ADVENTURE/COMEDY TROPIC THUNDER (1 5) 06min coco
When location filming on the Vietnam war movie goes awry, three big name Hollywood actors become embroiled with a heroin cartel run by a tyrannical 12-year-old (Brandon Soo H00) and are forced to become the soldiers they are portraying.
Excess is what Tropic Thunder specialises in. Director Ben Stiller has taken the template of his last directorial effort Zoolander and replaced fashion models with actors. Crazy as it seems, the egos here are even bigger and more fragile. The actorly stereotypes are ticked off one by one.
Any doubts that Robert Downey Jr is the best actor working in Hollywood are put to bed with his supreme comic performance, wherein he completely parodies Russell Crowe. Downey has publicly denied that his character, the oh-so-serious Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus, is based on the Gladiator star, but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming (the accent, the gestures and the pompous self-belief). To have the best role in a Vietnam war movie, Lazarus undergoes a ‘pigmentation-alteration procedure’, to make him black. When he is not impersonating the Aussie ham, Downey spends the rest of the movie ripping into Hollywood’s stereotypes of black characters. His musings, lifted from 705/805 US TV show The Jeffersons theme song about the state of the black man in America, combined with his analysis of acting, is a masterclass on how to take a character to the extreme and then jump over the edge.
In addition to Downey, Stiller plays an action star desperate to be taken seriously as an ‘actor’, and Jack Black is a comedian famous for farting his way through gross out comedies.
Like Stiller’s previous directorial effort, and despite an impressive list of film cameos (Matthew McConaughey and Tom Cruise among them), Tropic Thunder looks like it’s been plotted by a child simpleton, but most of the time you’ll be laughing too hard to notice, or care. (Kaleem Aftab)
I General release from Fri 79 Sep.
46 THE LIST 18 Sop—2 Oct 2008
COMEDY THE FOOT FIST WAY (15) 82min .0.
Getting a cinema release through the endorsement of Will Ferrell and his Anchorman/Tal/egeda Nights director Adam McKay. The Foot Fist Way is a low-budget mockumentary about a small-time martial arts training school. Made in 2006. the central role of inept tae kwon do instructor Fred Simmons is played by Danny McBride. who has since gone on to appear in Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder and his man-child routine makes it easy to see why Ferrell and McKay have taken him under their wing.
The Foot Fist Way is a decent enough, if somewhat repetitive attack on the misguided macho attitudes of Simmons. Beaten up by children and rejected by women. including his unfaithful wife Susie (Mary Jane Bostic). Simmons hits the skids until he takes a road trip to seek inspiration from his idol Chuck 'The Truck' Wallace. played by Ben Best. who co- wrote the film with director Jody Hill. The film inevitably feels more like an inspired home movie than a proper feature. without much in the way of plot development or a satisfying pay- off. While a breakthrough success for McBride and his knockabout pals. wider audiences may well feel that, like the unfortunate customers who pay Simmons for instruction. that they've been offered something rather less than their hard-won cash deserves. (Eddie Harrison)
I General release from Fri 26 Sep.
DRAMA LINI-IA DE PASSE (15) 113min 000
HORROR ZOMBIE STRIPPERS (18) 94min .0
There was a time in 70s cinema, and then again in 803 video. when putting the word ‘strippers‘ in the title made for a guaranteed moneymaker. Competition from the super- pornography-highway of the internet has put the kibosh on such suggestive marketing ploys. but in the head of your average novelty/cult filmmaker these techniques still carry their own retro cool logic. Such is the case with Jay Lee's Zombie Strippers. a soft- headed. softcore film starring porn superstar Jenna Jameson as Kat. a zombie stripper who doesn't let being undead stop her from undressing. Lee's film revolves around a government-created virus that accidentally alters the metabolism of the inhabitants of a gentleman's club called Rhino‘s. Attempting to cash in on the Shaun of the Dead splat-core comedy vibe. the gags involve exploding heads and body parts. and nothing more exciting to offer horror- genre sophisticates than the paltry bonus of an appearance by Robert Englund. (Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy). Still. Zombie Strippers does have a few incidental pleasures. not least through the conscious homage to Eugene lonesco‘s absurdist 1959 play Rhinoceros (Englund's strip-club boss is called Ian Esko). But if you want zombies and strippers in the same movie. Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror segment of Grindhouse is considerably sexier. gorier and funnier. (Eddie Harrison) I General release from Fri 79 Sep.
The title. Linha de Passe. refers to a Brazilian game where the players attempt to pass a football to one another without it touching the ground. Yet the phrase also echoes the dramatic structure of this 8210 Paulo-set film. which observes the everyday struggles of four half-brothers and their single pregnant mother Cleuza
(Sandra Corveloni).
Whilst the latter works as a maid for a wealthy family. 18-year—old Dario (Vinicius de Oliveira from Central Station) aspires to being signed up by a professional football team. although the competition is fierce and coaches routinely expect bribes from the hopefuls. Dinho (Jose Geraldo Rodrigues) has a job at a petrol station and is a committed member of a Pentecostal church. and the eldest sibling Denis (Joao Baldasserini) attempts to Support his child on his motorcycle courier earnings. Meanwhile. the youngest Reginaldo (Kaique Jesus Santos) is obsessed with tracking down his father. who is apparently a bus driver.
Co-directed by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries. Dark Water) and Daniela Thomas (Guns and Peace. Midnight) the gritty Linha de Passe offers a rejoinder to the nihilistic Brazilian guns-and-drugs sagas that have followed in the wake of the pioneering City of God. For the most part eschewing violence. the filmmakers allow their characters a degree of agency in their lives. despite the formidable obstacles in their selective paths. The schematic nature of the screenplay is offset by the impressive use of authentic locations across the sprawling. traffic- Choked city and the credibility of the performances from the mainly non—
professional cast. (Tom Dawson)
I GFT. Glasgow 8. Fl/ITi/iOtlSB, Edinburgh from Fri IQ Sep.