New Movies and Reviews

“Crank: High Voltage”

2009-04-29T23:06:00.000-07:00

REVIEW:

With its combination of fourth-wall-shattering onscreen graphics, self-conscious art direction and camera moves, ADHD editing, incongruous song choices (lowriders blast Little Anthony and the Imperials’ “Tears on My Pillow” on their car stereo, for instance), pneumatic nudity and outrageous ultra-violence, “Crank: High Voltage” is, in its own unique way, pure cinema.

Imagine a gonzo collaboration between Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Bay and Tex Avery on a weekend meth binge, and you begin to get an idea of what writer-directors Mark Neveldine and Brad Taylor have up their sleeves.

Jason Statham returns as hit man Chev Chelios, a.k.a. the lad who would not die; Statham is to “Crank” what the bus is to “Speed.” In the first movie, he had to keep creating adrenaline to stop a cocktail of toxins from entering his system. This time around, Chev must constantly electrocute himself to keep the artificial heart in his chest beating.

The fact that he’s got a pulse at all comes as something of a shock, since the first “Crank” ends with Chev falling out of a high-flying helicopter, bouncing off a car and landing on the asphalt in downtown L.A. As “High Voltage” starts up, a mysterious black van comes by and scoops up Chev. He wakes up on an operating table, having just had his heart removed by shady doctors working for the triads. When he realizes that the next organ the surgeons plan to harvest is between his legs, Chev blasts his way out of there, and so begins a new chase.

Familiar friends — including Amy Smart as Chev’s girlfriend Eve and Dwight Yoakam as his shady physician — and enemies pop up again, as do some new members of the ensemble, including Clifton Collins Jr. as a crime kingpin with vendetta on his mind, Michael Weston (also appearing in this week’s “State of Play”) as an EMT, David Carradine as a 100-year-old triad lord and former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell in flashback as Chev’s mum.

Neveldine/Taylor (as they are credited) take their cues from Chev; as he self-inflicts one jolt after another to keep his heart beating, the filmmakers keep throwing things at the audience, from a picket line of porn stars to gun battles featuring strippers to a graphic self-mutilation. Having to one-up their original 2006 cult hit is no easy feat, but they manage it. (Think they can’t top the public-coitus-in-Chinatown scene? Guess again.)

Admittedly, things begin to drag the tiniest bit towards the end — if one can use the word “drag” to describe a shootout at a Catalina mansion where Latino gang-bangers try to repel an invading army of Uzi-toting exotic dancers and gay African-American bikers. But who besides Chev can handle this much non-stop stimulation?

To call “Crank: High Voltage” sexist, racist or homophobic, incidentally, is to assume that this is a movie about human beings, which it is not. It’s more like a testosterone-soaked, definitely-not-for-children cartoon, and I mean that in the best way possible.

Whether or not you admire what “Crank: High Voltage” is doing, there’s no denying that the movie gives its vision 111 percent. And as films feel more and more like a compromise between the money people and the test audience and, oh yeah, the artist, that counts for a lot.

CAST & CREW
Director: Mark Neveldine
Brian Taylor

Writers (WGA): Mark Neveldine (written by) & Brian Taylor (written by)

Release Date: 17 April 2009 (USA)

Genre: Action | Crime | Drama | Fantasy

Tagline: He was dead...But he got better

Plot: Chelios faces a Chinese mobster who has stolen his nearly indestructible heart and replaced it with a battery-powered ticker that requires regular jolts of electricity to keep working.

Cast:

Jason Statham ... Chev Chelios
Amy Smart ... Eve
Dwight Yoakam ... Doc Miles
Efren Ramirez ... Venus
Julanne Chidi Hill ... Dark Chocolate
Reno Wilson ... Orlando
Keone Young ... Don Kim
Art Hsu ... Johnny Vang
Joseph Julian Soria ... Chico
Ling Bai ... Ria
Clifton Collins Jr. ... El Huron
David Carradine ... Poon Dong
Corey Haim ... Randy
Geri Halliwell ... Karen Chelios
Billy Unger ... Young Chev

17 Again

2009-04-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

REVIEW:

Nothing is ever completely original, “there is nothing new under the sun,” all drama boils down to seven basic plots, I get it.

But still.

There’s an unspoken but understood arrangement between filmmakers and the audience: Filmgoers don’t object when movie people rehash old movies and TV shows, so long as the end product injects some kind of new life or wit or spin or take on the material. Plundering the past is OK when the thieves do something interesting with the stolen goods.

And then there’s a movie like “17 Again,” which grafts together oodles of familiar characters and storylines without the benefit of anything new to say.

The film begins with a flashback to 1989 and a turning point in the life of high school senior Mike O’Donnell (Zac Efron). It’s the big game, and a college scout has come to watch Mike play basketball; seconds before the game begins, however, Mike’s girlfriend Scarlett informs him that she’s pregnant, so he walks out of the gym, pledging to devote his life to their new family.

Cut to 20 years later: Mike (now played by Matthew Perry) is a griping loser whom Scarlett (Leslie Mann) has kicked out of the house for torturing her and their two kids with his bitterness and regret. On the day he gets fired from his sales job, Mike goes back to his old high school, where a magical janitor (Brian Doyle-Murray) gives him the opportunity to become young again and fix his old mistakes.

After an “It’s a Wonderful Life”–esque interlude where Mike jumps off a bridge in an attempt to save the mysterious old man, he wakes up as a teenager and re-enrolls in high school. Mike’s nerdy-billionaire best friend Ned (Thomas Lennon of “Reno 911!”) figures out that Mike is on some sort of “spirit journey,” and Mike discovers that the real reason behind his return to school is to bond with and help his estranged children Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg — hey, wait, shouldn’t Maggie be 20 years old, and not a high school senior, by this movie’s calendar?) and Alex (Sterling Knight).

Grafting together pieces of “Big,” “Freaky Friday” and “Peggy Sue Got Married,” among many others, “17 Again” hits the usual plot beats, with young Mike steering Maggie away from an abusive boyfriend and giving Alex the confidence to talk to girls and join the basketball team. If only any of this were funny — Efron shows little flair for comedy, and he doesn’t get much help from Jason Filardi’s deadly script, which even hobbles the usually-hilarious Lennon. (The only remotely amusing moments come from Lennon’s pursuit of Melora Hardin as a high-school principal.)

The real stand-out moments of “17 Again,” oddly enough, are the heart-tuggy moments between young Mike and older Scarlett (who thinks the kid is a cougar-chaser until she figures out who he really is). He may not excel at getting laughs, but Efron handles the movie’s attempts at poignancy with some flair; this kid needs to find another “The Notebook” to star in, stat.

CAST & CREW

Director: Burr Steers

Writers (WGA): Jason Filardi (written by)

Release Date: 17 April 2009 (USA)

Genre: Comedy

Tagline: Who says you're only young once?

Plot: About a guy whose life didn't quite turn out how he wanted it to and wishes he could go back to high school and change it. He wakes up one day and is seventeen again and gets the chance to rewrite his life.

Cast:

Zac Efron ... Mike O'Donnell (Teen)
Leslie Mann ... Scarlett O'Donnell (Adult)
Thomas Lennon ... Ned Gold
Matthew Perry ... Mike O'Donnell (Adult)
Tyler Steelman ... Ned Gold (Teen)
Allison Miller ... Scarlett (Teen)
Sterling Knight ... Alex O'Donnell
Michelle Trachtenberg ... Maggie O'Donnell
Adam Gregory ... Dom
Hunter Parrish ... Stan
Mario Cassem ... Samir
Katerina Graham ... Jaime
Tiya Sircar ... Samantha
Melissa Ordway ... Lauren
Melora Hardin ... Principal Jane Masterson

Fast and Furious

2009-04-23T00:24:00.000-07:00

REVIEW:

The four original stars of “The Fast & The Furious” are back for the streamlined-title sequel “Fast & Furious,” but the producers’ effort to assemble them anew assumes that audiences are coming to these movies for the characters and not for the car stunts.

Subsequently, we get stuck spending most of the new film’s running time watching Vin Diesel and Paul Walker squint and say words in a weak approximation of acting, wasting precious time that could be spent enjoying street racers zipping through crowded thoroughfares and jumping over obstacles.

The whole cast reunion is something of a bait-and-switch anyway, since Michelle Rodriguez disappears from the proceedings early on. She does at least get to participate in the movie’s highlight, a “Wages of Fear”–inspired opening sequence where Dominic (Diesel) and his lover Letty (Rodriguez) hijack an oil truck on a narrow highway winding through a South American mountain range.

Letty wants Dominic to return to the States with her, but he heads off on his own, knowing that he’s a wanted man back home. Shortly thereafter, he gets a call from his sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), letting him know that Letty has been murdered, which prompts Dominic’s arrival in Los Angeles, seeking her killer.

Also on the trail of the drug kingpin responsible for Letty’s death is FBI agent Brian O’Conner (Walker) who, back in the first movie, befriended Dominic and seduced Mia while going undercover in the street-racing world. Brian tries to get Dominic to work alongside him in exchange for clemency, but Dominic doesn’t trust the Feds and strikes out on his own, leading to both Brian and Dominic getting work as drivers for the bad guys.

“Fast & Furious” often plays like a graduate thesis on the use of the automobile as a penis substitute in film; we’re thrown into a world where it’s all about cars and driving all the time, where trashy girls make out with each other in a desperate attempt to get their men to look up from their engines and pay attention to them. With so much empty macho glowering going on — particularly with Diesel and Walker both giving singularly vapid performances — it’s not surprising that Brewster comes off as Dame Judi Dench by comparison.

With Diesel getting a producer credit, it’s obvious that director Justin Lin didn’t have the last word when it came to deciding whether to give more time to the effective and thrilling racing scenes or to another of one Dominic’s tortured monologues. It’s a pity, since Lin (“Better Luck Tomorrow,” “Shopping for Fangs”) gave “The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift” the adrenaline and no-rules euphoria that’s sorely missing from the franchise’s latest installment. One can only imagine how “Fast & Furious” would have turned out if its faulty male leads got the factory recall they so richly deserve.

CAST & CREW

Director: Justin Lin

Writers (WGA): Chris Morgan (written by) & Gary Scott Thompson (characters)

Release Date: 3 April 2009 (Indonesia)

Genre: Action

Tagline: New Model. Original Parts.

Plot: Brian O'Conner, now working for the FBI in LA, teams up with Dominic Toretto to bring down a heroin importer by infiltrating his operation.

Cast:

Vin Diesel ... Dominic Toretto
Paul Walker ... Brian O'Conner
Jordana Brewster ... Mia Toretto
Michelle Rodriguez ... Letty
John Ortiz ... Campos
Laz Alonso ... Fenix Rise
Gal Gadot ... Gisele Harabo
Jack Conley ... Penning
Shea Whigham ... Agent Ben Stasiak
Liza Lapira ... Agent Sophie Trinh
Sung Kang ... Han Lue
Don Omar ... Himself
Mirtha Michelle ... Cara
Greg Cipes ... Dwight
Tego Calderon ... Tego

Adventureland

2009-04-23T00:16:00.000-07:00

REVIEW:

While the ads for “Adventureland” promise that it’s “From the director of ‘Superbad’!” it might actually be truer — if less advantageous from a marketing point of view — to say “From the director of ‘The Daytrippers’!” While Greg Mottola is the filmmaker behind all three of these comedies, his new movie is more about understated wit than outrageous antics. (Not that there’s anything wrong with either.)

“Adventureland” stars Jesse Eisenberg as James, a recent college grad who had hoped to spend the summer backpacking through Europe. After his family suffers an economic downturn — the film is set in the ’80s but still feels exceedingly relevant — James is stuck taking the only job he can get, working the games concessions at a run-down local theme park.

Working in games winds up being not entirely awful, since it affords James the opportunity to hang out with the sexy yet enigmatic Em (Kristen Stewart), who will spend most of the summer bewitching him, and the nerdy intellectual Joel (Martin Starr). We get to know other park employees, including Mike (Ryan Reynolds), the handsome maintenance guy who claims to have once jammed with Lou Reed, and vapid alpha-girl Lisa P. (Margerita Levieva).

While “Adventureland” fits squarely into the that-was-the-summer-that-changed-everything genre, it showcases its characters with such grace that you don’t mind the familiarity of the story. James, Em and Joel are smarter than the people who usually occupy this kind of movie — Joel refers to one girl’s rear end as “the Platonic ideal” — and they’re all uniquely (and realistically) bruised. James isn’t sure if his family can afford to send him to grad school as planned, while Em grapples with stepmother problems and a secret go-nowhere affair with Mike.

Joel, meanwhile, comes from an impoverished family and falls for an anti-Semitic Catholic girl, and no matter how much he knows his Russian literature, Tolstoy and Gogol aren’t proving to be much help with life after college.

With his two films currently in release — “Adventureland” and “The Education of Charlie Banks” — Jesse Eisenberg is proving himself to be one of the most dynamic young actors currently on the scene. Even though he occasionally drifts a little close to Michael Cera’s all-stammer-all-the-time territory, Eisenberg’s restlessly precocious characters (he also played one in “The Squid and the Whale”) always feel genuine and vulnerable.

Starr, one of my favorite “Freaks and Geeks” alums, has perfect comic timing, and Stewart gets to demonstrate lots more backbone here than “Twilight” allowed. Director Mottola rounds out the cast with great supporting players like of Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Wendie Malick and Jack Gilpin.

Audiences expecting the bawdy blowout advertised may not know what to make of “Adventureland,” but if you’re ready for a poignantly sweet comedy about encroaching adulthood, you’ll find that it’s one of the best films so far this year.

CAST & CREW

Director: Greg Mottola

Writers (WGA): Greg Mottola (written by)

Release Date: 3 April 2009 (USA)

Genre: Comedy | Drama

Tagline: It was the worst job they ever imagined... and the best time of their lives.

Plot: A comedy set in the summer of 1987 and centered around a recent college grad (Eisenberg) who takes a nowhere job at his local amusement park, only to find it's the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.

Cast:

Jesse Eisenberg ... James Brennan
Kelsey Ford ... Arlene
Michael Zegen ... Eric
Ryan McFarland ... Brad
Jack Gilpin ... Mr. Brennan
Wendie Malick ... Mrs. Brennan
Matt Bush ... Tommy Frigo
Todd Cioppa ... Velvet Touch Manager
Stephen Mast ... Rich
Kristen Wiig ... Paulette
Bill Hader ... Bobby
Martin Starr ... Joel
Adam Kroloff ... Adult Contestant
Kristen Stewart ... Em Lewin
Kevin Breznahan ... Molly Hatchet T-Shirt Guy

Coraline

2009-02-03T23:23:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Whether or not they’re adaptations of classic fables, animated films often wind up being parables that contain morals for young viewers about believing in yourself, being kind to others, not trading your voice to sea witches, whatever.

But “Coraline” stands out among recent animated features because its message is aimed at parents: Pay attention to your kids, because if you don’t, someone else will.

Based on the story by Neil Gaiman, the film introduces us to Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning), who’s smart without being precocious and energetic without being spunky. She’s just been dragged to a new home in the middle of nowhere by her parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman), gardening writers who hate going outdoors and who spend all their time staring into computer monitors.

Left to her own devices, Coraline gets to know her eccentric neighbors, all of whom seems to have ties to the shaggier ends of show business — upstairs is Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane), an acrobat who’s training mice to become a circus act, while living in the cellar are Misses Spink and Forcible (Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French), who had a saucy vaudeville act sometime between the two world wars.

Coraline’s one friend of her own age is oddball Wybie (Robert Bailey, Jr.), who warns her that his grandmother’s sister disappeared during their childhood in the very house where Coraline now lives. That bit of news doesn’t keep Coraline from traveling through a hidden door where she finds an idealized alternate universe where her parents are loving and doting, Bobinsky’s mice put on extraordinary shows and the ladies downstairs are young and talented.

One oddity among many: everyone in this alternate universe has buttons where their eyes should be. And when the seemingly friendly Other Mother (also Hatcher) in this strange new world tells Coraline she can stay forever if she’ll trade her eyes for her own pair of buttons, our heroine realizes things are more dangerous than she’d imagined. Can Wybie’s enigmatic cat (Keith David) help Coraline out of this jam?

In an era where Disney makes money hand over fist by selling little girls on the idea of being pretty, passive Princesses — Belle from “Beauty and the Beast” always wears her yellow gown but never holds a book in this product line — it’s thrilling to get a heroine like Coraline, who’s proactive, occasionally bratty and always very much her own person. The movie goes to some creepy places that will scare all but the hardiest little kids, but tween girls and boys alike should take this darkly exciting movie to heart.

“Coraline” marks a real triumph for writer-director Henry Selick, who never gets the credit due him for “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and whose lovely adaptation of “James and the Giant Peach” is a neglected modern classic of stop-motion animation. The world he’s created for “Coraline” — which you should really catch in 3-D if you can — brilliantly captures his gifts as both an animator and a storyteller. (The scene with the performing mice, for instance, starts out looking like something right out of a vintage George Pal Puppetoon, only to switch to a POV shot of a cycling mouse going down a circular ramp that only the latest technologies could allow.)

In the same way that movies like “Waltz with Bashir” and “Persepolis” open up the possibilities of animated storytelling for adults, “Coraline” dares aim above the heads of toddlers. And while girls who’ve recently swapped “Hannah Montana” for black eyeliner might be the film’s target audience, it’s for anyone old enough to know that family togetherness can have its dark moments.

CAST & CREW

Director: Henry Selick

Writers (WGA): Henry Selick (screenplay) and Neil Gaiman (book)

Release Date: 6 February 2009 (USA)

Genre: Animation | Family | Fantasy

Tagline: Be careful what you wish for.

Plot: A young girl (Fanning) walks through a secret door in her new home and discovers an alternate version of her life...

Cast:

Dakota Fanning ... Coraline Jones (voice)
Teri Hatcher ... Mother / Other Mother (voice)
Jennifer Saunders ... Miss Spink (voice)
Dawn French ... Miss Forcible (voice)
Keith David ... Cat (voice)
John Hodgman ... Father / Other Father (voice)
Robert Bailey Jr. ... Wybie Lovat (voice)
Ian McShane ... Mr. Bobinsky (voice)
Aankha Neal ... Sweet Ghost Girl (voice)
George Selick ... Ghost Boy (voice)
Hannah Kaiser ... Tall Ghost Girl (voice)
Harry Selick ... Photo Friend #1 (voice)
Marina Budovsky ... Photo Friend #2 (voice)
Emerson Hatcher ... Magic Dragonfly (voice)
Jerome Ranft ... Mover (voice)

The Pink Panther 2

2009-02-03T23:19:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

A quick tip for those MGM executives so starved of new ideas that they’re plundering the vaults for properties, like “The Pink Panther,” to remake: Blake Edwards is still alive. And yes, the genius behind the original “Panther” movies may have eventually run that franchise into the ground, but I’d still rather watch the one with Roberto Benigni as Clouseau’s son than endure another go-round with Steve Martin lazily hamming it up.

“Pink Panther 2,” to give credit where it is due, is less of a chore to watch than was the previous installment, but that’s like saying stepping in dog droppings is preferable to having your shoe go ankle-deep in cow flop.

Even with two or three actual laughs to be found in the film’s seemingly interminable 92-minute running time, “Pink Panther 2” is an astonishingly lazy, unattractive and indifferently-acted comedy that wastes the talents of comic geniuses John Cleese and Lily Tomlin. Heck, even Emily Mortimer had far funnier things to do in a handful of “30 Rock” appearances than she’s given here.

The vain and clumsy Inspector Clouseau (Martin) — who has been kicked back to parking detail by Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Cleese) — is summoned to join a crack squad of international detectives after a mysterious thief known as The Tornado makes off with the Magna Carta, the Japanese imperial sword and the Shroud of Turin. The film demonstrates its wit and intelligence in dealing with different nationalities by giving us an Italian lothario (Andy Garcia), a haughty and officious Brit (Alfred Molina) and a gadget-obsessed Japanese gumshoe (Yuki Matsuzaki).

And if for no other reason than to guarantee a boffo opening weekend in India, lovely Bollywood icon Aishwarya Rai Bachchan comes along for the ride playing an expert on The Tornado, even though the film gives her nothing funny to say or interesting to do. Jeremy Irons, at least, had the good sense to go uncredited for a cameo appearance as The Tornado’s fence.

You can pretty much guess what happens: Clouseau says inappropriate things, Clouseau breaks stuff, Clouseau winds up being smarter than anyone else in the movie. And while the vintage “Panther” movies were never known for their unpredictability, at least Peter Sellers was always delivering the laughs. Martin can’t come close to the original when it comes to hauteur or a silly French accent, and it’s painful watching him try.

Cleese, apart from an early bit of physical comedy that briefly calls to mind his classic Ministry of Silly Walks bit, is criminally underused and never allowed to build up a slow-burning fuse of rage like Herbert Lom once did. As for Tomlin’s thankless role as an expert in workplace political correctness, the less said, the better; her comic gifts will no doubt find better showcases in the near future.

CAST & CREW

Director: Harald Zwart

Writers (WGA): Scott Neustadter (screenplay) & Michael H. Weber (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 6 February 2009 (USA)

Genre: Adventure | Comedy | Family | Mystery more

Plot: Insp. Jacques Clouseau teams up with a squad of International detectives who are just as bumbling as he is. Their mission: Stop a globe-trotting thief who specializes in stealing historical artifacts.

Cast:

Steve Martin ... Insp. Jacques Clouseau
Jean Reno ... Ponton
Emily Mortimer ... Nicole
Andy Garcia ... Vicenzo
Alfred Molina ... Pepperidge
Yuki Matsuzaki ... Kenji
Aishwarya Rai ... Sonia (as Aishwarya Rai Bachchan)
John Cleese ... Chief Inspector Dreyfus
Lily Tomlin ... Mrs. Berenger
Jeremy Irons ... Avellaneda
Johnny Hallyday ... Milliken
Geoffrey Palmer ... Joubert
Phillip Goodwin ... Renard
Armel Bellec ... Louis
Jack Metzger ... Antoine

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

2009-01-29T23:40:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

While fans of the respective franchises might not want to acknowledge it, the “Underworld” movies and the “Twilight” novels have more in common than just the conflict between bloodsuckers and lycanthropes. They also take themselves seriously in a way that allows their fans to immerse themselves in these alternate universes while providing a steady stream of chuckles for those not so inclined.

Still, if you’ve had enough Oscar-nominated oatmeal, and you’re in the mood for a big bowl of sugary cereal with no nutritional content whatsoever, “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans” is ready for you to sink your fake fangs into it.

This prequel takes us back to the very roots of the franchise’s racial conflict, with vampire ruler Viktor (Bill Nighy) sparing the life of the first Lycan child that shows human characteristics. (Before then, the Lycans were all wolf, all the time.) That child grows up to be Lucian (Michael Sheen), who is favored by Viktor and trained in combat; at the same time, he’s forced to wear shackles to prevent him from transforming, and he spends his days as a blacksmith, creating weapons for the vampires to use against the Lycans in the vicinity.

While the Lycans move ever-closer to the vampire stronghold — where they are either killed or put into slavery — Lucian risks his life by having an illicit affair with Viktor’s daughter Sonja (Rhona Mitra, who starred in the equally guilty pleasure, “Doomsday”), a fierce warrior. On one of her “death-dealer” raids, Sonja is almost killed by a pack of Lycans, until Lucian escapes the castle and transforms into alpha dog to save her life.

Viktor feels betrayed, Lucian is thrown into prison, and things get (literally) hairy from there. There’s a revolt of the imprisoned slaves that’s supposed to put us in mind of Moses or Spartacus, but I found myself flashing on “Battlefield Earth” instead. And for all the film’s CG trickery, there’s nothing quite as effective as Nighy and Sheen facing off with swords and jumping up on chains.

There’s a lot to mock in “Lycans,” from Nighy’s obvious discomfort with his contact lenses (he spends most of the movie either opening his eyes as wide as possible or blinking furiously) to the hambone performances — you have to be an actor as talented as Nighy or Sheen to go this far over the top. Still, given that Sheen has spent much of his career acting his heart out opposite the people who wind up getting all the acclaim and the Oscar attention, who can blame him for taking a role that comes with fat paycheck and the chance to really build up his abs?

There’s lots of talk of curses and bloodlines, and it’s all supremely ridiculous. But there’s never a dull moment in “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans,” and that’s an increasingly rare commodity, even among genre movies.

CAST & CREW

Director: Patrick Tatopoulos

Writers (WGA): Danny McBride (screenplay) and Dirk Blackman (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 23 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Action | Fantasy | Horror | Thriller

Plot: An origins story centered on the centuries-old feud between the race of aristocratic vampires and their onetime slaves, the Lycans.

Cast:

Michael Sheen ... Lucian
Bill Nighy ... Viktor
Rhona Mitra ... Sonja
Steven Mackintosh ... Tannis
Kevin Grevioux ... Raze
David Ashton ... Coloman
Geraldine Brophy ... Nobleman's Wife
Leighton Cardno ... Fearful Lycan
Alex Carroll ... Young Lucian (as Alexander Carroll)
Elizabeth Hawthorne ... Orsova
Jason Hood ... Death Dealer
Mark Mitchinson ... Nobleman
Tania Nolan ... Luka
Craig Parker ... Sabas
Timothy Raby ... Janosh

He's Just Not That Into You

2009-01-22T22:52:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

So far, the pros for this movie include all the members of a stellar and adorable cast which, as I've reported before, includes just about everyone. Seriously. Based on the preview alone, though, Ginnifer Goodwin looks like she might steal a lot of scenes from the bigger named stars.

The movie is based on the bestselling book that was based on a Sex and the City episode about women overanalyzing men too much when things are sometimes as simple as, "He's just not into you." It's supposed to be liberating. . . or something. I guess the con for me is that I'm not quite clear on how this constitutes a cohesive plot and the trailer is no help with that. At first I thought it was a movie about how men play games and sidestep issues, but then Scarlett Johansson's character plays games, too, so. . . maybe it's just about game-playing.

Anyway, just seeing these familiar faces with The Cure's "Friday I'm in Love," blasting in the background is pretty fun. The movie was originally supposed to come out this summer but has now been pushed back to October 24.

CAST & CREW

Director: Ken Kwapis

Writers (WGA): Abby Kohn (written by) & Marc Silverstein (written by) ...

Release Date: 6 February 2009 (USA)

Genre: Comedy

Plot: The Baltimore-set movie of interconnecting story arcs deals with the challenges of reading or misreading human behavior.

Cast:

Morgan Lily ... 5 yr. old Girl
Michelle Carmichael ... Mother
Trenton Rogers ... 6 yr. old Boy
Kristen Faye Hunter ... Crying 20-Something
Sabrina Revelle ... Consoling Friend
Zoe Jarman ... Sorority Girl #1
Alia Rhiana Eckerman ... Sorority Girl #2
Julia Pennington ... Sous Chef #1
Renee Scott ... Sous Chef #2
Chihiro Fujii ... Tokyo Girl #1
Sachiko Ishida ... Tokyo Girl #2
Claudia DiMartino ... Jogger #1
Carmen Perez ... Army Recruit #1
Traycee King ... Army Recruit #2
Délé ... African Woman #1
Eunice Nyarazdo ... African Woman #2
Anita Yombo ... African Woman #3
Ginnifer Goodwin ... Gigi
Kevin Connolly ... Conor
Niki J. Crawford ... Waitress #1
Scarlett Johansson ... Anna
Bradley Cooper ... Ben
Justin Long ... Alex
Ben Affleck ... Neil
Jennifer Aniston ... Beth
Jennifer Connelly ... Janine
Natasha Leggero ... Amber
Anna Bugarin ... Yoga Teacher
Busy Philipps ... Kelli Ann
Drew Barrymore ... Mary
Angela Shelton ... Angela
Frances Callier ... Frances
Brandon Keener ... Jarrad
Chris Miller ... Baltimore Blade Staffer
Rod Keller ... Bruce
Leonardo Nam ... Joshua
Wilson Cruz ... Nathan
Brooke Bloom ... Paige
Hedy Burress ... Laura
Sasha Alexander ... Catherine
Marc Silverstein ... Bartender
Cory Hardrict ... Tyrone
Rene Lopez ... Gregory
Annie Ilonzeh ... Hot Girl
Mike Beaver ... Cousin Jay
Kai Lennox ... Devon
Shane Edelman ... George
Stephen Jared ... Steven
Kris Kristofferson ... Ken Murphy
Melanie Stephens ... Waitress #2
Nicole Steinwedell ... 'No Spark' Girl
Erik David ... Slick Guy in Bar
Jarrett Grode ... 'Droopy Dog'
Alex Dodd ... Skip
Bill Brochtrup ... Larry
Corey Pearson ... Jude
Sally Nisbet ... Wedding Guest
John Ross Bowie ... Dan the Wiccan
Sydney Lauren ... Tall Girl
Googy Gress ... Cousin Dominic
Derek Waters ... Part Guest #1
Nana Hill ... Part Guest #1
Peter O'Meara ... Bill
Jocelin Donahue ... Cute Girl

rest of cast listed alphabetically:

Joan M. Blair ... Emotionless Cashier
Abraham Rubio ... Parade Marcher (uncredited)

Inkheart

2009-01-21T21:38:00.001-08:00

REVIEW:

Since “Inkheart” purports to champion reading and the printed word, the best way to honor the film’s intentions would be to give kids a copy of the original book by Cornelia Funke. Actually seeing “Inkheart” would be enough to turn anyone off of not only literacy but also filmgoing.

This shrill, moronic and often ugly family adventure feels cobbled together from spare parts, with a script (David Lindsay-Abaire adapted Funke’s novel) that can’t even be bothered to follow its own rules or internal logic. Add an overblown score by Javier Navarrete — a left turn in traffic gets a fanfare usually reserved for invading Mongol hordes — and you have the recipe for an early contender for “Worst of 2009” lists.

Oatmeal-bland Brendan Fraser stars as Mortimer Folchart, who has the powers of a “silvertongue” — that is, he can bring people and objects out of books simply by reading those books aloud. Years earlier, his wife Resa (Sienna Guillory) disappeared into a novel called “Inkheart” when Mortimer accidentally read several of the book’s characters out. (Early on, we’re told that if something comes from the book into the real world, then the opposite must take place as well. Until that notion is completely dropped.)

With his young daughter Meggie (Eliza Hope Bennett), Mortimer has searched the globe for another copy of “Inkheart” in the hopes of rescuing his wife. Meanwhile, the book’s fire-breathing juggler Dustfinger (Paul Bettany) has been stalking Mortimer so that he can return to his own wife (Bettany’s real-life spouse Jennifer Connolly, in a cameo), while the villainous Capricorn (Andy Serkis) wants Mortimer to fetch him all the gold and treasure that literature has to offer.

There’s lots of frantic chasing going on, much of it involving poor Helen Mirren, stuck in the thankless role of Resa’s dotty, book-collecting aunt Elinor. (Yes, that’s two Oscar-winning actresses completely wasted in this mess.) Despite the fact that most of the film is set in the picturesque Italian countryside, Roger Pratt’s muddy cinematography gives “Inkheart” the overcast look of a low-budget “Mad Max” rip-off.

Brendan Fraser’s popularity as a leading man in this sort of off-brand adventure is a testament to his “first do no wrong” style of acting. It’s not that he does anything bad or good or inept or surprising or terrible or wonderful; he’s just a placeholder who stands back and lets the special effects do all the work. He’s not necessarily one of the problems in “Inkheart,” but he certainly doesn’t compensate for the many, many ways in which this movie goes terribly wrong.

I laughed exactly once in “Inkheart” — when a minor character thinks the frantic Mirren has stepped out of a copy of “The Madwoman of Chaillot” — but spent the rest of the time putting my fingers in my ears and rolling my eyes at the clumsy plot inconsistencies. Stay at home, read your own kids a great book, and spare yourself this nonsense.

CAST & CREW

Director: Iain Softley

Writers (WGA): David Lindsay-Abaire (screenplay) and Cornelia Funke (novel)

Release Date: 23 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Adventure | Family | Fantasy

Tagline: Every story ever written is just waiting to become real.

Plot: A young girl discovers her father has an amazing talent to bring characters out of their books and must try to stop a freed villain from destroying them all, with the help of her father, her aunt, and a storybook's hero.

Cast:

Brendan Fraser ... Mo 'Silvertongue' Folchart
Sienna Guillory ... Resa
Eliza Bennett ... Meggie Folchart (as Eliza Hope Bennett)
Richard Strange ... Antiquarian Bookshop Owner
Paul Bettany ... Dustfinger
Helen Mirren ... Elinor Loredan
Matt King ... Cockerell
Steve Speirs ... Flatnose
Jamie Foreman ... Basta
Stephen Graham ... Fulvio
Mirabel O'Keefe ... Young Meggie
Andy Serkis ... Capricorn
John Thomson ... Darius
Lesley Sharp ... Mortola
Tereza Srbova ... Rapunzel

Friday the 13th

2009-01-20T00:59:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Friday the 13th is an upcoming 2009 American horror film directed by Marcus Nispel, and written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. It is a reboot of the Friday the 13th film series, whose last film was the 2003 crossover film Freddy vs. Jason. Nispel also helmed the 2003 remake of Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, while Shannon and Swift wrote the screenplay for Freddy vs. Jason. The film stars Derek Mears as Jason Voorhees, with Jared Padalecki and Amanda Righetti portraying the male and female leads. Set for a Friday, February 13, 2009 release, the film will take elements from the first four films.

"Searching for his missing sister, Clay heads up to the eerie woods of legendary Crystal Lake where he stumbles on the creaky remains of rotting old cabins that lie in wait behind moss-covered trees. And that's not the only thing hiding under the brush. Against the advice of police and cautions from the locals, Clay pursues what few leads he has with the help of a young woman he meets among a group of college kids up for an all—thrills weekend. But they are about to find much more than they bargained for. Little do they know, they've entered the domain of one of the most terrifying specters in American film history - the infamous killer who haunts Crystal Lake armed with a razor-sharp machete…Jason Voorhees."

CAST & CREW

Director: Marcus Nispel

Writers: Damian Shannon (screenplay) & Mark Swift (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 13 February 2009 (USA)

Genre: Horror

Tagline: Welcome to Crystal Lake

Plot: A group of young adults discover a boarded up Camp Crystal Lake, where they soon encounter Jason Voorhees (Mears) and his deadly intentions.

Cast:

Jared Padalecki ... Clay
Danielle Panabaker ... Jenna
Amanda Righetti ... Whitney
Travis Van Winkle ... Trent
Derek Mears ... Jason Voorhees
Aaron Yoo ... Chewie
Arlen Escarpeta ... Lawrence
Julianna Guill ... Bree
Willa Ford ... Chelsea
Ryan Hansen ... Nolan
Jonathan Sadowski ... Wade
Ben Feldman ... Richie
Nick Mennell ... Mike
America Olivo ... Amanda
Nana Visitor ... Pamela Voorhees

Two Lovers

2009-01-20T00:43:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Leonard, a charismatic but troubled young man, moves back into his childhood home following a recent heartbreak. While recovering under the watchful eye of his parents, Leonard meets two women in quick succession: Michelle, a mysterious and beautiful neighbor who is exotic and out-of-place in Leonard's staid world, and Sandra, the lovely and caring daughter of a businessman who is buying out his family's dry-cleaning business. Leonard becomes deeply infatuated by Michelle, who seems poised to fall for him, but is having a self-destructive affair with a married man. At the same time, mounting pressure from his family pushes him towards committing to Sandra. Leonard is forced to make an impossible decision - between the impetuousness of desire and the comfort of love - or risk falling back into the darkness that nearly killed him.

CAST & CREW

Director: James Gray

Writers (WGA): James Gray (written by) & Ric Menello (written by)

Release Date: 13 February 2009 (USA)

Genre: Drama | Romance

Plot: A Brooklyn-set romantic drama about a bachelor (Phoenix) torn between the family friend his parents wish he would marry and his beautiful but volatile new neighbor.

Cast:

Joaquin Phoenix ... Leonard Kraditor
Gwyneth Paltrow ... Michelle Rausch
Vinessa Shaw ... Sandra Cohen
Isabella Rossellini ... Ruth Kraditor
Elias Koteas ... Ronald Blatt
Moni Moshonov ... Reuben Kraditor

rest of cast listed alphabetically:

Julie Budd
David Cale ... Jeweler
Nick Gillie ... Livery Driver
Carmen M. Herlihy
Samantha Ivers ... Stephanie
Anne Joyce ... Leonard's ex-fiance
Mari Koda ... Popping Dancer
RJ Konner ... Upscale Opera Guest
Evan Lewis ... Uncle
Marion McCorry ... Nurse
John Ortiz ... Jose Cordero
David Ross ... Waiter
Jeanine Serralles ... Dayna
Jose Edwin Soto
Uzimann ... Cab Driver
Mark Vincent ... Ronald's driver
Craig Walker

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

2009-01-20T00:36:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

The biggest crime of all in “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” is not the bank heist that goes down at a New Jersey mall on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year. Rather, it’s the egregious way in which Kevin James’ innate likability goes to waste.

The “King of Queens” star showed he could play an underdog with some sweetness and depth as a lovesick accountant in the 2005 romantic comedy “Hitch” — and he practically stole the movie away from Will Smith. This time, he plays yet another misfit, but one who’s so two-dimensional, needy (and frankly annoying) that it’s difficult to root for him.

Trouble is, James himself created the character: “I just love this guy,” he says in the film’s production notes. He’ll probably be one of the precious few who do.

James’ Paul Blart is a portly pushover who tries hard to be the tough guy as a shopping center security guard. Hypoglycemic and woefully out of shape, he’s failed the New Jersey state trooper exam eight times; nevertheless, he squeezes into his polyester uniform and takes his job as seriously as if he were out keeping the highways safe from speeders and drunk drivers. (His vehicle, by the way, is a Segway, which is repeatedly played for laughs but isn’t particularly amusing the first time.)

In an anemic take off on “Die Hard,” Paul gets his chance to prove himself when a bunch of skateboarding, bike-riding, X-Games refugees infiltrate the mall with plans to rob the bank, taking a few hostages in the process. One of them is Amy (Jayma Mays), the wide-eyed salesgirl at the hair extension kiosk, for whom Paul has the geeky hots. He awkwardly tries to woo her with boring trivia tidbits, which is meant to be endearing; instead it’s yet another conceit that quickly grows wearisome in the script from James and his longtime writing partner, Nick Bakay.

Paul bumbles his way around and manages to thwart the bad guys, one by one, with his in-depth knowledge of the shopping center’s intricacies as well as a borrowed pink, sparkly cell phone that allows him to connect with cops on the outside. Their leader is the sniveling Veck (Keir O’Donnell, who played tortured artist Todd in “Wedding Crashers”), who took a job as a security guard trainee under Paul’s tutelage to learn the way the mall works.

This being a Happy Madison Production — Adam Sandler is James’ friend and domestic partner from “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry” — there are, of course, plenty of obligatory adolescent sight gags to go along with the man-child hero fantasies, all of them flatly staged and observed by director Steve Carr (“Dr. Dolittle 2,” “Daddy Day Care”).

Surprisingly, though, given our would-be hero’s girth and the physical humor that goes along with it, “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” has a soft spot for fat people. In an early dinner-table scene with his mother and young daughter, the single dad smears peanut butter on top of a slice of blueberry pie mere moments after finishing his meal. “Go away, pain,” he says quietly to himself as he prepares to savor his favorite comfort food.

It’s a rare moment of believable humanity. You couldn’t buy another one here if you tried.

CAST & CREW

Director: Steve Carr

Writers (WGA): Kevin James (written by) & Nick Bakay (written by)

Release Date: 16 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Action | Comedy | Crime | Family

Tagline: Safety never takes a holiday.

Plot: When a shopping mall is overtaken by a gang of organized crooks, it's up to the a mild-mannered security guard to save the day.

Cast:

Kevin James ... Paul Blart
Keir O'Donnell ... Veck Sims
Jayma Mays ... Amy
Raini Rodriguez ... Maya Blart
Shirley Knight ... Mom
Stephen Rannazzisi ... Stuart
Peter Gerety ... Chief Brooks
Bobby Cannavale ... Commander Kent
Adam Ferrara ... Sergeant Howard
Jamal Mixon ... Leon
Adhir Kalyan ... Pahud
Erick Avari ... Vijay
Gary Valentine ... Karaoke Singer
Allen Covert ... Jerky Security Guy
Mike Vallely ... Rudolph

Hotel for Dogs

2009-01-14T00:06:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

If you know any kids who were traumatized by “Marley & Me,” the cure might be a stay at “Hotel for Dogs,” a movie that balances adorable dogs of all breeds and sizes with clever set design.

Oh yeah, there are some people in it, and they’re perfectly OK. But it’s not their movie.

Orphans Andi (Emma Roberts) and Bruce (Jake T. Austin) have been bounced around from foster home to foster home, but they’ve always managed to keep their always-hungry dog Friday on the sly. One day when Friday is on the run from animal control — I’m frankly surprised that the Dog-Catcher Anti-Defamation League isn’t already picketing this movie — he ducks into an abandoned hotel where he finds two other dogs hiding out in its crumbling splendor.

Andi and Bruce eventually find him, and even though Andi warns Bruce not to name the other two dogs, lest they become attached, soon the siblings are also taking care of Lenny and Georgia. (For adults who enjoy this sort of thing, “Hotel for Dogs” includes throw-away references to not only “Of Mice and Men” but also “Suddenly, Last Summer” and even Jean Vigo’s “Zero for Conduct.”)

With the help of pet-store employees Dave (Johnny Simmons) and Heather (Kyla Pratt), as well as neighborhood kid Mark (Troy Gentile), the kids create their own surrogate family by not only taking in every stray they can find but also by turning the hotel into a canine paradise. Bruce’s proclivity for Rube Goldberg–esque devices allows him to create machines to handle all the dogs’ feeding and hygiene needs. (He even creates a simulator ride involving car doors, a fan and travel footage.)

The film also stars Don Cheadle (as Andi and Bruce’s compassionate social worker) and Lisa Kudrow and Kevin Dillon as the duo’s moronic metal-head foster parents, but the real stars of “Hotel for Dogs” are the art department (with bonus points to propmaker bosses Marc Tantin and Marcel Worch for creating Bruce’s dizzying inventions), the army of animal trainers and dog wranglers, and the special effects artists who no doubt made all of the above look much slicker on the big screen.

The kids are all charming — I’ve enjoyed Roberts and Gentile more in other movies — but the script (adapted from the novel by Lois Duncan) gives all the personality to the four-legged actors and to the hotel itself — the building is a sprawling, old-school masterpiece of grand stairways, long banquet tables and velvet banquettes. Even the pee-and-poop solutions that Bruce devises fit in with the hotel’s grandeur.

If you’re the sort of person who checks out CuteOverload.com for pictures of puppy baskets, sleeping kitties and frolicking pandas, this is definitely the movie for you.

CAST & CREW

Director: Thor Freudenthal

Writers (WGA): Jeff Lowell (screenplay) and Robert Schooley (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 16 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Comedy

Tagline: No stray gets turned away

Plot: Two kids secretly take in nine stray dogs at a vacant house.

Cast:

Emma Roberts ... Andi
Jake T. Austin ... Bruce
Don Cheadle ... Bernie
Johnny Simmons ... Dave
Kyla Pratt ... Heather
Troy Gentile ... Mark
Lisa Kudrow ... Lois Scudder
Kevin Dillon ... Carl Scudder
Ajay Naidu ... ACO Jake
Eric Edelstein ... ACO Max
Robinne Lee ... Carol
Yvette Nicole Brown ... Ms. Camwell
Andre Ware ... Officer Jeff
Jonathan Klein ... Evan
Ruben Garfias ... Department Store Employee

The Uninvited

2009-01-10T02:27:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Based on Kim Jee-Woon's 2003 Korean horror film, The Uninvited revolves around Anna (Emily Browning), who returns home after spending time in the hospital following the tragic death of her mother.
Her recovery suffers a setback when she discovers her father (David Strathairn) has become engaged to her mother's former nurse, Rachel (Elizabeth Banks). That night, Anna is visited by her mother's ghost, who warns her of Rachel's intentions. Together, Anna and her sister (Arielle Kebbel) try to convince their father that his current fiancee is not who she pretends to be, and what should have been a happy family reunion becomes a lethal battle of wills between stepdaughters and stepmother.

CAST & CREW

Directors: Charles Guard & Thomas Guard

Writers (WGA): Craig Rosenberg (screenplay) and Doug Miro (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 30 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Drama | Horror | Thriller

Tagline: Fear moves in

Plot: Anna Rydell returns home to her sister (and best friend) Alex after a stint in a mental hospital, though her recovery is jeopardized thanks to her cruel stepmother, aloof father, and the presence of a ghost in their home.

Cast:

Elizabeth Banks ... Rachael
Danny Bristol ... Middle Wright Child
Matthew Bristol ... Younger Wright Child
Emily Browning ... Anna
Natalie Charles ... Orderly #3
Dean Paul Gibson ... Dr. Silberman
Arielle Kebbel ... Alex
Maya Massar ... Mom
John Prowse ... Butcher
David Strathairn

New in Town

2009-01-10T02:01:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Lucy Hill [Renée Zellweger] is an ambitious Miami business woman whose life is turned upside down when she is sent to Minnesota for nine months to streamline a production plant. She leaves her lawyer boyfriend Seth behind pretending she’s not interested in marriage and heads off to Minnesota totally unprepared for the change in lifestyle. In Miami Lucy had a high class wardrobe and nice apartment but her new home in Minnesota is a stark contrast and she finds herself feeling lost and miserable and clearly ill equipped to cope with the cold and icy conditions.

Things at her new job don’t go well and the workers rebel against the changes she tries to make afraid that she will make cuts to the number of workers at the plant. They manage to trick her on several occasions and she ends up being made fun of. To make things worse she gets off on the wrong foot with Ted [Harry Connick Jr] the union rep who is determined to make sure no jobs are cut.

Slowly Lucy manages to develop friendships, including Ted and his 13 year old daughter Bobbie and through an unfortunate but funny accident eventually the workers warm to her as well.

Just when things are starting to improve Lucy’s office in Miami tell her the plant has to close but Lucy decides to get creative and work with the town to come up with a plan to turn the situation around.

“New in Town” is a solid romantic comedy with many funny moments throughout, reminiscent of “Bridget Jones”.

CAST & CREW

Director: Jonas Elmer

Writers (WGA): Ken Rance (written by) and C. Jay Cox (written by)

Release Date: 30 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Comedy | Romance

Tagline: She's an executive on the move. But her career is taking her a little farther than she expected.

Plot: A Miami businesswoman adjusts to her new life in a tiny Minnesota town.

Cast:

Renée Zellweger ... Lucy Hill
Harry Connick Jr. ... Ted Mitchell
Siobhan Fallon ... Blanche Gunderson (as Siobhan Fallon Hogan)
J.K. Simmons ... Stu Kopenhafer
Mike O'Brien ... Lars Ulstead
Frances Conroy ... Trudy Van Uuden
Ferron Guerreiro ... Bobbie Mitchell
James Durham ... Rob Deitmar
Robert Small ... Donald Arling
Wayne Nicklas ... Harve Gunderson
Hilary Carroll ... Kimberley
Nancy Drake ... Flo
Stewart J. Zully ... Wallace Miller (as Stewart Zully)
Marilyn Boyle ... Winnie
Dan Augusta ... Billy Gunderson

The Unborn

2009-01-09T00:53:00.001-08:00

REVIEW:

The Kabbalah. Hot college students. An abandoned mental institution. Gary Oldman. Jogging. Twins. Nazi scientists. A suicidal mother. A lost blue mitten.

What do these things have in common? They’re all pieces in the convoluted mythology of “The Unborn.”

Best as one can tell, writer-director David S. Goyer’s film is a sort of Jewish version of “The Exorcist,” which is a vaguely novel concept. Catholics are usually the ones who have all the fun purging demons. But Goyer, who wrote the “Blade” series and co-wrote “The Dark Knight,” makes things laughably more complicated than they needed to be.

Well, there are some effective scares here, and you’ll laugh at yourself afterward just for jumping and squealing like a little girl. But other images and pieces of dialogue are just as hilarious — and that probably wasn’t their intention. (Jane Alexander, as a Holocaust survivor who’s been holding onto a secret, delivers a line abut Auschwitz that’s particularly off in tone.)

Odette Yustman runs around in tight jeans, tank tops and boy shorts as Casey Beldon, a young woman being haunted by startling dreams, then a weird neighborhood boy, then hallucinatory images of insects, and finally a full-blown spiritual attack. It’s almost Bunuel-esque the way the images come at you in surreal, random fashion, especially when Casey finds a jumpy, old black-and-white film reel and projects it on the wall in her basement (of course), something that unsettles her further.

Only Oldman, who classes things up in his few scenes as Rabbi Sendak, can help Casey fend off the impending possession. (Though the exorcism itself is just a lot of high winds and noise, and the events leading up to it ultimately raise more questions than they answer, such as: Where has Casey’s dad been all this time? Shouldn’t he know what’s going on? Could his out-of-town business trip really have taken this long?)

Meagan Good isn’t quite as helpful to Casey as the obligatory wisecracking best friend, but she does get a couple of amusing zingers. This is especially true in the scene when the two visit a mysterious woman in an old-age home (Alexander), who may have clues about both Casey’s mom’s suicide, the twin brother she never knew she had and images of intense little boys that keep popping up everywhere.

One kid repeatedly utters the menacing line, “Jumby wants to be born now,” which perhaps won’t grab hold of the cultural zeitgeist like “Redrum,” for example, a but it’s still good for a jolt. And maybe a laugh or two.

CAST & CREW

Director: David S. Goyer

Writer (WGA): David S. Goyer (written by)

Release Date: 9 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Horror | Thriller

Plot: A young woman fights the spirit that is slowly taking possession of her.

Cast:

Odette Yustman ... Casey Beldon
Gary Oldman ... Rabbi Sendak
Meagan Good ... Romy
Cam Gigandet ... Mark Hardigan
Idris Elba ... Arthur Wyndham
Jane Alexander ... Sofi Kozma
Atticus Shaffer ... Matty Newton
James Remar ... Gordon Beldon
Carla Gugino ... Janet Beldon
C.S. Lee ... Dr. Lester Caldwell
Rhys Coiro ... Mr.Shields
Michael Sassone ... Eli Walker
Ethan Cutkosky ... Barto
Craig J. Harris ... Rick Hesse (as Craig Harris)
Rachel Brosnahan ... Lisa Shepherd

Iron Man 2

2009-01-07T23:57:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell are in talks to play the villains in “Iron Man 2,” which is eyeing a spring start ahead of a May 2010 release.

A very tight lid is being kept on the script, but it is known that Rourke would play a tattooed Russian heavy named Ivan who becomes Whiplash, a man with deadly, technologically enhanced coils.

Rockwell would play Justin Hammer, a multibillionaire businessman and a rival of industrialist Anthony Stark, aka Iron Man, a role being reprised by Robert Downey Jr.

Gwyneth Paltrow is also returning as Tony Stark/Iron Man’s executive assistant, while Don Cheadle is replacing Terrence Howard as the hero’s best buddy. Another part — one for Stark’s assistant Natasha — is still open.

Jon Favreau is also back as director of the Marvel Studios/Paramount project, working from a script by Justin Theroux. The first film, released in April, grossed $582 million worldwide.

Rourke is making the best of the accolades he is receiving for his heart-wrenching turn in “The Wrestler.” On top of this big-budget movie, the actor, who will next be seen in “The Informers,” just joined the cast of “The Expendables,” an action movie starring Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham and Dolph Lundgren.

Rockwell is best known for his indie dramas. He recently starred as a sex-addicted con man in “Choke” and as an estranged husband in “Snow Angels.” He can currently be seen in the political drama “Frost/Nixon,” playing David Frost’s researcher, writer James Reston, Jr.

CAST & CREW

Director: Jon Favreau

Writers (WGA): Mark Fergus (screenplay) & Hawk Ostby (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 30 April 2008 (Indonesia)

Genre: Action | Adventure | Drama | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline: Fully Charged

Plot: When wealthy industrialist Tony Stark is forced to build an armored suit after a life-threatening incident, he ultimately decides to use its technology to fight against evil.

Cast:

Robert Downey Jr. ... Tony Stark
Terrence Howard ... Rhodey
Jeff Bridges ... Obadiah Stane
Gwyneth Paltrow ... Pepper Potts
Leslie Bibb ... Christine Everhart
Shaun Toub ... Yinsen
Faran Tahir ... Raza
Clark Gregg ... Agent Coulson
Bill Smitrovich ... General Gabriel
Sayed Badreya ... Abu Bakaar
Paul Bettany ... Jarvis (voice)
Jon Favreau ... Hogan
Peter Billingsley ... William Ginter Riva
Tim Guinee ... Major Allen
Will Lyman ... Award Ceremony Narrator (voice)

Good

2009-01-03T01:41:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Jean-Luc Godard once said that the best way to review a movie is to make another movie; sometimes, all it takes is seeing a second movie about a certain subject matter to highlight everything that the first movie did wrong. Such is the case with “Good,” which deals with an intellectual who gets swept up into the Nazi party without ever thinking about the larger issues at stake; it’s a powerful film on its own merits, but it also points out how tame and impotent “The Reader” is in examining similar issues.

“Good” stars Viggo Mortensen as John Halder, a Berlin literature professor whose novel about compassionate euthanasia finds favor among high-ranking Nazi officials, including Hitler, in 1937. While John has never joined the party, and doesn’t exactly subscribe to their politics, he’s won over by their flattery, never bothering to consider the sinister implications behind their interest in the subject. And when it’s made clear to him that party membership is required to climb the ranks at his university, he has no compunctions about doing so.

John Wrathall’s screenplay, based on the play by C.P. Taylor, shows how one rationalization flows into the next for John, who sheds his wife (Anastasia Hille) for a young, pretty student (Jodie Whittaker) and even becomes a high-ranking officer in the SS, although John insists it’s merely an “honorary” title.

None of this sits well with John’s best friend Morris (Jason Isaacs), a Jewish psychoanalyst whose fortunes in Nazi Germany tumble as John’s star is on the rise. It’s John’s guilt about not doing more to help out Morris that brings “Good” to its gut-wrenching climax, a long, swirling shot of a concentration camp that’s one of the most powerful movie moments in recent memory. (Compare it a similar moment in “The Reader,” set in a now-closed camp so as to render the scene completely safe and dry.)

It’s always a challenge for actors to play a character who’s meek and passive; often, those qualities rub off on the performance, making the actor erase himself off the screen. Mortensen manages to make John a docile doormat in the first part of “Good” — he frantically tries to watch over his children, cook dinner, and tend to his ailing mother while his wife is immersed in her work as a composer — while still being magnetic and compelling.

Isaacs takes a role that could have been a pure literary device — the Nazi’s Jewish best friend — and fully inhabits it, making Morris funny, angry and vital. Steven Mackintosh (“The Other Boleyn Girl”) and Mark Strong (the scene-stealer from “Body of Lies” and “Rocknrolla”) also make strong impressions as John’s new Nazi comrades.

Brazilian director Vicente Amorim understands, unlike so many other filmmakers who have tackled the subject, that the horrors of the Holocaust are enough to stir and disturb audiences; there’s no reason for the movie to clobber you over the head with one of history’s darkest chapters.

Even if everything in the film doesn’t quite deliver — there’s a clumsy, recurring Dennis Potter–ish motif of background extras occasionally lip-synching Mahler that serves only to set up a payoff later — “Good” manages to pull up a full bucket from a well that movies have visited over and over again.

CAST & CREW

Director: Vicente Amorim

Writers: C.P. Taylor (play) & John Wrathall (screenplay)

Release Date: 31 December 2008 (USA)

Genre: Drama

Plot: The rise of national socialism in Germany should not be regarded as a conspiracy of madmen. Millions of "good" people found themselves in a society spiralling into terrible chaos. A film about then, which illuminates the terrors of now.

Cast:

Viggo Mortensen ... John Halder
Jason Isaacs ... Maurice
Jodie Whittaker ... Anne
Steven Mackintosh ... Freddie
Mark Strong ... Bouhler
Gemma Jones ... Mother
Anastasia Hille ... Helen
Ruth Gemmell ... Elizabeth
Ralph Riach ... Brunau
Steven Elder ... Eichmann
Kevin Doyle ... Commandant
David de Keyser ... Mandelstam
Guy Henry ... Doctor
Adrian Schiller ... Goebbels
Rick Warden ... Brownshirt

Not Easily Broken

2008-12-30T02:26:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

After years of disagreeing on what true happiness, success, and love really are, Dave and Clarice Johnson have finally reached a breaking point in their marriage.
When Clarice is hurt in a car accident, the obvious truth that more than just her injuries need immediate attention is exposed. Their odds of making it worsen as Clarice begins to see a physical therapist, and Dave develops a friendship with Julie and her teenage son Bryson. The acceptance and comfort he finds in them stirs his longing for a family and a passionate partner. As temptation tugs at Dave and Clarice pulls farther away, they must confront whether their vows are or are NOT EASILY BROKEN.

CAST & CREW

Director: Bill Duke

Writers (WGA): Brian Bird (screenplay) and T.D. Jakes (novel)

Release Date: 9 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Drama

Plot: A car accident and shifting affections test the bond between a married couple.
Cast:

Morris Chestnut ... Dave Johnson
Taraji P. Henson ... Clarice Clark
Maeve Quinlan ... Julie Sawyer
Kevin Hart ... Tree
Wood Harris ... Darnell Gooden
Eddie Cibrian ... Brock Houseman
Jenifer Lewis ... Mary 'Mama' Clark
Niecy Nash ... Michelle
Cannon Jay ... Bryson Sawyer
Albert Hall ... Bishop Wilkes
Jeff Krebs ... Trauma Doctor
Nathaniel Carter ... Deshawn
Brendon Terrell Ferguson ... Marcus (as Brendon Terrell)
Kwame Boateng ... Darius
Henry Brown ... Mr. Reid

Bride Wars

2008-12-30T01:49:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) are best friends who since childhood have planned every detail of their respective weddings. At the top of their bridal "must have" list: a ceremony at New York's ultimate bridal destination, the Plaza Hotel.

Now, at age 26, they're both about to get married; they're about to realize their dreams; and they're about to live happily ever after.

Or maybe not...

When a clerical error causes a clash in wedding dates - they're now to be married on the same date! - Liv, Emma and their lifelong friendship are put to the ultimate test. Liv, a successful lawyer who is used to getting what she wants, including the perfect job and the perfect man, won't settle for anything less than the perfect wedding she has dreamed of for years. Emma, a schoolteacher who has always been good at taking care of others, but not so much in looking after herself, discovers her inner Bridezilla and comes out swinging when her own dream wedding is imperiled.

Now, the two best friends who'd do anything for each other, find themselves in a no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners struggle that threatens to erupt into all-out war.
CAST & CREW

Director: Gary Winick

Writers (WGA): Greg DePaul (screenplay) and Casey Wilson (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 9 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Comedy | Romance

Plot: Two best friends become rivals when they schedule their respective weddings on the same day.

Cast:

Kate Hudson ... Liv
Anne Hathaway ... Emma
Bryan Greenberg ... Nate
Chris Pratt ... Fletcher
Steve Howey ... Daniel
Candice Bergen ... Marion St. Claire
Kristen Johnston ... Deb
Michael Arden ... Kevin
Victor Slezak ... Colson
Kelly Coffield ... Kathy (as Kelly Coffield Park)
John Pankow ... John
Zoe O'Grady ... Young Liv
June Diane Raphael ... Amanda
Emily Sarah Stikeman ... Student #1
Robert Capron ... Student #2

Defiance

2008-12-30T01:44:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Defiance tells the World War II tale of three Jewish brothers who hide from the Nazis by living in the woods, and in alliance with Soviet partisans, perform raids while trying to survive. The Bielski brothers - Tuvia (Daniel Craig), Zus (Liev Schreiber) and Asael (Jamie Bell) - hide in the forest when their parents and neighbors are slaughtered by the Nazis.
Soon they have a small gathering of other refugees, and start to build a camp. Taking the leadership role naturally, Tuvia manages to get a weapon from a supportive villager, and in an act of revenge, kills the local official who has been turning in Jews to the Nazis. When a conflict ensues between Tuvia and Zus over how aggressive they need to be against the Germans (Tuvia would rather take a defensive role, and Zus wants to go out and kill proactively), Zus leaves the camp - which has grown substantially - to join the Soviet partisans who are also in the woods. As the refugees deal with the onset of winter (and typhus), Tuvia faces a challenge to his leadership, and Asael works to win the heart of one of the ladies in the camp.

Directed by Edward Zwick, Defiance tells the story in an interesting way, and overall it's a pretty well done film. The problem is that the story starts out with the Nazi raid on the village, so we never get a chance to know the brothers in their "normal" lives, to see how the sudden displacement changed their characters and temperments. All of the actors are speaking with an eastern European accent, and it gets a little confusing as to who is who - the names don't quite stick to the characters (especially with the numerous supporting roles). Still, the challenges they faced in the woods are effectively portrayed, and one can certainly appreciate the amazing stuggle they endured as they survived in the woods, and built a community under the radar of the Nazis, who were hunting for them.

The acting is overall fine, but nothing great - there are a few forced moments that were a little hammy, but it's not a dealbreaker. The music, composed by James Newton Howard, is like The Village II: The Shtetl. Using acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell, the music has a strong eastern European Jewish edge to it, and works fine in the film, never feeling over-the-top or too schmaltzy. Defiance is an interesting movie that tells a little-known story of survival and heroism during World War II. It's worth checking out, but there are better WWII films out there; this one might be better served on home video.

CAST & CREW

Director: Edward Zwick

Writers (WGA): Clayton Frohman (screenplay) and Edward Zwick (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 16 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Drama | War

Plot: Three Jewish brothers escape from Nazi-occupied Poland into the Belarussian forest, where they join Russian resistance fighters and endeavor to build a village in order to protect themselves and others in danger.

Cast:

Daniel Craig ... Tuvia Bielski
Liev Schreiber ... Zus Bielski
Jamie Bell ... Asael Bielski
George MacKay ... Aron Bielski

rest of cast listed alphabetically:

Tomas Arana ... Ben Zion
Rolandas Boravskis ... Gramov
Allan Corduner ... Shamon
Alexa Davalos ... Lilka
Mark Feuerstein ... Malbin
Iddo Goldberg ... Yitzchak Shulman
Iben Hjejle ... Bella
Jacek Koman ... Koscik
Mark Margolis ... The Ghetto Elder
Jodhi May ... Tamara Skedelsky
Sam Spruell ... Arkady Lubezanski
Sakalas Uzdavinys ... Lova
Markus von Lingen ... SS Scout
Mia Wasikowska ... Chaya

Taken

2008-12-27T00:24:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

There’s a new action star in town and it isn’t anyone you would immediately suspect. Does the name Liam Neeson ring a bell? Yes, the same guys who has primarily played the nondescript role for the majority of his career has found his John McClane as Bryan in the French action, quasi-thriller Taken.

Surprisingly, it isn’t as bad as you may think . . .

Neeson is a retired CIA operative trying to piece together his broken family. After his intense career, his wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) has left him and remarried and he’s all but a stranger to his 17 year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace). He finds the only way to reconnect with her and make peace with his ex-wife is to go against his better judgment and allow for Kim to travel to France with her girlfriends. He should have stood his ground though, because shortly after landing in the City of Lights, Kim and her friend are kidnapped by Albanians and sold as sexual playthings to the fabulously rich and the insanely powerful.

What follows next is a nice change of pace (the broken family man shtick gets old quick) as Bryan hauls ass to Paris to begin his hunt for the abductors. He dons his Sherlock Holmes hat and cape, and conducts some impressive detective work (which is sprinkled with some extreme luck). First, he goes to the kidnapping location and gets led to the man responsible for setting the girls up. Next, using his contacts in the French police he makes his way to a sex camp which in turn leads to a holding/drug house which leads to another link in the chain which invariably leads to another link (I don’t want to give it all away). What’s important is at each stop Bryan beats the living shit out of everyone within reach. Some of it is completely far-fetched (fighting a roomful of thugs armed with semi-automatic weapons unarmed) and some of it is pain-wretchingly real (anyone care for some home-brewed electrocution?).

Neeson does an admirable job as Taken’s human battering ram (undoubtedly some of his skill comes from what he learned on the set of Batman Begins). I must say, he carries himself well for a 56 year-old man. His moves are not as precise or as crisp as what I’d expect from the ass-kicking hero, but they’re good enough to get by with. Everyone else in the film is a throwaway napkin. Director Pierre Morel could have switched them around or substituted monkeys in their place without causing much of a problem since, aside from from the beginning of the movie, there is very little interaction between characters. The only thing missing was the wise-cracking remarks that are staples in the “kick ass and ask questions later” type of movie. But while they were notably absent, I can’t say I missed them a whole lot (probably due to the fact that these “witty” one-liners have steadily gotten worse and worse).

So its no Die Hard. So what – nothing is. It’s no James Bond flick either. What Taken is, is a good middle of the road action movie, that is on par with the likes of Seagal’s and Snipe’s finest (i.e., Under Siege and Passenger 57). It also proves to the rest of us (mostly me) that there is more to France than fine wines, croissants and surrender flags.

CAST & CREW

Director: Pierre Morel

Writers (WGA): Luc Besson (written by) & Robert Mark Kamen (written by)

Release Date: 30 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Action | Crime | Drama | Thriller

Tagline: Die Zeit für Rache ist gekommen. (The time for revenge has come.)

Plot: A former spy relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who has been forced into the slave trade.

Cast:

Liam Neeson ... Bryan Mills
Maggie Grace ... Kim
Famke Janssen ... Lenore
Xander Berkeley ... Stuart
Katie Cassidy ... Amanda
Olivier Rabourdin ... Jean-Claude Pitrel
Leland Orser ... Sam
Jon Gries ... Casey
David Warshofsky ... Bernie
Holly Valance ... Sheerah
Gérard Watkins ... Patrice Saint Clair
Marc Amyot ... Pharmacist
Arben Bajraktaraj ... Marko
Radivoje Bukvic ... Anton
Mathieu Busson ... Undercover agent

Waltz With Bashir

2008-12-23T22:29:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, “Waltz With Bashir” will change your ideas about the possibility of film.

It’s an animated documentary, which probably sounds like a contradiction in terms, but even describing it that way threatens to place it in the kinds of tidy, well-defined boxes that “Waltz With Bashir” consistently defies.

Maybe it’s best just to describe what director Ari Folman has done.

The former Israeli army soldier finds himself unable to recall his involvement in a massacre that occurred during the Lebanon war in 1982. A longtime friend, who’s still haunted by what he saw back then, reminds Folman of it at a bar one night, but Folman can’t even reach the slightest sliver of a memory in his mind.

And so he takes a camera and visits his fellow former troops, both close pals and people he hasn’t talked to in ages, in hopes of piecing together the bloody events that took place at the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. He even talks to veteran war correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai for his insights. Each of them speaks with Folman quietly, intimately, which makes us feel as if we, too, are in on the conversations — as if we’re somehow helping him unravel the mysteries of his past.

Once he finished his research, Folman then gathered the video footage of all those discussions and, through a hand-drawn process that took four years of painstaking work, had it illustrated by a team led by animation director Yoni Goodman and artistic director David Polonsky.

The result is breathtaking: With bold strokes and delicate details, it looks like a graphic novel come vibrantly to life. Dark shadows suggest impending danger, and bright splashes of color provide unexpected jolts of energy. That the figures on screen resemble real people, without appearing entirely realistic, adds to the fascination.

Through Folman’s innovative eyes, the scene that provides the film with its title is both tense and dreamlike. One of his comrades, Shmuel Frenkel, grabs a machine gun in the middle of a firefight and jumps into a West Beirut square, simultaneously dodging bullets and firing off countless rounds of his own. The combination of the two acts looks to Folman like a dance, one that happens to take place in front of murals of Israel’s Lebanese ally, Christian militia leader Bashir Gemayel.

Similarly, as the massacre in question builds to its crescendo, the journalist Ben-Yishai is depicted as an invincible warrior himself, striding unscathed through the gunfire with his shoulders back and his head held high. But “Waltz” mercifully also has its lighter moments — Folman remembers an old girlfriend at a dance club, for example, and early ‘80s music helps set the period mood.

One of the year’s best pictures, “Waltz With Bashir” will stick with you long afterward, both for its startling content and striking imagery.

CAST & CREW

Director: Ari Folman

Writer: Ari Folman (writer)

Release Date: 12 June 2008 (Israel)

Genre: Animation | Biography | Drama | War

Plot: One night at a bar, an old friend tells director Ari about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs...

Cast:

Ron Ben-Yishai ... Himself (voice)
Ronny Dayag ... Himself (voice)
Ari Folman ... Himself (voice)
Dror Harazi ... Himself (voice)
Yehezkel Lazarov ... Carmi Cna'an (voice)
Mickey Leon ... Boaz Rein-Buskila (voice)
Ori Sivan ... Himself (voice)
Zahava Solomon ... Herself (voice)

Revolutionary Road

2008-12-23T22:18:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

I genuinely regret never having read Richard Yates’ novel “Revolutionary Road,” not only because its admirers tell me it’s a compelling look at mid-century ennui but also because any future attempts to read it will be tainted by the dreary film adaptation currently being inflicted upon audiences.

The characters played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet spend the film screaming about the other’s flaws, and I unfortunately found myself agreeing with both of them — both the protagonists are thoroughly mediocre, uninteresting people, and I never figured out why I was supposed to care about the fate of either of them.

Within the first two minutes of the film, we’re told that neither April Wheeler (Winslet) nor her husband Frank (DiCaprio) is anything special; when they met years earlier in New York City, she was studying to be an actress and he wanted to explore the world. Now she’s the veteran of a disastrous amateur theater company, while he readily embraces suburban blandness.

The couple make some noises about liquidating their assets, shedding the shackles of the ’burbs and running off to Paris, but we know that these non-entities are never going to make it happen. April gets pregnant, and Frank accepts a promotion, and both of them get the luxury of screaming at the other about ruining their lives.

If the characters themselves had something going for them, these battles might have some heft to them; heck, even if they were just given interesting barbs to fling at each other — it’s not like George and Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” were the deepest souls on Earth — then “Revolutionary Road” might be the tiniest bit compelling. Instead, we get cardboard dullards shrieking until the veins pop up in their necks; the cumulative effect is not unlike an episode of “The Hills” where everyone is dressed like the cast of “Mad Men.”

Lots of talent goes to waste here, from the reunited “Titanic” stars to Kathy Bates to up-and-comer Michael Shannon (“Bug”); the latter gets stuck with one of those “author’s mouthpiece” roles that forces him to state aloud what we’re all supposed to be thinking. As if that weren’t clunky enough, he’s also playing a character who’s insane… except that he’s the most rational person in the movie! Get it?

Cinematographer Roger Deakins at least makes everything look terrific, whether it’s a Manhattan ad agency or a day at the beach, and production designer Kristi Zea and costumer Albert Wolsky capture the era as accurately as a stash of old Life magazines.

Too bad director Sam Mendes — Winslet’s husband, who already mined the toxic-suburbs motif in “American Beauty” — can’t seem to nail why he thought this was a story worth telling. I often found myself wishing I were watching April’s wretched community playhouse group instead.

CAST & CREW

Director: Sam Mendes

Writers (WGA): Justin Haythe (screenplay) and Richard Yates (novel)

Release Date: 15 January 2009 (Germany)

Genre: Drama | Romance

Tagline: How do you break free without breaking apart?

Plot: A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children. Based on a novel by Richard Yates.
Cast:

Kate Winslet ... April Wheeler
Leonardo DiCaprio ... Frank Wheeler
Christopher Fitzgerald ... Party Guest #1
Jonathan Roumie ... Party Guest #2
Neal Bledsoe ... Party Guest #3
Marin Ireland ... Party Guest #4
Samantha Soule ... Party Guest #5
Heidi Armbruster ... Party Guest #6
Sam Rosen ... Party Guest #7
Maria Rusolo ... Party Dancer #1
Gena Oppenheim ... Party Dancer #2
Kathryn Dunn ... Party Dancer #3
Joe Komara ... Party Dancer #4
Allison Twyford ... Party Dancer #5
David Harbour ... Shep Campbell

Last Chance Harvey

2008-12-23T21:47:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

If there’s such a thing as the Laptop Lotto for screenwriters, “Last Chance Harvey” writer-director Joel Hopkins hit the Superball. Hopkins, best known for his award-winning 1998 short film “Jorge,” somehow scored Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson for a screenplay that, by rights, should have snagged Daniel Hugh Kelly and Catherine Oxenberg before winding up on one of the channels you’d ignore on a trans-Atlantic airline.

Hoffman stars as Harvey, a composer of jingles for TV commercials, who’s at a professional and personal crossroads. His career seems to be sputtering to a halt — a producer actually says to him, in the movie’s very first scene, “There are no more chances, Harvey.” — and he’s completely estranged from his daughter, whose wedding in London prompts him to travel overseas.

Once Harvey arrives at the wedding, we see what an outsider he has become in his own family; the second husband (James Brolin) of his wife (Kathy Baker) is the de facto father of the bride, and Harvey is merely an awkward interloper. Just when he’s about to throw in the towel and go back to the States, he crosses paths with Kate (Emma Thompson), a lonely Brit whose clinging mother (Eileen Atkins) has made it impossible for her to find a man.

You can pretty much map out what happens from here: Harvey and Kate rub each other the wrong way. They cross paths again and are more civil to each other. They discover they enjoy each other’s company. A manufactured conflict arises to keep them apart. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Given that Hopkins has one of the world’s most photogenic cities as his backdrop, you might expect “Last Chance Harvey” to have an enchanting look about it, but the cinematography by John de Borman is flagrantly unremarkable. The Los Angeles of “Yes Man” seems a more romantic and inviting city than the Old Blighty we’re shown here.

If there’s one reason to sit through “Harvey” when it turns up on cable (or on that trans-Atlantic flight), it’s the always-watchable Thompson, who somehow makes us believe that someone who walks, talks and looks like Emma Thompson could be starved for male companionship. One scene featuring Kate on a disastrous blind date is a little masterpiece of melancholy, with Thompson starting out the meeting with gusto before gradually shrinking back into the scenery.

Hoffman, if anything, does too good a job at making Harvey into a pathetic loser at the beginning of the film — so much so that it’s hard to buy his redemption at Kate’s hands. You can’t help thinking that we’re being spared a fourth act in which Harvey screws up yet another relationship and leaves another woman in tears.

But then, bad choices seem to be contagious — “Last Chance Harvey” certainly won’t rank among the better script selections made by this impressive cast.

CAST & CREW

Director: Joel Hopkins

Writer: Joel Hopkins (writer)

Release Date: 16 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Drama | Romance

Tagline: It's about first loves, last chances and everything in between.

Plot: In London for his daughter's wedding, a rumpled man finds his romantic spirits lifted by a new woman in his life.

Cast:

Dustin Hoffman ... Harvey Shine
Emma Thompson ... Kate Walker
Eileen Atkins ... Maggie Walker
Kathy Baker ... Jean
Liane Balaban ... Susan
James Brolin ... Brian
Richard Schiff ... Marvin
Tim Howard ... Johnnie
Wendy Mae Brown ... Aggie
Bronagh Gallagher ... Oonagh
Jeremy Sheffield ... Matt
Daniel Lapaine ... Scott
Patrick Baladi ... Simon
Adam James ... Josh Hillman
Michael Landes ... Peter Turner

Marley & Me

2008-12-23T21:40:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

A word of warning to parents out there who have been seduced by the adorable-puppy-in-Christmas-bow advertising of “Marley & Me” and are considering taking their youngsters to see it: Don’t. The dog — and this may technically count as a spoiler, even though the movie is based on a best-selling book — dies. And “Marley & Me” milks audience grief (and will traumatize children) more than “Bambi” and “Old Yeller” combined.

I can report first hand that a veteran film critic of the crusty and cantankerous stripe came close to walking out of the screening I attended — and not because he didn’t like it. And even as I was rolling my eyes over how manipulative this movie gets, I had to choke back a few tears myself over just two words spoken by the family’s eldest child at the climactic doggy funeral.

If only everything leading up to Marley’s demise were nearly so compelling. Despite having been labored over by sharp screenwriters Scott Frank (“Out of Sight”) and Don Roos (“The Opposite of Sex”), “Marley & Me” feels like “She’s Having a Baby” with some “Marmaduke” cartoons grafted onto it.

Take the dog out of the equation, and you’re left with the not-very-interesting marital and career travails of John Grogan (Owen Wilson) and his wife Jennifer (Jennifer Aniston), newlyweds and recent college grads who have just left Michigan for the sunny climes of south Florida. They both get newspaper jobs — and the fact that this is a movie about people finding work and getting promotions in the print media industry already makes “Marley & Me,” set in the early ’90s, feel like a far-off period piece — and settle into their first house.

John’s rakish co-worker Sebastian (Eric Dane) suggests that the best way to hit the snooze button on Jennifer’s biological clock is to bring a puppy in the house, and so the Grogans adopt Marley, an adorable hound who will grow up to be — as the real-life Grogan called him in his hit book — “the world’s worst dog.” Cue leg-humping, dinner snatching, furniture chewing, et. al.

The Grogans finally start having children — after suffering a miscarriage, another plot point that makes “Marley” a tough sit for the kids — and move up to Boca Raton, then north to Pennsylvania. And Marley seems to get bigger and more unruly. (Kathleen Turner has a thankless appearance as a disciplinarian dog trainer who throws up her hands in the face of Marley’s anarchy.)

And then, well… the years pass. Which does things to dogs, no matter how beloved.

It’s not that “Marley & Me” doesn’t come by its tears honestly, but once you get beyond “see the nice doggie, see the nice doggie die,” there’s not a whole lot going on here. Wilson and Aniston are serviceably charming, but the Grogans and their minor life transitions aren’t interesting enough to keep us in our seats. The 22 dogs who play Marley — as well as Alan Arkin, as John’s editor — steal what little show there is. “Marley & Me” is too energetic and well-intentioned to rate as a dog, but it’s no best-in-show either.

CAST & CREW

Director: David Frankel

Writers (WGA): Scott Frank (screenplay) and Don Roos (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 25 December 2008 (USA)

Genre: Comedy

Tagline: Heel the love

Plot: A family learns important life lessons from their adorable, but naughty and neurotic dog.

Cast:

Owen Wilson ... John Grogan
Jennifer Aniston ... Jennifer Grogan
Eric Dane ... Sebastian
Kathleen Turner ... Ms. Kornblut
Alan Arkin ... Arnie Klein
Nathan Gamble ... Patrick (Age 10)
Haley Bennett ... Lisa
Clarke Peters ... Editor
Finley Jacobsen ... Conor (Age 8)
Lucy Merriam ... Colleen (Age 5)
Bryce Robinson ... Patrick (Age 7)
Benjamin Hyland ... Conor (Age 5)
Sarah O'Kelly ... Neighbor Mom (Nurse)
Keith Hudson ... Big Guy
Haley Hudson ... Debby

Valkyrie

2008-12-22T23:22:00.001-08:00

REVIEW:

It is admittedly difficult, although not altogether impossible, to make a movie about a historical event where everyone already knows the ending. Still, “All the President’s Men” and “Apollo 13” both generate substantial suspense even though almost everyone who saw either film had a pretty good idea of the outcome.

Telling that kind of story when things end up less happily is even trickier, but still doable: The second half of Steven Soderbergh’s “Che,” for example, follows Dr. Guevara to a rather dismal end in Bolivia, but the mechanics of his failure remain compelling.

And then there’s “Valkyrie,” which Mark Twain might have subtitled “The Not-So-Private History of a Campaign That Failed.” Director Bryan Singer is a master of forward motion in his storytelling — I still think “X2” is one of the best superhero films ever made — but he never distracts us enough from the knowledge that doom is around the corner for our heroes, a cadre of Nazis who sought to kill Hitler and negotiate with the Allied forces in the waning days of World War II.

After losing an eye, a hand and several fingers in North Africa, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) is recruited to join the high-level resistance by General Friedrich Olbricht (Bill Nighy). Von Stauffenberg devises a plan in which Operation Valkyrie — which was designed to keep the peace in the event that Hitler (David Bamber) should die — gets rewritten to allow Olbricht and his comrades to take power and to authorize the arrest of the entire SS, so that the Gestapo won’t be a factor in the regime change.

Getting Hitler to sign these new orders unread proves rather easy, but killing the Führer presents more of a challenge. At a meeting at Hitler’s Wolf’s Den bunker, however, von Stauffenberg is able to plant an explosive device, which successfully explodes.

And that’s sort of where the plan falls apart — von Stauffenberg skedaddles without confirming that Hitler is actually dead; General Erich Fellgiebel (Eddie Izzard) cuts off all communications as per the plan’s dictates, which makes it impossible for Olbricht to check in, and thus the implementation of Valkyrie is delayed for hours, and so on and so on. In other words, for all the zippy editing (by longtime Singer collaborator John Ottman, who also composed the effective score), viewers will spend most of “Valkyrie” waiting for the other jackboot to drop.

Most disappointingly, there’s a gaping hole at the center of “Valkyrie,” and his name is Tom Cruise. He’s the only actor in the film not doing either a British or a German accent — more on that in a moment — and he spends every moment on screen glowering and purring angrily. The actor appears lost without being able to launch his usual charm offensive, and whatever dark sides that Oliver Stone was once able to plumb from this performer seems nonexistent. If only his work here had an ounce of the nasty pleasures of Cruise’s “Tropic Thunder” cameo.

The accent thing really becomes distracting, incidentally. Putting Cruise-as-Cruise aside for one moment, it’s generally accepted in American movies about speakers of a foreign language that a British accent is the default. But when you’ve got U.K. actors like Nighy, Izzard, Tom Wilkinson (marvelously wormy), Kenneth Branagh, Terence Stamp and Tom Hollander using their natural voices opposite Hitler, all the other Nazis and all the other German characters (including “Black Book” star Carice van Houten, ill-used as Mrs. von Stauffenberg) speaking with German accents, it becomes a mess of dialects.

Ultimately, it’s not the actors that bring down “Valkyrie,” it’s the script by Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander, which never presents a compelling case as to why we should care about a bunch of Nazi officers who Failed to Not Save Hitler’s Brain. The writers have meticulously laid out what happened during those few hours when Hitler was thought to have been assassinated, but it boils down to lots of phone calls and maps being shaded.

Had things gone differently, could the resisters have seized power away from Hitler? Did anything of substance come out of the brief shining moment of the failed coup? “Valkyrie” never tells us, and it never builds any suspense around the idea that von Stauffenberg and company were on the cusp of making something actually happen. As such, what might have been “a gay romp through the Berchtesgaden” (as “The Producers” would have it) winds up feeling more like a thousand-year reich.

CAST & CREW

Director: Bryan Singer

Writers (WGA): Christopher McQuarrie (written by) & Nathan Alexander (written by)

Release Date: 25 December 2008 (USA)

Genre: Drama | History | Thriller | War

Tagline: Many saw evil. They dared to stop it.

Plot: Based on actual events, a plot to assassinate Hitler is unfurled during the height of WWII.
Cast:

Tom Cruise ... Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg
Kenneth Branagh ... Major-General Henning von Tresckow
Bill Nighy ... General Friedrich Olbricht
Tom Wilkinson ... General Friedrich Fromm
Carice van Houten ... Nina von Stauffenberg
Thomas Kretschmann ... Major Otto Ernst Remer
Terence Stamp ... Ludwig Beck
Eddie Izzard ... General Erich Fellgiebel
Kevin McNally ... Dr. Carl Goerdeler
Christian Berkel ... Colonel Mertz von Quirnheim
Andy Gatjen ... Angry SS Officer
Jamie Parker ... Lieutenant Werner von Haeften
David Bamber ... Adolf Hitler
Tom Hollander ... Colonel Heinz Brandt
David Schofield ... Erwin von Witzleben

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

2008-12-22T23:05:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

A Southern naïf meanders through a bizarre and unusual life story, one that includes encounters with legendary figures, a childhood sweetheart who sees the world but then returns home to bear him a child out of wedlock, a free-floating metaphor about the unpredictability of existence, and a devoted mother who provides aphorisms about how you never know what life is going to send your way.

Screenwriter Eric Roth is no doubt hoping that you won’t notice how many of his ideas from “Forrest Gump” have made it into his adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novella “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” And even fans of that earlier film may find themselves overburdened; “Gump” director Robert Zemeckis isn’t exactly known for his light touch, but next to “Button” man David Fincher, he’s practically Ernst Lubitsch.

Told in flashback by the elderly Daisy (Cate Blanchett), we learn the story of Benjamin (Brad Pitt), who was born a wizened old baby with arthritis and glaucoma and then spent the rest of his life growing younger. Abandoned by his horrified father (Jason Flemyng), Benjamin is left at the doorstep of an old-age home, where he is taken in by nurse Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), who raises the elderly infant.

Along the way, Benjamin meets young Daisy and is taken with her blue eyes — and that’s pretty much all the movie has to offer to explain a relationship that survives World War II, Daisy’s stint as a Broadway dancer in the original production of “Carousel,” and the couple’s separate globe-trotting jaunts to Russia.

We’re supposed to believe, incidentally, that Daisy’s daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond) never knew until this deathbed conversation that Daisy was the only American invited to dance with the Bolshoi — despite the fact that Daisy spent her later years teaching dance. Isn’t that the sort of credit you’d include in the brochure? And if, incidentally, acting is all about listening, Ormond deserves some kind of award for having so much exposition lobbed at her both here and in “Che.”

The special effects that make “Benjamin Button” possible in its present state are certainly impressive — Pitt’s face is grafted onto various smaller bodies during Benjamin’s growing-up (or is that growing-down?) years, and it comes off way more convincingly than a similar attempt to put Kate Bosworth’s mug onto a female surfer’s skull in the best-forgotten “Blue Crush.”

While director Fincher has accomplished any number of technical marvels in the film, “Benjamin Button” lacks a soul; it almost feels like the big, sweeping emotional moments are being hit out of a sense of duty and not because the filmmaker really believes in them. (If Steven Spielberg had directed the movie, I might still have hated it, but I no doubt would have caught myself getting emotionally swept up in it from time to time.)

The performances are serviceable — Tilda Swinton steals the show in an all-too-brief appearance as one of Benjamin’s lovers — and the art direction is gorgeous, but I never connected with this movie for a second. Even the score was off, with the talented Alexandre Desplat writing his first obvious and treacly bit of music; showing an adorable 10-year-old boy suffering from dementia should be moving enough without a bombastic string section nudging things along.

When “Benjamin Button” pauses to make the occasional observation about life and death, and taking advantage of each moment, it gets close to achieving some kind of resonance. For the most part, unfortunately, it’s little more than a nearly three-hour reminder that we begin and end our lives in diapers.

CAST & CREW

Director: David Fincher

Writers (WGA): Eric Roth (screenplay) & Eric Roth (screen story) ...

Release Date: 25 December 2008 (USA)

Genre: Drama | Fantasy | Mystery | Romance

Tagline: Life isn't measured in minutes, but in moments

Plot: Tells the story of Benjamin Button, a man who starts aging backwards with bizarre consequences.

Cast:

Cate Blanchett ... Daisy
Julia Ormond ... Caroline
Faune A. Chambers ... Dorothy Baker
Elias Koteas ... Monsieur Gateau
Donna DuPlantier ... Blanche Devereux
Jacob Tolano ... Martin Gateau (as Jacob Wood)
Earl Maddox ... Man at Train Station
Ed Metzger ... Teddy Roosevelt
Jason Flemyng ... Thomas Button
Danny Vinson ... Priest Giving Last Rites
David Jensen ... Doctor at Benjamin's Birth
Joeanna Sayler ... Caroline Button
Taraji P. Henson ... Queenie
Mahershalalhashbaz Ali ... Tizzy
Fiona Hale ... Mrs. Hollister

Bedtime Stories

2008-12-22T22:54:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Adam Sandler returns to the familiar man-child of yore with “Bedtime Stories,” a desperate family-friendly comedy about wild nighttime fantasies that magically come true in broad daylight.

Truly, Sandler seemed to have moved beyond this comfortable adolescent state, past the goofy persona he forged for himself with early movies like “Billy Madison” and “Little Nicky.” He’s proven he can act, really act, with surprising vulnerability and nuance in “Punch-Drunk Love” and “Spanglish.” He seemed to have turned, God forbid, into a grown-up.

Even though “Bedtime Stories” represents a first for Sandler — a comedy that’s appropriate for all ages — it still feels like a giant leap backward for him. As Skeeter Bronson, the handyman at a boutique Los Angeles hotel, Sandler is doing that same silly, growly voice he uses in his “Hanukkah Song.”

Forced to look after his young niece Bobbi (Laura Ann Kesling) and nephew Patrick (Jonathan Morgan Heit) for a week while his sister (Courteney Cox) is out of town lining up a new job, Skeeter finds the only way to connect with the kids, and get them to go to sleep, is by telling them bedtime stories.

Soon, Bobbi and Patrick are chiming in with their own ideas about what the tales should include — gum balls falling from the sky, violent midgets, gooey booger monsters — and in no time, those details start creeping into Skeeter’s life. And those surreal occurrences inspire Skeeter as he racks his brain for a design concept for the new hotel his boss is launching.

It’s a whimsical and not-too-shabby idea from writers Matt Lopez and longtime Sandler friend and collaborator Tim Herlihy. But under the direction of Adam Shankman (“Hairspray”), the result is too often flat, crass and disjointed. Even though Shankman has plenty of elaborate themes to play with — Skeeter stars as the hero of a Western, a “Star Wars” takeoff and a gladiator adventure, for example — he keeps cutting away ad nauseam to the kids’ freakishly wide-eyed guinea pig, which isn’t even vaguely funny the first time. And in keeping with the raunchiness that traditionally infuses Sandler’s comedies, there are also various sight gags involving flatulent or slimy animals.

Harmless, sure — but also needless.

Russell Brand gets the few seriously funny lines in the script as the hotel’s room service waiter, though his brash comic tendencies — the ones that made him a scene-stealer earlier this year in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” — are, of course, suppressed here. Richard Griffiths and Guy Pearce are slumming as the hotel’s pompous owner and the suck-up who wants to take over his empire, respectively. And the always lovely Keri Russell goes woefully to waste in the straight-woman role as the kids’ baby sitter and Skeeter’s would-be love interest.

That last part might be the wildest fantasy of all.

CAST & CREW

Director: Adam Shankman

Writers (WGA): Matt Lopez (screenplay) and Tim Herlihy (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 25 December 2008 (USA)

Genre: Comedy | Family | Fantasy

Tagline: Whatever they dream up... he has to survive.

Plot: A family comedy about a hotel handyman whose life changes when the lavish bedtime stories he tells his niece and nephew start to magically come true.

Cast:

Adam Sandler ... Skeeter Bronson
Keri Russell ... Jill
Guy Pearce ... Kendall
Russell Brand ... Mickey
Richard Griffiths ... Barry Nottingham
Teresa Palmer ... Violet Nottingham
Lucy Lawless ... Aspen
Courteney Cox ... Wendy
Jonathan Morgan Heit ... Patrick
Laura Ann Kesling ... Bobbi
Jonathan Pryce ... Marty Bronson
Nick Swardson ... Engineer
Kathryn Joosten ... Mrs. Dixon
Allen Covert ... Ferrari Guy
Carmen Electra ... Hot Girl

Yes Man

2008-12-19T00:53:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

“And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself” isn’t just a line from “A Visit from St. Nicholas” — it’s how I felt about Jim Carrey’s performance in the new comedy “Yes Man.” Having been annoyed by his antics in many of his recent outings — take “Fun with Dick and Jane,” please — the world-class mugger dials it down and delights in this breezy (if somewhat formulaic) flick.

Carrey stars as Carl, a guy whose life has gone into a deep, deep rut since his wife dumped him years ago. (Not for nothing is Journey’s “Separate Ways” his ringtone.) After he’s passed over for a promotion and his best friend Peter (Bradley Cooper) chides him for disengaging from life, Carl takes another pal’s advice and attends a self-help seminar that encourages him to start saying “yes” to life — literally. At the seminar, he makes a covenant to say yes to every request that comes his way.

At first, it looks like his new positivity will lead him to disaster, as he gives a homeless guy a lift that leaves him with an empty gas tank and a dead cell-phone battery. But at the gas station, he has a meet-cute with the free-spirited Allison (Zooey Deschanel), which leads Carl to think there might be something to all this “yes” business after all.

Before long, he’s learning how to fly a plane, play guitar and speak Korean while he and Allison bond over their mutual sense of adventure. Will she still love him when she finds out that he’s just saying yes to life as part of a self-help program?

Granted, you won’t be biting your nails in suspense over the outcome, but “Yes Man” (based on Danny Wallace’s memoir) sets up lots of pitfalls that it deftly avoids. Deschanel’s Allison is lively and open to new experiences, but she never feels like one of those “kooky,” loud-hat-wearing Hollywood creations we’ve seen in a million movies, in spite of her cutesy scooter helmet. Carl’s neighbor Tilly (Fionnula Flanagan) is a sexy senior citizen, but she’s never the butt of the joke, since young men start clamoring for her favors. Even Carl’s ex-wife (Molly Sims) avoids winding up as the shrew or vamp you might expect from a lazier batch of screenwriters.

It’s these little moments of avoiding the obvious that made me forgive “Yes Man” its occasional forays into cliche. Any movie that throws in a random musical number featuring Luis Guzman can’t be all bad, right?

Whether it’s the script, the strong supporting cast (which also includes John Michael Higgins, Terence Stamp and “Flight of the Conchords” co-star Rhys Darby) or the direction by Peyton Reed, Carrey gives one of his loosest and least oppressive performances in recent memory. He gives Carl a wonderfully acrid sarcasm in the early scenes only to blossom into a charming romantic lead who never overdoes the rubber-faced shtick.

Yes. Really.

CAST & CREW

Director: Peyton Reed

Writers (WGA): Nicholas Stoller (screenplay) and Jarrad Paul (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 19 December 2008 (USA)

Genre: Comedy

Tagline: One word can change everything.

Plot: A guy challenges himself to say "yes" to everything for an entire year.

Cast:

Jim Carrey ... Carl Allen
Zooey Deschanel ... Allison
Bradley Cooper ... Peter
John Michael Higgins ... Nick
Rhys Darby ... Norman
Danny Masterson ... Rooney
Fionnula Flanagan ... Tillie
Terence Stamp ... Terrence Bundley
Sasha Alexander ... Lucy
Molly Sims ... Stephanie
Brent Briscoe ... Homeless Guy
Rocky Carroll ... Wes
John Cothran Jr. ... Tweed (as John Cothran)
Spencer Garrett ... Multack
Sean O'Bryan ... Ted

The Tale of Despereaux

2008-12-19T00:35:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Which came first, the rat or the mouse?

Doesn’t really matter. Even though Kate DiCamillo’s book “The Tale of Despereaux” came out in 2003 — and won a Newbery Medal for outstanding children’s literature — the animated film version still feels like a rip-off of “Ratatouille,” which was only released last year.

That’s partly because of the premise: It’s a food-laden fairy tale about a rodent (voiced by Matthew Broderick) who must overcome his underdog status to save the day.

But the bigger problem is its lack of comparative charm. Whereas the gorgeous, sophisticated “Ratatouille” was both a crowd-pleaser and a critical favorite, duly winning the Academy Award for best animated feature, “Despereaux” feels obvious, preachy and heavy-handed.

And that’s a surprise given that the script was co-written and produced by Gary Ross, whose previous screenplays include the smart, winning “Dave” and “Pleasantville.” Aside from its muted tones and a pleasing softness to the creatures’ fur and whiskers, there’s not a whole lot of subtlety to be found here in the film from directors Sam Fell (“Flushed Away”) and longtime animator Robert Stevenhagen — certainly not in the way it shifts awkwardly among three plots, all of which are connected to Princess Pea (Emma Watson).

Roscuro the rat (voiced with nebbishy earnestness by Dustin Hoffman) accidentally falls into the queen’s soup, killing her and prompting darkness and depression throughout the kingdom of Dor. (Soup is a very big deal in Dor, and it’s banned throughout the land after the queen’s death. Nevertheless, it’s still mentioned so often in this movie, it could be a drinking game.)

Roscuro is exiled for the act, which ultimately turns him hard and vengeful. But next comes Despereaux, a tiny, young mouse with giant ears. It’s obvious from the day he’s born that he’s different, but he grows into such a maverick, he fears nothing. He never cowers when he’s supposed to and would rather read books than eat them; his parents and older brother fret. As such, he’s also banished.

But then along comes the crass, portly serving girl Miggery Sow (Tracey Ullman), whose jealousy of the princess threatens the palace and, naturally, provides an opportunity for Roscuro and Despereaux to redeem themselves. Ullman, a gifted mimic with a great ear, lends her voice to some awfully clunky lines in expressing young Miggery’s envy and insecurity.

Also among the impressive vocal cast are William H. Macy, Frank Langella, Kevin Kline, Stanley Tucci and Richard Jenkins, but none of them is given any opportunity to let their unique, well-known screen personalities shine through. The overly pervasive voiceover, meanwhile, comes from Sigourney Weaver, who’s forced to spell out themes of courage, forgiveness and faith over and over again.

Surely children in the audience are astute enough to pick up some of these ideas on their own without being banged over the head with a soup ladle.

CAST & CREW

Directors: Sam Fell & Robert Stevenhagen

Writers: Kate DiCamillo (book) & Will McRobb (screen story)

Release Date: 19 December 2008 (USA)

Genre: Adventure | Animation | Comedy | Family | Fantasy

Tagline: Small Hero. Big Heart.

Plot: The tale of three unlikely heroes - a misfit mouse who prefers reading books to eating them, an unhappy rat who schemes to leave the darkness of the dungeon, and a bumbling servant girl with cauliflower ears - whose fates are intertwined with that of the castle's princess.

Cast:

Matthew Broderick ... Despereaux (voice)
Dustin Hoffman ... Roscuro (voice)
Emma Watson ... Princess Pea (voice)
Tracey Ullman ... Miggery Sow (voice)
Kevin Kline ... Andre (voice)
William H. Macy ... Lester (voice)
Stanley Tucci ... Boldo (voice)
Ciarán Hinds ... Botticelli (voice)
Robbie Coltrane ... Gregory (voice)
Tony Hale ... Furlough (voice)
Frances Conroy ... Antoinette
Frank Langella ... Mayor
Richard Jenkins ... Principal
Christopher Lloyd ... Hovis (voice)
Charles Shaughnessy ... Pietro (voice)

The Spirit

2008-12-19T00:26:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

I went into director Frank Miller’s big screen adaptation of comic book legend Will Eisner’s “The Spirit” with few pre-conceived notions. Having only read a small number of Eisner’s original comics, I didn’t know much about the character going in. But on the other hand, with the previews and trailers seeming to indicate this movie would be “Sin City” 1.5 in terms of art direction, I knew enough about the comic books to know that this style might conflict a bit with the source material.

Despite this conflict, or perhaps because of it, somewhere inside “The Spirit” is a great film. Its potential can be seen in bits and pieces all over the screen, making it all the more disappointing when it just never quite follows through on that potential.

First, comic book fans should know ahead of time that there are some major changes from comic-to-screen. Changes to characters are made to seemingly make them work better for a two-hour live-action movie, and possibly to make “The Spirit” more familiar to fans of other recent successful superhero films, leading to a few awkward moments.

Some of the acrobatics that title character performs for example just seem strange. Not cool ... not “wow” ... just strange. Most of these moments occur in the high-action scenes, and can pull the viewer right out of the rest of the movie.

These moments, however, were contrasted by mostly great dialogue by director/screenwriter Miller, and some effective one-on-one interaction between the various actors. The scenes between The Spirit and each of the film’s bevy of leading ladies always entertained. Each of these women had their own unique strength and style, and they all stood out at one point or another as if they were the star of the film.

Eva Mendes as Sand Saref particularly clearly seemed to enjoy her role. She played the sexed-up ultra-thief well, but her character never seemed fully developed, like part of her story wound up on the cutting room floor.

The best chemistry on screen, however, belonged to The Spirit and Commissioner Dolan. Gabriel Macht and Dan Lauria seemed like old friends (which, as it turns out, in real life they are), student/mentor and foils pitted against one another. Their give-and-take was spectacular, and a real highlight of the film.

Samuel L. Jackson’s Octopus was the least established of the characters pulled from the comics, and at times came off as a caricature. ‘Over the top’ doesn’t do justice to the ridiculousness of Jackson’s portrayal. If the respected actor dialed it down about 70 percent, then it would have been over the top.

Again, Miller’s dialogue shined in Octopus’ conversations with The Spirit, but any time he wasn’t directly addressing the hero, Jackson just came off as goofy. There was never any menace or threat inherent in the character, and while that may have been intentional, it never felt right.

All these supporting players revolve around the titular one, of course, and Macht does a good job throughout, peppered with moments of greatness, shining in particular while playing off his co-stars. In his rare moments of solo on-screen time, his presence just isn’t quite strong enough to stay compelling, and the shift to almost entirely cartoony shots mixed in with those strange acrobatics doesn’t help.

Visually, despite the impression the trailers may leave, the “Sin City”-ish effects and art direction does not in fact dominate the film. There are lots of other colors other than the ultra-noir black & white, and more “realistic” settings throughout the movie, with the ultra-stylized moments chiefly occurring during The Spirit’s patrols and monologues.

These sequences wind up coming off oddly, with the transitions in and out of near-animation a bit too jarring and unnatural.

The mosh of comedic banter and noir-ish drama worked well for the most part, but ultimately, those aforementioned moments of potential that flash and peek out now and again are too far and few between to save “The Spirit” from being a disappointment. The deviations from the comic book source material may also bug die-hards, but because Eisner’s creation is much less known to more mainstream audiences than some other iconic superheroes that likely won’t be a widespread problem.

If this film does well enough to rate a sequel, and with some more directorial seasoning under Miller’s belt, perhaps future installments could achieve the greatness this one just frustratingly teases. As it stands, “The Spirit” does a precarious balancing act juxtaposing great moments and terrible ones, leaving audiences likely be split over which makes the greater impression.

CAST & CREW

Director: Frank Miller

Writers (WGA): Frank Miller (screenplay) and Will Eisner (comic book series)

Release Date: 25 December 2008 (Indonesia)

Genre: Action | Drama | Thriller

Tagline: Down these mean streets a man must come. A hero born, murdered, and born again.

Plot: Rookie cop Denny Colt returns from the beyond as The Spirit, a hero whose mission is to fight against the bad forces in Central City.

Cast:

Jaime King ... Lorelei Rox
Gabriel Macht ... The Spirit / Denny Colt
Dan Gerrity ... Det. Sussman
Arthur the Cat ... Himself
Kimberly Cox ... Damsel in Distress
Brian Lucero ... Thug #1
David B. Martin ... Thug #2
Larry Reinhardt-Meyer ... Officer MacReady
Frank Miller ... Liebowitz
Eva Mendes ... Sand Saref
Eric Balfour ... Mahmoud
Samuel L. Jackson ... The Octopus
Louis Lombardi ... Pathos, etc.
Scarlett Johansson ... Silken Floss
Sarah Paulson ... Ellen Dolan

Wrestler

2008-12-17T01:07:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

To look at Mickey Rourke’s face is to see a road map of bad decisions. Who knew that the destruction of his beautiful mug — via boxing, plastic surgery and plain old hard living — would bring him to one of his greatest performances?

It’s hard not to look for traces of the off-screen Rourke, ’80s movie legend gone off the rails, in his portrayal of Randy “The Ram” Robinson, past-his-prime ’80s wrestling legend, in “The Wrestler,” and perhaps director Darren Aronofsky would rather we didn’t. But Rourke’s work in the film transcends mere stunt-casting; his performance is a howl of pain that seems to come from a very real place, and it’s a potent reminder — as was his compelling role in “Sin City” a few years ago — that even if Rourke has made a mess of his career, his talent remains intact.

Life is rough for “The Ram”: He competes in barely promoted bouts in school gyms to tiny but devoted audiences, paying the rent on his mobile home with a grocery store job. His body’s falling apart, but he continues the rituals of steroids, tanning beds and hair bleaching, because he still feels like he’s got an image to maintain.

Robert D. Siegel’s script maintains an even keel, neither glorifying nor degrading Randy too much. For every humiliation — insults from his grocery-store manager, an empty fan event where Randy sits at a table with a sad little stack of VHS cassettes — we get moments that let us see why Randy wants to stay in the game. His interactions with “rival” wrestlers are a real treat, from the advance choreography of how each bout will play out to the obvious adulation that up-and-coming grapplers have for this fallen legend.

And while Randy is haunted by his estrangement from his adult daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood), he does at least find a glimmer of affection from Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), an aging stripper. While Cassidy is looking to hang up her G-string for good, however, Randy risks what’s left of his health on a rematch with his former adversary, The Ayatollah, on the anniversary of their Madison Square Garden fight that broke pay-per-view records.

While Randy’s inability to give up a way of life that is destroying him is the tragedy that drives “The Wrestler,” I found the Randy-Cassidy relationship to be the film’s most compelling element. Aronofsky brilliantly demonstrates that stripping is to femininity what wrestling is to masculinity — a cartoonish exaggeration of gender. These characters could easily have been stereotyped “lovable losers” in a less humane filmmaker’s hands, but here they are wonderfully sad and true.

If “The Wrestler” errs, it’s in overplaying its hand regarding Randy’s return to the ring. While his self-destructive bent is certainly true to the character, the climactic sequence goes over-the-top. Aronofsky sometimes just doesn’t know when to quit — take a look at the last 20 minutes of “Requiem for a Dream” if you don’t believe me — and the film’s final overkill damages the delicacy of the character study it has created.

The movie remains well worth seeing thanks to the poignant, powerhouse performances by Rourke and Tomei. The movie business hasn’t always been kind to either actor — Hollywood seemed to be punishing Tomei for years over her Oscar win for “My Cousin Vinny” — but both of these great actors rise brilliantly to the occasion.

CAST & CREW

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Writer: Robert D. Siegel (screenplay)

Release Date: 2009 (Russia)

Genre: Comedy | Drama | Sport

Plot: A drama centered on retired professional wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson as he makes his way through the independent circuit...

Cast:

Mickey Rourke ... Randy 'The Ram' Robinson
Marisa Tomei ... Cassidy
Evan Rachel Wood ... Stephanie Robinson
Mark Margolis ... Lenny
Todd Barry ... Wayne
Wass Stevens ... Nick Volpe
Judah Friedlander ... Scott Brumberg
Ernest Miller ... The Ayatollah
Dylan Keith Summers ... Necro Butcher (as Dylan Summers)
Tommy Farra ... Tommy Rotten
Mike Miller ... Lex Lethal
Marcia Jean Kurtz ... Admissions Desk Woman
John D'Leo ... Adam
Ajay Naidu ... Medic
Gregg Bello ... JAPW Promoter Larry Cohen

Seven Pounds

2008-12-17T01:02:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

“Seven Pounds” slogs about, impressed with its own supposed depth, as we watch Will Smith play a man attempting to pay for his past sins. Director Gabriele Muccino (“The Pursuit of Happyness”) seems to think he’s in Ingmar Bergman territory, but he’s actually made the longest, most dour episode of “My Name is Earl” imaginable.

The film begins with Ben Thomas (Smith) calling 911 to report his own suicide — this literally happens in the first five seconds, so it’s not a spoiler — and then, rather than putting all of us out of our misery at the same time, “Seven Pounds” spends the next two hours telling us how he got there.

Probably because there’s almost no other way to sell this movie, the marketing campaign for “Seven Pounds” has been aggressively vague about what actually happens and even what the title means. All that mystery is pretty much for naught, since any attentive viewer will figure out the ending (and also what, exactly, those 112 ounces represent) about half an hour in.

Suffice it to say that Ben feels wracked with guilt and loss, and his coping mechanism brings him into the lives of various people, including a print artist (Rosario Dawson) and a blind, piano-playing telemarketer (Woody Harrelson).

One thing I can give away, since it’s in the trailer, is that Ben gives his house to an impoverished Latina mother (played by Elpidia Carrillo) looking to get out of an abusive relationship. “Seven Pounds” never addresses what’s going to happen when her property tax bill comes due; did we learn nothing from Oprah’s “Everybody gets a car” fiasco, when her needy donors had to report their automotive gift to the IRS?

Coming off his extraordinary work in “I Am Legend,” here Smith gives a horrendously disappointing performance. All of Ben’s grief is presented in the most externalized, indicating manner possible as Smith jumps back and forth between inert and manic, pausing occasionally for the shedding of one single tear, the male version of Demi Moore in her heyday.

The only saving grace of “Seven Pounds” is the luminous Rosario Dawson, who seems incapable of ever being artificial onscreen. She takes an underwritten character in an overblown movie and creates a real person, finding the grace notes and even elevating Smith out of ham-handedness in their scenes together. Dawson is one of the more underappreciated artists in contemporary American cinema, and if we have to sit through as turgid a vehicle as “Seven Pounds” to give her an opportunity to show her stuff, then so be it.

“Seven Pounds” ultimately delivers the usual phony baloney that the major studios offer up in thick slices at the end of the year. It’s the kind of tediously moralizing parable that wants audiences to leave the theater thinking about doing unto others, but its real target demographic is Oscar voters. Those Academy members may find themselves feeling less inclined towards generosity.

CAST & CREW

Director: Gabriele Muccino

Writer (WGA): Grant Nieporte (written by)

Release Date: 19 December 2008 (USA)

Genre: Drama

Tagline: Seven Names. Seven Strangers. One Secret.

Plot: An IRS agent with a fateful secret embarks on an extraordinary journey of redemption by forever changing the lives of seven strangers.

Cast:

Will Smith ... Ben Thomas
Rosario Dawson ... Emily Posa
Woody Harrelson ... Ezra Turner
Michael Ealy ... Ben's Brother
Barry Pepper ... Dan
Elpidia Carrillo ... Connie Tepos
Robinne Lee ... Sarah Jenson
Joe Nunez ... Larry (Hotel Owner)
Bill Smitrovich ... George Ristuccia
Tim Kelleher ... Stewart Goodman
Gina Hecht ... Dr. Briar
Andy Milder ... George's Doctor
Judyann Elder ... Holly Apelgren
Sarah Jane Morris ... Susan
Madison Pettis ... Connie's Daughter

Che

2008-12-15T23:03:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” is by no means a perfect film, but in a season laden with dopey historical movies like “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk” and “The Reader,” it’s exhilarating to watch a film that doesn’t hit all the usual biopic script beats.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara (Benicio del Toro) doesn’t sit by a campfire and tell children about the worker’s revolution; there’s no scene where Guevara’s wife clutches his sleeve and begs him not to go to Bolivia; Alberto Iglesias’ score never swells up so we know we’re supposed to be moved. Soderbergh and screenwriters Peter Buchman and Benjamin van der Veen instead trust us to pay attention and make up our own minds about what we’re seeing.

In telling Guevara’s story, Soderbergh has opted to simply allow events to unfold without applying editorial comment; in his book “Getting Away With It,” Soderbergh talks about directors who stand between the audience and the screen, waving their arms around, and the filmmaker certainly isn’t doing that here. In fact, if there’s a flaw to “Che,” it’s that the film occasionally meanders in its quest for unadorned storytelling.

“Che” is actually two movies that will be screened as one long “roadshow” film, complete with intermission, for awards consideration in New York and Los Angeles before being released as two separate titles early next year. Both halves of the film were adapted from Guevara’s diaries: “The Argentine,” which covers the birth of the July 26 movement and the eventual overthrow of Cuba’s Batista government, comes out of Guevara’s “Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War,” while “Guerrilla,” covering his unsuccessful Bolivian coup attempt, is adapted from “Bolivian Diary.”

And like a diary, “Che” is more about a succession of events than grand Hollywood commentary upon them. Both admirers and detractors of Guevara will find much in the film to challenge and to support their opinions; you won’t find blindly passionate sloganeering here.

“The Argentine” is framed by Guevara’s visit to the United Nations in the mid-1960s; in speaking with an interviewer (Julia Ormond) about his life, we see him meet Fidel Castro (Demián Bichir) for the first time in Mexico and the day-to-day struggles as he leads a revolutionary army across the island of Cuba. (Soderbergh doesn’t give us dates and locations; he merely opens each film with a map showing locations of interest and then expects us to remember that map when those areas are cited in the dialogue.)

“Guerrilla” is somewhat harder to watch, since we know that, unlike “The Argentine,” things aren’t going to end well for Guevara. His jungle travails are similar to his Cuban experiences, but we see how the U.S.-backed Bolivian government did a better job than Batista at keeping the peasant population from supporting the guerrillas. What’s also distracting about the second film are the appearances by the likes of Matt Damon and Lou Diamond Phillips, whose faces are familiar enough to jolt us out of the documentary feel that Soderbergh is attempting.

Greatly aiding Soderbergh’s push toward naturalism is Del Toro, who avoids movie-star showboating while nonetheless remaining utterly compelling. “Che” is by no means a breezy sit, but no matter what your politics, it’s a bracing tonic in a season of flaccid Oscar bait.

CAST & CREW

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Writers (WGA): Peter Buchman (screenplay) and Benjamin A. van der Veen (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 24 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Biography | Drama

Plot: In 1964, Argentine revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara (Benicio del Toro) travels to New York City to address the United Nations.
Cast:

Demián Bichir ... Fidel Castro
Rodrigo Santoro ... Raul Castro
Benicio Del Toro ... Ernesto Che Guevara
Catalina Sandino Moreno ... Aleida March
María D. Sosa ... Aledita
Raúl Beltrán ... Bolivian Customs Agent #1
Raúl 'Pitín' Gómez ... Bolivian Customs Agent #2
Paty M. Bellott ... Woman at Airport
Othello Rensoli ... Pombo
Franka Potente ... Tania
Norman Santiago ... Tuma
Joaquim de Almeida ... President René Barrientos
Pablo Durán ... Pacho
Ezequiel Diaz ... Loro
Juan Salinas ... Polo

Nothing Like the Holidays

2008-12-15T22:37:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Like the plantains and empanadillas that adorn the film’s Christmas dinner table, “Nothing Like the Holidays” is comfort food.

Though its title suggests uniqueness, “Nothing Like the Holidays” is exactly like most holiday films, with the notable exception of an almost entirely Latin cast.

John Leguizamo, Freddy Rodriguez and Vanessa Ferlito play the sons and daughter of Edy (Alfred Molina) and Anna Rodriguez (Elizabeth Pena). As families are wont to do in holiday films, all have congregated for Christmas — in this case, at their home in Chicago’s largely Puerto Rican neighborhood Humboldt Park.

Each brings their own problems to the table: marital troubles for Leguizamo with his gringo wife (Debra Messing), Rodriguez is just back from Iraq and Ferlito’s character is a struggling actress. As you might guess, the fortunes of all will greatly improve over one trying holiday weekend.

“Nothing Like the Holidays” comes from the producers of “Soul Food,” and like that film, revels in its ethnicity. Though the film apes every convention of Christmas films, it’s hard to fault its sentimental conventions too much; so many holiday films have been white Christmases.

And the movie is welcoming. Occasional subtitles are flashed to help the Spanish deficient keep up.

Messing is the minority here, an uptight business woman hoping to land her own hedge fund (pre-economic collapse, one assumes). At the dinner table, she plays the overly clueless outsider, asking, “Why is everyone fighting?” only to be informed no one’s fighting, they’re just “conversating.”

The roles are paper thin, which is too bad considering the talent of the cast. They have all been better. Molina and Leguizamo, in particular, deserve better material.

The always funny Luis Guzman does his usual enlivening schtick. Music from Paul Oakenfold also helps keep things pulsing.

Working from the simpleminded script by Rick Najera and Alison Swan, director Alfredo De Villa (“Washington Heights”) — shooting on location — lets his camera linger on the kitchen cutting board, the snowy urban landscape of Humboldt Park, the traditional Christmas march through the community.

It’s at these moments that one realizes “Nothing Like the Holidays” was really meant to be a documentary showing the vibrant, festive Puerto Rican community of Humboldt Park. As a fictional film, though, it needs a story.

CAST & CREW

Director: Alfredo De Villa

Writers (WGA): Alison Swan (screenplay) and Rick Najera (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 12 December 2008 (USA)

Genre: Comedy | Drama | Romance

Plot: A Puerto Rican family living in the area of Humboldt Park in west Chicago face what may be their last Christmas together.

Cast:

Alfred Molina ... Edy Rodriguez
Elizabeth Peña ... Anna Rodriguez
Freddy Rodríguez ... Jesse Rodriguez
Luis Guzmán ... Johnny
Jay Hernandez ... Ozzy
John Leguizamo ... Mauricio Rodriguez
Debra Messing ... Sarah Rodriguez
Vanessa Ferlito ... Roxanna Rodriguez
Melonie Diaz ... Marissa
Alexander Bautista ... Hector
Ramses Jimenez ... Fernando
Manny Perez ... Alexis
Claudia Michelle Wallace ... Tina
Cheryl Hamada ... Dr. Susan Lee
Manny Sosa ... Father Torres

Gran Torino

2008-12-15T22:31:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

You’ll pretty much figure out exactly where “Gran Torino” is taking you within the first 30 minutes, but it’s a testament to the vehicle that you’ll mostly enjoy the ride anyway. Director-star Clint Eastwood brings his advancing age front and center here — he could have called the movie “Grandpa Torino” — with a performance that’s almost shamelessly crowd-pleasing at times.

Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired auto worker whose wife has just died. He’s never been close to his sons or to their obnoxious children — the movie pins at least as much blame on Walt himself as it does on “these kids today” — and now he’s living alone in the same working-class Detroit neighborhood which has, over the years, become mostly occupied by the Hmong community.

The racist Walt has tended to steer clear of what he calls his “gook” neighbors, but all that changes when the bright but directionless Thao (Bee Vang) attempts to steal Walt’s classic Gran Torino from his garage as part of a gang initiation. When the gang-bangers return later in the week to beat up Thao, Walt pulls a gun on them and scares them off. (This scene could easily make “Get off my lawn” the new “Make my day” — yet another reason to be grateful that McCain didn’t win the election.)

Walt becomes an unwilling hero to the neighborhood and begins an awkward friendship with Thao’s sister Sue (Ahney Her). Thao’s family insists that the teenager is duty-bound to go to work for Walt, so the retiree makes the kid fix up the crumbling eyesore of a house across the street. The two wind up bonding, and Walt helps Thao get a construction job. (Nick Schenk’s script violates the “show, but don’t tell” rule at this point, making Walt actually say, “Christ, I’ve got more in common with these gooks than I do my own family!” just in case we hadn’t gotten the point.)

Just when Walt seems to have learned to open up to people, however, the unfortunate presence of that Hmong gang still hangs over the proceedings. There’s also the issue of Walt coughing up blood every so often, and both of these plot points lead “Gran Torino” in fairly predictable directions.

Still, as movies about crusty old men whose hearts melt through their friendship with young people go, “Gran Torino” is mostly a hoot, thanks to Eastwood’s Archie-Bunker-with-a-gun performance. Sure, his glower-and-growl moments are right out of sketch comedy, but the irascible Walt winds up being another great seriocomic creation from this iconic American actor.

He’s ably supported by Vang and, particularly, Her, two first-timers who couldn’t be more comfortable on camera. The two of them more than make up for some of the film’s clunkier moments, most of which involve life-and-death conversations between Walt and his fresh-faced parish priest (Christopher Carley). The high points of “Gran Torino” will make viewers likely to forgive its minor sins.

CAST & CREW

Director: Clint Eastwood

Writers (WGA): Nick Schenk (screenplay) & Dave Johannson (story) ...

Release Date: 9 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Action | Drama | Thriller

Plot: Disgruntled Korean War vet Walt Kowalski sets out to reform his neighbor, a young Hmong teenager, who tried to steal Kowalski's prized possession: his 1972 Gran Torino.

Cast:

Clint Eastwood ... Walt Kowalski
Christopher Carley ... Father Janovich
Bee Vang ... Thao Vang Lor
Ahney Her ... Sue Lor
Brian Haley ... Mitch Kowalski
Geraldine Hughes ... Karen Kowalski
Dreama Walker ... Ashley Kowalski
Brian Howe ... Steve Kowalski
John Carroll Lynch ... Barber Martin
William Hill ... Tim Kennedy
Brooke Chia Thao ... Vu
Chee Thao ... Grandma
Choua Kue ... Youa
Scott Eastwood ... Trey
Xia Soua Chang ... Kor Khue

Doubt

2008-12-13T00:17:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

I never saw John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt” performed onstage, but Shanley’s film version certainly doesn’t shy away from theatricality. Light bulbs explode, telephones ring insistently during tense arguments, literal and metaphorical winds whip up — heck, an actual cat chases an actual mouse, just to make sure the audience knows what’s going on.

The cat here is Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep), the kind of no-nonsense nun who figures in an entire generation’s parochial school nightmares. She’s a school principal who confiscates cough drops as candy, thinks “Frosty the Snowman” should be banned from the airwaves as a heretical celebration of the occult and is convinced that ballpoint pens will be the ruin of civilization.

Naturally, this brings her into conflict with her superior, parish priest Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who brings the aforementioned wind into Sister Aloysius’ well-ordered life. It’s 1964, Vatican II is brewing and the new priest in town thinks that priests and nuns might actually show love and compassion rather than instill fear into their young charges.

Sister Aloysius has been progressive enough to integrate the school, albeit with a single African-American student, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster II). Donald’s teacher, Sister James (Amy Adams), observes some odd behavior from Donald and fears that the young boy’s only friend, Father Flynn, may be guilty of improprieties.

That’s all Sister Aloysius has to hear before going on the warpath, and while she claims it’s the welfare of the children that most concerns her, it’s clear that it’s the change that Father Flynn represents that upsets her most. Failing to get anywhere with Donald’s mother, played by Viola Davis, Sister Aloysius goes after him herself, even though the Catholic Church gives men in its service power over women and — until recently — was always willing to look the other way regarding molestation scandals.

On one level, “Doubt” is a juicy “is he guilty or is she crazy?” melodrama of the “Death and the Maiden” school, and it’s admittedly entertaining to watch Streep play such a tough, cranky character. But if “Mamma Mia!” and “The Producers” taught us anything, it’s that stage people shouldn’t get too involved with the movie version, because the performances wind up playing to the mezzanine rather than to the camera lens.

But even if Streep and Hoffman aim for the cheap seats every so often, Adams and especially Davis deliver unsentimental, life-size-and-no-larger performances. Shanley’s best writing here is in the creation of Donald’s mother — whose reaction to Sister Aloysius’ suspicions provide “Doubt” with its most provocative yet truthful moments — and Davis does the role exquisite justice.

Had Shanley — whose only previous directorial effort was the odd cult comedy “Joe Versus the Volcano” — had entrusted his play to surer hands, “Doubt” might have been the dramatic powerhouse the playwright obviously wanted it to be. But he certainly got close, and that counts for something.

CAST & CREW

Director: John Patrick Shanley

Writers (WGA): John Patrick Shanley (screenplay) and John Patrick Shanley (play)

Release Date: 8 January 2009 (Israel)

Genre: Drama | Mystery

Plot: Set in 1964, Doubt centers on a nun who confronts a priest after suspecting him abusing a black student. He denies the charges, and much of the play's quick-fire dialogue tackles themes of religion, morality and authority.

Cast:

Meryl Streep ... Sister Aloysius Beauvier
Philip Seymour Hoffman ... Father Brendan Flynn
Amy Adams ... Sister James
Viola Davis ... Mrs. Miller
Alice Drummond ... Sister Veronica
Audrie J. Neenan ... Sister Raymond (as Audrie Neenan)
Susan Blommaert ... Mrs. Carson
Carrie Preston ... Christine Hurley
John Costelloe ... Warren Hurley
Lloyd Clay Brown ... Jimmy Hurley
Joseph Foster ... Donald Muller (as Joseph Foster II)
Bridget Megan Clark ... Noreen Horan
Michael Roukis ... William London
Haklar Dezso ... Zither Player
Frank Shanley ... Kevin

The Reader

2008-12-13T00:13:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

I’ve generally been a defender of the films of Stephen Daldry, but seeing “The Reader” made me understand why some people hated his previous movie, “The Hours.” That film, they said, was fussy and airless, tamping down truth and humanity in favor of the brand of dry “culture” that lures certain segments of the moviegoing public with the promise of a tastefully prim Sunday matinee.

That’s certainly how “The Reader” played for me; watching Daldry try to tuck the horrors of Nazi Germany into neat little hospital corners made for a singularly unsatisfying (however tidy) experience.

If there are any compelling moments to the film, they’re all in the first third, which could be called “Summer of My German Cougar” or “So I Schtupped a Nazi War Criminal.” Fifteen-year-old Michael (David Kross) and thirtyish streetcar conductor Hanna (Kate Winslet) have the opposite of a meet-cute: He’s sick with scarlet fever and barfing in the street, so she rinses the sidewalk and helps him home.

After he recovers, Michael goes to visit his Good Samaritan, and in no time they’re having a steamy affair. (Points to Daldry for being so frank about the nudity in these scenes; it’s rare for an American movie not to try to hide everything behind the sconces.) Michael soon discovers that Hanna loves it when he reads to her, and so he does, everything from Homer and Goethe to Tintin and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” Eventually, he rebels against the hold she has on him, so she winds up ending the affair on his 16th birthday.

Cut to about 10 years later, when Michael is attending law school and goes with his classmates to the trial of several women who were concentration camp guards. Much to his surprise, Hanna is one of the defendants. The trial winds up hinging on whether or not Hanna wrote a particular report regarding the deaths of various prisoners, and although Michael realizes he is in a position to help her, he chooses not to.

Decades later, the divorced Michael (now played by Ralph Fiennes) comes across a book that he once read to Hanna, and he begins sending her tapes of him reading, thus kicking off a correspondence that will change both of their lives.

But by this point, “The Reader” has shown itself to be so emotionally constipated — not to mention unable to seriously address the Holocaust — that there’s nothing compelling about these two characters or their stories. As one character points out toward the end, “If you want catharsis, look in literature; don’t look in the camps.” It’s advice that Daldry should have followed, since his movie certainly adds nothing to seemingly boundless explorations of this subject.

Most of the cast comes off as twitchy and cantankerous, although Kross makes for a compelling teenager in love (he’s less convincing as a young adult law student) and the great Bruno Ganz livens up his few scenes as Michael’s law professor.

While much of the acting is unremarkable, it bears noting that several performers are forced to wear some truly awful old-age makeup; Lena Olin, in particular, gives a monologue in the trial scene that I confess I mostly missed because I was fixated on the waxy mess that had been deposited upon her gorgeous face. It’s a rare moment of too much in a movie of not enough.

CAST & CREW

Director: Stephen Daldry

Writers: David Hare (screenplay) & Bernhard Schlink (book)

Release Date: 9 January 2009 (USA)

Genre: Drama | History | Romance | Thriller | War

Tagline: Unlock the mystery.

Plot: Post-WWII Germany: Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Burk re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.

Cast:

Ralph Fiennes ... Michael Berg
Jeanette Hain ... Brigitte
David Kross ... Young Michael Berg
Kate Winslet ... Hanna Schmitz
Susanne Lothar ... Carla Berg
Alissa Wilms ... Emily Berg
Florian Bartholomäi ... Thomas Berg
Friederike Becht ... Angela Berg
Matthias Habich ... Peter Berg
Frieder Venus ... Doctor
Marie-Anne Fliegel ... Hanna's Neighbor
Hendrik Arnst ... Woodyard Worker
Rainer Sellien ... Teacher
Torsten Michaelis ... Sports Master
Moritz Grove ... Holger

The Day the Earth Stood Still

2008-12-12T23:56:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

If you’re looking for chuckles this holiday season, bypass the miserably unfunny “Four Christmases” and go where the real comedy is — “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” a clumsy, moronic remake of Robert Wise’s brilliant 1951 classic about an alien invader trying to save the human race from its own self-destructive impulses.

What did poor Wise do, incidentally, to deserve such treatment? His chilling horror masterpiece “The Haunting” was already put through the meat-grinder with an effects-heavy 1999 remake, and his thriller “The Andromeda Strain” was revisited with ill results in a SciFi Channel re-do earlier this year. What next — a hip-hop reinterpretation of “The Sound of Music”? (Granted, Queen Latifah could totally tear up “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” but still…)

The new “Day” can’t be bothered to include the thought-provoking dialogue of the original, choosing instead to bury the audience with special effects that are visually impressive but no substitute for an actual script. And what words do remain are so exquisitely awful that they provide some of the season’s biggest laughs.

My personal favorite? Astro-biologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) takes alien Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) to see a Nobel Prize–winning scientist and notes that her colleague was honored “for his work in biological altruism.” What would that entail, exactly? Helping frogs cross the street?

Klaatu has arrived on this planet to warn that other civilizations are meeting to figure out what to do about humanity, which is on a course to destroy the Earth. But after the secretary of defense (Kathy Bates — no, really, Kathy Bates) threatens to interrogate him, he eludes the military with Helen’s help. After that kind of welcome, no one can really blame Klaatu for not standing in the way of mankind’s destruction, but Helen hopes to convince him that people can change and reverse our catastrophic course.

She never bothers to show him “An Inconvenient Truth” or a Prius waiting list to back up her argument, mind you, she just keeps jabbering, “We can change!” (I kept waiting for her to add some follow-up along the lines of, “We’ll all start bringing our own bags to the supermarket! And install those fluorescent bulbs that are unflattering to skin tones!”)

Klaatu’s sidekick robot Gort, after taking out some drone planes and their missiles, finally gets boxed up and taken to an underground facility where the android turns into billions of little locust-y bugs that destroy everything in their path. Thus does the final act of “Earth” turn into a remake of that classic stinker “The Swarm.” (The only good part of this sequence is that you get to see military men literally aim at a gnat with a cannon.)

To make matters worse, the movie can’t decide on consistent rules for the little bugs. When director Scott Derrickson (“The Exorcism of Emily Rose”) needs suspense, the creatures make ever-expanding cracks in glass before they break through and destroy everything; when the movie is in a hurry, they just swoop through and lay waste to an entire football stadium in seconds.

Discussing the acting in “Earth” is something of an exercise in pointlessness — Reeves does a lot of wooden staring while speaking in a monotone, so at least he’s working within his skill set. You’d think Jennifer Connelly would turn down all “weepy scientist” roles after “Hulk,” but she’s once again drying tears on her lab coat. Young Jaden Smith gives the ickiest kind of juvenile performance, radiating would-be cuteness and pathos as Helen’s stepson.

Only John Cleese, oddly cast as the Nobel honoree, brings anything resembling gravitas to the movie, but he sprints off-screen as quickly as he can. Ticket buyers for “The Day the Earth Stood Still” might feel similarly inspired to wear their running shoes to the theater.

CAST & CREW

Director: Scott Derrickson

Writers (WGA): David Scarpa (screenplay) & Edmund H. North (1951 screenplay)

Release Date: 12 December 2008 (Indonesia)

Genre: Drama | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline: 12.12.08 is the Day the Earth Stood Still

Plot: A remake of the 1951 classic sci-fi film about an alien visitor and his giant robot counterpart who visit Earth.

Cast:

Keanu Reeves ... Klaatu
Jennifer Connelly ... Helen Benson
Kathy Bates ... Regina Jackson
Jaden Smith ... Jacob Benson
John Cleese ... Professor Barnhardt
Jon Hamm ... Michael Granier
Kyle Chandler ... John Driscoll
Robert Knepper ... Colonel
James Hong ... Mr. Wu
John Rothman ... Dr. Myron
Sunita Prasad ... Rouhani
Juan Riedinger ... William Kwan
Sam Gilroy ... Tom
Tanya Champoux ... Isabel
Rukiya Bernard ... Student

Lakeview Terrace

2008-12-12T00:28:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Remember the spate of “from Hell” movies of the late 1980s and early ’90s, about psychopaths who would insinuate themselves into your life and then wreak havoc? It all started with the “mistress from Hell” (“Fatal Attraction”) but quickly spun off into the “nanny from Hell” (“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”), the “roommate from Hell” (“Single White Female”) and the “nymphet next door from Hell” (“The Crush”), among many others.

One of the lesser entries into this quickly-overplayed genre was the “cop neighbor from Hell” thriller “Unlawful Entry,” with Ray Liotta as the man in blue terrorizing suburbanites Kurt Russell and Madeleine Stowe. It wasn’t a great movie, but at least it knew exactly that kind of shameless thriller it was and didn’t try to convince the audience that it had something to say about police brutality or the fragility of marriage or anything.

If only “Lakeview Terrace” could have been as honest about its intentions. This schlocky suspense flick about African-American L.A. cop Sam Jackson blowing a gasket when a mixed-race couple (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) move in next door is no deeper than “Unlawful Entry,” but oh, how it wants you to think it has some resonant message about race in the post-riot, new-millennial Los Angeles.

It’s not like the film couldn’t have taken a more ambitious tack — director Neil LaBute has certainly made provocative films about gender politics (his laughable remake of “The Wicker Man” notwithstanding) and co-screenwriter Howard Korder’s plays (like “Boys’ Life” and “Fun”) have brilliantly punctured suburban anomie. Too bad the result of their labor plays out like Cordon Bleu chefs covering a shift at a McDonald’s.

“Lakeview Terrace” does have its cheap thrills, mostly revolving around Jackson playing head games with Wilson and Washington and orchestrating all kinds of cleverly nasty tricks to make them move out. By showing the couple’s marriage as somewhat incommunicative and volatile, however, the film doesn’t put a lot at stake — the way this husband and wife are portrayed, they’d be coming apart at the seams even if they’d moved next door to a vacant lot.

Most disappointing is the fact that writers Korder and David Loughery couldn’t resist giving us the scene where Jackson explains to Wilson (and the audience) exactly why he’s got it in for the couple, wrapping his motivations up in a tidy bow and explaining away any of the complicated, messy impulses that an actual human being might have. That moment feels like the worst of old Hollywood, where everything has to be underlined and the villain’s raison d’être has to be fully laid-out before good triumphs over evil.

Jackson skirts the edge of going overboard with his portrayal, widening his eyes so much at times that you expect him to start foaming at the mouth and fulminating about “race mixing” and “miscegenation.” If an actor this talented is going to slum it in hokey, over-the-top thrillers, I’d prefer he direct his anger at those mother-effing snakes on that mother-effing plane.

CAST & CREW

Director: Neil LaBute

Writers (WGA): David Loughery (screenplay) and Howard Korder (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 19 September 2008 (USA)

Genre: Drama | Thriller

Tagline: What could be safer than living next to a cop?

Plot: An LAPD officer will stop at nothing to force out the interracial couple who just moved in next door.

Cast:

Samuel L. Jackson ... Abel Turner
Patrick Wilson ... Chris Mattson
Kerry Washington ... Lisa Mattson
Ron Glass ... Harold Perreau
Justin Chambers ... Donnie Eaton
Jay Hernandez ... Javier Villareal
Regine Nehy ... Celia Turner
Jaishon Fisher ... Marcus Turner
Robert Pine ... Captain Wentworth
Keith Loneker ... Clarence Darlington
Caleeb Pinkett ... Damon Richards
Robert Dahey ... Jung Lee Pak
Ho-Jung ... Sang Hee Pak
Bitsie Tulloch ... Nadine
Michael Sean Tighe ... Manager

Choke

2008-12-12T00:22:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

As disappointing book-to-film adaptations go, “Choke” isn’t quite as bad as “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” but it’s up there.

The novel from “Fight Club” writer Chuck Palahniuk, about a sex addict who pretends he’s choking in restaurants to make money to pay for his demented mom’s hospital care, wasn’t exactly great literature. But the characters felt vaguely real beneath the weirdness — or perhaps because of it — and the story had glimmers of poignancy at which writer-director Clark Gregg’s film hints only rarely.

Sam Rockwell is certainly game for the material. As he’s shown in movies such as “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” he’s capable of playing characters who are twisted yet likable; there’s something dangerous about him, but also sort of sweet.

Here, his Victor Mancini feels like nothing more than a collection of eccentricities. Then again, “Choke” is so cursory and rushed, he doesn’t have time to show us much more. He works as a historical re-enactor at a Colonial America theme park with his best friend, Denny (Brad William Henke), which seems like an excuse to dress Rockwell in puffy shirts and pointy hats. (Gregg himself has a couple of amusing moments as the village’s self-serious ruler, who says things like, “Where dost thou go?”)

That Victor is a sex addict — who arranges wild trysts through his 12-step meetings — feels like an attempt to be hip and edgy, to shock us, rather than an integral part of the miserable misfit he has become.

The breeziness that marked Palahniuk’s writing is largely gone; “Choke” the movie instead feels like a strong gust of wind. For a film about people behaving badly — a comedy, no less — this one falls oddly flat. Even the sex is no fun. And there’s a lot of it: on the bathroom floor, in an airplane lavatory, on a haystack, even in a chapel. That last one is really meant to rattle us.

Along those lines, the funniest scene in “Choke” — the only one to inspire big belly laughs — is the one in which Victor arranges an online date with a woman (Heather Burns) who gets off on pretending she’s being raped. She’s such a control freak, though, she has to direct every element of her fetishistic victimhood.

Other relationships that took time to percolate come out of nowhere, namely the unlikely one that forms between Victor and his mom’s uptight doctor, a woman for whom he might have real feelings for the first time in his life. As Dr. Paige Marshall, Kelly Macdonald does something similar to her performance in “No Country for Old Men”; but here, a little of that simple, monotone sweetness goes a long way.

Meanwhile, as Victor’s mother, Ida, Anjelica Huston tries gallantly to infuse the character with depth rather than seeming gratuitously wacky, but the substance just isn’t there. Flashbacks to her sporadic parenting throughout Victor’s childhood help flesh things out somewhat, but she still comes off as more of an idea than a real person: flighty and free-spirited but with muddled motivations.

In the end, all Victor wants is to be loved. At least, that’s how it goes in the book. In the movie, though? Hard to tell, and even harder to care.

CAST & CREW

Director: Clark Gregg

Writers (WGA): Clark Gregg (screenplay) & Chuck Palahniuk (novel)

Release Date: 30 October 2008 (Australia)

Genre: Comedy | Drama

Plot: A sex-addicted con-man pays for his mother's hospital bills by playing on the sympathies of those who rescue him from choking to death.

Cast:

Kathryn Alexander ... Agnes / Mousy Girl
Teodorina Bello ... Jamaican Lady
Kate Blumberg ... Edwin's Wife
Jonah Bobo ... Young Victor
Willi Burke ... Deranged Socialite
Heather Burns ... Internet Date / Gwen
David Wolos-Fonteno ... Edwin (as David Fonteno)
Matt Gerald ... Detective Ryan
Clark Gregg ... Lord High Charlie
Joel Grey ... Phil
Viola Harris ... Eva Muller
Brad William Henke ... Denny
Paz de la Huerta ... Nico
Michelle Hurst ... Shapely Nurse
Anjelica Huston ... Ida J. Mancini

The Lucky Ones

2008-12-12T00:14:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Soldiers might be clamoring to re-enlist if they all saw as much action in their homecoming as the threesome in “The Lucky Ones.” Returning to combat could seem like a picnic in comparison with the tumult these three endure once back on U.S. soil.

“The Lucky Ones” is the latest casualty in Hollywood’s unsatisfying parade of war-on-terror dramas, a movie built on improbabilities.

Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams and Michael Pena manage occasional moments of humor and pathos as three wounded Iraq War veterans on an impromptu road trip across America.

But mostly, the screenplay by director Neil Burger and co-writer Dirk Wittenborn forges a false camaraderie by hurling the three lead players into perpetual artificial situations.

Beginning with a blackout that forces them to rent a car and drive rather than fly, “The Lucky Ones” tosses out one convenient contrivance after another to bond these battle-scarred strangers together, culminating in a preposterous encounter with a tornado that seems to blow in from some action flick playing in the next theater.

Though each comes with a fairly detailed life story, the characters themselves feel like hollow creations, deliberately designed as utter opposites so the filmmakers can show us how we’re all really the same inside.

Robbins plays Fred Cheever, a sturdy family man eager to return home to his wife and teenage son in the St. Louis suburbs.

Pena is T.K. Poole, a cocky sergeant headed to Las Vegas to seek “professional” sex therapy to restore his male plumbing, which is on the blink from a shrapnel wound that he fears would diminish him in the eyes of his fiancee.

McAdams is Colee Dunn, a Southerner who’s taken nothing but hard knocks in life yet retains her cheery optimism as she carts a fallen comrade’s valuable guitar back to his parents, who coincidentally also live in Vegas.

Seated near one another on a flight from Germany to New York, the three then end up sharing a minivan and all kinds of fabricated adventures meant to turn them from passing acquaintances to comrades in arms.

The disparate veterans bicker and broil, but they repeatedly have one another’s backs through a bar scuffle, a strange church service, a stranger society shindig, clashes with civilians over the Iraq conflict and any number of interpersonal crises.

Though our heroes don’t always get what they want, the road manages to toss up precisely what they need. Unfortunately, there’s little subtlety to the roadblocks, detours, U-turns and pit stops Burger and his team concoct.

How utterly felicitous that the story produces not just one, but two potential methods to produce exactly the amount of cash required to settle one of the soldiers’ financial burdens.

How deliriously fantastic that the group stumbles on a trio of skilled sex workers in the absolute middle of nowhere, women who might be able to ease T.K.’s little problem.

And how about that tornado, preceded by a monster hail storm, the foul weather wafting into the movie literally from out of the blue?

The stark documentary style of “The Lucky Ones” is a complete turnabout from the classy, surreal look of Burger’s last film, “The Illusionist.” However, that tale of magic and sleight of hand is much more plausible than his farfetched take on Iraq War homecomings.

CAST & CREW

Director: Neil Burger

Writers (WGA): Neil Burger (written by) & Dirk Wittenborn (written by)

Release Date: 26 September 2008 (USA)

Genre: Comedy | Drama | War

Tagline: Sometimes losing your way home means finding yourself

Plot: The story revolves around three soldiers -- Colee, TK and Cheever -- who return from the Iraq War after suffering injuries and learn that life has moved on without them.

Cast:

Tim Robbins ... Fred Cheaver
Rachel McAdams ... Colee Dunn
Michael Peña ... T.K. Poole
Molly Hagan ... Pat Cheaver
Mark L. Young ... Scott Cheaver
Howard Platt ... Stan Tilson
John Heard ... Bob
Arden Myrin ... Barbara Tilson
Coby Goss ... Peter Tilson
Vis Brown ... Rental Car Agent
Spencer Garrett ... Pastor Jerry Nolan
Katie Korby ... Shannon
Katherine LaNasa ... Janet
Conner Manning ... Jesse
William Manning ... Jesse

Nights in Rodanthe

2008-12-11T00:24:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

There’s a newly released Diane Lane movie that’s an absolute must-see. She stars as a teenager who escapes her grim town by forming a punk band and eventually inspiring young girls everywhere with her anti-authoritarian music and …

What’s that? We’re not talking about the 1980 riot-grrrl classic “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains,” recently made available on video for the first time ever?

You want to know about “Nights in Rodanthe”? Oh.

In yet another gooey adaptation of a popular, treacly novel by Nicholas Sparks (“The Notebook,” “Message in a Bottle”), Lane stars as Adrienne, a suburban wife and mother who takes a week off to care take a beachside inn for her friend Jean (Viola Davis), the hotel’s owner, who’s on vacation. She needs the time away to think about whether or not to take back her estranged, philandering husband Jack (Christopher Meloni).

The one guest at the inn is Dr. Paul Flanner (Richard Gere), who’s there to sort out issues of his own. He recently lost a female patient on the operating table, and the woman’s husband (Scott Glenn) — who is suing Paul for negligence — has asked the surgeon to come to the seaside town of Rodanthe, N.C., for a chat.

As a literal hurricane is bearing down on the inn — which defies all laws of logic and architecture by standing right on the beach itself — a metaphorical one swirls about Adrienne and Paul, who realize that they’re meant for each other. And as the storm pushes them into each other’s arms (a moment which, depending on your temperament, will make you swoon or scream with laughter), they heal each other’s wounds and teach each other how to love all over again.

The phrase “chick flick” hardly captures the scale of female fantasy going on in “Nights in Rodanthe.” First of all, you get to be Diane Lane, mother of two, still trim and gorgeous and with a trunk full of woodworking tools in the attic waiting for you to rediscover your muse. Add to that the fact that you have a choice between two gorgeous men — the manly Meloni, who’s dying to return to your bed and is begging your forgiveness, and Gere, the sensitive doctor who’s rocking your world with the best sex you’ve ever had while encouraging you to appreciate your worth. Late in the film, Adrienne even gets an apology from her bratty Goth teenage daughter (Mae Whitman) for her bratty Goth behavior.

All that’s missing is the part where she eats chocolate-covered cheesecake in order to make her thighs slimmer.

Lane, of course, puts her shoulder to this ludicrous screenplay (by Ann Peacock and John Romano) and gives it her all, even though she’s way too talented for such codswallop. (Also above the material? George C. Wolfe, the director of Broadway’s “Angels in America” plays, making his feature theatrical debut. Apart from some jarring “Moulin Rouge”–esque editing early on to show his characters’ fractured mental states, he plays it straight and efficiently, perhaps hoping to convince studio suits to trust him with the money to make a real movie next time.)

It’s to the point where you want to send Lane — as well as Davis, who does what she can with the “white heroine’s one black friend” role — to France for a year to make movies with François Ozon, André Téchiné and anyone else who can actually craft interesting and challenging roles for women. (The exchange program would also include long lunches featuring Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert and many bottles of really good red wine.)

Many critics will no doubt tar this film with the dreaded “Lifetime movie” epithet, but I’d venture a bit further — “Nights in Rodanthe” is the world’s longest General Foods International Coffee commercial.

CAST & CREW

Director: George C. Wolfe

Writers (WGA): Ann Peacock (screenplay) and John Romano (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 26 September 2008 (USA)

Genre: Drama | Romance

Tagline: It's never too late for a second chance

Plot: A doctor who is traveling to see his estranged son sparks with an unhappily married woman at a North Carolina inn.

Cast:

Diane Lane ... Adrienne Willis
Richard Gere ... Dr. Paul Flanner
Christopher Meloni ... Jack Willis
Viola Davis ... Jean
Becky Ann Baker ... Dot
Scott Glenn ... Robert Torrelson
Linda Molloy ... Jill Torrelson
Pablo Schreiber ... Charlie Torrelson
Mae Whitman ... Amanda Willis
Charlie Tahan ... Danny Willis
Carolyn McCormick ... Jenny Flanner
Ted Manson ... Old Gus
Ato Essandoh ... Jean's Lover
Terri Denise Johnson ... Medical Resident
Jessica Lucas ... Admiring Nurse

Miracle at St. Anna

2008-12-11T00:21:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Director Spike Lee wins a lot of battles in his new film, the World War II–set “Miracle at St. Anna,” but he ultimately loses the war. A powerful cast delivers, and many individual sequences stand out, so it’s too bad that the sum total of the project feels so muddled and excessive.

The film begins in 1983, with elderly veteran and post office employee Hector Negron (Laz Alonso) recognizing an old man who steps up to his window and then shooting that man in the chest with a German luger. The mystery deepens when the police find the long-lost head from a priceless Italian statue in Hector’s apartment. An eager young cub reporter (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, saddled with gee-whiz dialogue that even Dick Powell might have choked on) tries to get Hector to tell his story, but he won’t talk. He does, however, vault into a flashback that takes up most of the film.

Hector was a radio man with the African-American Buffalo Soldiers during World War II, and we see several companies trying in vain to cross a river in Italy, where Nazi snipers pick most of them off. Hector makes it across with three fellow soldiers — Staff Sergeant Staples (Derek Luke), ladies’ man Bishop Cummings (Michael Ealy) and the hulking and good-natured Pvt. Train (Omar Benson Miller) — but since their redneck commanding officer refuses to believe that they actually made it across, he provides them with no backup.

Train rescues 8-year-old Angelo (Matteo Sciabordi) from a barn, and he seems to bring the soldiers good luck. The quintet arrives at a small Italian village surrounded by Nazis and tries to figure out their next step, eventually getting tied up with a group of partisans while Staples and Cummings compete for the attentions of the beautiful Renata (Valentina Cervi).

Screenwriter James McBride adapts his own novel, and that’s one of the script’s many problems — there’s an army of minor characters, subplots, red herrings and MacGuffins that could easily have been jettisoned, but McBride obviously loves his own creation too much to trim it down. (“Miracle at St. Anna” runs an unwieldy 160 minutes — someone like Sam Fuller could have delivered an 85-minute film that covered all the bases.)

In addition to some Screenwriting 101 mistakes — this is Hector’s flashback, but it contains many sequences and conversations he couldn’t possibly have known about — the script never states its points about racism when it can overstate them. The men have conversations about the roles of blacks in American society that play like didactic platitudes stitched together, and the scenes of institutionalized racism would feel more effectively disturbing if they were presented as business-as-usual and not flecked with cracker spittle.

Still, there are moments that transcend the film’s problems, including the devastatingly graphic battle sequences, a horrifying massacre of innocents, and the propaganda broadcasts of “Axis Sally” (Alexandra Maria Lara), who urges the Buffalo Soldiers to stop fighting for a country that treats them like second-class citizens. Many of the quieter moments between characters (Staples and Renata, Tree and Angelo, etc.) also hit just the right note. While the cast is uniformly excellent, it’s worth highlighting Sciabordi’s moving and underplayed turn — it’s one of the best juvenile performances in recent memory.

More’s the pity, then, that those great moments are ultimately outweighed by the ones that don’t work, all the way to the would-be tearjerking climax. Lee’s creative passion is apparent throughout “Miracle at St. Anna,” but the screenplay lets him, and the audience, down.

CAST & CREW

Director: Spike Lee

Writers (WGA): James McBride (screenplay) & James McBride (novel)

Release Date: 26 September 2008 (USA)

Genre: Action | Crime | Drama | Thriller | War

Tagline: World War II has its heroes and its miracles.

Plot: Set in 1944 Italy, the story of four black American soldiers who get trapped in a Tuscan village during WWII.

Cast:

Derek Luke ... 2nd Staff Sergeant Aubrey Stamps
Michael Ealy ... Sergeant Bishop Cummings
Laz Alonso ... Corporal Hector Negron (Young / Old)
Omar Benson Miller ... Private First Class Sam Train
Pierfrancesco Favino ... Peppi 'The Great Butterfly' Grotta
Valentina Cervi ... Renata
Matteo Sciabordi ... Angelo Torancelli (The Boy)
John Turturro ... Detective Antonio 'Tony' Ricci
Joseph Gordon-Levitt ... Tim Boyle
John Leguizamo ... Enrico
Kerry Washington ... Zana Wilder
D.B. Sweeney ... Colonel Driscoll
Robert John Burke ... General Ned Almond
Omari Hardwick ... Platoon Commander Huggs
Omero Antonutti ... Ludovico

Religulous

2008-12-11T00:11:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Bill Maher is preaching to the choir with “Religulous,” a documentary that dissects organized religion, but he’s doing it in his laceratingly funny, typically sardonic way.

The comic has touched on this topic often in his standup act and on his HBO talk show “Real Time With Bill Maher,” but here he uses his formidable debating skills to go on a full, focused attack. Pretty much no one emerges unscathed (except those who practice Eastern religions, for some reason).

Although Maher’s mother was Jewish, he was raised in the Catholicism of his father’s side of the family; now he calls himself a rationalist, and thinks the idea that we all came from a garden with a talking snake is a fairy tale for overgrown children and crazies.

If you’re an atheist or an agnostic, you’ll be completely on board and happy to tag along with Maher as he travels the globe asking people about their faith — everywhere from Jerusalem to the Vatican to Amsterdam, where he finds not only the Cannabis Ministry but also a Muslim gay bar (with two people in it). At a makeshift truckers’ chapel in Raleigh, N.C., the drivers put their hands on his shoulders and pray in a circle that he’ll find the Lord (good luck with all that); at the shlocky Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, Fla., Maher interviews the actor playing Jesus, a hippie who wears a headset microphone to perform on stage.

If you’re a true believer, though, you’ll probably be offended — and some of his subjects become visibly agitated with him on camera. Maher is surely smart enough to realize that his movie will convert no one, but he seems to get off on the thrill of the challenge nonetheless.

“Religulous” comes from director Larry Charles, who teamed up with Sacha Baron Cohen for “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” and it has a structure reminiscent of that 2006 comedy as well as similarly uproarious laughs. The ones on the receiving end of Maher’s Socratic-style questioning are often humorless — they don’t get that he’s toying with them — which makes the results even more absurdly amusing. The more Maher probes, the more hypocrisies he exposes.

Having said that, many of his targets are low-hanging fruit, which was true of “Borat,” as well. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), a Christian who believes in creationism, doesn’t come off as the sharpest tool in the shed, and that’s before he starts making up words such as “indigously.” (His final quote: “You don’t have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate.”) Yisroel Dovid Weiss, an anti-Zionist rabbi in New York, is depicted as babbling, combative and on the fringe.

But as you’ve probably noticed by now, “Religulous” consists of a series of interviews, a parade of talking heads expounding about heavy subject matter, which potentially could have been dry and lifeless. Instead, it’s consistently entertaining and often laugh-out-loud outrageous, a testament to Charles’ ear for comic timing and to the comfort he and Maher clearly enjoy with each other.

Quick cutaways to movie clips that illustrate his points, from “Scarface” to “Superbad,” keep the energy and hilarity high, as do subtitles commenting on the conversations, similar to “The Word” segment on “The Colbert Report.”

But Maher undermines his arguments at the end when the tone turns sharply serious: He tries to make a connection between religion and all the wars and violence in the world, and he does it with the same kind of certitude he condemned others for having. He takes his infinite verbal capacity and turns it into a heavy-handed tirade, when the process of seeking enlightenment had a far more divine power.

CAST & CREW

Director: Larry Charles

Writer: Bill Maher (written by)

Release Date: 3 October 2008 (USA)

Genre: Documentary

Tagline: Do you smell something burning?

Plot: Bill Maher's take on the current state of world religion.

Cast:

Bill Maher ... Himsel

rest of cast listed alphabetically:

Steve Burg ... Himself
George W. Bush ... Himself (archive footage)
Kirk Cameron ... Himself (archive footage)
George Coyne ... Himself
Tom Cruise ... Himself (archive footage)
Jerry Cummings ... Himself
Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda ... Himself
Reginald Foster ... Himself
Dean Hamer ... Himself - Dr. Dean Hamer
Ken Ham ... Himself
John McCain ... Himself (archive footage)
Aki Nawaz ... Himself (as Propa-Gandhi)
Andrew Newberg ... Himself
Fred Phelps ... Himself (archive footage)
Mark Pryor ... Himself - Senator
Pat Robertson ... Himself (archive footage)
John Travolta ... Himself (archive footage)
Yisroel Dovid Weiss ... Himself

Nobel Son

2008-12-10T00:27:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Just in time for year-end “worst movie” lists comes “Nobel Son,” a movie far too confident in its own cleverness and charm, two elements it lacks in abundance.

Here are several rules this idiotic time-waster violates:

No. 1: If you’re going to have a convoluted conspiracy/caper/plot at the heart of your story, it should hold up to the tiniest amount of scrutiny. By the time Barkley Michaelson (Bryan Greenberg) realizes that he’s the victim of the machinations of the sultry City Hall (Eliza Dushku) and the conniving Thaddeus (Shawn Hatosy), I had already come up with at least three ways that this allegedly diabolical frame-up made no sense whatsoever and how it could be explained to the police in about two sentences.

No. 2: If the names and attributes of characters are going to appear written on-screen, it’s annoying when someone later speaks those attributes out loud. The word “autodidact” appears on screen with Thaddeus’ name when he shows up in the movie; a few scenes later, he tells someone else that he’s an autodidact. Similarly, Thaddeus calls Gastner (Danny DeVito) a “recovering obsessive-compulsive,” even though the audience was informed of this fact when the character first appeared. Note to screenwriters Randall Miller (who also directed) and Jody Savin: These descriptive terms were irksome enough the first time; repeating them is like biting the inside of your cheek and then accidentally biting the same spot again later.

No. 3: If you were lucky enough to ensnare talented actors like Alan Rickman (as an obnoxious academic who wins the Nobel Prize), Mary Steenburgen (as Rickman’s oft-cuckolded wife), Bill Pullman, Ted Danson, Ernie Hudson, Hatosy and Dushku, write a script in which they can play characters who resemble human beings, the kind who say interesting things and have something to do.

“Nobel Son” is so utterly idiotic, that I can’t even bring myself to explain the plot. It basically boils down to obnoxious Barkley trying to finish his thesis when his stentorian father Eli wins the Nobel. The night before he’s supposed to join his parents on a flight to Stockholm, Barkley has a tryst with poet City, but then winds up getting kidnapped by Thaddeus, who has his own ax to grind with Eli. Ransom demands, double-crosses, “shocking” revelations and comeuppances follow, but none of it is remotely interesting.

“Nobel Son” was one of my most unpleasant filmgoing experiences of 2008 (and in a year like this, that’s saying something). With the economy in the crapper, two wars being waged abroad and a new Britney Spears album on the charts, there’s already enough strife in this world. Spare yourself the added injury of “Nobel Son.”

CAST & CREW

Director: Randall Miller

Writers (WGA): Jody Savin (written by) & Randall Miller (written by)

Release Date: 5 December 2008 (USA)

Genre: Comedy | Crime | Drama

Plot: Barkley Michaelson is in a deep life rut. He's struggling to finish his PhD thesis when his father, the learned Eli Michaelson...

Cast:

Alan Rickman ... Eli Michaelson
Bryan Greenberg ... Barkley Michaelson
Shawn Hatosy ... Thaddeus James
Mary Steenburgen ... Sarah Michaelson
Bill Pullman ... Max Mariner
Eliza Dushku ... City Hall
Danny DeVito ... Gastner
Ted Danson ... Harvey Parrish
Ernie Hudson ... Lasasso
Tracey Walter ... Simon Ahrens
Lindy Booth ... Beth
Kevin West ... Jaundice

rest of cast listed alphabetically:

Kirk Baily ... Wil Cavalere
Dawn Balkin ... Stewardess
Greg Collins ... Foreman
Reid Collums ... Delivery Guy
Lucy DeVito
Tiffany Downey ... Model
Bennett Dunn ... Bartender
Mark Famiglietti ... Officer Relyea
Mary Pat Gleason ... Ruby
Brendon Graham ... Soldier
Joyce Guy ... Eileen Moses
Larry Hankin ... Dr. Polaczek
Juliette Jeffers ... Claire
Matthew Kimbrough ... Deacon
Hal B. Klein ... Tully's Guy
Joe Koons ... Poet
Valerie Long ... Excrement Woman
Wayne Lopez ... Cabbie
Danika Quinn ... Opera Singer (as Danika Osterman)
Dean Rader-Duval ... Ernie
Johanna Torell ... Analea
Matt Winston ... Clifford
Avis Wrentmore ... Model

Flash of Genius

2008-12-10T00:20:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

It’s the first day of school and Greg Kinnear, as a college engineering professor, writes the word “ethics” on the blackboard for his students to ponder.

Obviously, this will be important to this character and to his story. It’s also just one of many examples of director Mark Abraham spelling out for the audience exactly where he’s going with “Flash of Genius,” a bland David-and-Goliath tale of corporate greed and deception that’s based on true events.

Kinnear stars as Dr. Robert Kearns, married father of six and inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper in 1960s Detroit. Someone had to figure it out — the guys at the Ford Motor Co. had been tinkering for a while with little success. But then when Kearns came along, the company liked his makeshift contraption so much, it stole the thing away from him and perfected it without giving him credit (or a cent).

“Flash of Genius” is the long, arduous story of the legal battles and family sacrifices Kearns made in the name of truth, justice and all that is right in this world. There’s something quaint about how old-fashioned this little guy’s fight is — and Kinnear is often so aw-shucks in his Midwesternness, it sounds like he’s doing a Jimmy Stewart impression.

Always one with a flair for comedy, Kinnear is stronger toward the end of the movie, when Kearns nervously serves as his own lawyer in court; the absurdity of these scenes provides some desperately needed laughs. You know the line about how a man who represents himself has a fool for a client? It’s like that.

But we know that he fought and won, and Abraham, a longtime producer directing for the first time from a script by Philip Railsback, does little to boost suspense.

The movie touches on the ways in which Kearns’ single-minded quest for recognition damaged his family (he was briefly hospitalized for a mental breakdown), but it doesn’t make him too tortured or off-putting because, you know, we’re still supposed to root for him to succeed. It’s a tough balance to strike, and “Flash of Genius” never makes him entirely convincing in either direction.

Lauren Graham is likable as always but seems miscast as Kearns’ dutiful wife, Phyllis, who finds she can only tolerate his obsession for so long. You want to see her in a livelier, sharper, more subversive role — she was completely great in “Bad Santa,” for example. Dermot Mulroney doesn’t get much to do as Kearns’ connected friend who tries to help him sell his invention, but at least he’s not in a romantic comedy this time.

But Alan Alda has a couple of standout scenes as Kearns’ lawyer and, after a while, he sounds like the only person who is making any sense. As Kearns’ lawsuit drags on, Ford executives just want to make it go away, and offer him increasing amounts of life-changing money. Kearns won’t even begin to consider it, which is hard to fathom, and in feel-good movie fashion, his kids support him all the way.

There’s a fine line between standing up for yourself and selfishness, and “Flash of Genius” drives right over it.

CAST & CREW

Director: Marc Abraham

Writers (WGA): Philip Railsback (written by)

John Seabrook (article)

Release Date: 3 October 2008 (USA)

Genre: Drama

Tagline: Corporations have time, money, and power on their side. All Bob Kearns had was the truth.

Plot: Robert Kearns takes on the Detroit automakers who he claims stole his idea for the intermittent windshield wiper.

Cast:

Jake Abel ... Dennis Kearns
Aaron Abrams ... Ian Miellor
Alan Alda ... Gregory Lawson
London Angelis ... Wade Previck
Dylan Authors ... Young Pat Kearns
Warren Belle ... Cop #2
Grant Boyle ... Patrick Kearns
Sergio Di Zio ... Louis
Ashton Doudelet ... Older Tim
Tim Eddis ... Cop #1
Andrew Gillies ... Paul Previck
Lauren Graham ... Phyllis Kearns
Josette Halpert ... Teen Maureen
Tim Kelleher ... Charlie Defao
Greg Kinnear ... Bob Kearns
Gavin & Ben Kuiack ... Infant Bob Kearns Jr
Victoria Learn ... Young Maureen
Isaac Lupien ... Older Bob Kearns Jr
Tatiana Maslany ... Older Kathy Kearns
Dermot Mulroney ... Gil Privick
Duane Murray ... Jim
Landon Norris ... Young Dennis Kearns
Shae Norris ... Young Kathy Kearns
Kate Parr ... Peggy
Mitch Pileggi ... Ford Exec
Simon Reynolds ... Chrysler Guy
Daniel Roebuck ... Frank Sertin
Chuck Shamata ... Professor Irwin
Bill Smitrovich ... Judge Michael Franks
Kristian Truelsen ... Doctor
Steven Woodworth ... Young Tim
Liam & Owen Wright ... Toddler Bob Kearns Jr.

Rachel Getting Married

2008-12-10T00:14:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

No matter how sophisticated home theater systems get, I’m a big advocate of seeing movies on the big screen. Yes, tickets and snacks are expensive, and people don’t know how to behave in public anymore, but the actors and cinematographers and writers and directors want you to see their work writ large, in a dark room, with booming speakers. Watching films on an iPhone may be convenient, but it’s not what the artists intended.

For “Rachel Getting Married,” however, I’m going to lift my usual rule and suggest you wait to see it until you have access to a fast-forward button, for reasons I’ll explain momentarily.

Anne Hathaway stars as Kym, a messed-up young woman who gets a weekend pass out of rehab so that she can return to her home in Connecticut for the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt).

We’ve all seen lots of movies about dysfunctional families, substance abusers and suburban weddings in the last few decades, goodness knows, but screenwriter Jenny Lumet (daughter of director Sydney) deftly shows more than she tells. Rather than write out conversations where characters tell each other things they already know so that the audience can be brought up to speed, Lumet drops little hints along the way.

In moments when Kym’s father (Bill Irwin) and stepmother (Anna Deavere Smith) look at each other in silent concern or Kym explores her old house or the two sisters have lovingly awkward conversations about the past — to say nothing of Kym’s spectacularly disastrous rehearsal-dinner toast — attentive audiences can glean this family’s tragedy and the imbalance of their relationships.

The cast is terrific, from Hathaway’s black hole of narcissism and neediness to the always-radiant Debra Winger as Kym and Rachel’s mostly absent mom. Hathaway is getting Oscar buzz, not so much for breaking new ground with this performance but for being a luminously gorgeous actress playing a role where she swears, sports a self-inflicted bad haircut and has sex with a fellow NA member (the handsome Mather Zickel as Kieran, who winds up as the wedding’s best man). Intentionally or not, she’s got the Halle Berry/Charlize Theron playbook in her hands and she’s using it brilliantly.

Where “Rachel Getting Married” needs the fast-forward button is, oddly enough, when Rachel finally gets married. Up until that point, the film is a compelling mix of painful comedy and revelatory tragedy, but when we get to the wedding reception, director Jonathan Demme gets completely distracted by the musicians he’s cast to perform in the film.

I adore Robyn Hitchcock (the subject of a Demme documentary) and Sister Carol (who memorably put a Caribbean spin on “Wild Thing” at the end of Demme’s “Something Wild”), but their musical performances — along with that of a samba combo — grind the plot of “Rachel” to a complete halt. By the time the amps get unplugged and the characters start speaking again, the momentum is completely lost.

That’s a real shame, because “Rachel Getting Married” was shaping up to be one of the season’s more moving dramas. The best way to work around the director’s self-sabotage would be, I think, to get the DVD, skip past the reception music, watch the rest of the movie, and then go back and listen to the songs later. That way, you’ll get to enjoy a fine script as well as Jonathan Demme’s favorite bands without feeling like the director just lost his way.

CAST & CREW

Director: Jonathan Demme

Writer (WGA): Jenny Lumet (written by)

Release Date: 31 October 2008 (Spain)

Genre: Drama | Romance

Plot: A young woman who has been in and out from rehab for the past 10 years returns home for the weekend for her sister's wedding.

Cast:

Anne Hathaway ... Kym
Rosemarie DeWitt ... Rachel
Mather Zickel ... Kieran
Bill Irwin ... Paul
Anna Deavere Smith ... Carol
Anisa George ... Emma
Tunde Adebimpe ... Sidney
Debra Winger ... Abby
Jerome Le Page ... Andrew
Beau Sia ... Norman Sklear
Dorian Missick ... Dorian Lovejoy
Kyrah Julian ... Sidney's Sister
Carol Jean Lewis ... Sidney's Mom (as Carol-Jean Lewis)
Herreast Harrison ... Sidney's Grandmother
Gonzales Joseph ... Sidney's Cousin

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

2008-12-10T00:11:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

One of the great teen-movie subgenres is “that crazy 24 hours that changed everything,” which has given us classics (“Sixteen Candles,” “Dazed and Confused”) as well as movies that are merely OK (“Adventures in Babysitting,” “Can’t Hardly Wait”).

Put “Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist” in that latter category — despite an appealing cast and a tone of mildly sardonic sweetness, the movie is missing that X factor that makes you understand why the characters fall for each other and gets you to root for them being together. It felt like the movie put a sheet of hard plastic between the audience and the screen, preventing full immersion into what could have been a real charmer of a comedy.

Put-upon Nick (Michael Cera) is the bassist for a drummer-less New Jersey rock band, The Jerk Offs, of which he is the only heterosexual member. Even though he’s still depressed about getting dumped by his pretty, unfaithful girlfriend Tris (Alexis Dziena), he loads up his Yugo and drives into Manhattan to play a gig.

Also heading into the city that night are Tris and her classmate frenemies Norah (Kat Dennings) and Caroline (Ari Graynor). Norah has never met Nick but harbors a crush on him based on the mix CDs he’s burned for the unappreciative Tris. (Shades of the character in “Metropolitan” who falls in love with a boy based on the discarded love letters he wrote to her roommate.)

Norah and Nick have a meet-cute at the Jerk Offs show, and Nick’s bandmates are thrilled that he’s interested in someone besides toxic Tris. One makeover later — because all gay men in Hollywood movies exist only to lug around Wonderbras and facilitate heterosexual romance — the musicians send Nick and Norah off to find a secret show by a legendary underground band while they take attempt to take the hilariously inebriated Caroline home.

If there’s one aspect of adolescent fantasy that director Peter Sollett (“Raising Victor Vargas”) gets exactly right, it’s the idea of New York City as a playground where minors can always get into bars and where there’s plenty of free parking all night long. (Manhattan hasn’t looked like this much of a teenage dream since “The World of Henry Orient.”) The new generation of indie-rock kids will no doubt love all the band-name-dropping (as well as the cameo appearance by hipster musician Devendra Banhart) even if it will eventually make the film as dated as, say, the “Empire Records” soundtrack.

And if you think that shared taste in music alone is enough to make two teens fall in love with each other, then maybe “Nick & Norah” will work better for you than it did for me. I wanted to get swept up in the movie, but I never had that moment where I was convinced that the two lead characters belonged together, even though Dennings is charming and witty and Cera has his sensitive hangdog-hipster routine down cold. (Frances Farmer once referred to her famous co-star as “Cary Grant being Cary Grant being Cary Grant,” and if Cera doesn’t diversify his portfolio soon, his peaches are going to get a little too moldy, if you know what I mean.)

“Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist” comes very close to working, but it’s ultimately a let-down. Or as the characters in the film might put it, it’s a iTunes Free Single of the Week that doesn’t make you want to download the whole album.

CAST & CREW

Director: Peter Sollett

Writers (WGA): Lorene Scafaria (screenplay) & Rachel Cohn (novel) ...

Release Date: 3 October 2008 (USA)

Genre: Comedy | Drama | Music | Romance

Plot: High school student Nick O'Leary, member of the Queercore band The Jerk Offs, meets college-bound Norah Silverberg and she asks him to be her boyfriend for five minutes.

Cast:

Michael Cera ... Nick
Kat Dennings ... Norah
Aaron Yoo ... Thom
Rafi Gavron ... Dev
Ari Graynor ... Caroline
Alexis Dziena ... Tris
Jonathan B. Wright ... Beefy Guy (Lethario) (as Jonathan Bradford Wright)
Zachary Booth ... Gary
Jay Baruchel ... Tal
Justin Rice ... Bishop Allen
Christian Rudder ... Bishop Allen
Giorgio Angelini ... Bishop Allen
Darbie Nowatka ... Bishop Allen
Cully Symington ... Bishop Allen
Jeremy Haines ... Randy (Are You Randy)

Cadillac Records

2008-12-08T23:45:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

While it tells the story of an exciting period in American pop culture, “Cadillac Records” winds up being so trite, tidy and two-dimensional that you would swear you were watching a late-night infomercial for the great music of Chess Records. All that’s missing is a toll-free number and a paid walk-on by Frankie Avalon.

More’s the pity, since the story of Polish immigrant Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody) and how he made a fortune on “race music” by nurturing the careers of Muddy Waters and other blues-rock legends certainly could have translated to a compelling screen story. As it stands, however, “Cadillac Records” feels uncomfortably like “Walk Hard” played completely, deadly straight.

As Chess turns his Chicago junkyard into a “colored” nightclub, sharecropper Waters (Jeffrey Wright) plays and sings for a man recording folk music for the Library of Congress. Hearing his music played back to him for the first time inspires the guitar player to leave Mississippi and head to Chicago to find his fortune as a musician. After he plays at Chess’ club, the nightlife impresario drags him into a recording studio, and history is made.

What follows is known by anyone who’s ever watched VH1’s “Behind the Music,” with Little Walter (Columbus Short), Etta James (Beyoncé Knowles), Chuck Berry (Mos Def) and the rest trooping through the studio, going on tour, getting rich, doing drugs, breaking up marriages, getting arrested and watching white acts rip off their music. There’s a template movies like this follow, and here there’s not one note of deviation.

There are plenty of howlin’ moments in writer-director Darnell Martin’s script that have nothing to do with Mr. Wolf, from the painful narration read by Cedric the Entertainer (he describes Muddy Waters as a man “every man wanted to be, and every woman wanted to love” and gives Cliff’s Notes on mid-century racism) to the appearance of some pasty Brits who meet Waters on the sidewalk in front of Chess and tell him, “We named our group after one of your songs — ‘Rolling Stone.’” And do we honestly believe that Etta James didn’t understand what the self-explanatory “All I Could Do Was Cry” was about until Leonard Chess explained it to her?

The musical performances are sprightly enough, but they’ll all make you wish you were listening to the real deal. Knowles is a talented singer, but let’s face it, she’s no Etta James. (If you were wondering how she landed the role, her executive producer credit on “Cadillac Records” should explain all.) Her performance seems like something of a natural progression from “Dreamgirls” — in that film, she basically played Diana Ross; here, she’s essentially playing Diana Ross playing Billie Holiday in “Lady Sings the Blues.”

Brody, Wright and a jaunty Mos Def — as well as the always tragically underutilized Gabrielle Union, as Waters’ unhappy wife — do what they can to elevate the material, but it’s a lost cause. “Cadillac Records” is as flat as the LPs you’d be better off listening to for the 109 minutes required to watch the film.

CAST & CREW

Director: Darnell Martin

Writer (WGA): Darnell Martin (written by)

Release Date: 5 December 2008 (USA)

Genre: Drama | Musical

Tagline: If you take the ride, you must pay the price.

Plot: Chronicles the rise of Chess Records and its recording artists.

Cast:
Adrien Brody ... Leonard Chess
Jeffrey Wright ... Muddy Waters
Gabrielle Union ... Geneva Wade
Columbus Short ... Little Walter
Cedric the Entertainer ... Willie Dixon
Emmanuelle Chriqui ... Revetta Chess
Eamonn Walker ... Howlin' Wolf
Mos Def ... Chuck Berry
Beyoncé Knowles ... Etta James

rest of cast listed alphabetically:

Tim Bellow ... Man in the Caddy
Tony Bentley ... Lomax
Lawrence P. Beron ... Overseer
Tammy Blanchard ... Isabelle Allen
Eric Bogosian ... Alan Freed
Marc Bonan ... Keith Richards
Wayne Cobham ... Piano - Ettas Recording Recording Group
Ryan Curtis ... Picnic Boyfriend
Veronika Dash ... Blonde
Eshaya Draper ... Geneva's 7 Year Old Son
John Farrer ... Violinist - Ettas Recording group
Shiloh Fernandez ... Phil Chess
Jill Flint ... Shirley Feder
Doug W. Goldman ... Trumpet - Ettas Recording group
Gano Grills ... Slick Pimp
Suzette Gunn ... Minnie
Evan Hart ... Young lover
Osas Ighodaro ... Vicky - Maid
Kevin Jackson ... Mysterious Black Man
Albert Jones ... Hubert Sumlin
Nate Jones ... Etta's Recording Group
Rayan Lawrence ... Harmonica Player
Chyna Layne ... Juanita
Malikha Mallette ... Little Walter's girlfriend
Kevin Mambo ... Jimmy Rogers
Anthony Del Negro ... Bandstand Dancer
Natasha Ononogbo ... Muddy Waters' Girlfriend
Ginnie Randall ... Muddy Waters Grandmother
Norman Reedus ... Chess
Jake Robards ... Robert
Jay O. Sanders ... Mr. Feder
Stephen Seidel ... Officer Brown
Derrick Simmons ... Dice Player
Valence Thomas ... James Cotton
Dwan Dink Young ... Drums - Ettas Recording group

Frost/Nixon

2008-12-08T23:38:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

You know how a comedian can completely ruin his own joke by stopping to explain the punch line? The filmmakers behind “Frost/Nixon” do the same thing, undercutting some of the film’s most powerful moments by tossing in scenes where the characters tell the audience what it has already seen.

Does Hollywood not trust moviegoers’ intelligence? Or does director Ron Howard’s TV background make him assume that everything has to be repeated, just in case someone was in the kitchen making a sandwich the first time?

It’s a pity there’s so much redundancy going on, because “Frost/Nixon,” as the title suggests, manages a real power when TV personality David Frost (played here by Michael Sheen) and disgraced former president Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) butt heads. Frost, of course, made television history by paying Nixon to do a series of one-on-one sit-downs, and watching these two media-savvy figures go toe-to-toe made for fascinating TV.

The interview segments — and the off-camera negotiations and conversations — between Frost and Nixon are easily the highlights of the film, but Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan (adapting his own play) dilute the rest of the movie with a tiresome underdog story about Frost and his accomplices bucking the odds, fighting to get their show on the air and looking for what Sarah Palin would call the ultimate “gotcha” question.

We’ve seen that story a million times before — even if it plays like a fantasy in this era of a “fair and balanced” media that looked elsewhere while the president raped the Constitution — and it takes time away from the fascinating interplay between the two lead actors. Sheen, best known in the U.S. for his portrayal of Tony Blair in “The Queen” (also written by Morgan), plays Frost as an vain showman who finds himself in the unfamiliar waters of real journalism, equally as interested in making history as he is in lining up sponsors.

Langella makes an extraordinary Nixon — while the actor doesn’t much resemble the president, he gets the voice, the rounded shoulders and the jowly persistence just right. The actor achieves that transcendence by which you forget you’re not watching the real guy, something that Sean Penn’s overrated “Milk” performance never manages. While Langella may not be the cinema’s finest Tricky Dick — that title still belongs to Philip Baker Hall’s powerhouse performance in Robert Altman’s “Secret Honor” — his portrayal packs a wallop.

If only someone could have talked Morgan and Howard into trimming all the sideline stuff. Even with a strong ensemble of actors (Toby Jones, Rebecca Hall, Sam Rockwell, Oliver Platt), “Frost/Nixon” dims when Langella and Sheen aren’t the focus. It’s full of the kind of slick, shallow, Oscar-friendly filmmaking for which Howard has received undue acclaim, but the movie only hints at what could have been a sharper, smarter look at politics and the media.

CAST & CREW

Director: Ron Howard

Writers: Peter Morgan (screenplay) & Peter Morgan (play)

Release Date: 26 December 2008 (Australia)

Genre: Biography | Drama | History

Tagline: 400 million people were waiting for the truth.

Plot: A dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost and former president Richard Nixon.

Cast:

Toby Jones ... Swifty Lazar
Frank Langella ... Richard Nixon
Michael Sheen ... David Frost
Sam Rockwell ... James Reston, Jr.
Kevin Bacon ... Jack Brennan
Matthew Macfadyen ... John Birt
Oliver Platt ... Bob Zelnick
Rebecca Hall ... Caroline Cushing
Andy Milder ... Frank Gannon
Kate Jennings Grant ... Diane Sawyer
Gabriel Jarret ... Ken Khachigian
Jim Meskimen ... Raymond Price
Patty McCormack ... Pat Nixon
Geoffrey Blake ... Interview Director
Clint Howard ... Lloyd Davis

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

2008-12-08T23:34:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

After “The Devil Wears Prada” detailed an up-and-comer at Vogue magazine, “How to Lose Friends & Alienate People” attempts to do the same with Vanity Fair. Cross your fingers that Hollywood eventually gets to Field & Stream.

Based on the memoir by Toby Young, “How to Lose Friends” is about a British journalist named Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) hired from across the pond to come to New York and write celebrity profiles for Sharps magazine — a clear stand-in for Vanity Fair, complete with a doppelganger for Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter, played by Jeff Bridges.

Pegg’s Sidney is your classic Brit in the Big City, but perhaps not in the way you’d expect. Surrounded by serious, unfunny and superficial colleagues, he’s a loutish, uncool party crasher who cheerfully claims “Con Air” is the greatest film ever made.

In “How to Lose Friends,” Americans are the ones that need to loosen up. But when did we Yanks become the straight men? After centuries of casting the British — with their etiquette and their tea — as the boring ones, the international scales of stereotype may be tipping the other way.

Indeed, Sidney is at one point described as “a British person born in New Jersey.”

But the one cultural difference Sidney is most proud of is his refusal to join in — as portrayed here — American-style fawning over celebrities. (Never mind Fleet Street’s rabid celebrity obsession.)

Sidney is more fearless. He doesn’t bat an eye at asking a musical comedy star if he’s Jewish or if he’s gay. He doesn’t hesitate to call a highly regarded young director a twit. And he won’t play the industry standard games of cow-towing to publicist demands to land an interview.

“Hacks do not take orders from flacks,” he insists.

It’s not his ethics that make him enemies so much as his boorish behavior. Only fellow scribe Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst) can tolerate him.

There is some satire here of the entertainment industry: its velvet ropes, its “in-crowd,” its celebrity coddling. But where there might be biting observation, there are mostly pratfalls, “limpy pig” dances and full-frontal nudity.

That’s not necessarily all to the bad, since Pegg’s good cheer is hard to resist. The British comedic actor impressed with his breakthrough British comedies “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” — both of which are smart enough while seeming dumb.

“How to Lose Friends” comes close to finding the same equilibrium. Unfortunately, it falls into incredibly predictable territory as Sidney gives up his standards in return for advancement and then doubts whether it’s worth trading success for a chance at real love.

The two notable satirical exceptions are Gillian Anderson’s pitch-perfect publicist and the mock trailer for the fictional film “Teresa” about Mother Teresa, starring a young starlet (Megan Fox).

Instead, the film turns to standard romantic comedy territory. Sidney, as anyone would, falls for Alison. Dunst is a restless, whip-smart beauty who, after all, can make Spider-Men consider giving up their powers. What chance does a hack have?

The film undoubtedly loses something when she disappears for much of the third act as the film lumbers toward obvious movie cliches instead of something new. It’s a shame because the movie’s director, Robert Weide, has proven a willingness to go deep into life’s raw imperfections as a director and producer of Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

If only he had asked while making the film, “What would Larry do?”

CAST & CREW

Director: Robert B. Weide

Writers: Peter Straughan (screenplay) & Toby Young (book)

Release Date: 3 October 2008 (USA)

Genre: Comedy | Romance

Tagline: Brace yourselves, America.

Plot: A British writer struggles to fit in at a high-profile magazine in New York. Based on Toby Young's memoir "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People".

Cast:

Kelan Pannell ... Young Sidney Young
Janette Scott ... Mrs. Young
Simon Pegg ... Sidney Young
Megan Fox ... Sophie Maes
Gillian Anderson ... Eleanor Johnson
Kelly Jo Charge ... Apollo Awards Presenter
Christian Smith ... Apollo Awards Guest
Katherine Parkinson ... PR Woman
Felicity Montagu ... Clipboard Nazi
Thandie Newton ... Apollo Awards Guest
John Lightbody ... Assistant Hotel Manager
Ian Bonar ... Post Modern Review Staff #1
James Corden ... Post Modern Review Staff #2
Fenella Woolgar ... Post Modern Review Staff #3
Chris O'Dowd ... Post Modern Review Staff #4

Blindness

2008-12-06T00:43:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

In his previous overrated hit films, “City of God” and “The Constant Gardener,” Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles has looked at humanity as wriggling specimens pinned to a board. His movies attach people-puppets to big, bold statements, but the films flounder when those people are supposed to be, you know, multi-dimensional human beings.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that Meirelles found himself drawn to José Saramago’s novel “Blindness,” which has characters like Doctor’s Wife and Woman with Dark Glasses dealing with a sudden worldwide epidemic of blindness wherein people can see only white instead of only black. (This milky opaqueness gives cinematographer Cesar Charlone license to create the film’s only satisfying moments.)

The epidemic begins when First Blind Man (Yusuke Iseya) is suddenly stricken with the disease, which he immediately passes on to those with whom he first comes into contact: Thief (Don McKellar, who also wrote the screenplay) who takes the blind man’s car, First Blind Man’s Wife (Yoshino Kimura) and Doctor (Mark Ruffalo). The latter’s spouse (Julianne Moore) somehow manages not to go blind, but she fakes it so that she can accompany her husband into a government-sanctioned quarantine facility.

Once inside, the group of sufferers grows larger and larger as more people are stricken, and once they’ve been separated from civilization long enough, everything eventually goes all “Lord of the Flies.” One patient (Gael García Bernal) declares himself King of Ward Three and hoards all the food that’s been delivered for the facility. He initially demands everyone’s valuables and then, once that supply has been exhausted, he forces the women in the other wards to become sexual slaves in exchange for sustenance.

The real power brokers wind up being The Doctor’s Wife, since only a few people know she can see, and The Accountant (Maury Chaykin), a crony of the King, who’s been blind his entire life and can expertly navigate his surroundings.

While the impact of the blindness epidemic is portrayed somewhat compellingly, in a sub-“Andromeda Strain” sort of way, Meirelles would rather tediously explore Big Ideas such as the corrupting influence of power, the absurdity of racism, the absence of God, etc. Ultimately, the characters wind up being about as deep as pieces on a chessboard as they play out this metaphorical mishmash, so it’s appropriate that they’re all named so generically.

I’m a huge fan of McKellar’s work as a screenwriter (“Highway 61,” “Thirty-two Short Films about Glenn Gould”), actor (“Twitch City”), playwright (“The Drowsy Chaperone”) and director (“Last Night”), but his “Blindness” script knocks you over the head with its symbolism and metaphors so hard that you’ll wish you were wearing a helmet. He also goes from Point A to Point C without explaining pertinent information: How does the King of Ward Three get a gun? At what point did The Man with the Black Eye Patch (Danny Glover) fall in love with The Woman with Dark Glasses (Alice Braga)? Maybe it’s explained in the book (which I haven’t read), but the movie doesn’t fill in those gaps for us.

Given the stick figures they’re playing, there’s not much to be said for the cast, although Moore manages a few striking moments as a woman who goes from carefree and almost ditzy to a no-nonsense survivalist. But even her intensity is squandered by “Blindness,” which keeps going for about half an hour after it’s run out of things to say, meandering towards a ludicrous climax that paints a smiley face upon the proceedings and lets the audience go home without dwelling on any of the film’s gloomier moments. (Ruffalo and Glover get very little to do here and seem to be riffing on their respective standard roles of inert man and wise old sage.)

“Blindness” bleeds seriousness and lofty intentions from its every frame, but it’s a didactic bore. But hey, it’s Oscar season, so it’s probably just one of many more of those to come.

CAST & CREW

Director: Fernando Meirelles

Writers: José Saramago (novel) & Don McKellar (screenplay)

Release Date: 3 October 2008 (USA)

Genre: Drama | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

Tagline: Lust is blind.

Plot: A city is ravaged by an epidemic of instant "white blindness". Those first afflicted are quarantined...

Cast:

Julianne Moore ... Doctor's Wife
Mark Ruffalo ... Doctor
Alice Braga ... Woman with the Dark Glasses
Yusuke Iseya ... First Blind Man
Yoshino Kimura ... First Blind Man's Wife
Don McKellar ... Thief
Jason Bermingham ... Driver #1
Maury Chaykin ... Accountant
Mitchell Nye ... Boy
Eduardo Semerjian ... Concerned Pedestrian #1
Danny Glover ... Man with the Black Eye Patch
Gael García Bernal ... Bartender / King of Ward Three
Joe Pingue ... Taxi Driver
Susan Coyne ... Receptionist
Fabiana Guglielmetti ... Mother of the Boy (as Fabiana Gugli)

Happy-Go-Lucky

2008-12-06T00:31:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

You don’t have to be a screenwriter to know the structure of 99 percent of all Hollywood scripts. See enough movies, and you can see the “meet-cute,” the “Act 2 conflict” and the “11th hour reveal” coming from miles away.

It’s the predictability of most movies that makes the work of Mike Leigh so refreshing. If you’ve ever seen one — the Oscar-nominated “Secrets and Lies” or “Vera Drake,” perhaps, or “Career Girls,” “Life is Sweet,” “Topsy-Turvy” or “High Hopes,” to name a few — you know that his films present unforgettable characters and fascinatingly intimate stories, but do so within structures that feel organic and lifelike, slowly and subtly working their way toward the audience understanding just who these people are and what guides their behavior.

That’s definitely the spirit that Leigh brings to his new film, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” which seems at first to be a somewhat aimless series of scenes about Poppy (the engaging Sally Hawkins), a grammar school teacher with an eternal sense of optimism. Rather than impose a plot on the film (Poppy falls in love! Poppy find the jewel thieves!), “Happy-Go-Lucky” gives us a fly-on-the-wall look at her life, whether she’s preparing lesson plans with her best friend Zoe (Alexis Zegerman), visiting her highly strung pregnant sister, helping out a troubled student or exasperating her fellow pedagogues — Karina Fernandez as a Flamenco teacher and Eddie Marsan as Scott, Poppy’s humorless driving instructor.

It’s Scott — as rage-filled and bigoted as Poppy is ebullient and life-affirming — who starts out as a background character but winds up being the film’s antagonist, challenging Poppy on her point of view and her way of looking at the world. Graciously, Leigh and Hawkins have given the character enough of a backbone to stand up for herself. This is not a woman easily shaken, after all — the film begins with Poppy getting her bike stolen, prompting her to sign up for driving lessons rather than waste time fuming about the injustice.

The thought of spending two hours with a relentlessly upbeat person in real life, much less in a movie theater, can be daunting, but Hawkins gives us a woman who’s more than just a collection of turn-that-frown-upside-down clichés. Indeed, playing someone sunny without making them totally irritating might be more of a challenge than portraying Lady Macbeth, and Hawkins makes Poppy’s good cheer pragmatic and personable.

The catalyst for making Poppy come completely together as a character is her showdown with Scott, and Marsan (who also played the bad guy in “Hancock”) more than holds his own with Hawkins. Leigh avoids the easy pitfalls — he never tries to explain either character — by giving Hawkins and Marsan enough room to figure these people out and to allow audiences to understand them as much as anyone can ever understand a fellow, complicated, three-dimensional human being.

Movies like “Vera Drake” and “Naked” have given Leigh a very undeserved reputation as a grim sourpuss, but if you watch any of his other films I referenced above, you’ll know he’s someone who sees the humor in life’s darkest moments and who ultimately believes in the resilience — and, without being gross about it, the good — in people. You’ll definitely walk away from “Happy-Go-Lucky” sharing that feeling.

CAST & CREW

Director: Mike Leigh

Writer: Mike Leigh (writer)

Release Date: 18 April 2008 (UK)

Genre: Comedy | Drama

Tagline: The one movie this fall that will put a smile on your face.

Plot: A look at a few chapters in the life of Poppy, a cheery, colorful, North London schoolteacher whose optimism tends to exasperate those around her.

Cast:

Sally Hawkins ... Poppy
Elliot Cowan ... Bookseller
Alexis Zegerman ... Zoe
Andrea Riseborough ... Dawn
Sinead Matthews ... Alice
Kate O'Flynn ... Suzy
Sarah Niles ... Tash
Eddie Marsan ... Scott
Joseph Kloska ... Suzy's Boyfriend
Sylvestra Le Touzel ... Heather
Nonso Anozie ... Ezra
Trevor Cooper ... Patient
Karina Fernandez ... Flamenco Teacher
Philip Arditti ... Flamenco Student
Viss Elliot Safavi ... Flamenco Student (as Viss Elliot)

RocknRolla

2008-12-05T02:08:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

To attempt to recap the plot of Guy Ritchie’s new film “RocknRolla” would probably require flashcards, a dry-erase board and PowerPoint; suffice it to say that while the movie never tires of adding more characters and plot twists to its runnething-over-cup, Ritchie brings enough flash and silliness to the proceedings to make it a fun, if exhausting, ride.

Gerard Butler stars as Mister One Two, a mid-level hood involved with sexy accountant Stella (Thandie Newton), who informs One Two when her employer, Russian mobster Uri (Karel Roden), is moving large sums of money so that One Two and his men can steal it and give her a cut.

Uri begins to suspect that the loot is actually being swiped by mobster Lenny (Tom Wilkinson), who’s trying to borrow the money from Uri for a real-estate scheme he’s cooking up with the help of The Councillor (Jimi Mistry). Not helping relations between Uri and Lenny is the fact that Uri loaned Lenny a lucky painting which was stolen by Lenny’s rock-star stepson Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell), who, in turn—

See? My head is already spinning, and we didn’t even get to the gay mobster, the subplot about the stool pigeon, the badass Russian henchmen, Johnny’s feckless American producers (Jeremy Piven and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Stella’s sham marriage, the crawfish torture, or the criminal with a weakness for Emma Thompson movies.

The “RocknRolla” experience is akin to watching those “Drunk History” clips on YouTube, where inebriated people try to explain the Louisiana Purchase despite the fact that they can barely complete a sentence. You try to keep up with it, amused at the very attempt at storytelling, but it gets exhausting. In both cases, however, there are enough laughs and shocks along the way to make the experience worthwhile.

Butler and Newton have an entertaining chemistry which Ritchie exploits to the fullest in two of the film’s best sequences — one involving rather ludicrous dancing, while the other is one of the most cut-to-the-chase sex scenes ever filmed. Butler’s moments with Mister One Two’s best mate Mumbles (Idris Elba) pack a droll zing as well.

I admittedly got a little skittish when a gay subplot reared up in this testosterone-soaked bloke epic, but writer-director Ritchie actually handles it with wit and smarts. Christopher Ciccone’s recent tell-all bestseller “Life with My Sister Madonna” suggests that Ritchie’s homophobia came between the author and his celebrated sibling, but this film could be used as evidence that it’s Christopher Ciccone, and not gays in general, whom Ritchie dislikes.

If it’s adrenaline, over-the-top violence and cheeky gangsters you’re after, “RocknRolla” definitely delivers. But don’t be shocked if you find yourself wanting some aspirins and a cold compress once it’s all over, especially when you note that the closing credits are already promising a sequel.

CAST & CREW

Director: Guy Ritchie

Writer: Guy Ritchie (written by)

Release Date: 31 October 2008 (USA)

Genre: Action | Crime

Plot: In London, a real-estate scam puts millions of pounds up for grabs, attracting some of the city's scrappiest tough guys and its more established underworld types, all of whom are looking to get rich quick. While the city's seasoned criminals vie for the cash, an unexpected player -- a drugged out rock 'n' roller presumed to be dead but very much alive -- has a multi-million dollar prize fall into his hands.

Cast:

Nonso Anozie ... Tank
Charlotte Armer ... Nurse
Gemma Arterton ... June
David Bark-Jones ... Bertie
Geoff Bell ... Fred the Head
Morne Botes ... Jimmy
Gerard Butler ... One Two
Jamie Campbell Bower ... Rocker
Idris Elba ... Mumbles
Tom Hardy ... Handsome Bob
Toby Kebbell ... Johnny Quid
Matt King ... Cookie
David Leon ... Malcolm
Andy Linden ... Waster
Ludacris ... Mickey (as Chris Bridges)
Roland Manookian ... Bandy
Dragan Micanovic ... Victor
Jimi Mistry ... Councillor
Tiffany Mulheron ... Jackie
Thandie Newton ... Stella
Jeremy Piven ... Roman
James Puddephatt ... Policeman No.2
Laurence Richardson ... Policeman
Blake Ritson ... Johnny Sloane
Karel Roden ... Uri
Tom Rooke ... Waiter (as Thomas Rooke)
Michael Ryan ... Pete
Anton Saunders ... Copper
David Sterne ... Barman
Robert Stone ... Bouncer
Mark Strong ... Archie
Johan van Vuuren ... Sloan 2
Bronson Webb ... Paul
Tom Wilkinson ... Lenny Cole

City of Ember

2008-12-05T01:14:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

It’s turning out to be quite the year for post-apocalyptic kids’ movies — this summer we had “Wall-E,” with its polluted Earth abandoned by an increasingly flabby human race, and now comes “City of Ember,” about a pocket of civilization that’s been living underground for 200 years after an unspecified catastrophe (or what Peter Greenaway in “The Falls” would call a “Violent Unknown Event”).

Would that this new movie had a tenth of the charm or the smarts of the Disney/Pixar cartoon. All “City of Ember” offers are uninteresting characters in a grimy and bleak world — the production design all but screams “It’s a set!” — and instead of suspense or even empathy, there’s just noise and ugliness.

The film begins with scientists loading up a box with instructions on how to leave the underground city and return to the surface world two centuries hence. The box is supposed to be passed down from mayor to mayor, but it winds up buried in a closet until it’s discovered by Lina (Saoirse Ronan). Perfect timing, too, because Lina and her best friend Doon (Harry Treadaway) have noticed that Ember is falling apart, with more frequent blackouts due to the city’s failing generator.

They can’t rely on the authorities for help, since the corrupt Mayor (Bill Murray) has already built a bunker that will house him while Ember crumbles around him. (He’s aided in this by his sniveling toady of an advisor, played by Toby Jones; through sheer coincidence, Jones will pop up later this month as Karl Rove in Oliver Stone’s “W.”) Murray’s useless leader gets one moment that’s become very topical of late — his idea for dealing with the generator situation involves putting together a commission — but he’s neither funny nor particularly villainous.

Screenwriter Caroline Thompson — who, until now, has had a pretty good run as a writer of kid’s films, with “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “The Secret Garden” as just two of her many credits — relies on some lazy devices in her adaptation of Jeanne Duprau’s novel. Doon’s father (Tim Robbins) gives his son a seemingly useless doohickey at the beginning of the movie that of course becomes indispensable toward the end, and there’s also a hideous mole creature that, while useful as a deus ex machina, will completely freak out younger children.

“City of Ember” is awful to look at — no one expects a crumbling underground city to be pretty, per se, but rather than strive for the fascinating decay of “Brazil” or “The Road Warrior,” the production design brings to mind the ill-fated “Super Mario Bros.” movie. Heck, even the videogame “Bioshock” does a better job of showing a rotted-out city of the future.

With the exception of the talented young Ronan, the cast seems mostly adrift here. And if you remove the spectacularly vapid Treadaway from the equation, there’s an amazing number of gifted actors being misused by this production; in addition to Murray, Jones and Robbins, there’s also Mary Kay Place, Marianne Jean-Baptiste (as the only person of color in all of Ember), Mackenzie Crook and Martin Landau wasting their time.

While producers Fox Walden continue in their efforts to bring interesting books for youngsters to the big screen, moviegoers are advised to read the novel and skip the flick.

CAST & CREW

Director: Gil Kenan

Writers (WGA): Caroline Thompson (screenplay) & Jeanne Duprau (book)

Release Date: 10 October 2008 (USA)

Genre: Adventure | Family | Fantasy

Tagline: Discover The Secret

Plot: For generations, the people of the City of Ember have flourished in an amazing world of glittering lights. But Ember's once powerful generator is failing ... and the great lamps that illuminate the city are starting to flicker.

Cast:

David Ryall ... Chief Builder
Ian McElhinney ... Builder #2
Harry Treadaway ... Doon Harrow
Tim Robbins ... Loris Harrow
Bill Murray ... Mayor Cole
B.J. Hogg ... Mayor's Guard
Toby Jones ... Barton Snode
Lucinda Dryzek ... Lizzie Bisco
Matt Jessup ... Joss
Lara McIvor ... Roner
Myles Thompson ... Smat
Eoin McAndrew ... Student #1
Rachel Morton ... Student #2
Conor MacNeill ... Student #3
Lorraine Hilton ... Miss Thorn

Body of Lies

2008-12-03T19:52:00.001-08:00

REVIEW:

A terror cell of Islamic jihadists, featuring at least one baby-faced insurgent ready to become a suicide bomber. The blazing Middle Eastern sun shining through a window into a smoky, dingy apartment. A market square full of innocent civilians running in a panic in all directions after the surprise explosion of a car bomb. A room full of U.S. soldiers looking at images from a spy satellite on a wall full of screens.

In just a few years, these images have become hopelessly trite, popping up as they do in every single movie about the post-9/11 world. From “The Kingdom” to “Traitor” to “Rendition” and on and on, movies about terrorism rehash the same tired trope while failing to say anything new or provocative about the current state of U.S. foreign policy.

Add “Body of Lies” to this heap of snoozeburgers. If you thought that director Ridley Scott, working with actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe and screenwriter William Monahan (“The Departed”), was going to break the Hollywood Goes to Iraq curse with his latest, get ready for disappointment — the Hollywood Surge still isn’t working.

DiCaprio stars as Roger Ferris, a CIA agent who does all the pesky ground work of intelligence in the Middle East while his boss Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe) pontificates in Washington and meddles with Ferris’ delicate negotiations. Hoffman’s boorish interference mucks up Ferris’ operations in Iraq before completely ruining a Jordanian operation spying on a terrorist safehouse.

You’d feel sorrier for Ferris, but he loves his job too much to tell Hoffman to shove it, so we see his best-laid plans collapse over and over again. Eventually, the two work together on a gambit that’s the one smart idea “Body of Lies” has to offer — in order to draw out the elusive and vain Al-Saleem (Alon Abutbul), Ferris and Hoffman take an innocent Jordanian architect and use internet chatter and phony bank transactions to make him look like the hot new jihadist on the block. After the CIA guys create a fake bombing on an American base in Turkey — the “casualties” are all corpses from the morgue dressed as U.S. soldiers — Al-Saleem seeks out the architect, allowing the Americans to track him down.

But, of course, things don’t go as smoothly as planned. You guessed it — Hoffman messes up Ferris’ perfect plan. If this were a chick flick, Ferris’ friends would come over for a makeover, they’d sing a Motown song into hairbrushes, and they’d convince him that Hoffman is nothing but bad news. But since this is a shouting-guys-in-sunglasses movie, no one learns unless someone’s delivering the death-blow.

DiCaprio is never particularly convincing as a hard-bitten espionage veteran with a broken marriage; his North Carolina accent has all the stability of a provisional government, and Ferris’ tacked-on romance with an Iranian nurse (Golshifteh Farahani) never convinces. Crowe, for his part, fares better with the accent, but his role mainly amounts to giving bad orders via cell phone. The only performer who ever connects is Mark Strong, as the slick and continental chief of Jordanian security. (Strong also steals scenes in this week’s “RocknRolla.”)

“Body of Lies” seems eager to impugn U.S. policy in the Middle East, but it wants to have it both ways: There are noble, intelligent Ferrises out there, but they’re constantly being overrun by the blustering Hoffmans, so the solution is… what, exactly? The movie ultimately has no idea, thus making it even more of a metaphor for the current state of the world than it ever intended.

CAST & CREW

Director: Ridley Scott

Writers (WGA): William Monahan (screenplay) & David Ignatius (novel)

Release Date: 10 October 2008 (Indonesia)

Genre: Action | Drama | Thriller

Tagline: Trust no one. Deceive everyone.

Plot: Roger Ferris uncovers a lead on a major terrorist leader suspected to be operating out of Jordan.

Cast:

Leonardo DiCaprio ... Roger Ferris
Russell Crowe ... Ed Hoffman
Mark Strong ... Hani
Golshifteh Farahani ... Aisha
Oscar Isaac ... Bassam
Ali Suliman ... Omar Sadiki
Alon Abutbul ... Al-Saleem (as Alon Aboutboul)
Vince Colosimo ... Skip
Simon McBurney ... Garland
Mehdi Nebbou ... Nizar
Michael Gaston ... Holiday
Kais Nashif ... Mustafa Karami
Jamil Khoury ... Marwan (as Jameel Khoury)
Lubna Azabal ... Aisha's Sister Cala
Ghali Benlafkih ... Aisha's Nephew Rowley

Secret Life of Bees

2008-12-03T19:35:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

One of the great challenges facing artists is the occasional necessity of staring into the face of pure evil. It’s a test for a filmmaker to be able to present the Nazi commandant of a concentration camp, say, or a shotgun-wielding Klansman without resorting to cartoonish, exaggerated, over-the-top portrayals.

Sadly, that’s where Gina Prince-Bythewood gets tripped up as the writer-director of “The Secret Life of Bees.” Bringing Sue Monk Kidd’s novel to the big screen, Prince-Bythewood gets a lot of things right, but every time a mouth-breathing redneck pops up to torment one of the movie’s African-American characters, “Bees” loses a dimension.

Still, the film has lots to offer. Dakota Fanning (who you’d think would be skittish about playing another Southerner after the debacle of “Hounddog”) stars as Lily, a South Carolina girl who accidentally shot her beloved mother when she was just four years old. With only the drunken, bitter T. Ray (Paul Bettany) to raise her, Lily bonds with the family housekeeper, Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson).

After President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act in 1965, Rosaleen goes to town to register, only to be confronted by three angry racists. When she dumps tobacco juice on their feet, she is beaten savagely and arrested. Lily springs Rosaleen from the hospital, and the two take off for Tiburon, the name of which is written on the back of an icon of a black Madonna, one of the few objects belonging to Lily’s mother that the child still has.

That iconography is also featured on the jars of honey produced by August Boatwright (Queen Latifah), whom Lily and Rosaleen turn to for sanctuary once they arrive. August’s musician sister June (Alicia Keys) is dubious about the newcomers, but the slightly simple May (Sophie Okonedo) insists that they stay.

At its best, “Secret Life of Bees” feels like an American spin on the wonderful Dutch Oscar-winner “Antonia’s Line,” about a utopian matriarchal society that stands apart from a world in chaos. The women help and support each other — and Lily falls in love for the first time with the charming Zachary (Tristan Wilds), but this being mid-1960s South Carolina, you just know their teenage interracial relationship is bound for rocky times.

There’s a lot of Oprah’s Book Club–style healing going on in the film, with family secrets brought to light and hard hearts being softened, but Prince-Bythewood and her cast find moments of honesty amidst the personal growth.

Old pros Fanning and Latifah are just fine in roles that match their strength — precocious, strong-willed youngster and soft-butch sage, respectively — and Hudson continues to emerge as an arresting screen presence even in non-musical roles. Okonedo keeps May from being too precious or simpering, but it’s Keys who’s the real surprise here. Sexy, stentorian and funny, she’s a natural; a wise producer should cast the feline Keys in an Eartha Kitt biopic, stat.

It’s the larger picture of the South in the civil rights era that seems to be beyond the filmmaker’s grasp; all the men in the film are either sensitive nice guys or closed-minded blowhards. And while there was no shortage of the latter at that time, surely there were people whose opinions weren’t just, you’ll pardon the expression, purely black or white. Paul Bettany is a fine actor, but he can’t keep T. Ray from being a stick-figure meanie, and he’s actually the most interestingly presented of the small-town racists.

And that’s a shame because, at its best, “The Secret Life of Bees” is a terrifically entertaining, two-hanky, coming-of-age, world-as-we’d-like-to-see-it fable. Too bad the best parts throw the worst moments into such sharp relief.

CAST & CREW

Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood

Writers (WGA): Gina Prince-Bythewood (screenplay) & Sue Monk Kidd (novel)

Release Date: 17 October 2008 (USA)

Genre: Adventure | Drama

Tagline: Bring Your Girlfriends, Sisters, Mothers and Daughters

Plot: set in South Carolina in 1964, this is the tale of Lily Owens a 14 year-old girl who is haunted by the memory of her late mother...

Cast:

Dakota Fanning ... Lily Owens
Queen Latifah ... August Boatwright
Jennifer Hudson ... Rosaleen Daise
Alicia Keys ... June Boatwright
Sophie Okonedo ... May Boatwright
Paul Bettany ... T. Ray Owens
Hilarie Burton ... Deborah Owens
Tristan Wilds ... Zach Taylor
Nate Parker ... Neil
Shondrella Avery ... Greta
Renée Clark ... Doll
Sharon Morris ... Violet
Nicky Buggs ... Cressie
Jasmine Burke ... Sugar Girl
Emma Sage Bowman ... Young Lily #1

What Just Happened?

2008-12-03T18:57:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Hollywood producers are — speaking generally, of course — rich, pampered, selfish, spoiled and powerful. That doesn’t mean that a talented filmmaker couldn’t make a smart, compassionate movie that would make an audience feel some sympathy for one of these guys.

“What Just Happened?” is not that movie.

Honestly, are we supposed to feel bad for Ben (Robert De Niro), who we meet as he shuttles around to his various ex-houses containing his various ex-wives, driving the kids to school while taking call after call on his Bluetooth? Over the course of a week, Ben has to grapple with a touchy British director (Michael Wincott) who doesn’t want to change the bleak ending of the new Sean Penn movie in time for the Cannes Film Festival; meanwhile, the producer is battling Bruce Willis (playing himself, unconvincingly), who refuses to shave off his beard, even though the studio suits are threatening to pull the plug on his new movie if he doesn’t.

Also giving Ben agita is his ex-wife Kelly’s (Robin Wright Penn) refusal to take him back, the ambitious young female producers throwing themselves into his bed, and the fact that his friend Scott (Stanley Tucci) is currently sleeping with Kelly.

Hear that, laid-off workers and families who are being foreclosed out of their homes? You don’t know how hard it is to take Israeli producers out for sushi or to find yourself kept out of the studio’s private jet!

Adapting his own book, writer-producer Art Linson (“Into the Wild,” “Fight Club”) doesn’t really uncover anything about the insanity of Tinseltown’s inner workings that other, better movies haven’t already revealed. (Sixteen years after “The Player,” it’s apparently still all about making temperamental British directors change their endings and grappling with the casting of Bruce Willis.) There are two funny sequences — one involving Ben and Kelly’s therapist, the other at the Cannes Film Festival — but just about everything else in “What Just Happened?” feels safe, familiar, toothless.

De Niro’s performance here is better than, say, “Righteous Kill,” but you can tell he’s still pretty much phoning it in. John Turturro overdoes it as a hypochondriacal agent, but Catherine Keener at least brings some polite menace to her role as a ruthless studio exec.

Movies have often been added to the list — just beneath sausage and legislation — of things its admirers shouldn’t watch being made. Especially if the glimpse behind the curtain is going to be as bland a pudding as “What Just Happened?”

CAST & CREW

Director: Barry Levinson

Writers (WGA): Art Linson (written by) and Art Linson (book)

Release Date: 28 November 2008 (UK)

Genre: Comedy | Drama

Tagline: In Hollywood, everybody can hear you scream.

Plot: Two weeks in the life of a fading Hollywood producer who's having a rough time trying to get his new picture made.

Cast:

Robert De Niro ... Ben
Bruce Willis ... Himself
Stanley Tucci ... Scott Solomon
John Turturro ... Dick Bell
Kristen Stewart ... Zoe
Lily Rabe ... Dawn

rest of cast listed alphabetically:

Dennis Albanese ... Anthony
Emily Alpren ... Lou's Assistant
Floanne Ankah ... Bollywood singer (voice) (as Florence Annequin)
Ari Barak ... Aba Peterson
Moon Bloodgood ... Laura
Lindy Booth ... Hostess
Felix J. Boyle ... Hollywood Producer / Vanity Fair
Virginia Bryant ... Grammy Scene Award Attendee
Scott Burn ... Lou's Assistant
Alessandra Daniele ... Sophie
Cayleen Davies ... Hot girl in car
Byron de Marse ... Funeral Guest #1
Vincent De Paul ... Jack L. McDonagh's Brother
Aubrey Dickinson ... Film Festival Attendee
Jay Ferraro ... Movie Theater Patron
Aura Figueiredo ... Lady at Cannes Film Festival
Jill Flint ... Lou's Secretary
Leslie Dawn Forsyth ... Cheering Fan
Karina Friend Buck ... Verna
Julia Frisoli ... Lady Getting Pedicure
Massi Furlan ... Scott Solomon's Assistant
Steven Galarce ... Jack L. McDonagh's cousin
JR Garcia ... Red Carpet Attendee
Phil Gardiner ... Film Critic
Logan Grove ... Max
Frank Hansen ... Hitman #2
Stacey Hicks ... Kaitlyn
Marin Hinkle ... Annie
Mark Ivanir ... Johnny
Peter Jacobson ... Cal
Lu Johnson ... Vanity Fair Set Dresser
Kalina Justice ... French Wife
Brandon Keener
Catherine Keener ... Lou Tarnow
Ayla Kell ... Mary #1
Stefania Koszti ... Celebrity Guest #1- Cannes Film Festival
Kat Kramer ... Celebrity Guest - Cannes Film Festival
Laurie Lee ... Red Carpet Fan
Dimitri Lekkos ... Jack L. McDonagh - Dead Agent
Paul Lieber ... Photographer
Ron Li-Paz ... Rabbi
Paydin LoPachin ... Mary
Jacques Maroun ... Taxi Driver
Kristopher Maslardzievski ... Famous Actor
Jared Morrison ... Film Crew
Alex Norca ... French Guard
Ali Olomi ... Waiter
Sean Penn ... Himself
Tom Probst ... Celebrity Guest
William Ragsdale ... Agent #1
Monica Ramon ... Celebrity guest
Jean-Michel Richaud ... Festival Host
Wendy Riordan ... Starlet
Brent Rose ... First A.D.
Bess Rous
Remy K. Selma ... Jimmy
Scott L. Treger ... POWER Producer
Sonny Vellozzi ... Film Crew Member
Michael Wincott ... Jeremy Brunell
Robin Wright Penn ... Kelly
Dey Young ... Marilyn

Max Payne

2008-12-03T18:41:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

I’ve always wondered why, when I see a great Mark Wahlberg performance in a film like “I Heart Huckabee’s” or “The Departed,” I have to remind myself all over again that the artist formerly known as Marky Mark can be a very fine screen actor. But then I see “Max Payne,” and it reminds me; I forget how good he can be because of his frequent participation in brainless bullet-fests like this new big-screen adaptation of the popular videogame.

Wahlberg gives an aggressively wooden performance as Max, a cop who has shut down his emotions since the murder of his wife and child several years earlier. (It is possible, incidentally, for an actor to play someone cut off from his feelings without glowering around stone-faced like a Golem in a black leather jacket.) Reassigned to the Cold Cases room, Max obsessively searches the files for clues to the men responsible for killing his family.

Max meets a woman with a wing tattoo on her arm; she soon turns up dead, carrying the wallet she stole from Max. Next, Max’s former partner Alex (Donal Logue) turns up a clue connecting the woman’s grisly dismemberment to the death of Max’s loved ones, but he too winds up slaughtered, in Max’s apartment, of all places.

Eventually, Max pieces together a conspiracy, but “Max Payne” spells it all out so obviously that the densest audience members will put the pieces together at least half an hour before Max finally does. (It helps, but it’s by no means required, to be familiar enough with Norse mythology — or even “Thor” comics — to know what “aesir,” “valkyrie” and “ragnarok” mean.)

Director John Moore (who gave us the hacky remake of “The Omen”) tries to make up for first-time screenwriter Beau Thorne’s moronic script by upping the art direction quotient. The film is set in a grimy and wintry — but impeccably designed — New York City, and whenever the plot lags, Moore throws in another slo-mo gun battle to rouse the audience.

Perhaps sensing that Wahlberg’s cardboard performance — with the exception of a berserker rage moment towards the end that drew hearty laughs at the press screening I attended — needed some bolstering, Moore at least filled out the cast with a strong crew of character actors. In addition to Logue, “Max Payne” also features Beau Bridges, Chris O’Donnell, Kate Burton and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges picking up a nice paycheck for a minimal amount of effort.

Poor Mila Kunis gets second billing for a role so badly sketched out that we have no idea who she’s supposed to be. As the sister of the first victim, Kunis’ Mona at one point threatens Max with, “You know what I do for a living.” Actually, until I read in the press notes that Mona is an assassin, I had no idea, because the movie never bothers to explain if she’s a gangster or merely a well-armed supermodel.

If occasional bursts of balletic violence are enough to make you forgive a movie’s multiple shortcomings, then you might have fun at “Max Payne.” Otherwise, you’ll just wind up feeling…well, look at the title.

CAST & CREW

Director: John Moore

Writers (WGA): Beau Thorne (screenplay) and Sam Lake (video game by Remedy Entertainment and 3-D Realms Entertainment)

Release Date: 22 October 2008 (Indonesia)

Genre: Action | Crime | Drama | Thriller

Plot: Coming together to solve a series of murders in New York City are a DEA agent whose family was slain as part of a conspiracy and an assassin out to avenge her sister's death. The duo will be hunted by the police, the mob, and a ruthless corporation.

Cast:

Mark Wahlberg ... Max Payne
Mila Kunis ... Mona Sax
Beau Bridges ... BB Hensley
Ludacris ... Lt. Jim Bravura (as Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges)
Chris O'Donnell ... Jason Colvin
Donal Logue ... Det. Alex Balder
Amaury Nolasco ... Jack Lupino
Kate Burton ... Nicole Horne
Olga Kurylenko ... Natasha Sax
Rothaford Gray ... Joe Salle
Joel Gordon ... Owen Green
Jamie Hector ... Lincoln DeNeuf
Andrew Friedman ... Trevor Duncan
Marianthi Evans ... Michelle Payne
Nelly Furtado ... Christa Balder

W.

2008-12-03T18:19:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Whether or not it was premature for Oliver Stone to make a movie about George W. Bush’s presidency — what with Bush still occupying the Oval Office — is certainly a matter of taste. After all, Mao famously told Nixon in the early ’70s that it was “too soon” to evaluate the lasting impact of the French Revolution.

But even though Stone can’t resist the occasional lapse into cartoonishness, “W.” winds up being a thought-provoking examination of a crucial turning point in American history. What may wind up being most shocking to the conservatives who have been pillorying Stone for months is how sympathetic the film is to its leading character, a man who managed to become one of the nation’s most popular and least popular presidents over the course of two terms.

The film begins with Bush (played by Josh Brolin) running the Oval Office meeting where the term “axis of evil” is created. In one swoop, Stone gives us a roomful of actors impersonating well-known figures, including Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, Toby Jones as Karl Rove, Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld, Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell and Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney.

But just when “W.” starts feeling uncomfortably close to being a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, the film takes us back to Yale in 1966, where young George is enduring pledge week at the DKE house and impressing his brothers by remembering their names, thanks to his habit of giving them all nicknames. (We’ll see the adult Bush doing the same thing later in the film, referring to a female Asian journalist at a press conference as “Miss China.”)

The contemporary scenes depict the run-up to the war in Iraq — yellowcake uranium, aluminum tubes, WMDs, the whole shebang. In a lengthy and memorable sequence, Powell tries to act as a voice of conscience while Cheney lays out the nation’s need for oil and the necessity of putting Iraq and eventually Iran under U.S. control. In flashbacks, we see W. commit youthful indiscretions, make fruitless attempts to gain the approval of his father (James Cromwell) and mother (Ellen Burstyn), all the while winning the heart of Laura (Elizabeth Banks).

Stanley Weiser’s screenplay lazily connects the Freudian dots, painting W.’s obsession with Iraq as a way to win Poppy’s love once and for all. (The movie posits that Bush the younger thinks his father lost the 1992 election because he failed to take out Saddam at the end of Gulf War I.)

Despite this historical reductionism, and the somewhat awkward shoehorning of some favorite Bushisms (“Is our children learning?” et al.), Weiser interestingly examines a life and a presidency that are very much in progress and actually manages to create sympathy for a political figure who is currently despised by a significant portion of the populace.

The acting is similarly all over the place, with Brolin’s fascinating turn dominating the film; he manages to make that invisible transition that all stars of biopics hope to accomplish, where the audience stops watching the actor and just accepts him as the character. Granted, Brolin leaves out many of the tics (the smug laughter, the sneer) that make the real W. so irritating, but he’s nonetheless created a fascinating portrait. Banks comes off as much warmer than the real Laura Bush, although the brown wigs have the odd side effect of making her look like Parker Posey.

Probably the worst of the cast is the talented Newton, who tries too hard to capture Rice’s singularly eccentric facial expressions and vocal mannerisms (to say nothing of those eyebrows) and comes off like someone in a “Mad TV” sketch. Among the White House insiders, it’s only Dreyfuss and Wright who make a strong impression as, respectively, the devil and angel on W.’s shoulders.

In the short term, no matter how well-made “W.” is, it’s uncertain what audiences will want to cough up the price of a ticket — Bush’s remaining fans won’t trust Stone to do right by their man, while foes of the president won’t want to spend a few hours being reminded how much they don’t like him.

Whatever your preconceived notions, “W.” manages to be both exactly what you thought it would be and something else entirely. Which, ultimately, makes it like every politician who ever existed.

CAST & CREW

Director: Oliver Stone

Writer (WGA): Stanley Weiser (written by)

Release Date: 17 October 2008 (USA)

Genre: Biography | Comedy | Drama

Tagline: Get Ready

Plot: A chronicle on the life and presidency of George W. Bush.

Cast:

J. Grant Albrecht ... Jacques Chirac (as Charles Fathy)
Sayed Badreya ... Saddam Hussein
Elizabeth Banks ... Laura Bush
David Born ... Moderator
Dennis Boutsikaris ... Paul Wolfowitz
Jesse Bradford ... Thatcher
Jonathan Breck ... Corndog
Josh Brolin ... George W. Bush
Bruce Bryant ... Odessa Debate Patron
Ellen Burstyn ... Barbara Bush
Wes Chatham ... Jimmy Benedict
Maria Chen ... Military Aid
Teresa Cheung ... Asian Journalist
Rob Corddry ... Ari Fleischer
James Cromwell ... George Herbert Walker Bush
Jon Michael Davis ... Campaign Aide
Richard Dreyfuss ... Dick Cheney
Chris Freihofer ... Evangelical 2
Terry Gamble ... Rove Aid
Jim Garrity ... News Commentator
Michael Gaston ... Gen. Tommy Franks
Jeff Gibbs ... Josiah Pringle
Scott Glenn ... Donald Rumsfeld
Ioan Gruffudd ... Tony Blair
Colin Hanks ... Speechwriter 1
Jeff Hoferer ... McCormick
Toby Jones ... Karl Rove
Jonna Juul-Hansen ... Jan O'Neil
Stacy Keach ... Earle Hudd
James Martin Kelly ... NSC Official
Tom Kemp ... David Kay
Allan Kolman ... Vladimir Putin
William Lanier ... Resort Waiter
Brinkley A. Maginnis ... Anita Bush
Madison Mason ... Adm. Kelly
Bryan Massey ... Skeeter
Lee Ann McDade ... News Woman
Bruce McGill ... George Tenet
John Neisler ... White House Lawyer
Randall Newsome ... Paul Bremer
Thandie Newton ... Condoleezza Rice
Gabriela Ostos-Tamez ... Reporter #2
Anne Pressly ... Anchorwoman
Paul Rae ... Kent Hance
Randal Reeder ... Oilrig forman
Jason Ritter ... Jeb Bush
Andrew Sensenig ... Reporter #1
Marley Shelton ... Fran
Jennifer Sipes ... Susie Evans
Bill Stinchcomb ... Secret Service
Ronan Summers ... CIA #3
Paul T. Taylor ... Texas Reporter #4
Taylor Treadwell ... Anchor 2
Jonathon Tripp ... News Boom Operator
Thomas Wallace ... John Negroponte
W. Douglas Waterfield ... Richard Armitage
Drew Waters ... Navy Seal
Brent Weisner ... Secret Service Agent
Jeffrey Wright ... Gen. Colin Powell
Noah Wyle ... Don Evans

Pride and Glory

2008-12-02T00:18:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Everything about the dirty cop thriller “Pride and Glory” is formulaic and forgettable, even down to its generic title.

It could be an uplifting drama about a basketball team breaking racial barriers, or it could be about an elite squadron of World War II fighter pilots. You’d never know the difference and it wouldn’t matter anyway. Instead, “Pride and Glory” is an overlong saga of good and bad New York police officers battling for control, one that plays out both in back alleys and quiet suburbs.

Edward Norton and Colin Farrell chew up the scenery and spit it back out again as brothers-in-law and brothers in blue. When a cop killer takes down four of their comrades, years of schemes and resentments come bubbling to the surface.

It’s no secret who is on which side: Norton’s Detective Ray Tierney is the honorable one and Farrell’s Jimmy Egan, who is married to Ray’s sister (Lake Bell), is on the take. But Ray’s older brother, Francis (Noah Emmerich), whose men were killed in the opening ambush, is also a factor, as is patriarch Francis Tierney Sr. (Jon Voight), the head of the detective division.

These are Irish cops, and just to pile on the cliches, Ray and Jimmy have a climactic, knock-down-drag-out brawl at their favorite hangout, a bar that’s literally called Irish Eyes, with Irish music blaring in the background. At Christmas, no less! (That holiday is just one of the occasions for Dad to get sloshed on whiskey and start slurring about how proud he is of his sons. Poor sap.)

If director Gavin O’Connor’s film sounds familiar, that’s probably because it’s a lot like “We Own the Night,” which came out almost exactly a year ago. Joaquin Phoenix was the black-sheep brother, Mark Wahlberg was a young police captain on the rise and Robert Duvall was their veteran-lawman father. That movie was just as much of a throwaway, despite its similar pretensions of Greek tragedy.

O’Connor, who is as far away as humanly possibly from the last movie he directed — the 2004 crowd-pleaser “Miracle,” about the gold medal-winning 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team — co-wrote the script with Joe Carnahan (“Narc”). O’Connor and his twin brother, Gregory, the sons of a New York cop, came up with the story along with Robert Hopes. In theory, these are people who know this world intimately, so it’s mind-boggling that they were unable to breathe new life into such a well-worn premise.

The question isn’t who is corrupt but rather whether the family can — and should — keep the corruption from becoming known. This results in many secret conversations away from the ears of the more innocent members of the clan (wives and children) in which characters rehash who knew what about whom and when. A subplot involving Francis Jr.’s wife (Jennifer Ehle), who has cancer, feels like an underdeveloped afterthought.

For a film about violence and action, “Pride and Glory” has absolutely zero momentum, and the dark, muddled visuals from cinematographer Declan Quinn certainly don’t help. There is, of course, the obligatory funeral featuring officers in their formal uniforms and bagpipes blaring on a bitterly cold winter day. You get the picture — you’ve seen it all before.

Things don’t really get interesting until almost the end of the movie, when Ray provides some unexpected answers at an interview with internal affairs. Then again, maybe that scene just feels inordinately exciting because it’s the only one we didn’t see coming.

CAST & CREW

Director: Gavin O'Connor

Writers (WGA): Joe Carnahan (screenplay) & Gavin O'Connor (screenplay) ...

Release Date: 24 October 2008 (USA)

Genre: Crime | Drama

Tagline: The last thing you want to uncover...is the truth.

Plot: A saga centered on a multi-generational family of New York City Police officers. The family's moral codes are tested when Ray Tierney, investigates a case that reveals an incendiary police corruption scandal involving his own brother-in-law. For Ray, the truth is revelatory, a Pandora's Box that threatens to upend not only the Tierney legacy but the entire NYPD.

Cast:

Colin Farrell ... Jimmy Egan
Edward Norton ... Ray Tierney
Jon Voight ... Francis Tierney, Sr.
Noah Emmerich ... Francis Tierney, Jr.
Jennifer Ehle ... Abby Tierney
John Ortiz ... Sandy
Frank Grillo ... Eddie Carbone
Shea Whigham ... Kenny Dugan
Lake Bell ... Megan Egan
Carmen Ejogo ... Tasha
Manny Perez ... Coco Dominguez
Wayne Duvall ... Bill Avery
Ramon Rodriguez ... Angel Tezo
Rick Gonzalez ... Eladio Casado
Maximiliano Hernández ... Carlos Bragon

Synecdoche, New York

2008-12-02T00:11:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

If a seasoned filmmaker created a work as funny, moving, perplexing, thought-provoking, poignant and powerful as “Synecdoche, New York,” that alone would be reason for exultation. The fact that this little gem — both intimate and epic, cerebral and emotional — marks the directorial debut of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman makes the achievement all the more worthy of celebration.

The usual plot synopsis won’t be able to capture everything that goes on in the film, but it’s essentially the story of theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose life is literally and figuratively disintegrating around him. While his body’s functions begin shutting down one by one, his wife Adele (Catherine Keener) abandons him, heading off to Berlin to show her artwork and taking their young daughter with her.

Newly single Caden is pursued by Hazel (Samantha Morton), the ebullient woman who runs the box office at his theater, but he winds up marrying actress Claire (Michelle Williams) instead. Caden receives a MacArthur Genius Grant and sets out to create his most ambitious theater piece yet: a play that will be simulacrum of his town of Schenectady, with actors playing the roles of everyone in town (Caden and Hazel included; Claire, of course, plays herself) and a godlike Caden shaping the lives of his characters.

As the play progresses, Caden loses track of time — this is a man, after all, who directed a production of “Death of a Salesman” with twenty-somethings playing Willy and Linda Loman — and what feels like weeks in the movie’s chronology turns out to be years, as characters age, die and otherwise get on with their lives. His ever-expanding theater piece grows more and more ambitious as Caden loses more control over his real life and his health.

Without getting too much into the further plot mechanics of “Synecdoche, New York,” I can say the film provides a banquet’s worth of food for thought about love and relationships, artists and the elusive nature of “truth,” how death impacts the way we live our lives, and even the phenomenon of character actors becoming familiar yet distant presences in the lives of moviegoers. (The film offers dozens of recognizable faces in the cast, from its leading players down to favorite “oh-that-guys” like Jerry Adler and Alice Drummond.)

The rap on writers-turned-directors is that they sacrifice images to words, but Kaufman deftly juggles both. The writing is as funny and heartbreaking and oddball as you’d expect from the man behind “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” but Caden’s worlds-within-worlds are also a wonder to behold.

Director Kaufman also makes all the right moves in casting the perfect ensemble and getting great work from them. Hoffman gives another superlative performance, and he’s ably supported by fellow troupers Keener, Williams and Morton as well as Hope Davis, Emily Watson, Tom Noonan, Dianne Weist and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

“Synecdoche, New York” left me speechless at first; since that feeling passed, I haven’t been able to stop thinking or talking about it. It’s the best American film of 2008 to date, and probably of 2007 and 2006 as well.

CAST & CREW

Director: Charlie Kaufman

Writer (WGA): Charlie Kaufman (written by)

Release Date: 5 February 2009 (Netherlands)

Genre: Comedy | Drama

Plot: A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

Cast:

Philip Seymour Hoffman ... Caden Cotard
Catherine Keener ... Adele Lack
Sadie Goldstein ... Olive (4 years old)
Tom Noonan ... Sammy Barnathan
Peter Friedman ... Emergency Room Doctor
Charles Techman ... Like Clockwork Patient
Josh Pais ... Dr. Eisenberg (Opthamologist)
Daniel London ... Tom
Robert Seay ... David
Michelle Williams ... Claire Keen
Stephen Adly Guirgis ... Davis
Samantha Morton ... Hazel
Hope Davis ... Madeleine Gravis
Frank Girardeau ... Plumber
Jennifer Jason Leigh ... Maria

High School Musical 3: Senior Year

2008-12-01T01:35:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

You’re probably going to read a lot of negative reviews of “High School Musical 3: Senior Year” that were written by old fuddy-duddies who disliked or perhaps never even saw the first two installments of the series, both of which premiered on the Disney Channel. So let me say right up front that this mostly-negative review is written by an old fuddy-duddy who found the first two “HSM” movies to be charming and engaging.

Would that “HSM 3” contained a single new idea. This latest and last of the series is a stitched-together Frankenstein monster of an entertainment, featuring major components that were already trotted out the first two times.

It’s the same plot you’ve already seen, with just a few end-of-high-school elements sprinkled on top. Troy (Zac Efron) is once again torn between his love of basketball and his talents as a song-and-dance man; this time, he has to choose between shooting hoops at his father’s alma mater and getting a scholarship at Julliard.

His girlfriend Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) faces anew the twin sirens of academia and performance — will she head off to Stanford early for a freshman honors program or stay at East High for the big senior show? Comic relief villainess Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) once again wants to elbow Gabriella out of the way both onstage and in her relationship with Troy. And so it goes.

Not that the tweens to whom “HSM 3” is squarely aimed will mind this crushing familiarity, but given the franchise’s leap from small screen to big, one would hope that director Kenny Ortega and screenwriter Peter Barsocchini would have exercised a little creativity in broadening the scope of this admittedly flimsy premise. For the most part, isn't even much more visually striking than its cable TV antecedents; some of the musical numbers feature more ambitious camera movements, but 95 percent of “HSM 3” has a television-scaled flatness to it.

Speaking of the musical numbers, the new songs in “HSM 3” are as familiar as the plot, with each tune coming off like an exact retread of what’s come before: The new “I Want It All” is to “Fabulous” (“HSM 2”) as “Can I Have This Dance” is to “Start of Something New” (“HSM 1”) as “Scream” is to “Bet On It” (“HSM 2”). Worse still, there’s no standout barn-burner like “We’re All in This Together” (“HSM 1”) or “What Time Is It” (“HSM 2”). Let’s just say that I walked out of “HSM 3” humming the tunes from the other movies.

The dancing is fun to watch — director Ortega is a veteran screen choreographer, going back to “Dirty Dancing” and “Xanadu” — but the acting pales by comparison. Efron and Hudgens are sweet but vapid, and the movie fails to take full advantage of Tisdale’s bravura bitchiness or the over-the-top flamboyance of Lucas Grabeel as Sharpay’s brother Ryan, a hyper-fashionable wielder of jazz hands.

None of this is bound to keep “HSM 3” from being a blockbuster juggernaut at the box office, and I’m certainly grateful that the series popularity among kids means that future generations of Hollywood decision-makers won’t be afraid to keep the musical genre alive. It’s just disappointing that this rare opportunity — how many TV movies get a sequel that opens in theaters? — was frittered away with a stultifying safeness.

CAST & CREW

Director: Kenny Ortega

Writers (WGA): Peter Barsocchini (written by) and Peter Barsocchini (characters)

Release Date: 29 October 2008 (Indonesia)

Genre: Comedy | Drama | Family | Musical | Romance

Tagline: high school graduation

Plot: As seniors in high school, Troy and Gabriella struggle with the idea of being separated from one another as college approaches. Along with the rest of the Wildcats, they stage a spring musical to address their experiences, hopes and fears about their future.

Cast:

Zac Efron ... Troy Bolton
Vanessa Hudgens ... Gabriella Montez
Ashley Tisdale ... Sharpay Evans
Lucas Grabeel ... Ryan Evans
Corbin Bleu ... Chad Danforth
Monique Coleman ... Taylor McKessie
Bart Johnson ... Coach Jack Bolton
Alyson Reed ... Ms. Darbus
Olesya Rulin ... Kelsi Nielsen
Chris Warren Jr. ... Zeke Baylor
Ryne Sanborn ... Jason Cross
KayCee Stroh ... Martha Cox
Matt Prokop ... Jimmie Zara
Justin Martin ... Donny Dion
Jemma McKenzie-Brown ... Tiara Gold

Splinter

2008-12-01T00:49:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

The retro horror movie “Splinter” begins with a scrawny bumpkin lounging in a cheap lawn chair outside a deadly quiet gas station in the Oklahoma woods. He wears a trucker hat emblazoned with the words “I (Heart) Bikinis.”

You know this guy will be a goner in scant minutes, but nothing can prepare you for who — or what? — attacks him.

The feature debut from British writer-director Toby Wilkins is a truly inspired mix of stripped-down, 1970s-style scares and vivid special effects. It has so many gnarly, oh-my-God-did-that-just-happen? moments, your jaw will hurt from hitting the floor so often.

The premise may seem old-school and familiar, but it’s the execution that will grab you. Boyfriend and girlfriend Seth (Paulo Costanzo) and Polly (Jill Wagner from those Lincoln-Mercury commercials) are heading for a weekend camping trip to enjoy a little “anniversary sex under the stars,” as she puts it.

Naturally, everything goes wrong. First, they struggle with the tent and end up breaking the thing. Once they decide to give in and look for a motel, they get carjacked and held hostage by escaped convict Dennis (Shea Whigham) and his jonesing, junkie girlfriend, Lacey (Rachel Kerbs). Then they hit some kind of animal on a back road and have to change a flat tire. It’s only when they all stop at a gas station that they begin to realize the creature they encountered is far more dangerous than they ever could have imagined.

Wilkins makes expert use of silence and steady pacing to build suspense, but also well-placed sound effects to jolt us. Even though “Splinter” reaches back aesthetically, it is so refreshing to see a horror movie that isn’t overedited, isn’t smothered in screechy noises and musical cues telling you when to be scared. One of the most effective scenes of all features Seth and Polly, holed up inside the gas station that becomes their fortress, trying to reach outside for help using nothing but wire hangers, duct tape and their shaky nerves. The buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead provides the subtly nagging soundtrack. Wilkins knows how to hold a shot — and we all hold our breath.

And the thing that’s out there — a sort of spiky, infectious ferret that turns its victims into zombie porcupine Frankensteins — is a twisted force to behold. Oh, and it mutates, thriving on its own blood (and the blood of others) to become something new and even more dangerous. And did we mention that pieces of its victims can break off and walk around on their own? A hand, a severed torso, etc.

Seth, who is conveniently studying for his Ph.D. in biology, becomes so fascinated by this thing that he forgets to be frightened — ignores the fact that bloody, mangled body bits are flinging themselves against the convenience store’s glass door with persistent thumps.

“It’s metabolizing,” he observes with awe. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

He’s right. And neither have we.

CAST & CREW

Director: Michael D. Olmos

Writers: Enrique Almeida (writer) & Adrian Cruz (writer)

Release Date: 17 August 2007 (USA)

Genre: Thriller

Tagline: Everyone Dies Dirty

Plot: A gang member, suffering from severe memory loss, searches for his brother's murderer. He secretly enlists the aid of the investigating Detective, while other members of his gang are mysteriously and sadistically murdered.

Cast:

Tom Sizemore ... Detective Cunningham
Edward James Olmos ... Captain Garcia
Ivonne Coll ... Mom
Enrique Almeida ... Dreamer
Resmine Atis ... Detective Gramm
Noel Gugliemi ... Dusty
Dallas Page ... Detective Stiles
Delilah Cotto ... Vanessa
Emilio Rivera ... Jesse (Veterano)
Adam Rodriguez ... Private Martinez
Hector Atreyu Ruiz ... Trigger

rest of cast listed alphabetically:

Ski Carr ... Louie garcia
Gary Cruz ... Lil Nights
Anthony Cuesta ... Speedy
Kira Elliot ... Female Officer 1
Ruben Ferrer ... Paradise Gardens G 2
Billy Garcia ... Shaggy
Jesse G. ... Paradise Gardens G 4
Nicholas Gonzalez ... Detective Diaz
Del Guillen ... Paradise Gardens G 1
Mark Hall ... Detective
Nico Hill ... Detective Scinetti
Rob Hinderstein ... Detective
Harry Karp ... Forensics Officer #2
Alejandro Llobet ... Bartender
Jennifer Lopes ... Bar Girl
Art Madison ... Detective
Thaddeus Massey ... Forensics Expert Petersen
Vinni Ali'i Mesa ... Smokey
Ramon Molina ... Termite
Gino Montesinos ... Gumby
Lisa Moya ... Female Under Arrest 1
Bridger Nielson ... Detective
Bodie Olmos ... Forensics Officer
Mico Olmos ... Detective
Mario Orozco ... Happy
Danny Ortiz ... Casper
Senen Reyes ... Greenville G (as Sen Dog)
Danny Romo ... Paradise Gardens G 3
Kim Rouggie ... Herself
Chris Tongue ... Officer Hanson
Emiliano Torres ... Shooter
Brien Varady ... Detective
Jared Ward ... Detective

The Haunting of Molly Hartley

2008-11-28T23:06:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Points to “The Haunting of Molly Hartley” for defying conventions in its provocative final twist, but the movie really makes you work for it — to get to the finish line, audiences will be forced to endure trite dialogue, familiar situations and uninspired acting.

After a flashback intro where a young girl is murdered by her father on the eve of her 18th birthday because of what she’s “going to become,” we meet Molly (Haley Bennett), a troubled young girl starting classes at a snooty prep school. She recently survived her mother stabbing her in the chest with scissors, and Molly and her father (Jake Weber) try to put the incident behind them.

The school provides the usual pretty mean girls and thoughtless cads; about the only people who are nice to Molly are born-again Christian Alexis (Shanna Collins) and hunky jock Joseph (Chace Crawford). While she tries to fit in, Molly is besieged by visions of her mother attacking her and of mysterious, shadowy figures calling her name.

Is Molly going crazy, just like mom? Or could it be that Mom wasn’t insane but had a legitimate reason for trying to kill her daughter?

Screenwriters John Travis and Rebecca Sonnenshine, to their credit, don’t take the story to the safe, predictable places you might expect. But they indulge in tons of clichés, from the prep school meanies to the BOO! jolts that come at the most obvious times.

First-time director Mickey Liddell fails to transcend the material, either through creating a spooky ambience or by getting his young cast to make more out of their paper-thin characters than is on the page. Collins (the sexually precocious daughter on the underrated “Swingtown”) at least gets a role that puts her striking and unusual features to good use, but teen pin-up Crawford, as usual, does all his acting with his eyebrows and cheekbones.

“The Haunting of Molly Hartley” flirts with having something to say about budding female sexuality and evangelical religion, but it winds up being a pale copy of several of Roman Polanski’s more chilling films. (Molly at one point runs past a local repertory theater playing “The Tenant.”) The big finish of this Halloween release will surprise moviegoers — and possibly annoy some parents taking their 12-year-olds to see “Molly Hartley” for a late-October scare — but too much of the movie is stale candy corn.

CAST & CREW

Director: Kevin Smith

Director: Mickey Liddell

Writers (WGA): John Travis (written by) and Rebecca Sonnenshine (written by)

Release Date: 31 October 2008 (USA)

Genre: Drama | Thriller

Tagline: This Halloween her past is yet to come.

Plot: Molly Hartley looks to put her troubled past behind her with a fresh start at a new school, where she sparks with one of the most popular students...

Cast:

Haley Bennett ... Molly Hartley
Jake Weber ... Robert Hartley
Chace Crawford ... Joseph Young
Shannon Marie Woodward ... Leah
Shanna Collins ... Alexis
AnnaLynne McCord ... Suzie
Marin Hinkle ... Jane Hartley
Nina Siemaszko ... Dr. Emerson
Josh Stewart ... Mr. Draper
Jessica Lowndes ... Laurel
Randy Wayne ... Michael
Jamie McShane ... Father
Ron Canada ... Mr. Bennett
Kevin Cooney ... Dr. Donaldson
Ross Thomas ... Jock

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

2008-11-28T22:56:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Economic times being what they are, people often go to extremes they never thought themselves capable of. So when lifelong pals and current platonic roommates Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) find themselves unable to pay the rent and the utilities, who can blame them for getting into the blue-movie business?

That’s the premise of “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” and it’s a lovely, naughty little movie that allows writer-director Kevin Smith to indulge his twin penchants for scatological sex talk and heartfelt slacker romance. Having old friends realize they love each other during the making of a pornographic video might not be the usual romantic comedy convention, but no one could accuse the maker of “Chasing Amy and “Dogma” of pursuing the tried-and-true.

Zack and Miri both work dead-end jobs — he slings lattés, she’s in retail — but they decide to attend their 10-year high school reunion so that Miri can hit on Bobby Long (Brandon Routh), the football jock who was her teenage crush. Much to her chagrin, Bobby shows up with his boyfriend, gay adult film star Brandon (Justin Long), who tells all about his current gig to an endlessly fascinated Zack.

Once Zack and Miri’s power and water get turned off, he decides that going into porn will be the answer to their financial difficulties. And despite some early resistance — Miri: “Other people don’t have to have sex on camera.” Zack: “Other people have options. And dignity.” — they throw themselves into the project. Zack’s co-barista Delaney (Craig Robinson) invests in the film and becomes executive producer, while Zack and Miri hold a series of hilarious auditions for their co-stars.

For the two old friends, though, actually having sex — even in front of a video camera and a crew of low-budget porn-makers — winds up being a game-changer, which is what “Zack and Miri” is for Smith. As the filmmaker matures, so do his characters, and after getting the amusing but featherweight “Clerks II” out of his system, it seems that Smith is ready grow as a filmmaker while still embracing his very R-rated comic sensibilities. The result is his smartest and funniest film since “Chasing Amy.” (Full disclosure: Smith and I are professional acquaintances, and he participated in a charity event I organized earlier this year.)

Smith has always had a gift with young actors — he is, for better or worse, responsible for launching the careers of Ben Affleck and Jason Lee — and his streak continues here. Rogen has become comedy’s favorite lumpen Everyman, and his rapport with Banks confirms his status as a dashing romantic lead in a schlubby stoner’s body.

For her part, Banks achieves a sprightliness that eluded her in this year’s “Definitely, Maybe,” and she’s very game to get dirty (talking) with the boys’ club. Smith regulars Jeff Anderson and Jason Mewes — the latter going full-frontal seemingly without batting an eyelash — have fun with the material, but the best of the second bananas is definitely Long, vamping it up and having a blast as a gay porn stud. (Kudos to Routh as well — who knew Superman could be funny?)

It’s ironic that the film’s title is causing trouble for advertisers and even some theater chains, since “Zack and Miri” deals directly with the fact that, in the age of the internet, porn isn’t the shocking taboo subject it once was. The wonderful, short-lived series “Swingtown” devoted an entire episode to the 1970’s controversy surrounding “Deep Throat”; that film’s director died this week, and he probably never imagined a world where we’d all have naked people at our fingertips, so to speak.

But once audiences get past the inherent shock value of “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” they’ll find a laugh-packed and tenderhearted tale that explores the accidental crossing of the line between having sex and making love.

CAST & CREW

Director: Kevin Smith

Writer (WGA): Kevin Smith (written by)

Release Date: 31 October 2008 (USA)

Genre: Comedy | Drama | Romance

Plot: Lifelong platonic friends Zack and Miri look to solve their respective cash-flow problems by making an adult film together. As the cameras roll, however, the duo begin to sense that they may have more feelings for each other than they previously thought.

Cast:

Elizabeth Banks ... Miriam Linky
Seth Rogen ... Zack Brown
Jason Mewes ... Lester
Gerry Bednob ... Mr. Surya
Edward Janda ... Customer
Nicholas Lombardi ... Teen #1
Chris Milan ... Teen #2
Jennifer Schwalbach Smith ... Betsy (as Jennifer Schwalbach)
Kenny Hotz ... Zack II
Brandon Routh ... Bobby Long
Anne Wade ... Roxanne
Justin Long ... Brandon
Tom Savini ... Jenkins
Jeff Anderson ... Deacon
Jim Norton ... Auditioner #1

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

2008-11-28T22:47:00.001-08:00

REVIEW:

The family drama “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” depicts the Holocaust through the simplistic eyes of a child: all the brutality, all the absurdity, crystallized by the innocence of an 8-year-old boy.

That lad is the son of a Nazi commandant, and he befriends a Jewish boy his age who is being held in the concentration camp his father oversees. Sounds mawkish, but the relationship between wide-eyed Bruno (Asa Butterfield) and sad-faced Shmuel (Jack Scanlon) is the most effective part of writer-director Mark Herman’s needlessly overpowering film, based on John Boyne’s novel.

It’s engaging for a while, though. Both boys are newcomers but the curious way they approach each other feels believable because their characters are so lonely, and the friendship that blossoms between them has an undeniable sweetness — even though they’re separated by an ever-present and imposing barbed-wire fence.

Bruno and his family move from Berlin to the countryside when his up-and-coming Nazi father (David Thewlis) gets a promotion. The boy is understandably sad to leave his friends behind, but at his new home, he knows absolutely no one and is crushed with boredom — that is, until he spies a faraway “farm” from his bedroom window.

Naturally, his mother (Vera Farmiga) and father try to squelch his inquisitiveness about this mysterious place — “Why do the farmers wear pajamas?” he asks in his tiny voice — but once he grows tired of playing checkers by himself, Bruno defies their orders and dashes out the back gate to investigate. That’s where meets Shmuel, passing the time by himself at the edge of the yard.

Chatting with this boy of a totally different background is exciting for Bruno because he doesn’t realize yet that Shmuel is, theoretically, supposed to be the enemy. He thinks Shmuel and everyone else on his side of the fence are playing some sort of game — that must be why each person wears a number. The propaganda lessons that have strongly influenced his older sister Gretel (the unpleasant Amber Beattie) haven’t had quite the same impact on him.

Thewlis is singularly driven and ambitious as Bruno’s stern father, but the placid Farmiga makes things vaguely interesting once she snaps and realizes that her husband may not be such a good guy after all. In the midst of their marital strife, Bruno sneaks out day after day, and he and Shmuel talk and play and confide in one another; each is the other’s only real friend.

You know you’re being manipulated but Herman, who also directed the small gem “Little Voice” from 1998, shows admirable restraint — until the very end, at least. The climactic conclusion is so preposterously coincidental, so over-the-top in its melodrama, it’s more likely to elicit incredulous frustration than sorrow.

It doesn’t help that the insistent score from James Horner, an Oscar winner for “Titanic,” overwhelms us with a sense of dread early and often. That’s unnecessary. This is a movie about the Holocaust, after all; clearly, something horrific is going to happen.

CAST & CREW

Director: Mark Herman

Writers: John Boyne (novel) & Mark Herman (screenplay)

Release Date: 14 November 2008 (USA)

Genre: Drama | War

Tagline: A timeless story of innocence lost and humanity found.

Plot: Set during World War II, a story seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences.

Cast:

Asa Butterfield ... Bruno
Zac Mattoon O'Brien ... Leon
Domonkos Németh ... Martin
Henry Kingsmill ... Karl
Vera Farmiga ... Mother
Cara Horgan ... Maria
Zsuzsa Holl ... Berlin Cook
Amber Beattie ... Gretel
László Áron ... Lars
David Thewlis ... Father
Richard Johnson ... Grandpa
Sheila Hancock ... Grandma
Iván Verebély ... Meinberg
Béla Fesztbaum ... Schultz
Attila Egyed ... Heinz

Repo! The Genetic Opera

2008-11-28T22:35:00.001-08:00

REVIEW:

“Repo! The Genetic Opera” is easily one of the worst movies of the year, if not all time.

This goth garbage isn’t clever enough to be “Sweeney Todd” and it isn’t campy enough to be “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” — it’s not even worthwhile in a culty, midnight-movie way. In fact, it’s hard to tell whether “Repo!” is trying to be serious or funny, the tone from director Darren Lynn Bousman (“Saw II” through “Saw IV”) is so erratic.

One thing is for certain: This is one of those movies you have to watch through splayed fingers — not because it’s so pervasively violent and gory, which it is, but because it is simply too cringe-worthy to look at head-on.

If you’ve heard of “Repo!” at all, it’s probably because of the involvement of Paris Hilton, and for no other reason. Hilton actually has a supporting role here as a sort of naughty-vampira version of herself: a black-tressed heiress who is hooked on plastic surgery. And yes, she does sing, but no better or worse than anyone else.

The intentionally dissonant songs with their painfully clunky lyrics, which writers Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich first created for their “Repo!” stage musical, are set in a futuristic society where people’s organs mysteriously fail and transplants become not just necessary but fashionable. That’s where the biotech company GeneCo steps in, headed by CEO Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino, inexplicably slumming — he really is a trained opera singer). Zdunich, who also serves as our narrator, the Grave Robber, keeps popping up to explain the convoluted plot in malevolent tones.

But if you can’t afford to pay for your new heart or spleen, GeneCo sends the Repo Man (Anthony Stewart Head) to collect. And he sings while he’s doing it! The most ridiculous example of this is a scene in which he’s got a guy hanging upside down and he’s disemboweling him while simultaneously talking on the cell phone to his teenage daughter, reminding her to take her medicine.

Poor, sick Shilo (Alexa Vega from the “Spy Kids” movies) doesn’t realize her dad is the mean, old Repo Man, though — she just thinks he’s a mild-mannered, overly protective doctor named Nathan, still mourning the death of her mother. (Mom is the source of her illness, by the way: “I’m infected by your genetics,” Shilo sings in one of the film’s oddly peppy rock tunes. “Mother can you hear me? Thanks for the disease.” Every song is that literal.) The family’s twisted back story, which is tied in with Rotti’s, plays out in comic book-style panels, which do nothing to liven up the movie’s dreary look.

There’s also a strange sexual tension that exists between Hilton’s character, Amber Sweet, and her two freaky brothers as they blow the family’s money on cosmetic surgery and compete to see who will take over Daddy’s company. The frequent juxtaposition of sex and death in “Repo!” is neither arousing nor frightening, it just feels gratuitous.

Sarah Brightman, who became an international superstar as Christine in “The Phantom of the Opera” on the London stage, makes her feature film debut in a bizarre role as Blind Mag, a singer who is — you guessed it — blind, but can see thanks to eyeballs on loan from the evil GeneCo.

When she scratches out those eyes on stage — after delivering an aria while suspended from the ceiling, the one merciful moment of salvation in this cacophonous onslaught — it makes you realize she’s onto something. At least she didn’t have to watch the rest of the movie.

CAST & CREW

Director: Darren Lynn Bousman

Writers: Darren Smith (screenplay) & Terrance Zdunich (screenplay) ...

Genre: Fantasy | Horror | Musical

Plot: A worldwide epidemic encourages a biotech company to launch an organ-financing program similar in nature to a standard car loan. The repossession clause is a killer, however.

Cast:

Alexa Vega ... Shilo Wallace
Paul Sorvino ... Rotti Largo
Anthony Head ... Nathan Wallace / Repo Man
Sarah Brightman ... Blind Mag
Paris Hilton ... Amber Sweet
Bill Moseley ... Luigi Largo
Nivek Ogre ... Pavi Largo (as Ogre)
Terrance Zdunich ... Graverobber
Sarah Power ... Marni Wallace
Jessica Horn ... Jessica Adams
Branko Lebar ... Rotti's Chauffeur
Brianna Buckmaster ... Sherrie Alviso
Anna Kostan ... Young Mormon Woman
Brad Austin ... Young Mormon Man
Marty Adams ... Big Man

Soul Men

2008-11-27T20:55:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

The plot outline for “Soul Men” could fit comfortably on a single note card, with room left over for a grocery list and a few phone numbers. A road-trip rip-off of “The Sunshine Boys” infused with soul music and vulgar, misogynist humor, this dreadful film marks a sad end to the distinguished careers of Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes.

In a flashback introduction that feels like lesser outtakes from “Walk Hard” (which wasn’t that great to begin with), we learn that music icon Marcus Hooks (John Legend) has died and that VH1 is planning an all-star funeral for him at the Apollo Theater. The news brings some much-needed excitement into the life of retired used-car dealer Floyd Henderson (Bernie Mac), who was one of Marcus’ backup singers back in the day, before the star went solo.

Marcus’ other backup singer, Louis Hinds (Samuel L. Jackson), had a single hit as a duo act with Floyd until the two men had a professional split over the woman they both loved. With Floyd bored out of his mind in a senior citizen community and Louis living in poverty as an ex-con with anger issues, the two men reluctantly agree to reteam. Since Floyd won’t fly, they have to put up with each other in a cross-country car trip.

You can pretty much map out what happens without seeing the movie, but the story outline can’t begin to capture the mean-spirited humor, the hideous cinematography (there are green-screen shots in the driving sequences that are mind-bogglingly awful) and the general air of predictability that permeates “Soul Men.”

Apart from the character of Cleo (Sharon Leal, several steps down from “Dreamgirls”), the daughter of the woman over whom Floyd and Louis fought, every woman who turns up on screen is either a shrew or a slut or both. Special attention should be paid to the criminal misuse of the hilarious and talented Jennifer Coolidge, who pops up as a middle-aged temptress who removes her dentures for an intimate moment with Floyd. Wokka-wokka!

There’s a whiff of a gag in the flashback sequences regarding Jackson’s ability to make all of the popular African-American hairstyles of the last 50 years look somewhat ludicrous, but that’s about as close as “Soul Men” gets to generating any laughs. Stay home with some Platters and P-Funk CDs and spare yourself this musical mishegas.

CAST & CREW

Director: Malcolm D. Lee

Writers (WGA): Robert Ramsey (written by) & Matthew Stone (written by)

Release Date: 7 November 2008 (USA)

Genre: Comedy | Drama | Music

Tagline: Out of sync. Never out of style.

Plot: Though it's been some twenty years since they have spoken with one another, two estranged soul-singing legends agree to participate in a reunion performance at the Apollo Theater to honor their recently deceased band leader.

Cast:

Samuel L. Jackson ... Louis Hinds
Bernie Mac ... Floyd Henderson
Sharon Leal ... Cleo
Adam Herschman ... Phillip
Sean Hayes ... Danny Epstein
Affion Crockett ... Lester
Fatso-Fasano ... Pay-Pay
Jackie Long ... Zig-Zag
Mike Epps ... Duane Henderson
John Legend ... Marcus Hooks
Isaac Hayes ... Himself
Vanessa del Rio ... Full-Figured Neighbor
P.J. Byrne ... Floyd's Doctor
Ken Davitian ... Ardesh Kezian
Jennifer Coolidge ... Rosalee

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

2008-11-27T20:46:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Yes, computer animators, it’s really cool how you make each individual hair in a lion’s mane stand out. And the way you fill the screen with striped zebras is a wonder to behold. But is it too much to ask for these feature cartoons to have a story that isn’t about the hero’s quest to prove himself? Could we put Joseph Campbell back on the shelf and find a new dramatic archetype?

Seriously, “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” may not be the worst of the animated features that have been forced down our collective gullet since the genre’s rebirth with “The Little Mermaid” almost 20 years ago, but it feels like a collection of tropes and gags so familiar that even 4-year-olds could map out where they’ve seen all this before.

The first movie dealt with a quartet of zoo animals who break out of New York’s Central Park Zoo and then, through a series of misadventures, wind up fending for themselves in the wilds of Madagascar. This time around, we’re treated to a little pre-history, in which we learn that lion Alex (voiced by Ben Stiller) was actually poached off an animal reserve in Africa, much to the sorrow of his parents Zuba (the late Bernie Mac) and Mom (Sherri Shepherd).

After we flashback through that childhood incident (as well as the events of the first “Madagascar”), we see Alex, zebra Marty (Chris Rock), hippo Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) and giraffe Melman (David Schwimmer) aboard a rickety plane that their lemur and penguin pals plan to fly back to New York. Things don’t go quite so smoothly, however, and a semi-harrowing crash delivers them back to Africa and the reserve where Alex was born.

The conniving Makunga (Alec Baldwin) uses Alex’s arrival as a way to usurp Zuba’s position as alpha lion, while the other three animals deal with their own issues — Marty meets a peer group of zebras, although he worries about losing his individuality; Gloria gets to entertain a gentleman caller who seems interested only in her avoirdupois; and Melman gets to put his years of hypochondria to good use as a witch doctor, although he’s still too terrified to profess his love of Gloria.

“Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” is bright and colorful to look at, but the movie gets weighed down by an excessive amount of talk, talk, talk, little of which is particularly funny. A big chunk of the plot revolves around Alex lacking the jungle skills of a lion, but wasn’t the first movie about him rediscovering his killer instincts when returned to the wild? That entire notion is never once mentioned here, and it feels like lazy writing.

Most of the voice performances are merely adequate, although Baldwin has a field day playing what might be classified as Scar from “The Lion King” as filtered through Baldwin’s hilariously ruthless “30 Rock” character. (The animators give Makunga very Baldwin-like facial expressions, and he winds up being the movie’s most interesting character.) And while a little David Schwimmer usually goes a long way, his voice is exactly the sound you imagine a hypochondriacal giraffe making.

Easily entertained children will probably be amused enough by “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa,” but their parents may find themselves growing restless at this overly fussy, shticky movie and will not doubt look forward to an Escape 2 the Lobby once the credits start rolling.

CAST & CREW

Directors: Eric Darnell & Tom McGrath

Writer: Etan Cohen (written by)

Release Date: 7 November 2008 (USA)

Genre: Animation | Action | Adventure | Comedy | Family

Tagline: Move It, Move It

Plot: The sequel to 2005's "Madagascar", in which New York Zoo animals, Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Melman the Giraffe and Gloria the Hippo...

Cast:

Ben Stiller ... Alex (voice)
Chris Rock ... Marty / Additional Zebras (voice)
David Schwimmer ... Melman (voice)
Jada Pinkett Smith ... Gloria (voice)
Sacha Baron Cohen ... Julien (voice)
Cedric the Entertainer ... Maurice (voice)
Andy Richter ... Mort (voice)
Bernie Mac ... Zuba (voice)
Alec Baldwin ... Makunga (voice)
Sherri Shepherd ... Mom (voice)
Will i Am ... Moto Moto (voice) (as Will.I.Am)
Elisa Gabrielli ... Nana (voice)
Tom McGrath ... Skipper / Lemur #1 (voice)
Chris Miller ... Kowalski (voice)
Christopher Knights ... Private (voice)

Role Models

2008-11-27T20:26:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

Let us now praise Paul Rudd. While this leading man seems to eschew the usual off-screen antics that put performers on the public’s radar, Rudd dependably brings a dry, intelligent wit to movie after movie. Whether in comedy classics (“Clueless,” “Knocked Up”) or clunkers (“Over Her Dead Body”), he has quietly accumulated an impressive résumé of engaging, entertaining performances.

With “Role Models,” he may suddenly find himself getting the attention he has largely avoided, because his work here is at a game-changing level for a young actor. The fact that he also shares a writing credit should provide a boost as well.

Rudd stars as Danny, a spokesman for an energy-drink company whose job involves appearing at schools and telling kids to consume his swill rather than doing drugs. He’s accompanied on these gigs by Wheeler (Seann William Scott), a skirt-chasing slacker who performs alongside him dressed as a minotaur.

Danny’s stuck in a rut and bitter about it — early on, he takes out his frustrations on a coffee-shop barista over the ridiculous tall/grande/venti nomenclature — and his anhedonia drives away his girlfriend lawyer Beth (Elizabeth Banks, who’s currently wooing underachievers in two other films, “W.” and “Zack & Miri Make a Porno”).

Frustrated by life’s many disappointments, Danny gets into an altercation with a tow-truck driver that leads to him and Wheeler being forced to mentor kids in a Big Brothers–type program to avoid going to jail. Under the watchful eye of former addict Gayle (Jane Lynch) — who never encountered a metaphor she couldn’t mangle — Danny is assigned to Renaissance Faire–obsessed geek Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), while Wheeler tries to bond with foul-mouthed youngster Ronnie (Bobb’e J. Thompson).

And yes, of course, removing their gazes from their own navels teaches Danny and Wheeler valuable life lessons, and their mentorship does wind up improving the lives of their young charges, but what’s great about “Role Models” is that even when the plot threatens to go all Dr. Phil, director David Wain (“Wet Hot American Summer”) never softens the film’s comic prickliness. The repartee remains snappy, and the script doesn’t surrender to schmaltz.

Rudd’s slow burn and deadpan have never been sharper, and it makes for a perfect contrast with the cheesy zest that Scott gives to Wheeler. Mintz-Plasse’s Augie might on the surface seem like a variation of his brilliant turn as McLovin in last year’s “Superbad,” but he’s called upon to go deeper and stranger here, which he pulls off perfectly. And even if the whole cursing-kid thing isn’t the laugh-getter it once was, Thompson’s gusto makes the stream of profanities coursing from his mouth feel shocking all over again. Kudos, too, to Lynch, for making what could have been a routine character into a wonderfully oddball creation.

While I haven’t been a big fan of Wain’s film and TV (“Stella,” “The State”) work, “Role Models” is a well-crafted concoction, from the brilliant payoff of a running gag about KISS to its unique blend of crassness and huggability. This film heralds another director who can join with Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith in what is becoming another golden age for R-rated comedy.

CAST & CREW

Director: David Wain

Writers: Paul Rudd (screenplay) & David Wain (screenplay)

Release Date: 7 November 2008 (USA)

Genre: Comedy

Tagline: Danny and Wheeler were just sentenced to 150 hours mentoring kids. Worst idea ever.

Plot: Wild behavior forces a pair of energy drink reps to enroll in a Big Brother program.

Cast:

Seann William Scott ... Wheeler
Paul Rudd ... Danny Donahue
Christopher Mintz-Plasse... Augie Farks
Bobb'e J. Thompson ... Ronnie Shields
Elizabeth Banks ... Beth
Jane Lynch ... Gayle Sweeny
Ken Jeong ... King Argotron
Ken Marino ... Jim Stansel
Kerri Kenney ... Lynette (as Kerri Kenney-Silver)
A.D. Miles ... Martin Gary
Joe Lo Truglio ... Kuzzik
Matt Walsh ... Davith of Glencracken
Nicole Randall Johnson ... Karen
Alexandra Stamler ... Esplen
Carly Craig ... Connie

Slumdog Millionaire

2008-11-27T19:27:00.000-08:00

REVIEW:

The framing device is one of the cinema’s most venerable ways of telling a story. From William Holden floating facedown in a swimming pool at the beginning of “Sunset Blvd.” to Peter Falk reading Fred Savage the story of “The Princess Bride” to Ewan McGregor sobbing at his typewriter in “Moulin Rouge!” it’s a great way to use flashbacks to tell a story and flesh out the characters.

And you’ve never seen a framing device like the one in “Slumdog Millionaire,” a movie so compelling and, ultimately, upbeat, that it left me grinning wider than anything I’ve seen in ages.

The framing device involves young Jamal (Dev Patel), a teenager who fetches tea at one of India’s huge telemarketing companies. Jamal has captured the imagination of the entire country by winning millions of rupees on the India’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” Naturally, in a country where the caste system hasn’t completely disappeared, the idea of a “slumdog” answering such difficult questions has the show’s host (Anil Kapoor) convinced that the kid must be cheating, so when we first meet Jamal, he’s being interrogated by the authorities.

A sympathetic police inspector (Irfan Khan of “The Namesake”) takes Jamal through each question that he got right, and in explaining how he knew the answers, Jamal tells his life story of growing up in the slums of Bombay with his hot-headed brother Salim, of being taken in by a Fagin-like exploiter of children and of Latika, the girl he’s loved all his life.

It’s best to know as little of the plot of “Slumdog Millionaire” as possible, so I’ll reveal no more. But Jamel’s story encompasses everything from pluck and triumph to horror and cruelty, and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (“The Full Monty”), adapting the novel “Q&A” by Vikas Swarup, makes this tale almost Dickensian in both its flourishes and its soul.

Jamal, Salim and Latika are each played by three actors at different ages in their lives — children, pre-teens and young adults — and all nine performances are knockouts. It’s Patel, however, who anchors the film and draws the audience into this fascinating story.

India, with its overcrowded streets, cluttered urban skylines and sprawling vistas, becomes a character in the story, too, thanks mainly to Anthony Dod Mantle’s stirring cinematography. Poverty never looked as dazzing as the overhead shots of the maze-like Mumbai ghetto.

I was surprised to learn, after the fact that “Slumdog Millionaire” runs two hours, as those 120 minutes zipped by. (It’s a stark contrast to, say, “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa,” which felt longer than “Berlin Alexanderplatz.”) Once “Slumdog” launches into its final act, you’ll get that pang that comes with the last chapter of a great book you wish you weren’t about to finish.

CAST & CREW

Directors: Danny Boyle & Loveleen Tandan (co-director: India)

Writers: Simon Beaufoy (screenplay) and Vikas Swarup (novel)

Release Date: 7 January 2009 (France)

Genre: Comedy | Crime | Drama | Romance

Plot: The story of how impoverished Indian teen Jamal Malik became a contestant on the Hindi version of "Who Wants to be A Millionaire?" -- an endeavor made without prize money in mind, rather, an effort to prove his love for his friend Latika, who is an ardent fan of the show.

Cast:

Dev Patel ... Jamal Malik
Anil Kapoor ... Prem Kumar
Saurabh Shukla ... Sergeant Srinivas
Rajendranath Zutshi ... Director (as Raj Zutshi)
Jeneva Talwar ... Vision Mixer
Freida Pinto ... Latika
Irfan Khan ... Police Inspector
Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail ... Youngest Salim
Ayush Mahesh Khedekar ... Youngest Jamal
Sunil Kumar Agrawal ... Mr Chi (as Sunil Aggarwal)
Jira Banjara ... Airport Security Guard #1
Sheikh Wali ... Airport Security Guard #2
Mahesh Manjrekar ... Javed
Sanchita Couhdary ... Jamal's Mother
Himanshu Tyagi ... Mr Nanda