Fresh Loaf

CRITIC'S CHOICE: Viggo Mortensen as John Halder in 'Good'

Every year since 2000, the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival has reliably presented the diversity of movies by Jewish artists or otherwise reflecting the Jewish experience. This year, films relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict range from Alan Dershowitz’s legalistic documentary The Case for Israel to the family friendly drama The Little Traitor, starring Alfred Molina.

The 2009 festival runs Jan. 14-25 and includes 48 narrative and documentary features and shorts representing 20 nations. This year’s program particularly conveys the breadth of other art forms involving Jewish themes, as viewed through the prism of cinema. It’s like the filmmakers’ cameras stand on the foundation of Jewish culture.

One of festival’s highest-profile screenings is the Atlanta debut of Good (3 stars), an adaptation of a 1981 play by late English playwright C.P. Taylor. Viggo Mortensen plays John Halder, a German novelist and literary professor who understandably worries when his work draws the attention of Hitler’s government in the mid-1930s. A smooth-talking member of the Reich (RocknRolla’s Mark Strong) expresses interest in Halder’s treatment of euthanasia in a novel and asks the writer to draft a paper on the subject. (more…)

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If only home-grown fantasy film Delgo had hit — and left — theaters a little sooner, it could have qualified for our coveted Least Influential People of the 2008 award, assuming that the computer-animated alien title role qualifies as an “Atlantan.” The Fathom Studios production set a record for lowest-grossing film ever released on more than 2,000 screens, and, as The Onion A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin put it,

is rapidly becoming the stuff of pop-culture legend. Failed films are a dime a dozen but Delgo is perhaps the floppiest flop ever to saunter floppily into flopsville and become Dean Of Failure At Flopsville State University.

In fairness, the blame for Delgo’s failure should be laid on an overambitious distribution plan and an invisibility marketing and promotional scheme. Certainly 2008 saw plenty of significantly worse films, notably the following:

1. Speed Racer. The Wachowski Brothers’ overlong eyesore adaptation of the kitschy anime series left skidmarks on your retinas.

2. An American Carol. Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore is a ripe target for parody even for people who share his politics, but this July 4th themed Christmas Carol spoof trots out cameos from Bill O’Reilly and Paris Hilton. Can comedies apply for bailouts?

3. The Spirit. The year that hit the heights with such superb comic book adaptations as Iron Man and the Dark Knight also plumbed the depths with this misguided mix of the style of Sin City and the kitsch of the Adam West “Batman” series.

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HEART ATTACK: Eva Mendes as Sand Saref

TITLE: The Spirit

GENRE: Style-drunk superhero story

THE PITCH: After Central City cop Denny Colt (Gabriel Macht) dies but gets better, he becomes a masked avenger called the Spirit who takes on criminals such as the similarly indestructible Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) and seemingly countless femme fatales.

MONEY SHOTS: Nothing looks particularly good, but it’ll be hard to forget the Octopus and the Spirit fighting in a swamp and hitting each other with a toilet, a kitchen sink and a six-foot wrench. Louis Lombardi plays all of the Octopus’s moronic cloned henchman, including a tiny side effect that amounts to a head attached to a bouncing foot. Belly-dancing Plaster of Paris (Paz Vega) threatens the Spirit with sabers while he’s tied to a dental chair. Explosions leave sinister, octopus-like clouds.

BEST LINE: “Some day I’d love to do your autopsy,” Dr. Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulsen), the “good” love interest, tells the Spirit. (more…)

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Every year Comic-Con steals some of the thunder of Atlanta’s Dragon*Con (this year held Aug. 29-Sep. 1). The San Diego comic book, fantasy and all around geek showbiz convention has gradually become Hollywood’s unofficial venue for hyping genre projects. That neat-0 Iron Man trailer from last year, for instance, debuted at Comic-Con. A friend of mine who lives in Los Angeles and frequently attends Comic-Con said that the studio hype is getting a little out of hand: “This is the year that Hollywood Officially Ruined Everything.” I wasn’t there, but here are a few apparent highlights. (Any of you who did attend Comic-Con, please let us know what else looked cool.)

Pixar presented an extremely short teaser trailer for next year’s Up — which, based on the company’s track record, could be one of next year’s best movies. Up stars the voice of Ed Asner and has been called “”a Pixar-meets-Miyazaki art film version of About Schmidt,” so it could be the studio’s riskiest venture yet:

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