Movie Reviews
X-Men: The Last Stand
Add "X-Men: The Last Stand" to the list of trilogies whose third parts are the weakest, along with "Jurassic Park," "Back to the Future" and "The Godfather." It's not a bad movie, though not for lack of several bad elements (sloppy editing, some outr...
An Inconvenient Truth (documentary)
Al Gore's shockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" looks like the most captivating and informative college lecture you ever attended. Folksy and accessible at first, then building up to impassioned and fervent, Gore addresses his audience with facts, figures and PowerPoint, making the case for an alarming trend in global warming and the catastrophic effects it will eventually have. The most enlightening moment comes when he addresses the myth that global warming is still being debated among scientists: No it isn't, he says, and observes that among 928 randomly selected global warming articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, precisely zero of them suggested there was any question that the phenomenon is real, man-made and threatening. So why do people think there's anything less than near-universal consensus among scientists? Because Big Oil WANTS people to think that, the same way Big Tobacco still insists there's "debate" about smoking when in fact the debate ended long ago. "An Inconvenient Truth" isn't "fun," per se, but it never ceases to be fascinating and eye-opening.
The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code� may not have been a literary masterpiece, but at least it was good preposterous fun. Ron Howard’s movie adaptation, on the other hand -- a thick, bloated film in which a very stern-faced Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou dash around Europe blurting important-sounding dialogue -- takes itself far too seriously. As you know from reading the book two summers ago, the story starts with a murder at the Louvre, where Hanks’ “religious symbologist� Robert Langdon is summoned to help decipher the odd clues left by the victim, which leads him on a quest to determine the true nature and current whereabouts of the Holy Grail. The film lacks a good climax or even any decent momentum, and only Ian McKellen as Langdon’s Grail-expert friend seems to be having any fun, embracing the story’s outrageousness instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.
Over the Hedge
Movies based on comic strips have a spotty history -- surely "Garfield" still haunts the dreams of many parents, as it does mine -- but "Over the Hedge" is a buoyant and funny animated lark in its own right, regardless of its funny-pages origins.
...
See No Evil
You have no idea how happy I am not to know who Kane is. He's a WWE wrestler, you see, and not having heard of him means I have no connection to that world.
But there are people who love professional wrestling, and who love Kane, and they will sur...
Moonlight
"Moonlight" has two 13-year-olds doin' it, makes frequent references to the girl's recently begun menstrual cycle, and includes a scene where the boy (injured and hiding in a barn) craps his pants and lets the girl clean him up. Wanna guess which continent the movie comes from? That's right! Europe! Dutch director Paula van der Oest follows up her much-admired "Zus and Zo" with this moody suspense drama in which a young drug mule (Hunter Bussemaker), dying of gunshot wounds, is found by rich girl Claire (Laurien Van den Broeck) in her family's backyard shed. She treats his injuries, wipes his butt, and eventually takes him on the run from his evil, vaguely Russian pursuers. The kids' language barrier means they don't speak much, and the film is often eerily quiet, to great effect. Other times, it's just plain odd, as when Claire and the boy hide at a Catholic youth retreat and the boy must pretend to be both a) female and b) mentally handicapped. It's a serious film (really!) that keeps bringing up motifs of blood, sex and gender without ever really DOING anything with them, and the story ultimately goes nowhere.
Twelve and Holding
All the characters' lives are messed up in "Twelve and Holding," but they're messed up in ways that we can relate to. It's that underlying truthfulness that gives the well-told story its resonance.
It's a fantastic second effort for director Mich...
Poseidon
There are few things more pitiful than a movie that thinks it's being serious when in fact it's being very, very funny. "Poseidon" is one of those movies, a rushed, unintentionally silly retread of 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure" that feels more like...
Just My Luck
Forget "Poseidon." The real disaster movie this week is "Just My Luck," a gruesome trainwreck of a teen comedy about an always-lucky Manhattanite (Lindsay Lohan) and a perpetually unlucky man (Chris Pine) who meet at a masquerade ball, share a kiss, and in so doing reverse their respective fortunes. No one in the film ever says or does anything close to what a real person would say or do in the same situation, and the movie's idea of "bad luck" is what the rest of us call "being clumsy or stupid." (Getting an eye infection because you reinserted your contact lens after dropping it in the cat's litter box is not "unlucky." It's retarded.) The acting is bland and the direction weak, but nothing could have saved a screenplay this witless, unfunny and illogical.
Goal! The Dream Begins
In "Goal! The Dream Begins," a Mexican immigrant in Los Angeles finds that in order to pursue his version of the American dream, he'll have to go to England. His name is Santiago (Kuno Becker), and in this very Disneyfied (read: generic) underdog sports story, he gets a chance to play soccer with Newcastle United. It's a dream come true for the humble lad -- if only he can 1) raise the money needed for a plane ticket, 2) convince his unsupportive father to let him go, and 3) through 100) overcome the other 98 obstacles that perfunctorily arise on the road to success. The movie is the first part in a planned feel-good trilogy, but if they're all going to be as rote and mechanical as this one, I don't see the point. For what it's worth, though, there are some decent soccer scenes, only they keep calling it "football." Whatever.
Sketches of Frank Gehry (documentary)
A documentary about an architect has an uphill battle finding an audience, because for one thing it's a documentary, and for another thing it's about an architect. I mean, come on. But "Sketches of Frank Gehry" is a spiffy little doc, directed by longtime filmmaker/first-time documentarian Sydney Pollac. It reveals a little about an architect's craft and thought process, but mostly it's about Gehry himself, the man, the myth, the legend. The big deal about Gehry, Pollack says, is that while most architects deal with straight lines and easily defined geometric shapes, Gehry favors bizarre curves, twists and oddly proportioned shapes. The man himself comes across as a garrulous, likable old crank, not the loony eccentric you'd expect from viewing his work, and despite some omissions on Pollack's part -- no interviews with family members, or explanations for why they're not available -- it's a solid film. It's certainly a great deal more entertaining than you'd expect a documentary about an architect to be.
Wah-Wah
Actor Richard E. Grant becomes writer and director in "Wah-Wah," an autobiographical film about a British teen living in Swaziland in the 1960s, at the tail end of England's colonial presence there. It is a hodge-podge of random plot threads, insignificant details and an often-melodramatic tone -- yet it's always sweet and moderately likable. Thanks are due particularly to Nicholas Hoult (from "About a Boy," much taller and more grownup now), who plays the boy with admirable maturity. He helps make the film better than it ought to be.
Keeping Up With the Steins
I'm glad I'm not Jewish. "Keeping Up With the Steins" would make me embarrassed to be. It's bad enough the lousy Christian films I have to put up with.
Scott Marshall is the son of director/actor Garry Marshall, which probably explains how he was...
The Proposition
Written by gloom-rocker Nick Cave and directed by fellow Aussie John Hillcoat, “The Proposition� is the Down Under equivalent of “Deadwood�: violent, profane and dusty. It’s set around 1900 in the brutal, uncivilized outback, with a British captain (Ray Winstone) seeking to tame it by bringing a family of outlaws to justice. His method is to turn the brothers against each other, and the film considers whether blood really is thicker than water. All the violence adds up to an anti-violence message, sort of, and the film is more thought-provoking than you’d suspect, in addition to being grimly entertaining.
Art School Confidential
Director Terry Zwigoff reunites with his “Ghost World� writer Daniel Clowes for “Art School Confidential,� a disappointing comic noir about a series of murders at a Manhattan liberal arts college. There are chuckles in the first half as the film skewers the various types of art students -- vulgar filmmakers, gay fashion designers, vegan painters, etc. -- and Max Minghella has a certain soulfulness as the protagonist, a “normal� freshman artist named Jerome. He is smitten with Audrey (Sophia Myles), a fellow student who works as a nude model in Jerome’s drawing class, and annoyed by Jonah (Matt Keeslar), an untalented artist whose work keeps being praised over his. The film begins astutely, offering scathing indictments of the art world as ruthless and commercial, then veers into the serial-killer plot, half-heartedly trying for laughs while it goes through the motions of solving the murders. It's a daring ploy -- come for the laughs, stay for the pitch-black dissertation on art and fame -- but Zwigoff and Clowes just don't pull it off.
The Promise (Chinese)
Kaige Chen, of "Farewell, My Concubine" fame, has made China's all-time most expensive film with "The Promise," but he hasn't made its best. The film has beautiful scenery, energetic camerawork and exciting action sequences, sure -- and yet those elements feel like they belong in a better movie, one with less lavishness and more humanity. The story involves a princess who is rescued by a slave wearing his master's armor, leading to a case of mistaken identity: The princess marries the master, not the slave, in gratitude. (Whoops!) Meanwhile, a conniving evil general dispatches an assassin to kill the slave (or whoever), and the princess frets over a prophecy from her childhood that says she will lose every man she ever loves. The film recalls "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hero," and these epic stories of centuries-ago warriors and princesses, with their magical realism and convoluted backstories, always walk the line between engrossing fantasy and flat-out goofiness. Chen lacks the delicate touch of Ang Lee or Xhang Yimou, though, and "The Promise" falls on the goofy side more often than it should.
Mission: Impossible III
People have begun to notice lately that movies are in decline while TV shows are becoming more impressive in their scope and size -- more like what movies are supposed to be, in other words. Nowhere is this more evident than in "Mission: Impossible I...
Hoot
The message of "Hoot" is that it's never too young to get started in the field of eco-terrorism. Vandalizing construction sites and chaining yourself to bulldozers -- that's not just for grownups, you know. The target demographic of tweenage boys and girls -- it's the rare film that seems aimed at both -- will probably react favorably to it, though I can't say it did much for me, a grownup who notices things like plot holes and logical fallacies. The story concerns two boys and a girl in Florida who learn that the site where a Mother Paula's Pancake House is supposed to be built is also home to some endangered burrowing owls. This leaves them no choice but to sabotage the construction efforts and attempt to bring down The Man. Why don't the kids just alert the media about the presence of the owls and let the government revoke Mother Paula’s permit? Because that wouldn’t be any fun, silly! But the young actors give earnest, straightforward performances, and the film has a playful tone that makes it likable regardless of its dubious story line.
An American Haunting
This week's lousy thriller, "An American Haunting," comes to us from the director of 2000's "Dungeons & Dragons" and focuses on a supposedly true story about a Tennessee family tormented by a ghost in the 1810s. The movie firmly believes that if something happens suddenly and is accompanied by a loud "sting" on the musical score, that's all that's necessary to scare an audience. There are no haunting images, no creepy scenarios beyond the basic "there's a ghost in my room and it keeps rattling the doorknob." Nope, just a lot of loud noises designed to make you jump. Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek (as the parents of the haunted girl) deserve better than this, and both use their considerable talent to imbue the generic ghost story with more weight than it deserves. But it's still lousy.
The King
In Texas, there are two men referred to as kings: Elvis and Jesus. Both figures are evoked in the subtly creepy drama "The King," in which a man named Elvis threatens another man's relationship with Jesus. Elvis (Gael Garcia Bernal) is the illegitimate son of a Corpus Christi rock 'n' roll preacher (William Hurt), conceived before the man found God. He has a wife and kids now, and he wants nothing to do with this living reminder of his previous, sinful life. Yet Elvis ingratiates himself into the family anyway, and the very well-crafted film builds emotional suspense as we slowly realizes Elvis' true intentions. It's a tense and harrowing drama in which so many people have so many lies and secrets floating around that it's only a matter of time before everything comes crashing down.
Down in the Valley
Harlan Carruthers, the Edward Norton character in "Down in the Valley," is the L.A. version of Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro's character in "Taxi Driver." Like Travis, Harlan longs for a world that doesn't exist anymore, pretends he's something he's not, and dreams of living a life of stoicism and heroics instead of the empty drudgery he's confined to now. This is a sober and often chilling examination of the conflict between the Old West and the New West, with Harlan an out-of-work rancher who takes up with an underage girl (Evan Rachel Wood) whose father, a corrections officer named Wade (David Morse), is the equivalent of the local sheriff: suspicious of the new-comer, and rightly so. The individual elements -- sexually active teen, sudden violence, anti-hero protagonist, general moodiness -- are typical Sundance fare, but writer/director David Jacobson manipulates them pretty well, and Norton's performance is one of his most riveting in years.
Water (Hindi)
In "Water," director Deepa Mehta creates a powerfully real (but cinematically lovely) view of 1930s India, at a time when Indian women, particularly widows, were greatly oppressed. An 8-year-old girl named Chuyia (played a little cherub named Sarala) has been wedded to a man she's never met, and who dies before she ever sees him. Thus at a terribly young age, she is cast aside like all widows in the culture, forbidden to remarry or be productive members of society. At a small compound where a dozen or so other widows live, she meets the beautiful young Kalyani (Lisa Ray), a fellow widow who shares her enthusiasm for life. Though the details of the story are foreign to Western thinking, the general themes of forbidden love and conflicted religious feelings are familiar to almost everyone. And with beautiful Sri Lankan scenery filling the screen, the film's visuals hold almost as much power as its story does.
Lady Vengeance (Korean)
Chan-wook Park's "revenge trilogy" began brilliantly with "Oldboy," stumbled only slightly with "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance," and now falls into deep trouble with "Lady Vengeance." Nearly gone is the absurd, dark sense of humor. The plot is mostly fr...
United 93
“United 93� may prove to be America’s catharsis, a big group-therapy session for everyone who lived through 9/11 and still remembers it as though it were yesterday. As the first filmmaker to depict events from that day, writer/director Paul Greengrass has been under intense scrutiny amid fears that he would botch the project through sentimentalism, false heroism or any of the myriad ways a film like this could go wrong -- and it turns out those worries were unfounded. This is as perfect a film as I’ve seen, respectful of its subject matter, utterly devoid of Hollywood-style fakery, and 100 percent gripping from beginning to end. Greengrass employs a subtle, documentary-style touch as he tells the story of the hijacked flight that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11. He refuses to underline important symbolic moments the way most filmmakers would, or indeed to pander to our emotions in any way, preferring to let the naturalistic acting and the crackerjack editing do the job without overt manipulation. The result? A completely devastating experience that demonstrates a mastery of the medium.
RV
“RV� isn’t any good, but at least it has Barry Sonnenfeld as its director. The guy knows how to tell a visual joke. He'll position the camera and the actors in just the right way to catch the comedy, even when, as is the case for most of "RV," there's no comedy taking place. Because Tim Allen was busy, I guess, Robin Williams stars as Bob Munro, a bumbling, workaholic dad who tries to make up for neglecting his wife and kids by taking them on an RV trip to Colorado. All the cliches of the road-trip comedy are present, including the vehicular mayhem (the RV is a rental, which means it must be destroyed) and a run-in with some wildlife (a raccoon, specifically). And in a special two-for-one offer, we also get the cliches of the workaholic-dad-learns-what's-really-important comedy, right down to the finale where Bob tells his soulless boss to take this job and shove it. The whole thing is made bearable by Sonnenfeld's visual acumen; you can tell a talented professional had his hand in it. Now, why a man with Sonnenfeld’s gifts would expend so much effort in making an erupting RV toilet look interesting, I have no idea.
Stick It
Jessica Bendinger's first screenplay was the snarky and subversive cheerleader flick "Bring It On," and while she got sidetracked thereafter with tweener piffle like "First Daughter" and this year's "Aquamarine," she's back in full sass mode with the surprisingly funny "Stick It." Focused this time on the world of competitive teenage gymnastics, Bendinger creates a world where everyone speaks in that uber-slangy "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"/"Gilmore Girls" patois, as a gymnast-turned-juvenile-delinquent (Missy Peregrym) is ordered to resume training under a has-been coach (Jeff Bridges) alongside a team of girls who hate her for walking out on the world finals a few years ago. It's a breakout performance for the relatively unknown Peregrym, while Bridges proves he still has some comedic gusto as he approaches 60 (!). Bendinger is in the director's chair for the first time, and while the film takes an odd "fight the power" detour in its last act -- who knew there was such rancor against the gymnastics scoring system? -- it's otherwise a stylish, smooth piece of work, with plentiful smart-aleck dialogue and actors savvy enough to know how to sling it.
Akeelah and the Bee
The most impressive thing about "Akeelah and the Bee" is that it has the courage to stand there with a straight face and tell us it's an inspiring, ennobling story of dedication and triumph ... when in fact it's an utterly derivative, 100-percent-recycled, completely forgettable story of dedication and triumph. Its top asset is young Keke Palmer, who plays the title character (Akeelah, not the Bee) with aplomb and surprising depth. Akeelah is a bright but unfocused student in L.A.’s inner city who shows promise on the spelling bee circuit -- if only some sensei can harness her skills and hone them. Enter Dr. Larabee (Laurence Fishburne), a former teacher with some vague affiliation with Akeelah's middle school, who senses the Force is strong with this one. He guides her toward spelling-bee excellence with impassioned speeches like: "The bee is a tough nut. I’ve seen it chew kids up and spit them out!" I respect the film for being wholesome and upright, and it has a positive message. I just wish there were one element of it -- just one! -- that was fresh or original.
American Dreamz
There's so much going on in "American Dreamz" that it's no wonder it sometimes forgets to be funny. You'd lose focus, too, if you had to execute parodies of reality TV, terrorism, the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, western consumerism, and "Am...
The Sentinel
There are two conspiracies going on in "The Sentinel," and even combined they're not as interesting as one episode of "24." Kiefer Sutherland plays another no-nonsense, velvet-voiced federal agent who pursues justice with guns a-blazin', this time a Secret Service investigator who thinks someone from inside his organization is plotting to kill the president. Meanwhile, a fellow agent (Michael Douglas) is sleeping with the First Lady (Kim Basinger) and being blackmailed over it. Think the two schemes are connected????? Well, duh. And a thousand times, duh. I guessed who the bad guy was pretty early, due to an unusual and undue emphasis the film placed on a particular detail. And once the villain is officially revealed, it goes further downhill: His motives are weak, and the people pulling his strings are the dullest murderers I've seen in a long time. It leads to a climax that's both confusing AND boring, which is really the only noteworthy feat the film accomplishes.
Silent Hill
If you’ve been waiting for someone to make a video-game-inspired movie that’s actually watchable, I have disappointing news: It still hasn’t happened. (Probably never will, either, but that’s a discussion for another time.) “Silent Hill� merely continues the tradition of mediocrity, with an intense Ohio woman (Radha Mitchell) searching for her 9-year-old daughter in a West Virginia ghost town while avoiding a Christian cult and a lot of supernatural weirdness. Despite the pedigree – screenplay by Roger Avary (“Pulp Fiction�), direction by Christophe Gans (“Brotherhood of the Wolf�) – “Silent Hill� offers no scares, only a little creepiness, and scene after scene of Radha Mitchell stumbling around abandoned streets yelling, “Sharon!� It also has a convoluted back story that ends with possessed barbed wire tearing people apart while the little girl watches. Classy.
Hard Candy
The specter of pedophilia is raised in "Hard Candy," an intense, well-acted film that deals with its alarming subject matter in an audacious way. Like it or hate it, there's no denying it hasn't been done quite like this before. Our predator is Jeff (Patrick Wilson), a handsome 32-year-old who meets a 14-year-old girl named Hayley (Ellen Page) on the Internet, followed by a meeting at a cafe, followed by a trip back to his house. That’s when Jeff realizes Hayley’s giggly, flirtatious teenager routine was an act, and that she’s actually a precocious, manipulative girl who knows of his past crimes and is bent on revenge. Patrick Wilson, so flat in “Phantom of the Opera,� redeems himself here with a performance that is rawly emotional but not over-the-top, while Ellen Page -- a striking young actress with great potential -- carries the film on her righteously indignant little shoulders. Still, at 103 minutes, it’s too long. The characters reach their emotional and psychological endpoints long before the film has ended, and there's not much for the story to do after that. Cut this thing down to size and you've got yourself one dickens of a thriller.
Kinky Boots
"Kinky Boots" is a perfectly harmless little comedy that is exactly like the other perfectly harmless little comedies of its genre, right down to the last plot point. I can't think of any reason for you to see it, but I can't think of any reason not to, either. Upon the death of his father, Charlie Price (Joel Edgerton) returns to his small English hometown to save the family's shoe factory, lest it go under and all those dedicated cobblers become unemployed. To reverse the company's diminishing income, he and a drag queen friend named Lola (Chiwetel Ejiofor) market a line of high-heeled boots specifically for men (i.e., for drag queens, cross-dressers and transvestites). With generically pleasant direction by first-timer Julian Jarrold and a script by Tim Firth (who wrote the identical "Calendar Girls") and Geoff Deane, "Kinky Boots" counts on its viewers being delighted by the most predictable of developments. Will the staunch anti-drag-queen shoemaker eventually be won over by Lola? Will the make-us-or-break-us fashion show aaaaaalmost fail before Lola shows up at the last minute and saves the day? Tune in and find out! Or don't.
Scary Movie 4
You kids today, with your "Date Movie" pseudo-spoofs and your PG-13 horror remakes and your "SNL"-fueled misconceptions about satire -- you don't remember what REAL movie parodies were like, back in the days of "Airplane!" and "Top Secret!" Back then...
The Wild
Please remember: Just because a film is animated and has the Disney name on it doesn't mean it's any good. As the new Exhibit A, I offer "The Wild," a lazy, half-witted adventure that is probably the worst cartoon Disney has ever produced. (I never saw "The Black Cauldron.") It offers no real laughs, no excitement, no adventure, and no interesting characters. In fact, if you saw last year's "Madagascar," you a) deserve a refund, and b) have already seen this. In the New York Zoo, a young lion named Ryan (voice of Greg Cipes), following an argument with his dad, Samson (Kiefer Sutherland), hides in a storage compartment that is subsequently put on a ship bound for Africa. Samson and his animal friends set out to save him, and they all wind up in Africa, where nobody knows how to survive because they were born in captivity, and there's a cult of wildebeests who want to become carnivores, and they intend to start practicing on the lions, and there's a dance number. Honestly, a dance number. It's tempting to call the film "The Mild," but I think even "mild" might be too strong a word.
Subject Two
I can almost recommend "Subject Two" as an introspective take on medical ethics and the doctor-patient relationship, set against the background of a modern-day Frankenstein story. It's almost a good movie in that context.
In fact, though it moves...
The Notorious Bettie Page
Bettie Page was a pinup model in the 1950s, at a time when there were a lot of pinup models but not very many who were willing to pose nude. A Baptist girl from Tennessee becoming one of the most famous model in America, only to retire after a few years in the business -- it sounds like Bettie led an interesting life. Which is why "The Notorious Bettie Page" is a disappointing film. It's a shallow recounting of events without theme or purpose. The glib, kitschy screenplay, and Gretchen Mol's reading of it, keeps everything on the surface, with very little exploration into people's motives or psyches. There is the merest hint of sexual abuse when Bettie is young, and a subsequent rape, with neither issue ever referred to subsequently. Surely those things helped carve Bettie's path in life (assuming they're true), but the film only introduces them so it can ignore them again. Like so many biopics, it tells us what the subject did without telling us why.
La Mujer de Mi Hermano (Spanish)
While our elected officials are screaming at each other about illegal immigration and 700-mile-long fences, they’re overlooking an infestation just as insidious: the steady stream of crappy movies flowing into this country from south of the border. “La Mujer de Mi Hermano� (“My Brother’s Wife�) stars actors from all over South America and was shot in Chile by a Peruvian director, yet what it most closely resembles is a Mexican soap opera. The gorgeous Zoe (Barbari Mori) and her gorgeous husband Ignacio (Christian Meier) have a lot of money but zero chemistry. Ignacio refuses to have sex with her except on Saturdays, and even then he can’t seem to impregnate her, which strains their relationship further. Clearly, Zoe has no alternative but to sleep with Ignacio’s gorgeous brother Gonzalo (Manolo Cardona), who has already earned Ignacio’s disdain by being an artist instead of working for a living. What follows is 90 minutes of gorgeous people lying to each other -- Zoe to Ignacio, Ignacio to Gonzalo, Gonzalo to his regular girlfriend -- why, they even lie to the poor maid, Maria, who must wonder what she did to deserve working for such despicable, self-centered idiots.
Mountain Patrol: Kekexili (Chinese; Tibetan)
There are enough ethical questions raised in "Mountain Patrol: Kekexili" to keep PETA occupied for months. The film comes to us from China, a nation whose government isn't known for treating people humanely, let alone animals, and is the work of Beij...
Somersault
How a down-to-earth country like Australia grew so attached to the pretentious "Somersault," I have no idea. The feature debut of writer/director Cate Shortland, it is the story of a trampy 16-year-old girl named Heidi (Abbie Cornish) who runs away from home after her trampy mother catches her kissing her -- that is to say, Mom's -- boyfriend. What happens when Heidi runs away? Why, a personal journey of discovery, of course! The film shows us her constant cycle of feeling miserable, trolling for sex, then feeling miserable again, but it doesn’t delve into her character any deeper than that. Instead, we get laughable metaphors-come-to-life like the scene where Heidi looks at the world through rose-colored ski goggles. To its credit, the film has a palpable sense of wistfulness to it, with Robert Humphreys’ lovely cinematography focusing on the pale blues of midnight and the grayish blues of dawn, all to great melancholic effect. But it’s still a weakly drawn, naval-gazing snorefest, evocative colors aside.
Lucky Number Slevin
A non-linear story, a twisty narrative, cold-hearted gangsters who speak in a stylish patter -- this is "Lucky Number Slevin," though it is also many, many other films of the past couple decades. Nobody talks like this, and no real-life schemes ever get pulled this smoothly; the only question is whether you enjoy the unbelievable way the story is told. A man named Slevin (Josh Hartnett) is mistaken for his friend Nick by two gangster bosses (Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley), and unfortunately for Slevin, Nick owes them money. Fortunately for Slevin, the bosses hate each other, so they can be played against each other. An assassin (Bruce Willis) and a cop (Stanley Tucci) float in the periphery, as does Nick's neighbor (Lucy Liu), eager to get involved in the action. The flick -- directed with panache by Paul McGuigan -- is made from good parts, but it isn't as light on its feet as it should be. It's often so enamored of its own cleverness that it starts to feel bloated and overlong, but it does offer a few fun surprises.
Friends with Money
If you put a few married couples together at a restaurant table, they'll talk and laugh and enjoy a pleasant evening. It's in their cars afterward, as the couples go their separate ways, that the real dirt starts flying.
Did you know they haven't...
The Benchwarmers
From the writers of “Grandma’s Boy� and the director of “Beverly Hills Ninja� comes “The Benchwarmers,� starring Rob Schneider and David Spade as -- sweet crap, do I even need to go on? What more could you possibly need to know? Sigh. Those two, along with Jon Heder (essentially playing Napoleon Dynamite all over again), are nerds who form a three-man baseball team to compete against the jerky Little League boys who are always picking on the less athletically inclined kids. The one bright spot amidst the endless fart, booger and getting-hit-with-baseballs jokes is Jon Lovitz as a billionaire who backs the geek squad. His every line is funny simply because he isn’t trying desperately to get a laugh -- a stark contrast to Schneider and Spade, who are as smarmy as ever.
Take the Lead
“Take the Lead� combines two tired genres: the one where a peculiar teacher comes to an inner-city school and turns all the kids’ lives around with his unorthodox methods and Socratic wisdom; and the one where teenage enemies and rivals come together through the healing power of dance. Antonio Banderas plays Pierre Dulaine, a Manhattan ballroom-dance instructor who, for ill-explained reasons, takes over a ghetto high school’s detention program and teaches the delinquents in there how to dance. They’re reluctant at first, of course, until he shows them how sexy the tango can be, and next thing you know they’re dancing against Dulaine’s rich white students in the citywide ballroom competition. Do the inner-city kids bring some of their own flava to the contest? Hells yeah! Meanwhile, the kids fall in love with each other, overcome prejudices, and heal old wounds, tick, tick, tick, right down the checklist. Alfre Woodard has a noble presence as the tough-as-nails principal, and darned if Banderas isn’t so charming he almost makes this by-the-numbers old claptrap actually work. Almost.
Phat Girlz
"Phat Girlz" is a sincere, good-hearted movie told from an uncommon perspective: that of a fat woman. The fact that it's very obviously a first effort, was cheaply shot and badly edited and moves at an ungainly pace is almost irrelevant. You want to like it anyway, just for what it's trying to do. Mo'Nique stars as Jazmin Biltmore, a plus-sized gal who dreams of becoming a fashion designer. On a retreat to Palm Springs, she meets a gorgeous Nigerian doctor who prizes her largeness, making her feel desirable and sexy and boosting her self-esteem. Nnegest Likké's screenplay realistically captures the paradoxes of being a fat woman in modern culture, with Jazmin wanting to be respected as a big girl yet wanting to be thin, too. But as a director, Likké has no sense of rhythm or timing -- essential skills in comedy -- and often betrays her inexperience with scenes that are poorly staged and edited. Overall, the film feels raw and amateurish, but it earns a few laughs, and I can honestly say I liked Jazmin and felt invested in her search for fulfillment. I'm recommending it, barely, because I think it speaks pretty well to a certain audience and does so from the heart.
95 Miles to Go (documentary)
"Seinfeld" was "the show about nothing," but I always thought that description belonged to a sitcom starring another observational comic: "Everybody Loves Raymond." Ray Romano, a New Yorker every bit as neurotically easy-going as Jerry Seinfeld, carr...
On a Clear Day
The only thing wrong with "On a Clear Day" is that it's too similar to too many other movies in which eccentric British people do odd things. In this case it's an old man who wants to swim the English Channel, but it could also be laid-off workers wh...
All Aboard! Rosie’s Family Cruise (documentary)
While the idea of spending a week trapped on a boat with Rosie O'Donnell might SOUND really, really appealing, it turns out this documentary -- about O'Donnell's 2004 cruise for gay couples and their children -- is really, really dull. Director Shari Cookson follows O'Donnell's own family (partner Kelli and their four children) as well as several others, but there are no real "stories" to grab onto. We're left instead with vignettes: This couple wants to have a baby; that couple has a wedding at sea; those gay men are worried about their daughter going off to college next year. It might as well be surveillance footage from the cruise for all the structure it's been given.
Brick
The best high school films make you remember how every aspect of your teenage life seemed like a matter of life or death. "Brick" achieves this by transplanting the world of film noir detective stories to a modern high school, making the life-or-death struggles literal rather than figurative. Paradoxically, the effect of all this seriousness is that we are amused, and writer/director Rian Johnson works this to his advantage. Bringing "Maltese Falcon" dialogue -- with dames and tough guys and femmes fatales and shady characters and whatnot -- into a high school setting is inherently funny, not always in the laugh-out-loud sense, but consistently in the this-dialogue-is-interesting-to-listen-to sense. Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a loner (by choice) at his Southern California school, reluctantly sets out to find his ex-girlfriend's killer, in a mystery that unfolds as a complicated, twisty story involving the school's toughest thugs and their hired goons. Joseph Gordon-Levitt gets the role exactly right, playing the cynical, world-weary outsider so that he is both a tribute to the Humphrey Bogart prototype and a modern improvement on it, and if the film isn't 100 percent the bee's knees, it's no dizzy dame, either.
Awesome; I F***in’ Shot That!
In 2004, the Beastie Boys performed at Madison Square Garden. They had a camera crew on hand, but they had another nifty idea, too: They handed out video cameras to 50 audience members and let them film the show from their perspectives. "Awesome; I F***in' Shot That!" almost captures the excitement of the live concert, with the Boys in fine form as they rip through two dozen songs with their usual energy and panache. The audience footage is grainy and jittery, of course (though the sound is state-of-the-art), and the editors waded through 50 amateur tapes plus the professional stuff to put together a film that represents all of them. It would seem that letting the audience film your show for you is better in theory than in execution. Viewers of a concert film want to see their idols up close, and audience members don't have the necessary vantage points. The best films of this genre transcend fandom by creating a work that stands alone. "Awesome" doesn't do that, but it surely gives the hardcore fans something to swear by.
Find Me Guilty
Vin Diesel showed promise back before he fell in with the wrong crowd and started making things like "The Chronicles of Riddick" and "The Pacifier." Leave it to veteran filmmaker Sidney Lumet -- widely regarded as the consummate "actor's director" -- to get him back on track with the well-made and amply entertaining courtroom dramedy "Find Me Guilty." Based on a true story about the longest Mafia trial in U.S. history (almost two years!), the film stars Diesel as Jack DiNorscio, a low-level mobster who chooses to defend himself, even though his 19 codefendants have high-priced lawyers. Jack is lovable and clownish, seeking to gain sympathy from the jury by making them laugh rather than by disputing the charges he's faced with. The courtroom is crowded, but Lumet shoots it from so many different angles as to make it seem expansive and comfortable. It's our world for two hours, and it's an agreeable place to be.
Ice Age: The Meltdown
The inevitable "Ice Age" sequel, subtitled "The Meltdown," is as well-meaning and likable as its predecessor. Neither film is a classic, nor do they exactly brim with originality, but they serve up some laughs and do so without anyone getting hurt.
...
Basic Instinct 2
The most enjoyable bad movie of 2006 will almost certainly prove to be "Basic Instinct 2," an utterly hilarious piece of camp trash that elicited more laughs from me than any comedy in the past month. Tragically, "Basic Instinct 2" thinks it is a very serious movie. It follows Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) to England, where she still writes lurid fiction and occasionally kills men. She comes under the care of a psychiatrist (David Morrissey) who is somehow bewitched by her completely transparent attempts to seduce and manipulate him. Stone delivers each line in a smirky, vixenish fashion, wringing vague double-entendre out of nearly every sentence. The film lags quite a bit in its midsection, with zero suspense and zero character development. But the last 20 minutes are overwrought, twisty and jaw-droppingly preposterous enough to be funny. If only the film were a comedy! If only.
ATL
"ATL" offers what I assume is an accurate depiction of Atlanta life for working-class African-American kids, and it does so without pandering to the target audience or completely shutting out everyone else. It tells a smart, engaging story of a group of ATL kids in the final weeks of their senior year of high school. Rashad (Tip "T.I." Harris) works for his uncle's janitorial service; Esquire (Jackie Long) buses tables at a snooty country club and hopes to get into an Ivy League school; their friends have varying levels of ambition. They all spend their Sunday nights at the roller rink, where the pressures of the world melt away as they engage in their elaborate mating rituals. The performances are all down-to-earth and honest, often comical but never silly, and the movie very astutely captures the cocky flirting and fighting that goes on between hormonal boys and girls. The film gets into some haves-vs.-have-nots material that feels like nonsense, and there's some meandering near the end. But in all it's a respectable, mostly enjoyable film, even for a white California-bred kid like me.
Slither
The latest worthy successor to the legacy of Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" films is "Slither," an outrageously freakish and funny horror flick in which extra-terrestrial slugs turn people into pustulant zombies. Written and directed by James Gunn (who wrote 2004's excellent "Dawn of the Dead" remake), it borrows from countless previous films, yet it whips all those old ingredients into a highly entertaining new dish. A man becomes infected by some kind of space creature, causing him to reproduce in the form of fast-moving slugs that will crawl in your mouth and take over your body. The man's wife (Elizabeth Banks) and the town police chief (Nathan Fillion) lead a small group of survivors trying to thwart the menace, while the infected man himself grows ever more slimy and huge back at his home base. It's a very savvy film, aware of its heritage but not full of winking irony or self-referential jokes, and clever enough to be funny and creepy at the same time.
Adam & Steve
The Adam and Steve of "Adam & Steve" first meet as gay, screwed-up 21-year-olds in 1987, when Adam (Craig Chester) is a goth kid and Steve (Malcolm Gets) is a go-go dancer and cocaine addict. They have a disastrously abortive one-night stand -- i...
Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing and Charm School
"Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School" is long on good intentions but short on believability, with characters who never seem like anything other than actors reading lines from a page. Writer/director Randall Miller presents Steve Mills (John Goodman), who, as he lays dying, recounts to a bystander named Frank (Robert Carlyle) his 1960s childhood, where he took dance lessons and developed a crush on a girl named Lisa. Now, in the present, he wants Frank to find Lisa and tell her what happened to him. Frank, a recent widower who could use the company, goes to the Marilyn Hotchkiss school and, unable to find Lisa, develops friendships with the people who now populate the beginners' class. This is one of those movies about loss, grieving and letting go, but it is also one of those movies about the transformative power of dance. Yet it is not very good at being either one of those kinds of movies. It's a competent but ungraceful film, the sort of thing that needed more polish and probably more objective opinions during the writing and shooting process.
Mardi Gras: Made in China (documentary)
I am confident that having seen "Mardi Gras: Made in China," I will never expose my breasts in exchange for beads again. Between this and "Super Size Me," no one's ever going to want to do anything fun anymore.
This is a wry, eye-opening document...
Lonesome Jim
The Coen Bros. are often criticized for making films in which they seem to be mocking, rather than liking, their own characters, and now here's one of their regular actors, Steve Buscemi, directing a film that does the same thing. "Lonesome Jim," which will seem very familiar if you saw "Garden State," is about a young man (Casey Affleck) who trudges home to Indiana to collect himself after failing in New York. His older brother Tim (Kevin Corrigan) has a nervous breakdown around the same time, stealing Jim's thunder, and their ever-chirpy mother (Mary Kay Place) keeps ignoring reality and remaining optimistically subservient. Written by first-timer James C. Strouse, this caustic comedy mocks its inhabitants' small-town nerdiness, but also puts them in situations that require learning and growth. It expects us to laugh AT them one minute and cry WITH them the next, in other words. It's hard to navigate through changes in tone like that, but Buscemi and his sharp cast -- especially Affleck as the sleepy-voiced, immature Jim -- do their best. In the end, there is a sweetness underneath all the detached unevenness.
Stay Alive
This week's stupid but innocuous PG-13 cookie-cutter horror film is "Stay Alive," about kids who play a mysterious video game and subsequently die the same way their game characters did. The pretty young things in the movie are bumped off in approximately the order you expect them to be, with language and gore that have obviously been trimmed down to avoid an R rating. Director William Brent Bell achieves a few genuinely spooky moments early on by employing -- of all things -- subtlety; alas, he soon abandons that tactic in favor of loudness and "Ring" rip-offs, right down to the creepy ghost girls with stringy hair crab-walking across the floor. It's a very dumb story at heart, and it makes for a fairly bad movie, albeit a harmless one.
Inside Man
There is so little to "Inside Man" that it barely warrants a full-length review. It's a bank-robbery movie, and an entertaining one, but that's all it is. It makes no bold claims at originality. It has a couple of moderately nifty surprises. It goes ...
Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector
"Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector" is 89 minutes of gags centered on the butt: Larry's own, other people's, and even the butts of animals. Larry (born Dan Whitney in Nebraska; the accent is fake) does his redneck shtick as a health inspector trying to crack a series of mysterious food poisonings. His blustery boss and uptight female partner don't know what to make of him and his outlandish white-trash (I'm sorry, "redneck") behavior, but in the end they come to admire his ways. It's surprisingly sloppy and unfocused, so determined to get out as many poo-poo-pee-pee jokes as it can that it forgets to actually make them funny. An endless barrage of half-hearted poop references doesn't qualify as humor. It reeks of desperation, among other things.
Take My Eyes (Spanish)
IcÃÂar BollaÃÂn's searing Spanish drama "Take My Eyes" does what few films before it have managed: It depicts domestic violence without making the abuser a one-dimensional monster and without becoming a suspense-thriller. Where most films on this topic are ridiculously black-and-white, "Take My Eyes" has gray areas. The abuser, Antonio (Luis Tosar), suffers from profoundly low self-esteem, and in a sincere effort to keep Pilar (Laia Marull) from divorcing him, he attends anger-management therapy and sees a counselor. We don't sympathize with him, exactly, but we do recognize him as having traits we sometimes see in ourselves. The film is realistic -- and thus more compelling -- because we don't know how it's going to end. Real people often reconcile, and they often reconcile even when they shouldn't. There's no melodrama anywhere in the film, only drama, with every single moment superbly acted and startlingly believable.
Don’t Come Knocking
"Don't Come Knocking" is an upbeat, lightweight drama about a hard-partying actor named Howard Spence (Sam Shepard, who also wrote the film) who goes AWOL from the set of his latest Western and returns to his hometown of Elko, Nev., to reconnect with his mother -- and thence to Butte, Mont., where it turns out he has a son he never knew about. He's been using drugs, alcohol and sex to cover up his real feelings all these years, but now it's time to face himself and figure out how to be happy. Directed by Wim Wenders, the film is about an unhappy person, but it's not a sad movie. It's sunny (literally and figuratively), and the performances by Shepard, Eva Marie Saint, Jessica Lange and Tim Roth (as an investigator hired to find Howard and drag him back to work) are charming.
V for Vendetta
Is it possible to agree with a movie's ideas so much that you feel like you're being pandered to? "V for Vendetta" uses futuristic fear-mongering to delineate liberal America's worries about the power of the right wing, and the specific details of th...
Thank You for Smoking
Based on Christopher Buckley's scathing 1994 novel, "Thank You for Smoking" (adapted and directed by Jason Reitman) is a straight-faced dark satire about the all-American pastimes of spin-doctoring, lying and bullying your opponent with so much rhetoric that people start to think HE'S the liar. It's a confident, razor-sharp comedy about Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), top D.C. lobbyist for Big Tobacco, a man who is an expert at using his charisma to get people on his side. William H. Macy is outstanding as a persnickety senator who wants to put a skull and crossbones on every pack of cigarettes; J.K. Simmons plays Nick's blustery, weaselly boss; Robert Duvall is a North Carolina tobacco billionaire; and Katie Holmes -- back when she was allowed to have fun -- plays a sexy reporter who seduces Nick and tricks him into divulging some secrets. Everything about the film is as slick and sure as Nick Naylor himself, right down to our hero's character arc as a good guy who eventually learns how to actually be good.
She’s the Man
The main character in "She's the Man" is so stupid that I'm amazed she's able to take a shower without drowning. Her name is Viola (Amanda Bynes), and in this "Twelfth Night"-inspired teen farce, she dresses up like her twin brother to take his place at a prep school, in an elaborate scheme to get even with her ex-boyfriend. In order to achieve "comedy," the simple-minded screenplay (credited to four people, not counting Shakespeare) uses the shtick employed by most comedies about people going undercover: She makes no attempt whatsoever to actually fit in. See, she's SUPPOSED to be a guy, but she keeps forgetting and ACTING like a girl! Isn't that hysterical?! Seriously, every five seconds she forgets what she's doing, says something girly, and then goes, "Ahem! I mean, um (manly voice), what's up, DUDE?" And each time she does, Bynes overplays the "comedy" of the situation with buggy eyes and flailing hands, like one of the lost, retarded Stooges. That it's a lousy comedy is a given; that it's aggravating and frustrating, too, is just crap icing on the crap cake.
Church Ball
One of the most admirable things about "Church Ball," Mormon filmmaker Kurt Hale's fourth slap-happy contribution, is that you don't have to be Mormon to appreciate the premise. It's about church basketball leagues, and even if you have no experience with them, you can quickly accept that they exist and enjoy the upbeat tone and occasional chuckles that the film provides. It's a standard underdog story, with perennial losers trying to have a winning season for once, and Hale (with co-writers Paul Eagleston and Stephen Rose) leaves no sports-movie cliché unturned, right down to the last-second play that decides the game. There's a lot of the time-wasting that plagued "The Singles Ward" and "Home Teachers," too, with scenes that aren't funny enough to justify their irrelevance and randomness. But there are legitimately funny moments, including several from Fred Willard as a one-eyed Mormon bishop. Even with the tangents it's still a more cohesive, streamlined story than some of Hale's past efforts, and the production values are getting better each time.
The Cassidy Kids
In the movie "The Cassidy Kids," there was a TV show in the '80s called "The Cassidy Kids Mysteries." It was a Saturday-morning sitcom in which a group of precocious pre-teens solved small-town whodunits, and it was inspired by a real case (real with...
Bickford Shmeckler’s Cool Ideas
"Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas" is an up-and-down comedy about a brainy college student (Patrick Fugit) whose notebook of Stephen Hawking-style brilliance goes missing. I like certain elements of the film -- it was shot in a very nice-looking high-definition digital video, for example, and Fugit is almost always a fun actor to watch -- but it's not as amusing or entertaining as it wants to be, nor are Bickford Shmeckler's cool ideas actually all that cool.
Population 436
"Population 436" is about a U.S. census taker who visits the Midwestern town of Rockwell Falls to investigate an anomaly: For more than 100 years, the town's population has always been exactly 436. What could be the reason for this strange-- what's t...
Patriot Act (documentary)
In 2003, Drew Carey led a group of comedians on a USO tour of the newly liberated Iraq, entertaining the troops like Bob Hope used to do. Among the comics was Jeffrey Ross, who brought along his camcorder and thought the resulting footage might make ...
Cruel and Unusual (documentary)
Here's a problem I bet you never thought about before: When someone is transsexual, maybe a man in the process of becoming a woman, which prison does he/she go to? The men's or the women's?
Filmmakers Janet Baus, Dan Hunt and Reid Williams have th...
Lifelike (documentary)
Because every subject will eventually have a quirky documentary made about it, here's the one about taxidermy, called "Lifelike."
Insubstantial but pleasant, "Lifelike" is a brief (52-minute) look at the art of taxidermy, focusing on a few practit...
Bondage
Instead of "based on a true story" or "inspired by actual events," "Bondage" begins with this notice: "This s*** really happened." So I guess we're all laid-back and kickin' it old-school, dawg.
The s*** really happened to Eric Allen, the film's ...
S&Man
J.T. Petty loves horror films, and he's made a couple of them himself. His third feature, "S&Man," is a documentary about the creepy world of underground filmmaking, and he's done something fiendish. You'll enjoy it more if I don't tell you what,...
Motorcycle
"My girlfriend dumped me, so I bought a motorcycle" is the title of the first chapter in "Motorcycle," an offbeat low-budget slacker comedy in which the motorcycle in question is owned by a series of discontented 20-somethings.
Chris (Chris Pratt...
Danny Roane: First Time Director
In "Danny Roane: First Time Director," the title character is a former sitcom star who is now in the process of botching his first attempt at filmmaking by relapsing into alcoholism. "Danny Roane: First Time Director" is the work of Andy Dick, a form...
Gretchen
About 15 minutes into "Gretchen," I thought: I'm watching this year's "Napoleon Dynamite." It has the same quirky vibe, the same small-town characters, quiet tone and semi-absurdist view of high school. The program for the South By Southwest Film Fes...
Failure to Launch
In some cultures, it's perfectly normal for men to live at home until they get married, no matter how old they are when that finally occurs. Tripp wishes he lived in one of those places.
Tripp (Matthew McConaughey) is the happy-go-lucky 35-year-o...
Ask the Dust
It feels like "Ask the Dust" has scenes, or perhaps just key lines of dialogue, missing from it. The two central characters' actions seem unmotivated much of the time. They get angry over odd things, and they love each other yet sometimes engage in precipitate cruelty and racial slurring. They might understand each other, but I do not understand them. Based on a novel by John Fante and directed by Robert Towne, this is a romantic drama set in a sepia-toned Depression-era Los Angeles, where Arturo Bandini (Colin Farrell) has come to make his fortune as a writer. The son of Italian immigrants, he wants to be part of "white" American society, and is therefore disappointed when he falls in love with a Mexican girl, the lovely Camilla (Salma Hayek). So many developments in the plot occur out of nowhere and without cause, giving it a disjointed feel. The details add up to a story, but it's not cohesive and fluid enough to be engaging. How are we supposed to love the characters when we never understand their behavior?
The Hills Have Eyes
Most remakes are unnecessary, but "The Hills Have Eyes" seems especially so. The plot remains virtually unchanged. If Wes Craven wants a whole new generation to appreciate his 1977 gorefest, why not just re-release it? He's a producer on the remake, with Alexandre Aja directing and Aja and Gregory Levasseur adapting the screenplay -- the same duo behind 2004's horrific "High Tension." In "The Hills Have Eyes," an all-American family is attacked in the New Mexico desert by a band of deformed hillbillies who live in abandoned mining caves. The mutants are relentless in their pursuits, and Aja does not shy away from showing the carnage and brutality. In the end, when some revenge is exacted against the monsters, it isn't enough to make up for the savagery. At some point, the film stops being fun and just becomes grueling.
The Shaggy Dog
Among the previous credits of the five people who wrote "The Shaggy Dog" are such films as "Daddy Day Care," "The Prince & Me," "Bad Boys II" and "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle." The director, Brian Robbins, gave us "Varsity Blues," the MTV-distributed "The Perfect Score" and the Keanu Reeves melodrama "Hard Ball." That the unholy collaboration of these six people could produce a movie that is merely "bad" and not a whirling vortex of suckitude is cause to praise your higher power. "The Shaggy Dog," with its obvious jokes and heavily orchestrated "family bonding" moments, is your average bad Disney live-action remake, with Tim Allen as an assistant district attorney who starts exhibiting dog-like traits before literally turning into a big wooly pooch. The sight of a grown man behaving like a dog is funny for a minute; unfortunately, the film lasts 98, and one of those minutes features the song "Who Let the Dogs Out?"
Duck Season (Spanish)
In “Duck Season,� Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke’s pleasantly subdued slacker comedy, two 14-year-old best friends are accustomed to spending Sunday afternoons together, playing XBox and drinking Coke. But with a divorce looming for one boy’s parents, today might be the last lazy Sunday for Flama (Daniel Miranda) and Moko (Diego Cataño). Don’t expect sentimentalism from early-adolescent teenage boys, though. Instead, Eimbcke (working from a screenplay he wrote with Paula Markovitch) treats us to such low-key, mildly absurd situations as challenging the pizza guy to an XBox match and ingesting pot-laced brownies baked by Flama’s 16-year-old female neighbor. Eimbcke shoots everything either head-on or in profile (few skewed angles or even three-quarter shots), reflecting his straightforward attitude toward the material: This is life for these kids, with its amusing ennui, mild angst and everything else.
Game 6
Red Sox fans remember Oct. 25, 1986, of course. It's the day first baseman Bill Buckner let a ball go through his legs, costing them the game and, ultimately, the World Series. "Game 6," a philosophical comedy written by postmodern novelist Don DeLillo, recounts that fateful day through the eyes of Nicky Rogan (Michael Keaton), a Broadway playwright and Sox fan whose highly personal new play opens the same night as the game. With an infamously poisonous theater critic (Robert Downey Jr.) scheduled to attend and the leading man unable to remember his lines, Nicky figures he has a greater chance of seeing a successful production if he watches the game instead. The film's fanciful, semi-absurdist dialogue and plot developments -- like an asbestos leak in midtown Manhattan and a traffic reporter on the radio who waxes philosophical rather than report the traffic -- can be challenging, but it never becomes too heavy or pretentious. It's ultimately a very nice and simple film, with clear messages and sparklingly witty dialogue, smart enough to be worth contemplating but not so brainy that it becomes a chore to watch.
Before the Fall (German)
For a German boy in 1942, there were few greater honors than being invited to attend one of the National Political Institutes of Learning (NaPoLA was the German acronym), which were essentially military schools designed to turn teenagers into soldier...
16 Blocks
Most high-intensity films (action and horror in particular) have a scene just before the final battle where things are calm for a minute and the main characters talk grimly and philosophically about what they'll do when this is all over, or what it's...
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (documentary)
On Sept. 18, 2004, Dave Chappelle used his own money to put on an outdoor concert in a Brooklyn neighborhood. He gave out free tickets to 5,000 people, including a few busloads he brought in from his hometown of Dayton, Ohio. The show featured his comedy along with hours of rap and R&B performances by everyone from Kanye West to Erykah Badu. The Fugees, broken up since 1997, reunited and did a set. It was a day of bliss for Chappelle's fans, and the film "Dave Chappelle's Block Party," directed by Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"), captures the energy and fun of the event in a way that few documentaries do. Footage is about equally split between the onstage performances and Chappelle's pre-show shenanigans. In a year that has already suffered from the embarrassing shuckin' and jivin' of Martin Lawrence and Tyler Perry in "Big Momma's House 2" and "Madea's Family Reunion," it's exhilarating to see a film that celebrates black culture without turning it into a minstrel show.
Ultraviolet
Milla Jovovich stars in "Ultraviolet," which looks a lot like another one of her "Resident Evil" sequels but which is really a movie set in a futuristic world where Milla has awesome powers and kills lots of dudes. And, um, there are some ways that it's different from "Resident Evil," too. She plays Violet, a member of a race of people called Hemophages whose strength and ability have earned them the scorn of the strong-arm government, which seeks their destruction. The movie was written and directed by Kurt Wimmer ("Equilibrium"), and it's a confusing jumble of sci-fi jargon and random plot twists, where the characters know perfectly well what's going on but the audience doesn't. But the film's "look" is very appealing, with some dazzling live-action/CGI sequences. If we can't figure out what's going on, at least we have pretty pictures to look at.
Merry Christmas (French)
In "Merry Christmas" (or "Joyeux Noel" as it's known in its native France), German, Scottish and French soldiers lay down their arms in the middle of World War I to celebrate Christmas together. It's a stunning act of pacifism and humanity, made all ...
Aquamarine
If your best friend were about to move to Australia, and you only had a few days left together, you would try to lend assistance to a mermaid, knowing that anyone who helps a mermaid is granted a wish, right? I thought so. “Aquamarine,� aimed at 13-year-old girls and other people who have never seen “Splash,� has Claire (Emma Roberts) and Hailey (Joanna “JoJo� Levesque) finding the title mermaid (Sara Paxton) in their Florida beachside swimming pool and setting out to help her find true love before her mer-father forces her to marry some undersea doofus. Luckily, there’s a hunky teenage lifeguard (Jake McDorman) on hand, and the squealy girls (aided by all the latest magazines, of course) teach their new fish friend the fine art of chasing boys and making them like you. Based on Alice Hoffman’s young-adult novel, the film makes no attempts to appeal to anyone other than its primary demographic, but it does what it does well enough -- and without condescension or egregious illogic -- to be simple, giggly fun.
Madea’s Family Reunion
You asked for it! Following the surprise success of last year’s abysmal “Diary of a Mad Black Woman,� Tyler Perry’s other stage plays are being turned into crappy movies, all the better to preach and talk down to an underserved African-American audience. “Madea’s Family Reunion� again stars Perry (in drag) as a giant no-nonsense grandmother who dispenses wisdom, insults and beatings with equal vigor. With one-dimensional villains and faux-inspirational dialogue, writer/director Perry trots out a host of soap opera subplots, with golddigging socialites, abusive fiancés, troubled teens and single parents all represented. Some of Madea’s shenanigans are funny; most aren’t; and two-thirds of the film is devoted to didactic melodrama rather than comedy anyway. But it’s better than the first film, in the same way that the bomb on Nagasaki was better than the one on Hiroshima.
Running Scared
The first things we hear in "Running Scared" are a gunshot and the F-word. Let it not be said that "Running Scared" misleads the audience about its tone.
In the first real surprise of 2006, writer/director Wayne Kramer ("The Cooler") delivers a c...
Doogal
"Doogal" is a dazzlingly incomprehensible computer-animated film about a dog who, with his friends (a rabbit, a cow and a snail), has to find three magic diamonds to prevent a villain from freezing the world. The villain has a spring for a lower half, by the way, so he hops around and makes a "lord of the spring" reference. The dialogue is rife with lame jokes and pseudo-savvy pop-cultural references, all of which sound like they were written by someone who is only vaguely familiar with American culture. Part of me wants to consider whether the film's target audience of very young children would find it entertaining. But most of me says that regardless of how much THEY might like it, there's no way YOU, their parents, could stand it. It's a pale wreck of a cartoon.
Neil Young: Heart of Gold (documentary)
A great concert film needs two things: a great performer, and a director smart enough to get out of his way and let the music speak for itself. "Neil Young: Heart of Gold" was directed by Jonathan Demme, whose "Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense" is considered by some to be the best concert film ever made. "Heart of Gold" gives it a run for its money, a solid 100 minutes of Neil Young and his band performing brilliantly, his songs by turns angry, tender, poetic and simple. And Demme captures it unobtrusively, with long takes, lots of close-ups and nothing to distract from Young's unadorned performance.
Tsotsi (Tsotsitaal)
The sky over the ramshackle ghetto in "Tsotsi" is a dirty brown. Beneath it are shacks made of flimsy wood and tin. There's smoke and filth everywhere. It's hell on earth. What better setting for a tale of redemption? "Tsotsi" is a slang term for a thug in Johannesburg, and it's the only name the film's protagonist (played by Presley Chweneyagae) goes by. After stealing a car that turns out to have a baby boy in the backseat, Tsotsi's savageness is slowly tamed as he forces himself to care for the infant rather than coldly discard it. Director Gavin Hood, who adapted the film from Athol Fugard's novel, makes his points subtly, without the underlining that usually goes on in movies about characters in need of change. Tsotsi is a thug of few words, and newcomer Presley Chweneyagae portrays him in simple terms: He's a cold-hearted villain, and over time he gradually becomes less so. No epiphanies, no one moment that changes his life, just a gradual learning process. It's an uncommonly moving film, with almost no fireworks to highlight the parts that are supposed to be moving.
Unknown White Male (documentary)
"Unknown White Male" is a thought-provoking and highly compelling documentary that tells the story of one Doug Bruce, an English-born New Yorker who, on July 2, 2003, lost his memory. Reunited with friends and family whom he no longer recalls, Doug's journey to rediscover himself is chronicled by his long-time friend Rupert Murray, who was quick with a video camera to capture this very strange story. Murray asks, "How much of our personality is determined by our experiences ... and how much is already there -- pure 'us'?" Without common memories and shared experiences, what reason do we have to be friends with our friends? Can Doug reclaim his former life? Does he even want to, having started a new one from scratch? Murray is not an expert filmmaker, but he tells his friend's (and his own) very personal story with a skill that goes deeper than most amateur documentarians.
Freedomland
Turn on "Law & Order: SVU" any night of the week and you'll see a story that's better-told and more smartly structured than "Freedomland," which is a wreck of a film that has no idea where it's going. It's set in a largely segregated New Jersey city where a white woman (Julianne Moore) claims her car was stolen by a black man, and that her 4-year-old son was in the backseat at the time. Racial tension threaten to boil over, while a detective (Samuel L. Jackson) wonders if the mom's story is reliable. Deep themes emerge occasionally, but they are handled with quick editing and zooming cameras -- "Look at how edgy we are!" is the translation -- and when it's done, you'll be hard-pressed to figure out what the point of the whole thing was.
Eight Below
We've known for years that Disney is out of new ideas, what with the straight-to-video sequels and the constant remakes. "Eight Below" is another remake, this time of a 1983 Japanese film, but it's more than that. It's also a cross between Disney's "...
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
"Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" is a movie about the making of a movie. The movie being made is based on a book, a book that is itself about the writing of a book. Where Laurence Sterne's 18th-century novel "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" wandered, got sidetracked and never did get around to telling its story, the film we're watching does the same thing. It sets out to create scenes from the book but then gets caught up in its behind-the-scenes intrigue -- script meetings, costume fittings, intra-cast squabbles -- instead. Steve Coogan is hilariously arrogant as himself, the lead actor in this Tristram Shandy movie, jealous of his supporting cast and trying to juggle his work with visits from his girlfriend. The film is a brilliantly funny dissection of the movie-making process and is just a lot of jolly, smart fun to watch.
Winter Passing
Stand in the middle of a film festival and swing a stick and you're bound to hit a movie just like "Winter Passing," a moody, character-driven, mostly plot-free drama about a broken family trying to reconnect. Reese (Zooey Deschanel), a struggling actress, returns home to Michigan to look for the love letters her famous novelist parents wrote to each other when they were dating, for which a publishing house has offered $100,000. This means dealing with her father (Ed Harris), though, a reclusive alcoholic nutcase who now lives in the garage of his home while two of his devoted fans (Will Ferrell and Amelia Warner) live inside. Fences are mended, tears are shed, etc., etc. It's nicely acted, for the most part, but it doesn't do anything you haven't seen done before.
