The Tillman Story: From gridiron to graveyard.

This week’s trio was found lounging in an unmarked file box, stuffed with DVD screeners and buried deep in the inner-recesses of my storage locker.

The Tillman Story (2010)

Director Amir Bar-Lev (My Kid Could Paint That) originally wanted to call his film I’m Pat F---ing Tillman — the last words spoken by the 27-year-old soldier, just moments after a bullet discharged by one of his own men pierced his chest. Pat was killed by “friendly fire,” military parlance for errant bullets that accidentally strike an ally during an attempt to engage enemy forces. Friendly fire accounted for numerous fatalities in the Iraq conflict. What made Tillman’s death an exception? Normally, it would be easy to attribute the reason he became a household name to America’s penchant for celebrity gawking. Pat Tillman would have been just another statistic were he not a star linebacker for Arizona State University and later the Arizona Cardinals. Who fired the shot or shots that killed Pat Tillman? The names of those accountable were redacted by the military and in all likelihood will never be made public. The Tillman Story is not interested in pinning blame on those who participated in fratricide. What gives the film its raw power is its honest depiction of a family that would not take yes for an answer.

It took a month for the Bush administration to get its act together and deliver their laudatory account of Tillman’s death to his parents. When faced with a similar situation, almost any other family would have accepted the medal and the government’s verdict. But Pat Tillman, Sr. refused to take the government’s version of his son’s death at face value. The harder the military tried to cover up the truth, the harder the Tillmans came at them. Mother Dannie’s efforts were uniformly dismissed. What does a woman know about combat? It wasn’t until Pat. Sr. peppered a salutation to military investigators with a four letter word that they began to take him seriously.

Unlike the military, the filmmakers resist the urge to conceal the truth, and instead present a warts-and-all depiction of the Tillmans. Wearing a t-shirt and armed with a beer, Kevin delivers a drunken, profanity-laced eulogy at his brother’s funeral that will give you chills. And listen carefully as one of Tillman’s friends randomly drops a bomb of his own by revealing rumors that his pal had ulterior motives and enlisted with a political future in mind. Bar-Lev told Filmmaker Magazine, “One of the projects involved in the film is taking him down off the mythological pedestal.” The director had his work cut out for him. In a strange way, the fact that Tillman didn’t die a hero’s death makes him appear all the more gallant. Rummy and the boys will undoubtedly view The Tillman Story as a sound career move. After all, how many football players succeed in making the transition to the big screen?

Going the distance (2010)

Labor Day 2010 marked an unprecedented occurrence in holiday movie openings. The trio of mainstream releases (The American, Machete, and Going the Distance) were all rated R. In each case, the films failed to live up to studio expectations, but at least the latter featured Drew Barrymore at her most appealing since Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You. After the drubbing it took at the box office, I recall fearing the actress would revert to the safety of PG-13 romantic comedies or Charlie’s Angels 3-14. If only. In the 12 years since Going the Distance threw in the towel, Barrymore has appeared in a mere five pictures, six if you count a vocal cameo in the Scream reboot. Before making her bid as the new Oprah Ellen Gifford, America’s pouty-lipped sweetheart began life as the ‘80s answer to Shirley Temple, playing opposite Spielberg’s other-worldly puppet in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. In the eyes of many, particularly TV followers with faulty memories, she hasn’t changed one bit. Doesn’t anyone remember Poison Ivy, Guncrazy, a spread in Playboy, or the blood soaked shower scene in Doppelganger?

The decision to shift from dirty girl to free spirit occurred somewhere around the time she flashed David Letterman on The Late Show. Following that, she’d done little more than rake in the dough with a couple of Charlie’s Angels pictures and a series of romcoms in which she carried an assortment of stand up comics and/or SNL types on her back: Adam Sandler (The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates), David Arquette (Never Been Kissed), Ben Stiller (Duplex), Jimmy Fallon (Fever Pitch) and ex-hubby Tom Green (Freddy Got Fingered). Going the Distance was the first R-rated Drew Barrymore picture in years. (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Donnie Darko didn’t qualify as starring roles.) Every romcom has a hook, and in this case it’s a long-distance relationship. The other major difference is that this time, it’s the female lead who is out of work at the movie’s outset. Erin (Barrymore) is a 31-year-old journalism student living in New York with only six weeks left before she has to return to grad school in San Francisco.

Garrett (Justin Long) is not cut out to partake in a committed relationship. He has a good job with a record company, but when his girlfriend’s birthday rolled around he forgot to buy her a gift and celebrated by ordering takeout. With that romance dead in the water, it’s time for Garrett to hit the bars in search of new love. The first thing he notices about Erin is that she’s a master of video games, the foundation for any great relationship. They go back to his place, where Garrett’s roommate Dan (Charlie Day) is kind enough to provide background music through the apartment’s paper-thin wall. The cheap laughs provided by Day and Jason Sudeikis (can’t Barrymore make one movie without an SNL alum?) have obviously been planted to make this more appealing to boyfriends, a breed generally eager to skip out on date-night chick flicks. Nanette Burstein and screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe (both making their feature film debuts) don’t have the confidence needed to stick to the romance and keep the raunchy comic relief to a minimum.

If anyone in the supporting cast deserves credit, it’s Matt Servitto and Christina Applegate. As Erin’s straight-faced, “I haven’t got time for you, girlie” editor, Servitto draws many a chuckle simply by furrowing his brow. And Applegate’s comedic chops are run through the wringer as Erin’s safeguarding and grievously mysophobic sister.

The scenes of the couples’ long distance longings are charmingly disengaging, particularly when both participants, eager to partake in phone sex, offer conflicting scenarios. What makes these segments (and most of the movie) work is the chemistry between off-screen lovers Barrymore and Long. But any chance of the romantic duo becoming their generation’s answer to Tracy and Hepburn were dashed to bits by the film’s measly performance at the box office.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010)

Andrew Sarris, the man who introduced American audiences to the auteur theory, once observed, “Directors, writers, actors (even critics) do not always run true to form, and the critic can never assume that a bad director will always make a bad film. No, not always, but almost always, and that is the point. What is a bad director but a director who has made many bad films?” Those three sentences, and the promise of enlightenment they hold, have drawn me to more unmemorable movies than I care to recall. If what Sarris says holds true, Jon Turtletaub is about as bad as they come. When The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was released, he had directed eight features, all for various branches of the Walt Disney Empire. He was generally assigned to kidpics (3 Ninjas, Cool Runnings, The Kid) and lightweight, but equally unrewarding adult fare (Instinct and the contaminated While You Were Sleeping). The one picture that kept me coming back for more was Phenomenon, but it had nothing to do with finding the cinematic pearl amidst the swine. Any director who signs his name to a film that posits John Travolta as a genius instantly commands my attention.

Tutrletaub partnered with mega-producer/popcorn salesman Jerry Bruckheimer in 2004 for the first of two Nicolas Cage actioners. It took days to restore feeling in my legs after National Treasure so naturally I shied away from its sequel. So why waste my time on another Cage/Bruckheimer/Disney production? Cheap laughs? Satirical contempt? Air conditioning? I’ll argue that over half of the films released each year, particularly during the summer months, are geared for 14-year-old boys, but with the exception of a few patently condescending 3D cartoons, there isn’t much in the way of passable family fare. Not that I have children — something for which you should all give daily thanks — but if I did, this would be a great way to kill two hours in a theater. If you don’t go in expecting something along the lines of Planet of the Apes, my sentimental favorite father-and-son bonding movie, you just might be surprised how breezy it is.

The story began as a tribute to the revered “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” sequence from Fantasia, and the CG recreation of the menacing mops and buckets is quite spectacular. Even more impressive is a delirious chase through Chinatown where a paper dragon magically transforms into a fire breathing menace spewing rectangular multi-colored bits of confetti that gracefully somersault to earth. The plot has something to do with Cage as an ancient but eternally buff master sorcerer trying to prevent the release of two evil spirits (destined to wipe out civilization as we know it) from a nesting egg. Jay Baruchel plays the wizard-to-be, a gangly physics major who is introduced to his master in the form of a peppy extended sight gag. He follows a love note — containing an answer from the girl of his dreams — as the wind magically whisks it through the streets of Manhattan. The lion’s share of the credit for quickening the film with rich mahogany tones and luxurious trappings goes to former Abel Ferrera DP Bojan Bazelli and Naomi Shohan and her team of production designers and art directors. When all else fails, as it frequently does in contemporary cinema, I have long since learned to get by on maddeningly detailed sets lit with an equally complex visual style that causes me to lose track of the plot in favor of the pictures. Besides, a person doesn’t expect anything that even comes close to “style as subject” in a Jerry Bruckheimer production, so I’m grateful for what I get.

Up until Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans helped bring about a return to form, Nicolas Cage appeared in an embarrassingly long run of brain numbing, big-budget action pictures. He’s fine as the over-stimulated Balthazar, and if nothing else, he deserves our respect for going up against what amounts to the dirtiest hairpiece this side of Tom Sizemore’s schmate in Strange Days. Very little of the film’s budget appears to have gone into designing and dry cleaning Cage’s stringy rug, which appears to have been laundered in a gefilte fish broth shampoo followed by a goose grease conditioner. In this case, the casting coup goes to Jay Baruchel in the part originally created by Mickey Mouse. Baruchel was very appealing in a couple of memorable comedies (Knocked Up, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), yet between this and She’s Out of My League, it appears that the skinny, squishy-faced 27-year-old actor is destined to play juvenile Don Knotts prototypes for a few more years to come. Honestly, I am shocked how much I enjoyed this picture. I kept thinking of Big Trouble in Little China, another visually sumptuous roller coaster that didn’t meet with critical acclaim or — in the case of John Carpenter’s film, at least — financial success.