The Rub

MOVIE REVIEW: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

2008-12-29T20:39:00.002-06:00

Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett,Taraji P. Henson
Director: David Fincher
Release Date: December 25, 2008
Running Time: 165 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Paramount Pictures

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Every movie made employs the use of some sort of gimmick. Some are smaller than others and they don’t always work but whether it is the cast, the special effects, or something else, every filmmaker uses some device that they hope will allow their movie to rise above their contemporaries. In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button the gimmick is the story. A baby is born with the appearance and all of the physical limitations of an old man who ages backwards through life. It’s really a fascinating premise that, beyond its initial intrigue, stirs a lot of questions. How would one operate under the construction of backwards aging? How would you let it shape your everyday life? On a deeper level, how would you deal with the inevitability of loss in your life that would be compounded by that very construction? It is in the films attempt to answer these questions that you will find its true appeal.

At first glance, this film seems like a fairly odd film choice for director David Fincher. The styles of his previous films were consistently dark and stylish, in story and design. So why would a director who made his name with films like Fight Club, Se7en, and Zodiac opt for a character driven fairy tale? For starters, he is one of probably a handful of directors with the ability to handle the special effects needed to properly translate the required images to the screen while being able to balance them against the story. If the main device of the movie is the setup, then right behind it would be how the effects were handled. Technologically, the film is a masterpiece. Throughout the film we see Benjamin (Brad Pitt) at every point in his life, from grave to cradle. Almost every scene features Pitt at various ages other than his own and you are left with no choice other than to believe it – it is just that seamless. In an early scene you see a child’s body with the 80 year old face of Brad Pitt and you believe it. It is obvious enough to notice but subtle enough for you not to care. It’s only after the film is over do you start to wonder how it was done. The greatest compliment I can give the film is never once are you taken out of the story because of the effects.

The movie’s main conviction is that love transcends all things related to time. While still having the appearance of an old man but only ten or so years old in actual age, he meets Daisy, a young girl whose grandmother lives in the nursing home where he has grown up. During her many visits the two form a bond and play as children. As he gets old enough, or young enough in this case, to leave the house and begin living his life on his own, the two cross paths at intermittent times in each of their lives, all while Daisy (Cate Blanchett) grows older and Benjamin continues growing younger. The emotional weight of the movie is created in the conflict of the opposing directions of their aging. With the foundation firmly in place, the payoff is that much richer when they are finally able to be together. While this is where most love stories would end, they are still forced to contend with the predestination of his condition and its certain consequences.

Aging, love, and loss are things that we all must deal with at some point in our lives and death is an inevitability we all face. Benjamin is no different – he only takes a different path to get there. Or as it is put into perspective for him at one point in his life, “Sugar, we all end up in diapers.” We, of the normally aging variety also have a definite end to our lives; we just don’t know when. A lot of people, like me, would say they prefer it that way, opting for the comfort of attempting to live each day like it is your last, or some other hackneyed brand of optimism. Like most pieces of advice from the bumper sticker pulpit, it is better in principle than execution. In reality all it does is allows us the excuse, the sin, of procrastination because anything we don’t accomplish today can just wait until tomorrow. Benjamin isn’t afforded that opportunity. His life has a finite end laid out; he is just given a bit more notice than the rest of us and the path he chooses with this knowledge in his possession is what makes the film so great.

Sprawling epic stories like this have the tendency to drag on in spots, but even at almost 3 hours, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button moves at the pace of a film half as light. Screenwriter Eric Roth took some liberties adapting the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s original short story, but wisely chose to steer clear planting Benjamin in the moments of historical circumstance that he did with Forrest Gump (which he also wrote). Doing so would have diminished the significance of the struggles Benjamin faced throughout the film undoing what it had spent so much time trying to accomplish. In other words, it would have been a disaster. Instead, historical moments were sparingly used as to merely anchor the story and depict the passing of time.

One could surmise that the gimmick of Benjamin’s aging is what drives the movie, rendering it less effective. It is true that therein lies the framework of the story, but the movie rises above cliché not because of the gimmick but because of the choices he is forced to make because and in spite of his condition. We should all be so wise.

And there's the rub.

**** out of ****

MOVIE REVIEW: Valkyrie

2008-12-27T20:34:00.003-06:00

Starring: Tom Cruise, Tom Wilkinson, Terrance Stamp, Eddie Izzard
Director: Bryan Singer
Release Date: December 25, 2008
Running Time: 120 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: United Artists

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Fundamentally speaking, the appeal of Tom Cruise in the last few years doesn’t make any sense. Just as soon as he took Katie Holmes hostage and started parading her and her ‘too scared for escape’ look around the world, people seem to have become disinterested in anything he has to do professionally; or so they say. Sure he was great in Tropic Thunder, but I’m talking about the movies he has had to carry on his own. Everyone seems to talk a big game but with the exception of last year’s Lions for Lambs, you have to go all the way back to Magnolia, almost a decade ago, to find a film he starred in that didn’t gross at least $100M domestically. So much for disinterest. Maybe he just has mind control over all of us too.

Keep in mind; these aren’t secrets I am exposing for the first time, so why his pick for his latest project was a big budget WWII Hitler assassination movie is beyond comprehension. For a man so caught up on selling his image, it stands to reason that there would be better ways to spend his time. It ended up being much worse than it appeared on the surface. The release date moved so much nobody cared when it was really coming out and as soon as the trailers came out the backlash was already in full effect.

Now about that – if you decided upon viewing the trailer that you weren’t going to like the movie because of the American accents, then seeing the movie then complaining about the accents seems a bit counterproductive. Find something else to complain about; or at least, find something more. Yes, it is distracting. Yes, it would have been better had they at least tried, or not replaced them with a handful of soggy Brits. But again, all things we knew from the trailer months ago. So as for you, Mr. 800 lbs Gorilla, if you are going to stay in here you are going to have to sit there with your mouth shut – you’ve been addressed. Let’s move on.

The aesthetics may take the spotlight, but the movie actually has a pretty interesting plot. I suppose it’s less a plot than history lesson, depicting the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Conceived by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise) who had become disenfranchised with the way Nazi Germany was handling the war, Operation Valkyrie was a plan, of Hitler’s design, that would impliment an interim government in the event of his death. So all Stauffenberg had to do was select the people to run his shadow government, devise the plan to have Hitler killed, and initiate Operation Valkyrie to reinstate the image of his holy Germany. It’s not a bad setup, but even the movie knows it’s a little too tidy, where at one point someone is heard saying the line, “It’s a military operation – nothing goes according to plan.”

The good news is that it plays out like a cross-section of WWII history. The bad news is that it plays out exactly like a cross-section of WWII history. There are too many wheels in motion long before we even get sat down in the theatre. Think of it as joining our regularly scheduled World War already in progress. Director Bryan Singer attempts to hit the ground running showcasing his greatest strength – action, but as the movie barrells ahead there is a lot of groundwork that needs laid before any real action or tension can take place. It finally does in the second hour and when it gets going it ends up being a pretty serviceable war thriller.

It’s like mowing the yard when you were younger on the family’s beat up old mower. You know, the one you had to crank a half-dozen times to get it started. It worked fine once you got it started; it was just a pain in the ass getting there. Once you get passed all the preconceptions about the movie it’s really not that bad. Not great, but not terrible. That is, if you can get passed the accents.

And there’s the rub.

** ½ out of ****

MOVIE REVIEW: Frost/Nixon

2008-12-24T20:28:00.001-06:00

Starring: Michael Sheen, Frank Langella, Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell
Director: Ron Howard
Release Date: December 25, 2008
Running Time: 122 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Universal Pictures

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In 1977, just a few years removed from the only resignation by a U.S. President in the history of our country, Richard Nixon agreed to be interviewed by a moderately successful British TV personality, David Frost. Over the course of 28 hours of interviews Nixon eventually apologized for the scandals of his administration. Not before or since has Nixon publicly addressed the issues surrounding Watergate.

Take a second to let that sink in. It’s only been 30 years since the interviews but the way we get our news today has changed so drastically that a news event like this would be impossible to achieve in today’s news environment. The advent of the internet and the 24-hour cable news channel has completely changed the way we get our news. But in 1977, when network anchors ruled the news on the Big Three, a foreign journalist against the odds scored what is still today considered the most important political interview ever.

Frost/Nixon was adapted from the 2007 Broadway play of same name that focused on the interviews and the preparation leading up to them. The outcome of the interviews is what made them as successful as they have become, but any time you have a movie based on actual events, the conclusion ends up being irrelevant. Since that element is removed as the dramatic driving force, the filmmakers had to rely on good old fashion storytelling and performances to push the film.

The meat of the story is obviously the interviews themselves, but equally as interesting is everything that happens that leads up to the climax. It wasn’t a simple matter of asking for and conducting an interview. The whole production was the brainchild of David Frost (Michael Sheen), conceived on a whim without full knowledge of what he was up against. It was a ratings stunt, nothing more. His offer is $500,000, besting the offer from CBS. He is talked into a larger price. As he begins to realize the process it became apparent that financially, he was in over his head. He was going to be in for everything he had and without investors and ad revenue, there was a chance the interviews would never take place and he would be bankrupt in the process. At the same time, the realization starts to set in that more than ratings, he has the opportunity to give Nixon (Frank Langella) “the trail he never had” since Gerald Ford gave him full pardon after he entered office. Nixon, convinced by his handlers that Frost was intellectually inferior, intended to use the interviews to get his name back into the political arena. Well, that and money. Even in retirement Nixon was shown to be driven by greed. So much so that, in an unprecedented move then and an unthinkable one today, Nixon agreed to appear on camera without pre-interview preparation or knowledge beforehand of the questions. All he knew were the general topics to be covered and in what time frame.

The interviews provided the drama of a couple of gladiators trading swings of the sword. Much the same way the best parts of The Silence of the Lambs were watching the interaction between Clarice and Dr. Lector, we get to see two competing ends of the spectrum try to outwit each other in a game of cat and mouse. While Frost attempted to swing for the fence with his opening question: “Why didn’t you burn the tapes?”, Nixon’s charismatic defense of anything that had any bite to it proved the approach ineffective. The confident smugness of Nixon, the way he baited Frost, almost playfully, like he wanted Frost to come after him, made you root against him. The way he attempted to convince Frost that the word “corrupt” didn’t mean what he thought it meant, so long as his heart and intentions were pure reminded us of another slippery President that tried to mince words and create his own definitions in the last fifteen years. All of it made you want Frost to bury him if he could, but when the moment came where he began to candidly discuss admissions regarding Watergate, I can’t say that you feel too sorry for him, but he isn’t completely demonized either. For that you can credit Langella’s soon-to-be-Oscar-nominated performance and the writing by Peter Morgan. And the fact that Ron Howard made on of the best movies he ever has.

For as good as the direction, writing, and performances are, I still maintain that the most fascinating part of the movie is the fact that for as recently as the events occurred, the same thing would never happen today. For one, there is less mystery with today’s politicians. Everybody knows about everything they want to know and if someone IS hiding something it takes about ten seconds for it to be all over the fifteen news channels and hundreds of websites. But, perhaps because of the actual Frost/Nixon interviews, there is no way you would ever be able to get an interviewee to agree to the terms Nixon agreed to: no advance knowledge of the questions, sole control over content, etc. No, those days, if they were ever here under normal circumstances, are long gone. Everybody is too interested in making themselves look as good as possible in the public eye to put themselves out there like that. And too many other people have too much to lose or gain to give that amount of control to one person. There’s a word for that, I can’t quite remem–

Oh yeah: politics.

And there’s the rub.

**** out of ****

MOVIE REVIEW: Synecdoche, New York

2008-11-25T20:21:00.002-06:00

Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Release Date: October 24, 2008
Running Time: 124 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Sony Picture Classics

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On a personal level, I consider Charlie Kaufman the most talented working screenwriter in Hollywood. I don’t think I am alone in this thought. His resume is one of impressive and envious of anyone in the past however many years you want to use to quantify it. It is one thing to craft a story with intelligent structure and dialogue. It is another thing altogether to create entire universes that have a distinct taste and smell to them. When you sit down to watch a Kaufman scripted film, there is an expected level of chaos and disorder. Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind – all of these films have a wildly imaginative subject and scope, which is exactly the reasons we love them so much.

Synecdoche, New York marks Kaufman’s directorial debut and to the general movie-going public it will amount to little more than a confusing movie with a confusing title. Fans of his work will draw pretty much the same conclusion. On one hand it is an almost unapproachably pretentious movie with a title that is difficult to pronounce (‘si-NEK-duh-kee’, by the way). On the other hand it is a movie that sort of transcends explanation. That’s not a movie critic cop-out, it just has many, many layers beyond its face value.

On the surface it is about a theatre director making a play. Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has had moderate professional success while everything else in his life seems to be failing on all levels. His wife Adele (Catherine Keener) goes to Germany on vacation with their daughter and never returns. He thinks he is dying at every turn, his therapist might be crazier than he is, and his life is chalked full of failed relationships. With his wife Adele, his daughter, a string of female encounters, his body, his feces. He receives a prestegious grant that allows him the financial freedom to create his theatrical masterpiece on the stage. He sets out to gain an understanding of his life and the reasons pieces of it are always failing. The result is a never ending production of his own life, with no audience, that is built to scale in a warehouse in New York with actors and actresses playing everyone he is associated with, including himself, playing out in real time. All the time. For more than twenty years. As with any piece of self reflection, the deeper you dig the more you unearth. Caden’s solution is to sift through the confusion by piling on more. As events happen in his real life, he hires actors to replay the scenarios in voyeuristic fashion so he can observe his own misteps.

Like any other movie born of the Kaufman mind, the perception of reality is tweaked and bent until it is almost broken. Amidst the confusion it is really a story about a man who is afraid of dying without making his mark on the world. It is about a man who wants to overcome his failures, or at least understand how and why they exist, both real and perceived. A lot of writers draw from themselves at some point or another – it makes sense being the subject they are most familiar with – but Kaufman takes the unpopular approach of airing all his insecurities and dysfunctions through his characters for the audience to experience with him. It is not only self-referential but self-depreciating. There is a brutal honesty, almost an indignity, through the lens which we view his reflection. It would come across as pretension if there weren’t pieces of all of us in his view of himself. We all feel the same insecurities; they just manifest themselves differently in the Kaufman universe. Think of it as Woody Allen in an altered state and you’ll be close.

It is easy to become suffocated by the neurosis on display if there weren’t truth in them. Kaufman has a way of cutting so deeply into his subjects that he surpasses gimmickry and enters a level of honesty that others wouldn’t dare approach. I wont even try to claim that I understood everything in the movie. Even with multiple viewings certain parts of it just are what they are, without explanation. And it may be the least accessible film than the previous entries associated with the Kaufman brand but if you can get passed the perceived vanity and allow yourself to be receptive to its message you might end up surprising yourself at just how normal the whole thing ends up being.

And there’s the rub.

*** ½ out of ****

MOVIE REVIEW: Twilight

2008-11-21T08:14:00.002-06:00

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Release Date: November 21, 2008
Running Time: 121 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributor: Summit Entertainment

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The best part about being a film critic is that my sole purpose as it pertains to this site is to give my opinion. There are a few more subtleties that go into it, but for all intents and purposes my responsibility to the reader doesn’t go much farther than telling you what I think about movies. People read reviews to determine whether or not to see a particular movie and, for me, the beauty of it is that there is no wrong answer. I tell you what I think and you make up your own mind. Movies like Twilight come along every so often that make my job that much easier. I could tell you the middle hour is ruined by a subplot involving a dancing one-legged hobo fornicating with members of the Catholic Church for money and you would shrug it off and see it anyway.

I have reserved the right of non-participation in the growing recreational activity of Twilight bashing that has become so popular in the past few months. Attacking the mob mentality of zealous fans is a bandwagon that would be an easy target to jump on, but I haven’t any level of education on the subject to warrant my involvement in such practices. The Twilight fan base, loyal, loud and proud as they are, has been forced to defend their passion to those that have, raising the pitch to a deafening level. So we are left with this game of back and forth that doesn’t really amount to anything because no one had seen the movie, thereby rendering the basis of everyone’s arguments – from both sides – invalid by default.

Well I have seen it and I have good news and bad news. The good news is there really aren’t any hobos. The bad news is the movie really isn’t that good either. I would be remiss if I didn’t qualify the review by saying I have not read the books. To be honest, I hadn’t even heard of them before starting to write for this site. I only say that for the sake of disclosure but it has no bearing on my ability to enjoy the movie. Look at the film adaptation of any book; if they are good, they are good in their own right – the film shouldn’t come with pre-requisite reading. Books are made into films because it is assumed the story will carry the film. The problem with Twilight is no matter how you look at it, it just doesn’t.

You all know the story, but for the few that don’t, I’ll quickly bring you up to speed. Bella (Kristen Stewart) moves to small town Washington to live with her father and meets the mysterious Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) who happens to be a vampire whose family lives secretly among the townspeople of Forks, Washington. Edward saves Bella from a near death experience and the two begin to fall in love. She finds out what he is – doesn’t care – and the two embark on a romantic journey that eventually endangers her life leaving him and his family to save her. I take no offense to the story itself, but it is very awkward and kind of unbelievable. Not ‘awkward’ as in teenagers falling in love is always a little clumsy, and not because he is a vampire and she should be scared of him (although mildly, but I can get on board with the ‘love conquers all’ motif), but the pacing is such that it takes for-EVER to get going and by the time they actually come to trust one another and fall in love it seems like they had been fighting it for nothing and now they are so swiftly and madly in love it just doesn’t make sense. I am even willing to give a pass by assuming pieces of the book were left out in lieu of a two hour run time but I can’t help an overall feeling of, well, awkwardness. It doesn’t help that the performances in the movie were laughable at times (literally, the crowd I was with laughed way too many times when it was supposed to be sincere on screen); only Pattinson showed fleeting moments of ability. His fans may be on to something because with the right material, I can see him becoming one hell of a leading man. Sadly for most of the Twilight he was resigned to looking creepy and uncomfortable. I understand what he was going for, it just didn’t work.

There have been a lot of comparisons drawn between Twilight and the Harry Potter series. Both are teen fantasy dramas based on insanely popular books with an even wilder fan base. I don’t want to start the whole Harry Potter vs. Twilight argument, but on the basis of overall appeal, there is a reason the Harry Potter films are more widely accepted that goes beyond its box office totals. The special effects are incredible (more on that in a minute) but the stories themselves are what draw the most attention. It would be easy for non-fans to dismiss them both because they don’t like stories of wizards or vampires. But strip them down to their fundamental story elements for a minute. If you take the wizardry and magic of Harry Potter out of the equation, you are left with the story of an orphan involved in a struggle with the man who killed his parents while trying to overthrow the evil surrounding him in order to free his people. It’s your basic revenge story with a splash of good vs. evil. That’s pretty heady stuff for a set of children’s books. Adults buy into the themes because they are basic enough to promote some form of emotional investment. That and they are the basis of countless great stories from film and print and something they are familiar with. Add back in your wizards and magic and kids are immediately drawn to the aesthetics of the story. All the sudden you have a story that people on a variety of levels can identify with that is worthy of their attachment.

Twilight is in the same boat except when you follow the same exercise you realize it’s got a lot of filler and sort of relies on the gimmick to propel the story. Remove the vampires from the story and you are left with the story the new girl in school that falls in love with a guy. They have some basic ‘Romeo and Juliet’ complications that could prevent them from being together but on the whole it is a teenage love story. I have absolutely no problem with that, but in terms of broad appeal it just doesn’t stack up when you look at the big picture. I thought the exact same thing when I watched Brokeback Mountain. I enjoyed the film, for the performances more than anything, but when you take away the theme of homosexuality, the element that made the film as notable as it was, and tell it as a basic love story the same way and it just doesn’t hold up. I know what you’re thinking, “Who cares?” My point is that when you add a layer of fanaticism it should be to compliment the stories not quantify them. When you start adding pieces to the story for the sake of dressing it up you are left with little more than the lipstick on a pig analogy.

I heard complaints coming out of my screening that the movie would have been better with improved special effects. I would caution the use of that as an excuse because good movies come from story telling. Not every movie has a Lord of the Rings effects budget and I don’t discredit the film for its effects. I was actually rather impressed with what they were able to accomplish without them. You start talking about adding in high dollar effects and we are back to the previous examples. The movie isn’t any better or worse because of them. And as someone who hasn’t read the books I can’t speak for what may or may not have been left from the book, nor do I care. The books may be the greatest thing in print since the bible but if you made a movie about that and left out the part about the resurrection it wouldn’t be half good either and no one would care.

I’ll be honest; I wish I liked Twilight more than I did. The fans have proven that they are nothing if not impassioned and very protective of their baby. To feel that strongly about something, however blind and misguided, is sort of endearing and actually left me a little envious. That being said, I saw Twilight at a midnight showing amidst a sea of electrified Twilight fans. They were an eager and vocal group but approachable. I talked to a row of girls sitting next to me before the film started and they told me all about how they loved the books and thought Pattinson was the dreamiest thing on wheels but they worried the movie wouldn’t live up to their expectations. There is something to be said for fans of the material – not just ill tempered critics like me – having reservations about their beloved books not adapting well to the screen.

In the second half of the movie I began watching the crowd out of the corner of my eye for reactions and I noticed about a half a dozen times the girl sitting next to me smacking her palm to her forehead and chuckling at something cheesy that had just happened onscreen. And all I could think was in that moment where both sides of the Twilight frenzy had joined in secret agreement, she was going to walk out of that theatre and tell one of her friends who wasn’t there with her all about it – the good and the bad – and the result would be the same as if I had told her myself:

It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.

And there's the rub.

** out of ****

MOVIE REVIEW: W.

2008-10-19T20:00:00.002-05:00

Starring: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, James Cromwell, Ellen Burstyn
Director: Oliver Stone
Release Date: October 17, 2008
Running Time: 129 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributor: Lions Gate

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Any comedian will tell you the secret to a good joke is to make it accessible, have a good setup, and kill with the punch line. I don’t know that there is necessarily a golden formula but this seems like pretty sound advice on a general level. I suppose variations of the same thing can be said about making movies. Director Oliver Stone had nothing if not a golden setup. A movie about the exiting President of the United States, while he is still in office, mere days before the election that would remove him from power, and with just enough time to reflect on his last eight years in office. Stone being no stranger to controversy or films of historical significance seemed to be in a perfect position to move in for the kill. Instead we got what those in retail refer to as the old ‘bait and switch’.

W. does show us what we expected to see from this movie; that George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) grew up as a hard partying man of privilege who rarely had to deal with consequences for anything he did or said. He was an irresponsible, womanizing, carousing, spoiled little rich kid who wouldn’t and couldn’t hold a job. Any trouble he got into was fixed by a phone call from his father, George H.W. Bush (James Cromwell). It also told how Dubya fell ass-backwards into politics and eventually became the leader of the free world. It would almost be an inspiring “little engine that could” type story, if not for knowing the details about how everything actually turned out. The pre-release posters and trailers suggested the movie would be a caustic illustration of the rise and fall of the 43rd President of the United States. Turns out, W. shows a surprising lack of poignancy, political or otherwise.

Bear in mind, Oliver Stone is a man who built a career out of making controversial films based on actual events of historical significance. He’s not even a stranger to Presidential controversy (JFK, Nixon). Stone has turned this type of film into a brand name, largely based on the controversy his films willfully embody. This time, for one reason or another, he seemed to completely abandon ship. W. didn’t have enough bite to be the satire it wanted but was just mean enough to be unsympathetic. Just when I thought I understood which angle they were going for, the table turned. With a film like W. you expect, if not demand, that that the film pick a side, especially with Stone in the driver’s seat. The expectation was built before a page of dialogue was ever written.

After seeing the film I started questioning the timing of its release. If it was satire they were going for, why now? What left is there to gain by taking one last whack at a piñata that has long since been emptied? Wouldn’t that approach have been a lot more impactful had it waited until the cake cooled before applying the frosting? If it was sympathy they were after, again, why now? Wouldn’t it have helped out even a year ago before Bush’s legacy had already been cemented?

There is just too much that didn’t fit together for W. to have worked like it was supposed to. In an effort to rush it into theatres before the election the whole thing felt slapped together. For as disconnected a film as it was there were some really great performances; namely Josh Brolin as Dubya and Richard Dreyfuss as his second in command, Dick Cheney. Both men opted for performance over impression and both helped carry the film through some of the slower parts. This is all far more than I can say for the treatment Thandie Newton gave to the character of Condoleezza Rice. It is less surprising how bad per impersonation was but rather how no one else filming noticed how bad it was. Regarding performances, the problem in a movie with this many moving parts is that it’s impossible for the array of characters to get their just development. In the end it mostly felt like a bunch of famous people dressing up and acting like a bunch of other famous people doing MADtv skits out of order for two hours.

Every time W. had a chance to go for the throat, Stone turned a sympathetic eye on his subject and gave him an excuse. By suggesting that Bush has a reason for being the way he is, you remove any accountability he has coming because it suggests that he didn’t have a choice. It’s not just a stretch but more a shame that Stone thought it would be just that easy.

And there’s the rub.

** out of ****

MOVIE REVIEW: How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

2008-10-07T02:30:00.001-05:00

Starring: Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox, Jeff Bridges Director: Robert B. Weide
Release Date: October 3, 2008
Running Time: 110 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: MGM

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People reminds me of a dog I had when I was a kid. It was this huge Great Dane that would lumber around and trip all over himself and destroy anything in the process. Anyone who saw him for the first time would be scared to death of him, but he was dumb as a bag of hammers and just a harmless. That’s pretty much where the comparison stops because I loved that dog and still have fond memories of him. On the other hand, I saw the movie late last night and can barely remember it enough to write this review.

Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) runs a British celebrity rag and makes a living pissing people off; crashing celebrity parties to get close to people more famous than him and patting himself on the back when he is successful at doing so. In his pocket he proudly keeps a laminated photo of himself in the wrong end of a Clint Eastwood headlock. He’s that guy. For no reason that is explained with any sensibility, he is recruited by Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges) to come across the pond and work for Sharps Magazine, an upscale New York magazine with celebrity reputation. Even before his first day of work he is already trying to use his new position to get women to notice him. He hits on a girl at a bar named Alison (Kirsten Dunst). Guess where she works? That ends without mention and we’ll just say the first woman he takes home from a club doesn’t go as planned. His first night in America is moderately funny, if not 100 percent predictable but by the time he starts working you can see exactly where it’s headed. He causes random mischief over and over again, isn’t nearly as victimized by repercussions as he should be for the stunts he pulls, plays it straight for awhile to get ahead then swings for a bit of personal vindication. It’s a grown up version of Home Alone without the holiday sentiment. Or at least without the holiday.

I have long since conceded to the fact that a majority of the movies we see during any given year will follow a clearly laid path, so to dislike a movie just because the formula is predictable is a little bit of a back-handed complaint. I can handle formula so long as the pieces that make it up shine through enough to get you passed it. There were enough reasons why How to Lose Friends & Alienate People could have been good. Hollywood satire is always a ripe sandbox to play in if it’s done even half right and Simon Pegg has proven his British comedy reliability in the past with movies like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The only thing he proved this time around is that without Edgar Wright, his manic little British-guy act isn’t nearly as heartily received. Megan Fox as Sophie Maes, a young starlet on the rise, would have been funnier if it didn’t seem like she was just playing herself. Maybe that was the point, but it was boring and obvious. Kirsten Dunst continues to prove her transparency with each passing role. As far as performances go, for as little screen time as they were allowed, Gillian Anderson as Sophie Maes’ puppeteer of a publicist and Jeff Bridges were both dead on. I’d like to imagine that both of their performances were what the rest of the cast was going for.

The reason How to Lose Friends & Alienate People fell apart were that the pieces of the machine that should have allowed it to rise above its own mediocrity simply didn’t deliver as promised. It wanted to be a scathing look at the Hollywood machine from the inside perspective of an outsider who doesn’t fit the mold. When it looked like it wasn’t getting there on concept alone it tried to incorporate the use of that famous dry British wit for added punch. But just when it started to show its teeth it played it safe instead of going for the kill just like that stupid dog I used to have. It’s too bad too, because the movie had the makings, at least in concept, of a pretty decent little comedy but like the man the movie is based on, found ways to screw it up without so much as an ounce of effort.

And there's the rub.

* 1/2 out of ****

MOVIE REVIEW: Choke

2008-09-29T19:30:00.001-05:00

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Angelica Huston, Brad William Henke, Kelly Macdonald
Director: Clark Gregg
Release Date: September 26, 2008
Running Time: 89 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Before a single scene was ever filmed, the movie Choke was at a disadvantage. Whether or not the film would be any good was of little relevance. It was already handicapped by two inevitable comparisons: to the Chuck Palahniuk novel the movie was based on and to the David Fincher’s Fight Club, also adapted from a Palahniuk book. They are fair comparisons for obvious reasons but in the interest of continuing that fairness I watched this movie with two thoughts in mind. One, this wasn’t going to be Fight Club. Choke didn’t have the director, stars or the budget to even come close to competing. Two, and most importantly, the books are always better. Saying you didn’t like a movie adapted from a book because it wasn’t as good as the book is like saying you didn’t like Star Wars because you don’t like science fiction. I’m not saying it’s impossible or that some films haven’t come close, it’s just a stupid thing to say.

Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) has, what could be described as, baggage. Lots of baggage. He is a sex addict struggling to complete his recovery. He has a go-nowhere job as a historical interpreter at a colonial-era reenactment community. His mother, Ida (Angelica Huston) is in the hospital with a form of dementia that prevents her from recognizing Victor even though he visits daily. He had to drop out of med school to work and pay for his mother’s medical care. His job doesn’t sufficiently meet all of the financial requirements of the hospital so he has resorted scamming people. He goes to nice restaurants and pretends to be choking so unsuspecting patrons will ‘save’ him, feel bad, and send him money. Money he uses to pay for his mother’s hospital stay. A mother that doesn’t recognize him or deserve the attention she is getting. You get the idea; he’s got problems.

If that wasn’t enough, Victor’s best friend Denny (Brad William Henke) always tries his best to help when and where he can, but has his own bag of sexual perversions to work through. And to further add to the confusion, Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald), a doctor at Ida’s hospital, throws the entire foundation of Victor’s existence for a loop with her idea for a ‘miracle cure’. There is enough craziness to go around and Victor always ends up in the middle, even if it is mostly of his own construction. He works during the day, then goes to see his mother, tours sex addict support groups at night and does it all over again the next day. The movie plays less with traditional form of narrative direction than a cross-sample of everything Victor would encounter during the course of any given week. Like the book, the movie ends without a great deal of growth from the main characters; the only uplifting part is in the hope that growth could at least be possible. Which I guess is growth, more or less.

First time director Clark Gregg (who also wrote the screenplay), works the camera with the efficiency of someone far more seasoned. He is able to juggle the multiple tones of the film to quite a remarkable degree of success. The movie doesn’t capture the tone of the book, but it also doesn’t seem like it was trying. It is always a risk, especially when dealing with someone else’s celebrated words and vision, but I admire his impudent approach. What’s more, he was able to get some really great performances out of his cast, especially Sam Rockwell. The character of Victor Mancini is so layered that it would be difficult for an actor of lesser talent to tie them together as seamlessly as Rockwell does. His jumping back and forth between the vast swings of emotion was fun and pretty impressive to watch.

I’m not saying Choke is without its problems. Denny’s rock castle needed either far more or far less screen time because it just felt thrown in for added weirdness. The flashbacks to Victor’s childhood were too few in number and information to give us any real insight, and the big twist at the end felt clumsy and anticlimactic. But what did impress me was that Clark Gregg was able to take this material, spin it, and give us something almost completely different. The movie is much more a twisted romantic black comedy than the dark satire of the book. They both have their strengths but the movie works, either because of or in spite of, the liberties it took with the written story.

Just don’t ask me which I liked better.

And there's the rub.

*** out of ****

MOVIE REVIEW: Tropic Thunder

2008-08-14T00:50:00.001-05:00

Starring: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan
Director: Ben Stiller
Release Date: August 13, 2008
Running Time: 107 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: DreamWorks Pictures

This country loves its parody, doesn’t it? The National Lampoon brand made a career out of it, Saturday Night Live is in its 34th season and late night talk shows, a staple of which is poking fun at current events, have been around for over half a century. As much as people would sometimes like to turn their nose up and scoff at the audacity of the envelope being pushed, the market has been thriving almost as long as the medium has existed. So it always baffles me when these rights activists get their draws in a bunch over something that, even in the wildest stretches of imagination, were never meant to be taken seriously.

Tropic Thunder is a Hollywood movie making fun of Hollywood making movies. On the set of “the most expensive war movie ever made”, first-time director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) can’t pull his lead actors from their pools of self-absorption, costs are spiraling out of control and the studio threatens to shut down production for good. He decides that he will set the actors loose in the jungles of Southeast Asia (and into the path of some real local mercenaries) to find their way back. All while they think they are still filming their Vietnam movie. The story itself isn’t terribly original or complicated – it tastes almost exactly like a dish I had years ago called Three Amigos – but the point of the movie isn’t in the premise, which only exists to drive the story, it is in the parody.

Tropic Thunder is full of characters riddled with cliché and satire, but that is exactly the point. Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) is the highest paid action star in the world until his attempt to turn in a serious performance is met with collective disdain and his career plummets. Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) is a leading comedic actor known for his one-note, multi-wardrobed performances, who has fallen into the well of drug addiction. Kirk Lazurus (Robert Downey Jr.) plays – stay with me – an Australian method actor with multiple Academy Awards to his credit who, in the interest of his craft, undergoes a skin pigmentation procedure to make him appear African American so he can play the black lead in the movie. There are a big handful of smaller and cameo appearances that are mostly perfect – especially one in particular that you will know as soon as you see it. – but the movie will probably be remembered for Robert Downey Jr.’s near blackface performance. Watching a real black man try to argue with a fake black man about his fake blackness is funny by itself but realizing that neither of them gets the joke not only doesn’t get old, it’s priceless.

Hollywood has been making fun of itself for years; it just hasn’t been done this well, or this funny, in awhile. It is not difficult to connect the dots between the characters and the subjects of their prodding. And that is exactly what makes it funny. Most of these jokes are ones we make to our movie watching friends like we are some kind of experts on the subject. Like that guy at the office that everyone secretly makes fun of behind his back for having a mullet and a jean jacket until that one day when he says, “No shit, I have a mullet. Wanna go for a ride in my Camero and listen to Billy Squire?” Knowing that Hollywood gets the joke too makes it that much more hilarious. If this movie had been made even ten years ago it probably wouldn’t strike the same tone it does today. We’d all still get the satire in theory but our exposure to the process of filmmaking, thanks to the internet and celebrity gossip sites and TV shows, makes us as an audience are more tuned in to the behind the scenes shenanigans and the jokes cut deeper and are funnier because of it.

What makes Tropic Thunder the funniest movie of the summer is that everything they are making fun of is so over the top and done with just the right amount of self-awareness to realize, and further satirize how ridiculous it is.

To anyone who still doesn’t get the joke, lighten up, it’s only a movie.

And there’s the rub.

*** ½ out of ****

DVD REVIEW: Smart People

2008-08-13T00:21:00.001-05:00

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page, Thomas Haden Church
Director: Noam Murro
DVD Release Date: August 12, 2008
Running Time: 95 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Miramax Films

I will preface this review with an admission of guilt that I am more than happy to announce as loud as it will take for anyone to hear it: I can’t stand Ellen Page. In my humble opinion Juno was just alright and my distaste for the movie rests solely on the shoulders of its star. I found myself defending my position during the films release more than I felt necessary and the singular argument that came from the other camp was that if I like her in Hard Candy (I did) and hated her in Juno, then I must have disliked the character Juno more than the person acting as her. That wouldn’t be a bad argument if it weren’t completely wrong. On the timeline of this longstanding debate, Smart People may have dealt the death blow for the opposing side. But let me back up just a touch.

As a film critic, I would like to think I am subjective enough not to let a singular performance ruin an otherwise decent movie. It hasn’t always held true (see: Juno), but I was bound and determined not to let it happen here. In other words, I went into it with an open mind. I am proud to say that I did not find Smart People to be a bad movie because of Ellen Page. No, this time it was a group effort.

Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is a literature professor at a local college. Not only can his students, peers and family not stand him, he seems to almost prefer it that way. He blames it on the fact that he is a lost soul since his wife passed away, but hearing that past students felt the same way suggests that he has always been a miserable curmudgeon and only now has a comfortable excuse. His daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) seems to share his flair for the dramatic. A member of the Young Republicans, shooting for the perfect SAT score with no friends or life outside of the walls of misery the family seems to be insulated in, she follows daddy’s path in lockstep. A series of events land Lawrence in the hospital in the care of Dr. Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker) and in the compromising position of relying on his adopted brother Chuck (Thomas Haden Church) for help. Upon his discharge, he fumbles his way into a date with the Dr. Hartigan. Then screws it up. Then inexplicably gets another date. Then screws it up again. And so on. The whole movie revolves around the central fact that not one of its characters can function in or navigate their way through any relationship, romantic or otherwise, and beyond the flighty (adopted) brother Chuck, everyone in the movie is a miserable wreck. I take that back; Chuck is a mess too, but he seems to be the only one trying to outrun the pack. I have no problem peering into a snow globe of the unfortunate. Seeing people climb out of a well despair, of their design or not, is the basis of a lot of good movies. But when people are there of their own volition coupled with a stubborn refusal for change, it is difficult to generate any sympathy - especially when the majority of the dialogue is reserved for spelling out their level of discontent.

Beyond the story itself, the actors are all guilty of thinking everyone will fall for it without questioning anything. Every interaction in the movie is forced. Sarah Jessica Parker and Dennis Quaid have a laughable lack of chemistry that may have fit the story better if it weren’t so overdone. Ellen Page could have done herself a favor and not followed Juno up with a character that is basically a carbon copy; albeit a few years more cynical. The only ray of hope is Thomas Haden Church and even he is reduced to a one-note, zany slob relative that is more obvious than it is refreshing. The story is clunky, the characters are smug and self-absorbed and the acting is so pretentious and whiney that I just can’t get passed the fact that they are trying too hard to make this movie something it is obviously not.

Margaret Thatcher once said, “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.” These characters obviously didn’t get that message. I just wish there would have at least been a scene where someone took them all out back and gave them something to cry about.

And there’s the rub.

* ½ out of ****

Review: The Midnight Meat Train

2008-08-08T03:38:00.000-05:00

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb, Vinnie Jones, Brooke Shields
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Release Date: August 1, 2008
Running Time: 111 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Lionsgate Films

Describing the instability in my affection for horror movies goes beyond pointing out the obvious. I like the classics and I went through my “slasher phase” in the eighties, but I have no time for the new school idea of horror movies. I have the Saw’s and Hostel’s of the world to thank for that. And don’t even get me started on Asian remakes. But this love of ours for the moving picture is cyclical enough that, like anything else, if you wait it out, something will come along to restore our faith. The Midnight Meat Train is that movie.

Based on a short story by Clive Barker (I haven’t read it), The Midnight Meat Train has a pretty simple premise. Leon Kauffman (Bradley Cooper) is a photographer struggling to hit it big. His work focuses mainly on inhabitants of the city in their element at night. When Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields), the head of a prominent art gallery challenges him to dig deeper and find the darker side of his subjects, he does exactly that. On a shoot one night he stops a woman from being attacked by a group of men but ends up with some extraordinary pictures from the ordeal. The paper the next morning tells a different story. The next night he sees a man he thinks may have been involved and begins following him. It turns out, that man known only as Mahogany (a perfectly used Vinnie Jones), is a serial killer who literally butchers late night passengers on the subway. What starts out as a chance meeting turns into an obsession for Leon as he continues to try and prove his own conspiracy theory to his wife Maya (Leslie Bibbs) and to a certain degree, himself.

Vinnie Jones may be the perfect villain for this movie but the real star performance is director Ryuhei Kitamura, the critically acclaimed Japanese director making his American debut. Do not allow yourself the disservice of dismissing the movie as a vanity project full of style and short on substance. The story may be pretty straightforward but the direction is anything but. Kitamura proves that what makes great Asian horror so great is the exact ingredient missing from most American submissions: mood and tension. The dimly lit, almost nightmarish cinematography would be enough to surpass the majority of horror movie wannabes in and of itself, but the camera work adds much depth to the movie. The CG is abundant but done in a way that doesn’t draw attention to itself. During certain sequences the camera acts as a voyeur, working just ahead of the action enough that you want to actually lean over in hopes of seeing everything before it all catches up to itself.

When it’s all said and done, The Midnight Meat Train is hardly perfect. The title is obvious, either brilliantly or embarrassingly, I’m still not sure which. There were a few elements that were either better explained in the original story (I’m told most of them are) or not at all, and the ending is just this side of bat-shit crazy – but it all worked on the level that you would expect from a good horror movie. It is dark and bleak and gory when it needs to be without being over the top. The good news is The Midnight Meat Train is the cream of this year’s horror movie crop. The bad news is that hardly anyone will get to see it, at least in theatres.

The long and short is that The Midnight Meat Train was given the green light by the former head of Lionsgate. You remember, that studio that came into prominence and financial success with the Saw and Hostel franchises? It seems that they want to run with the big dogs so they brought in new management and scrapped all the pending projects so they can become the kind of studio that puts out schmaltzy drivel for the masses. In other words, crap that nobody likes that inexplicably makes loads of cash. The Midnight Meat Train was deemed too dark and bleak to live up to their new model of quality control so the wide release was scrapped in lieu of a 100 theatre release in the secondary market to make way for a forthcoming DVD release. The shame in that, beyond biting the hand that fed them, is that that just because they didn’t know how to market it doesn’t make it a bad movie or one that wouldn’t make money. I guess my message to Lionsgate is that horror fans are a loyal bunch and they will seek out movies like this – they crave them. Hell, they’ll see almost everything that is released by virtue of diminished supply alone regardless of how stupid it looks or ends up being as a finished product.

But I guess you already knew that, didn’t you?

And there’s the rub.

* * * out of * * * *

Review: Step Brothers

2008-08-01T00:03:00.000-05:00

Starring: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly
Director: Adam McKay
Release Date: July 25, 2008
Running Time: 95 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Columbia Pictures

Like Wedding Crashers, Knocked Up and The 40-Year Old Virgin before it, Step Brothers is the latest in the trend of comedies where title alone sells you on the movie. All you needed to know was that Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are adults who become step brothers after their parents get married. Your level of expectation is your own problem, but the title and cast told you whether or not you wanted to see this movie.

Me? I was sold. I like Will Ferrell. I agree that he is teetering on shark jumping territory as of late (I wrote in my review for Semi-Pro that his act was growing stale), but he has done enough quality work that as a collective group, the good outweighs the bad by a landslide. So I guess I should say that I still like Will Ferrell. But it is increasingly coming from a place of loyal reminiscence than active appreciation.

Step Brothers really is nothing more than I already described. Brannen Huff (Ferrell) is 39 years old, rarely employed and still lives with his mother Nancy (Mary Steenburgen). Dale Doback (Reilly) is equally fated and lives with his fater Robert (Richard Jenkins). Robert and Nancy meet on a whim, get married, and move in together. As the “boys” are forced to live together and interact, their aggravated laziness threatens the very foundation of the new family. The impact the boys’ actions have on the parents goes down a path of uninspired obviousness as they go back and forth between being friends and enemies.

For as talented an actor as John C. Reilly has been known to be, he possesses that rare quality of being able to balance his dramatic and comedic roles. His willingness not to take himself to seriously is the perfect volley to Ferrell’s serve. They are pretty evenly matched in the comedic arena when they are together. But while Ferrell tries his best to recapture some of the boyish naiveté that made Elf so successful, it doesn’t quite fit here because deep down the movie is just a little too mean spirited to make it work. Not that it is particularly a bad thing. In a movie as implausible and unbelievable as this, who am I to squawk at character development and dramatic range because let’s face it – Step Brothers isn’t that kind of movie.

No, Step Brothers is of the same brand of one-upmanship that all R-rated comedies have (d)evolved into in the last ten years. Ever since that kid that no one had ever heard of stuck his dingy in an apple pie and reinvented the genre, everyone to come after has been chasing the ace. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t always bad, but we’ve been so desensitized that the next movie has to outdo the last one or we almost wont even pay attention.

So did I like it or not? It has its moments, but in between them are forced gags beyond what you already knew the movie was about. I’d say it is better than Semi-Pro and not as good as Anchorman. So that doesn’t really say much. I guess all you need to know was that Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play adults who become step brothers after their parents get married. Your level of expectation is your own problem, but the title and cast should have already told you whether or not you wanted to see this movie.

And there’s the rub.

* * ½ out of * * * *

Review: The Dark Knight

2008-07-19T07:26:00.001-05:00

Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Cane, Morgan Freeman Director: Christopher Nolan
Release Date: July 18, 2008
Running Time: 152 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributor: Warner Bros.

I have done my absolute best to keep my expectations in check for The Dark Knight. Considering the fact that the viral marketing for this film started 2 years ago, the very notion of the film succeeding on any level under the weight of its own designed expectation isn’t simply preposterous – it is unimaginable. The truth is, for as overdone as the marketing seemed to be, the greatest prank the campaign pulled was fooling us all into thinking we were prepared for what we were about to experience.

For those who haven’t seen it I will keep it spoiler free but for anyone reading this, you already know enough of the plot to get started – Batman and the Joker battle for supremacy in Gotham. The first thing I noticed about the film that it has a completely different feel to it than any other movie based on a super hero or comic book character. You almost immediately forget you are watching a superhero, or even a Batman movie, as it hits the ground running with a bank heist. Instantly it has the feel of Michael Mann’s Heat. As the movie tears on, you realize that you aren’t watching a comic book movie at all but rather a sophisticated crime drama that happens to be housed in the walls of the superhero genre. That is just one of the many surprises Christopher Nolan has in store.

As a general rule of thumb, comic book/superhero movies stick to a couple basic ground rules: good versus evil where the hero is matched against a villain attempting to inflict peril on an unsuspecting city or group of people. To simply say The Dark Knight is different may be the understatement of the year. Nolan digs so much deeper and gives us a movie that is far more complex than that simple premise. In Batman Begins, we saw the the transformation of Bruce Wayne into Batman. The Dark Knight asks, “What now?” That ‘what now’ is that Wayne has grown weary of his role as Gotham’s savoir after being unjustly labeled a vigilante killer by the very city he has been trying to protect. The timing of the Joker’s introduction only further compounds this dilemma. He is at first, hell-bent on destroying Batman by way of humiliation by repeatedly asking him to reveal his true identity. He continues his murderous rampages while laying the blame at Batman’s feet. And everyone buys into the Joker’s plan. In the meantime, Batman/Bruce Wayne and Gotham have put all their faith in the city’s new District Attorney, Harvey Dent to rid the town of crime once and for all. It’s quite a little love triangle as each man realizes they need one another to fulfill their own agenda. Wayne realizes he needs Dent to help leave the life of Batman behind, the Joker realizes he needs Batman to feed his own anarchistic tendencies, and at one point or another Dent needs them both. The line of morality gets further blurred as we go. What is right and wrong in the name of right and wrong becomes the greater question as we further decent into the darkness of the human soul. It is that exploration that gives this film its bite and sets it apart from anything else before it.

The creation and application of Bruce Wayne’s alter-ego, is contingent on spending his time developing new weapons and armor in an effort to make himself as indestructible as he can because as a superhero without super powers. Batman is merely human and he knows his limitations. Where the Joker succeeds as an adversary is not attacking him physically but in his awareness of what makes Batman the way he is, or has become. Any of his attempted physical attacks are manifested from his understanding of the darkness where Batman exists. His weapon is knowledge and it is with this that he inflicts the most damage to Batman.

For all of this movie’s haunting moral complexities, it would be nothing without the excellent performances from its cast, of which there are many. Where do you start? Heath Ledger gives the performance of a lifetime – his or anyone else’s – as the Joker. His performance will go down as one of the greatest movie villains of all time, right next to Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs, Darth Vader in Star Wars, and Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange. It should come as no surprise that he seemingly pulled inspiration from all three. His Joker is sadistic, nihilistic, shows no empathy and is completely devoid of any character arc. What’s more, Ledger disappears into the role not just in his over the top approach to the character, but in the subtleties; the way he carries himself, the way he licks his lips like a rabid dog in between lines of dialogue, even the Joker’s trademark maniacal laugh has a psychotic tinge to it. As sad as it is that Ledger is not around to see and promote the film, it only fuels the performance that much further. The same way we are not given any explanation as to the Joker’s origin in the movie, we are all left to wonder just how Ledger brought that character to life as he did. It is perfect in every sense of the word and the lack of clarification as to how it happened makes it that much more haunting. It is hard to overlook the impact his death has on the movie but if he wins the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, like he deserves, it will be because he gave us a brilliant performance, not because he can’t do it again.

As great as Ledger is, you can’t overlook the performances from the rest of the cast. Aaron Eckhart as the no-nonsense DA Harvey Dent and his eventual transformation into Two-Face is beautifully tragic and he plays both sides to the hilt. Dent balances out the film as he provides the character arc that the Joker could not. Maggie Gyllenhaal makes us all (happily) forget Katie Holmes ever had anything to do with these movies. Michael Caine as Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox provide balance and wisdom in their respective roles. And Gary Oldman gives another understated performance as James Gordon. With a cast as strong as this, you start to gravitate away from the silly notion that seasoned and accomplished actors don’t belong in a genre movie like this.

At the end of it all, you have a swiftly paced 2 ½ hour movie that realizes every bit of ambition and scope that it set out to, and with respect, actually makes all previous Batman films worse by comparison. Nolan has created a masterpiece that will stay with you long after you finish watching it. Superman may have laid the foundation and Spider-Man may have made it a profitable business, but The Dark Knight transcends the genre by raising the bar and turning it into an art form.

And there’s the rub.

* * * * out of * * * *

tMF Top Five - Best Superhero Movies

2008-07-18T22:54:00.001-05:00

Comic books and superheroes have been around forever. Almost as soon as they rose to prominence in popular culture, TV shows and movies began taking shape as a popular vehicle for the art form. Superman started it all but it wasn’t until the 2000’s X-Men that the genre was considered a profitable business. The upside is that over the last decade, a lot of our favorite comic book characters were brought to life on the big screen. The downside is that some of them sucked. 2008, in particular the summer, has been the year of the superhero/comic book movie. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hancock, and Hellboy II, have already wowed us in one degree or another, but on the eve of the granddaddy of them all – The Dark Knight – tMF takes a look back at the best of the genre so far.

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Review: Hancock

2008-07-03T00:10:00.000-05:00

Starring: Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman
Director: Peter Berg
Release Date: July 2, 2008
Running Time: 92 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributor: Columbia Pictures

With the exception of the title, I have been starring at a blank word document for about half an hour. In my head, this film has rated 1 star to 4 stars and back. Even now, I have no idea how it’s going to end up.

Hancock (Will Smith) is the anti-superhero. When he’s not saving peoples lives he is passed out drunk on a street corner somewhere or drinking himself into a stupor on his way to being passed out somewhere. He is a mess. When he isn’t drunk, he is helping save the city from random low-end thugs. I use the term “helping” loosely because his nonchalant approach to property damage mid-rescue seems to be a great source of displeasure for those in the city he is trying to help. His antics finally become too much of a cross to bear and the city turns against him. It is curious that he doesn’t seem at all phased by the fact that people seem to despise his existence yet still keeps coming to their rescue.

When he saves the life of a fledgling PR executive, Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), Hancock is given an interesting proposal: allow Ray to help him clean up his image so the town can realize that they really do need him around, thereby giving him renewed purpose. Sounds like a win for everyone but Ray’s wife, Mary (Charlize Theron) has her doubts. The interaction between Hancock and Ray are some of the best parts of the movie. As for Hancock himself, I liked him more when he was the bitter asshole that nobody liked more than the “corporate” superhero they tried to turn him in to. Story-wise, it would have been an interesting concept to allow Hancock to continue to being the sarcastic jerk he always was and make the city change their approach to dealing with him. After all, they were the ones who stood to gain the most from his abilities.

For as upbeat and silly as the movie is portrayed, there is something very dark lying just below the surface. That is part of the problem with Hancock. There were traces of really interesting angles on the superhero cliché, but always just out of reach. The premise itself is intriguing but it’s almost as if they weren’t sure how to play it consistently. The beginning of the movie had fascinating story elements but the CGI was so bad it was almost a distraction, the middle had some great starting points for plot advances that went nowhere to make room for more action, and the end was just a sloppy, shameless pile of sappy Legend of Bagger Vance-type sentiment. Mixed bag doesn’t begin to describe how I felt watching this. Every time it felt like they were heading in a direction that could get things back on track, something stupid happened that made me shake my head in shame. It’s like watching Deal or No Deal and seeing some moron piss away offer after offer from the banker that would change their life forever on the slim chance that they have the million dollar case until you finally get so frustrated with their ignorance and arrogance that you hope they walk out of there with the penny just to prove a point.

But for all of its problems, Hancock wasn’t a complete waste; just a fistful of wasted opportunity. There is something to be said about watching the story of a superhero that isn’t based on material we are all familiar with beforehand. There are inherent risks to this approach but the originality is refreshing. If only they could have figured out how to harness those ideas into a movie worthy of its intentions.

And there’s the rub.

* * ½ out of * * * *

tMF Top Five - Worst Movies of 2008... so far

2008-07-02T00:23:00.001-05:00

Earlier this week I posted a top five list of the Best Movies of 2008… so far. For the most part, people seem to agree with the list (a lot of Cloverfield haters out there…). People agreed for a pretty simple reason; there haven’t been a lot of great movies to come out this year. Probably more seasonality than anything, but they have been few and far between. In the interest of fair and balanced reporting, it’s only right to present the other, uglier side of the coin. I actually had a lot more trouble narrowing down this list to only five. There have been some bad movies so far; some due to failed expectation and some because they were just plain awful. For me, these were the worst of the worst.

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DVD Review: My Blueberry Nights

2008-07-01T02:05:00.000-05:00

Starring: Norah Jones, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, David Strathairn, Natalie Portman
Director: Wong Kar Wai
DVD Release Date: July 1, 2008
Running Time: 90 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributor: The Weinstein Company

News flash: relationships are hard. They can be very frustrating at times. The way men and women attempt to communicate has always been a source of equal parts fascination and bewilderment to me. Everybody wants to know what the other person is thinking but unlike any other interaction in life, we find these odd methods of approach when dealing with the opposite sex. Rarely do people just come out and say what they think or ask what they actually want to know. Women seem to always want to know what guys are thinking. Men, on the other hand, seem less interested in wanting to know what women are thinking than they are finding ways to not let on what they are thinking. I think everyone can agree that the whole thing is absurd, yet we still find ourselves doing exactly that, from time to time. My Blueberry Nights a character study that dissects this very concept.

Elizabeth (Norah Jones) goes into a New York café looking for her boyfriend. The man who runs the café, Jeremy (Jude Law) possesses this uncanny ability of identifying and remembering his customers by remembering what they order. The suggestion that everyone that comes to the shop orders the same thing is not questioned, for fear of devaluing the plot device, I imagine. Anyway, through a series of quick questions and answers, Elizabeth gets enough information from Jeremy to suspect that her boyfriend is cheating on her. Over the course of the next several nights, she comes in to the café after hours and the two bond by way of conversation and blueberry pie. Just when the meetings are starting to hit their stride, she comes in one night and suggests that she is going to give the boyfriend another chance. A few nights go by in her absence until she sullenly returns, silently conceding defeat. The two rekindle their conversation and the next night, she is gone.

By way of the title cards sporadically placed throughout the movie, we find out that she is now in Memphis, Tennessee. She is working two jobs, a bar at night, and a restaurant during the day, to save for a car. Where she plans to go is not discussed or even eluded to. She sends Jeremy postcards for the purpose of staying in touch, but doesn’t reveal her whereabouts. During this stint she encounters a local policeman named Arnie (David Strathairn) and later his soon-to-be ex-wife Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz). She learns that Arnie has tried to quit drinking on several occasions but has yet to accomplish it fully. The meetings of consequence Arnie and Lizzie (she changed her name with her location, I guess) share are the strongest parts of the movie. They keep running into each other and divulging a little more to each other about each other along the way, until something happens that makes Elizabeth/Lizzie leave town.

Now she ends up somewhere cocktailing at a slum casino. She meets Leslie (Natalie Portman) who just lost a decent chunk of money on a bad beat at a poker table. Leslie talks Beth (oh, she goes by Beth now) into loaning her all the money she saved with the promise that she would either get it back if she won, or get her car if she lost. She loans the money, the money gets lost, and the two end up going to Las Vegas so Leslie can get her hands on more loot. Until something happens that makes Elizabeth/Lizzie/Beth hit the road again.

The problem with any character study as a movie is that the character(s) have to be interesting enough to sustain the runtime of the movie. On the surface, Elizabeth’s conflict was enough to generate inaugural interest but the more the story progressed, the less we knew about why it was all happening in the first place. Apart from her being an angsty 20-something that needed some sort of adventure, we never fully grasp her intentions.

From a technical standpoint, the movie is well shot. Director Wong Kar Wai (in his first English language feature film) goes to great lengths to evoke emotion from the surroundings. But trading style for substance is a problem My Blueberry Nights was too broke to afford. It is worth mentioning that Norah Jones does a decent job in her first acting performance. She is helped by the fact that her character seems as much out of her element as she. A truer test would have been to give her something of substance to sink her teeth into, but she does well enough with what she is given.

Like a woman or two I have encountered in my life, My Blueberry Nights looks really good, tries to be sexier than it should be allowed to be, but in the end is pretty hallow and boring. And slow. I had a conversation about this movie with someone recently and they said they hadn’t seen it but thought the poster was one of the best of the year. When they asked for my critique of the film, I gave them the most honest response I could think of:

“If that’s the case, you’re better off looking at the poster for 2 hours.”

And there's the rub.

* * out of * * * *

tMF Top Five - Best Movies of 2008... so far

2008-07-01T00:31:00.000-05:00

We are almost exactly halfway through the year and smack in the middle of the summer movie season. Sounds like as good a time as any to take a step back and grade the movie year thus far. This article was written last week in preparation for the end of the month and wouldn’t you just know it! Pixar had to go and ruin the party! Thanks to WALL*E my list is now in complete shambles. I know it is only June but mark my words, six months from now I will still be talking about WALL*E as one of, if not THE best, movies of 2008. It is a masterstroke of filmmaking, and not only as an animated film. I defy you to come up with a more beautifully shot and wildly romantic live action movie in the last few years. With WALL*E resting quietly atop the list as my favorite movie so far, I decided to leave the rest of the list unedited so you can get a look at the top five other best movies of the year.

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Review: WALL*E

2008-06-28T02:04:00.000-05:00

Starring (voices): Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Sigourney Weaver, Fred Willard, Jeff Garlin
Director: Andrew Stanton
Release Date: June 27, 2008
Running Time: 103 min
MPAA Rating: G
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios

I have always said that the computer age is ruining the way people communicate with each other. Not that long ago when people wanted to interact they had conversations, either in person or over the phone, and if geography dictated, people even hand wrote letters to one another. Crazy. Now everything is email, text messages, instant messages, picture messages, MySpace comments, Twitter updates, and so on. For all of the “advances” in communication that have been made in the last 20 years, the very syntax of our language has deteriorated so much that people that grew up at any point without the internet or cell phones will potentially have a hard time keeping up. And it’s only gonna get worse.

Wall-E takes place in the year 2815. Earth, as we know it, no longer exists. It has been cannibalized unrecognizably and covered in trash. With nowhere else to turn, humanity has abandoned the planet while thousands of WALL-E units (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) were left to convert the garbage into disposable form. Sponsoring the Earth’s exodus is the Buy n Large Corporation, a global company that essentially controls Earth, in the form of space station resorts called Axiom, where people are waited on hand and foot. And when I say every comfort is afforded, I mean every comfort. Unlimited food and drink. An endless supply of anything one could ever dream of, everyone has gorged themselves worthless. Even that pesky nuisance of walking has been eliminated as everyone hovers around on devices designed to eliminate the need to do so. The plan was to get everyone off Earth for five years, allow the WALL-E units to clean up, and then return when living conditions had improved. That was 700 years ago. Over time, all of the units were deactivated. Except one.

WALL-E spends his time doing what he was created to do — compact and organize trash. He has his method down to a science and has his science down to an art. Compacting and stacking trash high enough to form a new skyline, he continues his routine without interruption. He gathers items he finds interesting to take back to his home each night. His only interaction is that of a cockroach that follows him around while he works. If no other event had taken place, I imagine WALL-E wouldn’t have even minded, not knowing a whole other world exists. That is until…

EVE is a robot sent from the Axiom to find plant life. A plant would mean Earth was capable of sustaining life and the inhabitants of the Axiom would be allowed to return home. WALL-E immediately falls for EVE, even after being repeatedly almost blown to bits. He follows her around like a lost dog and the two eventually become friends. WALL-E shows EVE the plant he found working one day, she immediately stores the plant and shuts down awaiting deportation, according to her directive. When they come to pick her up, WALL-E stows away and goes back to the Axiom and into a world that he has never been accustomed to. Where EVE’s directive is to get the plant back to the Axiom, WALL-E’s directive is to get back to EVE.

This is the part of the movie where you will make your decision as to whether or not you liked it. The first half will be almost unanimously regarded as classic, playing like a great silent film, devoid of almost all dialogue. We simply watch the minutiae of WALL-E’s existence and get a real sense of his personality. But it is in his interaction with other life forms that make the film brilliant. Two recent movies dealing with character isolation come to mind: Cast Away and I Am Legend. If you have any complaint about either of these movies, it is the third act — when they are finally forced to re-insert themselves into some kind of interaction beings other than themselves. They both fail in this regard because they couldn’t figure out how to close the story after showing the characters by themselves for the majority of the movie. WALL-E is not only unafraid of interaction, he welcomes it, he forces it. He cannot be bothered by the insecurities of meeting a stranger. Those meetings are merely stepping stones to a greater cause: finding EVE.

Movies satirizing the dysfunction of the industrial world consuming itself in the name of advancement are nothing new. The last place I ever expected to see that message, however, was in a Disney/Pixar movie. This is the 9th feature film from Pixar and with each movie, they find a way to advance the art of computer animation by such leaps and bounds that it is hard to imagine what they will look like five years from now. But WALL-E is exponential growth, both in story and animation and design. Writer/director Andrew Stanton impressed us all with the physics of believing you were really under water in Finding Nemo. If you thought that was good, wait’ll you get a load of this. He has taken his love of personifying inanimate objects, mixed it with the common Pixar themes of love, loyalty and friendship, and set it against a dystopian landscape for some of the most scathing social commentary in years.

Simply put, Wall-E is Pixar Animation Studio’s magnum opus. It is the most beautifully drawn and wildly romantic movie I have seen in many years. The deeper message may be lost on kids but make no mistake, six months from now we will still be talking about this as one of, if not the best movie of the year.

And there’s the rub.

* * * * out of * * * *

DVD Review: John Adams

2008-06-10T01:57:00.000-05:00

Starring: Paul Giamatti, Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, David Morse, Stephen Dillane
Director: Tom Hooper
DVD Release Date: June 10, 2008
Running Time: 501 min
Distributor: HBO Films

“It is no small thing to build a new world, gentlemen.” – Ben Franklin

“I am determined to control events, not be controlled by them.” – John Adams

John Adams, the HBO miniseries based on David McCullough’s bestselling biography, accomplishes something that John Adams, the man, attempted to do for the better part of his political life, speak of his accomplishments, a feat which is achieved here in grand fashion. Most of our knowledge of John Adams is only that he was the 2nd President of the United States, but this miniseries tells a much broader story spanning more than 50 years, showing events before, during, and after his presidency. And what a fascinating story it is.

John Adams is the story of a man more complex than history would allow him to be viewed. John Adams (Paul Giamatti) was a stubborn little man whose moral foundation was built on strong principles far greater than most of those he surrounded himself with. His honesty and outspoken nature were among his best and worst characteristics. Beginning with his unpopular decision to defend the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre in the name of the law, a foundation he held very close, most of his decision making prowess came in the form of counsel by his wife, Abigail Adams (Laura Linney). Some of his decisions made in her absence have been widely and rightly condemned as being poor. She was his voice of reason any time he was to let his emotion blindly drive him into doing or saying something out of turn. The movie plays very well as a love story between the two. Separated for the better part of the first 14 years of their marriage, she stood by her man through every adversity encountered in the name of chasing his dream.

The sacrifices made by Adams were greater than those involving his wife and his family. The friendships of the men we came to know as the Founding Fathers were also strained as the country declared its independence and moved forward with the revolution. It was interesting to watch men and their alliances transform as the differing views of how to run a country’s government began to take hold. There was no blueprint for success, there were no definition of boundaries and title; they were making it up as they went along. We now look to our country to guide us but there was no history telling them how things should be run. They simply did what they thought was best as determined by the collective majority of those put into power.

Watching John Adams is like discovering our own history for the first time. I found myself feeling very patriotic. More times than not when we get a movie that involves a part of our American history, it is told in a self aggrandizing manner. John Adams told the story from a much different perspective. It was not afraid to show the trouble these men had in making the decisions that eventually shaped our country into what it is today. It showed each man less God-like than history has made them out to be. It wasn’t easy and mistakes were made. For that I think we should all be more thankful knowing they were ordinary men with extraordinary dreams and the fortitude and drive to realize them regardless of what obstacle stood in their way.

You cannot watch this film without being in awe of the multitude of great performances. Giamatti and Linney were the backbone to be sure, but the supporting members of the story provided a depth that would not have been able to be achieved if it weren’t for the great acting. Tom Wilkinson plays Benjamin Franklin as a man wise beyond his years and just as crazy. Stephen Dillane as Thomas Jefferson is a sophisticated southerner as headstrong in his ideals as the next, and David Morse as General and President George Washington not only bears an uncanny resemblance to our nation’s first president, he commands attention every time he is on screen.

Toward the end of the series, after another bout of frustration with how his legacy is to be upheld, Adams tells his wife that he should have followed his father’s course and been a farming, shoemaking, deacon so as to have avoided what he deemed to be only headaches left in the wake of his political career. The fact of the matter is that when a man makes sacrifices as John Adams did during his life to realize a dream that he may not even live to fully realize, that shows a selflessness of immeasurable proportion that we cannot fully grasp in our present state of affairs. History may not have allowed him to be as iconic a figure as the rest of the Founding Fathers, but for all his shortcomings he had something most of the rest of them lacked. He was honest and driven, yet fallible. That he made no apology for being any of these things made something far more important than any character trait he may have possessed: human.

And there’s the rub.

**** out of ****

Review: Kung Fu Panda

2008-06-10T01:47:00.000-05:00

Starring (voices): Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Seth Rogen, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, David Cross
Director: Mark Osborne and John Stevenson
Release Date: June 6, 2008
Running Time: 92 min
MPAA Rating: PG
Distributor: DreamWorks Animation

A decade on from the release of Toy Story, the new car smell of the age of computer animated feature films is gone. Nowadays it is difficult to justify liking something simply because it looks good. I’m afraid that ship has sailed. No, now we assume the film will look great and so we look to the story to work in conjunction with the animation to make a great film. These days, our assumptions and expectations have been heightened by the success of so many computer animated feature films, but sadly there are few really great ones. But the good news is that it is time to clear a spot towards the top because we have a new member of that illustrious circle.

Kung Fu Panda is the story of Po (Jack Black), a gentle, lumbering beast of a panda who works for his father (who just happens to be a goose) in his noodle shop. He daydreams of kung fu but he is not what you would call a pillar of physical fitness. No, he is as clumsy as you imagine a panda bear would be at such a skillful art as kung fu. Or at waiting tables. Or at walking stairs, up or down. Po idolizes the Furious Five, a group of supremely skilled martial arts warriors trained by their master, Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), so much so that he talks to their action figures in his bedroom window upon waking up each morning. When an ancient master has a vision of an imprisoned evil warrior Tai Lung (Ian McShane), a former student of Shifu, escaping and returning malice to the Valley of Peace, he calls for a formal ceremony so he can determine who is the mightiest of warriors and name that one the Dragon Warrior.

Po heads to the ceremony, overwhelmed by the prospect of being able to see in the Furious Five in action and in person: Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogen), Viper (Lucy Liu), and Crane (David Cross). He lumbers up an infinitely long flight of stairs to get to the stadium only to realize it has taken him so long the doors have closed, leaving him outside with no clear line of sight. As the ceremony unfolds inside and the Furious Five perform, he finally devises a plan to make it inside to see the action. Only he falls in from the sky just as Master Oogway chooses the Dragon Warrior. Who do you think he picked?

This much and the rest of the story is devoid of any real surprises from a narrative perspective, but the writing is not lazy either. It’s just pretty modest martial arts fare. So what makes the movie so good? I can’t really say it’s any one thing over another - the story is a perfect blend of action and humor. My only complaint is that the characters of the Furious Five weren’t as developed as the rest of the cast. It would have made the story longer and probably resulted in a loss of steam, but I would have liked to see more of them. And I know I just got through saying it doesn’t count but it is worth mentioning that the animation is really spectacular. DreamWorks Animation really stepped up their game from their previous films. Not only is it beautifully drawn and colorfully vibrant, the action scenes are extremely well choreographed. You can definitely tell a lot of care was put into making them as artistic as possible.

The more I think about it, the best part of the film is none of the things I mentioned - its more what this movie is not. The original idea for the film was to make it a parody and a spoof of martial arts movies. But co-director John Stevenson disliked the idea and decided instead to give the film an epic feel while blending in light comedy so it could stand tall beside the films he was modeling it after rather than making fun of them. Mission accomplished.

Now there’s your secret ingredient.

And there's the rub.

*** ½ out of ****

Review: You Don't Mess With the Zohan

2008-06-09T01:44:00.000-05:00

Starring: Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chriqui
Director: Dennis Dugan
Release Date: June 6, 2008
Running Time: 113 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributor: Columbia Pictures

My appreciation of the career of Adam Sandler has been a tumultuous affair. It started with Billy Madison. With every bone in my critic and non-critic being, I know it to be an atrocity of a movie. But I still like it. Happy Gilmore paid it forward and then Bulletproof came along. I didn’t like it, but I appreciated the departure from his brand of stupid comedy. Then he went back to his stupid brand of comedy for a few films, then Punch-Drunk Love came out and blew everybody away. Then he went back to the well, then Spanglish. The well. Reign Over Me. The well. And so on. Whether it works or not, every time he tries something different he follows it up with a few old stand by’s. You almost have to admire his tenacity.

Almost.

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan is Sandler swimming to the bottom of the well. For that he makes no apology. From the time the movie starts, there is no mistake that this will be a huge dish of Sandler pie with all the fixins. The title alone is ridiculous and the premise is nothing short of insanely stupid. Zohan Divr (Sandler) is the top agent for the Mossad, the Israeli secret police, who grows tired of the fighting between the Israel and Palestine. He decides to fake his own death and move to New York City to realize his dream of becoming a hairdresser. People who will see this movie will see it because they want to with the knowledge of the title and the premise in hand before doing so. Anyone that willingly sees it with that kind of ammunition will enjoy it.

I’m not sure what I expected but I am surprised by how much I didn’t hate it. I keep avoiding saying out loud that I liked it, because it’s almost shameful that I did. You Don’t Mess with the Zohan is the kind of movie that you have every right to despise but you can’t find a reason to do so. Not a good one anyway. The movie is stupid, but it generated enough laughs to keep me entertained. Even if the political message got a little heavy-handed towards the conclusion, it was handled with such a “can’t we all just get along” approach that it doesn’t get weighed down. The plot doesn’t really surface until oddly late in the film, but it is only there to drive the action. The movie is really just about a military super-agent that wants to cut hair. If there was any question at all, after the first five minutes you knew that Sandler and Co. were only out to do one thing – entertain themselves and hope everyone else got the joke.

The story is ridiculous but it is so over the top you can’t even use that as an argument. It reminds me of the final battle at the end of 8 Mile. Rabbit knew exactly what weaknesses his opponent would try to use against him so he defended himself by using it first, leaving them only one response:

Silence.

And there's the rub.

*** out of ****

Review: The Strangers

2008-06-02T01:38:00.000-05:00

Starring: Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman
Director: Bryan Bertino
Release Date: May 30, 2008
Running Time: 90 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Rouge Pictures

The idea of being terrorized by strangers is nothing new to the horror or thriller genres. Exponentially, the idea of being terrorized by those same strangers within the confines of your home should be scarier. The idea of someone forcing their way into your house threatens the belief we have that we are safest in the sanctuary of our own home. The Strangers attempts to weave that idea into a story, which it does pretty well. It then attempts to sustain that idea for the length of a two-hour movie, which it doesn’t do very well.

The Strangers opens with a narrative voice-over explaining that the film is inspired by true events. Oh, this old gag again? I get it and all, and for a story steeped in simplicity, the concept of building atmosphere before we even get started is pretty vital, but idea of tagging everything with this disclaimer is getting a bit tired. So for everyone keeping tabs, we have: being terrorized by strangers (scary), in your own home (scarier), in a story based on true events (yatzee!).

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, true story, scary scary, yadda yadda yadda… Kristen McKay (Liv Tyler) and James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) leave a friend's wedding reception to spend the evening at the Hoyt summer home. We know this because it is explained in the opening narrative along with all that “true story” business. When the film actually starts we see the two of them leaving the reception and arriving at the house. The house has been prepared for the arrival of a newly-engaged couple, but for reasons untold, the night didn’t turn out as planned. There is some of the reserved, awkward banter you would expect from a couple who has just not gotten engaged. Then comes a knock on the door.

Not just a knock. A bang.

A woman comes to the door asking for someone named Tamera. They tell her she has the wrong house and send her on her way. She comes back later - with friends. They are all wearing a different type of mask and begin eliminating all forms of communication and all methods of escape. They make noises, appear out of nowhere then disappear again, write cryptic messages and generally display the kind of creepy behavior you would expect from a group of masked folk messing with people at 4:30 in the morning. The anomaly here is that just about the time things are starting to pick up, everything falls apart.

Tyler and Speeman are fine (yes, “fine” is as good a compliment as I can muster) as the leads and for what they are tasked with, they accomplish it well enough. They just aren’t given much to work with. I like the simple approach to the story and the setup, both direct and implied; I just didn’t like the execution. It is hard to place all the blame on first-time writer and director Bryan Bertino, who seemed to have every intention of making a good movie. On one hand, his direction, at least in the first half of the movie, shows promise. He accomplishes quite a lot in terms of tension and atmosphere with very little to work with. On the other hand, that very little to work with bit comes back to bite him since he provided the material in the first place. Instead he is forced to use tired, stock ideas such as people and faces appearing out of nowhere and having the soundtrack as the fourth intruder. It’s as if he used up all his good ideas during the first half of the film and then realized he had an hour of movie left to make so was forced to use them all over again.

And again.

And again. I guess the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

And there’s the rub.

** out of ****

DVD Review: Serial Mom (Collector's Edition)

2008-05-17T01:59:00.000-05:00

Starring: Kathleen Turner, Sam Waterston, Ricki Lake, Matthew Lillard
Director: John Waters
DVD Release Date: May 6, 2008
Running Time: 94 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Universal Studios

“Wow, I haven’t seen that movie in years.”

Yeah, that’s what I said too. I remember seeing and liking it when it came out but hadn’t thought about Serial Mom in years until I was given the opportunity to review the newly released Collector’s Edition.

In case you don’t remember the story. Beverly Sutphin (Kathleen Turner) is a suburban housewife who seems to have everything. Her house is always immaculate, she makes a killer meatloaf and she loves her family dearly; her obliviously nerdy husband Eugene (Sam Waterston), their constantly lovesick daughter, Misty (Ricki Lake) and their horror-film loving son, Chip (Matthew Lillard). Together they are the portrait of the perfect all-American family except for the nagging little detail that behind closed doors Beverly is a raging sociopath who dispatches her victims with little reason.

Of course to her, she has all the reason in the world. Her reasons range from off-handed threats, perceived or otherwise, to members of her family to poor social habits such as not recycling and wearing white shoes after Labor Day. The relevance of her reasoning is unimportant because Beverly doesn’t seem to exist on the same plane of social conscience as everyone else in the known world. Her motivations are also ingeniously left uncovered. We have no idea what makes her tick other than to suggest that when things don’t go her way she simply eliminates the nuisance. In the movie there is no evidence that she is normal until something makes her snap. I imagine that Beverly has been killing for some time and the movie is just a glance at the timeframe in every serial killer’s ‘career’ where they either get lazy or want to get caught. If that is the case, I don’t think she wants to get caught for the sake of stopping her zealous behavior more than I think she actually wants to be applauded for doing the world a service.

This is the kind of story that fits perfectly in the John Waters canon. Serial Mom continues his path to mainstream after the campy films of his early career. Like all of the films Waters has made, despite the topic discussed in the movie it really is funny. The contrast between Beverly’s outward persona and the inner demons she tries less and less to hide make the movie more than a one-note joke. The same way that the idea of murder isn’t traditionally a very humorous topic, Waters creates this world of such overblown surrealism that it fits all too tidily. Contrary to the films statement otherwise, this was not based on a true story, at least not that I am aware of.

Until this week I had not seen the film since it came out and one thing really struck me as curious. Fifteen years after the film was made, it actually has more depth than it did in 1993. It transformed from a simple comedic satire to a commentary of our current society’s fascination with celebrity and our media’s ignorant willingness to make anyone with a story famous. You have to keep in mind that O.J., Robert Blake and Columbine all came after this movie was made. Had this movie been made today it would be significant but with a whole separate feel. As it stands John Waters is either a genius or just got really lucky this time.

Or maybe both.

And there’s the rub.

*** out of ****

DVD Special Features:
- Feature Commentary with John Waters and Kathleen Turner
- Feature Commentary with John Waters
- Serial Mom: Surreal Moments – a mini documentary on the making of Serial Mom with Waters and stars of the film reminiscing about the films production.
- The Kings of Gore: Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman – a tribute.
- The Making of Serial Mom – an original promotional featurette.

DVD Review: The Great Debaters (2-Disc Special Collector's Edition)

2008-05-17T01:44:00.000-05:00

Starring: Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Jurnee Smollett, Nate Parker

Director: Denzel Washington

DVD Release Date: May 13, 2008

Running Time: 123 min

MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributor: The Weinstein Company

When you pair up two great actors in a film you expect great performances from them. This seems like a simple idea, but it doesn’t always play out the way it should. The Great Debaters is touted as having two former winners of the Academy Award for Best Actor going head to head with each other, yet curiously they only share two scenes together, by my count. Both scenes work well but aren’t a true indication of how the movie plays. The Great Debaters follows the true story of Melvin B. Tolson (Denzel Washington), a no-nonsense debate coach and sometime political activist who drove his team to national prominence in 1935 by challenging and defeating some of the best debate schools, white or black, in the nation.

The movie opens late at night, in a backwoods establishment. We see a young man drinking and being engaged in a fight by the husband of a woman he was trying to pick up. As the fight escalates, and just before they cross a line that cannot be uncrossed, a poorly dressed man, who was inexplicably running through the woods at that time, steps in and stops the fight. We pick up a few scenes later as that same young man, Henry Lowe (Nate Parker), is in class and he and the poorly dressed man from the night before, Tolson, meet again under different circumstances. Movie convention tells us there is no way Henry Lowe is not making the team. After a rigorous, in-house audition, the four members of the debate team are selected. Lowe, of course, is joined by Hamilton Burgess (Jermaine Williams), the foundation of previous year's debate team; James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker), an intellectual savant; and Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), the only female debater any of them has ever encountered. Each of them brings something to the group, and as a team, they begin blowing out the competition leading to their eventual confrontation with reigning National Debate Champion - Harvard University. Along the way they encounter a rather formulaic look at life as an African American in the South in the 1930s. Or as much as I have been made aware of, having no frame of reference. The view offered of the reality of the racial climate during this time is moving and unapologetic, without being exploitive. The things they see and the situations they are forced into shape them as people and ultimately fuel their motivation throughout the movie.

The fact that this movie follows every sports movie convention in the book is irrelevant, just as the end result of the debates, including the final showdown with Harvard, is inconsequential. The story is not so much about what they accomplish as what it took to for them to accomplish it. Ask any fan of professional wrestling (the “sports entertainment” variety): a predetermined outcome does not make the match any less engaging to watch. What makes this movie work isn’t the rags-to-riches type story of the underdog who could; it is a story that demands compassion but doesn't beg for it. This is achieved through the keen direction of Denzel Washington, in his first directorial effort since Antoine Fisher (2002), and through the acting performances. Not only Washington himself, but Whitaker and all of the other members of the debate team. Their characters are mildly underdeveloped, a fact which is outweighed by the strength of their performances. In a movie where the characters are more the story than the story itself, my single complaint is only that I wanted more of them.

And there's the rub.

*** out of ****

- - -

DVD Special Features on the 2-Disc Special Collectors Edition:

- Deleted Scenes

- The Great Debaters: A Historical Perspective

- “That’s What My Baby Likes,” Music Video

- “My Soul Is A Witness,” Music Video

- The Great Debaters: A Heritage of Music

- Scoring The Great Debaters with James Newton Howard and Peter Golub

- Learning the Art: Our Young Actors Go To Debate Camp - A New Generation of Actors

- The 1930s Wardrobe of Sharen Davis

- The Production Design of David J. Bomba

- The Poetry of Melvin B. Tolson

Review: Speed Racer

2008-05-10T23:59:00.000-05:00

Starring: Emile Hirsch, John Goodman, Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon, Matthew Fox
Director: Larry Wachowski and Andy Wachowski
Release Date: May 9, 2008
Running Time: 135 min
MPAA Rating: PG
Distributor: Warner Bros.

Leading up to this weekend, I could not think of one reason of pertinence that would justify making Speed Racer into a feature film besides the obvious exploitation of existing media for financial gain. I had every reason to dislike this film. Larry and Andy Wachowski, the forces behind a couple of little indie films, Bound and The Matrix have some s’plainin’ to do. Since being widely and rightfully accused of ruining The Matrix franchise, they have not stepped foot behind the camera. I would call this a good thing.

Speed Racer is more than just a movie by the Wachowski Brothers; it is their attempt at reinvention and they want to make a statement. What that statement is, for sure, is unclear. Do they want to be once again taken seriously, or do they want something that will put a middle finger in anyone’s face that questions their path? Either way adapting an anime series with a cult following is a curious choice of material. But dig a little deeper and it’s not as much of a leap as you’d think. Look at their directorial efforts – Bound, The Matrix Trilogy, and now Speed Racer. All pretty different movies, but thematically they have a common thread: the observation of the traps people make of their lives and the reveal of their eventual transformation. Basic stuff, I know, but it becomes interesting when you consider that their career is starting to become molded to that same theme. Speed Racer is the Wachowski’s warm embrace of that idea.

But I am getting off track.

You’ve seen the trailer and the TV spots, so for me to say that this movie is a live-action cartoon is redundant, so I’ll put it another way. Let’s say Tron and Willy Wonka (the original) had a kid and that kid got so high while watching Pink Floyd The Wall that he ate a dozen lava lamps and threw up all over The Flintstones and the drug scenes in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; the result would be Speed Racer. It is a colorfully vibrant and trippy mess. That’s the good news. The bad news is, at best the plot is a throwaway Afterschool Special of the week. Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) is a talented young racecar driver who wants to avenge the death of his older brother, Rex Racer (Scott Porter) by winning The Casa Cristo – the same race that took his brothers life years earlier. His race team is a mom-and-pop operation ran by his parents, er… Mom (Susan Sarandon) and Pop (John Goodman). Along the way the owner of Royalton Industries, a leading top dollar operation, makes Speed an offer too good to be true. Too loyal to the family business, he rejects the offer from Royalton (Roger Allman) and soon uncovers some trade secrets, nefarious in nature, such as race fixing and cheating for financial gain. And blah blah blah, Racer X (Matthew Fox)… blah blah “I’ll show you”… blah blah “Go Speed Racer Go!”, blah. In other words, corporations are bad, winners never cheat and cheaters never win, the end. In even fewer words, you wont see this movie for its plot.

The visuals are the only thing worth seeing, which begs the question; is it possible for technological style to outrun a bad script? This question isn’t new ground for the Wachowski’s after Matrix Revolutions, but the answer Speed Racer provides is… almost. Watching this movie is like walking into a dark room from the outside – you have to give it a second and let your eyes adjust before you really see anything clearly. This is good because the first half of the movie sucks and is better left unseen. The second half is, how do you say, bad ass. The racing scenes are very well put together, edited even better and a ton of fun to watch.

All in all, this is a kids movie. Nothing more or less. I don’t buy into the anti-capitalist campaign some people attempted to mount against the film any more than I believe this is the filmmakers death rattle. I will say this, the brothers Wachowski swung for the fence, and they almost made it this time. They no doubt have talent when it comes to technological achievements on screen. Visually, their flair for the dramatic and style are unequalled. They aren’t out of it yet, but they need to get back to their roots and write a compelling story that will compliment their visual style.

In a movie whose main villain is a corrupt business man who practices dirty politics, I wonder if it is simply a matter of chance that he bears a striking resemblance Al Gore; a man who just happened to have lost out on the U.S. presidency at the hands of a corrupt business man who practices dirty politics. Just as much as I wonder if it is a matter of chance that a movie whose bare-bones message of “cheaters never win” came out mere months after the New England Patriots lost the Super Bowl after being accused of cheating and barreling through previous championship games and this years regular season undefeated.

Save your commentary to either one of those previous statements based of your own personal beliefs – they were simple observations. Maybe I am putting too much thought into this. Hell, I can barely decide if I even liked the movie. Or as I described it to a friend:

I don’t know if it was any good or not, but parts of it were really cool.

And there’s the rub.

** 1/2 out of ****

DVD Review: I'm Not There

2008-05-04T03:07:00.001-05:00

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, Marcus Carl Franklin
Director: Todd Haynes
DVD Release Date: May 6, 2008
Running Time: 135 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: The Weinstein Company

Just this week I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about music. His and my personal tastes differ a great deal but we were able to have a very intelligent and passionate conversation. One thing he said really stuck with me. We were discussing the transition in rock music during the late 1980s and early 1990s. He said, “Listen, I can’t stand Nirvana but I can appreciate how their music changed the face of music during that time. Same with The Beatles, I don’t like their music but I respect how they changed rock and roll.” It was a refreshing statement because a lot of people are very one track minded when it comes to music and have a lot of negative things to say about anyone that doesn’t agree with them. I suppose the same can be said about movies.

I can’t say I am terribly familiar with the story of Bob Dylan. I would call myself a casual fan of his music at best and don’t claim to know much about him aside from the fact that he never stayed locked on one style for very long, so the story itself intrigued me.

I guess you could call I’m Not There a biopic but it isn’t one marred by the constraints of conventional wisdom; quite far from it actually. In telling the story of the career of Bob Dylan director Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven, Velvet Underground) used six different actors to intercut seven different stories; none of which were actually Bob Dylan but each one telling a story representing phases in Dylan’s life. An African-American boy who calls himself “Woody Guthrie” (Marcus Carl Franklin) plays a version of Dylan as a boy, or at least the story he represented himself as having gone through. Jack Rollins (Christian Bale) is a young folk singer of political conscience. Robbie Clark (Heath Ledger) is a fictional actor best known for his film portrayal of Jack Rollins (the Christian Bale character). Ben Whishaw plays a young rebel Arthur Rimbaud. Cate Blanchett plays Jude Quinn, a spin on the most well known version of Dylan at the height of his fame in the 1960s, just as his original fan base cried “sell-out”. Christian Bale is later Pastor John, representing the born again Dylan. Finally Richard Gere is an aging Billy the Kid in a western town.

The standout performances in the film are easily Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger, but for different reasons. Blanchett nailed the physicality of Dylan during that time but is no means a simple impression – she owns this role that deservedly earned her a Supporting Actress nomination. Ledger’s story is full of passion as a man on the outside of his marriage looking in.

Each story is shot with a different style to further capture and illustrate the timeframe in which the story is told. Aside from Blanchett’s performance, none of the ‘versions’ of Bob Dylan sound like or even resemble the man. The stories aren’t even connected to each other aside from the overall canon of the story they are attempting to tell. They aren’t supposed to. Instead they are meant to create a collage of characters that embody the persona of a man who changed his image and style with such regularity that anyone attempting to make a film about his life would have no choice but to use different actors.

I’m Not There doesn’t try to explain the mythology of Bob Dylan but rather put each phase of his life and/or career on display for interpretation. In concept, I loved this film. I love the risks it took in swaying from convention. Some of the stories didn’t work as well as others – I still have no idea what is going on with Gere’s Billy the Kid story. I shouldn’t say that; I get the idea, but the placement was odd at times and took away from Blanchett’s story just as it was gearing up. Some of the others worked on their own merit but again, the placement was odd. It is hard to fault a film with no real plot, per se, for feeling like it is starting and stopping and random intervals, but that is inevitably what happened a few times.

This film is not meant to point to factual representation of these events but illustrating our perceptions of them, and of a man that is no closer to being explained at the end of the film than before you started watching.

The DVD Special Features are pretty standard fare: a director commentary, deleted scenes, outtakes, auditions, a written introduction to the film detailing each Bob Dylan version in the film, and a “Dylanography” feature (filmography, discography & bibliography). The best feature is A Conversation with Todd Haynes who describes, in vivid detail, his thought process before, during, and after making the film. It is a very interesting series of interviews that further explain the madness and the process that went into making the film.

And there’s the rub.

*** out of ****

Review: Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

2008-04-28T02:15:00.000-05:00

Starring: John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris
Director: Jon Hurwitz and Hay Schlossberg
Release Date: April 25, 2008
Running Time: 102 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Warner Bros

Man, these guys have had a rough couple of days.

Picking up immediately after the end of the first movie, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay does not waste any time getting back into the story. Having just professed his affection for his neighbor Maria, Harold (John Cho) decides he and Kumar (Kal Penn) need a vacation. This is a stoner movie, so it only makes sense that they end up attempting to go to Amsterdam. Each of the guys has their own agenda for wanting to go there. Harold doesn’t want to wait for Maria, who just happens to be there on business, and Kumar wants to go for the same reason most people who travel there want to go: legal marijuana. So here we are, staring down the barrel of inevitability wherein the sequel to a story of a couple of pot smokers heads them to Amsterdam. The very idea is obvious and lame. But low and behold something original happens; they don’t make it there. Why? Because Kumar cannot wait to land to partake in his favorite herbal enhancement and somewhere along the way they are suspected of being terrorists and sent to Guantanamo Bay.

After a very short stint at Gitmo, the guys escape by simply walking out and catching a boat to Miami. They track down a former classmate conveniently living in the area and embark on a trek to Texas to enlist the help of Kumar’s ex-girlfriends fiancé, who may be able to use his Washington connections to help the guys out. Sounds simple, but in true stoner movie fashion, the quest is anything but. Along the way their encounters include, but are not limited to a bottomless party (both male and female), their infiltration of a KKK rally, inexplicably meeting up with a drug addled Neil Patrick Harris on his way to a whorehouse, and getting high with President George W. Bush.

Believe me when I say, those aren’t even the most potentially offensive parts of the movie.

As much as I hate the term, a movie like this is almost critic-proof, in that being the sequel to a story featuring pre-existing characters of popularity, it barely matters how stupid the movie may be, the target audience will see it anyway. The only thing is this one is actually pretty good. By good, I mean funny. And by funny, I mean horrendously offensive. I almost used the term politically incorrect but that term doesn’t apply here. Believe it or not, this movie has something to say about a lot of things, not the least of which being racial and social profiling. On one level, it is garden variety slapstick, gross-out, pot smoking humor and on the other, the movie works as a blazing commentary on our nations prejudices. I will not waste anyone’s time getting too deep into the discussions presented in the movie – they can be left to be debated by the people the message is intended for in the first place. The movie definitely picks a side but the satire is masked in its own idiocy so as not to be too preachy.

I had minor issues with the movie itself, but those criticisms are petty and unfair. Like the demographic of the passengers of the plane on its way to Amsterdam seemed grossly out of place. Having never been there before I cannot speak first hand for the type of passenger that should be on a plane headed towards that particular destination, I just imagine it being different than it was in the movie. And like I mentioned, the actual escape from Guantanamo Bay seemed overly simplified. Like I said, petty, but worth noting.

All in all, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay kept what worked in the first film and scraped what didn’t. Former Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry as an overzealous and under informed agent of Homeland Security cracked me up every time he was on screen. And as much of an easy and logical decision as it would have been to bulk up Neil Patrick Harris’ part in this movie, the filmmakers wisely chose to use him again in small doses, forgoing the idea that more is better. Lord knows the last thing this audience needs is to be over stimulated.

And there’s the rub

*** out of ****

tMF Top Five - Best Stoner Movies

2008-04-25T12:39:00.001-05:00

With only one week to go before the release of Iron Man and the official start of the summer movie season, this week's offering of new releases is understandably light on quality. Really, only two films will be fighting for ticket dollars this weekend. Baby Mama should take care of the female audience and on the other side of the coin we get Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. (Hey, I told you it was a light weekend.) It does, however, provide an opportunity to take a closer look at a hit-or-miss subgenre of comedy – the stoner movie.

The American tradition known as the stoner movie is less concerned about providing movies to get stoned to than showing a day in the life and (high) times of the everyday pot smoker. Thematically, they are all cut from the same cloth: a laid-back group of guys are sent on an arbitrarily ridiculous quest of self-described nobility with their drug of choice taking center stage. More often than not, these movies are awful, even to their target audience, but a lot of them seem to gather a cult following anyway. I guess everything is funnier when you’re high. For the record, The Wizard of Oz with Dark Side of the Moon missed the cut… but just barely.

tMF Top Five – Best Stoner Movies [read full article]

Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

2008-04-22T01:18:00.001-05:00

Starring: Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand
Director: Nicholas Stroller
Release Date: April 18, 2008
Running Time: 110 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Universal Pictures

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is the latest apple to fall from the Judd Apatow family tree of comedy films. For anyone having spent the last few years underground preparing for Y3K, this tree is comprised of a group of friends who take turns writing, directing, and/or starring in each others movies, all packaged and shipped with the Apatow seal of approval. I guess that makes this movie Knocked Up’s baby brother. Or first cousin. I don’t know which. It’s sort of like the mafia, only instead of getting whacked, we get penis jokes. There’s a joke in there somewhere but I’m too tired to write it.

Either way this movie stays true to the golden formula perfected by the Apatow Family over the past few years – focus on a group of men far more immature than their age should allow, force them to deal with some level of reality in their respective circumstance and see how they react. It is the textbook definition of, well, textbook, but it is also real life in the sense that every man struggles with his own evolution into adulthood at some point. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is no different.

Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) and Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) seem like a picture perfect couple - literally. Peter’s refrigerator, coffee mug, and calendar are plastered with pictures of the two of them together. She is the rising Hollywood star of a “CSI”-esque TV show and he composes music for the same show. He worships the ground she walks on. Then she dumps him. While he’s naked. I mean really naked. Crushed and with nowhere to turn, Peter goes on a hollow one-night-stand-athon. After that exercise in humility does not bear fruitful, and at the behest of his brother Brian (Bill Hader), he decides to go on vacation to clear his head. He picks a place in Hawaii that Sarah had always talked about and off he goes. Great idea, until he shows up and finds her there too; with her new boyfriend, pop sensation Aldous Snow (Russell Brand).

Peter spends the remainder of the movie retracing the steps of his five year relationship with Sarah to see what did and didn’t work, having his nose rubbed in her new relationship, and dim-wittedly flirting with a beautiful hotel employee named Rachel (Mila Kunis), who just happens to be Sarah’s polar opposite. I wonder how it will turn out…?

Movies about mans struggle out of the aftermath of a failed relationship are a dime a dozen. This one doesn’t bring anything new to the table but rather focuses on and exploits his vulnerability within the situation. Peter is not only crushed by the break-up, but he is pushed out of his comfort zone when confronted with the very person who broke his heart. He operates under the delusion that he isn’t running from the awkward situation but rather, forcing himself to grow by sticking out the vacation and being the bigger person. Only he succumbs to the inevitability of having to see for himself what she is up to at all times, regardless of the train wreck it is bound to turn into.

The R-rated comedy has taken many shapes over the past 25 years. In the early 1980’s it took Porky’s and Fast Times at Ridgemont High a topless shot or two and a couple of light drug references to earn the badge of an R-rating. Soon that wasn’t enough. In the late 1990’s, There’s Something About Mary and American Pie taught a new generation of male teens that getting caught with your dingy in an unconventional location, be it a pie or zipper, will garner a laugh. In 2008, keeping up with the times means that audiences have had to bear witness to the arbitrary penis shot, or shots. I picture the process of making Apatow-ian movies as a group of friends in a college film class being split into groups and assigned with the task of making a comedy. Each group takes a turn trying to outdo each other purely for their own amusement and in the interest of continuity and one-upsmanship; each one has to go bigger and farther than the last entry to stay ahead of the curve. It’s the ultimate game of truth or dare and trust me, nobody ever picks truth. I get that shock = funny sometimes, but I just don’t think the world is ready for full frontal male nudity in mainstream comedy. At least not the audience I saw it with, who met each scene with either groans or equally uncomfortable silence. Then again, we are from the Midwest so maybe we’re the prudes.

Being a notch on the Apatow bedpost means the use of the usual supporting players. The mostly annoying Jonah Hill, the mostly funny Bill Hader, and the always hilarious Paul Rudd are all true to type. And his penis aside, Segel not only carried the lead in the movie with surprising ease, he also wrote a pretty good script. The real growth here is the strength of the female cast for once. Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis played the antithesis of each others characters to perfection.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall will not be accused of blazing a path of originality, but lucky for us, it doesn’t have to. Thing is, this one is actually pretty funny. Not punch-you-in-the-face, laugh out loud funny the whole way through, but funny in that “funny because it’s true” sort of way; and anything it lacks in humor it makes up for in heart. Balancing the two meant it could be funny without seeming like it was trying too hard while at the same time being heartfelt without being in danger of being too cheesy.

And there’s the rub.

*** out of ****

Review: The Ruins

2008-04-17T21:38:00.001-05:00

Starring: Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone, Shawn Ashmore, Laura Ramsey
Director: Carter Smith
Release Date: April 4, 2008
Running Time: 91 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Dreamworks Pictures

To the horror genre, the idea of young Americans being terrorized on vacation isn’t breaking any new ground. The setting has been around almost since the inception of the genre, explored as early on as Friday the 13th. What is it about the concept that makes for such a good, if not slightly overused setting? The idea of any good horror movie is to play against peoples common fears. Being on vacation automatically puts people on the defensive because they are out of their element. Ranging from flying to get there in the first place to simply being around people they don’t know, vacations can be a breeding ground for good horror.

As with any successfully used screenwriting device, young Americans encountering danger on vacation is becoming clichéd. We’ve seen it used very well (Open Water, Deliverance, and, most recently, The Descent – my vote for the best horror movie of the decade) as much as we’ve seen it used poorly (Hostel, Wolf Creek, and Turistas). As much as they all have the commonalities of playing against basic human fears, the Hostel’s of the world have opted to ride the latest flavor of the moment and splatter gallons of blood across the screen in lieu of telling a compelling story. Don’t get me wrong; the idea of getting chopped to bits in a foreign country is probably pretty scary if it is happening to you, but for sheer watchability, call me crazy but I need something more.

Ask and you shall receive…

The Ruins is the latest entry in the “Why Foreign Countries Scare Young American Travelers” sweepstakes. The textbook opening finds four friends – Jeff (Jonathan Tucker), Amy (Jena Malone), Eric (Shawn Ashmore), and Stacy (Laura Ramsey) – nursing hangovers at a Mexican resort. They are two days from the end of their trip and trying to decide how to spend the tail end of it. Enter Mathias (Joe Anderson), a fellow vacationer from Germany. You are weary of him because you can’t quite make him out. And you are weary of him because vacation horror movie convention tells you that you should be. Both he and his friend Dimitri (Dimitri Baveas) are heading to an ancient Mayan pyramid the next day to look for Mathias’ brother, believed to have gone to an archialogical dig site in the area. They leave a copy of the map with a separate set of guys, the Greeks, to catch up with them later. After a bit of discussion, the whole gang decides to embark on a trek the pyramid the next day. The ruins are not located on any map and vague warnings from the locals fall on deaf ears. After hiking through the jungle together, they happen upon the ruins. So far, not really much to write home about. Interesting enough but riding a wave of anticipation to this point.

As soon as they reach the ruins and without immediate explanation, they are ambushed by Mayan natives, killing one, and forced to the top of the pyramid at gunpoint. The natives set up camp, presumably to ensure that no one escapes. At this point we still do not understand why. It is in not understanding where the picture begins to take hold. Without spoiling the movie I will say there is more than simply refugee natives and foreign travelers to be weary of. Our travelers soon realize the vines at the site of the ruins seem to not only be alive, but deadly to whoever makes contact with them. Both physically and psychologically.

As the movie progresses the feeling of the film quickly shifts from uncertainty and confusion to that of hopelessness and primal fear. As ironic a statement is I am about to make, the hopelessness in the movie is its high point. Most critics have panned the film for its bleak outlook but I believe the unsettling tone is what makes it as good as it is. The performances all around are just, ok. It is the tone that is set by the story that makes the movie stand out. There is gore, and some of it is difficult to watch, but a perfect balance between gore and tension is met. It is used just sparingly enough, and at the perfect times, that it plays into the film and the story more than a device to advance it. The filmmakers know the material enough to understand the movie should not pander to the type of audience that would make Prom Night the highest grossing movie in the country.

I liked the movie because of its simplicity. I liked the movie because you were never really sure of anyone’s intentions. This allowed the filmmakers to achieve something unique by involving the audience in the story enough to put them on the defensive. The simplicity of the story added to the overall feeling of hopelessness as the movie wore on. For the record, I know the difference between the ending of the book and the movie, and I liked the movie version better. Maybe I didn’t like it better but it played out better on screen, adding a spice of Greek tragedy that helped sell the movie even more. Scott Smith (A Simple Plan – the screenplay and the novel it was based on) wrote them both and had the sense to make the change for the movie. Who am I to tell him what to do with his own story?

And there’s the rub.

*** out of ****

Review: 21

2008-03-28T23:13:00.000-05:00

Starring: Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, Laurence Fishburne
Director: Robert Luketic
Release Date: March 28, 2008
Running Time: 123 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributor: Columbia Pictures

It is movies like this that test the film critic in me. I have two sides battling for supreme domination. On one hand there is my generally critical nature of movies themselves as films, and on the other, there is my love for the subject matter. They are two sides that I knew walking in to the theatre would go at it like a Seinfeld black and white cookie.

The movie 21 tells a story I am familiar with. It is the Hollywood version of the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, the story of six MIT students who perfected a card counting system and took Las Vegas casinos for millions of dollars in the early 1990’s playing blackjack. I use the term ‘playing’ so loosely because these kids didn’t get involved in the game to gamble. It was business and they were there to make money. And that they did. I became familiar with the story after my first trip to Las Vegas, many moons ago. The story spoke to the kid in me. The same way The Goonies made me think I was going to find treasure in the small Iowa town of my upbringing. I don’t think it was so much that I thought it was really going to happen but that it would be way cool if it did.

Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) is a financially struggling college student at MIT. Since he was a child his dream was to go to Harvard Medical School but without a full-ride scholarship, that he and 75 other students are vying for, he is about $300,000 short of tuition. Enter Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), a mathematics professor and leader of the MIT Blackjack Team who offers Jim a spot in the group. He is a wily old coot. He’s a cross between the teacher he played in Pay it Forward, Eugene Simonet, and Keyser Soze. It’s an odd mix but it works on some level. It wouldn’t anywhere else but again, this is Vegas, or a Vegas movie anyway and things are off just enough for it to be par for the course. All seems to be going well for the team until Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne), an old-school casino security agent becomes determined to take them down. And yes, by old-school I mean ruling with brass knuckles in a dingy room where no cameras are allowed. In other words, a total B.A.

Even with the inclusion of Ben’s love interest, Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth), the real star of the movie is none other than Sin City itself – Las Vegas. A place where everyone has dreams of hitting it big. A place where the only limits are your imagination and your bank account. A place where lascivious activity is met with a blind eye and breeds otherwise naughty behavior. In other words, Las Vegas is a place where events told in the movie could really happen, or at the very least could be passed off as such easier than anywhere else.

The Hollywood touch makes the movie as slick as a newly opened pack of cards. The downside to that is that regardless of how fascinating the events are that the movie is based on, it needed to be polished to sell to the masses – not just card playing Vegas junkies like me. The upside is that 21 ended up being a lot better than I expected. I don’t know if it was so much a good movie more than it was just fun; and I’ll take that. It’s one of those movies you put on just before you go to Las Vegas so you can think of the truck loads of money you’ll have to carry home and all the elaborate ways you are going to win it.

Then you get there and bring a whole new meaning to the phrase, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

And there’s the rub.

*** out of ****

Review: 10,000 B.C.

2008-03-25T14:47:00.000-05:00

Starring: Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis
Director: Roland Emmerich
Release Date: March 7, 2008
Running Time: 109 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Warner Bros

So I’m in the theatre seeing who knows what with my better half. We watch the previews and turn to each other after each one is over and give the one look critique in silence. You know, that head shake or whatever to determine if this is one she sees with me or one I am on my own for. The first time I see the trailer for 10,000 B.C. I have to admit I was interested. It looked pretty decent. I turn to her shaking my head yes and am met with a blank stare and the following statement; “Are you kidding me? Aren’t you a movie critic?”

Touché.

I sign up to review the movie and literally that night saw the trailer again in front of something else. Once again I thought it looked decent. Then I started thinking. Where is the dialogue? What is the story about? Wait, why did I think this was going to be good after hearing again who made it?

Dear God, what have I done.

One things for sure, no one ever accused Roland Emmerich of being a master craftsman. His previous attempts to direct have yielded exactly one and three fourths of a half decent movie – Independence Day, The Patriot, and Stargate. I can’t decide which movie makes up which percent, but I’m sticking to my figures.

Movies involving history or past events that are alleged to have taken place are tricky business. People making these movies typically try to stick to the facts as much as possible and interject the story with life where they see fit to make the story flow. Fair enough, I say. I imagine the idea of a movie like 10,000 B.C., in its infancy, was designed to tell a story focused not so much on fact, but rather an interesting setting. Again, fair enough.

There are just far too many things to attack with a movie this bad. The story itself is a garden variety prehistoric odyssey with no heart. And I may have been schooled in the butt crack of the Midwest but even I know English wasn’t the native tongue ten thousand years ago. In an interview with Emmerich he said he decided to use English in the movie because he felt using an ancient language wouldn’t have been as emotionally engaging. He went on to say that faced with the dilemma of forcing the audience to read subtitles of a language they didn’t understand and look at what was on screen, he opted for the latter. Hearing this made me immediately assume that what we were being forced to look at would have overcompensated for the lack of story. Aside from a couple scenes in the movie, it did not.

It’s hard to say if the movie is meant to be a history lesson of any kind. If it is, then it is grossly irresponsible. I thought it less of a lesson in history rather than one of economics; the study of the production, distribution, and consumption of good and services. It is bad economics to make a movie of this size and spend all the money in the budget on a handful of scenes. Emmerich is known for doing this and why he keeps being allowed to do so without producing a decent picture is beyond me. The lesson here is that if you don’t want to see it then don’t go and you win, right? Well this may be true to a point but look at it like this: A studio spends umpteen million dollars to make a pile of a movie like this then is forced to oversaturated the market with its product. This means you get sixteen showings a day of 10,000 B.C. at your local theatre while movies that cost less to make, and therefore loss less if they make less, get pulled early or not ran at all. So even if you don’t go see movies like this, you still lose.

I guess they’re right; there IS no such thing as a free lunch.

And there’s the rub

* out of ****

Review: Drillbit Taylor

2008-03-23T13:58:00.000-05:00

Starring: Owen Wilson, Troy Gentile, Nate Hartley, Alex Frost
Director: Steven Brill
Release Date: March 21, 2008
Running Time: 102 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributor: Paramount Pictures

This movie is a classic example of two ideas playing against the middle.

The story was based on an original idea from John Hughes.

Hmmm…

The synopsis? Three freshmen get singled out the first day of high school by a bully. The place an internet ad and end up hiring a bodyguard, Drillbit Taylor, to protect them.

Meh.

The movie is rated PG-13 (ugh)…

… for crude sexual references throughout, strong bullying, language, drug references, and partial nudity.

Based on that description, if I was a teenager watching HBO late at night and that flashed up on the screen, I would have thought I had died and gone to ‘Movies I Shouldn’t Be Watching’ heaven.

But the end result is Drillbit Taylor; a movie about Ryan (Troy Gentile), Wade (Nate Hartley), and Emmit (David Dorfman). Three freshmen who, on the first day of high school, get railroaded by the school bully, Filkins (Alex Frost). After a series of interviews, the boys hire Drillbit Taylor (Owen Wilson) as their budget bodyguard.

Drillbit Taylor is the nicest looking homeless guy you will ever see – in real life or the movies. His clothes are just vintage enough to pass as dirty and his hair just messed up enough not to be neat.

Filkins is the type of high school kid who lives in a nice house, drives an immaculate car and has no parental supervision anywhere to be found. The fact that he has no parents anywhere to be seen is addressed, but the idea is so obvious and out of place it made me wish they’d have just left well enough alone. He is a cross between Nelson from The Simpsons and O’Bannion from Dazed and Confused. Just crazy enough to be worried about, but over the top enough to know he will get his in the end.

My problem with movies like this are not that they are simply bad movies – I can handle that. When that bad movie is wrapped in pretty paper and jammed down my throat while being passed off as something else is where I grow tired. The people that made this movie had to know it wasn’t good, or they wouldn’t have had to resort to pulling that old ‘From the Maker’s of ____’ trick. Judd Apatow needs to stop attaching his name to movies his friends make or they are going to tarnish his golden touch. And Superbad was funny, but Seth Rogen hasn’t proved that he can write just yet.

The movie is supposed to be light with a sprinkle of warm and fuzzies but I was too bored to notice. I liked Wilson more when he interacted with the kids. I liked the kids more when they interacted with themselves. And I liked the movie more when I listened to an older couple next to me talk about how awful it was in between crunches of popcorn.

Owen Wilson elected to sit out the promotional tour for this movie. Producers were worried the press would spend more time focusing on his hospitalization last year than discussing the movie. I would like to think Wilson just knew he made a bad movie and decided to cut his losses. Who knows.

I would refer to the movie a wolf in sheep’s clothing but with a title like Drillbit Taylor, I’m not sure it was even trying to hide.

And there’s the rub.

* ½ out of ****

Review: The Bank Job

2008-03-19T22:32:00.001-05:00

Starring: Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Stephen Campbell Moore
Director: Roger Donaldson
Release Date: March 7, 2008
Running time: 110min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: Lions Gate

It’s funny how a simple sentence can change your entire outlook on a movie.

“Based on a true story.”

We see it all the time preceding certain books and movies but its placement seems curious sometimes, no? It’s not like Saving Private Ryan felt the need to say that it was based on a true story. Why? Well, we kinda already figured that out. No, we see this disclaimer in front of movies that suggest that we may not otherwise believe what we are about to see had it not been for the fact that is was based on events that actually took place. Does anyone think The Blair Witch Project would have been half as successful had it not been for those five simple words? Exactly. The truth just feels more interesting. It’s actually quite a master stroke of marketing. It allows the filmmakers to play with the facts more than usually allowed because we the viewer tend to turn a blind eye to certain inaccuracies and embrace it as fact regardless of that voice in the back of our head asking “Did this REALLY happen?” I think Mark Twain said it best, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't.”

It is a fine line to walk though.

This brings us to The Bank Job. Based on an actual bank robbery in London in 1971, the story was alleged to have been hidden until now due to a government gag order to protect certain members of the British Royal Family. How it was hidden for almost 40 years until a Hollywood movie revealed the events as fact is beyond me but hey, they said it was so it’s gotta be true, right?

Terry Leather (Jason Statham) runs a fledgling car lot and is behind on debts to some people of a seemingly shifty nature. As if the clouds parted and a ray of coincidence shined below, Martine (Saffron Burrows), an old acquaintance of Terry’s shows up with a proposition for a job. You know, that “one last job” that plagues every other heist movie ever made. He assembles his crew of regulars and they begin planning the job. They are going after the safe deposit boxes in the vault of a bank on Baker Street in London. What they don’t know is that Martine has set them up on behalf of the British Secret Service, MI5, to obtain one specific deposit box that contains photos of a member of the Royal Family in a rather compromising position. Or positions, as it were.

The movie itself follows just about every convention of heist movie lore. Nothing even particularly noteworthy even happens during the heist itself, or so it seems. It is everything going on behind the scenes that make this movie worth its running time and work very, very well. The job itself is done about halfway through the movie and the rest of the time is spent unraveling the mess they don’t even know they’re in to begin with. I particularly took note of the fact that since the story is set in the 1970’s, the movie is forced to use of equipment of the time rather than imploring the use of intricate technology that no one understands simply for the “wow” factor. Quite a nice change of pace, for once.

Jason Statham is shaping up to be quite a charismatic action star. He is given room to work here and he does, very well. So long as he sticks to his Guy Ritchie movie roots and steers clear of anymore Jet Li collaborations, he should be well on his way.

The movie works because of Statham’s performance and the illusion of a simple heist story. The fun is seeing his crew get in way over their head and try to get back out of it. I have no idea if half of the movie is true or not, and I really don’t care. It’s not the reason I saw the movie or any part of the reason I liked it as much as I did.

But it sure didn’t hurt.

And there’s the rub.

*** out of ****

Review: Vantage Point

2008-03-04T00:10:00.001-06:00

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, William Hurt
Director: Pete Travis
Release Date: February 22, 2008
Running time: 90 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Sony Pictures

Eight strangers with eight different points of view try to unlock the one truth behind an assassination attempt on the United States of America.

The concept itself is intriguing. Any time there is a story newsworthy enough to be plastered all over every channel in the known world, we get the same details drudged out in front of us until a new perspective is offered. So to concentrate all perspectives into a 90 minute movie should be nothing if not efficient.

11:59:57… 58… 59… 12:00:00 as the church bell rings.The GNN crew is covering an anti-terrorism summit in Spain. A TV producer directs various cameramen and anchors as President Ashton (William Hurt) arrives. He is introduced, takes the podium, then two shots in the chest from afar. An explosion in the distance, then the podium explodes. People die. Freeze-frame. Rewind.

11:59:57… 58… 59… 12:00:00 as the church bell rings.Secret Service agents Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) and Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox) escort the President to the anti-terrorism summit. One of them thinks he sees a shooter. The President takes two to the chest. The other chases someone. An explosion in the distance, then the podium explodes. People die. Freeze-frame. Rewind.

11:59:57… 58… 59… 12:00:00 as the church bell rings.American tourist Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker) parades around by himself filming the anti-terrorism summit. This makes sense because that’s exactly the vacation we all want to take by ourselves. He thinks he sees a shooter in the window. He films it. The President takes two to the chest. An explosion in the distance, then the podium explodes. People die. He runs after someone because he’s apparently a vigilante now. Freeze-frame. Rewind.

Christ this is getting old…

The alarm clock strikes 6:00 AM, “I Got You Babe” comes on the alarm clock radio and – oops, wrong movie.

Where were we? Oh, Spain. President, explosions, dying, chasing. Got it.

The story itself is a slim 23 minutes long; from beginning to end. Conceptually I get it, but in order to make it work I need to care why these people are doing what they are doing. Or not doing. I didn’t. I didn’t care about one of these characters; a lack of character back story and poor acting is not something this movie needed to contend with. And the transitions between the stories were awful. Literally freeze-frames and a fast rewind montage to get you back to the beginning. After about the fifth time, I half expected the General Lee to come blasting across the screen and freeze so Waylon Jennings could voice over his concern for how the Duke boys were going get themselves out of this mess.

Now THERE’s high concept.

You know that friend who thinks it’s funny to wrap your Christmas present in six different boxes like a Matryoshka doll only to find it’s a gift card at the bottom to a store you don’t like? Or how you made your parents buy you a Happy Meal every week for a month so you could collect all the Matchbox cars? But since it was a McDonald’s toy it was a generic non-brand name toy car where the decals didn’t line up and the wheels didn’t work?

That’s this movie.

The good news is Happy Meal toys have improved since I was a kid. Bad news is this movie will always suck.

And there’s the rub.

½ * out of ****

Review: Semi-Pro

2008-03-01T17:51:00.000-06:00

Starring: Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, Andre Benjamin
Director: Kent Alterman
Release Date: February 29, 2008
Running time: 85min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: New Line Cinema

Certain things in life we have been conditioned to just take for granted. For example, I know that every October I go on a camping trip into the middle of nowhere, every weekend I see at least one new movie in the theatre, and Will Ferrell is one of the most consistent comedic actors working today. This is why the following statement physically pains me to type:

Will Ferrell’s act is growing stale.

I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later and I should have seen this coming, I just wasn’t ready to see it happen already.

Semi-Pro is the story of Jackie Moon (Will Ferrell), a singer whose one hit single “Love Me Sexy” made him rich. He then used the profits to buy an ABA basketball team, the Flint Michigan Tropics. They happen to be the worst team in the league. This may have something to do with the fact that Jackie is the owner, coach, promotional manager, and star player. He may not be a very good player, but he’s a star nonetheless. In 1976, just before the ABA collapses, the NBA agrees to merge the four best teams in the ABA into their league. Jackie trades the team washing machine for former Boston Celtic benchwarmer Ed Monix (Woody Harrelson) to make a run at 4th place and a spot in the NBA. Think: a dumbed down basketball version of Slap Shot and you’ll get close.

The good news and the bad news is that the movie is just okay. There were laughs, even a few out loud moments, but they were too few and far between to sustain the whole movie. This is only sadder when you consider the movie is only 85 minutes long. Do not expect anything more than a few hours killed on a Saturday afternoon. It follows every sports, comedy, and movie cliché in the book

Looking back on his previous films, you realize Ferrell works best when given a good script to do so, provided he is allowed the freedom to ad-lib within that structure. The trouble with Semi-Pro is that there seems to be no script. It felt like they had a basic idea and told the actors to just wing it once the director yelled “action!”. The potential for catching lightening in a bottle is there when you allow for ad-libbing, but you have to have a starting point. This concept may work on Curb Your Enthusiasm, but it didn’t work so well here.

It also strikes me as odd some of the career choices Woody Harrelson makes. His dramatic acting aside, his choices for comedic roles are all over the place. But I can summarize in one sentence; this is better than Play It to the Bone but nowhere near as good as Kingpin. Hell, it may only be marginally better than White Men Can’t Jump. Yeah, that doesn’t really narrow the gap, does it? Ok, maybe it took more than one sentence… But suffice it to say even the funny parts of Semi-Pro weren’t because of Woody.

I haven’t completely given up on Will Ferrell movies (Step Brothers actually looks pretty funny) but I think it might be time he foray into new territory like he did in Stranger Than Fiction; give him a chance to grow a little bit. At the very least, he can always come back and churn out roles like the ones that made him famous if it doesn’t work out. It seemed to work for Jim Carrey. Oh wait…

And there’s the rub.

** out of ****

DVD Review: Margot at the Wedding

2008-02-18T22:16:00.001-06:00

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black
Director: Noah Baumbach
DVD Release date: February 19, 2008
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Paramount Home Video

When I was younger a friend of mine had his birthday party over a weekend at his parents’ house. A bunch of us spent the night watching movies, playing video games, and eating pizza — standard fare for the time and not unlike any other time we had done the same thing. But this one particular time we were all hanging out watching a movie and his parents got into some kind of argument in the next room. We all tried to ignore it by turning up the TV but no one was even paying attention to that anymore. My friend was understandably embarrassed which, in turn made us all a little uneasy, but through the whole event, no one ever really stopped listening to see what was going on. Watching Margot at the Wedding gave me that same feeling of uneasiness.

Margot (Nicole Kidman) sets out to visit her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who announced that she’s marrying her boyfriend Malcolm (Jack Black). The sisters are not on speaking terms. The reason for this is never said aloud but as the story unfolds you begin to get an inclination as to why.

Margot is like a bull in a china shop. She’s a typhoon that leaves a mess in her wake that isn’t easily avoided. She just blurts out whatever is in her head, regardless of its timing or audience. She doesn’t seem to possess the filter everyone else has that stops them from saying inappropriate things as they come to mind. It’s as if she doesn’t see the sense in wasting the energy to censor herself. To make matters worse (for everyone around her, anyway), she feels justified in saying whatever she wants about everything she wants. Basically she just doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get that certain things that are better left unsaid, even if everyone is thinking it. She is the type of person that forces her opinion on everyone — welcomed or not — and expresses anger when it is not met with a thankful ear.

We’ve all known someone like Margot in our lives and more times than not they have made us angry when they are on one of their rants. But like they say, bad press is still press. I think she honestly believes the things she says but at the same time, she acts the way she does to garner the attention. Her intentions may be good but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
Margot may be considered a monster by her family and everyone in her path, but that doesn’t make her character any less watchable. The performances in the movie really make the film as good as it is. The story itself is a little off-kilter but there is realism in the dysfunctional way this family interacts. Pauline seems just as crazy as Margot if not a bit more introverted. Jason Leigh plays her with modest restraint and the movie is better for it. Her laid back lifestyle isn’t equipped to handle Margot’s abrasive nature. Pauline’s fiancé Malcolm is a rather earthy, hippy of a character but seems to exist for the sole purpose of being a catalyst for igniting Margot’s rage.

Ultimately the movie really is less about the likability of these characters than the voyeuristic nature by which they are observed. Just like how we all slow down at an accident on the side of the road to see what happened, we don’t necessarily like what we are seeing the whole time, but we can’t look away in the off chance that we are going to see some sort of carnage. Of all the characters in the movie, I feel the most sorry for the kids. They have little say in what is going on around them and are just forced to deal with it. In their innocence, it seems normal for them because it seems like that is all they have really known. I suppose the upside of that is if they have friends over for a birthday party one day, they’ll find it easier to ignore than I did when everything goes to crazy in the next room.

And there’s the rub.

** 1/2 out of ****

Official [ Movie Site ]

Review: Jumper

2008-02-16T15:54:00.001-06:00

Starring: Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell, Samuel L. Jackson, Rachel Bilson
Director: Doug Liman
Release Date: February 14, 2008
Running time: 88 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: 20th Century Fox

One of the cardinal rules of good filmmaking is to not underestimate the intelligence of your audience. There are different levels but it makes you wonder which is the bigger crime; not trusting your audience to figure out a movie on its own without being beat over the head with the answer, or thinking they aren’t smart enough to notice that they could have known the answer if given a plot to do so. One of the first lines in Jumper told me all I needed to know about the intentions of the film:

“It didn’t used to be this way. I used to be a regular chump. Like you.”

Great…

David Rice (Hayden Christensen) finds out as a teenager that he has the ability to “jump”, or teleport. His mother left when he was five and he lives with his father. After almost drowning on day he accidentally jumps to a library, then home, then to NYC, then into a bank to steal money. If I am moving too fast for you, not to worry, however long it took you to read that last sentence is about as much time as the movie allowed for a back story, so you’re up to speed.

Fast forward to today. David has quite a little racket going for himself. With his newfound ability perfected, he lives in a swank New York apartment bankrolled by jumping in and out of, and robbing bank vaults. One day he comes home from his latest tryst overseas met by a man in his loft. Roland (Samuel L. Jackson) never reveals where he is from but immediately tries to capture and kill him. He’s got a bunch of fancy gadgets that are never explained, but we get the idea they prevent David from being able to jump.

The remainder of the movie is David running from Roland, who happens to be a Paladin (huh?), finding out there are other jumpers out there, such as Griffin (Jamie Bell) who possess the same ability as him. Sometime in the middle we briefly find out that Paladin’s are an organization set on destroying all the jumpers. The ‘why’ is never explained, but we are expected to make that… uh, leap and just go along for the ride.

The problem with the ride is that it’s, well, kinda boring. And at my last count, action movies aren’t supposed to be. The pacing of the film is fine, I suppose, but the teleporting stuff got old pretty quick when there wasn’t much substance to be found anywhere else. The concept itself is interesting and I think there is a good movie in there somewhere, but the idea of teleporting became a bit thin. I take that back; the idea of teleportation is pretty cool, but the execution was thin.

I guess there’s a reason Nightcrawler wasn’t a bigger part of X2.

The movie is based on the 1992 novel Jumper by Steven Gould. Before sitting down to write this review, I took a midnight stroll down the Information Superhighway to find out if the book was as much of a mess. Come to find out the differences between the movie and the book was pretty substantial. I found that all the stuff they changed from the book is all the stuff that comes across as disconnected in the movie. It is curious why you would take proven material, skin the meat from it and try to dress it up in something different. Guess they should have left well enough alone.

You don’t go to a movie like this for the acting, but it is worth mentioning that Jamie Bell is by far the best part. If I was a jumper and had a friend that could do the same thing, I’d want him there to hang out with. Sam Jackson is underused and reduced to a bad comic book character. That makes more sense explaining why he looked like a poor man’s Wesley Snipes from Demolition Man. I will say though, life sized cutout of Anakin Skywalker they used in the movie is a lot more mobile than I expected from a piece of cardboard. It was still cardboard though, so don’t expect much.

This movie was like watching a bad run of episodes of the TV show Lost – too many questions and not enough answers. The difference is on Lost, at least we know eventually everything will make sense. At least more than it does now. Jumper never will. Even if the two sequels planned ever get made. The danger of telling a story over three movies is like telling any story; you have to grab them early.

The movie lives up to its name though, because the story is all over the place.

And there’s the rub.

* 1/2 out of ****

Review: Definitely, Maybe

2008-02-16T15:47:00.000-06:00

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Abigail Breslin, Isla Fisher, Rachel Weisz
Director: Adam Brooks
Release Date: February 14, 2008
Running time: 105 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Focus Features

“You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?”

“I'd say more like one out of a million.”

“So you're telling me there's a chance.”

We all make choices in life, every day. Some are smaller and have little or no impact on the grand scheme, and some shake us to our foundation and alter the very balance of power in our lives and completely change the game. For one reason or another a few months back I embarked on a quest to find the first good romantic comedy of the season. I didn’t mean to, but after seeing so many bad ones, I imagined there had to be one out there sooner or later that didn’t make me want to reject my trade. Regrettably, my stubborn nature took over.

Well it happened. Dear God, it finally happened. But my personal victory notwithstanding, the movie isn’t completely without flaw.

The almost divorced Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) goes to tuck his annoyingly inquisitive daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin) into bed one night and she starts in on him about wanting to hear the story of how he fell in love with her mother. Kinda like that TV show with the clever title – what was the name of it again? – oh yeah, How I Met Your Mother. He begins to tell the story, through flashbacks, of three loves in his past.

I remember reading an article somewhere one time that listed all these different types of women and it saying something about how men should try to date as many different types of these women as they can before they decide on “the one”. Seems like an obvious and skanky argument (wait, sorry – shaky. Never mind, skanky works) but Will must have read the same article because the three women he talks about are scattered across the board.

There’s old reliable, Emily (Elizabeth Banks), his college sweetie. The ambitious journalist, Summer (Rachel Weisz) with a penchant for sleeping with old men and young women. And April (Isla Fisher), the free spirited arty chick with whom he does/doesn’t/does/doesn’t have feelings for. Or a little bit like A Lot Like Love. The movie goes into his time juggling these three women at various points in his life leading up to now. It’s all well and good, but it’s like driving west across Colorado toward Denver, you see the end about an hour before you get there. And it does take a little longer to tell the story than it needs too. What does work, however, is the fact that none of the women are vilified. No one is painted an easy scapegoat for us to hate and root against. For one reason or another things just don’t work out with them at any given time. This happens in life and that it happens here makes this pill all the easier to swallow.

I don’t know what it is about movies, especially this type, that employs the use of kids as the voice of reason. This one is right out of the book where the kid seems to know more about what’s going on than the adults and find cute ways to tell them what is what in such a way that makes them feel stupid for ever not understanding. Sleepless in Seattle, anyone? Like I said, it isn’t groundbreaking cinema, but it serves its purpose and wasn’t terrible getting there.

This movie’s likability benefits greatly from the paltry comparisons to its romantic comedy brethren released so far this year. Take it for what it’s worth but I’d call it a win. By default, sure, but a win either way. At this point I’ll take what I can get.

And there’s the rub.

** 1/2 out of ****

Review: Fool's Gold

2008-02-10T22:53:00.000-06:00

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, Donald Sutherland

Director: Andy Tennant

Release Date: February 8, 2008

Running time: 113 min

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Distributors: Warner Bros.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I were arguing about the wide-spread appeal of NASCAR. He tried to convince me that it was a legitimate sport and I gave him the stock hillbilly-infused commentary and a battery of equally stereotyped responses to his argument. This went on for a good 20 minutes. Just when he thought he had me standing there wobbly enough, he attempted to finish me off with a Fatality:

HIM: “Hey, it’s the fastest growing sport in America.”

ME: “Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s any good.”

Not believing my statement to be true, he asked me for an example. I told him to check the box office totals for any given week during the first half of the year and in an alarming amount of examples, the top movies are garbage.

HIM: “It always goes back to movies with you, doesn’t it kid?”

Waiting for the totals this week just to prove my point was worthless – I already knew the answer. Let’s just say this coming week we get to look forward to all new trailers for Fool’s Gold with an updated tagline – “#1 Movie in America”. And I can’t say I am the least bit surprised.

So what about THIS movie, you ask? Not that it matters but Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson play treasure hunters Ben and Tess Finnegan in search of the legendary 18th Century Queen’s Dowry – 40 chests of exotic treasure that was lost at sea in the 1700’s. All this while trying to salvage their marriage tested by Ben’s inability to commit to a life outside of beach bumming and treasure hunting. It is grotesquely boring and unoriginal, even by the standards of this year’s romantic comedies. So in other words, no, it really doesn’t matter. Even my own girlfriend who loves cheesy crap like this spent the better part of the movie trying to convince me that we should leave and that I could write a review having only seen the first part of the movie. We stayed, but she would have been right.

Another friend of mine and his wife had planned all week on seeing Fool’s Gold for their date night this weekend. After receiving a text message from me warning them of the travesty that lie ahead, I strongly urged them to pick something else. Knowing that this would be the perfect opportunity for him to seize the moment, I pushed for Rambo.

This morning, I was awoken by the following message from my friend’s wife:

“Your public massacre of Fool’s Gold is the reason I had to watch the bloody and cruel obliteration of women and small children for an hour and a half. I hold you responsible for tainting my mental health and what once was a friendly and romantic tradition of "date night". My sanity and marriage has been jeopardized. Hope you're pleased.”

I knew she would hate it but her husband will thank me later, so that part is funny to me. While she vowed to make all future selections for date night movies as a result of their evening, I’d like to think she is less upset at me for not recommending Fool’s Gold, but more upset at the irony behind a romantic comedy being responsible for causing this much strain on a marriage. And so close to Valentine’s Day. My response to her was obvious:

“Chick flicks inflict their own brand of punishment and should not be used so spitefully. Tell your husband he’s welcome.”

So continues my search for the first watchable romantic comedy of the year continues…

And there’s the rub.

ZERO out of ****

Review: Strange Wilderness

2008-02-06T16:07:00.000-06:00

Starring: Steve Zahn, Allen Covert, Jonah Hill, Justin Long

Director: Fred Wolf

Release Date: February 1, 2008

Running time: 87 min

MPAA Rating: R

Distributor: Happy Madison Production

As I was walking out of seeing this movie, a group of people were in front of me talking amongst themselves as they walked out. One of them dropped a folded up piece of paper. I picked it up and tried to chase them down to hand it back to them, but I lost them in the lobby. After reading it (what, you wouldn’t?), I thought I’d share given the nature of the afternoon we just spent together.

Dear Hollywood,

I writing this letter on behalf of the group of young people you so affectionately refer to as ‘stoners’. While we appreciate your trying to speak to our demographic in recent years, I as chair person speak for the entirety of the group when I say, “enough is enough”. We are tired of being talked down to like we should expect nothing more simply because of the choice of recreation we decide to embark on.

To say ‘enough’ is not to say we don’t get it. We get that you are trying to pigeon-hole us into watching admittedly dumber movies because well, we have in the past. But we’ve sat through the last “stoners trying to save, their own ass” saga. I’m sure you, like us, no doubt understand the mathematical equation of the basic stoner comedy.

(s2+ T) x W = A

Or, two stoners plus a ridiculous task times weed equals awesomeness. But if you have a grasp these basic algorithmic concepts, then you surely understand the problems that can occur when you disrupt the flow of control within these individual statements. In computer science, a loop is a sequence of statements which is specified once but which may be carried out several times in succession. Most programming languages have constructions for repeating a loop until some condition changes. This is all well and good, but you flew too close to the sun, didn’t you? While operating under the notion of a condition-controlled loop, you tried too hard to force the idea by creating events that will run on their own; events that would eventually create an infinite loop. The only problem with that is that these loops are only designed to work until an exceptional condition such as an error arises. In other words, an event-driven program may be intended to loop forever handling events as they occur; only stopping when the process is killed by the operator. You sirs, dear operators, have killed this very process. A process that is know and understood by us, and previously held dear – the stoner movie. As a result, we are no longer interested in your product or products of similar likeness.

We will no longer become test subjects in an experiment that does not allow us to think for ourselves. We will no longer watch people of lesser intellect pass off their lack of skill as that of being “high”. While we appreciate what you are trying to do for our own sake, please allow us to respectfully spit it back at you as we have had our fill, thank you.

Not that we would ever tell anyone what to do because, you know, it goes against that whole ‘voice of a generation’ thing we have going, but a few pieces of advice: in the future, when trying to recreate the feeling of our group taking part in our recreation of choice, please do not attempt to “get one over on us” because you think we wont notice. Please do not include players from previously successful movies in your own. If they cannot produce on their own merit, then don’t insult us by assuming just because we see Farva from Super Troopers that we are going to clap and cheer and say, “oooh, far out. Look, it’s Farva!” in response. Please do not include people like Steve Zahn in you film and hope to rest lightly on the fact that he can be very funny, because he wasn’t here. At all. Jonah Hill is not funny, stop giving him work. Aside from Die Hard and those Mac commercials, Justin Long isn’t either. And as cute as it is that your characters in your movie are named after the same people that made it, the next time you all decide to make a movie, do us all this one little favor: Take the paper you were going to waste printing the script, roll it up with your favorite bud (kind or otherwise cleverly named), and smoke it. Smoke like you never smoked anything in your life. Then for the love of all that is holy in this world, we hope you fucking choke on it. Given the choice, next time I’d rewatch Norbit.

Repectfully (of course),

The Stoners

Huh? All this time I thought I was the critic. Go figure.

And there’s the rub.

ZERO out of ****

Review: The Eye

2008-02-01T15:59:00.000-06:00

Starring: Jessica Alba, Alessandro Nivola, Parker Posey, Chloe Grace Moretz, Tamlyn Tomita

Director: David Moreau, Xavier Palud

Rated PG-13

Release date: Feb 1, 2008

I actually requested this review during a phase I like to refer to as the “sign up for movies I don’t want to see in an effort to challenge myself as a reviewer” phase. Or S.U.F.M.I.D.W.T.S.I.A.E.T.C.M.A.A.R for short. Right out of the gate, I had lowered expectations. Not bleak really, because I tried to keep an open mind, but lowered to say the least.

I suppose I shoulda known better. I shoulda seen it coming. Then I find out the movie was produced by Tom Cruise. I shoulda left after the trailer for Prom Night.

The Eye is a remake of The Pang Brothers 2002 Asian film, Jiàn Guǐ. I first heard about the original from a friend of mine who always tries to find these movies no one has ever heard of in search of the “diamond in the rough.” I never got around to seeing that film, but I can safely attest to the fact that this is not said diamond.

The most frustrating part of this movie is that the concept itself is quite interesting. Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba) is a concert violinist who has been blind for the better part of her life. She undergoes a double corneal transplant so as to have her sight restored. After the surgery, Sydney begins having visions of the dead and premonitions that she attributes to the violent nature by which the donor patient died. The idea always struck me as pretty twisted — a person seeing unexplained visions through someone else’s eyes all while being passed off as her mind simply adjusting to the concept of sight. Or better yet, just the idea of a blind person being able to see for the first time in years and having to re-acclimate themselves to an environment they have grown to not only survive in, but flourish. So the idea is fine, and there is a good story to be told somewhere in there, but even the best laid plans can flop down like a bag of hammers if it’s not executed properly. This is my problem with The Eye.

Horror movies are supposed to be entertaining. For that matter, all movies should strive to be, but horror in particular needs a little something extra. Whatever it is and whatever it sets out to be, it shouldn’t be boring. Boring movies are one thing, but boring horror is another crime altogether. First and foremost they should be scary. This can be achieved a number of different ways but tension is the vehicle I like to ride in. There is no tension in loud noises, only annoying loud noises. There is also no tension in blurry ‘shapes’ that hover around in the background and jump out of thin air; especially if you are telling the story of a person regaining their sight. Really, is that the best you’ve got is an out of focus lense and some creepy kids? I’ve seen home movies with better camera work than that, and that wasn’t on purpose. I would say tension could be created through a back story that makes us care about the characters or the situations they are in. Sadly, we are not afforded such luxuries. Instead we are treated to a poorly executed mess of a good idea with an ending that bounces somewhere between bad super hero and Jeepers Creepers. I would say textbook, but only if you were actually blind and tried to read one that wasn’t designed to allow you to understand it. Or if it were in Spanish and your eye doctor/psychoanalyst who inexplicably speaks the language fluently wasn’t there to translate for you. If that doesn’t make sense don’t worry, it doesn’t to me either and I saw the movie.

Which brings us full circle with the very beginning and the Prom Night trailer. I will not dive head-first into Lake JustbecauseyouCANremakesomethingdoesn’tmeanyouSHOULD. But I will stick a toe in to test the temperature — if you are going to remake a superior product, do it the justice of being relevant; don’t perpetuate the problem by making the same mistakes of your predecessors. And for viewer’s sake, engage us, even if only to a degree. Don’t bore everyone to tears between scares that aren’t even there to begin with.

Oh, by the way, the water in the lake is warm. Go ahead and take a swim.

And there’s the rub.

* out of ****

Review: The Orphanage

2008-01-28T15:54:00.000-06:00

Starring: Belén Rueda, Geraldine Chaplin, Fernando Cayo
Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
Release Date: January 11, 2008 (wide)
Running time: 100 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Picturehouse

I’m pretty sure any time you are a former foster child growing up in a creepy old house the last thing you want to do is buy it later in life and reopen it. I guess I can’t speak from experience, but it seems a bit off-putting on its own.

The Orphanage is presented by Guillermo del Toro and directed by first-timer Juan Antonio Bayona. The Spanish horror film is about Laura (Belén Rueda), a former resident who returns to the orphanage where she grew up with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and their son Simón (Roger Príncep) with plans to reopen it as a home for sick and disabled children. Simón, an only child, has imaginary friends that worry his parents mildly, but not alarmingly. That is until he informs his mother of a game him and his new friend, Tomás play — a scavenger hunt that leads to the boy finding out a family secret about himself. After a period of reclusion and a chilling scene where Laura thinks she sees Tomás, Simón disappears. Without a trace. Over the coming months, Laura and Carlos are slowly driven apart by the separate paths their individual grief takes. Carlos tries to remain a realist, but Laura begins to see these imaginary friends and continues to search.

Any time you have an old house as a setting, you automatically make an additional character for your movie, good or bad. This film benefits from the subtlety of the “performance” of the house. It helps create a mood here that goes beyond creaky doors and antique furniture by creating a visual style that complements the setting and the mood perfectly. Even the muted, dull, earth tones help add to the ambiance of the film. Of course the setting does not completely make the movie, it just helps. There are also strong performances, namely from Rueda who wisely embodies the emotion of a mother dealing with loss without overplaying.

This is a perfect example of how a PG-13 horror movie should be made, even though calling it a horror movie is misleading. It’s a simple ghost story that does what it set out to do. The good thing about this movie is that it works very well despite the lack of blood and gore. Instead, it relies on another device that seems to have been forgotten by filmmakers these days trying for the same affect — tension and pacing. The Orphanage tells a genuinely intriguing and often scary, ghost story that never cheats, yet explains everything in the end. The good thing about this is that it works exceptionally well. The bad thing about it is that it works exceptionally well. Not bad directly, but any time something works well like this, the jackals at American studios immediately rush out multiple attempts to recreate the same feel. The result is all the remakes we get dumped on us until we are oversaturated with inferior redo’s until the well runs dry.

I sat down to write this review and I had in mind what I wanted to say. One thought I had while watching the movie was, “I wonder how effective this movie would have been as an American ghost story?” Since the American version of horror these days is throwing buckets of blood everywhere and coming up with elaborate death scenes that star the newest flavor of the week, more times than not the answer is ‘no’. While I was getting ready to write the review I found out we don’t have to wait long to get the answer on this one. It seems that New Line Cinema has acquired the English-language rights and plans to move forward with a remake. Can’t we at least let the body get cold before we start picking the meat off the bones? And more importantly, why? Haven’t we already proven we can’t successfully remake foreign horror? The Ring was just, ok. Beyond that I can’t think of one off the top of my head. The Orphanage is the type of movie that should be seen and applauded on its own merits. I strongly recommend seeing it now, before its impact is greatly watered down by a shoddy American remake.

And there’s the rub.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Review: There Will Be Blood

2008-01-24T13:19:00.000-06:00

Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Release

Date: December 26, 2007

Running time: 158 min

MPAA Rating: R

Distributors: Paramount Vintage

“Ladies and gentlemen… I’ve traveled over half our state to be here tonight. I couldn’t get away sooner because my new well was coming in at Coyote Hills and I had to see about it. That well is now flowing at two thousand barrels and it’s paying me an income of five thousand dollars a week. I have two others drilling and I have sixteen producing at Antelope. So, ladies and gentlemen… if I say I’m an oil man you will agree.

You have a great chance here, but bear in mind, you can lose it all if you’re not careful. Out of all men that beg for a chance to drill your lots, maybe one in twenty will be oilmen; the rest will be speculators — men trying to get between you and the oilmen — to get some of the money that ought by rights come to you. Even if you find one that has money, and means to drill, he’ll maybe know nothing about drilling and he’ll have to hire out the job on contract, and then you’re depending on a contractor that’s trying to rush the job through so he can get another contract just as quick as he can. That is the way this works.”

That is the opening dialogue of the movie by oil man, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis). It comes no less than 15 minutes into the picture and tells us all we really need to know about the man. But we don’t know this to be fact until the end of the film, more than two hours later.

There Will Be Blood is director Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest and best film to date. Coming from me, the last sentence says more about this film that anything else you will find in this review. Singularly due to the fact that I am a huge PTA fan. Eleven years after the debut of his first feature film, Hard Eight, the man has made a grand total of five films. Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia (one of my top five favorites of all time), Punch-Drunk Love, and now There Will Be Blood. With a resume like that, why go for volume? While all of his films thus far have been excellent, There Will Be Blood is his most creatively daring, by far his most ambitious, and easily the crowning achievement of a brilliant career.

PTA’s films, like those of Tarantino and Scorsese, are trademarked for creating a distinct universe — a universe where he uses these large ensembles to tell elaborately intertwining stories that barrel along seemingly unrelated to each other, slowly and methodically peeling back the layers while simultaneously showing the growth and self-destruction of its characters until a transformation is complete. There Will Be Blood does this, but replaces the cast and multiple storylines for that of one man and his many conflicts. The results are some of the best filmmaking of this decade.

You’ve all heard the reports, and I can tell you that for once, they are not inflated or oversold: Daniel Day-Lewis is absolutely remarkable in the film. Anderson may have created the character of Daniel Plainview on paper, but Day-Lewis immerses himself in the character so deeply that he becomes Plainview, redefining the concept of the craft of acting itself. Daniel Plainview is as ruthless as he is mesmerizing. He is a man who creates tension simply by participating in conversation. He commands the direction of the conversation so much that when asked a question he doesn’t like, he simply continues as if it were never asked.

There Will Be Blood is a sprawling epic of a story told with exacting precision. The movie takes place during the span of 29 years and in the hands of a lesser-skilled director, it could have been a brutally boring mess. The movie tells the story of Daniel Plainview, an oil man of modest beginnings, who in 1898 discovers oil while prospecting for silver. He begins drilling and soon earns enough money to build a small drilling company. By 1911, he has become one of the wealthiest, most successful oil men in America.

Plainview is approached by Paul Sunday (Paul Dano), who sells him an oil lead on his family’s property in Little Boston, CA. When he arrives and attempts to buy the land, Paul’s twin brother, Eli (also Paul Dano), raises the price — the lion’s share of which is intended to be used in the founding of his own church. This is the first of many run-in’s between the two men and the beginning of a conflict that will span the next 16 years and the rest of the film.

So many reviews of this movie claim that it is about the rise and fall of Daniel Plainview — this is only partially right. On the surface that is the story, but underneath there are uglier elements at play that make this movie what it is at its core, like discussions of concepts such as family, capitalism, and religion. Daniel Plainview’s only family is his “son and business partner” H.W. Plainview. While he primarily uses H.W. to soften his sales pitch at various towns along the way, I think he truly cares for the boy. That is, until an accident at one of the oil wells permanently impairs H.W.’s hearing. Take notice when the accident occurs: the derrick explodes and Daniel immediately tends to H.W. until he realizes the injuries aren’t life threatening. He then spends the rest of the night and into the following day staring up at the burning remains until the problem is resolved — as if nothing else in the known world exists but him. He gets angry at his son for, in his mind, committing the crime of going deaf. This shows fallibility and weakness that Daniel cannot surround himself with if he is to be as successful as he intends.

That Plainview is driven by greed is not the surprise. It’s the fact that he does so while operating as if it were a sickness, which lends to the idea that he doesn’t have a choice. By planting that suggestion, it implies that pity should befall him for his actions. This is the stroke of genius by Anderson and realized by Day-Lewis’s performance that makes this film work so well. By laying the foundation as they did, and after everything Plainview does in the movie, we somehow do not hold him accountable for his actions because he did them all not by choice, but a matter of instinct. And we quietly root for him the whole time, even if we don’t like admitting as such.

The main contention in the film is the conflict between religion and capitalism. By showing that a complete and total devotion to either ideal would result in a flawed conclusion, the movie does not take a side. It doesn’t need to. It’s almost as if they presented both sides of the argument and allowed them to crucify each other. Had each man understood that they could have both co-existed, things may have ended differently; although not nearly as engaging. As it were, the men wound up being consumed with their own contorted sense of victory as well as with proving each other and the ideals they represented, wrong. While I think they could have coexisted with each other, once each were hell bent on destroying the other it makes you wonder, would one exist at all without the other? If each man began at opposite ends of the morale spectrum their paths were clearly marked on a crash course to the middle towards an inevitable conclusion.

Many people will hate the ending of this film. My response to those people: you obviously haven’t been paying attention. The end of this movie is as perfect as anyone could have ever imagined. It is supposed to be unsettling. It is not supposed to go down easy (like say, a milkshake?). You just spent the last 150 minutes watching Plainview build his empire, achieve his own distorted notion of success at all costs, sacrifice anything and everything to serve his own intentions while becoming a slave to his own pride, and what, you wanted a happy ending?

At the end of the film we see Plainview as a financially wealthy recluse, jailed in the prison of his own creation and refusing to have learned the method by which to communicate with his son (sign language). But he is still searching. He has all the money he could have ever wanted, the fame, and even the reclusion that he thought would make him happy, but he doesn’t come alive until the final minutes of the film. I will not ruin the events that transpire but there is a precise moment at the very end where he feels he has nothing left to fight for — like he has finally won. He finally defeated the man, the church, and more importantly, religion itself. The same religion he spent so much time trying to avoid and the very religion that failed him when his son went deaf. Because capitalism WAS his religion, he finally got what he had been fighting for his entire life. It is only then can make his final declarative statement that perfectly sums up the entire movie:

“I’m finished.”

And there’s the rub.

**** out of ****

Review: The Bucket List

2008-01-21T15:49:00.000-06:00

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman
Director: Rob Reiner
Release Date: January 11, 2008 (wide)
Running time: 97min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Warner Bros.

I like pizza. I’d say it’s one of my favorite foods. It’s easy, it’s always good, and you can create variety just by changing a few toppings around (I’d say I’m a supreme guy, for anyone interested). I also like chili and spaghetti. But if you tried to put chili and spaghetti on a pizza I don’t know that the end would justify the means. (Actually, that doesn’t sound half bad…). My point is just because you like the ingredients doesn’t mean you will like the finished product as a dish. You could say The Bucket List is kinda like a chili-spaghetti pizza.

I mean honestly, who doesn’t like Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson? The two of them have been in some incredible movies. Doesn’t it make sense that the two of them in a movie together would be good, if for no other reason than to see them in the same movie? Yes, that makes plenty of sense. What doesn’t make sense is why they picked such a lackluster project to finally work together. And don’t get me started on Rob Reiner — or as the name tag he would wear to a high school reunion would read, “Hi, My name is: I haven’t made a good movie in over a decade.”

A mechanic, Carter Chambers (Morgan Freeman) and the obscenely wealthy Edward Cole (Jack Nicholson) are two elderly men who discover they have terminal cancer. As they share a hospital room, they become friends and decide to fulfill their lifelong personal desires by way of their “bucket list,” a list of things to accomplish before they kick the bucket. Cutesy. So the conveniently wealthy Cole (they need the trip bankrolled, don’t they?) and Carter up and take off to live out their wildest fantasies.

I don’t claim to understand women, but I have a handle on some of the basics. Such as if you just tell your wife you have less than a year to live and you plan on spending it gallivanting around the world with a stranger on some personal mission without explaining anything more, I’m pretty sure she’d smack your ass hard enough to put you back in the hospital. And not only do these terminally ill cancer patients show few signs of illness, they are apparently healthy enough to fly around the world and back. How convenient.

From here it is a rush job to see how many extravagant locations they can slap up on the green screen to make these two stand in front of. Some of it was bad. It reminded me of Toonces, the Driving Cat on SNL. Not once did you really believe the background to be conveying the realism of a cat driving a car. At least in Toonces’ case, it was supposed to be for comedic effect.
The saddest part of The Bucket List isn’t the impending doom of cancer, it is how depressing it is to see these two screen legends wasted on a movie this bad. It’s almost as if they got into filming, realized the garbage heap they were in the middle of, and just phoned it in. And it was a long distance call.

The Bucket List commits the most blatant of movie crimes: it thinks it is something that it is not and it tries way too hard. Reiner can’t decide how to play the material so he tries to funny it up. Then it needs to be serious and he pushes that down our throats. It’s not as emotionally manipulative as say, Pay It Forward, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Sean Hayes as Chambers’ assistant is the best part of the movie. His laughs are accomplished through the subtle art of restraint. Restraint, huh? Now THAT would have been a novel idea.

And there’s the rub.

* out of ****

DVD Review: Rob & Big - Season 1 & 2 (Uncensored)

2008-01-08T12:59:00.000-06:00

Rob & Big: The Complete Seasons 1 & 2 (Uncensored)

Starring Chris Boykin, Rob Dyrdek

Paramount Home Video

Available Jan. 8, 2008

Come on, you know the words. Sing along with me:

“My Buddy, (my buddy)My Buddy, (my buddy)Wherever I go, he goes…”

From the equally annoying yet perfect opening theme song, the MTV comedy reality series Rob & Big crams the idea of friendship down our throats with such force you almost turn away in disgust. The show follows the lives of professional skateboarder Rob Dyrdek and his best friend and head of security Christopher “Big Black” Boykin. The premise of the show is simply to follow them around and document their antics, of which there are many.

YO! MTV Raps, The Headbangers Ball with Riki Rachtman, Remote Control, Liquid Television — these are the shows I think of when I think MTV. Or at least MTV as it was when I watched it regularly. I guess you could say I am one of those people who stopped watching “when they stopped playing music videos.” It just doesn’t do it for me anymore. I probably swung back during the initial Jackass craze, but for the most part I have, dare I say, outgrown MTV. But for all the new MTV programming that has been lost on me in the last 5-10 years, this show is different.

For starters, Rob & Big is watchable. That seems like a simple idea but think about it, MTV is, at the very least, partially responsible for the demise of the American attention span. The oft-tired, quick-cut, Ridley Scott-style of editing was damn near invented by MTV. So to say this is watchable says something different from the jump. Along with its watchability, the show is funny. Not the typical flash in the pan, “watch this guy take a bat to the nuts” funny; it is “sit by yourself after a hard couple of days and laugh out loud” funny. That these two are best friends is apparent from the beginning, but once you start watching the show, you see how genuine their friendship is, and that comes through in how funny the show is.

The guys end up in various locations (Montreal, Vancouver, Florida, Mississippi, and Ohio). And yes, they get into some really random and ridiculous situations (Big Black comes out of male-stripper retirement as Black Lavender; the guys attempt to start Fitness Week; they attempt time travel), but the parts of the show I liked the best were the quieter, less manic moments — the moments where the two of them are just sitting around the house talking or playing with Meaty, the house bulldog. Those are the moments that strike the truest picture of the friendship these two have forged and they are usually the funniest. Not because of anything in particular that they get involved in, but because that is when the realism shines through. Like you and your friends sitting around and laughing about nothing of any substance but think it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever heard.

Just listen to Rob talk to Big. Oftentimes Rob has such a sense of exasperation in his voice; a restrained delivery that is very genuine and comes off as very funny. Don’t believe me? Watch the Special Feature on Disc 4 where they feature Rob & Big on MTV Cribs. On that show, they are doing their best “keep up with the Joneses” impression of other people that has ever graced that show, pimping out their gear and doing their best to convince everyone how hard they are. Then watch the show on the rest of the discs. They drop the act and we get a glimpse into their real life. Or as real as life can be when you are a rich, professional skateboarder that has no discernable job.

Even on a show as funny as this, there are gems that stand out. Black Lavender #2.5, “making it rain” $1 bills on a crowd at a skate competition after winning a $5,000 bet against a friend, Tampa #2.6, Big Black’s eccentric Uncle Jerry in Mississippi #2.3 & Bobby Light #2.7, and the Bobby Light video shoot #2.7. But hands down the funniest episode of BOTH seasons is Meaty & Mini #2.1, where the guys pick out and take home the newest addition to their family: a miniature horse named — what else? — Mini Horse. I laughed myself to tears watching this episode. “It’s gold, Jerry, gold.”

Rob & Big – The Complete Season 1 & 2 (Uncensored) is 4 discs with all 16 episodes from both seasons 1 and 2 with the standard special features: deleted scenes, additional footage of Meaty, Mini, Uncle Jerry, a few skate tutorials, and the “Dirty Girl” music video. There is nothing too spectacular in the Special Features, but this DVD set isn’t about the extras — it’s about the show. Rob & Big isn’t a show setting out to prove anything. The guys don’t take the typical approach, or should I say they don’t do what you would expect a skateboarder from the Midwest to do when he gets rich at a young age and decides to live in Hollywood. They don’t go and party a lot and they don’t appear to be living “the lifestyle.” That’s not to say that they haven’t or they aren’t, but isn’t it refreshing that the creators don’t feel it vital enough to its success to make it the focal point of the show? Hmm… maybe MTV is, dare I say, finally starting to outgrow itself.

And there’s the rub.

Season 1: *** out of ****

Season 2: *** ½ out of ****

Special Features: ** out of ****

Review: 27 Dresses

2007-12-31T22:36:00.000-06:00

Starring: Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Malin Akerman
Director: Anne Fletcher
Release Date: January 11, 2008
Running time: 107 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: 20th Century Fox

Romantic comedies tend to exist in their own little world, don’t they? A world where they make up their own rules without any real connection to the rest of the planet. A world where everything gets a tidy treatment and at the end of the day, everyone’s problems are solved in the span of about 100 minutes. They are the sitcoms of the movie world and they rarely make apologies for it.

Having sat through P.S. I Love You not 24 hours prior to watching this, I thought about the genre as a whole and did a little exercise. I sat down and made a quick list of all those plot devices I could think of that are overused in romantic comedies, just to see how many they would try in 27 Dresses. This list was based strictly on my best grasp of the subject matter and the fact that I had seen a similar movie less than a day before. This is not meant to be a complete list by any means - its just what I wrote down before the movie started:

- The lead character will be overworked.
- She will be interested in someone who is blissfully ignorant of that fact.
- This will run her ragged, to within an inch of her sanity.
- During this period of rickety behavior, the filmmakers will attempt to make her look frumpy by dressing her in less than attractive clothing (sweats, etc) and/or make her eat sloppily for added effect.
- Someone will fall in love or even get married in an insanely unrealistic amount of time (i.e. mere weeks).
- Everything will blow up in someone/everyone’s face.
- Someone will sing along with a song on a car radio. During this song, a relationship will grow in leaps and bounds.
- Someone’s atrociously unforgivable behavior will be forgotten thanks to a smile or gift or both.
- She will find the man she thinks is right, kiss him, and realize he is not at all right based solely on that kiss alone. They will both agree.
- Once the lead character ends up with whoever she ends up with and her transformation is complete, she will also have quit/changed jobs.
- There will be a disgustingly sweet, happy ending.

The picture begins, and we’re off.

27 Dresses painfully tells us the story of Jane (Katherine Heigl), who is the very definition of the saying, “always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” In case there was any confusion on that, we are lucky enough to have that very saying as the tagline for the movie. Jane has been in love with weddings since she was a little girl. When we first see her all grown up, she spends an evening cabbing back and forth between two simultaneous weddings so as not to let anyone down. Weddings she has helped, nay, completely planned down to a tee. We soon find out she is secretly and madly in love with her boss George (Edward Burns), a fact that he is of course, completely oblivious to (check). She is an underappreciated asset in her job (check), and spends all of her spare time being a bridesmaid for all of her friends, 27 so far to be exact (get it, 27 dresses…?).

Jane’s sister Tess (Malin Akerman) comes to visit her and in whirlwind fashion, falls in love with her boss, the so-called secret love of her life, and the two of them get engaged to be married (check). Guess who gets to plan it and be the Maid of Honor? Jane is sent into a downward spiral (check) and of course, every one of my list o’ clichés is checked off in grand fashion until the saccharine sweet ending barrels through and everybody wins (check mate). I am not really giving anything away by saying this because people who see this movie will be from one of three schools of thought. One, they have been suckered into seeing it by a female significant other and they don’t care. Two, they are a critic and are seeing it as a matter of duty, and they see the end coming from miles away. Or three, they are the significant other doing the dragging and even they know how it ends, and they don’t care. As we were walking out, the two females I saw this screening with asked me what I thought of it. I told them I thought it was boring, trite, cheesy and clichéd. Then I asked them what they thought of it. They said it was cheesy and clichéd but cute, and they liked it.

27 Dresses offers nothing new and doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. This isn’t a bad thing as I don’t think they were really trying to do anything other than make a straightforward romantic comedy. If this movie had been a chess match, I would have played the part of Garry Kasparov, and it would have been over in about ten moves. My biggest complaint isn't about the genre, it's just how boring the whole thing is. The only enjoyment I got out of it was crossing item after item off my list as they showed up. And I laughed at exactly two jokes, neither of which I even remember anymore, if that tells you anything.

To rate this movie poorly because I am not the biggest fan of the genre is only half fair – half, because when it's made right, I will like just about anything. As a paying member of the movie-going population, I didn’t like the movie because it was as bland and tasteless as regular Kool-Aid without the sugar. As a critic, I didn’t like it because I could have written this review for any of the many similar movies that I have seen, changed the title and still been right on point. If P.S. I Love You was the ‘choose your own adventure’ of romantic comedies, this one was the ‘paint by numbers’ version. If anyone had tried to spruce it up by raging against the assigned color coordination, going against type would only have made it worse. So I guess it was a lose / lose from the jump.

And there’s the rub.

* 1/2 out of ****

Review: P.S. I Love You

2007-12-30T22:31:00.000-06:00

Starring: Hilary Swank, Gerard Butler
Director: Richard LaGravenese
Release Date: December 21, 2007
Running time: 126 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Warner Bros.

“Chick Flicks”.

It’s kind of a derogatory term if you think about it. I don’t know too many women who like to be referred to as ‘chicks’, and to go so far as to pigeon-hole a whole category of movies with a blanket statement seems equally shallow. Nevertheless, the term is an accepted one and is synonymous with sappy drivel that men the world over find themselves being repeatedly dragged to see in the hopes of building up enough points to talk their better half into seeing the latest Die Hard movie.

Let me step back a moment. Like any genre of movies, I can easily find a few of this type that I can not only sit through, but would go so far as to say that I like. The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Say Anything. These movies all tell a great story, but do so by playing it straight. I suppose the same can be said about movies of ANY genre but these types of movies have that much more hingeing on their ability to keep it real. P.S. I Love You is the newest addition to that little sorority of films. As with any organized social club, there is an unquenchable need for immediate acceptance. P.S. I Love You attempts to overcome this by bringing a new dish to the table. It's just a pity that the ingredients are stale and undercooked.

It begins by showing us a couple: an ‘as Irish as Lucky Charms’ Gerry Kennedy (Gerard Butler) and his ditzy American wife, Holly (Hilary Swank). They are on their way home from some sort of event and they are fighting. Or better yet, she is mad and he is trying to figure out why and what he can do to make it stop. The fight itself drags on at a snail’s pace and never really accomplishes anything, much like it would in real life. They bicker back and forth. She nit-picks at flaws of his that have nothing to do with their current fight. He does his best to defend himself and reminds her that she is crazy. (Not Farrah Fawcett-on-Letterman crazy, but cutesy, frazzled, Meg Ryan-type crazy). Or in other words, much like it would happen in real life. Now that the groundwork has been laid, the film switches gears.

Cue the tears.

Gerry dies. Brain tumor. The rest of the characters are introduced all at once in a convenient little funeral scene because that’s what happens in chick flicks. We meet Holly’s tightly wound mother Elizabeth (Kathy Bates), her best friends Sharon (Gina Gershon) and Denise (Lisa Kudrow), and Daniel (Harry Connick Jr.) a seemingly random bartender. You don’t have to wonder for very long how random that guy is to the story. Holly falls into depression until her family comes to her rescue on her 30th birthday. A cake is delivered with a taped message from Gerry.

Tears in three…two...

In the message he informs Holly that she is to expect a letter in the mail the next day followed by a slew of others, each containing a task for her to complete to try and ease her grief and transition her into her new life without him.

…one... and… GO.

But to start with, she is to forget about that, put on her Sunday best and go get hammered. It was more eloquently put, but that’s what happened. The rest of the movie follows Holly as she receives these random letters with random tasks showing her the light as she – what else? – picks up the pieces, finds herself, and the strength to move on and live life.

I realize a lot of movies rely on the audience’s suspension of disbelief but I never got on board with the whole premise. Not necessarily the idea of a dead husband controlling his wife’s life from the grave, but the preparation he had to have gone through to get there. He’s dying of a brain tumor and has the strength to pull together a plan of such epic proportions? This from the guy who started the movie fighting with his wife because he said the wrong thing at dinner? This from the guy who spent the first 15 minutes of the movie telling his wife she needed to stop planning out her life so much and just roll with it? And NOW he wants her to grieve and give up the next year of her life chasing these letters? I don’t know – I just didn’t buy it. Rather than taking a cue from the great stories of the genre, it tried a little too hard to get a little too cute.

Lisa Kudrow and Harry Connick Jr. steal their scenes. Not because they are particularly good in them (well, Connick is), but their characters add some much needed life to the story. This is little more than a ‘choose your own adventure’ version of a romantic comedy. There are usually only a couple ways any given plot point will end up, and it doesn’t stray from the path – at all. Swank is a good actress, or at least she has been in the past. She even has two Oscars to prove it. She just can’t seem to find the off-switch on her dramatic chops here. In the end all it means is that after this foray into romantic comedy, her funniest role remains The Next Karate Kid. Too bad that one wasn’t on purpose either.

And there’s the rub.

** out of ****

Review: No Country for Old Men

2007-12-23T22:25:00.000-06:00

Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Release Date: November 21, 2007
Running time: 122 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: Miramax Films, Paramount Vintage

“It’s a mess, ain’t it, sheriff?” – Wendall

“If it ain’t, it’ll do ‘til the mess gets here.” – Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, No Country for Old Men

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

A welder, a hired gun, and an almost retired sheriff walk into a West Texas town. Each of the men is running. What they are running from, and toward, quietly becomes the foundation for the tapestry that is brilliantly woven in what is quite possibly the best movie this year.

No Country for Old Men, the latest film from Joel and Ethan Coen, is adapted from the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy. The movie tells a fairly simple story. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) opens the movie in voiceover, explaining why he is soon to retire. His time in this job is now past as the region, and the world, has become violent beyond his understanding. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), the welder, happens on a collection of corpses and a dying Mexican in the apparent aftermath of a drug deal gone sour. He finds a case with $2 million in cash and takes it home. Meanwhile, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), the hired gun, has just escaped from police custody and steals a car after killing the driver. Chigurh’s introduction accomplishes two things. One, it introduces us to the unique weapon he uses throughout the movie, and two, it establishes him as an instantly classic movie villain. In any given situation, he does what he feels he has to do, even though without having prior knowledge of that situation - he operates with almost random calculation. His methods may be cold and brutal but to him they are justified. Moss finds the cash and soon realizes he is being chased for it; Chigurh is the man hired to get the money back, and Sheriff Bell is the man trying to make sense of the whole bloody affair.

In less capable hands, this movie could have easily fallen victim to the gruesomely tired cliché of “someone chasing someone for money after a drug deal gone bad.” In fact, when non-movie watching friends ask me about my favorite movie of the year and I tell them about No Country, they inevitably ask, “What is it about?” My answer is usually met with complacency. To simply explain the plot of this movie doesn’t do it justice. To properly appreciate it, you actually have to experience the story unfolding before your eyes.

What is the difference between a good movie and a great movie? What makes a great movie a classic? In short, it has to engage the audience. Yes, story, performances, direction to be sure, but what really makes a movie like No Country for Old Men work so well is the way it flows. The pacing of this film is pitch-perfect. There doesn’t seem to be one wasted minute here and every scene serves a purpose in the greater good of the story. I am happy every time I see a movie that isn't edited in the quick cut, MTV style. Sometimes that is fine, but to make a remarkable and lasting impression, I want the story to unfold on its own – almost in real time. That is the only way to truly build tension. No Country not only accomplishes that to an almost perfect degree, but it does so with such ease that you don’t even realize it until after the movie is over.

The movie is far more than a game of cat and mouse. Chigurh and Moss carry the film by showing us how they each handle desperation. As Chigurh gets closer to him, Moss begins to take on the characteristics of his pursuer. He loses sight of what started him down this path to begin with and ends up in a situation that is obviously over his head. If only he were aware that he is not cut out for this lifestyle. Chigurh, on the other hand, was born to this life. There is a great line by James Gandolfini in True Romance where he explains to Patricia Arquette what it feels like to kill a person. The first few times, he says, had a real impact on him but ... “Now… shit. Now I do it just to watch their fuckin' expression change.” You get the feeling that Chigurh belongs to the same school of thought, only he's a few classes ahead of Gandolfini’s character. There is no other scene in the movie where this is more evident than when he goes into the gas station and talks to the store owner. You feel the tension of that entire scene and know that had the coin toss ended differently, he would have carried out whatever came to him in that moment without a second’s hesitation. Throughout the encounter, he just toys with him until he becomes bored with the conversation. That smugness should not be mistaken for instability; it's the random calculations of a cold-blooded killer. And Bardem plays him perfectly.

This movie isn’t about who did what to whom and how; it's about why. Sheriff Bell, Moss, and Chigurh do everything in the movie in the name of justice. Maybe greed initiated each of their respective journeys, but justice is what takes to the finish. What makes that concept interesting is that while each man is motivated by the same thing, each of them has a vastly different idea of what that means.

There is a lot of ambiguity in the last 20 minutes of the movie. Why doesn't more happen in the hotel when Sheriff Bell goes by himself at the end? What really happens to Moss’s wife when Chigurh finally shows up? But that's fine; the story works better when everything isn’t spelled out and packaged for us. Viewer interpretation and continued debate are just more reasons why this movie has been, and will continue to be, talked about for months to come. The ending of the movie is perfect – a great companion and bookend to the whole story – even if it took me a few days to think so.

The Rub:
Sometimes a movie comes along that simply blows you away. After I first saw it, I couldn’t shake it for a long time. It stays with you not because you are trying to figure it all out (although that may be part of it), but like any piece of great work, you appreciate the story and how it is told. Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and yes, even Josh Brolin all deserve Oscar nods for this film. That will go nicely with the Best Director and Best Picture nominations they are almost guaranteed to get. This is not only the best film of the year, but the best film the Coen Brothers have ever made, and they made Fargo. So that’s got to count for something, right?

And there’s the rub.

**** out of ****

DVD Review: Halloween - Unrated Director's Cut

2007-12-18T10:17:00.000-06:00

Halloween (2007)
2-Disc Unrated Special Edition
Directed by Rob Zombie
Starring Tyler Mane, Malcolm McDowell, Sheri Moon Zombie
Genius Products/The Weinstein Company
Available Dec. 18, 2007

“Go for it. Make it your movie.”

According to director Rob Zombie (The Devil’s Rejects) during a special feature titled “Re-Imagining Halloween,” that is what John Carpenter said when he respectfully contacted him to tell him he was directing a remake of his 1978 classic. Zombie goes on to say that when he decided to remake — sorry re-imagine — Halloween he wanted avoid making a shot-by-shot remake since that movie already exists (agreed). So without any creative input from Carpenter, that is precisely what he did.

This movie is something of an anomaly. It is a remake of an arguable classic, the granddaddy of all slasher movies, the movie to which every A, B, C, and Z-grade horror movie owes its existence. It is also a Rob Zombie movie. What a testament to his directorial abilities that after only two films, the expectation for that label is already this high. There were enough built-in reasons that this movie’s theatrical release had no business being as successful as it was. More surprising, the success wasn’t a result of Zombie fans flooding theaters and inflating the box office, it was actually a really good movie.

In his attempt to make this movie his own, Zombie did more than just update actors and wardrobe, he rocked the original right to its core and restructured the whole story from the ground up. The first half of this movie is the new material and most glaring change to the story. We start in a world previously unearthed in the Halloween universe. Much goes into explaining young Myers’ backstory before the original batch of Halloween night killings.

We see Michael (Daeg Faerch) as a child living a less than rosy childhood, to say the least. We see him and how he interacts with his mother Deborah, (Sheri Moon Zombie, flexing some unforeseen range), her drunken sorry excuse for a boyfriend, Ronnie (William Forsythe), and his iconic sister Judith (Hanna Hall). The movie opens with Michael getting ready for school by doing what you would expect a young psychopath to be doing — killing his pet hamster. We see him at school being bullied. We see him getting hauled into the principal’s office for fighting. And then we see the first glimpse of the destruction to come as he leaves school, waits in the bushes for the very kid that threatened him, and then beats him to death in cold blood. That scene in particular sets the scene for the evil that is being unleashed on the world. Even the way Zombie chose to shoot the scene — many shots from behind the bushes and in the grass almost as if a passerby was observing and rightfully hiding from this monster of a child — gives us a sense of what is in store.

From this point, there is no turning back. Michael waits for his mother to go to work Halloween night then unleashes his evil on his family and the world around him. Seeing a young Michael Myers methodically plot and execute his killings is quite unsettling. It’s hard to say Faerch’s portrayal of Myers is brilliant because of what he’s doing by way of his performance, but it is effective and downright haunting. Zombie walked a fine line in going back and explaining why everything happened. But after watching the picture in its entirety, you realize it’s less to do with gaining sympathy than it is simply telling the story from a different angle.

After a series of quieter moments watching Myers and Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) work through a myriad of interviews, Michael slowly slips into the confines of his own mind. He ceases communication with anyone and after 15 years of not speaking, Loomis finally moves on. Shortly thereafter Michael breaks free and returns to Haddonfield where the movie shifts into more of a remake mode and tells the story from the original 1978 film. The second half of the film holds truer to the original story and while the shift is minor, it works well in conjunction with the movie as a whole.

The DVD release offers two versions to choose from: a Two-Disc Special Edition and an Unrated Director’s Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition). Having seen the theatrical release, I was curious what else Zombie would have included in a world without boundaries. The short answer? Not much. At first, I was a little put off by this as part of the fun of watching a Rob Zombie movie is seeing what he wasn’t allowed to release in theatres. From what I could tell, the biggest storytelling difference was the scene leading to Michael’s escape from the asylum. In the theatrical release, it was after Loomis announced he would no longer be treating him and as he was being transported to another facility. In the director’s cut, the scene is changed as the orderlies take a female patient into Myers’ room, brutally rape her and Myers’ escapes only after one of the men touch one of his many masks and he beats them all to death. I can’t decide which version I like best. The one from both originals that goes a long way in explaining why Myers escaped after losing another parental figure in Loomis and his home of the last 15 years, or this newest version that offers little explanation other than a random act that could have been avoided with minor changes. Both have a different immediate impact but at the end of the day, the result would have been the same. It is an interesting side note to a conversation whose meaning doesn’t have much impact on the overall story.

The second disc of Special Features (identical in both versions) offers a variety of goodies that are remarkably, not that entertaining:

Alternate Ending – a grossly inferior ending to the theatrical (and unrated edition) release. Partially because it was simply inferior and partly to do with the fact that I absolutely loved the ending to this movie the way it was released. To elaborate further would ruin the experience for those who haven’t seen it, but let’s just say I thoroughly enjoyed the resolution that the movie came to.

Deleted Scenes (w/ optional commentary) – the deleted scenes left little to the imagination of those wondering why the scenes were deleted. Merely additions or lengthened scenes from the released version of the movie.

Bloopers – Otherwise known as Malcolm McDowell’s cursing and fart joke reel. One word: lame.

The Many Masks of Michael Myers – a watchable interesting piece that discusses the masks young Michael wears and the process that went into creating the new version the iconic Halloween mask.

Re-Imagining Halloween – a three-part featurette that discusses bringing the movie to the screen, casting the actors, and effects and wardrobe. Full of interviews with Zombie and the rest of the cast and crew. The best special feature on the disc.

Meet the Cast – screen tests from most of the actors. Daeg Faerch is even creepy in his screen test.

Laurie Strode Screen Test – why she has her own section from the rest of the cast is beyond me.

Theatrical Trailer – that we all saw a hundred times before the movie came out.

As much as it pains some people to say it, Rob Zombie made a hell of a film. His directing style compliments his vision, which is very obviously from the mind of someone who cut their creative teeth on vintage movies from all decades of horror’s past. This visual style was even evident in his music career with White Zombie, and later as a solo artist, so why it has come as such a shock to people that he has the ability to make a great horror movie is beyond me. Halloween is a respectfully skillful interpretation of classic material with some really cool twists on a few of the landmark scenes from the original. I said in my original theatrical review that it is as audacious in its concept as it is arrogant in its confidence and I admire the chances he took, and his presumption to think he could pull it off.

As much as the original Halloween was about Laurie Strode, this version is all Michael Myers. This is a purist’s horror movie that is not interested in elaborate kill scenes, but rather relies intently on its focus of a character who happens to commit fiercely violent acts. And they are as bloody as they are intense. Some people have, and will continue to complain that the movie applies too many liberties and strays too far from the original source material. To quote Zombie again, “For good or for bad, it’s a totally different experience.” As much as I couldn’t agree more, I am most thrilled it wasn’t the latter.

And there’s the rub.

Halloween – The Unrated Director’s Cut: *** ½ out of ****

DVD Special Features: ** out of ****

DVD Review: Lost: Season Three

2007-12-11T10:00:00.000-06:00

Lost: The Complete Third Season
Starring Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway, Dominic Monaghan
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Available Dec. 11, 2007

Rarely does a show come along that lends itself so openly to viewer participation. Listening to story complaints and even going so far as to allow viewer complaints to be a driving force behind structuring the schedule of the episodes, the creators of Lost, while keeping the show on its projected path, are very dialed in on what the viewers want. When the season originally aired, it was shown in two blocks of episodes. As a way of silencing complaints of all the reruns that littered previous seasons, Season Three opened with a six-episode run. Then after a 3-month hiatus, it returned with 16 new episodes in a row. This was a valid complaint as no other show relies so heavily on continuity as does the Lost universe.

The beauty of a show like this is that when executed properly, the ambiguity actually adds to the richness of the overall mythology. But balancing between the introduction of new story elements and answers to previous ones has been the Achilles’ heel of the show since the pilot aired.

When we left the island in the excellent season two finale, Jack (Matthew Fox), Sawyer (Josh Holloway), and Kate (Evangeline Lilly) had been captured by the Others. Hurley (Jorge Garcia) had been released and sent back to camp with the message that they were never to return. And Michael (Harold Perrineau) and Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) were given a boat by the Others with the coordinates to finally get off the island and return home. It was an explosive episode (pun, intended) that left viewers clamoring for more.

But season three didn’t start with the same intensity. We see that Jack is being held captive in the Hydra (another Dharma Initiative station) while being interrogated by a new Other, Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell). Kate and Sawyer were kept in nearby cages and it is revealed that “Henry Gale,” whose real name is Ben (Michael Emerson), is in fact the leader of the Others. As the season gets under way, there are few answers from previous episodes and new questions mount quickly. The initial batch of episodes felt like a tease. While they weren’t great, they were hardly terrible either. My biggest complaint echoed that of every other person that watched and loved the show, simply not enough answers. At the very least, the ratio between answering existing questions and introducing new ones didn’t balance out.

Once the show returned from hiatus after the initial batch of episodes, a funny thing happened — it got good again. I mean, scary good. What once seemed like a convoluted mess that the writers were making up as they went along turned out to be probably the best season to date. Oddly enough, I attribute it to the fact that the show DID stumble out of the blocks. Without the uproar over the mediocrity of the start of the season, they wouldn’t have been able to turn it around. Better yet, they wouldn’t have been made to do so. In the face of waning viewership the writers were forced to start resolving some of the core mysteries of Lost. Who are the Others and why are they on the island? Why was Locke in a wheelchair? What was that cable on the beach? Who is Christian Shepard’s daughter? What do the Others want with the children? Why can’t anyone find the island? What is the Dharma Initiative? Once pushed out of their comfort zone, they answered some of these questions and found a rhythm and a balance that enabled them to get the show back on track. Granted, this is Lost so a number of perennial questions still remain. What is the smoke monster? What is the significance of the numbers? How does the island have healing powers and why does it only work on some people? How did Christian Shepard die and where is his body? What are the voices in the woods? What happened when the hatch imploded? What’s with the skeletons in the cave? Who is Jacob and what is the significance of his list? And what in God’s name is with the four-toed statue? Among many, MANY others.

To start this season the creators tried to raise the bar too high, too fast. When you go back and watch it again, it becomes clear that they took heed to viewer concerns and made adjustments on the fly where needed. The show caught up to itself in the second half of the season and for as much as can be made about the show’s ambiguity, when viewing it as a whole you get a sense of scope and realize just how much ground was covered. There were a few shallow episodes (episode #309, “Stranger in a Strange Land” and episode #310, “Tricia Tanaka is Dead”) and lest we not forget the awful intrusion of Nikki and Paulo midway through the season. But even amidst their trespasses, their penultimate episode #314, “Exposé” was pretty clever and ended no doubt with an audible jubilation from all of their despisers.

The strengths of the season were episode #308, “Flashes Before Your Eyes,” where the idea of space-and-time-travel is first discussed and we are made aware of Desmond’s “flashes”; episode #319, “The Brig,” where Locke finally deals with his “daddy issues,” and of course the brilliant season finale episode #322, “Through the Looking Glass;” when we are introduced to the game-changer for the first time: the flashforward. Up to this point, all of the character-centric episodes have been told through a combination of current island stories and flashbacks into those particular characters past. But in the finale, we see a haggard and miserable Jack in a post-island meeting with Kate and are side swiped with the idea that getting off the island isn’t the end-game result. The storytelling possibilities are limitless and in one 3-minute scene to end the season, life was breathed anew.

After watching this season I wondered if the success of Lost as it is today would have existed 10-15 years ago. In a pre-Internet culture before the “need to know NOW” mentality was instilled in all of us and the ability for geeks everywhere (I use the term amorously) to scour the Internet for clues, would the success of a show like this have even been possible? Without having readily accessible information or being able to re-watch the episodes on DVD for any little hint that could help shed more light on what is going on, (yes, that includes me, who re-watched the scene with Locke and Ben in Jacob’s cabin repeatedly in slow motion and with pause button in hand), would it have been as well received as it is now, or is that very premise what makes the show so different, and so special?

Lost: The Complete Third Season - The Unexplored Experience is a 7-disc set that features all 23 episodes (the finale is split into two separate parts) on 6 discs and a disc of bonus features. The bonus features include a handful of never-before-seen flashbacks and the “Lost on Location” feature, a behind-the-scenes look at 10 different episodes. There are audio commentaries on four episodes (”A Tale Of Two Cities,” “I Do,” “Exposé,” and “The Man Behind the Curtain”) by executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and various actors in each episode. There’s also a Lost video game demo and promo, and of course the standard, but boring deleted scenes and bloopers. The best special features are “The Lost Book Club” that discusses the show’s literary references and the “Lost in One Day” feature that gives a fascinating look at 24 hours in the life of the series, from the writing, direction, wardrobe, and editing of no less than 5 episodes at a time in varying levels of production.

Conceptually, the show started with a fairly simple premise: tell the story of a group of plane crash survivors who end up on a mysterious tropical island. As the story has unfolded we realize the show isn’t really about that at all. Sure, they are still trapped on the island and other forces, be it people or otherwise, are trying to keep them there, but what really makes the show work is the richness of the characters. All of the characters on the island are forced to confront the failures of their past and revisit issues or events that make up the core of who they all are emotionally. They are all metaphorically lost in addition to physically being as such. In simple terms, the show is about redemption. And in a season where the characters were made to confront demons of their past and decide how that is going to shape their future, it is not surprising the writers and creators of the show did the same to equal effect.

The creators have repeatedly said that the story of Lost is a mosaic and that the total story will only begin to take shape over the course of the three remaining 16-episode seasons. Without seeing all the pieces of the puzzle we are left with little more than rampant theorized speculation. For anyone who watches this show as religiously as I do, it begs the question: Would we have it any other way?

And there’s the rub.

Review: Fred Claus

2007-11-17T00:44:00.000-06:00

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamotti, Kevin Spacey, Rachel Weisz
Director: David Dobkin
Release Date: November 9, 2007
Running time: 116 min
MPAA Rating: PG
Distributors: Warner Bros. Pictures

For a lot of people, Christmas is their favorite time of year. Religious implications aside, and for reasons left to the individual, there is no other span of time in the calendar year as generally well regarded as the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Having said that, it becomes more and more difficult each year to sift through the garbage and enjoy it for what it is, or at least what it was that made you like it in the first place. The season itself starts earlier and earlier thanks to the wonders of the obscenely over-commercialized retail arena and political correctness has stifled the spirit of the holiday so much that we feel martyred just for wishing someone a Merry Christmas. This twinge of sadness, this funk, lurked around and stayed with me throughout this movie.

Frederic Claus (Vince Vaughn) is the older brother of Nicholas Claus (Paul Giamotti). Nick is born into medieval family and immediately starts working his way into the role of family favorite. Eventually, and inexplicably, Nick is granted sainthood. And apparently by some stretch of folklore I have not been privy to, when you become a saint, you and your family and wives and children all become immortal. Seems weird, but so goes the narrative explanation. Fast forward to today. Fred lives in Chicago as a repo man and Nick has embodied the modern day version of Santa Claus we all know and love. Fred needs to borrow money and Santa agrees under the condition that he come to the North Pole and work for it during the holiday rush.

Meanwhile, Clyde Northcutt (Kevin Spacey) is an efficiency expert sent by some unnamed agency that apparently oversees all holiday figures and their respective operations. He is sent to the North Pole to monitor and report back the details of Santa’s operation to determine whether or not they are deemed efficient enough to handle the worldly workload of Christmas, or whether the work should be consolidated and outsourced to faster, less expensive agencies. This is where that sadness I talked about came in.

It does not take a film scholar to know well before taking your seat what was going to happen in this movie. There is strife between Fred and Santa. The conflict is dealt with and in the end, the spirit of Christmas prevails. I am not robbing you of the experience of seeing this by saying that. What DID surprise me was the message the movie inadvertently sent by the contrived plot. Instead of being a funny, lighthearted holiday romp, this struck me as quite a sad little movie. The story of an old timer who has run his business the way he wants to run it for as long as anybody can remember only to be abruptly faced with the prospect of losing everything he has worked for because someone else thinks his methods are outdated? Or basically every Mom and Pop store in Anytown, USA before the mall, Wal-Mart, or any other oversized conglomerate steamrolled them out of business. To take institutions like Christmas and Santa Claus and overlap them with the modern ideals and trappings of Corporate America is flat out depressing. It might have been an interesting concept had it not been anywhere close to what they were shooting for.

Hidden agendas aside, the wasted talent in the movie is enough to run anyone out of town. Vince Vaughn and his fast talking, effusive way has worked in the past, and will no doubt work again, but he needs to learn the lesson of time and place. I am pretty sure his whole shtick was lost on any kid who went to see this movie. And any respectable adult in the audience should have noticed how tired his act was after The Break Up. When the five or ten worst movies of 2007 comes around, Paul Giamotti will now have the distinction of having starred in two of them after the awful Shoot ‘Em Up. And Kevin Spacey is still on auto-pilot in another cheesy performance I think he phoned in from the set of Superman Returns. To top it all off, the CGI used to put regular sized actors faces on elfin bodies did nothing but creep me out.

The Rub:
Full of bad performances, distracting and weird looking CGI, and an inadvertently depressing story, Fred Claus wants to be a funny fish out of water holiday film, a la Elf, but it completely misses the mark. The previews made it look bad and the execution was that much worse. We must be on the Naughty list this year because we all got the same big lump of coal. Merry effing Christmas.

And there’s the rub.

½ * out of ****

Review: Tree

2007-11-04T22:31:00.000-06:00

Starring: Bill Elverman, Kate Berry, Avery Laine, Jeff Garretson

Director: Michael R. Steinbeck

Running time: 46 min

Distributors: Drop Shadow Productions

“More and more intense. Every day I am seeing the future. I am seeing my glorious end. The tree is telling me the story of my death.”
- Tom Brueggeman, Tree

The Skinny:
Tom Brueggeman and his family discover the tree in their yard gives them visions of the future. Tom struggles with his visions as they are gradually more vivid outlines of his own death.

The Review:
Horror films, or what passes as a textbook definition of horror films today, are all about blood and guts and gore and how disgusting can you make it onscreen. Even worse, with a lower budget the ideas behind all that gore become cheesy imitations when applied on film. Tree is different, and different for all the right reasons. It is different because it applied some novel concepts that aspiring filmmakers should take note of; one of which is that it all starts with the script. Without a good story to tell you are dead in the water.

The movie opens as Tom Brueggeman (Bill Elverman) and his family have recently taken over the family farm in rural Wisconsin after his wife’s father passes away. Tom doesn’t seem to be terribly motivated to have been relegated to this life, but he manages anyway. In the basement one morning, Tom finds a journal his father-in-law left behind full of crop reports and farming tips but at the end there are these stories. Creepy stories that are a bit off-putting to Tom so he ignores them and goes on about his day.

Chopping wood one evening after a long day, Tom starts to see flashes that include his daughter, then his wife crying, then nothing. He passes the visions off as an offshoot of the typically overworked farmer. Later, Tom’s daughter Katie (Avery Laine) tells him that when she is out in the yard playing she “sees things sometimes. Like dreams but I’m awake.” Tom questions her but seemingly for her sake, he ignores it. Katie and wife Ellie (Kate Berry) begin having visions too, but theirs seem to be less of the macabre and more about winning pie contests and the like. They both try to convince Tom this is not a bad thing but as the days go on and the dreams become more intense, eventually showing Tom his own death, he is understandably rattled and less willing to accept this as a perky anomaly.

Another of those novel concepts is finding actors that happen to be good at acting. In many independent films, the acting is one of the main areas of opportunity. In this film it is one of its strongest attributes. Lead actor and writer Bill Elverman gives two winning performances. First his script is original and fresh. He takes the time to tell the story, and his simple idea is maintained for the length of the film. Second, his performance, with Avery Laine, is the heart of the movie. Their performances, as well as the music used in the film, really helped ratchet the tension.

There is a scene by the river stuffed with people used more as a backdrop than to heighten the tension of the scene. This would not have been as distracting had it not been for the strength of the performances leading up to that scene. It was off base, but not enough to ruin the movie.

I smelled the ending coming long before it actually happened, but what saved it from the throes of mediocrity was the very last shot of the movie. I wont ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but the closing image rose above what came dangerously close to banality and really brought it home for a strong finish.

The Rub:
An independent film full of strong performances, crisp writing, and refined direction that makes for a genuinely honest movie that actually tells a story. A refreshing change from other horror movies that spend all their time and money relying on blood and guts and special effects they can’t afford.

And there’s the rub.

*** out of ****

Learn more about the film:

http://www.thetreemovie.com/

http://www.myspace.com/treemovie

Review: Gone Baby Gone

2007-10-30T09:37:00.001-05:00

Starring: Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris
Director: Ben Affleck
Release Date: October 19, 2007
Running time: 115 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: Miramax

“I am going to ask questions. If you don't answer fully and truthfully, you will suffer much more than you have to.” - Creasy, Man on Fire

“He lied to me. Now I can't think of one reason big enough for him to lie about that's small enough not to matter.” - Patrick Kenzie, Gone Baby Gone

The Skinny:
Ben Affleck directs and co-writes the script adapted from the author of Mystic River.

The Review:
Amanda, a 4-year-old girl goes missing in the south Boston neighborhood of Dorchester. Private investigators Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and his girlfriend and partner Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) are hired by the missing girl’s aunt to assist Police Chief Doyle (Morgan Freeman) in talking to a neighborhood reluctant to discuss anything with the cops. Amanda’s mother, Helene (Amy Ryan), is a strung out drug-addled alcoholic. That she acts like she could give a rat’s ass less and could easily be a prime suspect is the exact reason to decide that she isn’t.

The Departed, Mystic River, The Boondock Saints, and now Gone Baby Gone. As much as I hate clichés (and it doesn’t get worse than this), Boston is becoming the new New York City when it comes to settings for good crime movies. The neighborhood, really - or more specifically both Affleck’s acquaintance with it - becomes sort of a character on its own. The mood the setting gives off, the people in the background, the language used; all of it.

The movie does have its share of awards worthy performances. Casey Affleck is brilliant in this movie. There is a sense that he knows he is in over his head, yet he has the fortitude to grow into the situation and stand his ground regardless. Ed Harris is lights out as Detective Remy Bressant.

Ben Affleck’s script is not only very tight and well structured, but he could not have hit a bigger homerun in his directorial debut. Imagine your public career being one of the bigger laughing stocks of the business for the last five years. Imagine wanting to rid yourself of that stigma. What do you do? Surely you don’t chose to adapt a screenplay from a book written by the guy who wrote Mystic River. You remember; that movie that had it not been for The Lord of the Rings: ROTK would have won Clint Eastwood another Oscar, so you can have immediate comparisons drawn, right?

That sounds exactly like the corner a post-Daredevil Affleck would have painted himself into. Only this time the joke is on us. Ben Affleck directs a very tight movie that burns slow at first while it mounts the tension. Once we get to the point where we start peeling away the layers, you can’t help but be impressed with the story itself. But look closer and pay attention to the shot selection. About halfway through, the movie seems to abruptly end. So abrupt that I looked at my watch and wondered what they were going to do with the other hour that was left. As Affleck continues to tell this story and you go back over everything, you realize that there wasn’t one wasted shot in the movie. Every one of them serves a purpose to the story. All the clues are there, even blatantly out in the open sometimes, but Affleck wisely chooses his shot selection such that we see everything we need to see to figure out the story, even if he doesn’t make it apparent that it will end up being part of the story.

What started as your garden variety kidnapping movie ended up being so much more. Not just the difference between right and wrong, but the definitions of the two, the degree to which people can be right and or wrong, and everyone’s interpretations of what they perceive all of it to be. The movie begs the question, “How far would you go to do the right thing?” Everyone in the movie has an agenda and a solid argument for why their definition is right, but this movie, and the questions it raises, is much more than a simply right and wrong. If only it were that easy.

In the end, there are no clear cut answers. Days later I am still torn, even as I sit her typing. Arguing what is right by law and right for the girl is like arguing the difference between ethics and morals. The story is told so well, and with such moral ambiguity, that as an audience we cannot simply sit back and judge the characters for making the decisions they made, we are forced both to make one for ourselves and be able to argue our justification. Simple yes or no just doesn’t cut it. Without giving anything away, the last scene of the movie still sticks with me. We see Kenzie sitting there, presumably both reveling in, and regretting the decision he made all at the same time. You will know this because you will be doing it in real time right along with him.

The Rub:
This is a wonderfully skillful directorial debut by Ben Affleck and equally excellent performances by Casey Affleck and Ed Harris. This movie will stay with you for a while after you’ve seen it. It is also happens to be one of the best movies of the year.

And there’s the rub.

**** out of ****

Review: 30 Days of Night

2007-10-29T00:06:00.001-05:00

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster
Director: David Slade
Release Date: October 19, 2007
Running time: 113 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: Columbia Pictures

“You are a vampire who never knew what life was until it ran out in a big gush over your lips.” - Lestat, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

“God? No God.” - Marlow, 30 Days of Night

The Skinny:
Vampires descend on Barrow, Alaska as they enter a month of prolonged darkness during the winter solstice.

The Review:
Somewhere, some time I read that Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) affects almost 25% of Alaskan residents to some degree. It would stand to reason that residents of Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost settlement on the North American mainland and in the United States, would make up the largest portion of that percentage. With just over 4,000 residents in the town, 25% would put us at right about 1,000 people impacted. Christ, don’t these people have enough to worry about? Now there are vampires attacking?

First things first. What a wicked idea for the setting of a vampire movie. A snow covered Alaskan town on the verge of reclusion, cloaked in darkness for weeks at a time in the dead of winter. Even the writers understand the novelty behind this as one of the vampires actually says at one point, “Why didn’t we think of this ages ago?” 30 Days of Night is a movie based on the graphic novels of the same name. There isn’t much in the way of a hidden meaning. It is, well, exactly what you would expect when you hear the premise behind it. Vampires can’t be in the sun, so they decide to go to the one spot on Earth during the one time of year when there is no sun. From there, they can go on an uninterrupted feeding frenzy. Pretty simple.

Josh Hartnett plays Eben Oleson, the sheriff of Barrow where seemingly little else happens besides this newest rash of things for him to do. It is too easy to jump all over Hartnett for being too wooden, stiff, dull, expressionless, or any other adjective we can think of to classify his acting ability. He is all these things in this movie too, but he wasn’t bad, per se, he was just… there. In the end, he wasn’t what the movie was about in the first place. This isn’t a movie about performances or even plot, necessarily.

You can have the coolest premise in the world (and they do) but it’s still a movie about vampires. Which makes it a horror movie. Which means there are certain conventions that are going to be present. There is still a group that is traveling together. Someone gets infected. Someone sacrifices himself for the greater good of the group. The annoying guy is met with an untimely death that no one really feels all that bad about. I would label these spoilers but they happen in every horror movie so I’m not really giving anything away. They aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel here folks - it’s a vampire movie.

Speaking of… I found these vampires to be a bit Dawn of the Dead-esque. They are a fast moving, cutthroat group that actually exudes a bit of personality. At least the main few of them. In particular, Marlow (Danny Huston), the leader of the group, is quite convincing.

David Slade’s direction is tight without too many wasted shots. He gave the movie a grainy, gritty look to it that works well for the film. There is a contrast between the bloody carnage of the violence happening around them and the snow of the locale that lends itself well to the nature of the picture.

There is one shot, my favorite of the movie, that shows us everything we need to know about it. It is a slow moving aerial shot that pans up the road leading through town. There are vampires killing and maiming in just about every corner of the screen. It really shows the scope of the carnage the town is going through. Bones breaking, blood splattering, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.

The Rub:
In case you didn’t pick up the subtlety of the message so far - this is a movie about vampires. It wont redefine the genre, but it surely didn’t ruin it either. It’s bloody and violent but above all; well made. An insanely simple and wicked premise, slick direction, and cool effects make this a good little popcorn horror flick. Don’t expect anything groundbreaking, but this is a far cry better than the majority of horror out there today.

And there’s the rub.

*** out of ****

Review: Dan in Real Life

2007-10-27T16:04:00.001-05:00

Starring: Steve Carrell, Juliette Binoche, Dane Cook, John Mahoney, Dianne West
Director: Peter Hedges
Release Date: October 26, 2007
Running time: 95 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Touchstone Pictures

“Honey if you call and I'm not home I'll be at the gym or the gun club.” - Jack Butler, Mr. Mom

The Skinny:
Dan Burns is a single father of three girls who tries to pick up a woman who ends up being his brother’s girlfriend he was planning to introduce during a family function. Now they all have to spend the weekend together.

The Review:
It’s funny how differently things hit you on different days. Depending on the day or week you are having, a movie can either sit well with you or sit like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t really expecting too much from this film, but I guess a funny thing happened on the way to the forum…

Dan in Real Life is about a single dad and popular family advice columnist Dan Burns (Steve Carrell). He is doing his best to raise his three daughters; two teenagers and one almost there. They set out on a weekend away for an annual family get-together. The first morning, Dan goes into town and meets a woman, Marie (Juliette Binoche) at a book store. We soon find out that Marie happens to be the girlfriend of Dan’s brother Mitch (Dane Cook), who was using the weekend as an outlet to let her meet the fam. The rest of the weekend is spent watching the Dan and Marie share secret laughs and quick snippet meetings in this mansion of a house unbeknownst to the rest of the family, especially Mitch.

This movie shared with me a few surprises. The most obvious is my realization that Steve Carrell is actually growing on me. This version of him anyway. Not The Office version or the Evan Almighty version. It even took me a while to like 40 Year Old Virgin. But when I finally got there, what I liked most about it was the quieter moments. Those are the moments that define his ability beyond his manic episodes. Much like his Bruce Almighty co-star Jim Carrey before him, he is best when used with restraint. The quieter, more toned down version suits him much more.

The scene where Dan and Marie meet in the bookstore is sweet and just real enough to set the right tone for the movie. Dan is gentle and clumsy and mildly awkward in his approach to Marie – much like you would expect a divorced father of three to be in that situation. I also liked the dynamic between Dan and all of his daughters. They each have their own conflict and he does what he can to balance them. There is a sweetness to his interaction with them but also the sense that he is barely hanging on. As the weekend progresses and he continues to hide his affection for Marie and the tension mounts, Dan starts to melt down a bit. Oh, how glad am I that his Carrell chose to play this straight with a quiet desperation rather than resort to his old tricks and ham it up. His performance, and the movie, is better for it.

Another surprise is that Dane Cook did not actually ruin this movie. That’s not to say that he wasn’t mostly annoying (he was) and still the worst part of the movie (he was), but he wasn’t the distraction this time around that he is starting to be. Not for one second did I get on board with the idea that a Dane Cook/Juliette Binoche union was plausible. They looked awkward together and I didn’t buy it. Maybe that played into the movies hand a little more in getting me to buy/root for a Dan/Marie partnership. Or maybe not. I don’t think it really matters. The end result of the movie was never in question either way.

Yes, this movie had its share of problems. This essence of this movie was the very definition of formula, almost to a sitcom degree. But it didn’t matter. I liked the scenes where the family interacted. Sure they were quirky and odd and existed seemingly for the sake of being quirky and odd. But between the crossword puzzle competitions, group morning exercising, and even the creepy talent show, the tone it set for the film was cheesy yet moderately charming all at the same time. Dan in Real Life isn’t really about the family, or the overacted brother, or the formula the script adhered to. It’s about Dan and how he interacts with, and deals with, all the stress in his life. And even though the movie isn’t about all of those things, it is hard to ignore that they helped shape Dan into what he is now and how he chose to deal with everything happening around him.

The Rub:
Dan in Real Life is a sitcom formula stretched to feature length. In this case, it’s not a bad thing. The real strength of the film is Steve Carrell and the realism he brought to the character. If he would have played this any other way, the film would have been a disaster. As it stands, flaws and all, this is a good, lighthearted movie that just sits right with you after you’ve seen it. Even if you wont remember it two weeks from now.

And there’s the rub.

*** out of ****

Review: Across the Universe

2007-10-26T22:49:00.000-05:00

Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess, Joe Anderson, Dana Fuchs
Director: Julie Taymor
Release Date: October 12, 2007
Running time: 131 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Columbia Pictures

“Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you, tomorrow I’ll miss you. And remember I’ll always be true.”
- Paul McCartney, All My Lovin’

“The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”
- Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin Rouge!

The Skinny:
A musical telling a love story set in and spanning the 1960’s as told against the backdrop of the music of The Beatles.

The Review:
Very rarely does a movie come along that I have as much need to see as I did when I first heard of Across the Universe. Beyond simply wanting to see, I had to see this movie. The Beatles are without question my favorite band of all time and musicals are an obscenely underused genre in movies, so this movie was set up to be the perfect marriage of the two.

Across the Universe tells the story of Jude (Jim Sturgess) and his travels from his home in Liverpool, England to the good old U.S. of A. He is initially looking for his father whom he has never met and who does not know he exists. While he is there, he encounters a rash of people, whose names are derived from either titles or lyrics of Beatles songs. There’s Max (Joe Anderson), the rebellious kid from a family of privilege who moves to New York with Jude, and his sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), with whom Jude falls in love. In New York they guys meet, and end up rooming with Sadie (Dana Fuchs) an aspiring musician, Jojo (Martin Luther McCoy), Sadie’s guitar player and love interest, and Prudence (T.V. Carpio), who may or may not be interested in Sadie. Or Max. Or both, or neither. Lucy moves to New York after the death of her boyfriend in Vietnam and winds up falling in love with Jude. Max gets shipped to Vietman, shifting Lucy’s focus from all Jude all the time, to a radical anti-war movement. Sadie and Jojo go through the turmoils of being struggling musicians in love. And the whole thing just lumbers along from there.

The performances in the movie were decent. Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood in particular rose above the rest of cast. Dana Fuchs musical performances made for some of the better song renditions in the movie. It would, however, be difficult to argue that the best musical performance in the movie is T.V. Carpio’s I Want to Hold Your Hand. Never before has a song shifted its meaning as much by simply changing the tempo and setting in which it was sang quite like this was.

In concept, this movie is absolutely amazing. The idea of using the music of one of the most revered bands ever to tell a story set in the backdrop of the time in which the music was created is just this side of genius. Hearing these arrangements I have loved the better part of my life reimagined and reinterperted was mostly pretty amazing. I especially liked how you could see the grain of the film shift through each of the phases of The Beatles musical catelog. Some of the songs were a bit overdone, but it’s hard to ignore the essence of the music either way. At best, the versitility of The Beatles shines through in vivid detail. But there were times when it felt like the songs were forced into the movie for the sake of another musical number rather than to tell the story. And that is precisely when my worst fear realized itself. The movie started to suck.

This could have been - wait, let me start over - this SHOULD have been an achievement of the grandest scale. I just can’t tell who wanted it more, me or the movie itself. I will say this for Across the Universe; the ambition was there, but somewhere along the way it took its eye off the ball and couldn’t remember what it wanted to be. It wanted to be a love story set to Beatles music. Then it wanted to be a Beatles musical told through a love story. But it couldn’t ever figure out how to be both. About the time Taymor opted out of telling the story and into selling us with visuals, I lost my enthusiasm. Don’t misinturperet this; the visual aspect wasn’t lost on me at all - it was brilliant in spots - it just happened to coincide with the time when the storytelling stopped. When something worked, it worked wonderfully until it was overwraught and used as a weapon to bludgeon us with. When it didn’t, it just kind of fell flat.

Shortly after I got home from seeing Across the Universe, I got a call from a friend who had seen, and loved the movie. She wanted to know what I thought of it. I said the first thing that came to mind: “It was alright but I liked it better the first time I saw it, when it was called Moulin Rouge!” In hindsight, it as kind of a cheap shot since the two movies hadn’t much to do with each other. But there is a little stock in my first reaction. After that conversation I asked my girlfriend what she thought of it. Her unsolicited response? “I bet Baz Luhrmann is really pissed off somewhere right now.”

The Rub:
Across the Universe wants to be a lot more than it is. While grandiose in its ambition, once you strip away the novelty of having The Beatles music as a backdrop for the story, you are left with little more than a mediocre, clichéd love story that barely works. It wants to be trendy and genius and trippy, and while Julie Taymor’s visual flair is unarguably evident, the movie kind of lost it’s way once it abandoned the story it was trying to tell. I didn’t hate it, parts of it were outstanding. But the parts that weren’t seemed forced and based on my expectation and all that could have, make that SHOULD have been; this was nothing short of a missed opportunity.

And there’s the rub.

** ½ out of ****

Review: 3:10 to Yuma

2007-09-18T01:28:00.001-05:00

Starring: Russell Crowe, Christian Bale
Director: James Mangold
Producer: Stuart M. Besser, Ryan Kavanaugh, Cathy Konrad, Lynwood Spinks
Release Date: September 7, 2007
Running time: 117 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: Lions Gate Entertainment

“You all spared no expense this time, Byron. I gotta say, though, it's probably cheaper just to let me rob the damn thing.”
- Ben Wade in 3:10 to Yuma

“If it's between you and some poor guy whose wife you're gonna make a widow... brother, you are going down.”
- Vincent Hanna in Heat

The Skinny:
A remake of the 1957 film of the same name adapted from a short story by Elmore Leonard.

The Review:
I don’t see that many Westerns. When you say it out loud it’s kind of appalling considering most of the ones I have seen (and my experience is embarrassingly limited) are generally pretty good. They appeal because of basic thematic fundamentals: enforcement of the law, honor and cowardice, and good old fashion good guys vs. bad guys. The good ones are more than just cowboys and Indians; they are studies in character that take place in a simpler time. Well, maybe not simpler, but definitely a time that is more uniquely American than any other film genre.

Dan Evans (Christian Bale) is a rancher and veteran of the Civil War who is down on his luck. He lost his leg in the war and his barn has just been burned down in the middle of the night. He is living with the fear his sons don’t respect him and that he is not providing for his family. Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) is the leader of a gang with over twenty robberies on the Southern Pacific Railroad on his resume. He has charisma and intellect beyond the borders of his gang and his evil actions. Yet, you still want to see him get his just dues.

Evans and his boys stumble on a robbery in progress by Wade and his gang. Wade takes their horses but lets them go. Later in town, Evans crosses paths with Wade again and stalls him long enough for him to be arrested. He agrees to help escort Wade to prison train in Contention (the 3:10 to Yuma) for desperately needed reward money. In its most basic form, the plot of the movie is simple; get a man to the train on time. But the plot is not what drives this movie. It is the interaction between Wade and Evans while they are on the journey to Contention.

Remember the scene in Heat where DeNiro and Pacino discuss the discipline of their chosen professions and reflect on their ultimate intentions while having coffee? Of course you do. It is a great movie and that scene stays with you long after you finish watching it. Although they come from the opposite sides of the law, they are civilized amidst the chaos that has, and is about to ensue. They go so far as to kindly let the other know that when push comes to shove, civilized or not, neither of them will hesitate to let instinct take over and do what they think has to be done.

This movie is a lot like that scene. It is essentially a long conversation between two men who seem to exist only in each others universe. Even though they will ultimately both do what they have to in order to serve their own interests, they will be civilized about it, even if they are pushed to violence. You get the feeling that if Wade has to be sent to prison, there is no one else he would rather accompany him on his journey than Evans. They interact with each other as if no one else is around, and the movie is all the better for it. The whole movie we are lead to believe that Evans is only doing this for the reward money, but during the final 20 minutes the movie comes full circle because we come to the realization of his true motivations at the precise moment that he does, even if Wade knew it all along.

The Rub:
3:10 to Yuma is a great movie that tells a simple story that flourishes from the performances of Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, both as individual performances and the way their characters interact. Even though both men keep their own agendas in play, there is a civility in their actions that forges a stronger connection and makes the movie all the better for it.

And there’s the rub.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Review: Mr. Woodcock

2007-09-17T11:23:00.001-05:00

Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Sean William Scott, Susan Sarandon, Amy Poehler, Ethan Suplee
Director: Craig Gillespie
Producer: Bob Cooper, David Dobkin
Release Date: September 14, 2007
Running time: 97 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: New Line Cinema

“Well, I am known for my meat.”
- Jasper Woodcock in Mr. Woodcock

The Skinny:
Childhood fatty gets tormented by his gym teacher, grows up and writes a book only to find out the object of all his motivations is now dating his mother.

The Review:
6th grade. Third period gym. Coach Stange.

Everybody knew all you had to do was show up and dress for class and you’d get an easy A; so that I did. Yet at the end of the first semester I had to explain to my folks why I got a C- in gym class. I argued over and over that Coach Stange flat out hated my guts. Mom even went so far as to call the school to find out. Why the low grade for a whole semester? According to him, it was because I forgot my gym clothes one time and I needed to be taught some discipline. It took her until the next year of seeing A’s in gym for her to finally believe me that he did actually hate me. I didn’t let my distaste for him ruin or guide my life, but God I hated that guy. Mr. Woodcock tell a similar, albeit slightly more colorful version of that same story.

Growing up in small town Nebraska, John Farley (Sean William Scott) was one of the many child victims tormented by their gym teacher, Jasper Woodcock (Billy Bob Thornton). He has since grown up to be a successful writer, penning a seemingly worthless self help bestseller Letting Go: Getting Past Your Past. Farley returns home to claim a local prize only to find that the source of all of his childhood frustrations and adult motivations, Mr. Woodcock, is now dating his mother.

I don’t know why, but the fact that Woodcock looked exactly the same 13 years later made me laugh. Out loud, even. Beyond that, watching Thornton chew the screen was about as good as this movie got. He must’ve typed in Bad Santa into his flux capacitor and hit cruise control because he’s basically doing the same character. The only thing is, like that bad joke you like so well no matter how many times you hear it, it never really gets old. It is widely understood that Billy Bob Thornton is arguably one of the greatest working actors today, and I love seeing him get down and dirty in his dramatic best, but watching him verbally berate people on screen never ceases to be funny to me. At least not yet. I typically like my Sean William Scott cocky and idiotic (see: the American Pie films and The Rundown), so his sniveling, whining, Farley didn’t play that well. Ethan Suplee as Farley’s childhood friend Nedderman, adds another dopey sidekick to his resume and Amy Poehler continues to be as annoying as ever as Maggie, Farley’s agent. I wouldn’t mind it if she was funny, but only being there to forcefully interject her stock one-liners grew tiresome very quickly. Susan Sarandon plays it straight as Beverly Farley, but does it really matter in a movie with the title Mr. Woodcock?

The movie is one joke stretched as thing as it can without breaking. To say this is a good movie, or even a funny one is pushing the limits of my honesty. There are a few laughs here and there but for the most part, it isn’t really worth anyone’s time, cast included. Woodcock plays it all badass until the end somewhere and tries to pull a cowardly lion by finding a heart. I would have preferred him either having all heart or none at all. This isn’t the type of character where I expect to see growth. And the oh-so-predictable ending does what you would expect any one note joke of a movie to do, try to teach us a lesson. And that lesson is this: If you and your mother are sitting in a hospital waiting room, her in her 1970 Corn Cob Queen gown, and you in your high school wrestling tights, both holding on to the past, your best bet is to just go with it because Woodcock is about the most entertaining thing either one of you have going for you. And that’s not saying much. Coach Stange, if you’re out there, had you been remotely funny like this I wouldn’t have thought you were suck a prick all these years.

The Rub:
Mindless and predictable, Mr. Woodcock is the kind of movie that works best when you’ve seen everything else, there is nothing on TV, and you have nothing else to do. Don’t expect gut busting Superbad type laughs, but Billy Bob Thornton is good for a few chuckles, and about the only thing worth seeing. It’s not really good at all but I didn’t completely hate it only because it served its purpose - to help me kill a few hours, even if it had to take a few brain cells with it.

And there’s the rub.

** out of ****

Review: The Brave One

2007-09-14T23:42:00.000-05:00

Starring: Jodie Foster, Naveen Andrews, Terrence Howard, Mary Steenburgen
Director: Neil Jordan
Producer: Susan Downey, Joel Silver
Release Date: September 14, 2007
Running time: 119 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures

“Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name. But what’s puzzling you, is the nature of my game.”

- The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil

The Skinny:
Jodie Foster turns vigilante after the murder of her fiancé.

The Review:
Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) and her fiancé David (Naveen Andrews) are like two peas in a pod. She does a show on a New York talk radio station and he is a doctor. They are blissfully in love and planning their wedding. They fake-cute argue over things like invitations and what type of wedding they should have. On a walk through Central Park one night with their dog, they are brutally attacked. She is beaten within an inch of her life, and him six inches further. She wakes from her coma three weeks later to find that David’s funeral has already been held and she is left with nothing to do but pick up the pieces and try to move on.

Going in to this movie seemed like dangerous ground to tread so soon after seeing Death Sentence just two weeks ago. Another movie about an average Joe turned vigilante killer after the death of their (blank)? And even if there will always be a spot reserved in my movie loving heart for her because of Silence of the Lambs, Foster kind of fell off the map for me some time ago. This movie surprised the hell out of me.

There are three reasons it works so well. First, the performances by Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard are incredible. Foster finally jumped off that one trick pony she had been riding through her last few movies roles and added back some of the spunk that made us love her in the first place. She’s pretty much been sleepwalking for the past five years, so it’s great to see she still possesses the talent and chops that made her famous. Watch the scene where Erica does her first radio show after the attack. She gets on air, freezes and restarts three different times. It is painful to watch. Not only do you hear the fear in her voice, but you feel it for her. You just want to reach through the screen, take her out of the room and end the discomfort. Not many actors could pull it off, and even fewer with such haunting effect. Howard adds the perfect counterbalance to her performance. He plays the rare good cop who still believes in the system he fights to protect, even if he has any number of reasons to have become jaded by it.

Two, the direction from Neil Jordan is very solid. Nothing is overplayed. Even when Erica is in full on vigilante mode, the movie doesn’t just move from one kill scene to the next. They aren’t elaborately staged scenes full of blood and carnage; they all serve the story and illustrate the conflict she is going through. There is restraint in his direction that really sets the tone for everything, and gets it perfect. Even toward the end when the movie walks dangerously close to becoming a cliché cat-and-mouse thriller, he has the sense enough to pull it back and ride the horse that got him here.

Finally, the movie sort of throws conventional revenge movie wisdom out the window. The basic structure is in place, but this movie takes the time to dig deep into the emotion behind Erica’s transformation. This isn’t someone who lives through a brutally violent act then just decides out of thin air she wants to go on a killing spree. She is not a superhero, she is a real person. When she gets out of the hospital she becomes so paralyzed with fear and paranoia that she is a prisoner in her home. She can’t sleep and is afraid to even leave. When she finally forces herself to get out of the house, there is a level of fear to be expected, but we watch it consumer her. She tries the conventional route of gaining some much needed normalcy (going to the cops, getting back to work, etc). She goes to the same places she has been to a thousand times but sees things in a completely different light since the attack. There is a slow burn to her transformation that feels not only justified, but necessary without being righteous.

By definition The Brave One is a revenge movie, but dealing with the idea on such an emotional level is what sets it apart from some of the more mundane features from the same genre. The entire movie barrels on a path toward an expected conclusion but at the end, throws you for a loop by doing the opposite of what you expect. It doesn’t quite feel like cheating, but it does come out of nowhere.

The Rub:
Typical revenge movie conventions be damned - this movie primarily deals with the emotional transformation Erica goes through after her attack. Don’t let the boring and obvious title fool you, this is a fantastic movie carried by the strength of its direction and excellent performances. Everything here is played at just the right tone and we haven’t seen Foster this good in some time. Hopefully it will allow us to see more of the Jodie Foster we have come to know and love watching.

And there’s the rub.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Review: Shoot 'Em Up

2007-09-11T02:30:00.001-05:00

Starring: Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Monica Bellucci
Director: Michael Davis
Producer: Susan Montford, Don Murphy
Release Date: September 7, 2003
Running time: 87 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: New Line Cinema

“Nothing could be more painful than listening to you jabberin' on and on.”
- Mr. Smith, Shoot ‘Em Up

“What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this?”
- Pet Shop Boys

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
- Jesus

The Skinny:
No skinny. Just read.

The Review:
What is your favorite food?
Maybe it’s something your mother made for you growing up or maybe it’s something you only have during the holidays. Whatever it is, I want you to close your eyes and picture it in your head. Think about how it tastes. How it smells. Think about all the reasons you like it. Now, with your eyes still closed, picture this fabulous meal of meals, the one true object of your culinary affections, your all-time desert island favorite meal of all time, being served to you with a big, fresh, steaming, smelly ladle of baby food colored, I just ate five truck load of the worlds worst sushi and don’t think I’m going to make it to the bathroom, shit smothered all over the top of it. You are now about 10% on your way to describing what I felt like watching this movie.

How in the name of all that is holy, could this have happened with two of my favorite current actors in the leads? Smith (Clive Owen) plays a… well I’m not sure what he’s supposed to be. What I do know is that he happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up in a shootout with a gang of ne'er-do-wells led by Hertz (Paul Giamotti), get it, Hertz? Oh never mind… Smith ends up delivering some poor lady’s baby during the shootout, calls on the help of a prostitute acquaintance of his, Donna Quintano (Monica Bellucci), and together they spend the rest of the movie playing cat and mouse with Hertz and his band of merry men, trying to save the baby. Why he bothered to care enough about it to risk getting his face blown off a thousand times over still escapes me.

The plot is… wait, what plot? Let’s see, there was something about a double or triple cross involving a government official and a gun manufacturer and something about a baby lab set up to harvest bone marrow and guys trying to stop all of it from happening - or something like that. It’s not that I didn’t follow it; I was just assaulted with it somewhere in the middle for the sake of having something else to follow besides the pointless action. Remember how horny you were on prom night? This is more forceful. And like both nights, by the time it really mattered I was too busy trying not to bite off my own tongue from the convulsions to even bother caring.

This was, by all accounts, supposed to be a slam bam, balls-to-the-wall action movie. At least there was action, right? Tell me there was action. If it succeeded on any level it was that it jumped right into it from the beginning. Within the first 5 minutes I thought, “Ok, this could be a fun little throwback to all the cheesy 80’s action movies I grew up on”, so I strapped in for the ride. And as hard as I try, I will never get back, what would be the next 85 minutes of my life. Ever. The action sequences were so over the top and so ridiculous that they could have only existed in the movie to have proof on film that some idiot studio head actually greenlit this movie. He must’ve lost a bet. Or owed someone a HUGE favor. The merry go round shootout, the loft shootout, the car chase, the sky diving scene, the warehouse shootout; even the sex scene was so bad I had to continually close my eyes, take a deep breath, and force myself not to walk out. I kept thinking that it had to get better, or at the very least not get any worse. Oh how wrong I was. This was reminiscent of Showgirls in that the primary draw of the movie (T&A there, action here) was so overused I got sick of seeing it. It kept getting worse and worse and worse until finally I just shook my head and laughed at the carnage (not the good kind) that was unfolding right in front of my fragile little eyes. At least we got various breaks in the action so Hertz can talk to his wife on his cell phone for no reason at all and Smith can eat his carrots… nope wait, never mind, Smith just killed someone with a carrot. Sorry, make that four different people. I guess we don’t get a break after all.

I watch a lot of movies and they aren’t all destined to make the awards circuit - nor should they be. And I am all for a good guilty pleasure now and again. They all have their place. But there are levels of failure that can be achieved. This one didn’t just scrape the bottom of the barrel, it hit rock bottom and kept digging. This is an absolute waste of an extremely talented cast. It tries to be funny and self referential, but the one liners become increasingly grating and if the movie understood itself as well as it wanted to, it would have realized just how terrible it was.

To paraphrase a line from the movie we kept getting bludgeoned with: Hey Smith, you know what I hate? Everything about this god awful train wreck of a movie you just tricked me into sitting through.

The Rub:
This is the worst movie of the year - hands down. There are no redeeming or likable qualities to be found anywhere in this picture; not one. A disappointment on levels I didn’t even know existed in the known world. It can only be best summed up by a quote from an equally idiotic, but at least likable movie, “…what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

Yeah, what he said.

And there’s the rub.

zero out of ****

Review: Death Sentence

2007-09-03T20:36:00.000-05:00

Starring: Kevin Bacon, Kelly Preston, Aisha Tyler, John Goodman
Director: James Wan
Producer: Ashok Amritraj, Howard Baldwin, Karen Elise Baldwin
Release Date: August 31, 2007
Running time: 110 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: Fox Atomic

“I say who lives, I say who dies.”

The Skinny:
Kevin Bacon does his best six degrees of Charles Bronson as the world’s greatest dad becomes vigilante killer after the brutal death of his oldest son.

The Review:
First - a couple of points. One, Kevin Bacon is an obscenely underrated actor. The fact that he was passed over for major awards for his work in Mystic River and Murder in the First is nothing short of criminal. Two, I am on the opposite side of that spectrum when discussing director James Wan. I am just not a fan. Dead Silence was boring and I thought Saw was absolutely awful. You think it is merely coincidence that the Saw films got better after he stopped directing them? I don’t. Also, I like a good revenge movie. Be it your westerns, your Asian, or your miscellaneous revenge flicks, they are pretty good when they’re done right. But good or bad, there isn’t much in the way of originality to the basic premise. Somebody wronged somebody else and they retaliate by seeking some sort of violent retribution. Everyone has pondered that “what would you do if…” question, so there is a touch of realism that can be felt in these types of movies.

In Death Sentence, Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) is a risk assessment executive and consummate family man. This guy has it all. The perfect family, the perfect job, and I’ll bet there is a cupboard full of ‘#1 Dad’ coffee mugs to further validate the point. The film opens with various home videos of the Hume family showing us, in numbing detail, just how tight knit this family is. The oldest son plays hockey, the youngest son paints, but they live in their own little fairy tale world where nothing seems to go wrong and everyone gets along without incident. Sure, as the movie moves forward we see that the teenage brothers *gasp* fight like, well, teenage brothers. Beyond that, all is well in the home of Hume. Of course in a revenge movie, so by standard conventions we know this wont last. Nick and oldest son Brendan (Stuart Lafferty) are returning home from a trip in the city where Brendan played hockey. The gas light comes on in the car (in the wrong part of town obviously) and they just have to stop for gas - right now! - in the most dilapitated of gas stations. I wonder if something bad will happen? Sure enough, Brendan goes in for a drink and ends up dying by way of some gang member initiation. After a brief tussle with the one who killed him, Nick gets a look at the face of the killer. At pre-trial, he decides that he will take matters into his own hands rather than put his trust in a justice system that will no doubt fail him, by killing the man who shot his Pa… I mean son. This sets off a war between his associated gang.

The story itself isn’t the problem - pretty much a by the book revenge flick - it’s everything else that feels off. Kevin Bacon deserves better. I don’t know what compelled him to make this movie. Actually, yes I do; this guy has made a career out of playing characters who are against the grain. He doesn’t fit a common mold and will never really be in danger of being type casted towards a specific character type. This could have been another in a long line of great performances, but alas… As the fairy tale father, he played the everyman with ease. But the rest of the movie felt inconsistent because it didn’t seem like he could decide how to play it. Straight bad ass, conflicted killer, scared father; his performance just jumped around too much. And his was the best performance in the movie. Gang leader Billy (Garrett Hedlund) plays the same cookie-cutter, bald headed, tatooed, wannabe BA that could have came from any other movie or street corner. He did much better on the other side of the coin in Four Brothers. The rest of the gang was equally tired and clichéd. They smoke, they drink, they cuss, and they were just too cartoony for their own good. Let me guess, their headquarters is in, oh yep, there it is - the back of a bar. How quaint. Other than a few curse laden epitaphs, they aren’t imposing or scary in the least. There must’ve been a Rollback sale on faceless, dill hole gangsters at Wal-Mart. If so, they got their moneys worth. And don’t even get me started on Aisha Tyler, as Detective Wallis. She is the most distracting, annoying, ill casted piece of trash to grace the screen in a long time. In a scene where Wallis and Hume’s wife Helen (Kelly Preston) come to the realization of what he has done, he is met with a “You are a good father” response from the wife, and a “Stay in the house. You’re lucky to be alive” from Wallis. Poor script to be sure, but her delivery in this scene and many others felt so out of place, I don’t even think she knew what movie she was ‘acting’ in. If you can even call it that. On her best day of shooting, she wasn’t half as good as Cary Elwes on his worst day shooting Saw.

Much like the acting, the direction was inconsistent. There were parts that caught my interest, but the movie never really found its groove. It wanted to be a gritty revenge movie. Then it wanted to have heart. Then it went back. And forth. And so on. Director James Wan went to such lengths to humanize the family in the beginning that it became overbearing, and in the end, I just didn’t care. He used filters to make the film look washed out and gritty, then he hit us with an overuse of color. Mostly red. And a lot of it. The violence was brutal and bloody, but came in spurts (no pun intended). It was graphic, then it was restrained. Almost like Wan picked his spots where to show his ability to direct violence, then let someone else fill in the rest. The best part of the movie was the showdown in a parking garage. There was a nifty looking long tracking shot that followed Hume as we went from level to level that ended in a decent fight on the roof, inside a car while it rolled slowly towards the edge. As I said, it was a good scene but much like the rest of the movie, it felt misplaced and only there as a vehicle to show us that he could pull it off rather than a smooth transition to an event in the story. The final scene between Hume and Billy was an ending that felt real and it worked well, it was just too little too late. For as bad as this mess was, it was still Wan’s best outing yet as a director. For the record, that’s not a compliment.

The Rub:
This was a textbook paint by numbers film that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a gritty revenge piece with heart or honest character study with violence. The acting was sub par and the direction was inconsistent. Kevin Bacon deserved much more, and while this was James Wan’s best outing yet, he still isn’t a director I am ready to get on board with. Maybe he should stick to the Saw franchise. Then again, maybe not.

And there’s the rub.

** out of ****