moments in the history of the movement, including discussion of how to balance legitimate competition against the risk of another broken arm. The film wisely sticks close to its core subject, and climaxes with an extensive depiction of the SuperCLAW event, functioning well as a fond memento for CLAW aficionados and a fine introduction for those hearing about it for the first time.

CLAW screens at the Paramount on Saturday, January 18 at 8pm. Tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for those age 12 and under. While the film contains plenty of salty language, it also serves as a healthy introduction to an inspiring subject in an environment less rowdy than a crowded bar. There will be a Q&A with the directors after the screening.

Stoney

More Than Animals/Self-released

More Than Animals is an eclectic, largely engaging album. If you like your British singer-songwriters with a little bit of swagger, then Stoney’s your guy. “Sweet Release” is a raucous piece of pop rock, and driving numbers like “The Score” crank up the energy. “Devil on My Back” is a groovy stomper that sounds like it’s been on an acid trip, and on the closer, “Round Here,” Stoney does a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde dance with a palatable, moody first half that explodes into a sinister rock song by the end. More than an exploration of Stoney’s broad sonic palette, the album digs into weightier topics. On “Bedpost,” Stoney ponders a greater worth than a sexual, animalistic nature, and whispers resignedly in “Round Here” that none of his exploits and cares will go with him beyond the grave. Dark and energetic one moment, unexpectedly thoughtful the next, More Than Animals is a striking record.

Jess Novak

Bad Habit/Self-released

Singer-songwriter Jess Novak’s debut release is chock full of raw and intelligent tales, and she imbues even the most journal entry-style subjects with enough universal appeal to make them relatable. Her songs range from acoustic folk (“Worth It”) to blues (“Haven’t Found You Yet”), and sometimes blur the lines between the two (“Let You Know,” “Simple”). “Fritzi” stands out as Novak’s dusty vocals convey the powerlessness felt in the face of tragedy, and how the world goes on like nothing happened. On the acoustic closer “Zack,” Novak is at her most honest and vulnerable when she mourns a loss, “We don’t hate you God/We just want ’em back.” Written and performed with the grace and skill of a seasoned veteran, Bad Habit is one you’ll want to get into.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb6q1Z2xyT8

States

Paradigm/Self-released

The third release from States is an engaging sonic and lyrical exploration of new directions. While its previous efforts have not been singularly focused, a lot of Paradigm centers on the aftereffects of broken relationships. Echoing pop rocker “I Hope You Stay Gone,” laments a former flame, and on “Erase it All,” singer Mindy White confidently proclaims “This is not a love song for you.” The ambient, otherworldly rock ‘n’ roll of “Circles,” “Closer,” and “Summer Love,” is dreamy, and White’s clear, angelic vocals and her lyrical takes on relationship turbulence is noteworthy. The pop rock melodies on Paradigm are divine.