Christina Waters

Written with a crystalline ear for everyday miasmas, Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg dive deftly into the depths of contemporary family ties. The Kids are All Right stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a longtime lesbian couple whose teenaged children are busy testing boundaries. As their 18-year-old daughter Joni, played to restless perfection by Mia (Alice in Wonderland) Wasikowska, gets ready to go off to college, the younger son, Laser (Josh Hutcherson) goads her into contacting their sperm donor father (Mark Ruffalo). Set in the hip enclaves of bourgeois Southern California, the film offers us the new American family—green, eco-conscious, bristling with political correctitude—on the verge of more revelation than it can handle.

Director Cholodenko and her co-writer achieve the exact angle of post-hippie rhetoric (more…)

Still haunted by Leonardo diCaprio’s beautiful face, taking on gravitas with time, I find it difficult to know where to start with Christopher Nolan’s hugely entertaining Inception. From the director of Memento and The Dark Knight, this dream-within-a-dream caper is everything a movie should be. Mixing up cinematic quotes from Mulholland Drive, The Matrix and many a 007 thriller, Inception offers tight script (too tight for those who don’t enjoy teasing out interlocking plot lines), mind-boggling cinematography (Paris morphed in on itself is easily one of the most thrilling uses of moving images ever devised), vertiginous editing (in the good sense), a relentless Hans Zimmer soundtrack, and a cast of ridiculously good-looking men dressed beyond Hugo Boss.

Perhaps the final race against time sequences go on ten minutes too long. Maybe there is too much verbal exposition. But I didn’t care. (more…)

Backlit by a throbbing, surging, overripe score from opera composer John Adams, and wandering stylishly through the mother of all Milanese mansions, Tilda Swinton & company offer much in the way of visual opulence, in the new Italian chick flick I Am Love.

Tall, attenuated and obviously, beautifully bored, Swinton’s character - a Russian blonde married into a wealthy family of spoiled Milanese textile magnates - is only one of many confined and closeted characters in this sensuous bit of fluff. With her Mannerist neck (more…)

They’re all here again, Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), Jessie the cowgirl (Joan Cusack)), Hamm, Bullseye, Barbie, and of course Andy the boy who loves all of these spunky toys. In the third installment, Andy has grown up and is just about to leave for college. Woody and the gang are growing anxious — will Andy store them in the attic? or will he toss them into the garbage?

If you loved the first Toy Story, easily one of the most ambitious — and successful — animated films of all time, then you’ll feast on this sequel showing once again that the folks at Pixar have no peers in the visual storytelling department.(Certainly the dummies over at Universal won’t make a dent in Pixar with the utterly clueless, sappy clunker called Despicable Me. Actually they should have simply called it Despicable and been done with it.)

What’s most delightful about the new Toy Story is that it is a tale told in every possible narrative dimension. (more…)

Kung fu king Jackie Chan, arguably the best-known human on the planet, was once a kung fu prodigy following in his father’s swift footsteps. At 12, Jaden Smith is also a child star, following in his talented father’s footsteps. And even if the dangerously cute son of Will and Jada Smith isn’t a martial artist, he is smart, quick, and poised enough to hold a screen for two hours.

I’ll be candid here. I’ve seen every Rocky at least five times. I am a complete sucker for the little guy who fights back to topple the big bully formula. That’s the story here with the remake of the 1980s Karate Kid. Only instead of Japanese karate, the name of the game is kung fu. The setting is today’s Beijing, and instead of avuncular Pat Morita, we have the amazing Jackie Chan, who at 55 still has technique, and acting skill to burn. Plus he’s sexy.

So even if you’re not a 15-year-old boy (more…)

A few weeks ago I saw the trailer for the new Shrek Forever After and found myself sucked in enough to grab a tub of popcorn and settle in for my very first Shrek.

A Shrek virgin no more, after two hours of 3D antics starring the voice of Eddie Murphy (brilliant!) and the loveable green visage of the big ogre, I decided that I was just not Shrek material. I’ve seen the original fairytales on which almost all of the slender “plot” of Shrek 4 was based. I devoured fairytales as a kid and knew about Rumplestilskin, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel & Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk, etc. etc. I even saw, over and over, the Judy Garland version (more…)

The first time around, it was Robert Downey Jr. I was watching. And even with this second installment of the Marvel Comic hero, Downey is an endlessly adroit chameleon, able to pivot moods in micro-seconds. Yet, somehow—especially since most of the film reduces to a series of high-tech explosions—it’s Mickey Rourke I’m watching this time around.

No man sports tattoos better than Rourke, who’s made a performance piece out of his scars, unfathomable hair and more-macho-than-thou dress code. He could make tattoed feet a global fashion statement. But obviously the key to his seductive loser’s swagger lies elsewhere.

Seemingly free of pretense, he appears grittier, more real than the very screen he explodes upon. When he unleashes whips of fire and electricity, he’s believable. The metal teeth, the gutteral Russian accent, the unnaturally swollen fingernails that attack keyboards in order to reprogram satellite software—I submit, utterly, to whatever it is this guy’s selling. (more…)

It wasn’t enough that Sam Worthington stunk up Avatar. He’s gone and done it again, this time wearing Greek armor along with his burr cut and clenched jaw.

Against all odds, and certainly against good judgment, Worthington somehow landed the hero’s role of Perseus, in this needless remake of the 1981 Clash of the Titans. You know the story. Zeus, Hades and Poseidon are steamed up over humans’ disrespect for the gods. So they crank up their ultimate monster from hell, the Kracken, for a big dose of destructive pay-back.

Fine. So Perseus, the love child of a human mother and Zeus, the big kahuna of Olympus (long story), leads a pack of studly (more…)

Tell me I’m not alone in finding the new Tim Burton exercise in narcissism a crashing bore. (Except for the miraculous vision of Johnny Depp.) Obviously made to cash in on the momentary 3-D craze, Alice in Wonderland, the newest screen visitation to the holy shrine of Lewis Carroll is just not up to the task, I don’t care how much turquoise eyeshadow they put on Helena Bonham-Carter’s Betty Boop eyes!

Oh the opening definitely grabbed me, offering a shimmering reminder of the magic of Carroll’s shamanic fable of the role of the imagination in constructing the texture of reality. But when that tiny doorway finally lets the newly miniaturized Alice into the garden of talking flowers, things grew—not curiouser and curiouser, but rather more and more obvious, predictable, and in many cases, (ironically) unimaginative.

To relish the gorgeous face and nimble movements of Johnny Depp is to realize all over again that no artificially-generated imagery can match the nuance and depth of human action. But Depp’s appeal is almost drowned in computerized cliché and hackneyed set design.

The genius that brought us Edward Scissorhands somehow failed (more…)

A riddle in the key of repression - and destined to win a few Oscars.

“Director Michael Haneke believes that one generation’s moral decay is rarely eradicated, but lingers submerged in the collective unconscious until future events trigger its return. In a German village on the verge of World War I a series of random events ignites suspicion, violence and strange punishment. The ripening mood of paranoia and retaliation tears apart the village fabric, until the messes are covered up and control regained. As a forensic allegory of hypocrisy, longing, and disappointment, The White Ribbon owns a place in the short list of all-time unforgettable films.”

That’s how I began my review of The White Ribbon — you can read the entire piece in the current Santa Cruz Weekly. And no matter how many people try to scare you off, don’t miss this gorgeous and provocative film.

I’m so tired of people saying to me, “yes, but it’s in black and white,” as if describing some sort of physical deformity. (more…)