Review of 'Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work'

America takes Joan Rivers for granted. And why wouldn't it -- she won't go away!

That's the yin and yang of "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," the undeniably fascinating and entertaining documentary that looks at the audacious entertainer in the seventy-fifth year of her life. It is a portrait of a woman who refuses to retire, who can't accept irrelevancy and who is desperate for mass attention.

It is also the story of a woman who has broken ground for hundreds of female comics who've ridden in her wake -- yes, Kathy Griffin and Sarah Silverman, we're all looking at you -- but who's garnered almost no respect as a result.

This probably has something to do with the fact that she's willing to endorse just about anything anyone wants to sell -- not just for the money, understand, but also as a way of keeping her own name in the spotlight. In this manner Rivers, 77, has managed to both promote and undercut herself over a lifetime.

As the year of the documentary begins, Rivers' career is on the skids. She bemoans a calendar filled with blank pages, pages she wishes were filled with TV and radio interviews, concert gigs, her own TV show, whatever.

Then writer-directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg (who usually work with more political fare; these aren't celebrity profilers) begin bouncing back and forth between Rivers' extraordinary career and her up-and-down-and-up year.

In historical terms, Rivers is really one of the grand old stand-ups, a late evolver out of the vaudevillian-Borscht Belt comic tradition. It's no coincidence that she and Don Rickles have been performing in concert together for years -- they're cut from the same old-fashioned cloth.

But it's also apparent that Rivers brought -- and still brings -- a shocking amount of Lenny Bruce edginess along with that tradition. She was doing abortion jokes in the '70s -- who's even doing abortion jokes now?

The great kick of this film is its reminder of the blazing speed of this woman's wit; she literally bowls Johnny Carson over with one retort. Few comics have ever been so on.

Except in the here and now of the film, she's pretty off, at least in popularity. She's finishing a play that she'll open in England, and if it's a hit, she'll bring it back to New York. And there's a roast she's dreading that's coming up on Comedy Central where she knows she'll get buried in plastic surgery jokes.

And she and her daughter Melissa have agreed to be on this NBC reality show with Donald Trump, "The Apprentice." She'll probably be kicked off after just a few episodes, but it's face time on prime time network TV, so it's worth it for the exposure.

As it turns out, it's very worth it.

The film's greatest moments, of course, are the least expected. Rivers' longtime manager just disappears halfway through with no explanation. She and her dandied-up grandson deliver a Thanksgiving dinner to a shut-in and the woman turns out to be a formerly hot, cutting-edge photographer now confined to a wheelchair; Rivers is devastated.

And when a heckler at some casino in the boonies yells out that a joke about Helen Keller isn't funny because his son is deaf, Rivers lashes out at him with a fury that's near heartbreaking, as if she's defending a lifetime spent on the edge of bad taste, begging audiences to laugh with her at everything that isn't very funny at all.

"Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" finds much to admire in the contradictory soul of its subject, but then it's hard not to. Yes, Joan Rivers is for sale. Why wouldn't she be?

Review of 'Toy Story 3'

More than with any other Pixar film, there's an edge and sadness that clings to "Toy Story 3," even as it's bouncing from one zany situation to the next or trotting out some impossibly cute toy character.

And it's not simply the horror movie tones throughout, although the terrifying Big Baby with its half-closed eye and brain-dead demeanor could easily front a "Child's Play" revival.

It's the angst and abandonment, the existential pain hanging over the whole darn thing, as well as the film's ugly, over-riding question: Are we all just useless in the end?

Wait -- this is a kids' movie?

Well, sure it is ... sort of. You've got Sheriff Woody (Tom Hanks) and Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and all the other wonderful toys come to life, and as always they're having big adventures and there are close calls and great escapes and big mistakes that lead to even bigger laughs.

And it's both visually and verbally dazzling, make no mistake about that (although the 3-D effects here are nothing special simply because the movie looks so good in the first place). Pixar married the world of modern computer animation and sophisticated storytelling with the original "Toy Story" in 1995, and since then it has been the hands-down leading studio of any kind in Hollywood.

It has never made a film that could be considered close to weak; most have been outright great. "Toy Story 3" continues that tradition.

See it by all means, although if you're bringing a small child be aware that there are indeed scary situations (although a very small child might not even understand what makes them so scary). It is a wonderful film.

But it is by no means a light film. In fact, in many ways, before it opts to dive into a great pool of sentiment at the end, it is a deeply dark film.

Andy (John Morris), owner of our beloved toys, is now 17 and going off to college. The toys have sat abandoned in a chest for many years now waiting for Andy to play with them. He hasn't.

They fear the future. The garbage can? Storage in the attic? It seems unlikely he'll take them to college.

Andy decides to take Woody to college -- brave freshman he is -- and store the rest of the gang in the attic. Unfortunately, he tosses them into a garbage bag and Mom (Laurie Metcalf) thinks that means garbage.

But the toys escape to a box to be donated to a local daycare center. What could be better for a toy? Unlimited access to kids!

Unfortunately, the kids our toys end up with are too young and brutal. And the daycare center turns out to be a house of horrors ruled over by a psychopathic Teddy Bear named Lotso (Ned Beatty). Cue the screaming.

No, don't, it's not all that grisly, and Sheriff Woody comes to the somewhat shaky rescue. But things get crazy. And the crazy makes it all the more rewarding.

The standout newcomers are undoubtedly Barbie (Jodi Benson) and Ken (Michael Keaton), probably making more sense for parents than kids. That's OK, parents will be so shaken by the subtext here they'll need the laughs.

But don't fear. Our toys aren't that much different than useless Carl Fredricksen in "Up" or useless Wall-E in "Wall-E," the two previous Pixar films, both of whom proved pretty useful.

Heart dictates function in a Pixar world; if you have one, you have the other. And really, who would argue?

No one with a heart, obviously.

Review of 'The Karate Kid'

It's a blatant and obvious remake of a corny classic, its title now makes no sense whatsoever, and it's been reconfigured as something of a 'tween scream machine.

But none of that matters.

The bottom line is "The Karate Kid" is precisely the sort of rousing, stand-up-and-cheer, feel-good entertainment movie audiences have been starved for this summer. It's a fish-out-of-water, underdog-winner that's unapologetically commercial and ready to rock.

It also offers more solid proof of genetics than any 100 textbooks ever could in the person of young Jaden Smith, son of superstar Will. Yes, this entire project was built to put Jaden in the best possible light, but there's no getting around it -- the kid is a natural born movie star.

Most importantly, though, "The Karate Kid" is "The Karate Kid" -- a classic commercial, smash hit of a movie.

Except for the Kung Fu thing. And the Chinese thing. And the black thing. And the wax on, wax off thing.

No, seriously, it really is "The Karate Kid." It's just the tweaked "Karate Kid."

This kid is 12 years old, he's black, he's from Detroit (Yo!) and his name is Dre (Smith). And right off the bat he's moving to China with his mother (Taraji P. Henson), where she's landed a job with a car company.

Once there, though, Dre runs into some middle school Kung Fu bullies who, for unspecified reasons, decide to make him their personal punching bag. Turns out tough attitude and a couple of scrawny fists aren't much good against bigger kids being coached by a fascist martial arts master, as these bullies are.

Dre has sporadic happy moments with a cute violin prodigy named Meiying (big-smiling Wenwen Han) -- this is the 'tween dream stuff -- but finds himself on the wrong end of sure annihilation when he suddenly discovers his apartment's handyman, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan, shining like he hasn't in years), is a Kung Fu master.

Hey, everybody knows where this is going. But getting there is the fun. The montage scenes. The mundane chore that becomes a hidden lesson. The mystical revelations. The road trip.

The road trip here is a bit more exotic than in the original film, obviously, this being China; although the mysticism is a bit more subdued. And Mr. Han is given a bit of tragic back story that lets both Chan and Smith stretch.

Still, you know the whole thing is building toward the Kung Fu tournament in which Dre will show his newfound skills at the end. And you can't help but roll along with it.

That said, it's a little hard to see what director Harald Zwart ("Pink Panther 2," "Agent Cody Banks") brings to the party beyond the film's somewhat dull look, and it seems as if the movie takes too long getting to Chan's character, at which point it picks up a lot of steam.

"The Karate Kid" may not be great filmmaking, but a lot of parents are going to enjoy taking their kids to see it, as well they should. And those kids are going to cheer. As well they should.

'Splice' review

Daring, disturbing and deliciously twisted, "Splice" is an innovative jolt of a movie arriving as it does in the midst of the somewhat formulaic summer blockbuster season.

A sci-fi horror film that knows rules are made to be broken and then broken again, this film still adheres to many of the genre's dearest conventions -- the monster as innocent, humans as the real terrors, the price of messing with Mother Nature -- while nudging its narrative ever outward in astounding ways.

What starts out as a modern "Frankenstein" ends up in uncharted sexual-psychodrama territory. Take that you silly vampires.

The first indication that this isn't your typical scare flick comes in the casting. It's not often you find an Oscar-winning actor in this sort of genre film, but there's Adrien Brody ("The Pianist").

Even more impressively, there's actress-director and Oscar-nominated writer Sarah Polley alongside him. Polley ("The Sweet Hereafter," "Go," "My Life Without Me," she wrote and directed "Away From Her") may be the most reliable talent in film -- if her name is attached it's probably worth seeing.

The two play Clive and Elsa, supremely successful nerd scientists, famed for their work with genetic material, including splicing together the DNA of different animal species. Their work for a giant pharmaceutical corporation has been groundbreaking, but their extensive laboratory is about to be taken from them as the push comes to turn their discoveries into moneymaking applications.

Knowing time is running out, Elsa decides to take the plunge with the one experiment that is forbidden -- the mixing of human and animal DNA. To the couple's surprise, the experiment works, and soon a creature like no other is born and growing at an exponential rate.

The girl -- who has characteristics of a bird and an amphibian as well as those of a human -- is dubbed Dren (that's nerd spelled backward). As played by Abigail Chu when young and the French actress Delphine Chaneac when grown, the creature is an innocent who begins exhibiting intelligence early on and then takes on social characteristics.

Meanwhile, Elsa and Clive themselves are slowly revealed through their interactions with Dren, and the audience's sympathies take to ricocheting between the three characters -- everyone's vulnerable, everyone's imperfect, everyone's hurting. Everyone's a monster.

Splice was written by Vincenzo Natali, Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor and directed by Natali with such a sure, human hand that it's easy to wonder why he isn't better known (he's actually a Detroit native who made 1997's "Cube").

One of Natali's best decisions was not to lean completely on special effects for Dren. Chaneac especially brings an empathy to the creature that no computer could.

The topicality of the subject matter is indisputable -- there are probably more scientists sneaking around labs with test tubes of mixed DNA at this very moment than anyone wants to admit. But at the same time, the classic matter of man messing with mortality makes the story applicable to any audience of the past century.

The great thing about "Splice," though, is that Natali goes beyond the science and makes the drama as human as it is ethical. These aren't just people pushing us into a brave new world; these are seriously messed up people pushing us into a brave new world.

And that, of course, is always the problem.