Featured Review: CHANGELING

Changeling

Starring - Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Donovan, Amy Ryan, Colm Feore, Jason Butler Harner, Michael Kelly, Geoff Pierson

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Grade: B

"I want my son back! I want my son back!"

Watching the details so intricately placed in Changeling, I began to notice something. So we have standardized the telephones since the 1920s. We've standardized refrigerators, cars, public transportation, cereal boxes, arrest warrants, and mental institutions. So now, have we standardized award movies?

Changeling turned into what invariably happens to several films of its caliber every year; it went from a good film that otherwise would be an engrossing period biopic, into a forgettable "award" movie. The entire production is full of pedigree that screams from its every ounce of life that it wants to be a big contender come February's Oscars. However, it lacks the true gumption and risk some of the best movies ever made had to deservedly get there.

Angelina Jolie stars as Christine Collins, a single mother in the working world of 1920's Los Angeles. When her son Walter goes missing during an emergency shift at the Pacific Telephone Company, Christine is soon embroiled in hardships and controversy with the Los Angeles Police Department, a devious and corrupted lot led by Captain J.J. Jones (Burn Notice's Jeffrey Donovan). They give her a different boy, send her to a mental institution, subject her to a serial killer's dementia, and out and out lie and underhand her plight. The only humane person it seems is Reverend Gustav Briegleb, a radio pastor who uses her to highlight the treacherous police force.

Unlike the flappers we've seen in Chicago, Christine is an honest, hardworking woman active in the retro society dominated by men and corruption, just touching as a precursor to the equal rights and power women would fight for decades later. The title doesn't necessarily invoke the change in Christine's "son", but rather the strength she acquires through her ordeals. Jolie is very strong at purporting this, mixing a shy, trampled demeanor with a little bit of "We Can Do It" slogan spirit as her terrible circumstances go on through the years. Since the Best Actress category is always a little weak, Jolie seems to be a shoo-in to get a nomination.

Other performers vary, but all are adept. Jason Butler Harner is as outstanding as he is creepy playing Gordon Northcott, a demented, abusive, but almost child-like Canadian serial killer involved with Walter's disappearance. Amy Ryan is subtly good as a "woman of the night" Christine meets in the mental ward, as is Malkovich as the reverend out for justice, a rare restrained role for him. Only Jeffrey Donovan, struggling to rid himself of his New England accent, seemed a bit stiff.

The biggest problem I had with Changeling as a complete film was the same I had with David Fincher's Zodiac last year. Both biopics were definitely watchable with an invigorating cast and a sharp story, based on true-to-life serial killer cases and the people involved on the investigative side. But like Zodiac, Changeling drew back from any prestige with a procedural feel and too many subplot elements distracting away from the heart of the story, which Eastwood chose to make about the plight of Christine Collins.

Eastwood's direction is deceptively simple, which is both a positive and negative. His style invokes an old school Chinatown feeling (both films are about power and corruption in Depression-era Los Angeles), with pinpoint accuracy of the styles, colors, models and fads of the time. However, it's done to such a fault that Changeling plays like a straightforward period movie, without much suspense. There's some ambiguity within the context of the story, but Eastwood piles everything together in such a simple manner that the film tends to drag on during the times when the acting isn't being put on showcase.

Changeling is by all accounts a good film; solid acting, swift direction, and the pace was steady enough to stay alert and comprehensive throughout. But for such a lofty pedestal it placed itself on, Eastwood and company failed to trigger a real emotional reaction. When a film wants to puff itself up as an award worthy film, it has to fire on all cylinders. Instead Changeling went through all the motions of a forgettable award movie.

Featured Review: OCTOBER I

Continuing the trend of short reviews, I had free time on Friday & Saturday to see 7 films (4 on Friday for a grand total of $5, 3 on Saturday for $5, equaling 7 films for $10). Also added Choke from a random Tuesday night screening after class.

Appaloosa - Starring Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger
Harris starred, directed, co-wrote and co-produced this lumbering western that re-teams him with his A History Of Violence co-star Mortensen. The performances are all solid and edgy, menacing in their surroundings (though Jeremy Irons' character voice is remarkably similar to that of Daniel Plainview), but Appaloosa slowly builds and builds to a climax that never really comes. Pretty to look at, not very interesting to watch.
Grade: C (10/4/08)

Beverly Hills Chihuahua - Starring Piper Perabo, Jamie Lee Curtis, Drew Barrymore
The premise and the marketing for this film is outlandishly and garishly stupid by all means, but Chihuahua IS a Disney movie. Given the chance, Chihuahua isn't half bad, and actually spreads a positive moral message to its key demographic of little kids. Director Raja Gosnell (Scooby Doo) refrains from taking the film's annoying qualities to an absolute hilt. Sort of like this generation's Homeward Bound, except for slightly less intelligent and focused kids. AKA, perfect for the YouTube generation.
Grade: C (10/3/08)

Blindness - Starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal
Blindness, Fernando Meirelles' much anticipated follow-up to Cidade de Deus and The Constant Gardner, is extremely ambitious visually, ironic for such a story about quarantined blind people. It has Children Of Men and I Am Legend vibes, inserting a we-take-our-lives-for-granted rhetoric in the midst of an almost apocalyptic disaster quality film. In the end Blindness fails to see a grander picture of allegorical democracy, but is interesting enough for an artsy two hour commentary on the beauty of vision.
Grade: B (10/4/08)

Choke - Starring Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly Macdonald
Anjelica Huston gives a knockout performance, as does Rockwell as always, but it's hard to take their merits seriously in such a bizarre story of bizarre characters. Sort of true to Chuck Palahiuk's book, everything is disjointed until the very end, but it takes a lot of investment to understand any of the character's motives beyond the simple premises. Entertaining, but strange and hard to warm up to.
Grade: B- (9/30/08)

Fireproof - Starring Kirk Cameron, Erin Bethea, Ken Bevel
It's a simple matter of personal faith; if you're a die-hard Christian, you'll probably love Fireproof. If you're an atheist, agnostic or someone who couldn't give a crap about Kirk Cameron, Fireproof will make you burn with hate. Yes, the acting is kind of cheesy at points, and it is more or less shot like a Lifetime movie. But for a film that was made on half a million dollars and starring Cameron and a bunch of Georgia church volunteers, it's surprisingly durable.
Grade: B (10/3/08)

How To Lose Friends & Alienate People - Starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox
Whereas Pegg's "Brit conquering the States" contemporary Ricky Gervais found himself working seamlessly in the mainstream Ghost Town, Pegg has yet to break out of the sheer brilliance of Shaun Of The Dead. How To Lose Friends is full of pompous revelation and cliche hyperbole. It gets tolerable in the second half, but save the pig and chihuahuas for a family comedy. Fox is spot-on as an airhead actress, but she's still only used for her body here.
Grade: C- (10/3/08)

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist - Starring Michael Cera, Kat Dennings, Alexis Dziena
With its cooler-than-thou New York suburbanites crawling the city spouting lyrics and gusto within every square inch of prime hipster real estate, Nick & Norah should be a casualty of the MTV generation lambasting the indie generation. But the film features a charming cast of up-and-comers who fit into their roles like beautiful stereotypes, and we're left with a pocketful of music rebellion nostalgia that hasn't really been seen since the 1980s.
Grade: B- (10/3/08)

Righteous Kill - Starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, John Leguizamo
On the bright side, director Jon Avnet improves on his technique over 88 Minutes. While De Niro and Pacino are nowhere near the brilliance their careers were 20-30 years ago, they don't embarrass themselves too badly here. The big hitch however is the fact that the "grand twist" is obvious to anyone who's ever seen a NYPD noir 20 minutes into the movie, and thus we're forced to watch this tepid cat and mouse game go on for another hour before anything gets resolved.
Grade: D+ (10/4/08)

Featured Review: SEPTEMBER

So I've been incredibly busy lately with college, relationships and a new job, so for now I'm just going to post short reviews of the films I've seen this September, and at worst post every 2 weeks or so the new things that come up. Still planning to do a major awards ceremony this winter.

Bangkok Dangerous- Starring Nicolas Cage, Shahkrit, Yamnarm, Charlie Young
Laughably bad and exceedingly boring, Bangkok Dangerous plays like Nic Cage's steely Asian action version of An American In Paris. He fights some bad guys, trains his Thai courier boy the ways of the American dojo, and falls in love with a deaf mute pharmacy clerk. And the hair, oh Lord child, the hair. Cage's pantomime skills are classic.
Grade: D (9/5/08)

Burn After Reading - Starring George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt
Though not nearly as funny or heartwarming as some of the Coens' best parables, Burn After Reading doesn't necessarily let it's big name actors get in the way of an interesting and well-made, if ultimately pointless film. The main stars range from excellent (Pitt is a considerable Supporting Actor nomination) to weary (John Malkovich is a great actor, but kind of slows down the film here).
Grade: B+ (9/13/08)

College - Starring Drake Bell, Kevin Covais, Andrew Caldwell
It's pretty sad when a film titled College is still more infinitely forgettable than a simple T-shirt with the word on it. Though it has some genuinely funny laughs occasionally, the movie suffers from a slew of perplexing decisions going against it. Targeting high schoolers and Drake Bell fans with an R-rating? Making all your characters except Covais truly detestable? This ain't your older brother's Superbad.
Grade: D+ (9/5/08)

Eagle Eye - Starring Shia LeBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Billy Bob Thornton
Eagle Eye is sort of a coming out party for director D.J. Caruso to be the next Michael Bay. Vastly entertaining yet insufferably over-the-top and cliche, Eagle Eye curbs itself from a host of movies, including Enemy Of The State, I Robot and without spoiling TOO much, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sure, it has a cheeky sense of humor and never truly takes itself completely seriously, but even if it was thrilling enough to finish the popcorn bag, you find yourself asking WHY?
Grade: C+ (9/27/08)

Fool's Gold* - Starring Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, Donald Sutherland
Despite the easy affability, chemistry and charm of the leading actors- a pair that should be together in real life- Fool's Gold sinks to the bottom of the filmmaking depths with shallow caricatures and some jarring violence for such a breezy and hollow effort. It's like an exotic vacation that you spent the entire time in the lavatory for.
Grade: D+

Ghost Town - Starring Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Tea Leoni
It takes a lot of gall to appreciate Gervais' awkward and dread based sitcom comedies (including the brilliant, original UK version of The Office), but surprisingly Gervais is easily accessible here. He alone turns what would normally be a middling romantic comedy of the updated Topper variety into a charming spectacle with a little bit of off-color bite. Ghost Town is the kind of film that one shouldn't necessarily be excited to see, but is proof that there is fresh life in the romantic comedy genre. Surprising little gem of a movie.
Grade: B+ (9/25/08)

Man On Wire - Starring Philippe Petit, Annie Allix, Jean-Louis Blondeau
Usually when one thinks of a documentary, they think of a subject that is either made to change a point of view, or to enlighten. Certainly Man On Wire enlightens, but for a subject so seemingly inconsequential in the grand scope of the world- a man tightrope walking across the World Trade Center almost 35 years ago- it is highly entertaining. Blending a unique spin of straight documentary and heist film, director James Marsh doesn't mince on 9/11 despite an easy target to do so, and thus the absence of the subject makes the legacy of the WTC that much more bittersweet.
Grade: A- (9/16/08)

Miracle At St. Anna - Starring Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso
For every ingenious thing Spike Lee crafts within this quasi-true story of black soldiers holed up in Italy during WWII, Lee seems to make 1 1/2 times more mistakes with the storyline. While his "struggling race in the face of white supremacy" slant has been toned down over the years, Lee still manages to make a couple of toothless jabs at the subject. An interesting tale with a couple of stellar performances (Omar Benson Miller in particular is sweet natured), Miracle At St. Anna ends up disappointing in the long run.
Grade: B- (9/26/08)

Featured Review: TRAITOR

Traitor



Starring- Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Said Taghmaoui, Neal McDonough, Aly Khan, Jeff Daniels




Directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff



Grade: A-



"You must be willing to sacrifice some of your pawns if you want to win the game."

There seems to be a misconception in Hollywood; that action films have to be dumb for the sake of the fight sequences, and that independent drama films with artistic ties cannot be violent, lest their fickle critics debase it as a said action film. Thankfully, Traitor blends both worlds together into a mostly captivating and engrossing spy thriller that offers the audience something different to think about. Something less patriotically jingoism in its actions, and more , even if that worldview isn't fully realized.

Surprisingly, Steve Martin, the guy still making Pink Panther and Cheaper By The Dozen sequels, is a co-conspirator behind Traitor's story. It's understandable to see him delve into a softer side with such Anglo-urban schmaltz as Shopgirl, but to come up with truly unique anti-American perspective (even if the film doesn't always stay anti-American) that isn't seen in too many mainstream films, Martin deserves a chance to branch out from the inane family comedies he's been stuck with as of late.

Don Cheadle stars as Samir Horn, a Sudanese native who had military ties to the United States. Currently he's in Yemen, selling explosives to American officials and Islamic terrorists alike; whoever is the highest bidder for his services. When Roy Clayton (Memento's Guy Pearce) and his partner Max Archer (Neal McDonough) step into the investigation, Samir finds himself in a worldwide cat and mouse game not only with them on his trail, but also navigating

Cheadle is certainly a treat to watch as he usually is, even if his character slowly becomes the "sensitive, slightly offended Black man out to do good", a Cheadle staple (see Hotel Rwanda, Boogie Nights, Reign Over Me). But it's still a great act. For at least the first half of the film his intentions are ambiguous and the audience is unsure how to like the character. It's no question that he'll end up being a good guy, but how good? He's no knight in shining armor, but can he redeem himself as a whole, or has his past rendered him to a life of guiltless solidarity? Cheadle leads us on a pretty decent journey of his emotions.

Also engaging is Said Taghmaoui, as Omar. He, more often that Cheadle's Samir, represents the conflicting views and sentimentality of what we consider terrorists. Omar is very much a part of the spree of violence, but has a pathos worked into the fabric of his character. Taghmaoui was one of the more interesting actors in Vantage Point, and has a real ability to be a principal star ala Omar Sharif if he's given his chance.

As a message film, Traitor doesn't pack much of a punch, but doesn't limp to its conclusion either. Obviously it strives to look deeper into the world and reasoning of people who commit such brutal acts of violence against Americans and their fellow countrymen. While its biggest points don't hit hard enough to truly get people debate the ramifications of America's status as First-World "peacemaker", it does offer more insight to its subject than most films claim to have.

The film can excuse itself from its intellectual faults by being a solid spy thriller. As far as action goes, it may even be considered a little slow paced for people expecting to see something as gung-ho as the Bourne trilogy. But there's twists and turns among the espionage, with plenty of violence, that give Traitor a few ounces of extra adrenaline over other dramas. It'll keep you guessing and interested throughout.

At times a bit cloying, but mostly enjoyable and thoughtful, Traitor is a rousing drama in the September midst of Hollywood dumping ground cinema. It's at times smarter than the Bourne series, but not as adventurous or . For a film conceived by a guy who's next film project is a comedic remake of Topper, and directed by the writer of The Day After Tomorrow, Traitor is however unusually engrossing thriller drama to watch. Unlike say, 88 Minutes, Traitor doesn't sabotage us on that.

Featured Review: DISASTER MOVIE

To read last week's mini review on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, or any other of the 94 movies from 2008 I've seen, CLICK HERE.


Disaster Movie



Starring- Matt Lanter, Vanessa Minnillo, Nicole Parker, Crista Flanagan, Calvin 'G Thang' Johnson, Ike Barinholtz, Kim Kardashian



Directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer



Grade: F


"That sounds kind of gay, dude."

WRITER'S NOTE: I did not pay to see this film. I have a reputation to uphold.

I try to be a consummate professional when critiquing movies; I don't want to be like the filmmakers of Disaster Movie and delve into the lowest forms of trepidation by mocking something so mercilessly and pointlessly infantile like Disaster Movie, and make an entire article one long ode to terrible filmmaking. It may certainly seem futile on such a wispy and unnecessary movie, but I'll give this short review my best academic reasoning behind why I and many, many, many others will hate this film, many without even seeing it.

By calling their film Disaster Movie, directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer purposefully and openly set themselves up for a barrage of reviews that use a pun along the lines of "a complete disaster of a movie". They don't need the critics. Instead they have a built-in audience of ADHD-riddled pre-teens and their parents who read the glossy supermarket magazines about Brangelina's latest adoption news. Friedberg, Seltzer and Lionsgate can laugh all the way to the bank while their "fans" hopelessly sit through 90 minutes of laughless celluloid. But gaging the audience that showed up for the screening, perhaps once and for all the last laugh will be on them.

If you've actually sat through one of these films, you know the title is misleading. While each film has a threadbare plot throughout that coincide with the name, every film is just weak satire on the minute pop culture of our society. The most sensible way to describe the plot goes like this: Will (Matt Lanter) and Amy (MTV's Vanessa Minnillo) break up because of his commitment issues. Will's friend Calvin (Gary 'G Thang' Johnson) then throws him a birthday party. When the city is under attack by some hurricane or what have you and Amy is trapped in a museum where she works, Will, Calvin, and other characters face strange encounters, most not involving any sort of actual 'disaster'. It's best left not to describe it.

The plot, or whatever you make of it, is more or less a patchwork of Cloverfield and The Day After Tomorrow. But they won't reference the latter by name because the core audience of Disaster Movie were but mere babies when that film was released in 2004. A real satire on disaster movies (which in effect was already done by David Zucker's Airplane! spoof on the Airport series) would have highlighted the Irwin Allen years, the random star power of those films (no Carmen Electra is not a 'star') or at least thrown in some sly winks to the 1990's revival of the genre. No Charleston Heston tributes? No dice.

Instead it's the kind of film that references one of the most quotable lines in the Rocky franchise, forever over-saturated on t-shirts and pop culture shows, by saying "Like Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV, 'I must break you'". You know, in case the kids younger than 11 don't get the reference in between the 'jokes' of a film of which the oldest parody reference is December 2006's Night At The Museum.

It's the kind of film that sings TWO musical numbers that are so annoyingly bad and random that it actually makes you think "Prom Tonight" from 2001's Not Another Teen Movie deserved a Grammy. Or at least a Juno award.

It's the kind of film that drags on for 5 minutes "making fun" of Hannah Montana's self-promotion. But really, it sounded like they were giving Miley Cyrus a pitch more than actually making fun of her. Maybe when Cyrus' show ends and she's about 2 months away from defying daddy in a Playboy or Maxim spread, she'll star in Oscar Movie or Animated Movie (or isn't she already doing that in Bolt?).

It's the kind of film that doesn't even bother hiring lookalike actors anymore. The guy who did Dr. Phil looked, talked and acted nothing like the real subject, and the way they wrote his character can't even be considered a 'parody' since it wasn't even making fun of things he's known for.

It's the kind of film that has a guy named 'G Thang' as one of its stars.

Sadly I have to admit that Disaster Movie edges out Friedberg/Seltzer's previous installment Meet The Spartans just an infinite fraction of an iota. While Spartans was devoid of a single laugh, Disaster did throw me for a couple of "I cannot believe they are doing this" chuckles. Perhaps the only genuinely funny moment, and an awkward one at that, was Nicole Parker's take of Amy Adams' Enchanted princess, describing her drug tolerance. But considering she did cheap impersonations of Jessica Simpson and Amy Winehouse as well, she deserves just as much ire as the rest of the prorated MadTV cast.

I refuse to end this article with a cheap titular pun. Friedberg and Seltzer know they want it, but they don't deserve it.

Featured Review: HOUSE BUNNY

The House Bunny

Starring- Anna Faris, Emma Stone, Kat Dennings, Katherine McPhee, Rumer Willis, Colin Hanks, Christopher McDonald, Beverly D'Angelo

Directed by Fred Wolf

Grade: D

"I gotta meet this frickin' bird!"

If while watching The House Bunny, you start to feel deja vu, you're not alone. Written by the co-writers of Legally Blonde, this film plays like a tired mixture of 50% Blonde, 30% Revenge Of The Nerds, and 20% Sydney White. Lots of ditsy blondes, lots of pink, lots of stereotypes about college make the film so vapid that it refuses to listen to the genial goodwill message it tacks on at the end.

While Anna Faris is no Reese Witherspoon in the acting pantheon, she deviates away from Witherspoon's Elle Woods enough to find a character on her own. Faris at times is really annoying, playing up the Marilyn Monroe-voiced, clueless but means well bimbo, but her comic timing and natural likability is one of the few saving graces for a pretty cliche and tumescent film.

The House Bunny has an undeniable mark left by Happy Madison, the Adam Sandler-owned production company in charge of it. It is at times just as raunchy as some of Sandler and his crew's dirtiest films, and if there is anything positive to say about the movie besides Faris' comic timing, it would be the equal way that the girls can perform gross-out gags alongside the boys. But then, is that really a good thing when it results in The House Bunny?

Shelley (Faris) is a former orphan, now a staple in Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion. But unbeknown to her, some of her fellow Playmates want her gone. Therefore, a day after turning 27, she is forced to move out. Where can an unschooled, unintelligent, poor, former Playboy bunny go to? Naturally, after a night in jail, she finds a sorority house further down the block. This leads Shelley to an unlikely facade as House Mother to the worst and most ragtag house on campus. These girls need pledges to keep their chapter, but who wants to pledge at a place that doesn't feature rockin' parties and kickass social events?. Shelley has ideas.

Pretty much every cliche about college and female outcasts are presented here. The girls range from being nerds to feminist rebels to pregnant hippies to exceedingly tomboyish. They are purposely and exagerratedly ugly, their house is ugly, and naturally, in the case of Emma Stone and Katherine McPhee, and mostly, in the case of Kat Dennings and Rumer Willis (eerily similar looking to father Bruce) become beautiful with a quick She's All That montage makeover that exceeds no cost.

The movie throws in a quick feel-good ending about the dangers of over-hyping the value of looks, but after spending the bulk center of the film glorifying the girls' new wealth in popularity and outer gravitas, the final moments feels as contrite and hollow as the jokes that reside in those moments.

The humor here is a bit overlapping at times. There's a dearth of dumb blonde jokes as expected, but once in awhile the screenwriters slip in a genuinely witty little tidbit that almost goes unnoticed. Instead the movie focuses on the dimwit musings that a 'typical blonde' from Playboy like Shelley might conceive in her head.

Anna Faris has come a long way from being the slightly-built, raven-haired Cindy Campbell of the Scary Movie franchise. One could say that when Reese Witherspoon left the vapid blonde role for bigger and artsier pictures like Walk The Line and, uh, Just Like Heaven, Faris ably filled in on her own terms. But how many films do we need, in which a ditsy woman learns how to deal with her life and the people that surround her in cutesy fashion and fabulous, FABULOUS clothes?

Overall, The House Bunny feels like just another comedy that curbs its ideas from the wacky hi-jinks movies from the 1980s, without as much family-friendly camp. Perhaps in 25 years our generation and the next will look at movies like The House Bunny with the same kind of cult reverence that we do for Revenge Of The Nerds; never as a particularly good film, but enjoying the somewhat dated 'product of the times' and humor with genial affection. Shelley may have hoped to be a Playboy Centerfold, but that's the best The House Bunny can hope for.

Featured Review: MIRRORS

Mirrors



Starring- Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Amy Smart, Cameron Boyce, Erica Gluck, John Shrapnel



Directed by Alexandre Aja



Grade: F




"Don't make me threaten you!"

Remember that lost season of 24 when Jack Bauer, between thwarting Russian terrorists and a secret government conspiracy unit, saved the world from demonic spirits that use mirrors to kill innocents? The one where he runs around screaming at people to save his family, shooting at the mirrors, and then fights the secret bad guy that almost comes out of nowhere towards the end? And we thought the writer's strike would save us from such a wild scenario.

As ludicrious as the plot sounds, movies like Mirrors can at times be unabashedly good. Films like The Shining and Poltergeist knew how to effectively deal with troublesome and killer ghosts in a story that didn't hinder the excitement or terror. But while director Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension, The Hills Have Eyes) earns a few points for cinematic style, he couldn't maintain a cohesive script, a shred of plausible acting, or any proper special effects. The rest of Mirrors is a jagged mess of broken shrapnel painstakingly piercing our auditory and visual senses.

Kiefer Sutherland stars as Ben Carson, a disgraced ex-cop who is rebounding from a bout with the bottle. His relationships are tenuous; he's unresponsive to his sister Angela (Amy Smart), seperated from his wife Amy (Paula Patton), and rarely sees his kids. That all is put to the test when Ben gets a job as a security guard, patrolling a burnt out department store that is left standing due to legal tie-ups. See, the mirrors in the place, enough to basically cover the entire store, are haunted with demon spirits. They want something, someone, Kiefer's blood be damned.

Never mind that the department store Kiefer oversees is larger than most malls, and that despite being gutted by a fire five years before, still retains all the charred mannequins, counters, and racks of burnt clothes. Never mind that Kiefer's job is so fresh that he's able to find the wallet of the guy he replaced in a locker, or that he can waltz in and check the guy's body because his wife just HAPPENS to be a forensic analyst at the morgue where the body was taken. No, Mirrors is much worse than that.

The plot holes are mind-numbingly rampant for a plot that sounds so ridiculous to begin with. Most of the damage the demon spirits inflict on the cast happen outside of the department store, as a means of revenge or notice. How can these random mirrors be haunted if the story's big reveal is primarily focused on the history of the department store mirrors? If they can travel to other mirrors in people's houses that easily, why don't they do much more widespread damage?

It's just another in a long line of films that only uses enough logic to drive its story, especially coming from a director who made one of the ultimate cop-out endings in recent film history in Haute Tension. They paint over the mirrors in the family house (and there's dozens of them. What, the Carsons don't appreciate any art?), instead of throwing them away, and apparently if that doesn't work, the spirits can supposedly control the water faucets, so they can reflect themselves in the flood.

The ending is somewhat unique, but the stupidity and fallacies of the first 108 minutes that preceded it completely desensitizes the viewer past the point of caring. It was like Aja came up with this last idea first, and attempted to build a shoddy story that leads to it.

Sutherland's status as Jack Bauer is supposed to lend an air of credence to the film, but Kiefer is overtly terrible. He starts off somewhat of a pussycat in his faux cashmere sweater and collared shirt, but by the end becomes as pushy and loud as Bauer is during an interrogation. Except instead of questioning terrorists, he's threatening elderly nuns about ghosts inside mirrors. Sutherland gets one-liner gold such as "What do you want from me?!" and "The mirrors... they're so clean!", and has an asinine penchant for screaming a singular profanity after every conversation. It's really quite humorous.

The effects were mostly cut-rate as well. The computer animation is so cartoonish in its gore factor that it illicited more laughter from the audience than gasps. Simple prosthetics, like in the mirror scene from Poltergeist, might have been scarier. Natch, just about anything inserted into the film would have been scarier than Mirrors as it is, aside from say, Prom Night.

Maybe I'm just being overly critical about a film that is not supposed to be as smart and sensible as Hamlet or even Hamlet 2. But you'd like to think that Kiefer and Patton are brighter than this. Even Amy Smart, she of Road Trip and Crank, doesn't deserve the miserable fate of being in Mirrors. When a horror film can't sustain a scare or even a modicum of reason for us to believe and invest in the story, the empathy for its mistakes doesn't exist. If only the wretched memory of Mirrors that now haunt my head didn't exist...

Featured Review: THE ROCKER

This review was originally written from an advanced screening on July 25th.


The Rocker



Starring- Rainn Wilson, Christina Applegate, Teddy Geiger, Emma Stone, Josh Gad, Jason Sudeikis, Jane Lynch, Jeff Garlin, Will Arnett



Directed by Peter Cattaneo



Grade: C-



"A lot of elevators play Celine Dion... that doesn't make it right."

Actors who get defined to one television role often have a blessing and a curse. They experience popularity and job security for the duration of their career-making character, but then they also struggle to develop a successful transition away from it. Michael Richards often superseded his titular co-star as Kramer in Seinfeld, but couldn't etch out anything of substance on his own. Bob Denver was known as Gilligan for the rest of his life. Same goes more or less for people like George Wendt, Megan Mullally, James Van Der Beek, Neil Patrick Harris, etc. They just can't escape the shadow of what made them a household name in the first place.

So is the case of Rainn Wilson and his first fully-engaged star-making turn, The Rocker. Stuck somewhere between a vehicle for Wilson, a vehicle for stalwart teen rocker Teddy Geiger, and an earnest if lukewarm attempt to appease every demographic with a slightly risque but never truly offensive PG-13 family message film, The Rocker never reaches that pantheon of hard metal licks. Instead it plays like weak radio-friendly pop rock.

The Rainn man plays Robert 'Fish' Fishman, once the highly touted drummer of 1980's hair metal band Vesuvius (with cheeky cameos by Will Arnett, Fred Armisen and Bradley Cooper), now a loser living in his sister's attic over 20 years later. His nebbish nephew Matt (Josh Gad, of FOX's short-lived Back To You) is playing the prom with his band A.D.D, and when their drummer gets expelled from school, Matt is forced to call upon his uncle for help. Igniting new passion into his life, Fish wheels and deals the local garage band into scoring gigs and going on tour, often in ways he didn't plan for. Along the way, he and his younger bandmates finds lessons in life and begins to grow up.

Everybody who has seen at least 50 mainstream movies know how these kinds of films end up. Each of the band members have ups, they have downs, they face their biggest challenge, the big bad villain (in this case being Fish's old band Vesuvius) gets its long-awaited comeuppance, and Fish gets the girl. All of this at the mere price of logical fallacy and enough pratfalls to make Chevy Chase want to sue.

Whereas Wilson's supporting role in My Super Ex-Girlfriend basically placed him as a jerk with glasses much in the vein as his character Dwight in The Office, Wilson's The Rocker persona almost strives with the singular goal of making him the exact opposite. He wears longer hair (a relic of the 1980's glam he's refused to move on with), doesn't wear glasses, and has a 'wild' personality. The movie itself is centered around a dozen or so gags that cause Fish bodily harm, a broad tactic that is rarely used in The Office.

But the trouble with this of course is, without the Dwight persona, Wilson isn't really all that much interesting. He hasn't had much of a chance to shine elsewhere, but does anybody remember his bit roles in Almost Famous, Sahara or Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal? For the few people that sat through House Of 1000 Corpses and watched him get killed and turned into some kind of mermaid creature, did they really look at his performance and say "Wow, he's going to be a star someday"?

Similarly unimpressive is Teddy Geiger, the 'real' brains behind the fictional band as the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist. He has genuine talent, but his character is so depressing and one-note for much of the movie it's hard to see him as a legitimate actor. I can imagine that after his short-lived success with his album Underage Thinking in 2006 went nowhere, he's looking jealously towards the increasingly manic fandom of The Jonas Brothers, wondering where it all went wrong.

The music in The Rocker is manufactured almost as much as a Disney multimedia franchise, only much less successful. Geiger and the modern A.D.D. band are obviously going for that 'tween rock sound somewhere between The All-American Rejects, Boys Like Girls and any number of the Fueled By Ramen label cohorts. They're all catchy enough, but nothing inspires. Worse that, not a single song is played in its entirety. Seems the writers concocted a verse and a chorus and settled at that. Had they made full-length songs and released them before the film comes out, income-flushed ten-year-olds might be almost as excited to see this as they were for Camp Rock and High School Musical 3.

If Rainn Wilson is ever going to come out of the shadow of Dwight Schrute, he needs a better outing than this. The Rocker seemed like a limp idea that Wilson was able to jump on in an effort to give himself some public face time. Unfortunately, plain and simple, this isn't the kind of movie that will take him to the top of the charts.

Featured Review: VICKY CRISTINA

Vicky Cristina Barcelona



Starring- Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem, Rebecca Hall, Penelope Cruz, Chris Messina, Patrica Clarkson, Kevin Dunn



Directed by Woody Allen



Grade: C+




"Life is short, life is dull, life is full of pain."

Woody Allen's fanbase is desperate for a hit. His films have more or less faltered from the nearly universally acclaimed works he submitted decades ago, but when one decent piece of work such as Vicky Cristina Barcelona hits the pipeline after so many other flukes and failures, people are desperate to find much more substance and eloquence than Woody, I think, is capable of anymore. A time-filling, pleasing little film that rights the ship set by Scoop and Anything Else? Yes, but Vicky Cristina never truly shakes up the world in which its characters are so desperately trying to live in.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is an interesting little piece of cinema. It obviously draws on European ideas and influences, particularly of the sexual revolution of the French New Wave. How do I know? Because the narrator explains it to us, in case we didn't get that was Allen's intentions here. There's many instances of bed-sharing, bed-hopping, three-ways, and other sexual and philosophical ideas, so it must be European. At least that's the freewheeling theme that speaks loudest.

We meet Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) on their voyage to a summer trip in Barcelona, Spain. Vicky has studying to do, and Cristina goes along for the adventure. They both have different directions they are heading in their lives, with different ideals, but when a curiously handsome and winsome stranger, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) interjects some romance between them, both Vicky and Cristina begin to question themselves. They work it out, and all seems to be fine and good, until Juan Antonio's suicidal, moody, yet talented ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) forces herself back into the picture.

Like Wes Anderson, Allen as of late has been fascinated with the trials and tribulations of the wealthy. Without good money, neither of the women would be able to jet set for the summer to Spain, one being able to whisk off to France when she feels like it. The couple they stay with own a fabulous mansion, Juan Antonio lives in a sprawling estate despite a carefree artist's life, and even his father seems to have a great big place to stay without much effort to show. Obviously it's a fantasy tale, but it seems Allen forgets that not everybody can name drop and travel to New York, Paris, Barcelona and the rest of the world at the tip of a hat.

Almost all of his characters, narrator included, spout off pretentious, haughty, over-enunciated diction for simple conversation. While that can be refreshing in a world of mainstream film that relies on swear words and slang, Allen's conversation lacks the wit his best-loved films are known for, and thus ultimately rings hollow. When Vicky says something like, "Let's not get into one of those turgid, categorical, imperative arguments" when just conversing with her husband and Cristina down a charming boutique alleyway, it would stop the flow of the moment in any conversation in real life. But because this is classic Woody Allen, the line passes right through.

The narration is served to function as a storytelling device, to make the film unfold like a short story you'd read on a relaxing day in a southern Europe villa. But in the end it does nothing but distract the viewer away from what the picture can tell us. So we understand Vicky has repressed feelings. Cristina doesn't know what she wants in her life. But these ladies are both very capable actresses, I'd prefer to have their emotions tell me what they're feeling rather than some nameless narrator completely unconnected to the story.

What keeps the movie above the waters of tedious arrogance is the acting. Every member of the principle cast is engaging and spirited, if only forced to embody characters that speak words that sound better on paper. Hall is particularly intriguing, with a face and charm of a possible star. Johansson holds up well, as does Bardem, who does a great job masking his Anton Chigurh-ness. But the most widely noticed and accessible role is Penelope Cruz's.

Cruz is the firecracker that sets the table for the second half of the film. Her performance is quite impressive, with a mix of fierce intensity, wild-eyed curiosity, but yet with enough nuance to control her aspect of the story. She's been given much praise as a possible award candidate, but for now she's on the fringe. If Cruz was given more to do than just be the crazy tigress that drives the stake through Juan Antonio and Cristina's existence, maybe the performance would've stood out more.

While overall Vicky Cristina Barcelona can be kind of unsatisfying and not as stirring as Woody's only other "good" film of the decade, Match Point, it is a step up from his terribly uneven resume of late.

Still, it's quite amazing that a man who can write witty screenplays such as Love & Death, Sleeper, Bananas, Annie Hall, Manhattan and et cetera, can lose his touch for the joy he found in his own neurosis. It doesn't necessarily take an East Coast ivory tower intellectual to understand his humor, but Allen needs to embrace that as his niche like he used to, rather than pretend he's something he's not. Because without his classic, compulsive wit, you get a 'turgid, categorical, imperative' kind of film like Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Featured Review: TROPIC THUNDER

Tropic Thunder



Starring- Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr, Nick Nolte, Jay Baruchel, Brandon T. Jackson, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Cruise



Directed by Ben Stiller



Grade: A-



"I know who I am! I'm the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude!"

Everybody likes Hollywood, but films about Hollywood often do not fare well. Most viewers have never worked inside a studio, so the art of satirizing something everyone on the set can side with, but the audience can't, often results in a mixed, awkward film. At times, especially in the beginning, Tropic Thunder crosses that line, threatening never to come back. But with a little moxie by its stars and a pretty cohesive and well-rounded script, Thunder rolls back.

While his starring comedies have been lackluster of late, Jack Black scored a major hit with Kung Fu Panda. Robert Downey Jr. has Iron Man and a serious career. The real test for the film was for Ben Stiller, who not only stars, but co-wrote and directed Thunder. Outside of the holiday hits A Night At The Museum and Madagascar, his legitimate comedies haven't risen to the challenge of his peers the past few years. So it's fitting that while Stiller makes himself the de facto number one star, he also makes a winning film because of his reliance on sharing the wealth with his co-stars.

Tropic Thunder starts with a trailer for each of the main characters. We meet Tugg Speedman (Stiller), the faltering action star trying to branch out without much success, Jeff "Fats" Portnoy (Black), the drug-addicted, Eddie Murphy-esque comic, and Kirk Lazarus (Downey), the insecure 5-time Oscar winning Australian who gets a skin procedure to play a black soldier. Their egos and other mistakes by rookie director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) and his crew throw the film production into a tailspin.

With patience and money running thin, Cockburn is goaded by Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), the deranged former soldier and writer of the book the film is based on, to drop the actors off in the real jungle and film guerrilla-style. So off go the three stars and two supporting actors, the energy drink spokesrapper Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), and the only character without an ego or exposition, Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) into the wilds of Vietnam without a clue what's happening.

After the initial trailers, Tropic Thunder starts off quite poorly. Coogan whines. Tom Cruise yells and curses. The likes of Bill Hader and Danny McBride run around spouting things, and the other stars get their introductions and story lines through television appearances. There's too much going on at one time to really focus on the humor at hand. The film doesn't really pick up until the five actors get booted off to the jungle, and get an unexpected and gross surprise almost immediately.

As the main cast get deeper and deeper into the jungle, the action picks up, but so does the laughter. The actors have discussions about their often shallow personal lives, about role techniques, about who they're supposed to be to other people. All five of them have a chance to really shine at some point without resorting to, at least in Stiller and Black's case, what type of humor they're familiar with.

If you can't tell from the trailer alone, Downey Jr's portrayal of Kirk Lazarus is downright amazing in itself. Humor wise, there have been better roles, and his is probably not even the funniest of the movie (Cruise and Matthew McConaughey are arguably the funniest when they share screen time). But the fact that the normally sarcastic-toned, dark-haired, beady eyed Downey can switch back and forth between a blond, blue eyed Australian and his stereotypically gruff black persona shows how much depth Downey can eke out of himself even in a summer comedy. He brings a touch of true class to his absurdness, whereas Stiller is forced to parody his own ridiculous Zoolander type goofiness.

Meanwhile, though his character is still close to being the straight man of the group, it's good to see Jay Baruchel in a bigger chunk of movie action. Since his lead role in the cult Judd Apatow series Undeclared, Baruchel has quietly popped up in bit parts over the years, including Almost Famous, The Rules Of Attraction, Million Dollar Baby (playing his own retarded character), and Knocked Up. If any of Apatow's proteges could use his own star-making vehicle, after Tropic Thunder Baruchel attests that he can do it, being both funny and often times the sensible leader of the egotistical group.

The cameos number in the dozens, perhaps the largest since Robert Altman's The Player. We see them in the fake trailers, television talk shows, and the award ceremonies (often out of irony), and yet unlike most films that shill for the acknowledgments, Thunder's star power feels legit. Strangest of all is the fact we expect Cruise and McConaughey to be cameos, but they are in the film just as much as any other actor. Cruise has great fun in his first comedy appearance since Austin Powers in Goldmember, and McConaughey, replacing Owen Wilson, works better in his role than Wilson would have because we don't expect it from a "romantic comedy" star like McConaughey.

Tropic Thunder loses itself in the middle of lampooning the Hollywood system at times, and the potential for an even better film was there. But while it was slightly disappointing to the funny bone, Thunder survived among its comedic peers by being comprehensible and enjoyable all the way through, which is a much better compliment than most of 2008's comedies have been given. Perhaps if it does well at the box office, we will see a Tugg Speedman reprise in Tropic Thunder VI: Arctic Lightning. I'm sure Stiller would light up with that thought.

Featured Review: SWING VOTE

For the mini-review of the long-forgotten Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, and 81 others, click here.


Swing Vote



Starring- Kevin Costner, Paula Patton, Kelsey Grammer, Dennis Hopper, Madeline Carroll, Stanley Tucci, Nathan Lane, George Lopez



Directed by Joshua Michael Stern



Grade: B+


"What are we about?"
"Winning. Because if you don't win, you can't do what you set out to do."

In the wake of perhaps the most important Presidential election of our time, and surely the most engaging Democratic election ever, it's kind of amazing that Swing Vote fared so poorly at the box office. Surely it was the lack of marketing, mostly centering around the film being just another Kevin Costner vehicle, and bad timing, being released square in the middle of the summer movie bonanza and well before the fervor of a Presidential election reaches the public who are not political aficionados. Even so, one would get the sense there could be some kind of market for a film like Swing Vote.

Strange, because while Touchstone may not have had faith in the initially unrealistic plot and turn of events, Swing Vote comes away with much less cheese and sap than its trailer or synopsis would lead you to believe. Instead it's an inarguably easygoing story that doesn't stray from the center line of politics, and surprisingly for such a toothless jab at pundits and the media, it's somewhat effective. If a film like The Manchurian Candidate or Dr. Strangelove is an intellectual thinking man's political satire, Swing Vote is a poor man's Capra-esque tale. Heartwarming and earnest, if decidedly overreaching in its humble message.

Ernest "Bud" Johnson (Costner) is a newly unemployed everyman from Texico, New Mexico (real town!), who rather drink, sleep, and carouse around than to own up to any responsibilities in his life. His daughter Molly (Madeline Carroll) does most of the things around the house and keeps him out of trouble. When he fails to show up for the polls on Election Day, thereby disappointing his daughter, she attempts to cast a ballot for him, but the machine gets shut off. When they find out New Mexico is the state that decides the entire election, it ends up coming down to one county, and to one man, Bud.

Costner as Bud is quite frankly a real jerk. He seems to at times have no respect for anyone but himself, and even himself he thinks very lowly of. Bud constantly lets down his daughter, and seemingly has no real moral compass outside of the basic rules of abuse and murder. Costner is actually quite good in the role, making one almost believe he isn't the actor who's face and name is supposed to sell the film on the poster. The fact that his character never truly breaks away from his sardonic, redneck ways even after his realization of what kind of life he's led, goes a long way into selling the character and plot implications.

Same goes for his daughter Molly and his supposed "love interest" Kate Madison, played by Madeline Carroll and Paula Patton respectively. Molly has a terrible case of Lisa Simpson syndrome, being way too smart and insightful for her age, being able to point out the flaws of every character and America in general just when the scene needs it. Patton often has the same "too perfect to be real" persona, but the fact that neither she nor Molly end up being a deciding factor in Bud's decision (Kate and Bud, despite all roads leading towards it, never actually start a relationship), again thwarts the pigeon-holing Swing Vote was destined to follow.

Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Hopper, the incumbent Republican and the opposing Democrat, make believable politicians. Though both are Republicans in real life, both Grammer and Hopper carry an air about themselves that speak of the basic principles of the parties they represent. Though the fact that their waffling on tried and true conservative and liberal stances in the effort to obtain Bud's vote can be seen as more unrealistic than the one-vote-wins plot, it often finds its most satirical moments there. It's a shame that Hopper's role was supposedly cut dramatically, because he's pretty interesting, especially in the film's funniest scene about an anti-abortion commercial.

Also lending some credence is the clean direction by Joshua Michael Stern. The film is a finely paced parable that never seems to sag much, nor get too frantic in places. Many scenes are aesthetically aware, going for centering shots and crisp backgrounds. The fact that Swing Vote merely looks like it was taken under careful consideration by Stern, sells the film more than any of the performances.

Let's face it, the fact that America comes down to one singular vote is pretty preposterous. There have been elections that came down to one vote many times in the history of the world, but never on such a scale as Swing Vote fantasizes. Especially in this day and age, when the candidates have so many campaign workers and strategists (in this case, realistically seedy Nathan Lane and Stanley Tucci), a recount and further controversy would happen long before such a situation would arise.

But to Swing Vote's credit, it's quite self-aware in the fact that it's not supposed to be a hard-nosed satire that strives for absolute realism. At least it acknowledged that the popular vote wasn't tied, as Bud's tiny county was merely the deciding vote of a state that would tip a neck and neck election. While everyone is waiting for Bud's decision, Hopper's Greenleaf has a one electoral vote lead. Adding mixed opinions from real-life pundits such as Chris Mathews, Bill Maher, Larry King, Ariana Huffington, and James Carville further the fact that this is a fantasy movie that merely offers a few good-natured questions, not out to shake up the entire political world.

Swing Vote is a nifty little film if it isn't expected to completely deride the facade of American politics. It makes some earnest points about the sensationalism in the media, and the corporate underbelly behind the electoral process and government positioning, but it's for a more mainstream audience. Not to say it's dumbed down, but just with softer edges. If you're someone who is a staunch supporter of a particular affiliation, the viewpoints you carry will definitely cloud your mind of a movie that isn't trying to swing viewers into a set party. But if like Bud, you're not very political or have an open mind to everybody's ideas, Swing Vote may be for you.

Featured Review: PINEAPPLE EXPRESS

This article was originally written on July 18th as part of the Advanced Reviews series.


Pineapple Express



Starring- Seth Rogen, James Franco, Gary Cole, Rosie Perez, Danny McBride, Amber Heard, Kevin Corrigan, Craig Robinson, Ed Begley Jr, Nora Dunn.



Directed by David Gordon Green



Grade: B-



"Thug life!"

Marijuana smokers rejoice. Pineapple Express becomes the first box office wide release since 1998's Half Baked to make no qualms about it's weed-y roots. Trying to create a new breed of film with over-the-top violence and action coupled with dirty, raunchy humor and gloriously unabashed love for the plant drug, Pineapple Express tries to do too much, and ends up doing way too little.

Opinion-takers at the advanced screening were asking patrons if it was the next Cheech & Chong. Not that Cheech & Chong is such a good movie to want to compare praise to, but Pineapple Express is not only inferior to the former film, but it's a black mark on Seth Rogen's otherwise sterling Apatow-linked career. Freaks & Geeks, Undeclared, The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, all great shows and movies. Pineapple Express? Disappointing.

Rogen stars as Dale Denton, a subpoena server who is inexplicably dating a teenager in high school. And he really, really, loves pot. Off the bat he witnesses a drug kingpin (Office Space's Gary Cole) and a saucy little policewoman (Rosie Perez) murder one of the sons of his main rival. They connect Dale to the crime scene thanks to his rare 'Pineapple Express' joint, and thus sets off a chain of who's-working-for-who scenarios involving his pot dealer Saul (Spider-Man's James Franco), two hitmen (Kevin Corrigan, Craig Robinson) and Saul's own middleman Red (Danny McBride). Dale and Saul bond as their adventure reaches its climax.

The humor, both marijuana-related and otherwise, have some extremely funny moments. But for every joke that hits, there are just as many that are extremely awkward to sit through. The cast was obviously going for that semi-improvisational, stream-of-consciousness feel that Apatow ekes so well out of his directed cast, but for Rogen and director David Gordon Green, it just throws the film's pacing out the window. Granted that success rate is much better than most other comedians' films this year, but for Rogen, we the audience expected better. The funniest parts of the redband trailer, as well as the awesome song "Paper Planes" by M.I.A., are literally M.I.A. from the film.

James Franco steals the movie performance-wise, but maybe it's because the rest of the cast fails to inspire. Franco seems genuine as Saul, a stoned loser who just wants companionship. He often has the best lines in the film and we tend to care about him over Dale. Rogen on the other hand is actually sort of annoying and loud, and when the scenes get packed with quick reactionary moments, he exposes himself to still be a green actor.

The other players are one-note at best. Gary Cole has very little personality, playing his drug lord as almost a straight villain. Rosie Perez hasn't been in a film I've seen since God knows when, and I STILL can't understand her when she talks. Kevin Corrigan and Craig Robinson (of Grounded For Life and The Office respectively) are more awkward than funny, and Danny McBride's one good line in the movie-- "Thug life!"-- is in the trailers. The clumsy ending involving Rogen, Franco and McBride, was seriously anti-climatic.

Why is Dale dating a high school girl? Statutory Rape aside, they never explained it, nor does it make a lot of sense, even for a movie like this. If she was ugly, or if Rogen was particularly good-looking, then maybe I'd get it. Or if she was only using him for free drugs, I'd totally understand. But from all accounts none of that was the case, and we are forced to believe that model/actress Amber Heard (Hidden Hills, Never Back Down) genuinely wants to date a scuzzy 25-year-old subpoena server who looks like he's 35. How much of a boner/ego did Rogen get while writing this idea?

For the longest time I was a fan of Seth Rogen, years before he became the warty toad prince of raunchy but pathos-driven R-rated comedy. From Freaks and Geeks to Undeclared, popping up in minuscule roles in Donnie Darko and Anchorman, he was very much under appreciated. Judd Apatow gave him a chance at screen-time in The 40 Year Old Virgin, which led to bona fide stardom in Knocked Up. Now he is no longer the dirty Seth Rogen with a cult fan base but Seth Rogen, the dirty Hollywood multi-tasking entity.

Pineapple Express could have been a resplendent example, setting up a template for more films of the same cloth. But something here did not click at all, at least not from the Rogen Wing of the School of Apatow. Maybe it was the budget. Maybe it was the director (who previously helmed the extravagantly different drama Snow Angels). Maybe they all were affected too much by the stage weed on set. Whatever it was, Pineapple Express failed to rocket to the pinnacle of our funny bones.

Featured Review: THE MUMMY 3

The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor



Starring- Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, John Hannah, Luke Ford, Michelle Yeoh, Isabella Leong, Russell Wong



Directed by Rob Cohen



Grade: B



"You fought one mummy Dad..."
"Yeah one mummy... twice!"

Who knew Brendan Fraser still had this much clout in Hollywood? After striking out in scarcely seen serious fare like The Air I Breathe and The Last Time, Fraser goes back to his action comedy roots so seamlessly, that the seven year gap since 2001's The Mummy Returns almost seems non-existent. The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor is by no means an outstanding film, but a fast-paced, easy to swallow adventure that pulls enough punches to gloss over some of the goofy content.

The Mummy franchise has always felt like a light-hearted rip-off of Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones series. Less overall violence, less Harrison Ford quips and more Fraser mugging. Dragon Emperor falls into the same vein as the previous two; our heroic characters get into peril time and time again, a massive hoard of the undead stage unrelenting attacks on them, and in the end they manage to scrape out a victory. It's a tried and true plot fitting for the old cinematic heroes of Errol Flynn's era.

Dragon Emperor picks up about 13 or 14 years after the previous installment. Rick O'Connell (Fraser) and wife Evelyn (Maria Bello, pulling a Darrin Stevens on the audience after Rachel Weisz opted out) are rich and retired in the English countryside, while unbeknown to them, son Alex has dropped out of college to follow in his parents' footsteps as an archaeologist and explorer. He finds the temple to the Emperor Han (Jet Li), a ruthless dictator who was frozen in stone by a curse. Of course through a twist of allegiances, the diamond stone that alleviates the curse falls into the wrong hands, Emperor Han is freed, and all hell breaks loose for the O'Connells.

The plot is your standard fare for action adventures set in foreign countries with mysterious ruins. Lots of booby traps and needlessly difficult puzzles and wall openings litter the tombs and temples. Fraser spouts "I can't believe this is happening again" type quotes for humor, although the script keeps the real groaners to a minimum. I won't even go into length badmouthing the field-goal kicking Chinese Abominable Snowmen. At least the bland Alex O'Connell character, all grown up from being the stereotypical 'meddlesome child' of action movies in The Mummy Returns, unlike Shia LeBeouf in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, is played by too less of a name (Australian Luke Ford) to get spin-off aspirations.

Effects-wise, Dragon Emperor is pretty run-of-the-mill as well. Some good animation of the skeletons during the battle scenes, plus the snow-drenched Shangri-La temple, but a couple of bloody combustions involving Li's are much weaker. They devolve into almost cartoonish fashion. Director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, xXx) takes over for Stephen Sommers and works an almost exact rendering of what Sommers would have done with the project anyways. Tit for tat.

Maria Bello (A History Of Violence, Thank You For Smoking), pales in comparison to Rachel Weisz as the "second" Evelyn O'Connell. She's a good actress, attested by at least the films mentioned above, but working out of her element of moody dramas and feigning a British accent, she doesn't muster anything much more than a fond recollection of Weisz in the role.

Li, Michelle Yeoh, Isabella Leong, and Russell Wong however are spot on and interesting in their roles concerning the fate of China and the Emperor's rule. Yeoh, of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame, is no stranger to the physical side of her role, and Leong proves she can be capable of being a future serious actress. Li doesn't necessarily do much besides growl and kill minions, but he serves as a quiet force to a film that could otherwise lack some credibility.

The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor is nothing else but a summer blockbuster that needs a soda and popcorn to wash it down. By the time the soda gets thrown in the trash bin, the memory of such a film is thrown out of collective consciousness. It wouldn't be a terrible predicament to see a fourth installment in the Mummy franchise, but like this third film, it's not something to look forward to all summer. It's just... there.

Featured Review: X-FILES 2

The X-Files: I Want To Believe



Starring David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Billy Connolly, Amanda Peet, Alvin 'Xzibit' Joiner, Mitch Pileggi



Directed by Chris Carter



Grade: C-




"I don't believe this."
"You know, that's been your problem from the very beginning."

I certainly wanted to believe. I wanted to believe that this second film installment of The X-Files franchise would be an engaging sci-fi thriller, something that could possibly lend credence to future sequels. If anything, give David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson something to do with their careers and balance out the negativity surrounding most of the recently released tripe in the horror/sci-fi genre. Instead, like the religious beliefs of Anderson's Scully, all that was left for The X-Files: I Want To Believe, was ugly, open-ended doubt.

It's been so long since the television series and first film premiered, that I barely remember said film, 1998's Fight The Future. But there were some indelible images. A kid being consumed by black goo, our heroes being chased by bees, a giant alien spaceship. It was an entertaining movie that combined some of the best elements of the show; aliens and dramatic tension. But I Want To Believe refuses to mix in its' most unearthly lineage, rather opting to put away their metaphysical playthings for a more complex 'human' touch. And that extracts all the interest out of new and casual fans like myself in enjoying this movie.

Years after their last hurrah in the FBI, Dana Scully (Anderson) is a doctor in a Catholic hospital dealing with a crisis of faith, especially over a presumably terminally ill little boy. She gets called upon to dig up her old partner Fox Mulder, a not-so-sought-after fugitive, to help solve an unusual case involving another missing FBI agent. He eventually agrees, and begins to not only earn the trust of Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet) the agent in charge of the investigation, but gets Scully involved in the process as well. The main chip the FBI have is Father Joe (Billy Connolly) a former Catholic priest and pedophile who has psychic visions that relate to the missing agent.

In essence the plot is less an exertion of the paranormal and supernatural, but that of a straight crime thriller with mythological subtext. However, therein lies its biggest problem: there seems to be more elements of films such as Zodiac or Stigmata than anything uniquely exciting or worthy of being a nearly two hour stand-alone television franchise vehicle. It drags on very, very slowly from one scene to the next without much of an element of surprise. When something climatic DOES happen, it pops out at you with all the excitement of a broken jack-in-the-box.

As fellow critic Michael Brieaddy points out, the film has very much the same feel that die hard fans of the television show know of. Like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The X-Files focused just as much on serious issues of people's lives and relationships as they did on the creatures. Not every episode is filled with alien and ghost arcs.

I'm all for serious drama fare. But ten years between films and a six year layoff on the franchise in general does not give them the excuse to build a template for a whole movie series with this much conversation building. Franchises like Batman and Spider-Man has earned the right to space out their action sequences with exposition and tension building and introducing future characters, but for The X-Files, with all subtle references to characters' past lives aside, we need a little refresher course. Had this been a direct sequel to Fight The Future, released in 1999 or 2000 while the show still was on the air, I Want To Believe might succeed without much mythological ado. But it's 2008, and nobody but the resolute fanboys care anymore.

None of the original supporting characters from the series' run appeared in the film (although many actors who served in bit episodic roles are littered throughout), save one. Mitch Pileggi, Assistant Director Walter Skinner, shows up for a brief scene towards the end. His appearance, no matter how canonical within the series of events, seems like an underwhelming attempt at getting longtime fans to clap or holler for another familiar face. But this is The X-Files, not The Brady Bunch Movie.

I may be nitpicking, because the performances were adequate enough. Xzibit never shouted 'Pimp My Ride!', and Connolly stood out as the formerly immoral priest, but really, if you're only making the movie to please a fan base that can't even beat Mamma Mia! in its second week at the box office, why not just resurrect it for cable television (The Sci-Fi Channel would kill for this license), or make a direct-to-DVD film series? Or are Duchovny and Anderson too busy to resort to such low wages? Looking at their resumes, I certainly find THAT hard to believe.

Featured Review: SPACE CHIMPS

Space Chimps



Starring Andy Samberg, Cheryl Hines, Jeff Daniels, Patrick Warburton, Kristin Chenoweth, Stanley Tucci, Jane Lynch, Carlos Alazraqui



Directed by Kirk De Micco



Grade: D



"Let's chimp this ride!"

Space Chimps, the second of three computer-animated tales about non-humans going into space this summer, is by far much less quality than its' predecessor, the stunning and exquisite Pixar offering Wall-E. Sadly, with Fly Me To The Moon yet to be released, this laughable and insulting excuse of a film to 'entertain' children, may not even be the worse of the lot. But it certainly fails to muster any sympathy with a no-budget animation crew and the lamest excuse of a script this side of the nebula, even by kiddie film standards.

Produced by Vanguard and Starz Animation (raise your hand if you knew the premium cable movie channel had its own animation division), Space Chimps looks like a product of a burgeoning technical college animator circa 1994. One can use the excuse of the simple and bare graphics as eye-pleasing to the youngest children who might be scared of some imagery in Wall-E. But let's face it, Toy Story had more depth and complexity in its computer generated scenery than Space Chimps, and the former film was released THIRTEEN years ago. This is just a cheap attempt to cash in on the cartoon market.

We meet Ham III (voice of Andy Samberg), a circus performer and grandson of the famous Ham, revered as the first hominid to successful fly in outer space (possibly because in real life at least half the monkeys launched during the era died). Ham III however, doesn't have the same ambition. But when the space program comes under flak for losing an expensive probe in a wormhole, letting a meglomaniac alien (voice of Jeff Daniels) bent on ruling his home planet with a giant casino inherit it, they use Ham III and fellow more serious chimps Luna (Cheryl Hines) and Titan (Patrick Warburton) as a last-ditch public relations stunt to retrieve the probe.

If there's one minor kudos to be given to the animators, it would be the texture of the monkeys. At least the detail of their fur seem to been given a little time to materialize. But the set pieces and other beings that populate the film are so terrible-looking, it sucks whatever tiny bit of clean and composite animation right out of your brain. The NASA space center and the humans therein are chunky and lifeless looking, while the alien planet the chimps descend upon is again, cheap enough to be made on a Macintosh in 1994.

But if that isn't sad enough, the characters and the script are completely asinine as well. There is a mentor simian named Houston (who looks eerily like a chimp version of actor Gary Cole. Was that intentional?), named specifically for a "Houston, we have a problem" joke. Every other line spoken by Titan is a pun involving 'chimp'. "We'll have to chimprovise!" and "Let's chimp this ride!" are not exactly what constitutes a good movie. Then we're littered with random references to Beverly Hills Cop and David Bowie, just to see if parents are paying attention. Worse yet is a couple of off-color remarks that to adults can insinuate sexual references, but still should have no place in a G-rated film whether the kids get it or not.

Jeff Daniels at least does some liberations with his voice, because his villainous alien character Zartog sounds nothing like him. But that's also to say his new voice is awful, loud and screeching. The same could be said for Kristin Chenoweth's character, nicknamed Kilowatt (again, so named as an eye-rolling pun). Every moment she's on screen, there's a shrillness in her voice that can only be heard by dogs. The fact that Kilowatt claims she's the last of her race on the planet, then towards the end of the movie we see several more just like her in the crowd just proves how poorly conceived this whole project was.

Maybe it's futile to debunk a film that's squarely aimed at the crowd young enough to believe anybody and their grandmothers can go into outer space. But when there's magnificent entertainment for children out there, including Wall-E and Kit Kittredge, there's no reason for Space Chimps to have to pander to the lowest recesses of our toddler's minds. We need to engage them in thoughtful, well-written entertainment. But for Space Chimps, that's 'chimply' not the case.

Featured Review: MAMMA MIA!

Read up on the quickly forgotten dark political satire War Inc. movie review HERE.


Mamma Mia!



Starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Amanda Seyfried, Stellan Skarsgard, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Dominic Cooper



Directed by Phyllida Lloyd



Grade: C+



"I don't care if you've slept with hundreds of men!"
"I haven't slept with hundreds of men..."

If last year's Sweeney Todd was an exercise in bringing the ultra-dark, consummately Gothic stylings of Broadway to the multiplex near you, Mamma Mia! could be considered the polar opposite. With its flamboyant costumes, beautiful and entirely dreamt up exteriors of Greek isles, and gads of pretty people of European ancestry singing along to the collective works of ABBA, Mamma Mia! is less a movie experience but a theatre revue filmed for a community playhouse.

I'm not here to judge the merits of the actual musical, for I'm sure the stage-to-screen transition lost many elements that made the Broadway/West End/Las Vegas show such a smash hit. But one certainly has to wonder why there's such a fervor for a franchise revolving around cheeky disco-flavored Swedish pop music that is 30 years old. Across The Universe worked because there was a multitude of great Beatles songs to play around with. How can they possibly fit such ABBA gold as "Dancing Queen" and "S.O.S." into a workable storyline?

Sophie (Mean Girls' Amanda Seyfried) is a beautiful young lady living in a resort town in Greece. She's about to be married, but there's still one major aspect of her life she hasn't wrapped up. The identity of her father. After reading through her mother Donna's (Meryl Streep) diary, Sophie finds out it can be one of three men from different parts of the world. Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Harry (Colin Firth) and Bill (Stellan Skarsgard) are all invited, all show up, and all must play a game of cat and mouse with Sophie's, and especially Donna's, feelings.

It's the kind of movie that you absolutely cannot take seriously. Nearly everyone on the island aside from say, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski (channeling her best Samantha Jones and Nina Van Horn) are young, fabulously gorgeous and have no duties but to group together and dance the day, afternoon, and night away. And if they aren't immaculately good-looking, the older ones like Baranski have the promiscuous spirit and spunk to make up for it.

It's the kind of movie where Streep's Donna can pity herself for living in one of Earth's paradises. Where there's only one black person and he's instantly attracted to the older ladies. Where one of the fathers can be swarmed by a sea of young, attractive ladies, then instantly realize he's gay. Where Pierce Brosnan, a famous Irishman, is tabbed to play an American, and yet cannot hold a tune in any dialect.

Thankfully both productions stay away from such kitsch hits as "Waterloo" and "Fernando" (although Streep hums the latter tune while walking about the village, and the cast sings the former in credit-rolling, non-canonical camp fashion). While it doesn't fit the context of the film's spectrum, "Dancing Queen" is the most joyous and infectious number, giving the village cast a few minutes to drop what they're doing and go on a town excursion with Donna.

The performances and tonal voices range from very good to "if he can't sing, why the heck did they cast him then?". Meryl Streep at some points of Mamma Mia! carries the movie on her back, giving a surprisingly well-rounded singing and acting accomplishment. 'Surprising' shouldn't be a word used for a 14-time Academy Award nominated actress, but Streep at 59, is quite spry and jubilant throughout. Her swan song, "The Winner Takes It All", isn't the most realized piece of pop music, but Streep commands a good acting presentation while pulling off the singing. It's guaranteed she'll add a record-tying 22nd Golden Globe nomination for this film, and it's possible she'll pick up Prezzie and Oscar bids.

Seyfried, Baranski, Walters, Cooper and even Skarsgard hold their own in various degrees, and Colin Firth does okay. His one solo, an acoustic folk version of "Our Last Summer" is suspect, but he gets through it. But the real travesty is Brosnan. His character is the lead of the three possible fathers, and his two big numbers are almost a pain to sit through. The Streep/Brosnan duet "S.O.S." is supposed to be a climax leading into the final act of the film, but his jarring lack of vocal range, best described as not having any whatsoever, pretty much ruins whatever emotion is coming out of Streep. His "When All Is Said And Done" is stranger yet.

It's good to see the movie musical trickling back into contemporary cinema after many years of exile. But whereas some recent musicals, Chicago, Dreamgirls, Across The Universe, Moulin Rouge! and et cetera have attempted to put a modern day film technique on the tried and true classic genre, Mamma Mia! plays like a forgettable MGM picture during the height of the movie musical generation of the 1940s and early 50s. The only changes made is the progressive sexuality and the retro-hip soundtrack. Like the band that provides said soundtrack, Mamma Mia! is just an aberration in the pop culture lexicon.