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posted by Adapt @ 9:44 AM
83 Comments:
Hi, I could not find any link to your contact details so I hope i did the right thing posting my query here. How do I apply for a writing position in any of your blogs and what are the terms? I am a freelancer.Thanks My email address is penpushertoo@hotmail.com
Preston Nicholson
Award Avenue
http://awardavenue.blogspot.com
For Your Consideration is just the type of movie that most people in the industry should love. It pokes fun at a practice that, for the most part, is seen as a pathetic attempt to jockey for that pat on the back that you may, or may not deserve. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the man at the helm, Christopher Guest, has a history of producing great comedy, with previous successes from Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind.
For Your Consideration breaks away from the usual patented Guest-brand of filmmaking, as the story is told in real-time format, as opposed to the “mock-umentary” style we’ve grown to love from his previous ventures. The film tells the story of the making of Home for Purim, a hammy film about a Jewish family seeking to re-congregate during war-time for a nice Purim dinner. However, when a spy on the set leaks the word to the Internet blogosphere that the film could be Oscar worthy, it makes the cast excited, and scared, at the same time. Marilyn Hack, the matriarch of Purim (played by Catherine O‘Hara), becomes the first cast-member to get the Oscar buzz. This buzz brings forth feelings of jealousy amongst the other cast, until they, one by one, start getting singled out as well. What ensues is a few months of pre-nomination morning prep, including talk shows, makeovers, production changes, and award prognosticators fawning over the film and its stars. This review won’t reveal what ultimately happens, but the ending seems ultimately appropriate.
A positive aspect of this film is definitely Catherine O’Hara. Her portrayal as Marilyn Hack is heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. As a conflicted actress who doesn’t know how to act regarding this possible surge in her career, O’Hara highlights Marilyn’s eccentricities and , by the end of the film, you are definitely rooting for her. The major laughs from the film come from her. I would wholly support an Oscar nomination for this performance.
O’Hara’s performance is almost the only thing about this film that is laugh out loud worthy. Many other aspects of the film felt empty, or like something was missing. An example is Jennifer Coolidge. Coolidge plays Whitney Taylor Brown, a producer who might not even know what the word “producer” means. I have always been a fan of Coolidge, and I generally enjoy her here, but her character felt very underdeveloped. Guest has utilized Coolidge’s comedic genius in the past, so the fact that she was a little more subdued in For Your Consideration was very surprising. The same goes for the majority of the rest of the cast. Nothing in particular stands out about the rest (when in past Guest films these stars have done remarkable things), except I must admit I chuckled a few times at Jane Lynch’s portrayal of an Access Hollywood-esque “reporter.”
Overall, the film kept me engaged, I think mainly because of my interest in the subject matter and not so much due to the quality of the film. It's not inherently a bad film by any means, but it doesn't meet expectations of what it could have been. For the hardcore Christopher Guest fans, I would say definitely watch it, but don't make it the last film you watch in a Christopher Guest film marathon.
Grade: B-
Casino Royale - $9
James Bond is back and better than he's been for a long time. Actually in Casino Royale James Bond is just beginning. The 21st Bond film takes us back to the beginning and lets us watch James Bond become OO7 and evolve into the man we've watched 20 other times.
Daniel Craig is the new Bond and I, like many others, was skeptical when I heard he had to learn to drive standard and had never held a gun before this movie. Craig proved me and all of his critics wrong with the best Bond performance since the great Scot himself. Craig plays Bond with the usual sophisticated confidence bordering on arrogance; what he also accomplishes is the tough side of Bond that was less than convincing in some of the past actors who played the fictional legend.
Casino Royale is a great action movie and a great Bond movie. As cliche as it may sound, I was literally on the edge of my seat during some of it. One scene in particular, where Bond chases a bomber through a high rise under construction, could be the best chase scene I've ever witnessed.
The movie centers around a classic Bond villian with a physical disfiguration. He is an understated villian named Le Chiffre who is not trying to take over the world but rather he is a financier of terrorists. Le Chiffre needs to make millions of dollars back to save his life and he plans to do this by winning a big-pot poker game at the Casino Royale. Bond's plan is to break Le Chiffre for good at the gambling table, and the $10 million buy-in is financed by the British Treasurey and delivered by Vesper Lynd who is the anti-Bond-girl in every way.
The only part of this movie I thought could have been better was the love story between Bond and Lynd, we see the sensitive side of Bond and we also see the context behind his womanizing ways and why this sensitive side is never to be seen again. I acknowledge that this part of Casino Royale was necessary for the plot but Craig was slightly less convincing as the romantic lead man.
Overall this is one of the best Bond movies I've ever seen and certainly the best action movie produced in years. I highly recommend seeing Casino Royale, especially if you are a Bond fan. The gag and gadget centered themes of the past few Bond movies are stripped away and the audience is left with a simplified movie that centers on the characters, low-tech real action, and a newly invigerated Bond character. I'm looking forward to #22.
I put this movie on my 'Watch It' list and give it a value of $9.
by: David Russell-Coutts
http://watchitmovies.blogspot.com/
I got your email re: my Casino Royale review. I'm glad you liked it. I'd love to be a contributor on your site and have you link to mine. I linked your site on mine: http://watchitmovies.blogspot.com/
Here's another review for you to consider.
Fearless - $7
Fearless is the true story Huo Yuanjia, or at the very least it is the telling of his legend. Yuanjia was an early 20th century Chinese martial arts master who is credited with uniting China and bringing it respectability in a time when China was short of both.
Yuanjia is kept from learning martial arts as a young boy by his Father but he trains in secret. As a young man he becomes skilled and arrogant and after defeating all challengers he is named the local champion fighter.
Yuanjia takes to drinking and partying and due to events that are partly his fault, a serious tragedy strikes his family. Devastated, he leaves his home town and disappears to the Chinese countryside, living as a simple farmer. Here he learns the value of hard work, humility and the respect of human life and returns to his hometown years later. What he finds is not the town he left; the people are poor and foreigners are controlling the economy. The Chinese people are belittled here and all over their country by foreigners. Eventually Yuanjia answers a challenge to take on fighters in different styles from all over the world to disprove the reputation of the Chinese as the "weak men of the east."
I went in to this movie with low expectations and truly enjoyed it. I don't typically enjoy martial arts movies that have little more than choreagraphed fighting in them. This movie provided more than martial arts though as it goes through the maturing and learning stages of Yuanjia after his family tragedy.
Jet Li plays Yuanjia and though his acting is not what has made him famous, he does an affective and convincing job in Fearless.
The fights in this movie are impressive and though I am thankful that they are not all there was to it, they are choreographed well and are a huge part of why I enjoyed this movie. The cinematography was surprisingly impressive as well, clearly the movie maker took great pains to make this movie about more than just martial arts.
This movie will not blow you away but as I said it was a pleasant surprise and I enjoyed it.
I put Fearless on my 'Watch It' list and give it a value of $7.
Here's a review for 'Fast Food Nation'.
My movie review blog has loads more: http://paddycmoviereviews.blogspot.com
The verdict: Great cast, not so great a script. A ‘Fast Food’ version of the book.
The rating: 6/10
The Book-to-movie adaptation is a unique type of media experience for the audience member. There is a certain idiosyncratic familiarity that can be enjoyed when reading a book over the course of twenty hours or so, allowing the reader to develop an intimate knowledge of characters, situations and plot developments. This type of experience has traditionally been difficult to replicate in a two hour movie. However, translations from printed page to silver screen have had no shortage of successes in the past, and show no sign of letting up in the future. Think the ‘Lord of The Rings’ trilogy of course, but also a long list including, among many others ‘The Shining’, ‘Schindler’s List’, and, um, ‘The DaVinci Code’. (Hmm… only because it made a shed-load of cash, I’ll allow that last one – Ed).
However, this type of movie adaptation can trigger visceral reactions from fans of the book. A classic example of this was the screen version of ‘American Psycho’, which made an enjoyable dark comedy experience out of a book considered by many to be repulsive at worst, and almost entirely unfilmable at best. The movie ended up more of a companion piece to the book, providing a deeper understanding of the main character’s story, and also produced a fantastic performance from Christian Bale.
'Fast Food Nation' is a curious type of book-to-movie adaptation, and one that most likely would fall into this companion piece category. For the uninitiated, Eric Schlosser's book was a didactic, well-researched account of all that is wrong with the American fast food industry, establishing links between the burger joint production line, and various aspects of the cultural fabric of the United States. From high-powered marketing executives, to cattle ranchers and Mexican slaughterhouse labourers, all the way down the chain to high school kids flipping burgers to earn a few bucks, and the millions of happy customers chowing down on big macs every day, the book is far-reaching and extremely informative. As each chapter draws to a close, the gathering weight of the overall conclusion rolls on relentlessly, and almost operates as a guide to quitting Big Macs, in the same manner as Allen Carr’s ubiquitous guide to quitting smoking. By the time the reader has finished the book, it is unlikely s/he will be rushing into a Mickey D’s or BK in the near future.
In the book, strong links are forged between the product offered by these fast food joints and many insidious cultural problems faced by Average Americans, such as obesity, employment issues and the pervasion of big corporation marketing into schools, with companies such as Burger King and Dr. Pepper sponsoring underprivileged schools to build 'lifelong consumers of the brand'.
However, Richard Linklater's adaptation - which was co-written with Schlosser - is a dramatisation, foregoing the obvious possibility of a documentary approach for a more character-driven story with a traditional narrative. (He does still talk about the shit in the meat though - Ed)
In what now seems to be the mandatory narrative structure of choice these days, 'Fast Food Nation' is three stories in one, with each separate vignette following the progress of characters involved in the fast food industry, albeit in very different ways.
Raul (Wilmer Valderrama), Sylvia and Coco are Mexican immigrant labourers, risking a hazardous border crossing for the prospect of work. Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear) is a marketing executive for a large – fictitious – fast food chain named Micky’s, and is enjoying unprecedented success with their latest beefy offering: ‘The Big One’. Meanwhile, Amber (Ashley Johnson) is an honest middle-class high-school kid working in her local Micky’s to earn the few bucks to help her get by, and possibly help out her mom, played by Patricia Arquette.
Although you might remember Wilmer Valderrama from ‘That 70’s Show’ (Fez!? Dude, no way! .. ahem – Ed), he’s actually quite good in this, albeit playing an everyman character, but he’s an honest guy with good sense, who just happens to be swallowed up by the meat-packing industry, and does his best to cope. This storyline is the device to allow the camera to poke around the slaughter-house, and although these scenes are the most horrifying in the movie, the characters themselves were a little caricatured for my liking.
Amber’s story takes a turn when she receives a visit from her uncle, played by Ethan Hawke. He encourages her to think twice about working for a company such as Micky’s, and his coherent arguments re-evaluate her choice to work for Micky's, a choice driven simply by the fact that it was the first job she could find.
Greg Kinnear’s story is the most implausible at the outset, and although he’s a great actor, and does well enough with the subject matter, this story is really just a device to allow the corporate side of the fast food industry to be lampooned. He visits a rancher (Kris Kristofferson) and talks to a rep from the meat-packers (played very well by Bruce Willis) and his journey enlightens him as to the type of corporation he’s working for.
As a political piece of work, ‘Fast Food Nation’ is brave, daring even, for it is challenging one of the foundation industries of the United States, and encouraging people to do the unthinkable – think. Amber’s story, the most interesting of the three for me, involves an intense period of learning and questioning for the young girl, and is possibly the only one of the three that produces any kind of positive outcome. Unfortunately, it becomes a little mired in political sensitivities towards the end, with Avril Lavigne’s character in particular providing an unwelcome addition to an otherwise very watchable support cast (including Paul Dano, who you might remember from ‘Little Miss Sunshine’).
So, it may be politically brave, but the ultimate question is, is it a good piece of movie entertainment? Well, unfortunately, it left me a little cold. I felt that, for the most part, the stories explored in the movie were a little lightweight, losing much of the power of the arguments presented in the book of the same name. Also, by presenting this story in an easily digestible package such as this, I felt as if the film was ultimately nothing more than a fast food version of the square meal the book had so capably delivered.
So instead of hanging around to watch Jeremy Thomas get presented with his Volta award after the Dublin Film Festival screening, PCMR decided to head off for a Whopper meal on the way home instead. (Dude, totally sick burn! – Ed)
Another review from http://watchitmovies.blogspot.com/
Spider-Man 3 - $2
Spider-Man 3 made a lot of money. It is an action packed movie with amazing special effects which appealed to a young audience and die hard fans of the comic. Unfortunately Spider-Man 3 is not a good movie. It is in fact terrible.
The 3rd installment of this franchise is a massive disappointment in comparison to the far superior 1st and 2nd movies of this same series.
The action is good, of that there is little doubt. The director is the same person who directed 1 and 2 and the action sequences are again amazing, the pace is fast and is likely the main reason so many people have already gone to see this movie. Though it could be said that there is also really nothing new here.
What went wrong then you ask? Basically everything else. The love story of Peter Parker and MJ is awkward and I found myself a little bit pleased when it wasn't working out during the movie. The dialogue in Spider-Man 3 is truly awful, cheesy jokes and lame one liners dominate a script that is devoid of the quality character development and tension that the first 2 movies contained. The villains in this movie were underdeveloped, we were left to guess how they were able to do most of what they could do and their hatred of Spider-Man was not believable to me.
The most glaring problem with Spider-Man 3 however is the major plot line. A living black sludge that falls from space attaches itself to Parker's scooter and later to his Spidey suit; this sludge (as Parker's chemistry teacher explains) increases the aggression of its host when it attaches itself to something. That's all we're told about it really. When Spider-Man is affected by this material he turns black and becomes more vengeful. Parker however basically turns into a bigger nerd with nicer clothes and a new hairdo.
There is a scene where the post-black-sludge Parker goes shopping and takes a girl to a Jazz club, this scene was intended (I believe) to show that Parker has become cooler and darker since the affect of the space sludge. I can say in no uncertain terms that this was the worst series of scenes I've witnessed in a movie since Crawlers. The cringingly bad acting was only eclipsed by the terrible writing in this part of the movie. At one point I leaned over to my wife, who I was at the movie with, and said "is this really happening?"
Overall it was painfully obvious that Spider-Man 3 was written by a new team of writers and not by the successful team which wrote 1 and 2.
If you are a big Spider-Man fan you may want to check this out anyway but I adamantly put Spider-Man 3 on my 'Don't Watch It' list and give it a value of $2.
by: David Russell-Coutts
http://watchitmovies.blogspot.com/
For those of you who do not know The Bourne Ultimatum is the third in the Jason Bourne Trilogy which follows the exploits of an ex CIA Agent Jason Bourne. In the third movie he is attempting to discover his true identity and who created the man that he has become. In the first two movies he was trying to find out why an agency known as tread stone was tracking him down and why they were attempting to kill him. In the first movie he is regaining his memory and in the second knows fully well who Jason Bourne is and what he was trained to do, Kill for a secret government agency bent on taking out anyone that might cause harm to the United States of America.
I really did not know what to expect when coming into this movie, I had seen the trailers and had it in my mind that they were only making a third novel to generate more money for the company that created it. Similar to several other movies coming out this year such as Rush Hour 3, a movie simply being made for money and no artistic or any sort of purpose. I have scene spy movies before and both of the previous Bourne movies so I expected more of the same just to please an audience that will go see the movie simply because of the name. I decided to give it a shot considering the amount of great reviews that have been circulating around the internet and came away with much much more then I had bargained for. This movie not only does a great job of sending off the trilogy but does it with a bigger bang then any trilogy to come out in the past decade. Usually trilogy's play out like this; The first film is great, the second is alright, the third is a complete downer. This is how the Jason Bourne Trilogy plays out; The first is amazing, the second even more so, the third is the best in the trilogy and makes me regret to say that this is probably the last. There are no cheesy cliffhangers just in case they want to make a fourth, there is no mention of them even needing to create a fourth. What we have hear is a movie that defy s all the odds of being "just" the third movie and is sent into the outer limits of being one of the greatest spy movies ever created. There I said it, I think this movie was better then Casino Royal by miles. At times Casino Royal was a bore to watch but this movie was a pulse pumping thrill ride that had me on the edge of my seat from beginning to it's amazing end.Some may be wondering why I am comparing this movie to Casino Royal. It is the only other decent spy movie to come out in years and most likely the only one that even comes close to walking in this film's shadow.
The acting by returning cast members Matt Damon, Joan Allen, and Julia Stiles is amazing. They play out their roles extremely well,especially Matt and Stiles. Matt fleshes out the Bourne character even more now that we see he is driven solely by the need to find out who he really is. Joan grows and shows that while she is the same character in the second film, now she is finally fed up with what the agency is doing and takes a stand to change it. Stiles returns and like Joan, she hasn't changed a bit. She doesn't like where the agency is going and what's to put a stop to what they are doing and have done to Jason. Other new cast members play out just as good as the three I just mentioned, I never found a single flaw in their characters to stop me from believing that they are who they say they are.
Camera work is nearly flawless, you usually know exactly what is going on and there is nothing to make you ask what the hell just happened. There is one fight scene that I am not going to spoil that is amazing, except for the camera that makes you feel a little cramped and you can't really get a good feel for what's going on. This might have been done to create more tension for the battle and while it did, still found a way to bug me just a little.
The story and pacing moves seamlessly from one scene to the next. You are never forced to ask somebody what is going on because you will always know. All of the elements come together perfectly and there are plenty of "Woah Shit" moments for the most avid action movie fan. There is one spot that might bug a few realists to ask how the hell he did that because it doesn't seem realistically possible but it's a movie and I don't mind a bit of fantasy to make the character seem more articulate with a motorcycle then most professionals out there. This is just one tiny part of a scene though and most probably will not even take notice.
To sum all of this up, The Bourne Ultimatum is the best in the trilogy and every spy, thriller, and action movie fan should see it. I promise anyone that decides to pay the money to see this film will not be disappointed. If you are disappointed, tell me and take me down a few points with plausible reasons why it wasn't any good to you. Although I don't see any way a person could be. The acting, camera, and story come together and show you this is what they mean when they say movie magic is Bourne.
9/10
Go see the documentary My Name is Alan and I Paint Pictures, starting September 19th, 2007 at the Pioneer Theater!
Alan's been drawing since he was 3 or 4, and when he saw Salvador Dalí's "Metamorphosis of Narcissus" at the age of 10, he knew that's what he wanted to do the rest of his life. He was a wild child that used to frequently get drunk and sniff glue, and even after being accepted to the prestigious St. Martin's School of Arts, he immediately dropped out to paint leather jackets, and soon after he moved from England to New York. But what begins as the typical struggling artist story becomes a very interesting look at a man battling schizophrenia and finding release through his art as well as physical activities like boxing.
What I love about this documentary is how much access it gives us to Alan's art. Even the brief animation snippets in between the interviews utilize characters from Alan's paintings. Director Johnny Boston takes what could have been a very boring observation of Alan at work and infuses it with life and character. And in perhaps the most touching sequence, Boston shows Alan interacting with an ex-girlfriend, and then with his current girlfriend. We learn that his ex was unable to handle his intense need to stay at home all the time. We learn that at this point in his life, Alan wants to concentrate on his work, but that he still needs women in his life for sex and good cooking. We reflect that to some extent, this is universally true.
There is something archetypal at work here. I understand that every painter has different experiences, but I was shocked to find how precisely Alan embodies what making art has always been like for me. Alan's story continues past this documentary. He is still struggling to obtain his Green Card. He is in danger of being deported. And after seeing the documentary, I really believe we need Alan here in New York. He's the real thing.
A Review of the Feature Film Holly
By
Gil Lahav
Shot on location in Cambodia, with scenes filmed in actual brothels of Phnom Penh's notorious red-light district, Holly sheds light on the horrors of child prostitution and trafficking.
Patrick (played by Ron Livingston) is an American card player whose empty expatriate life is jolted out of its slumber when his motorcycle breaks down in the K11 village of child prostitutes. While waiting for his motorcycle to be fixed, Patrick’s moral universe is turned upside down when he meets Holly (played by the talented Thuy Nguyen), a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl who was sold by her impoverished family into sexual slavery.
As Patrick learns more about Holly's irrepressible thirst for freedom and normalcy and the brutally abusive conditions that will destroy her if she isn’t freed, he decides to risk his life of comfortable apathy to save one girl. But as the story progresses, Patrick learns that his simple desire is complicated by ever more insurmountable obstacles in an economically, legally and morally bankrupt system that condones and often encourages the conversion of children into sexual commodities.
Directed by Guy Moshe, Holly was crafted with a memorably gritty but vivaciously real cinematography. Rough angles and occasionally unsteady camera shots accentuate the shady and dangerous elements that govern the world of exploited children. A panoply of color and light capture the exotic locales of the story. Frequent close-ups of the characters provide an uncomfortably intimate look at the human victims that populate Holly's dark world.
In the film Holly, as in the grim reality it portrays, there are no easy answers. The social worker Patrick befriends explains to him that if he buys Holly's freedom then he only fuels economic demand for the very scourge he wants to eradicate. Bringing Holly with him to the USA isn't an option because of the corrupt Cambodian laws that prohibit it. Even the answer that is safest for the victim - leaving her with an NGO that protects children - is an emotionally hollow outcome for Holly, because it means that she must completely disconnect from the one person who has showed her unconditional kindness (Patrick). It also means possibly never seeing her family again.
Holly is a study in cinematic under-statement. While there is no nudity and only one brief scene of violence, the viewer is all too aware of both the appalling crimes to which Holly is subjected and the gritty dangers Patrick faces in his quixotic quest to rescue her. Entire conversations are conveyed with just a few piercing expressions, and simple acts of human kindness or cruelty manage to transcend all differences in age, gender, culture and language. In a film of few words, the motive behind each gift speaks volumes: is a piece of food given by a selfless friend with no agenda, a corrupt cop with money on his mind, or a pedophile in search of sexual favors?
Even the reluctant hero is rendered with subtlety. Accidentally thrust into the dark world of child sexploitation, his initial impulse is just to introduce a moment of compassion and dignity into the otherwise wretched life of the little girl tending to his room at the sleazy guest house where his motorcycle breaks down. There are no grandiloquent soliloquies about his political ideology or objectives. But Patrick’s calm persistence in spurning those who would sell him children makes it clear what side he is on, and his steadfast mission to save Holly becomes a moral one that will give new meaning to his life and hers.
Above all, the film Holly explores the limits of human kindness and courage, and provides a stark reminder of the basic human rights to which all children are entitled: to be free from physical and sexual abuse, to be with their families, and to receive a proper education. To that end, the producers of the film (http://www.priorityfilms.com/) created a companion political campaign (http://www.redlightchildren.org/) with the aim of raising awareness about the issue and effecting change. For its powerful message and for the child victims it represents, Holly is a film that should be seen and supported by every caring adult.
Preston Nicholson, We have now posted your review of For Your Consideration to the main part of our site. Thank you for submitting this review. ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
David Russell-Coutts, We have now posted your review of Casino Royale to the main part of our site. Thank you for submitting this quality review. ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
Gil Lahav, We have now posted your review of "Holly" to the main part of our site.
We have now posted the review of "My Name I Alan And I Paint Pictures" to the main part of our site.
The submitted review of The Bourne Ultimatum has been placed in the main page of our site.
The submitted "Spider-Man 3" review by David Russell-Coutts is now in the main part of our site.
The review of "Fast Food Nation", submitted by http://paddycmoviereviews.blogspot.com/, is now at the main part of our site.
The submitted review of "Fearless" has been put in the main part of our site.
Keep these great reviews coming everyone! We'll get them posted to the main page of our site much faster in the future. Also note, feel free to link to your blog or site in your review.
A Review of Disturbia
"Above and Beyond"
Disturbia is the teen suspense thriller that steps beyond its genre to bring a unique form of entertainment. When seventeen year-old Kale Brecht (Shia LaBeouf) punches his Spanish teacher for commenting on his dead father, the troubled teen is sentenced to three months house arrest. During this time, he must wear an ankle monitoring device to ensure that he stays within a hundred feet of his house. Carrie-Ann Moss plays LaBeouf’s mother, Julie Brecht, and constantly says, “Clean up your room.” When she finds Kale’s room in a mess, she resorts to cutting the cable TV cord and cancelling his Xbox Live and iTunes accounts. With the absence of technology, Kale starts watching the neighbors through his windows. He observes Ashley Carlson (Sarah Roemer), the girl that just moved in next door, performing yoga. In addition, he sees a house wife having an affair and pre-teens watching porn. When Kale, his best friend Ronnie (Aaron Yoo), and Ashley suspect Mr. Turner (David Morse) is a serial killer, they begin spying on him. Subsequently, Mr. Turner discovers he is being watched and the teens become caught up in an unforeseen circumstance.
Disturbia’s director, D. J. Caruso, examines the issue of privacy in suburban life. The movie is a retelling of the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock film, Rear Window, in which L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart) and Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly) spy on suspected killer Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr). This film was based off the 1942 short story, It Had to Be Murder, by Cornell Woolrich. Nonetheless, Disturbia is a retelling of Rear Window for the high-tech generation, not a simple remake. LaBeouf does not try to be James Stewart for today’s youth. He successfully plays a typical hormonal teenage boy who resorts to snooping. When Hitchcock’s film debuted, American’s were disillusioned. The public believed that everybody was respectable and trustworthy. In today’s society, Americans believe it is their right to be suspicious of their neighbors. This mentality allows them to gain a sense of self-justification in knowing what goes on in their neighborhood.
In addition, Disturbia utilizes suburban elements from the movie American Beauty. In American Beauty a depressed father decides to turn his life around when he becomes obsessed with his daughter’s friend. Both of these movies portray suburban life and its effects on relationships. For example in Disturbia, Ashley’s father is having an affair. She says that her parents moved to the suburbs because, “City life had its temptations.” This portrayal of suburban life is probable and teenagers whose parents are divorced could relate to her situation.
Consequently, Disturbia effectively appeals to America’s youth through cultural references. For example, Kale plays Xbox Live and listens to his IPod. These technological references appeal to the young audience, who are able to associate with Kale’s circumstances. The screen writers, Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth, did a superb job of depicting Kale and Ronnie as average teens. Kale drinks Red Bulls, builds a tower of Twinkies, and puts on a Ramones shirt. These are average activities a teenage boy might do over the summer. LaBeouf’s acting is exceptional not only in the delivery of his lines, but also in his facial expressions. When his father dies, his stunned expression is remarkably realistic. However, Aaron Yoo provides outstanding comic relief. For instance, Ronnie brakes into Mr. Turner’s car he says to Kale, “This is a lot harder than it looks on the Internet.” Yoo and LaBeouf perform as exceedingly realistic best friends with their casual buddy dialogue.
On the other hand, Roemer’s acting is not as strong as the other characters. In some of her scenes, she does not look scared enough given the situation. Also, the screenwriters were not as successful with Roemer’s character, Ashley, who does not completely depict the average teenage girl. She does make cliché girl comments such as, “I love her shoes.” Yet, she flaunts around in a bikini and climbs to her roof to read which is not typical of the average suburban teen. Carrie-Ann Moss does a better job with her role as Julie Brecht. Her scenes are few but adequate enough for the audience to understand her love and frustration towards her son. Undoubtedly, the best acting is produced by David Morse. He is said to have not talked to LaBeouf during the production of the movie to enable him to immerse himself in his character’s mind. His calm tone of voice and precise delivery of ambiguous dialogue is guaranteed to keep the audience guessing. Mr. Turner snickers as he states, “So now you know you’re not the only one who’s watching.” The screenwriters had exceptional dialogue to give the character a sinister ambiance that is essential in an impressive suspense thriller.
There are several things that Disturbia does not accurately portray. Although the setting is the conventional suburb, it is improbable that numerous neighbors do not have adequate blinds. Kale is able to pick up the binoculars and look into several homes with unrealistic ease. When Kale and Ashley spy on Mr. Turner, Kale states, “Only in Disturbia. Where else are you gonna get this kind of entertainment?” This mentality is anticipated of teenagers who have grown up watching reality television. Furthermore, this statement depicts their immaturity and lack of respect for privacy that could be expected of some preteens, but not of teens their age. There are also flaws in the continuality of the movie. For instance, when Kale is tiding up his room he throws a shirt on top of the tower of Twinkies, but in the next two scenes the Twinkie tower is uncovered. In addition, Kale puts stickers on his ankle monitor, but in the next scene there are not stickers on the device.
Although there are flaws in the movie, it does move beyond the genre of a teen suspense thriller to also include aspects of comedy, romance, and drama. Typical teen thrillers tend to have lots of blood and gore, but this movie appeals to the audience’s suspense factor instead of showing blood gushing everywhere. The music adds to the suspense, because it is successfully positioned during moments of high tension. The suspenseful music allows the audience to bite their nails and remain on the edge of their seats. Comedy is present, when Ronnie makes witty remarks during moments of suspense. The movie displays the romance element through the cat and mouse relationship between Kale and Ashley. Finally, in scenes with Kale and his mother, the dialogue is especially dramatic. By adding several genres into one movie, Disturbia goes above and beyond the average teen thriller to establish a film that appeals to today’s youth.
mmbell, We have just posted your review of Disturbia to the main page of our site. Thank you for submitting this excellent review.
Note that we fixed some text issues in your posted review, for example where it reads "Disturbia’s" instead of "Disturbia's." For your knowledge, this is usually caused when writing reviews first in MS Word, then copying them into a comment field. Word fancies up text with curly quotes, etc., which text based programs do not recognize, causing these issues. You can avoid this in the future by writing in WordPad, TextPad, or some other text based program, or by turning off the curly quotes preference in MS Word.
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THE RULES OF ATTRACTION
danessf@yahoo.com
"If this is actually the college experience... consider trade school."
by dane youssef
Roger Avary's "The Rules Of Attraction" is a look at the "experimentation" of college life. Alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide and sexual escapades.
That's not to say that the movie is all about--oh wait, it pretty much is. There are a few moments of outside "experimentation," but it is mostly an orgy party. This is the kind of film Avary is best at. He showed this with his style and energy in movies like "Killing Zoe" and "Pulp Fiction."
He's been gone for about a decade working on this and has claimed that the "unfilmable" novels by Brett Eastern Ellis ("American Psycho" and "Less Than Zero") had been horrid adaptations because they strip Ellis’s storytelling style (told through accounts of multiple narrators giving their fuzzy testimonies).
In this new film, Avary tries to get that confused feeling down with different style techniques: rewind, fast-foreword, split-screen and multiple narratives.
It sometimes works and it sometimes doesn't. Perhaps this movie directed more like Christopher Nolan's "Following" and "Memento" and Steven Soderberg's "Full Frontal" instead of Fisher Steven's "Just A Kiss."
The performances are pretty strong, the best from James Van Der Beek ("Dawson's Creek," "Varsity Blues") playing the lecherous and sexually and neurotically charged Sean who's pastimes include anonymous sex and the use of every narcotic known to man.
He has a creepy glare made famous from most Stanley Kubrick films and a sardonic and uncaring nature. An "emotional vampire" he calls himself.
Shannyn Sossamon plays a college student who has eyes for her boyfriend, Victor (Kip Pardue) and is saving her virginity for him. She looks at gruesome books about STD's and other vaginal diseases to keep herself out of having sex.
What Lauren doesn't know is that Victor is in Europe and perhaps having sex with with the entire Continent. He narrates a capsule summary of his incredible escapades and is one of the best sequences in the movie.
Poor Lauren. She plans to lose her virginity to Victor, but as we see in the movie in the opening, that doesn't quite pan out.
Ian Somerhalder, model and all-around pretty boy plays the now openly-gay Paul who has eyes for Sean and tries to get him to succumb to his side. In the original novel by Ellis, Sean is a bisexual who sleeps with Paul. In the film, the two are seen kissing and making out in Sean's room. But is it real or is it all in Paul's head? The split-screen makes it all so confusing.
Jessica Biel ("7th Heaven") plays Laura's promiscuous roommate who's libido is running non-stop and drug intake is piling up. She gets a nosebleed ("rusty pipes") and sleeps with the men important to Lauren.
Eric Stoltz, Faye Dunaway and Swoozie Kurtz play the only adults in the movie who are really no better than the kids. A bit of Mr. Avary's creative license kicks in here (Stoltz's foppish teacher, Mr. Lawson) was not in the original novel. He states he cannot deflower Ms. Hyde because he is married with children and she is an undergraduate.
But oral doesn't count, right Mr. President?
Avary's technique sometimes works with the opening's bungee-jumping narrative, as well as a split-screen shot approach showing how two characters on completely different paths walking along and minding their own business meet up at the same location. And once a character's shades come off, the shot completes--indicating love at first sight. Really nice, Rog.
And the back-packing trip to Europe with the mysterious Victor who hosts and stars in this orgy of FF>. Some characters are kinda fun, but it feels too much like Avary is indulging himself too much to dig a little deeper into these characters.
In Ellis'es book, they let us get inside the characters. Right into their heads in a way we did in "Memento." A more style like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and insider feel like "Memento" I think would have been a better approach.
Still, Avary is a stylist first and foremost. He gave "PF" and "KZ" it's hyper-kinetic juice. So it's not a bad movie, not at all.
Still, it is commendable, if not a lot more. For a great inside feel of these characters heads, read Ellis’s novel. For a wicked orgy-rush film with a college backdrop, check out Avary's film.
"Rules of Attraction" is worth a look any way you cut it.
By the way, last I heard Avary was working on... Oh yeah, another Ellis novel.
Anyone out there know what Avary is up to now?
Dane Youssef, Thanks for submitting your review of The Rules of Attraction. This has now been posted in the main part of our site. Keem 'em coming! ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
NIL BY MOUTH
Nil by mouth... something to say...
by dane youssef
"Nil By Mouth" is the very first film written and directed by the great Gary Oldman, a seasoned veteran actor who has still yet to give a bad performance. Oldman grew up in the poorest ghetto of South London, where this film takes place.
And while this movie has been rumored and believed to be a semi-autobiography of Oldman's childhood and family (who wouldn't watch this movie and believe so?), Oldman himself has said that this is not him or his family.
Hey, I believe him. Although he grew up in this environment, he was not directly in the line of fire, if you follow me.
The film sets it’s sights on a South London family that defines the term “domestic unrest.” A woman, her husband, daughter, brother, their mother and grandmother. As well as the people outside their family who they are connected to.
"Nil By Mouth" represents many of the other families in South London, not Oldman's. The colorful cockney ways of the Great Britain. But more than anything, it’s problem of casual brutal urban violence.
We've seen many abusive types in movies--usually one-dimensional and sanitized. But "Nil By Mouth" refuses to white-wash. The fact that this is not a big-budget Hollywood star-vehicle allows this to be a real film-going experience.
This movie wishes to illuminate. Not entertain or delude. This is "slice-of-life," not escapist fantasy. I've told members of my family about it and they've given very mixed reactions. My father and sister disliked the dime-store production values and no-name actors. They asked me why I would rent such a bitter and hateful film. My mother says she has spent her life shunning this type of humanity and lives as if it does not really exist.
"The Way Of The Ostrich."
This is one of those frightening on-screen performances in recent memory. Ray Winstone deserves high praise and immortalization for his acting here in the role of Ray. He seems to be one of those unsavory, brutal characters in movies that stay with us. Like Hannibal Lecter in "Silence Of The Lambs," Like Dennis Hopper in "Blue Velvet," Like Norman Bates in “Psycho,” this performance haunts us like a ghost. The scorned ghost of a murderer...
There is a cringing moment in which Ray answers his wife's question as to why: "I do it because I love you." We cringe because his answer feels more familiar and common than it should.
Ray is not merely an abusive drunk; he is a horrible bastard, always prone to violent outbursts. When his wife hangs out with a casual male acquaintance, he suspects that she may be having an affair and damn near kills her.
Ray Winstone delivers a powerhouse performance in the role of Ray, a working-class man who loves his family, especially his daughter. But this man has demons. Demons that are so numerous and deep, they cannot be repressed. He can be a likeable, laid-back guy, like everyone else.
But we see that without serious provocation, he instantly becomes raving and homicidal. A side that most movies (and people) tend to shy away from. He will make your blood run cold and near the end, make you cry.
Kathy Burke, best known for her role on “Absolutely Fabulous” takes an enthralling dramatic turns as Valerie, Ray’s wife who’s sole purpose seems to be to keep the family strung together while putting up with her husband’s monstrous outbursts, almost sadomasochistic ally. This is an unforgettable performance.
Whenever there’s someone like Ray, there's almost always someone like Mark. Mark is sort of a sidekick or cheerleader for Ray and his violently domestic antics. He seems to be something of a drama queen, hitching his trailer up to the pain in Ray's life. It perhaps gives him an excuse to explode and go ape-shit the way he does. It's mentioned at one point that Mark himself was worked over by Ray's father---maybe this explains the tie that bond these two.
Jamie Forman is effective as Ray's little right-hand man. Apparently, Forman himself is the son of a real-life legendary gangster in London.
There are scenes where he shows the true symptoms of a violent criminal. I wonder... is the caustic streak of the father burning through the son? Jamie, unlike his old man has apparently chosen a more legal profession. Kudos for him.
Is he just a great actor? Jamie may actually have some demons himself.
And while Ray may be the black sheep of this family, all that really means is he's the blackest of the black. No one here is walking on water. Valerie smokes and drinks despite knowing full-well she's pregnant. No one around her really speaks up in protest about her indirect poisoning of her child.
Valerie's little brother, Billy is a severe heroin addict. Despite the fact that he's occasionally allowed to sleep over at Ray and Valerie's, Ray even feeds him and gives him a banknote here and there, Billy steals a score of dope from their flat.
You can only imagine how Ray takes to this. Billy is scorned, but although he is cast out, he still stays with his side of the family and even retaliates against Ray, stealing an irreplaceable family heirloom.
After this, Billy is not really in trouble.
He is all but dead.
Billy is a severe junkie and spends a lot of time with his friends. And since Billy is a junkie, there's only one kind of clique of friends he can afford: more junkies.
One of his pals, Danny is one of the movie's strangest characters. Danny is literally covered from head-to-toe with tattoos and body-piercing. He defines the term "body art." His whole body is like a big collage explosion.
But he's not the one-dimensional freak/weirdo/thug we'd expect just by getting a quick glance at him. He shows compassion and even sweetness at time like all the other characters, even Ray.
Nearly everyone drinks and smokes. Nearly everyone says "fuck," "shit" and "cunt" on a far more-than-regular basis. And their endless stream of profanity and brutal violent mistreatment of one another is like a sad testimony to how tragically pathetic they are.
You can almost hear the violins playing on the soundtrack to each of their lives. They are the victims of their life, their family, their environment, each other and themselves.
Oldman films using the now-traditional and all-too-common (but at the time, novel) hand-held camera technique and 16mm film, thus giving "Nil By Mouth" not the look of a polished, slick and lavish film, but raw, unkempt footage of very real life.
The movie looks like a true documentary, the herky-jerky camerawork makes it look as if we're seeing everything from our own P.O.V. As if we're "there, in the heat of the moment."
And we can't help but think about the little five-year old daughter and the unborn second child of Ray and Val, how their parents impact will undoubtedly shape them. It is an endless, vicious cycle of evil that shows no signs of breaking. And it is running rampantly throughout the world.
This is just one of those movies that… after it’s over, you want to do something… something to make things better.
LITTLE TRIVIAL NOTES ON "NIL BY MOUTH":
Unless you're somewhere in the European climate or at least Australian, you'd best hit "closed captioning" or "subtitles" if you want to understand so much as a damn line of dialouge. The thick cockney accents are almost indecipherable. They're so thick, you could choke on them. For me, it was almost like hearing morse code. The characters might as well have been speaking Chinese.
The title comes stems from a medical instruction in the hospital not to give a patient food or drink as they're about to go into surgery. The connection in that this movie makes with that title is poetically heart-breaking...
Just like... the rest of the film.
P.S.
One of the best of 2004. It sparkles and beams.
by dane youssef
“P.S.” is one of those rare movies that tells a story which feels too good to be true--the kind that’s escapist-fantasy and only seems to happen in movies and in our most desperate dreams.
But then again, sometimes we see and here that it does happen in real life. Once in a blue moon. It’s every great success story. Like movie-star Lana Turner getting discovered when working in a pharmacy or Muhammad Ali’s almost inhumanly-impossible success with his career in the ring, who talked like a professional wrestler.
“P.S.” is a movie like that. It tells a story as sweet as a fairy tale, that maybe could happen in life. Where a woman feels like when she loses someone, she loses her chance in life. But then something else comes along that is so incredible, it feels like the divine hand. Is God giving her a do-over? And not being so subtle about it?
Laura Linney continues her streak of must-see movies and Oscar-caliber performances here as Louise, a middle-aged admissions director who’s been through a real losing streak throughout her life.
She’s recently divorced from her husband, a compulsive sex-addict who’s diddled anyone who’s set toe in his class. Her best friend seduced away her boyfriend in high school and is now married in an upper-middle class suburb to a man she threatens to cheat on if he doesn’t fulfill his “husbandly duties.” She’s living the kind of life every woman wants to in her most cynical, vengeful, self-absorbed fantasies.
Laura’s getting older, life’s getting harder (and it hasn’t been very charmed to begin with). She begins to see all her hopes and dreams fading fast. And things get even more interesting when see has a private one-on-one interview with a potential art student.
This guy is just her type. Not only, but… he bares an uncanny resemblance to her late college boyfriend, an art major with a passion that matched hers. This guy doesn’t just look--he sounds, acts, behaves and his art is even similar. Louise is in shock.
What is this? Coincidence? Incidental? Has she been working herself too hard? Stress? Reincarnation? An escapist-fantasy movie-plot? Whatever it is, Louise is rubbing here eyes while warming up to this guy. Getting to know him… finds herself feeling something…. While trying to keep her feelings at bay. She’s a skeptic. She’s got one heck a heck of a track record.
One of the most refreshing things about the actress Laura Linney is that she's not just another manufactured beauty from off the assembly line. She's not just another actress. She's not "one of a million." She's just so real. She's not movie-star-ish.
She doesn’t wear designer clothes wherever she goes, live in a six-story mansion of Muhulland Dr, smoke cigarettes from a long black holder and have a private trophy room for all her honors. When she acts, it doesn't feel like acting. You feel you know her. She's a real person.
The same hold true for Topher Grace, which explains his success as an actor. He seems so adult, so grown-up for his age. Grace is charismatic and seems smart, his gift and his power on-screen doesn't come from a natural Brando-like acting talent, but his face, his body, his voice, his personality. Somehow, everything he says sounds like he means it. He's so square, so on-the-level. All he has to do is speak to convince you that he's legit.
As an actor, Grace has a style all his own which may or may not be intentional. He has an Anti-Brando method. He never changes his appearance or voice at all in his roles, but he has an earnest, open-faced, true-to-life and genuinely human way in every movie he so much as touches. Which explains why Hollywood keeps throwing mountains of scripts his way and why every movie he’s in, he’s given a nomination for something.
This is some of the best acting either Linney or Grace has ever done so far, pure and simple.
Gabriel Bryne, one of the finest actors in the world brings his trade-mark debonair and charisma in the role of Peter Harrington, Louise’s ex-husband who’s nasty habit primarily caused their divorce. There scenes that poke fun and make light of his “f-----g” habit are almost worth the rental price.
Which is why he takes home award after award for nearly every movie he does, because something about his whole appearance and personality makes it come across like he's just himself being himself, not an actor.
While "P.S." may just come across as a woman's picture (and it may well be), this isn't just a moody, sensitive, overly-emotional "chick-flick" to be seen on a "woman's day." This is a movie about some people who are seriously dealing with the trials of life at a turning point of age.
Paul Rudd, who been the key performance in some damn good movies, has basically just a little cameo, but as the estranged brother, he gives us further magnified scope into Louise’s little life. He’s a reformed junkie with a condescending, sadistic streak towards his big sis.
The movie has a deep, human, true-to-life atmosphere all throughout. There’s nary a moment that is written or executed in a way that feels contrived. Nothing in “P.S.” needs willing suspension of disbelief. Everything feels so beautiful and natural as the falling of the rain.
I’ve read an endless number of reviews for this movie which charge Dylan Kidd with making a picture less impressive than his previous effort. Ah, the sophomore jinx. I didn’t see his freshman effort, “Roger Dodger,” so I’m not particularly biased. And anyway, shouldn’t a film be judged solely on it’s own merits? Even Steven Spielberg made “Always,” “Hook” and “1941.”
Listen folks, seriously, so many filmmakers are accused being cursed with the dreaded “sophomore jinx” because when it comes to art, there are people who rate novelty above all else.
Movies like “Birth and “Return To Me” have tackled this subject before, but here it feels so legitimate. Like “Rocky,” this one makes us believe clichés can happen… and make us care.
WILLOW
Comes up short
by dane youssef
This one wasn't much when it first came out. The budget was extravagant and the box-office returns just barely covered the big fat price tag. And as measly as a movie as this was for it’s day on it's own merits, it's dwarfed even further by the immortal "Lord Of The Rings" saga.
"Willow" is the film the impish Warwick Davis is renown for his participation in the never-ending Horror-movie stories, the "Leprechaun" movies.
This was his first lead role and he brings a likeable and earnest charisma to the role instead of just trying to be little and cute like so many child performers and other midget actors.
Thankfully, he proves himself as to be more than just a cheap gimmick like so many other “bit-players.” He allows himself to really give a true performance and the film itself doesn’t go for the cheapest of shots with any of the height of it’s little people.
As a filmmaker, George Lucas is and has always been a homage-payer. He's one of those filmmakers who always tries to re-make those old films he loved during his own adolescence. With space operas: “Star Wars,” With Matinee Adventure flicks: “Indiana Jones,” With futuristic sci-fi adventures, “THX 1138.”
And now with “Willow,” he attempts to do the same for the sword-and-sorcery genre.
Notice I use the word “attempts.”
The whole universe is derived from the whole medieval sword-and-sorcery genre. And it's a full bar and buffet smorgasbord here: We've got "Lord Of The Rings," "The Story of Moses," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," "Sleeping Beauty" and "Gulliver's Travels" just to name a few.
Val Kilmer is pound-for-pound one of the great heavyweight champion actors from here
The 20th century and the 21st saw few better thespians. He truly delivered an Oscar for his re-birth as Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's "The Doors."
Here, anyone could have done the same job he does. It's his most unremarkable performance to date. They didn't need the great Kilmer for this one.
Any stock actor with a Screen Actors Guild card or with one year of high school drama class experience could have done as good a job.
Jean Marsh does a good job as Queen Bavmorda, but just about any random British actress on the planet could have done the same and gotten the same results.
Sadly, this one just stands toe-to-toe with the He-Man "Master Of The Universe" movie from 1987.
Even though Ron Howard Opie Cunningham was at the helm for this one, just about any hack with access to a tripod (that tilts low) could have done the same and gotten the same results.
The real problem with "Willow" is that it's totally unremarkable. It's about a likeable little guy with a big heart for his family. He has a magical gift and uses it to make a name for himself. He meets a great warrior with a shady record who may find love along the way.
They do battle with a wicked queen who happens to be a powerful witch with a great army, a two-headed dragon, a menacing lieutenant General who wears a mask scarier than his own face, yada yada yada yada. Do you even care?
There are two little like the 3-inch tall people in "Gulliver's Travels" called Brownies named Rool and Franjean with helium voices and ethnic caricatured French accents that would have been considered embarrassing in the '30's. They irritate and confuse, but never amuse. Unlike R2D2 and C3PO or Marcus Brody, they never provoke as much as a smile.
Lucas planned for this to be something of a series saga of films. But since this one barely made any return whatsoever, Lucas wound up scrapping the film "trilogy" and continuing the story in books. Hey, anyone out there ever actually so much as read a copy of the continuing "Willow" story?
With "Star Wars," "THX 1138" and "American Graffiti," Lucas swung for the fence like a dominant male gorilla. He pulled out all stops and then some. This one is on-par with your average episode of a Saturday Morning TV series, even for the day.
With Lucas' legendary "Indiana Jones" saga, we all remember one key gruesome scene in each movie---like the "false grail" scene in "Last Crusade" or the "Ripped Heart" in "The Temple Of Doom." In "Willow," there's a similar sequence inspired by the "Bay Of Pigs" from the Greek tales of "The Iliad and The Odyssey."
Lucas story pretty much recycles the whole outline plot of the "Star Wars" saga (episodes IV, V, and VI). Unfortunately, Lucas and Howard don’t really feel like they’re trying
to have the last word of the genre as they did in many of their earlier efforts.
You can see anything just as good and inspired/thrilling/etc. every Saturday morning on just about any network.
Unlike “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones” or “Cocoon,” this is not a product of theirs that defines the genre it’s from.
And what is it with the baby Elora Danan? She's so much of the damn plot and yet, all she does really is smile and cry on cue. There are babies in diaper commercials who have characters with more depth.
I like the two-headed dragon. It doesn't look like the traditional fire-breathing dragon. It hardly even looks like a serpent. This one is kind of inspired. As a change of pace, it has more of an ugly look to it with long and furry serpent necks, almost like an ostrich. It's really weird.
Although, it's one of the few inspired touches in this routine medieval epic.
It's a Lucasfilm Ltd. production, so the special effects are (as it goes without saying) in the Oscar nomination territory. Enthralling for the day, some even by today's standards still shine. Lucas has made a bigger name for himself as a innovator of special effects than as a filmmaker.
While it was a defining role for actor Warwick Davis and it employs more midgets and dwarves than any other production (and respectively), for anyone else, "Willow" is never anything special, nor does it attempt to be.
Even for it's day "Willow" was unremarkable. Seriously, how many tales of swords, sorcery, kings, queens, dwarves, dragons and trolls had we seen in movies, TV shows, books, fairy tales and what-have-you before this came along? Yet another case of, "Too little, too late."
Nearly 20 years later, that old axiom proves even more true.
DRAWING FLIES
Doesn't draw much attention... or even interest
by dane youssef
The Canadians approach to filmmaking is either bland, campy or downright blood-and-guts (usually in the “campy” gory vein, of course).
Most Canadians are as good at the art of film as mimes are at capturing the art of sparkling conversation.
Ever hear the expression, "it was halfway decent? Comes up halfway? Meet me halfway?” I had that thought stuck at the top of my head after viewing this one.
That's about the perfect way to describe "Drawing Flies," a Canadian-based indie featuring a sprinkling of an American-based cast and crew.
The first half of the movie starts out as a variation of the whole "Dazed and Confused" or "Slackers" genre, where we see some contemporary socially-relevant slacker types in Canada living on steady welfare. Then we see them go on the big self-discovery trip that’s the big turning point of their lives.
The Canuck Government cuts them off and they take the last bit of money they have in the world, pool it together and instead of paying the necessary monthly rent check, they blow the whole damn thing on a cover-charge at some party and dope.
Now totally and completely bankrupt, they move out of their place (they're living four to a single apartment) and hit the road. They then exile themselves to the deep, deep woods where they plan to make permanent residence. Thus, this is where the real journey-theme of the movie kicks in. This is where the part of their lives that has worthy interest to be a movie kicks in.
Or should anyway.
Jason Lee (as always) proves that any movie with him in it alone is worth seeing (OK, except for the unforgivably bad sedated-comedies “A Guy Thing” and "Stealing Harvard"--well, hey, if Tom Green's in it).
His performance starts out earnest with life-affirming optimistic hope and child-like charm, but then U-turns into angry, road rage and his long-repressed dementia kicks in. It’s the type of character he’s played in damn near everything, but it’s still thrills and shakes.
Mewes' performance here is kind of uneven. I mean, he's not really an actor--he's basically just a friend of filmmaker Kevin Smith who plays himself in movie after movie. Like Julia Roberts, he's not really an actor--he's more of a TV talk-show personality.
Jason Mewes stretches (somewhat) as a welfare-starving slacker who curses and smokes the dope, but not nearly at the level that his legendary Jay character does. He (like most of the cast) seems to have trouble swallowing the overwritten and unrealistic dialogue.
He doesn't talk so much about getting laid and eating out pussy as much, either. Mewes' Az character is more of somewhat-more-down-to-earth regular Stoner than a near-cartoonist comic relief.
Carmen Lee (they were married at the time of this one) does the worst job in this one. Every word, every facial reaction, every moment from her sounds horribly unconvincing. She is here, beyond a doubt, not only the absolute worst performance in the film, but the worst acting I’ve ever seen.
Hopefully, Carmen will stray from acting and find almost any other day job. She would be more adept to make a living donating sperm.
The movie's plot echoes "The Blair Witch Project:” A group of friends go on a long, long trip in the deepest woods on earth and into the great unknown. Then, a hidden agenda is revealed. One that may bring wealth and legendary status. It sounds (of course) to everyone else like s collision of insanity and stupidity. But doesn’t every ground-breaker at first?
Everyone sneers and turns against each other. It’s all sides divided. Bedlam, as always. The Loch Ness Monster. Sasquach. The Boogeyman. They’re all just good old fashioned monster folklore stories, aren’t they? There’s always evidence (of course) that tilts to the contrary.
Like I said from the start of this review (where you came in), “Drawing Flies” is a “halfway decent” film. If you only see half the movie, you’ll walk away having a better cinematic experience than you would if you saw the whole thing. Just see half. It really doesn’t matter which half. Just see half. The movie starts off in one frame of mind, then shifts jarringly in another direction.
And damn it all, the two just don’t mesh. They clash wildly like yogurt and broccoli. Just imagine for a second that resulting, lingering taste.
Doesn't draw much attention... or even much interest.
(WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS A MILD SPOILER--It does not reveal the entire film nor does it give away the ending, but it does reveal a brief surprise… that disappoints):
Indie-idol Kevin Smith (the fat hairy one himself) pops up in a bit part that feels like an extra.
He's at the end, he doesn't have so much as a word of dialogue, and he's dressed just like well… Silent Bob. And I mean SILENT BOB. He wears the same clothes he’s worn in the first three movies.
And it’s not like there much here to distinguish this bit part from his legendary Silent doppelganger. Smith dons the same outfit, same mime facial expressions. He even sports the exact same beard. What, the budget was so low, he couldn’t afford a shave or at least a trim? Or time to get another set of clothes from out of his closet?
Hey, it's a no-budget film, they couldn't afford a wardrobe department as his character is referred to as "John." You kind of wish there was just a little more of a punch line or pay-off, but…
But this time, there is no moment where he breaks the silence. The only difference between “John” and “Silent Bob” is… one is something, one is not...
BOBBY
Yes... A disapointing film, but a moving love letter...
by dane youssef
Emilio Esztevez's "Bobby" celebrates not only one of the greatest political icons to die before his time, before he had the opportunity to live up to even a fraction of his potential, but a seven-year effort to get it on the big screen.
Esztevez is not as renown in the business as his father and brother are. Nor does he have such a sparkling track-record. Let's be honest. Most of the man's movies (paticularly those made after "The Mighty Ducks") borderline on unwatchable. But hey, what about "Rated X"? I heard good things. Somewhere. I don't remember where exactly...
But just because a man has a few "Battlefield Earth" and "Catwoman"-like stinkers on his resume doesn't mean he's totally incapable of putting out anything at all decent. I know we love to skewer a star when they're down.
But let's give a poor guy an even shake...
Because of Estevez's experience in the biz, as well as his family's, "Bobby" is chock-full of big-name walk-ons. Yes, it's good to be able to employ the best and biggest names in the business, but I don't know if it nessicarily works here.
Despite the honors it recieved from the Screen Actors Guild and the Hollywood Film Festival as "Ensemble of the Year" (and yes, it's almost like a random list of the hottest and most esteemed talents working today), I think it's sort of a handicap here.
There are so many familiar faces that pop up like a Jack-In-The-Box and then disapear just as quickly, that it's kind of distracting.
They're all not on camera long enough so that we see the characters, not actors playing a role. We keep getting the feeling that all we're looking at is super-star after super-star just here to do some temp work, have fun, do a favor and pay respect to a great political icon.
There are so many storylines buzzing in and out in such a condensed amount of time that so many of them feel under-developed (and even pointless at times).
There are some really intriguing ones, yes, but there's also too much that just feels like filler. They're not around longe enough to make us really think or care about them.
There is no accomplished actor in the plum role of Robert Kennedy (a wise desicion on Esztevez' part)--Kennedy appears as himself in archive footage; newsreels and voice-overs. There is an enourmously talented and renown cast for "Bobby," but no real head-liner.
This is an ensemble vehicle, in the tradition of the late Robert Altman's films. Like every ensemble vehicle, the star is the subject matter--RFK himself.
The lives he touched, the inpact he made, many of the goings-on during the time... that appears here. But too briefly. Like an extra that just blends into a massive crowd or a beige wall. Where are they? You want them to stand out, you want more.
As for it's much-touted heavy-hitter cast: Joshua Jackson (who worked with Esztevez in "The Mighty Ducks" films) isn't really given much of anything to do as as Kennedy's campaign manager.
Christian Slater is one of the best working actors out there today, but any schmuck standing in line at "Hot Dog On A Stick" could have done as good a job as he's allowed to do there. Hey, maybe some of that trademark reptillian-like demeanor of his might have helped. He's a racist, but he's as interesting as plain white-bread. Heather Graham is equally ineffective (has she ever given a really great perfomance?)
Ashton Kutcher thankfully sheds his tired "Kelso" scthick as a spiritual drug dealer who introduces to LSD. He wears glasses, has long mop-like hair and a scruffy beard. This is good. We're looking at the character, not Kutcher. Lately, Kutcher has been trying to evolve past the dim-witted prett-boy roles in stupid throw-away rom-comedies. He seems to be in very serious danger of becoming just another flavor-of-the-month like so, so many, many other before him (and after him). With roles in movies like "The Butterfly Effect" and now "Bobby," there may be hope for him after all.
William H. Macy and Starone Stone are some of the best out there. Here they play a married couple who have a rather ugly secret, but the whole thing is under-written. Esztevez' should have kept working on this. It's a nice sub-plot, but their story is thinner than two-ply toilet paper. And we want more.
Lawrence Fishburne almost steals the movie as a veteran cook who works at the Ambassador. He has a deep philiosophical mind and some theories on the way the world is... and how to survive in it. How to make it yours. He sounds so insightful, like an older, seasoned veteran not miles away from Kennedy himself. He talks about how anger is toxic and his admiration and love for Dr. King and how it hurt when King was gunned down.
Legendary Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins appears as the elderly doorman who won't just flat-out retire because the boredom and feeling of uselessness gets to him. His role is pretty unremarkable, although he brings the same grace and dignity he does to pretty much any role he's in. It's nice to see him away from his "Hannibal Lecter" repitore. And "Bobby" is a vast improvement over Ron Howard's putrid steaming green Christmas diarrea log, "The Grinch."
Director Esztevez and Demi Moore appear together as a couple for the first time in Esztevez' nearly unwatchable "Wisdom," which contained none of what was promised. Or anything else worth seeing. They have some worthwhile moments as a showbusiness couple, especially Moore is what's some of the better work she's done in a while. And it's one of the few sub-plots that work.
The only true stand-outs here are Lawrence Fishburne, Sharon Stone, Martin Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. Everyone else seems is just coasting. Because they're all just distinguished veterans, we want them to make an enourmous impact.
The kind where the scene and line becomes a legendary moment and is quoted ad nauseum. But each shot just shows big-name marquee headers doing what just about anyone could have done. Maybe the fact that all these big names are dropped will draw them in.
I do applaud Esztevez for not just hiring some celebrity impressionist to play Bobby--like De Vito did for his "Hoffa." No two-bit actor can ever forge the man. So Kennedy actually appears at himself technically the whole time throughout (except of a few scenes where Bobby's right there with the actors, but we never get a good look, of course. That feels... respectful.
But does it work? The most crippling flaw in "Bobby" is that because of the contemporary faces and their underdevloped characters and underwritten scenes, we're never convinced we're back there during that fatal day. And when RFK walks through the door, onto the stage... we're never really convinced that he's in that room at this moment. RFK and the little people never seem to exist within the same time and reality.
Throughout the whole film, I was aware that they were just using old footage of Bob and the entire cast--er, members of the Ambassador were cheering facing a camera crew.
There are some moments that alone make Bobby worth seeing: A scene where a deception is going on and is revealed--we see the victim's tears and pain, a converstaion that takes place in a kitchen that really stays with you, two suited buttoned-down campaign volunteers who volunteer to embrace something more have than Kennedy, the reporter dying to see the senator in the flesh. All storylines that could have really packed a wallop if they're were written a little more. Was Esztevez on a schedule?
But there are a few too many which are just limp which leave you feeling Esztevez should have pumped them up or simply scrapped them altogether. Maybe leaving them in the bottom drawer and hauling them out the next time he wants to make a movie. As it is, this proudly stands as the best film Esztevez has come out with in over a decade. And it is a sometimes really touching tribute to a man who deseves it. For whatever reason you want to check it out, watch it, afterwards light a candle for Good ol' Bob.
In the end, what truly makes this a movie to see is the passion. The passion that Esztevez has for Bobby and has had ever since dear Emilio actually came in contact with him when he was but five years old.
"Bobby"'s finale (yes, that is the correct phrase) comes to no surprise, but what is so astonishing is how much such an act can still touch us as if we are actually there and then. It helps give the film more of an impact than everything leading up to it did.
What matters really is not when or how Kennedy left, but that he was there. Now that he's gone, it's says sad things about us how much we need him now...
THE DEVIL'S REJECTS
Just Plain Bloody Brilliant
by dane youssef
Rob Zombie is without a doubt one of the most versatile and true to his genre artists out there. "The Devil's Rejects" is the kind of movie uptight censors and worried parents always warned you was gonna get made some day.
A movie where the leads are psychopathic murderers, the violence is excess and the gore is so voluminous, that you have to ask: "Does this movie satirize this kind of sadism... or celebrate it? Is it a fun campy parody... or a sign that we may have gone too far with our ultra-violent-based entertainment?"
This movie actually defines the term "overkill." Three of the more interesting deranged killers from "House Of 1000 Corpses" get their own spin-off in the "Frasier" or "Jeffersons" tradition.
The three, who are a family, actually (a father and his son and daughter) go on a mass killing spree and are racing out of the country to legal freedom on the other side of the border. They seem to echo the Manson Family.
Their sense of humor is the kind of acquired taste like the movie itself has. It stems from the experience you'd get from... watching slasher movies throughout a lot of your life. Like lime green Jell-O, anchovies, fish eggs and black licorice, this is not for all tastes.
The movie is actually a lot smarter and more complex than you might imagine, if you're unfamiliar with what Zombie's movies are about. It's akin to films like "From Dusk 'Til Dawn," "Vulgar," "Desperado" and "Freaked."
If you like these types of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Friday the 13th" re-vamping in the video-geek traditions, here is a movie you may hold up as one for the history books. The dialogue is written a twisted brilliant way and the direction has a real retro-'70's homey-quality to it. In a way that doesn't feel contrived.
Sid Haig, Bill Moseley and Sheri Moon are all so perfectly demented in their roles, you have to wonder what they're like in real life. You pray they're nothing like they are here... and hope you never come across anyone remotely like this either.
Sheri Moon, wife of director Zombie, looks more like a typical American model-actress than the degenerate rank-skank she plays here. Moseley is real-life, was actually a columnist and Heig often played scuzzy thugs, but played the judge in Tarantino's "Jackie Brown."
I find it incredibly strange that some people seem to be COMPLAINING that the pursuing cop character (the sheriff, John Quincy Wydell) is as sadistic and mentally unbalanced as the family killers themselves. Why?
Yes, he is. But... why?
Why is that a bad thing? In any way at all?
Look, if there's anything history and government have taught us, it's that it takes one to catch one. Not just in the movies, but in life. And not just in real life, but in movies as well. You see, it's not just an opinion. It's a fact. It's the way of the world.
People... do we all not remember Tommy Lee Jones in "The Fugitive"? His I Will Catch Him By Any Means Nessicary Law Enforcer way was one of the true milestones in the movie, and it got him an Oscar. Would we want any of the other major characters to be far less interesting than the leads?
When you eat a meal of any kind, you don't just want a rich main course and the side dishes to be as tasteless as styraphone. You want a whole meal you can taste.
And the stuff with the sheriff and the rest of the cops IS something to see. Why? Because he isn't any kind of undeveloped character. Zombie made him (and everything else) just as big, broad, colorful and energetic as the '70's genre that this one stems from.
There's some humor with the Kentucky-Fried Sheriff and the rest of his "Good Ol' Boys" in Blue. It goes without saying that in a small town, the cops are all red-necked. The way the stereotype of the small-town cop in a campy-slasher pic is handled with more laughs than usual.
And there's a great moment where they call in a specialist, a film historian (see: uber film geek) to help them with the investigation and the film historian.... well, suffice to say, he insults the name of God in the house of the Lord, to say the absolute least.
We all know Zombie is a neo-talent outside of the music biz. He did the LSD effect in "Beavis & Butthead Do America."
The end may justify the means, in this case. The hick cops and the colorful killers... in the end, it's an ending we all knew we deserved.
Speaking of Zombie, his film debut "House of 1000 Corpses," was a film I found to be embarrassingly bad. I'm a fan of those types of rock-horror camp movies in the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "House Of Wax" vein. SEVERED vein, in this case.
But everything was played out so campy, so cheaply, so maudlin, so without suspense... that Zombie, I felt, made a movie that seems to be an insult, rather than a tribute to those horror-show camp classics.
But he's redeemed himself with this one. He's working without a net and it all could have gone horribly, pathetically wrong. So I give him props. BIG, BIG PROPS.
As I'm writing this now, he's currently re-making "Halloween." Though I wish he wouldn't, really. Why re-paint the Mona Lisa? Give it eyebrows, what? Will that REALLY be an improvement?
Brace yourself. Not for all tastes. Procceed with caution. Use extreme care.
NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED, SQUEAMISH, PRUDISH... OR TOO MORAL.
VULGAR
Something different from View-Askew. Glad I saw it.
by dane youssef
Bryan Johnson shows amazing talent and depth as a first-time greenhorn filmmaker. There's more thanjust one worthwhile film here. There's two.
"Vulgar" plays out like a scrappy, slapped-together little campy comedy and then shifts wildly into much darker territory. And then back again. And back...
Johnson seems to have a natural wild indie touch and while it has touches of some of the darkest nature ever uncovered on the screen, it also has some nice Jersey-blue collar comedy.
Now here's a movie Tarantino would enjoy. It's kinda like a soup. It plays out like a stew of movies, styles and ideas. European avant-garde cinema, indie film and campy, low-budget comedy. It's a shame this movie didn't play in Europe and France. Or college kids. This is the kind of thing they all gobble up.
I'm glad I bought a copy. It gives me hope as an aspiring filmmaker... and joy and thrills as a movie-lover who loves off-kilter stuff.
Brian O' Halloran is touchingly determined and vulnerable as the clown. He scrapes out a meager existence as a "party whore" and lives in his hovel of a home, living on s*** wages, barely making ends meet. His landlord is understanding and sympathetic and lets him "mow the lawn or do some maintenance" and knocks off a few.
Ethan Suplee and Matt Mawer are effective and creepy as his inbred and mentally-retarded sons who seem to have been phoned right out of "Deliverence."
Jerry Lewkowitz is just plain frightening and disturbing as Ed Fanelli. With his portly beer-belly, bug-eyes, raspy voice and bad wig that looks like a little boy's hair. I heard that the inspiration for this character was Dennis Hopper in "Blue Velvet." He's one of the scariest villains (or any kind of characters) to pop up on any kind of cinema in history.
The rape sequence with Will is just horrifying. It outdoes the whole scene in "Blue Velvet" and literally makes you BELIEVE and FEEL what this poor guy who just wants to entertain little kids is feeling.
The morning after where he has his emotional breakdown is just as strong. Will confides in Syd about the whole evening and Syd begs him to go to the cops, but Will swears him to secrecy. These scenes all shows strength, talent and feeling with both O' Halloran's acting and Johnson's directing.
Johnson himself, like Tarantino and producer Kevin Smith, once jockeyed in a video store. He gives the movie the flavor of a lot of low-budget films and masters past. He gives some "Kevin Smith" flavor in the dialouge and the juice of other great filmmakers', but he also gives it his own signature style. You'd have to see it to know what I mean.
Johnson has never been within 200 miles of a film school, so he seems to have gotten all of whatever film education and knowledge from Smith and Mosier.
You can tell Johnson is emulating Smith as a filmmaker, like the film's dialouge has an overwritten, over-articulate Kevin Smith-ness to it. Not to mention Smith's one-shot camera set-up. Still, there are moments that generate pain beyond words and conversation that Smith has never shown us.
And anyway, this is NOT a Kevin Smith film. I love the man, but this is another cup of tea altogether. Many will see because of the "Kevin Smith" name on the marquee. Which means they;ll be in for some serious shock and disappointment.
Johnson's only real mistake, in my opinion (and this is one that hurts the movie more than anything else) is his decision to act in it as the clown's only friend. You see why Smith only gave him bit-parts as Steve-Dave. He's no actor. He tends to mumble a lot of the time.
Look, read the other "user reviews" on IMDb about Johnson's "Vulgar." Listen to them describe it. YOU know if it's the movie for you. It all depends on your taste. Go to the site's OFFICIAL WEB PAGE and read the interview with Johnson. After hearing him, does it sound like your type of movie?
All in all, this is a hell of a debut. I liked Johnson's different stories and juggling them all at once. Comedy, drama, horror, working-class stories...
And at the center of it all, View Askew's poster boy--Flappy the Clown.
Have you ever wondered the real story about that clown? Here it is...
Now dear readers, I am not recommending this movie as "fun for the whole family." I do not recommend this as a movie to see with your drinking acquaintances. No, this a movie for a specific audience with a very acquired palate--darker, daring, low-budget, creepy, campy, gross and funny all at once.
Don't see this because Kevin Smith produced it. See it because this is your taste. Read the reviews. Does this sound like your brand of poison? You know who you are.
SPECIAL NOTE: Jerry Lewkowitz deserves particularly special acclaim. Speaking as someone who has seen far more than his share of movies, Lewkowitz is the most frightening villain I've ever seen.
And as Ed Fanelli, he should be placed next to Michael Rooker in "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" and Charlize Theron in "Monster." His role as the horrifying Ed Fanelli will stay with you to the grave...
THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE
The Beautiful Swan Song Of The
'80's.
by dane youssef
More dated than a Vanilla Ice album, "Ford Fairlane" was clearly a vehicle for Dice.
Unfortunately, this big loud, rock 'n' roll, sex-starved Ford crashed and burned. Figures. It was made in America.
During that fabulous, f----d-up era known as the '80's, the Diceman was on top of the world. Known for his persona as an Elvis impersonator with tackiness and bad vibes to spare, his over-exaggerated mock "Itallian" accent, his trademark leather jacket jeweled all-over with rhinestones and studs, chain-smoking and spreading misogyny and prejudice. (sniff, weep, sob. I really miss the '80's).
The whole movie looks like a film that clearly embodies the whole spirit and soul of the '80's.
The tropical mellow melody from "Yello" is great and so is Vince Neil and Sheila E. (although they should have had more time with their numbers), and Tone Loc plays himself as "undiscovered." Getting out only one measly verse.
20th Century Fox distributed this one, and it was the first in what was supposed to be a string of vehicles for the Diceman. But after this one went belly-up, 20th Century Fox shredded Clay's contract into confetti. Like many entertainers who had created a character persona, The Diceman was a soup de' jour that fell of the menu.
Now the Diceman's very presence in a movie or TV show is a red flag. A dire warning that this will go down in flames and crash-land into the ocean. Which is why the Diceman wisely chooses to limit his presence to stand-up gigs.
Can the lovable everyman Andrew Silverman (yes, I am being sarcastic) play anyone besides "The Diceman"? Doesn't look like it. Still, that is essentially what this movie was meant to be him doing his Diceman shtick in a movie lead with a different name.
Some fan on eCritic once described Clay's Diceman character as "Elvis Presley given a fatal over-dose of testosterone." He hit the nail right on the head so dead-on, it was breath-taking. Yes, THAT is the Diceman.
The humor never rises above the belt-line (natch), but the real problem is that the junior-high school humor isn't very inventive.
But no, that's not what Dice is about, is it? Still, one of the screenwriters is the award-winning Daniel Waters, who wrote the '80's teenage-angst high school masterpiece "Heathers." So you expect some amount of wicked lines and skewering satire. And for the most part we get that. There are great things in this movie (a few), some good things... and too much other stuff.
Renny Harlin really gives the movie a hip, smooth, glossy neon look, as well as first rate comic-action sequences. Not to mention a cast as priceless as the original works of Picasso. Some (actually, many) said the movie's one real problem was the casting of Dice. Well, I can kinda see what they're saying. Hey, it's a Dice movie. Deal with it. Well, you can't please everybody.
The movie is chock-full of big name celebrity walk-ons. There are so many names dropped here, you want them to pick some of them up. Gilbert Gottfried is sleazier than he's ever been as a obnoxious, grosser than the grossest gross-out DJ who's Fairlane's childhood buddy and now #1 in the ratings. Gottifried makes us laugh in that way that only he can and thankfully his role lasts just long enough so that he doesn't get on our nerves.
Brandon Call (who's been acting since the cradle) is endearing as a little kid who idolizes Ford and follows him around faithfully like a stray puppy. This film is a take-off of detective pictures, including "Dick Tracy." So just like "Dick Tracy," Ford gets involved with this young little ragamuffin who wants to be just like him and is also name "The Kid."
Naturally. And Priscilla Presley is golden as the femme fa-tale who doesn't even bat an eye at Ford's juvenile behavior. Robert Englund steals scenes from Clay as a merciless hit-man who's scarier, funnier and more energetic than Freddy Krueger ever was.
But while there is a lot of hip music video rock imagery and big name musicians walking through like this whole movie is a big MTV music awards after-party, not too many of them do the music that they're so known for doing.
Wayne Newton seems appropriate as a blow-hard record exec who seems too full of helium, Priscilla Presley as the necessary whodunit femme fa-tale, David Patrick Kelly as a perverted fan.
But the sweetness of the movie comes from Lauren Holly as Ford's girl Friday Jazz (who's the only one with a uterus who calls him on what a s--t-crock he is). "I'd always love Jazz... 'cause she despised me for who I truly am," Fairlane tells us. And Call's "Kid" idolizes and emulates Fairlane the way most boys do superheroes. He is the innocence of the film.
Clay has the looks, stature and self-confidence to play a leading man, but not the charisma. But then again, most of us have just seen his "Diceman" shtick. But can he do any other shtick? Although this movie seems to lean towards "no," one has to remember than he was just expanding on his "Diceman" shtick, because, around that time, it was still hot.
This guy had a hot career all throughout the '80's... and just as his career was really blowing up... it blew up. Still, I love this movie.
Ever since women took over in the late '90's, they censored and repressed us with a de-humanization form they like to call "political correctness." So that's really why I love this movie (and not just me, really), but a lot of other guys, too.
It was made during a time when it was still OK to be a man....
HOWARD THE DUCK
Do bad movies go to hell? Or someplace worse?
by dane youssef
Oh, Jesus...
What can possibly be said about this movie that hasn't already be said a thousand times? It almost seems redundant and tiresome to keep shooting such an already over-satirized target... though this movie took moments off my life I will never have back. I watched it simply to see what all the fuss was about.
I understand now...
Ughhhhhh....
Easy target as it may be, I must now express my contempt and hatred. After the severe deforming scar it left on my psyche, it's the very least of my
I actually lost seconds of my life as well, dear children. I actually feel like I'm suffering from motion sickness just THINKING about this movie...
Special FX Master George Lucas disowned this film. I know "Willow" wasn't great... and neither was "Radioland Murders" Or "Star Wars: Episode II"...
But here is a movie... that brings us all together... unifying us... in anger, disgust and hate... and annoyance...
Too stupid and lame to be fun and thought-provoking... takes itself too seriously to be campy fun (even by the standards of schlock '50's sci-fi/action movies--now some of THOSE are fun!) But with none of the charm, innocence, sweetness, much grosser, much raunchier... and special FX that even for their time, look cheesy and crummy. They borderline on rolling static.
Too poorly filmed and horribly shot and embarrassingly acted to a fun family movie, too awkward and straight-faced to even be unintentionally funny...
....and the bestiality thing with Thompson and the duck...
well, there's just NO genre for that, now is there?
This was not a good day for film. It's like a full-length version of "ALF...."
No, wait... I LIKED "Alf." I will not smear his legacy by associating it with this interplanetary bird-flu.
The fact that Howard knows a type of martial arts ("Quack Fu," as he calls it) is hurtfully unfunny.
And this came from Lucas, who's special FX company ILM is the finest on the planet? The effects are phony and ugly and hideous and horribly unconvincing... and that's the last thing we'd ever expect from George Lucas. The special effects look like they're from the '50's, like the very same surving production values from "Plan 9 From Outer Space." Including the acting and screenplay. It's like if Jar Jar Binks got his own starring movie... actually, that might have been better.
It's "all too easy" (to quote the great Darth Vader) to point out what a hideously mismade, tacky as can be blunder. One can go on and on about what a monumental waste of film, time, money and other precious human resources. Hell, look at all the time and effort Lucas' other company, Industrial Light & Magic put into this one.
Why didn't they just set it all on fire and dump it all into a cesspool? Would've saved time and cut-out the middle-man.
This little piffle was written by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who are no strangers to Lucasfilm projects, having written several Lucas' projects ("American Graffiti," "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and "Radioland Murders").
They're obviously favorites and friends of Lucas and clearly they wanted to make a special-effects sci-fi extravaganza of their own. And you have to love Lucas for giving them the shot.
But it's a disaster. Willard Hyuck has proved to be necessary and crucial script doctor polishing Lucas' stuff so he seems like a superhuman Greek god of film. But every film he's ever directed is not just bad, it becomes renown for being such a low point in cinema history.
His "catastrophes" include "Best Defense," "Dead People" and this steaming pile. (OK, I'll concede "French Postcards." Hell, I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day).
Kids love taking animal characters, paticularly muppets and the like. Their favorite are the traditional wise-cracking, pratfalling types. Well, I'm sorry to say that Howard lacks humor or charm really of any kind. Honestly, he lacks any kind of interest whatsoever.
Does anyone here remember the scene where Jeffrey Jones as the Dark Overlord in the biker bar... the final showdown where the demons may enter through the portal to our dimension... the scene where Howard brawls with the guy managing the group... all had me shaking my head in disbelief...
I know most of this goddammed review isn't exactly written in a deep, compelling way. But if the filmmakers didn't put any real interest (or much fun) into this one, how can anyone talking about it? Well, maybe at it's expense. That's the best thing you can do with a bad movie.
And for this one, the rolling credits over the musical montage concert at the end... didn't come soon enough.
Former accomplished ballerina-turned actress Lea Thompson has recovered from this abomination thankfully. Though I certainly have not.
It still haunts me...
HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE
Blaxploitation and indie-film unite!
by dane youssef
Movies in general are so formulaic that even most independent films are pretty routine and by-the-numbers.
Maybe that’s why “Hollywood Shuffle” feels so refreshing, like a much-needed change of pace. Most indies are made almost entirely by hand---one man writing, directing, and of course, producing (hey, they need every single spare little red cent they can get their grubby little hands on) and this one is no exception.
Townsend wears all the indie hats here… and he wears them proudly… and well.
This is the film that introduced the world to Robert Townsend. Well, that was it's whole purpose. Like Ed Burns’ "The Brother McMullen," this star-vehicle was written and directed by Townsend about his dream to make it as a professional actor, trying to break into Hollywood, while at the same time, trying to over-come the cruel limitations mainstream Hollywood has set up for black people who want to act... and actors, in general.
Whereas the '70's was the birth decade of the blaxploitation, so many of them were just cheap, cheesy, corny knock-offs of popular white films. Blaxploitation got more blacks into films, but the films themselves weren't really about anything. "Hollywood Shuffle" is a Blaxploitation film that really has something to say... that has an agenda.
There is so much burning talent, so many struggling entertainers wanting to make something of themselves, that Hollywood can afford to treat the auditioning talent the same way a really strong cleanser treats germs.
Townsend's efforts to make this movie are inspiring--he borrowed every dollar he could, asked for movie footage that was left on the cutting-room floor, called in every favor he could, threw everything he had and more to get this one made.
To tell his story, get his foot in the door... and at the same time, tell a story about what this kind of life is like. For those with talent who dare to dream big.
The great Keenan Ivory Wayans (who co-wrote this one) and John Witherspoon have bit players as people who work at the local hog stand in the neighborhood who don't ask for much out of life... and don't get it. They're the kind of cynics who spend their lives saying, "You're a fool for following your dreams."
When you near the end of your journey in this world, you really fully understand the meaning of the old phrase, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
Townsend interlocks a variety of skits with this all-too autobiographical tale that are in the vein of blaxploitation--"Superman," "Rambo," "Siskel & Ebert" and a commercial for Black Actors who want steady work.
All of which are pretty funny and inspiring. You have to admire the way that Townsend wants to put out some legitimate roles for black actors to play and black actors to idolize. But most of his skits go on too long after the point has been made and there are quite a few moments that feel like someone (Townsend obviously) should have punched up. Townsend is a far better actor than he is a writer or director.
Perhaps because he is only a filmmaker by necessity for this one. He’s more interested in using this to make up of all those dream roles he never got to play and showing his chops as an actor than really making a great movie.
There's a scene where he makes fun of "Siskel & Ebert"--before everyone started doing it.
Almost all the skits (where Townsend is fantasizing his dream roles as an actor) go on way too long, probably because Townsend is far less concerned with how funny the skits/movie is and more interested in using this movie to play all the dream roles he never got to before.
Every single actor is perfectly cast, especially Townsend himself. It's great to see
The movie captures the struggle of the out-of-work actor just right. We see lines and lines of actors warming-up, rehearsing their roles, going into the audition... all to hear, "Thank you, no. Next!" But some blessed, precious few are picked.
But those that are black are given racially-biased drivel to perform. Ethnic caricatures that shame and set back their race. Brothers and sisters who talk like stock characters frm the slave era, wearing redneck farm clothes, picking cotton, eating chicken and getting stinking drunk. Townsend tirades many black archetypes, most of which went out of style around the same time as blackface. Lil' Bobby obviously wants to say something about the way the brothers and sisters are treated in the biz.
There are some moments here you'll roar with laughter at. As well as moments that'll actually put a lump in your throat and a strange feeling of hope and pride. And there's another bit that spoofs the well-worn private eye genre, where the dick is after a killer Jeri Curl.
Like many other breakthrough films, especially independents, “Hollywood Shuffle” was another arrival of a fresh new talent. It happens as often as the rise and setting of the suns, but here is a film where it feels a little more special… because Townsend was really about something. You can see it here, not only in some of his satirist scenes, but some of the quieter moments where real drama in brewing and dreams are at stake.
We see where Townsend is asking himself if he’s good enough, if he face the whole world (which is how it is when you’re struggling to make it as an entertainer… or in life) and when life-long happiness is at stake. It almost hurts. And at the end of it all, when we wonder for Townsend’s character, Bobby’s sake… what will become of him? And then we realize we already know. We just found out.
It’s like looking in the sky at the stars like you always do… and then there’s a brand-new star shining in the night sky, standing out just a little bit bigger than the others. Haven’t seen that one before. Hey, is that a new one? Couldn’t be, could it? I don’t remember… there are so many. Another star is born.
Or made.
HEAVY TRAFFIC
One of the best... and Bakshi's best.
by dane youssef
This is rumored to be animation-pioneer Ralph Bakshi's favorite among all his projects. And no wonder. This is his story!
A 22-year old Jewish-Itallian spends his time playing pin-ball non-stop and drawing. He still lives with his parents, an Itallian man who cheats on his wife and a Jewish woman who's so emotionally torqued up--such a drama queen, that when Angelo comes home after a night with his lady, she hits him over the head with a frying pan and sticks his head in the oven.
There's always domestic unrest in any family, paticularly with interracial married couples who lived in the Bronx around this time. But they're so wound-up, so ready to snap--they come to blows and sharp instruments a little too quickly.
Way too quickly, in fact. Angelo and Ida's Punch-and-Judy realtionship--coupled with the problems that reside outdoors in the Bronx--Michael seems doomed to have some of it rub off on him. "You hang around garbage long enough, you start to stink," as they say.
But Michael has an outlet for his angst and confusion. Rather than fall into the trap many around him seem to, he vents himself at the drawing board. He draws a lot of the people and places in the Bronx. Although he seems to dislike many of them, they're so broad and colorful and wired, they translate easily to caricatures.
Bakshi takes us to all the usual haunts we visit in his movies--trashy ghetto neghiborhoods with buildings that loook condemed, dirt-cheap apartments, behind the wheel of cars, rooftops, nightclubs, bars, brothels.
The lives of all of the Bronx inhabitants: Jews, Itallians, blacks, drag queens, junkies, vagrants, hookers, cops, thugs and the like. And by using animation, Bakshi (and Michael) sort of illustrate their world and their eccentricity, which is so dangerous, it borderlines on insanity.
I wasn't paticularly crazy about the disco remix of "Scarlbrough Fair." What can I say? I fell in love with the original.
But I suppose it does fit in with the nature of the film. Bakshi uses a lot of shots of Michael playing pinball. He's a big pinball fanatic. It's obviously a metephor, perhaps for the hectic universe in which Michael bounces from one scenerio to another, for which he's constantly out of place.
Carol is a black woman who works at a local bar where Michael draws on the roof. She's loud, she's opinionated, she's passionate. And she really seems to be about something. She's not just an ethnic joke.
Like all bars, there are lots of colorful locals there, plenty of dangerous ones to be sure.
Michael tries to score free drinks with his art. But that's all he tries to score Michael's no ladies' man and he knows it. He's a deep, sensitive, skilled artiste. And a sitting duck for some of the louder, tougher guys who make up the city.
It doesn't help matter that he's a virgin and everyone knows it. At one point, some greasers try to hook him up with a loose woman who's eager to have it with a guy who's so fresh and green. Although this leads to a disaster. Even his own father tries to hook him up. Now there's a true loving father for you.
Michael has an eye for Carol (many people at the bar she tends do), not because he's dying to get laid like nearly every other male. But he seems to genuinely feel something real for her. When she offers it up to him in gratitude for a favor, he faints. He wants her, but he's just not ready.
Ida is fussy and over-protecive of her son, just like a mother hen. Or rather a Jewish mother. Angelo wants his son to be more of a "man's man."
Like all of Bakshi's films, this contains a lot of graphic violence and sexual images, as well as caricatures in the ethnic vein.
But surprisingly, in the strangest way, it contains real heart, as well as some sweetness. The relationship between Michael and Carol has to be seen. Bakshi could've made her just an archtype like everyone else and he didn't. She's just as developed and human and relative as dear Michael is. These two deseve one another.
"Heavy Traffic" is wildly imaginative and thrilling in all it's glory. Like "Being John Malkovich," we actually feel like we're inside the author's head rather than his film. This truly ranks as Bakshi's best. He deseves more credit for this than "Fritz The Cat."
How much of all this take place in Michael's mind and how much of it takes place in his reality? Maybe they're one and the same. Maybe not. Maybe we're supposed to figure it out. It up to us. Just like Michael's life is up to him.
The characters in the city are so damn cartoonish and erratic already, they transfer them into cartoon characters without losing anything in the translation.
Bakshi doesn't paint a pretty picture of the city and it's locals. But then again, he never has, has he? That's one of the things he's known for.
But that's not the only thing. Let's hope that when he goes... he'll be remembered for a lot of things.
Especially this one. It is... not only his best, not only one of the year's best... but of the best.
COONSKIN
Don't let the title throw you. This is one to see.
by dane youssef
"Coonskin" is film, by the one and only Ralph Bakshi, is reportedly a satricial indictment of blaxploitation films and negative black stereotypes, as well as a look at life black in modern America (modern for the day, I mean--1975). Paramount dropped it like a hot potato that just burst into flame.
But this is a Bakshi film, contraversal, thrilling, and a must-see almost by definition alone. Not just another random "shock-jock" of a movie which tries to shock for the sake of shock. It's by Ralph Bakshi. Anyone who knows the name knows that if HE made a movie, he has something big to say...
Although it's roots are based in cheap blaxploitation, "Coonskin" isn't just another campy knock-off of mainstream white film or any kind of throwaway flick. "Coonskin" wants to be more. It aims it's sights higher and fries some much bigger fish.
The movie doesn't just poke fun at the genre. Nor does it just indict black people, but actually seems to show love, beauty and heart in the strangest places.
"Coonskin" tells a story out of some convicts awaiting a jail-break. The fact that it's even possible to break out of a prison in the "Coonskin" world alone makes it old-fashioned.
One of the inmates tells a story about a trio of black brothers in Harlem named Brother Bear, Brother Rabbit, Preacher Fox who want respect and a piece of the action and are willing to get it by any means nessicary. The Itallian mob is running all the real action.
Big name black musicians star: Barry White and Scatman Crothers, as well as Charles Gordone, the first black playwright to take home the Pulitzer. Something big is happening here obviously.
The movie plays out like a descent into this world, this side of the racial divide. From an angry, hip, deep, soulfull black man with a hate in his heart and a gun in his hand.
Bakshi's films never know the meaning of the word "sublety." This one looks like it's never even heard of the word. But maybe a subject like this needs extremism. Real sledgehammer satire. Some subjects can't be tackled gently.
Bakshi is goddammed mercilless. Here, no member or minority of the Harlem scene appears unscathed.
The characters here are "animated" to "real" all depending on what the mood and situation are. The animated characters and the human ones all share the same reality and are meant to be taken just as literally.
Bakshi never just shows ugly caricatures just for shock value. He always has something to say. Nor is blackface is gratutiously. Here, unlike in Spike Lee's "Bamboozled," he seems to be using it to try and really say something.
Like 99.9% of all of Bakshi's films, this one incorporates animation and live-action. Usually at the same time. Bakshki isn't just being gimmicky here. All of this technique is all intertwined, meshing together while saying something.
Somehow, this one feels ineviably dated. Many of these types of films (Bakshi's included) are very topical, very spur of the moment. They reflect the certain trend for the day, but looking back of them years later, there's just an unmistakeable feeling of nostalgia (as well as timeless truth).
Even though the music, clothes, slang and the city clearly looks like photos that belong in a time capsule, the attitude, the spirit and the heart remain the same no matter what f--king ear it is. Anyone who's really seen the movies, the state of things and has been in company of the people know what I'm talking about.
Even some of the of the black characters are a bunny (junglebunny), a big ol' bear and a fox. One of the most sour and unsavory racist characters is a dirty Harlem cop who's hot on the trail of these "dirty niggers" after the death of a cop. But for him, it's not just business. Nor is it for the rest of the brothers who wear the shield. It's just pure sadistic racist pleasure of hurting blacks.
The sequence involving the Godfather and his lady is one of the most moving pieces in the whole film, of which there are many. It plays out like an opera or a ballet.
The promo line: WARNING: "This film offends everybody!" This is not just hype. Proceed with extreme caution.
You have been warned...
NORTH
If they outlawed paddling, they should outlaw this
by dane youssef
Here is a movie so wrong-headed, wrong-hearted, wrong-made... so worng, you'd think the old axiom of a broken clock that's right twice a day would prove. But nope. It doesn't. Not by a long shot.
One of my most depressing experiences as a child was seeing Rob Reiner's "North." In fact, as extensive internet research has shown me, it was a painful experience for many as children and stayed with him throughout adulthood.
One of the worst movies of the year. One of the worst movies of the decade. One of the worst movies ever made. One of the worst ever. And when I say "worst", I'm comparing it to thinks like the Black Plague, the Holocaust, World Hunger, AIDS and Leperocy.
Elijah Wood is a wonderboy who is constantly ignored by his parents despite his best intentions and efforts that make most parents beam like the sun with pride. He spends a lot of time feeling ignored and sits in a chair in a furniture store at the mall to think. He decides he deserves better parents than the ones he's got (who doesn't?) and divorces them.
His folks are comatose from shock, but who cares? He's already in search of better ones.
He travels all over the globe and finds surrogate folks which are not right for him. Not loving, caring, nuturing... or very funny or interesting.
His best friend from school is enthusiastic about the divorce and gets the word out to all parents that children deserve better and thing better change or else.
I was actually in physical pain watching how badly the film's plot is handled.
While it is a thrill to see Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus together as a married couple and action legend Bruce Willis in an easter bunny suit... believe me, it doesn't last. The bad outweighs the good. Oh, HOW the bad outweights the good.
The big-name celebrity bit-players are many: Dan Aykroyd, Reba McEntire, Jon Lovitz, Bruce Willis, Graham Greene, Abe Vigoda, Richard Belzer, Ben Stein, Alexander Godunov, Kelly McGillis, John Ritter, Scarlett Johansson, Lauren Tom and Alan Arkin. Films with a big-name cast doing walk-ons is kind of tricky. Often this leads to a bunch of actors embarassing themselves in bit throwaway roles for a quickie paycheck and "the sake of work." It all really depends on the film itself--the screenplay and the director.
When a film with such a high pedigree of actors and filmmaker, Mr. Rob Reiner, you have to wonder why this whole damn thing went so incredibly wrong. And then kept going. And going and going. I am reminded of the legendary quote, "Only those who dare to fail greatly, can achieve greatly." And just about all who flaunt this picture have achieved greatly at one time or another. So... there you go. The ying to the yang.
The result can be "Traffic" or "Gosford Park." And the result can be "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" of "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas."
You know, it's funny. When I first saw the trailer for "North," I thought to myself, "Wow. This looks like a good movie. I'm gonna see this one." And yes, the trailer damn well made this look like a good one. It just goes to show you... advertisements can make anything look appealing. Hey, remember "Babe: Pig In The City?" The ads didn't make the movie look like much. But the movie was... wow.
Hey, come to think of it-- I would like to advise to eveyone who was unfortunate enough to see any more of this one that what they used for the trailers (so much as a frame more) to go out and rent "Babe II." It's an ideal antidote.
Of course, you may need a few days of bedrest and antibiotics right after seeing "North," but after that... please... don't let this one put you off movies. Or any of the truly gifted people who were associated with this abomination.
Wood is one of the most talented actors ever to grace the business and the man seems unable to do a bad job onscreen. Just check out "Radio Flyer" or " for evidence. But hey, like I need to tell you, right?
But while his acting is on-par with Brando, Guiness, Hopkins and Kilmer, not every movie to come his way compliments his talents. Just after the disasterous misfire "The Good Son," this one floated it's way into theatres like a chunky, nutty, crooked turd after a whole year of improper diet. Adding further insult to injury.
It is perplexing--to the point of going cross-eyed and your whole head exploding "Scanners"-style--trying to figure out what in God's name the filmmakers were thinking.
Seriously, I actually picture Jesus H. Christ himself on the cross, thinking to himself, "I died for this... ? If I'd known, I wouldn't have botherered."
We all make mistakes, even collosal ones. Even the best of us.
Hell, especially the best of us!
Walt Disney was an anti-Semite. L. Ron Hubbard was a pedophile. R. Crumb is a racist and misogynistic sychophant. And I myself...
Well, I could go on, but you get the idea. Honestly, avoid this one about as much as you hepititis A-through-Z. A sulfur plant leaves he auroma of an autumn meadow perfume compared to this one.
In summary, "North" is a childhood trauma that refuses to be repressed. For many, including myself. Don't let it be yours.
Still, we are all mortal. We are all human. We all make mistakes, we stumble, we falter.
No one of us are infallable. Rob Reiner has delivered us "When Harry Met Sally," "The Sure Thing," "This Is Spinal Tap," "The Princess Bride" and "The American President." Surely, we can forgive "North." Can't we?
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly."
And Reiner has clearly done both. Let us at this as one of humanity's greatest follies... and try to find laughter in it. Not at the movie itself, which is clearly impossible, but at the movie's expense.
Like many Jewish comedians have done with WWII, the Holocaust and the years of slavery they were subjected to in Egypt, this is just one more thing we have to learn to laugh at. Not with, AT.
OK, Mr. Reiner. You are officially forgiven. Good luck... and let's hope another abomination like this isn't in the works.
Peace...
JOE THE KING
Whaley attempts therapy onscreen
by dane youssef
Frank Whaley's "Joe The King" has been called by the filmmaker himself "semi-autobiographical." And such a story about so much pain and misery just makes to almost want to see it just to see how thie guy got where he is today.
It so damn downbeat, you have to ask yourself, "How does all this turn out? This poor little guy... Is there a happy ending?"
Like a lot of actor-helmed vehicles, this one is loaded with big name walk-ons. They work, but at the same time, they disapoint. None of these characters are on the screen enough to make enough of an impact.
"Joe The King" is chock-full of trite and truths to life--the lead that seems to be born into the hard-luck life, the abusive, alcoholic loser father, the weak-willed, weak-spirited, whimpering mother who doesn't care if her husband pounds on her kids as long as he doesn't pound on her, the guidance counselor who's all thumbs--aren't they all? Not just a cliche' in movies, but what guidance counselor has ever been worth in damn in life? Was yours?
There is a moment where it is "Careers Day" in an elementry class where it is revealed that Joe's dad is the janitor. He is ridiculed an lashes out (very mildly) at an obnoxious litle teacher's pet and the Dickensian teacher drags Joe and spanks him in front of the entire class. The knife is further pushed and twisted when she makes the whole thing personal by muttering angrily so he can hear, "Just like your father..."
Whaley is clearly dealing with old wounds and knows how to use them so they feel fresh and make you cringe (or worse, relate).
The movie is full of downbeat moments and times where life shows it's ugly face. It seems as if God is very skillfully finding ways to torture Joe... and then skewering it further in smaller ways. In a moment of desperation, Joe attempts to do what his parents can't seem to... save the day.
Joe is not only starving, he descends into petty theft. Then takes it even further. He attempts to dodge his father's outbursts and reach out to his brother, who is trying to eke his way into the "in-crowd" and doesn't want Joe's jinx streak to rub off on him, even to the point of at one point getting out of bed and going to go sleep the closet to get away from his brother's sad vibes.
But "Joe The King" is not just one long crying jag. There is humor, sweetness and tenderness. People may differ about the nature of the ending, but in the strangest, saddest way, it offers some hope.
The children swear in the tradition of "Stand By Me," the child-abuse or disregard in the tradition of "Radio Flyer" and the atmosphere is reminsent of many other films about working-class life. Unlike "That '70's Show" or "Detroit Rock City" or "Dick," this movie doesn't feel like it belongs solely in the era. It takes place in the 1970's to be sure, but a story like this feels timeless.
Lead actor/title character Noah Fleiss gives on the the best performances he's probably ever given, although how many movies has he really made? And how many of them really have allowed him to shine? This is definately the one.
Val Kilmer gives a just plain awesome turn as Bob, Joe's stinking, deadbeat drunk of a dad who's one of the biggest problems in Joe's life. He owes money to more than half the town. He dodges his creditors like bullets, drinks himself into a pathetic stupor and lashes out monstrously at his family.
Kilmer, known for playing dazzling roles and pretty-boy parts, puts on a great deal of weight and shows nastier edges that he has since "The Doors."
Since writer/director Whaley and Kilmer first worked together in that film, Whaley obviously saw how powerfully Kilmer could play a violent sadist, always under the influence of drugs. Kilmer has had trouble getting working because he's so damn dificult to work with, so the two were clearly doing each other favors. Another pal of Whaley's, Ethan Hawke plays a friendly, but utterly useless guidance counselor who hopes to get Joe out of his slump at school. And because it's Joe, he makes things a lot worse.
Karen Young is adequate in a brief supporting part as Joe's mother. And hispanic wunderkind John Leguizamo, a natural comedic talent, takes a more dramatic turn here as a flamboyant busboy in an extended cameo at the local rathole diner where Joe is working illegally. When the ***** hits the fan and Joe is at the center of it, it doesn't really come as a surprise that he's the only one who knew all along.
Whaley seems to capture the flavor for this kind of working class life and he seems to bring out the best in child actors, as well as his more distinguished adult friends and peers. He also sends us back to the era without hitting us hard with period music on the soundtrack from the day.
I myself was kind of surprised that this screenplay won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award (along with Audrey Well's "Guinevere"). The Open Palm nomination for the film itself, that, I can see. The dialouge is altogether realistic, without being nessicarily sharp or too memorable. And the characters are believable without being too fresh.
Writer/director Whaley does an effective job of capturing the atmosphere of this Upstate New York working-class life and bring out the best in child actors and his big-name celebrity walk-throughs.
Whaley has said that much of the story is inspired by the childhood of himself and his older brother, Robert Whaley, who is featured on the soundtrack and has a bit part.
Good ol' Frank himself also has a directors cameo walk-on as one of many who the deadbeat Bob owes money to. He makes a personal house call, and he seems madder than the others Bob owes money to. He acts as a professional collector--the leg-breaking kind. He seems ready to kill Bob and after it's over, the sins of the father are, once again, visited on the son.
So this is the Whaley E! True Hollywood story. More or less.
There is a painful sadness that runs all throughout "Joe The King," and when you look at Frank Whaley, the roles he's taking on and heard him just talk as himself, you kind of see there's something here that Whaley has in him which he brings to his roles.
Whaley deserves extra kudos for getting as far as he did after being dealt such a bad hand. A backhand, even. What of Joe? What of his friends, family, enemies, acquaintences? If you drink in this one, you can't help but wonder...
"Joe The King" doesn't break any new ground whatsoever. But this is a slice-of-life film, and while technology, trends, art, ideas and ideals are constantly changing, some things remain trite and true no matter what era or part of the universe you're living in.
Whaley chooses some appropriate music for his movie and some nice visuals.
"Joe The King" is kind of an acquired taste, like many coming-of-age stories. It's more of a confessional than anything else.
If you've lived a life somewhat like this, or in this part of the world or in this enviorment remotely, you'll understand...
GODS AND GENERALS
Like a history lesson. But not as informative...
by dane youssef
Many sequels suffer from repeating and rehashing the majority of the material from the original. Some suffer from not being enough like the original. Some are lucky and...
Sometimes movies are bad because they are simply moving at a slow pace with little to no interest or substance. Sometimes sequels just have too much to live up to.
This is an example of just about every bad quality I've mentioned. It doesn't outright stink and suck, nor does it leave you cross-eyed with perplextion or indifference, either. But it doesn't really inspire any paticular feelings for you at all, really. Positive or negative.
"Gods and Generals" is a movie that might be perfect for recovering war veterans in trauma wards. A movie that moves on a quiet, comatose pace. "Gods and Generals," a prequel to the famed and magnificent "Gettysburg" has little or no energy. Everyone just appears to be back to set things up for "Gettysburg."
This whole movie is a 2 1/2 hour set-up for a punchline we've already seen---with nothing happening or really going on here.
Oh, I'm not saying it's horribly made. It's put together with skill---the whole look and sound of the civil war. It might be the kind of movie that would be shown in a history class.
It's complete with big-name actors like Jeff Daniels and Robert Duvall in full civil war garb and giving famous and poetic quotes as if they're striking a pose. They appear to be posing throughout the entire movie. It's a civil war re-enactment.
But they're just goofin' like any other group of men doing a civil war re-enactment.
There is one real battle sequence where everybody lines up and charges to die and to kill. The body count begins to pile up---like ANY war movie worth it's salt should.... but it doesn't capture the true stink and ugliness of war in a "Saving Private Ryan" or "Braveheart" sort of way, or even the original "Gettysburg."
Perhaps because all those were R-rated movies and this movie doesn't want to lose it's PG-13 movie, it's more about poetic stories and makes the civil war a backdrop for all this.
At least in my opinion, the actual problem with the fact this movie runs at the pace of a comatose snail. Still waters run deep? Not here.
The movie moves so slowly at times that these people seem to have started the civil war simply out of sheer boredom and so they could say thing that would become historic. This is part I to a III-part series ("Gettysburg" was part II). I look foreword to the next in the series.
"Gods and Generals" all felt like set-up where "Gettysburg" delivered the actual punchline. I hope the final in the series (these are all adapted from books) doesn't just tie up loose ends.
Let's all hope, shall we?
On the film scale--every scale--"GODS AND GENERALS" rates as two stars out of four, 3.5 out of 10, a dozing viewer in his seat (that's the rating system from the Chicago Examiner"). Eh...
SPECIAL NOTE HERE: Matt Letscher, a really good actor ("Gettysburg," TV's "Good Morning, Miami" and "The Mask of Zorro") at least is given more to do than his nameless and bit character in the original movie--but it's still just not a good movie, I'm afraid.
HAPPINESS
The pursuit of... but never the actual...
by dane youssef
The writer/director of this one is Todd Solondz, so you all know what to expect. For those who saw his heavily acclaimed (by critics and audiences alike) "Welcome To The Dollhouse" a movie about the hell almighty on earth that is junior high school.
I was not one of the film's many admirers. Yes, I felt like just about everybody else that the film did have some poignant truths, but... I pretty much already knew them all. It all felt kinda redundant.
I was in high school at the time and every scene I was watching, I thought, "Yeah, no shit" and "God, these people are either ass-holes and idiots." I mean, I know it's supposed to be a satire, but I felt too much like I was watching what I already knew and thought and what has been said too many times before.
His next film, "Happiness" about three sisters and their lives... and how adulthood is more or less as mentally unbalanced as junior high school. About three sisters and how their lives aren't as well-adjusted as they seem. Actually, the sisters are just the core of the storyline.
The seemingly ideal perfect sister is dry, secretly dull and lives such a sterile life that when an obscene caller gives her an obscene call... and she likes the idea of what he says so much... that she starts stalking him. Guess she hasn't done much slumming in her life.
Just thought you'd all like to know what you're getting into.
The best line in the movie "Happiness"... that almost encapsulates the entire film:
Helen Jordan: "I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you."
Joy Jordan: "But I'm not laughing."
I preferred "Happiness" to "Dollhouse," perhaps because "Happiness" illuminated a side of the more well-behaved supposed "perfect ideal" middle-class suburban lifestyle. It's sort of like a more pessimistic and repulsive "Hannah and Her Sisters"--- it deals wit three sisters and their lives and the misery in which they have to deal with in their lives.
It satirically attacks that supposed ideal upper-middle white class which seem successful and ideal... and peel back the layer and reveal how closeted, emotionally deformed and miserable they truly are.
(Spoilers here, brace yourself)
The pedophile material about the father who molests his son's best friend at a sleepover is really going to get under people's skin and make them gasp.
Bill (the father who's also a child psychiatrist, for probably the nature of his obsession) wonders about his own son's sexuality, but his is really the dangerous one. The father-son material is Solondz risqué-satire as it's absolute best. It's sad the movie bombed theatrically (mostly because the pedophile material got the movie an NC-17. So the movie was released with no rating at all).
As much shit as the Garden State takes for all the pollution and being a total lifeless bore next to the Big Apple, maybe if the town hadn't bore Bruce Springstein and Bon Von Jovi, it wouldn't be such a place to look down on.
Solondz is fascinated and obsessed with the darker and more quiet secrets that fester from behind those white-suburban doors. He's from Jersey, from that class of neighborhood that he lampoons so often and so well.
Here is the one man from Jersey who dares to make something of himself. I know, I know, I know. It's such an easy target, Jersey. Hell, even NY makes fun of Jersey. Nobody gives it respect--except Kevin Smith.
He's the only one who shows his town some love. Not many filmmakers come out of Jersey. Now Jersey can proudly claim Solondz and Smith.
As of right now, Jersey has officially redeemed itself for Bon Von Jovi and Bruce Springstein. So sayeth Dane Youssef, so be it.
CLOSING NOTE: This movie contains frank sexual talk, coarse dialouge, and molestation (taking place off-screen) and some serious emotional abuse. I really enjoyed it. I strongly recommend it. But you should all really know what you're getting into.
The movie originally got an NC-17 rating. It has not been edited. Solondz simply released it with no rating at all. You have all been warned.
Dane Youssef, Thank you for submitting the multiple movie reviews over the weekend. We've now posted the first few of these to the main part of our site. We'll have the rest of them up shortly. ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
Dane Youssef, Thanks again for all the great movie reviews. We have now posted all of these to the main part of our site. Keep 'em coming!~AmateurMovieReviews.com
(by dane youssef)
I have several other reviews I wish to have published. But I don't quite remember the name of all the ones I ALREADY DID.
Seriously honey, no clue.
How do I know so they don't get published a second time and my unpublished ones get a chance?
I just wanted to know.
Dane Youssef, Any reviews you published will be on this "Submit A Movie Review" page. Additionally, all of the recent ones, all posted in April, would be on the April Archives page. Finally, for those submitted long ago, or long ago enough to be indexed, search for "youssef" using the search box.
Perhaps we should "invite" you to publish, will will allow you to post your original movie reviews directly. Send us an email with your email address if you are intersted in this.
We could also make you a "Featured Reviewer", with your own section in the site, and with a link to the section in the right column of every page under a new "Featured Reviewers" heading. In this case your new reviews would post on your main page in the site, not on the front page, but would be accessible via search, etc. Additionally, if we set up your own section, we would be willing to put your Google Adsense code in all 3 of the display ads. Our code would then only remain in the small links text at the top.
Thanks again for all the great movie reviews.
Benjamin Wood
walrusgod movie reviews
http://www.walrusgod.com
Movie Review: In Bruges (2008)
The dark comedy is a difficult genre to get right. Make it too dark, and it fails to be funny and even supposedly humorous moments are amazingly uncomfortable (The Weather Man), while if you make it too funny, the dark moments seem to undermine the humor and actually work against the movie (The Meaning of Life). Fortunately, In Bruges manages to balance the comedy and darkness in a way that's both shocking and enjoyable.
Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson), two hitmen, have been banished to the medieval town of Bruges by their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), after a hit gone wrong. Ken, armed with tour guides and a zest for something new, is willing to take the trip in stride. Ray, however, is immediately turned off by Bruges' lack of modern amenities, and spends most of his time complaining or making fun of the locals (as well as other tourists).
While a story about hitmen, or more specifically a botched assassination, is not new, the way in which In Bruges is presented is. Martin McDonagh, a theater writer known for his caustic sense of humor and no-holds-barred strategy at writing, infuses the dark story of In Bruges with ample doses of politically incorrect jokes. In the first ten minutes, Ray claims, "If I'd grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me, but I didn't, so it doesn't," and then proceeds in the next couple minutes to insult a group of overweight American tourists, claiming that they can't go on a tower tour because they won't fit up the stairs. Throughout the movie, jokes abound about fat people, "midgets," black people, gay people, people from Bruges, tourists, and just about anyone else that can possibly be thought of. In many circumstances, I would've just gotten up and walked out, but In Bruges manages to paint the crass nature of the jokes in contrast with the characters behind the jokes (mainly Ray and Harry), and tries to show that it is not necessarily maliciousness that creates these jokes, but rather an ignorance about things outside of their own experience.
The subject matter is not the only possibly controversial part of In Bruges. The profanity is plentiful (Ralph Fiennes' character, who only has a major part in the last third of the movie, probably says the word "fuck" over a hundred times), and the violence is fairly graphic in a couple parts of the movie. It's not the profanity of the crassness that ultimately retracts somewhat from the movie, but rather the way the story is put together. On their own, most of the movies' scenes are strong, but sometimes you just have to wonder "Why was that there?" Case in point is a prolonged scene revolving around Ray, Ken, a "dwarf" (don't you dare call him a "midget") named Jimmy, and a couple of prostitutes. Although the scene is funny and disturbing (Jimmy describes in cocaine-fueled detail a war that will soon happen between the "blacks" and the "whites"), but other than revealing the characters' general lack of inhibitions (and Ken's growing annoyance with Ray and the kind of people he hangs out with), the scene seems disconnected from the rest of the movie. The humor, at times, just seems tacked on to liven up otherwise slow sections of the story.
This decision to spice up some areas of the story is a shame, for the humor probably would've been more effective and, in the end, more shocking had it been used sparingly. As is, by the time you reach the amazingly dark ending, your mind has been on such a rollercoaster of humor and darkness that it's tough to fully comprehend whether the movie you've just seen is brilliant or utter shit. Unfortunately, In Bruges' inability to seamlessly integrate it's comedy and it's darkness ultimately means that it's rather somewhere in between.
by dane youssef
"THE BROWN BUNNY" plays out like an Andy Warhol-inspired exercise that was warped into a vanity project. It's like a home movie on a family road trip where nothing is really going on and whoever has the camera is just killing time out of boredom
Some moments are quietly effective and inspire little musings in our heads. But far too much feels like something little that a brown bunny left behind... that's also brown.
Either the bunny or Gallo. He serves as writer, director, producer, composer and cinematographer. I think there's more, but I just don't have time.
The film stars Gallo as Bud Clay, a professional motorcycle racer going on one big long odyssey on the road to his old haunts to rediscover himself.
He will uncover a lot of things along the way, particularly that he is trapped inside a movie that just plain isn't very good.
Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny" is a self-indulgent exercise in futility. Although Gallo may consider this a compliment, I mean the making of the film itself, not this hero's story. So masturbatory, I actually wished I was blind before I was even 1/4 of the way through.
But it could have been. If Gallo had cut more of the scenes (and I don't just mean a few), put some music down on the soundtrack, shown more of the beautiful outdoor landscapes... and less of the interior of the car, Gallo himself just sitting there, preening. Striking a model-like pose in long, long, unbroken shots that feel endless.
Like they're a half-hour long. Gallo is a strikingly good-looking European man, but not nearly so that we can watch him for that long without getting itchy and restless.
You kind of wish the filmmaker (and there's only one--Gallo himself) had conjured up more music and put it on the soundtrack. Some more music might have helped pump up a lot of the stillborn scenes.
My description of the first 3/4's of the film torturous boredom doesn't even begin to do it justice. Gallo keeps the entire "Brown Bunny" moving at the pace of moss growing on a tree or rock.
There's a lot of flat, still dialouge with a lot of dramatic pauses (in a pathetic attempt to pump it up), the acting isn't much (except for Gallo and Sevigny) and the long, unbroken static shots with Gallo is staring off into the distance (which there are more than TOO MUCH of) inspired me to itch so much, I thought I came down with a horrible rash.
Hell, at one point, I actually wanted to throw things right at the screen. No lie, it actually came to mind--I would rather see some of the lowest points of "Howard The Duck" than look at Gallo's god dammed face for three more seconds.
Yes, that's how bad it got.
I know that the cut of the movie that was screened at Cannes (the film was not finished yet, but Gallo was pushed into releasing it) was indefinitely worse. But although I think that much of the editing was for the better (from what I've heard, it was vital), Gallo still needed to cut a few more scenes out of the movie and lay some more music here and there.
Despite talent on Gallo's part and some ambition to tell a worthwhile story, "Brown Bunny" moves at the pace of moss growing, no one throughout the film as a character is particularly intriguing or well-developed, not even Gallo's own character (the exception is Chloe Sevign) and there are too many slow spot where we're just waiting for something, anything to happen.
We don't have any idea exactly what Bud is thinking most of the time (or God help us, Gallo even). Maybe we're supposed to figure it out for ourselves. Perhaps Gallo wants our minds to speculate and wander. Is he leaving the thoughts of this odyssey up to our imagination? Or did he just not think this one through.
I was often bored and shifting back-and-forth in my seat, all throughout (except for the ending). I thought the movie needed more scenes of dialouge, more moments where Bud and those he encounters on his journey interact.
Also, much of the dialouge throughout every scene throughout the film was written is so badly recorded, I couldn't understand a word they were saying. I had to turn on the SUBTITLES just to understand what the hell they were saying.
I'm capable of appreciating a deep, slow-paced movie. But this one isn't just slow, it's d.o.a.
Many European filmmakers know how to make a slow movie work like a chess match or a staring contest, so that even when nothing is happening, it FEELS like Hell itself is breaking loose. Gallo obviously hasn't mastered that himself. He should have seen more of their work and studied it before putting "The Brown Bunny" into effect.
The late, great Stanley Kubrick himself defined and cornered the market on quietly brooding, suspenseful films. I would suggest Gallo pop in some of HIS movies in if he ever wants to make another movie in this vein.
But Gallo himself has admitted he is no filmmaker--or artist. In any sense of the word. He is a hustler. A Midnight Cowboy of sorts. He has acted, modeled, directed, wrote, painted... have I painted enough of a picture myself?
He is a man of innumerable talents. But he has no major. He hawks his skills to whatever at any given moment. He may not be a household name, but those that do know his name... look at him as something a little more than mortal.
Ted Curson, Jackson C. Frank, Vincent Gallo are credited for the musical score. At least Gallo admitted he needed some outside help there.
Reformed supermodel Cheryl Diggs doesn't really provide anything else but filler to kill the static. Hey, maybe she serves a vital purpose after all.
Chloe Sevigny ("Kids" and "Trees Lounge") is such a good actress and has such a touching character, it's a damn crime against cinema she doesn't have more scenes.
She should have been such a more substantial part of the film. She is a part of the fourth act where the comatose "Brown Bunny" almost bursts to life.
At the end of it all, there is the smallest ray of hope. Not just for Gallo's character, but for Gallo. And us. And his film. And what of that brown bunny that sits in the cage? That holds the film's prominent title? What of it? What's it's story?
I would have loved to see this world through it's eyes. What would it have to say? Do you wonder... ?
STEALING HARVARD
danessf@yahoo.com
by dane youssef
Was this supposed a comedy?
Hell, was this even supposed to be a damn movie?
Hell, I have no idea.
It must have been trying to be one.
Watching this one is like looking at a blank screen. It features talented high-caliber name actors, but they never seem to really be acting in a movie. They're just up there on the screen killing time with their monotony.
The plot is basically something for a fun Saturday-night buddy movie. But there's no energy, no spontaneity, no drive... no life. "Stealing Harvard" doesn't even have a heartbeat.
The movie stars the riveting and charismatic Jason Lee ("My Name Is Earl," "Dogma," "Chasing Amy," "Kissing A Fool") as John Plummer, a home-care worker at home health-care corporation called "Homespital," not unlike the hospital founded by Patch Adams.
Lee's engaged to and just looking for a house to settle down and have a family with. His fiancée's father is also his boss.
He's a bland, ordinary "John Everyman" who engaged to a sweet, cheerful woman (somewhat deranged, of course) named Elaine (played by Leslie Mann).
His boss as "Homespital" is going to be his father in law and naturally hates John as any true father-in-law should.
"Have you slept with my daughter?" John practically swallows his whole throat.
He smiles and says with too-friendly a tone, "If you have, I'll give you immunity and that if he have slept with her, he should tell him there and now and they'll let it go."
And John himself goes blank.
Then, looking like some kind of animal caught in oncoming headlights, John wisely lies.
Mr. Warner smiles and responds: "Good! Godammit, that's good! Because if you had, John, I was gonna kick your balls up into your head and let them rattle around in your skull like dice in a Yahtzee cup!"
He and his fiancée Elaine Warner (Leslie Mann from "George of the Jungle" and "The Cable Guy") have managed to scrape up $30,000 to buy a new house. But when his scholarly niece actually manages to get into a college, an old promise that John comes back to bite him in the ass.
This is the third movie directed by former "Kid In The Hall" Bruce McCulloch ("Dog Park" and "Superstar") and it's his third misfire. His films are always dull, flat, incapable of generating any energy.
Or maybe he just refuses to let them. He always has one really flamboyant character to generate some energy into an otherwise lifeless slog. Here, it's Tom Green.
TV shock-Meister (and expired flavor-of-the-month) turned day-actor Tom Green plays his best friend Walter Duffy, a landscaper who has his own business. with an angry, obnoxious personality and a single digit IQ. He's basically just Tom Green if he went into landscaping.
His style as a landscaper is to rip up fresh green, colorful and replace them with old, dead, ugly-looking tacky ones. Well, it's a look, I guess.
At one point, his boss takes him aside and asks him the same burning question that every consumes every father to the core and to the point of hysteria:
How to get a butt-load of money really, really fast? John's comes to his longtime buddy, Walter "Duff" Duffy who suggests... a robbery.
The kind of movie you round up your weekend buddies, go to a bar and have a few and go to see during the late-showing.
The film has all the energy of a 70-year old snail on an overdose of sedatives. Jason Lee, an actor I have the utmost respect for ("Chasing Amy," "Almost Famous" and "Vanilla Sky") who combines the best of Jimmy Stewart and Adam Sandler, is so cheerful and likable, he's boring here.
Now you can say all you want that Tom Green is a bad actor. Let's face it, he is. His Golden Raspberry Award for "Worst Supporting Actor" of 2001 speaks for itself (he won many other "worsts" that year), but his performance gives the film the lion's share of what little energy it actually has. If it wasn't for Green's obnoxious Duff character, we'd all be going to sleep.
The worst part, I'm afraid, is that despite Mr. Green's inability to act, he does not give the worst performance in this movie. That comes from director McCulloch himself as an attorney near the end of the film.
Rest assured, he's not there for very long, but his acting is so bad, I was amazed at how much worse he made the film simply by entering it.
Megan Mulally appears in a supporting role as Lee's sister, who's trailer-trash through and through. She has different sex partners every night... er, hour of the week. She and John have never really been close. They have a moment together. It's more deep and interesting than any other part of the movie.
Chris Penn pops up in a brief bit as a thug who is recruited by John and Duff to pull off a robbery, which leads to a scene that could have been funny, but just plain isn't. Like the rest of movie, it's so dead and flat-lined, you wish there was some doctor to put electrical pads over the chest of the film and go "Clear!" to bring it to life.
Here's a movie that could have been just big-fun disposable Saturday Night weekend entertainment like "Meet the Parents" or "Stuck on You." But this film needed a team of script doctors straight from the ER.
The brief gags from the supporting performers aren't much either. Big names with nothing to work with. John C. McGinley (TV's "Scrubs") is particularly embarrassing as a hard-nosed detective who's hot on their trail and trying to find out who's responsible for that mini-mart stick-up and is not above breaking the law.
He plays an almost completely unfunny version of his hard-ass cop role from "Point Break." I won't even get into the scene involving Richard Jenkins as the man of one of the houses they break into looking for money, suffice to say it didn't make me laugh and it hurt to watch. So does a scene which made me feel bad that John has had sex with Elaine--she cries during cotis. Good Lord.
Boring, when not irritating. It could have been so much better. So much funnier. With a script doctor, a director with some sight and some energy... well, Que se ra.
"There is nothing sadder than wasted talent" ---Robert De Niro as Lorenzo Anello in "A Bronx Tale."
DEUCE BIGALOW: MALE GIGALOW
danessf@yahoo.com
by dane youssef
I know that "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" is completely immune to critical reviews. This movie... no matter what critic, no matter how scathing, how cruel and cold... when it comes to movies like this... the press is powerless.
Really, who cares what the critics say? This is not the newest political biography by Oliver Stone.
Movies like this are just meant to make you laugh.
And this one does. But Definitely not enough.
I was really looking forward to this one. I was in the mood for a "Dumb & Dumber" or "Kingpin" type of comedy and I saw some of the ads for this one and it looked fairly funny. So when it first came out on video, I rushed out to get it.
I've enjoyed most of Sandler's stuff, the Farrelly Brothers movies and just about every movie from the comic film firm of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker. So, surely, I'd like this one.
"Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" is a vomit bag of a movie. Granted, that's more or less what I was looking for... but it was the WRONG kind of vomit.
THE PLOT IN A NUTSHELL: Goofy, homely and pathetic fish-tank cleaner Deuce (who's also a fish specialist) winds up playing house-sitter and "fish doctor" for a luxurious gigolo. Disaster hits (of course) and in a last desperate resort to raise some much needed money very quickly, Deuce becomes a prostitute. And encounters every misfortune possible.
Sounds funny, doesn't it? And in the hands of some genuinely talented writers and directors, yes, it damn well could have been.
But it's handled so terribly, so clumsy, so over-the-top, the humor dies out quickly and at the end, we lose faith and trust in summer gross-out comedies.
And we desperately need those, don't you agree?
There's a running joke involving a hard-ass police detective named Chuck Fowler (William Forsythe) who's more or less an unfunny comic take on Tommy Lee Jones in "The Fugitive." David Alan Grier made his work in "3 Strikes," but having him constantly show his penis to Deuce (which is apparently pathetically thin).
Or at least thin) is just not funny because no one here seems to know how to make it work. Schneider and co-writer Harris Goldberg ("D3: The Mighty Ducks," "I'll Be Home For Christmas") incorporate a butt-load of funny ideas into this script, but no one here seems to know how to make it work.
Director Mike Mitchell does not have the Midas touch when it comes to comedy. Gold, hell, he can't even settle for a bronze PLATING.
Everything is so obnoxious, so gross, so overplayed, it'll give you a headache.
It wouldn't be fair for me to say that there's no laughs to be had throughout the whole movie and it was totally without ANY merit: Oded Fehr is perfectly cast as the experienced smoldering prostitute. And Arija Bareikis is appealing as the love interest. And Schnider occasionally (early on) does deliver a chuckle with his performance.
There's a funny bit where an aquarium salesman appears to be either gay or a pervert and continuously makes double-ententes to Duece's confusion. And comedian actor Edddie Griffin (of whom my mother is a huge fan of) gets some of the movie's only laughs (belly-laughs) as a pimp named T.J.
T.J.:"I prefer to be called a male madame. Wait, that didn't sound right." He gets (probably) the movie's biggest laugh when he explains the prostitute food chain to Deuce, using Antoine's fish to illustrate his point.
And there are some really funny moments to be had early on and with some of the women Deuce services. Hey, you think the kind of MEN who pay for it are scary. Just imagine the kind of WOMEN who'd have to pay for it. But the movie stops trying less than halfway through and feels like it's on auto-pilot. Not just the director, but everything.
Look, I'm gonna say it right here, right now: Schnieder is just not a leading man, pure and simple. He does not have the looks, the height, the physique and charisma to carry a whole picture.
Even though it seems like this is the kind of lead that's perfect for Schnieder (an ugly, goofy, sexually-repellent man who could never get it for free, let alone be able to charge for it), he just can't quite pull this one off. Although this material (which he's partially responsible for could've derailed anyone).
Even if this one contained the best cast in the world, how much good can it do when you're working from a script you found in a condemned, rotting, stinking gas-station men's room on the urine-soaked floor? Look, Rob Schneider is just not the lead, pure and simple. He's the one joke character ("You con dew eeet!") and a supporting actor ("Judge Dredd, "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York," "Surf Ninjas" and "Knock Off"). He's just not a head-liner, pure and simple.
Co-billing, maybe, MAYBE. He should stop writing movies... or at least stop trying to carry them. Maybe a ensemble vehicle would help.
Schnieder was never meant to be an Oscar-contender, I know. But a box-office darling? Now Sandler, I can see, but...
Seriously, really... avoid this one. For good gross-out summer comedies, I recommend the following: "Dumb & Dumber," "Kingpin," "There's Something About Mary," "Scary Movie" and the "American Pie" trilogy. Check out Sandler's "Happy Gilmore," "Big Daddy" and "The Longest Yard."
FINAL WORD OF ADVICE: Avoid anything with Schnieder's name looming over the title.
VERY BAD THINGS
danessf@yahoo.com
"A wild, thrilling savory (acquired) taste. In-your-face, down-your-throat, in-your-stomach and out-your-ass THRILL RIDE"
by dane youssef
Well, now here's one that feels like doesn't just feel like another machine-made piece from off the assembly line. Here is a movie that feels like it has it's own ideas, thoughts, edges and all.
The studio execuives didn't dig their claws into this one, sucking all the nerve and originality out of it just to make it inoffensive and more filt for mass consumption.
All the more making this a move that's really worth seeing for those who don't like movies that just connect-the-dots and paint-by-numbers. In other words, a movie that desperately needs to exist. And be seen.
A bizzare combo protein-shake of black comedy, thriller and horror show, this is one of those Slow Saturday Night cult films that the weirdo clerk behind the counter is always personally recommending for those customers who ae kind of like his pals.
"Very Bad Things" is a film that plays out like a worse-case scenerio. One of those movies that puts a group of relative people in a situation where everything that can possibly go wrong... does. Hopefully, with results that translate to a good movie.
I found the movie to work on multiple levels. As an angry, aggressive, and assertive male-bonding comedy. As a thriller. As a white-knuckle, nail-biting action film. As a nightmare.
Writer/Director Peter Berg remarks he came up with the idea for this movie when he was at a bachelor party and saw the rowdy and over-the-top behavior from a lot of the other guests. These guys were looking for trouble, he said. What would happen if they found it? More than they could handle.
The movie is all-over-the-map, but I like that about it. Berg sets up some cynical suburbanites and their rowdy behavior and puts them in several life-or-death situations, which despite what many say, is thrilling to watch.
Christian Slater gives the strongest performance as the devil-may-care Robert Boyd, a man who seems to have no moral threshold. We never doubt his actions for a second. Slater knows how to play this character as plays him to the hilt.
Daniel Stern plays his usual nebbish. From the "City Slickers" movies, the "Home Alone" movies and all his others, he's appropriately nervous and uneasy--especially after what's occurring right now. There's are massive murders bobbing up and the body count is still rising.
Cameron Diaz is also effective doing an evil turn on the wedding-obsessed loon she was in "My Best Friend's Wedding" as a woman who doesn't care about anything else but having her big day. As far as she's concerned, the guests and the groom are secondary. She nitpicks and she bullies and berates. Many guys see this as the epitome of the woman who's about to have her big day.
Jon Faverau isn't as "money" as he's been in other roles, but maybe that's because he's supposed to be the straight man. He's a little too straight. Too stiff. You kind of wish they had spiced him up some more. He appears to just be in shock and going along with the flow most of the time, like a tag-along.
The movie plays out as a dark comedic thriller and at times a morality tale. What I like the most is the anarchy of the film and the performance of Christian Slater and especially the different ways the men and women in the movie react to him.
Watch for his scene with Tripplehorn when they go one-on-one. The homages to "Good Fellas" and "Reservior Dogs" are cute and memorable too.
Like I said before, this is a must-see for anyone who hates generic, paint-by-numbers movies. If this sounds like your cup of tea (and it damn well should), you're someone after my own heart. Then this is a must-see.
Check it out. Check it out now.
KISSING A FOOL
danessf@yahoo.com
"Formulaic romantic comedy meets dumb sitcom"
by dane youssef
Now here is a movie that wants to be something successful by combining everything successful.
"Kissing A Fool" wants to be too many things. Can you mix successful ingredients and get the best of every world? "Kissing..." tries to be a '40's-style romantic comedy, a modern sex comedy and a sit-com at the same time.
Co-writer/Director Doug Ellin is a friend of Schwimmer's and Schwimmer has gone on and on about exactly how great it feels to shed his Ross-image and play the complete anti-Ross.
Jason Lee stars as Jay Murphy, a sensitive nice guy who's a romance novelist and is recovering from his latest breakup with a model named Natasha (played by TV's "Weird Science" Vanessa Angel). He has a sweet boy-next-door demeanor about him and his real problem is he's too nice and sensitive for his own good.
The worst part about being sensitive is that the world is so full of crap and garbage, people are such @$$h0les that your feelings get hurt too often, too easy, too much. Better to be as cruel as the world or even more so and give worse than you get.
Believe me, I know of what I speak of.
David Schwimmer co-stars as Jay's best friend Max Abbitt, a sportscaster who's a womanizer who plays the field more than the teams reports on. A total creep and always with a dumb expression of his face, a self-satisfied drawl and his own cool-guy salutation: "What' up?" Always a toothpick and a "too cool" drawl dangling from his lip.
Mili Avital is unfortunately given the second-to-weakest developed character in the whole film. She's sweet, perky and photogenic... but nothing else, really. She and Lee could have some great chemistry if only the film allowed it. But this movie is written in a way that's so made-to-order, it's embarrassing.
Bonnie Hunt plays the narrator that is publishing Lee's book. She's also the narrator. Why does this movie need a narrator? The narration actually manages to make the movie even less suspenseful, if that's possible.
And Vanessa Angel, who broke through in TV's "Weird Science" and almost stole "Kingpin," is given the least interesting character. She plays a model and Jay's heartless ex-girlfriend who has dumped him and left him a pathetic neurotic mess. Hers is not a character, but a plot device. The heartless b*tch who is so cruel and horrible to the sweet-hearted hero so more of our sympathy goes to him. I groaned at her scenes.
The movie's dialog is not always plot-driven or cutesy-poo, like most romantic comedies are (although sometimes it is).
Most of the script is written in an observational sit-com kind of way. Like "Seinfeld" or "Mad About You" (or yes, even "Friends"). But the dramatic/romantic scenes are embarrassingly maudlin.
Is it just me or is the entire cast of "Friends" been trying to mimic Kevin Smith?
The Object of My Affection Kissing A Fool Three To Tango
Smith's groundbreaking romantic comedy "Chasing Amy" was revolutionary, insightful... and made big waves for Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Lee and Smith himself. A romantic comedy, a sex comedy and a relationship story. Not merely a love story, but a life story.
Lately, Hollywood has been trying to make Smith-like slick Hollywood movies. So far, they failed terribly. Smith's movies are great because they are daring and avoid formulas. And they master the art of sparkling conversation. This film does neither. Nor do any of the other Kevin Smith-wannabes.
Lee's character has been through the ringer and things are looking bleaker. I really liked him here and felt for him. And identified with him more than I wanted to.
I knew guys like Max in high school, but in the outside world? Who knows? I was kind of like the Lee character myself. In a way, I still am. Too sensitive. Too easily vulnerable. Such a whipping boy. I did understand what Jay meant when he said, "You know, I wish I had your heart. Then I wouldn't have spent so many sleepless nights...."
The plot seems cruel and creepy, yet too sit-com-like at the same time. "Test my fiancée''s fidelity?" Almost seems like a sick ploy to throw Jay & Samantha together, doesn't it?
Oh wait, it is...
Anyone who has ever seen a movie will know what the ending will be. It's almost like waiting for the coyote to fall off the cliff.
Schwimmer's Max Abbit character seems to dumb and dull and annoying to be interesting. He must be sick of playing the same type ("The Pallbearer," "Six Days, Seven Nights" and TV's "Friends"), but this movie will do nothing for him. Still, at least he tried.
I kept (back in 1999 when I first saw this movie) seeing a mad Ross trying to be bad whenever I looked at him, but now looking back on it and putting Ross out of my head (I really dislike the show anyway), Schwimmer does an effective job... however he doesn't really have dimensions and depth.
He's just not an interesting womanizer. Apparently, a lot of Schwimmer fans felt confused by his role here.
It feels like Schwimmer wants to play someone completely different without risking losing his hard-core audience.
Schwimmer does do a much better job breaking typecasting in the forgettable "Since You've Been Gone" and the memorable "Band of Brothers."
NOTE: The movie's title comes from the 1988 George Michael song "Kissing A Fool," which is featured on the soundtrack. It's all too fitting. The movie is brainless. The humor is brainless and so are all the characters.
MEMO TO Hollywood: If you're gonna keep making bad Kevin Smith-knockoffs, at lest quit putting "Friends" actors in them.
HOWARD THE DUCK (1986)
"Do bad movies go to hell? Or someplace worse?"
by dane youssef
Oh, Jesus...
What can possibly be said about this movie that hasn't already be said a thousand times? It almost seems redundant and tiresome to keep shooting such an already over-satirized target... though this movie took moments off my life I will never have back. I watched it simply to see what all the fuss was about.
I understand now...
Ughhhhhh....
Easy target as it may be, I must now express my contempt and hatred. After the severe deforming scar it left on my psyche, it's the very least of my
I actually lost seconds of my life as well, dear children. I actually feel like I'm suffering from motion sickness just THINKING about this movie...
Special FX Master George Lucas disowned this film. I know "Willow" wasn't great... and neither was "Radioland Murders" Or "Star Wars: Episode II"...
But here is a movie... that brings us all together... unifying us... in anger, disgust and hate... and annoyance...
Too stupid and lame to be fun and thought-provoking... takes itself too seriously to be campy fun (even by the standards of schlock '50's sci-fi/action movies--now some of THOSE are fun!) But with none of the charm, innocence, sweetness, much grosser, much raunchier... and special FX that even for their time, look cheesy and crummy. They borderline on rolling static.
Too poorly filmed and horribly shot and embarrassingly acted to a fun family movie, too awkward and straight-faced to even be unintentionally funny...
....and the bestiality thing with Thompson and the duck...
well, there's just NO genre for that, now is there?
This was not a good day for film. It's like a full-length version of "ALF...."
No, wait... I LIKED "Alf." I will not smear his legacy by associating it with this interplanetary bird-flu.
The fact that Howard knows a type of martial arts ("Quack Fu," as he calls it) is hurtfully unfunny.
And this came from Lucas, who's special FX company ILM is the finest on the planet? The effects are phony and ugly and hideous and horribly unconvincing... and that's the last thing we'd ever expect from George Lucas. The special effects look like they're from the '50's, like the very same surving production values from "Plan 9 From Outer Space." Including the acting and screenplay. It's like if Jar Jar Binks got his own starring movie... actually, that might have been better.
It's "all too easy" (to quote the great Darth Vader) to point out what a hideously mismade, tacky as can be blunder. One can go on and on about what a monumental waste of film, time, money and other precious human resources. Hell, look at all the time and effort Lucas' other company, Industrial Light & Magic put into this one. Why didn't they just set it all on fire and dump it all into a cesspool? Would've saved time and cut-out the middle-man.
This little piffle was written by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who are no strangers to Lucasfilm projects, having written several Lucas' projects ("American Graffiti," "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and "Radioland Murders"). They're obviously favorites and friends of Lucas and clearly they wanted to make a special-effects sci-fi extravaganza of their own. And you have to love Lucas for giving them the shot.
But it's a disaster. Willard Hyuck has proved to be necessary and crucial script doctor polishing Lucas' stuff so he seems like a superhuman Greek god of film. But every film he's ever directed is not just bad, it becomes renown for being such a low point in cinema history.
His "catastrophes" include "Best Defense," "Dead People" and this steaming pile. (OK, I'll concede "French Postcards." Hell, I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day).
Kids love taking animal characters, paticularly muppets and the like. Their favorite are the traditional wise-cracking, pratfalling types. Well, I'm sorry to say that Howard lacks humor or charm really of any kind. Honestly, he lacks any kind of interest whatsoever.
Does anyone here remember the scene where Jeffrey Jones as the Dark Overlord in the biker bar... the final showdown where the demons may enter through the portal to our dimension... the scene where Howard brawls with the guy managing the group... all had me shaking my head in disbelief...
I know most of this goddammed review isn't exactly written in a deep, compelling way. But if the filmmakers didn't put any real interest (or much fun) into this one, how can anyone talking about it? Well, maybe at it's expense. That's the best thing you can do with a bad movie.
And for this one, the rolling credits over the musical montage concert at the end... didn't come soon enough.
Former accomplished ballerina-turned actress Lea Thompson has recovered from this abomination thankfully. Though I certainly have not.
It still haunts me...
danessf@yahoo.com
JUST A KISS (2002)
danessf@yahoo.com
"An ambitious, inventive and intriguing.... misfire"
by dane youssef
"Rocky" and "Good Will Hunting" are the best of examples of what happens when out-of-work actors write.
In these situations, they can write themselves work. And with some talent, some and a little luck, these unemployable actors are never unemployed again.
Nervous nebbish actor Patrick Breen wrote this experimental WAY Off-Off broadway (so far off, I believe it didn't play in halfway houses) play "Just A Kiss" about how one single event can completely can change not just the lives of the kissers and their significant others, but people outside their little circles.
A whole chain reaction. One kiss. Between two people who shouldn't be kissing. And then hell breaks loose. Not just the kissers and their significant others. But people outside the circle as well.
A promising idea even though we have seen it before. One person and one desicion. That's all it takes.
Oddball character actor Fisher Stevens is a friend and collaborator of Breen's and makes his directorial debut with this experimental film and the often-dubbed "character actor" does some experimental character direction here with this one.
Perhaps the film is trying to be too many things at once.
Maybe the real problem with "Just A Kiss" is it takes too many targets. Social commentary on love, life and relationships (especially in NYC). A black comedy. An experiment. A drama. A dramedy, perhaps? And if that's not enough, the movie tries too hard to be "hip" and "stylish" and "ground-breaking" with it's technique.
"JAK," which could probably be best described as an "Anti-romantic comedy." What bothers me the most is that it's not a succesful one. But boy, it sure could have been.
Dag (named after a former U.N. secreatry, who's a real dog) is a commercial director who's dating Halley (a woman who saved his life) and living with her.
He's unfaithful quite frequently and seems to be prone to having flings with some of Manhattan's more mentally ill chicks. It's a shame Dag can't be faithful to Halley because she's the sanest woman he can come across.
Maybe it could have had it been... less ambitious? That's not the right attitude. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Should we HATE everybody for trying?
His friend Peter, a commercial actor (who also wrote this film) is having relationship trouble with his mentally unbalanced ballerina girlfriend who has a steady habit of cheating on him with everybody, she also has a married man named Andre (Taye Diggs) who comes over to sleep with her regularly and HE winds up having sex with Halley and bcomes her boyfriend. Peter has a quick one with Colleen, Andre's wife.
And... people start dropping and dying pretty quickly. Couples couple up with other people and the body count rises as people kill themselves or each other.
But now the problems with the movie: A lot has been made about the film's use of rotoscoping. An animation technique that was a favorite (and perhaps partially invented) of X-rated adult animation pioneer Ralph Bakshi. His "adult" cartoons often blended animation with live-action. This movie does the same.
Except with a live-action cast who only "occassionally" animate and do things that are glossed with cartoon frosting.
Why does this movie employ rotomation? Perhaps because the characters are cartoon characters themselves. They're so overplayed in a big, broad slapstick sort of way. Imagine Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny sitting around doing Neil LaBute or Todd Solondz material. It can be cute. For a few seconds. Maybe it's a metephor. Maybe it's supposed to mean this movie is more of a metephor than commentary. Or maybe it's just supposed to be stylish and hip.
But it just doesn't work here, pure and simple.
That is not to say ALL the rotoscoping in the movie is a bad idea. The intro in the title sequence is pretty great. But it just makes the rest of the badness so much more clear.
We hear Dag telling a story where he and Peter are in the back of a cab and speeding through NYC. We see rotomation at work outside illuminating the already-lit Manhattan after-hours club scene. Inside, everything is hopping... and litterally glowing. So are a lot of the people. A woman with a slavic accent screams at a man in a Porsche and makes death threats.
Dag moves towards her as the Porsche drives away. Onlookers think it's a bad idea. Who cares? She's vunerable.
They have passionante animal sex (complete with rotomation highlighting visuals). The morning after they wake up. She turns out to not have an accent. She's American. She sobs, I'm engaged! Dag just decides they should just forget last night, get her things and show her out the door.
Oh, she's crazy. Right before she takes that step out, she smiles and says (in a NEW accent), "She does this kind of s*** all the time." And we see her eye turn a frightening color. She's got multiple-crazy. This is a nice touch. Good little montage there, Steve.
But unfortunatly, this isn't a movie where they're satisfied with the little touches.
I love how diabolical the soundtrack is. This music is truly inspired. And kind of fitting for this movie, I guess. The thing how the movie is that it's so promising, it plays out like a notebook of theories and ideas by a first-year philsophy major.
The cast is great and than more able to play these characters. But the movie is directed like it's farce and slapstick when it's supposed to be serious. It moves at the pace and is styled like an MTV music video--which is all wrong for this material.
One bright spark is Marisa Tomei. Ever since "My Cousin Vinny," she's been typecast into playing that one role. The sexy, sassy and quick-tempered girlfriend who's kind of the whole point-of-sanity for her hair-trigger, on-the-edge boyfriend.
She got the Oscar for the role. Ever since, she has never been allowed to play another role. But in this movie, she has been granted the opportunity.
She plays a mentally unstable and potentially homicidal waitress. She makes small talk with Dag, plays his confidant. She reads fortunes in rings left by cold beer bottles. She reads his. He needs a one-night stand to help him to forget. She throws herself at him. "Leave your number." He does. This only makes things worse in a way I can't quite reveal here.
There's one potentially funny "Seinfeld-ian" moment as Peter makes a cellular call on a plane right before landing. The radio transmission interfears with the control tower. The plane breaks in half and passengers die. Now that really made me laugh.
The tourist class (business and coach) all die horribly whereas the first class skitter across the runway and land safely close to the gates. No here is an inspired bit. With a director able to juggle multiple tones a little better, this could've been a success.
But the actual final product plays out like an exercise or a list or experimentation of different cinematic styles. Which, actually, I guess, it is. Steven has always been a character actor, and now he's a character director. Let's hop his next character is at least somewhat better.
Lets also hope their next collaboration is better. Hell, it'll be easy to top this one. "Just A Kiss"... just doesn't work.
Better luck next time, guys.
Benjamin Wood, We have posted your review of In Bruges to the main part of our site. Thank you for contributing. ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
Dane Youssef, We have now posted more of your reviews, and will have them all posted shortly. Great reviews! Thanks again and keep them coming. ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
(Changed the tag on my blogger profile, so that's why the name appearing on my post has changed.)
Benjamin Wood
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Movie review: Training Day (2001)
Score: 3/5
Looking back on Oscar winning performances is always a difficult ordeal. On one hand, the nuances of a commanding performance become more evident to those who would ordinarily miss them, and the strength of the performance can be heightened simply by knowing the actor won an Oscar. On the other hand, it is also common to try to critique every flaw of the performance, to judge whether this performance was truly as spectacular as the Academy seemed to think it was.
Training Day was Denzel Washington's first lead actor Oscar, and his second Oscar overall (having won for his supporting role in Glory in 1989). And his performance as rogue detective Alonzo Harris is definitely powerful, but it's difficult to shake the feeling that this was a "make up" Oscar, one given to strong actor who had previously been snubbed for past performances. In this case, it seems that the Academy was trying to say "I'm sorry" for giving the Oscar to Al Pacino in 1992 instead of Denzel's performance as Malcolm X.
Overall, Training Day is a mediocre movie that is bolstered by great acting. Denzel's performance was electric, and during the first half of the film is positively attention-grabbing. Ethan Hawke's performance as rookie narcotics cop Jake Hoyt seems pedestrian for the first half-hour of the film, but it seems that his performance gets more powerful as his character slowly starts to take control of the situation he's in. By the end, both actors are carrying the film on their shoulders, trying their damndest to keep the film from failing under the weight of its average plot and sometimes sub-par dialogue. When one of the scenes directly leading to the finale centers around the line "Have you ever had your shit pushed in?", I can't help but wonder how much better this movie would've been with someone who could write decent dialogue.
The main problem with the plot is the conventionality. Jake must stay amazingly oblivious through the first two-thirds of the movie, and seems to ignore blatantly obvious signs that things are amiss. The movie also never really hides the fact that Alonzo is a dirty cop with something to hide, nor does it reveal his true motives with subtlety. Alonzo is portrayed as rotten from the start, and revelations about his character seem to be introduced with a sledgehammer rather than threaded in with a needle. In a movie that deals so much with deception, it's a shame that the characters seem to be revealed halfway through the movie, making the second half an exercise in waiting for the moment when the characters finally realize what the viewers have known for a while.
This plot mechanic may have worked well in film-noir, where those revelations made by the audience are frequently dashed by even further plot development, but Training Day has nothing beneath its surface. It's a straightforward police thriller masquerading as something more. It grabs the viewer's attention with the performances from Washington and Hawke, and yet does nothing with them. It's exciting and tense, yet afterwards seems unnaturally empty. It builds and builds, yet delivers the payoff way too soon, and by the end delivers us plot twists so contrived that they border on being Deus ex Machina revelations, and the ending can only be described as unnecessary and vaguely insulting to viewers who were expecting much, much more. If it had just been a standard action movie, it probably could be hailed as great, as an example of some of the best the genre has to offer. Training Day is not content to be called simply an empty action movie, however. It tries for something more, and completely misses the mark.
On a final note, I can't help but address the fact that Denzel won an Oscar for his portrayal of a crooked, violent, stereotypically boisterous Black cop, instead of Black community leader Malcolm X. I hope not to imply that the Academy made this decision with racist intent, but rather that, in the future, they might need to be a little more careful when doling out condolence Oscars.
Benjamin Wood
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Movie review: American Gangster (2008)
Score: 4/5
A couple times a year, a movie comes out that is unapologetically epic. Generally, these movies also sport the talent of those who are no stranger to movie's of epic stature:
- Ridley Scott, director of cult classics Alien and Blade Runner, the iconic Thelma & Louise, as well as more recent blockbusters Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven.
- Denzel Washington, who won an Oscar for Training Day and should've won an Oscar for his epic portrayal of activist and leader Malcolm X.
- Russell Crowe, who won an Oscar in Scott's Gladiator and has also starred in blockbusters L.A. Confidential, A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man.
Add to these names the up-and-coming talents of Chiwetel Ejiofor and Josh Brolin, and American Gangster was poised from the start to be larger-than-life. However, it was not guaranteed to be good. Of those epic movies that come out every year, as many live up to the hype as fail, and considering the mediocre reception given to Scott's last two directorial efforts (the aforementioned Kingdom of Heaven and the Russell Crowe-led romance/drama A Good Year), I had to approach American Gangster with caution.
Like most epics, American Gangster requires patience, and uses two-and-a-half hours to tell the story of the rise and fall of Frank Lucas (Washington), who became the most successful African-American gangster in United States history. Being thrust into a position of power early on with the death of his mentor, Bumpy Johson (Clarence Williams III), Lucas knew that success wasn't made by simply standing still. Lucas knew the power of drugs in the ghettos where he worked and grew up, and knew that there was an extraordinary amount of money to be found in selling heroin. Traveling to Asia to buy the drugs directly from the source (so as to avoid the complications of using a middle man), Lucas was able to not only achieve wealth for himself, but was also able to raise his friends and family up as well.
Washington, sometimes derided for not having a great range as an actor, is able to portray Lucas' arrogance and charisma perfectly, infusing him with much of the same life with which he infused his portrayal of Malcolm X. Crowe, portraying detective Richie Roberts, is less effective in his role, but is in no way bad. Rarely sharing a scene with Washington, Crowe is often expected to keep our interest even when Washington is not on the screen, and he just doesn't have the charisma to pull it off. Brolin and Ejiofor do solid supporting jobs, although their characters are a little-too one sided to be completely believable.
The surprising story of American Gangster, however, is Ruby Dee's brief role as Lucas' mother. Given only a few scenes to work with, Dee is nonetheless able to make Mama Lucas multi-faceted, both gracious for her son's generosity while fearful of how he earned his vast fortune. It's quite the feat when one is able to give a character with about ten minutes of screentime such character, and is even more impressive considering Brolin and Ejiofor were unable to do the same with much, much more to work with.
American Gangster, like many movies this long, suffers from its own scope, starting to flag near the two hour mark. Scott has never been a favorite director of mine, and many of the complaints I have had about his previous movies (Scott has an uncanny ability to linger too long on some scenes, and to have lead actors who are ill suited for the roles they play) can be applied to this one as well. Gangster probably could've been shorter and still had the same power, and Crowe isn't quite able to perform at the level required for the story. What ultimately raises American Gangster above Scott's previous work is the quality of the story (gangster stories, when told right, have no trouble reeling the audience in) and Denzel Washington, who manages to give one of his best performances, and more than makes up for Crowe's deficiencies.
While not quite as strong as it could have been, American Gangster can nonetheless be considered a success. As long as viewers are able to take it as it is, and don't try to compare it to the more violent (and superior) The Departed, they will most likely be pleased, if not blown away.
Benjamin Wood
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Movie review: The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)
Score: 2.5/5
When it comes to martial arts stars, there is a very short list of those at the top who have been able (or decided to) use their skills to break into Hollywood. Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris (don't laugh, he started his career as a champion martial artist and even trained with Lee) were two of the first. Now, Jackie Chan and Jet Li constitute the top martial artists in movies. Even having said that he's retiring from martial arts, Jet Li has teamed up with Chan for The Forbidden Kingdom.
The story is apparently roughly based on the ancient Chinese story "Journey to the West," while the individual characters (or at least their names) have been taken from Chinese mythology and pulp novels. For a rough synopsis, Jason (Michael Angarano), a young Boston kid, finds an ancient staff in a local Chinese pawn shop which transports him from Boston to a mysterious land. There, he runs into the possibly immortal, always drunk Lu Yan (Chan), who tells him that the staff is to be returned The Monkey King, who needs it to defeat the ruthless Jade Warlord (Collin Chou). On their quest, they run into the young minstrel girl Sparrow (Yifei Liu) and a mysterious monk (Jet Li) .
The Forbidden Kingdom is not overly concerned with the story, delegating it mainly to being told through two or three segments where one of the characters explains what is going on. And, although many action/martial arts movies have dialogue that is nothing special, The Forbidden Kingdom's is especially bad, sometimes even inducing a cringe or two at how bad it actually was. The only good dialogue is the occasional one-liner, uttered mainly by Lu Yan, and the humor is not nearly as prevalent as it should be, considering it is easily the strength of the writing crew. The action is entertaining and fantastical, and serves it's purpose well, being visually impressive and keeping the audience entertained.
Unfortunately, the actors around Jackie Chan and Jet Li are not nearly as charismatic or entertaining as the two stars, and the film suffers in almost every scene they aren't in. The film lags terrifically during the "storytelling" portions, and the centerpieces of the movie, the lengthy action sequences, don't quite compensate for the horrible story pacing and the extremely bad dialogue.
Benjamin Wood, We've now posted your last 3 submitted reviews, Training Day, American Gangster, and The Forbidden Kingdom, to the main part of our site. Thanks for submitting these, and keep them coming! ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
Benjamin Wood
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http://www.walrusgod.com
Movie Review: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Score: 3.5/5
Set in communist Romania, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a film centering around a young college girl's illegal abortion. Yet, the film is as much about friendship and human interaction as it is about abortion. Refusing to tell the audience whether the decision to have the abortion is right or wrong, writer/director/co-producer Cristian Mungiu is more freely able to focus his story on the people involved.
I mean it when I say "people" involved, and not "characters." Indeed, 4 Months is a fictional story, but the film is contructed with the barest of filmmaking flourishes, and ends up feeling as much like a harrowing hand-held documentary as it does a fictional movie. The images are grainy and sometimes almost indecipherable, and there is no music to be found anywhere in the film. Single takes can last for minutes, and a single character may be focused on for the duration of an entire conversation, something that is rare even in many of the cheaper, artier films which 4 Months will almost undoubtedly be associated with.
The acting is superb. Almost every actor is able to naturally flow into the story, and seems like a real person, and not a caricature. Laura Vasiliu infuses Gabita with the detachment and emotional distancing that sometimes comes when having to make a decision as life-changing as having an illegal abortion that could lead to either jail or death. Anamaria Marinca is even better as Gabita's friend Otilia, who has less to lose than Gabita, yet also cares even more and does everything she can to make sure that Gabita comes out of the situation okay. Vlad Ivanov, the illegal abortionist "Mr. Bebe," is believably mysoginistic and easy to hate, which is a testament to the actor's skill as much as it is the nastiness of the character. The lone exception is Alexandru Potocean's performance as Otilia's boyfriend Adi. Adi's character seems entirely peripheral (except to possibly give some insights to Otilia's motivation to so steadfastly help out her friend), and Potocean's acting does nothing to make the character more important.
Ultimately, the film, in many ways, succumbs to the power of the acting and the story. It becomes too real, too intimate, and it is just as difficult to look at the screen as it is to look away. The handheld camera is able to bestow realism, and yet also works towards disorienting the viewer. The story is simple and harrowing, and yet its realism left me wondering what the point of watching this film was. Was it supposed to be about the condemnation of banning abortion? Was it about the ruthlessness of the communist regime which ruled Romania until the 1990's? Was it more about friendship and interactions, and the ways in which we help out those who we are close to, often risking our own wellbeing for the sake of others?
4 Months might be about all of those things, or none of them. The problem I had, however, was that the only thing I could think of while exiting the theater was how uncomfortable I felt, and how I doubt that I will ever be able to sit through watching this film again, and I believe that many of the people who see it will feel the same way. Whether that's a good or bad thing, however, is ultimately up to each person to decide for themselves.
Benjamin Wood
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Movie Review: Music & Lyrics (2007)
Score: 4/5
Hugh Grant has gotten a pretty bad rap when it comes to his on-screen persona. Most of this criticism comes, and perhaps rightly so, from the fact that Grant acts almost exclusively in romantic comedies, and those movies that weren't romantic comedies failed miserably (I can say that, at the time of this writing, I have not seen a Hugh Grant move that was not a "romcom"). However, to immediately dismiss an actor for knowing his strength and sticking with it has always seemed harsh to me. Hugh Grant is no Johnny Depp, but he's aware of this, and he can generally make the movies he's in at least likeable.
Drew Barrymore, similarly, has also seemed to stick with romantic comedies, although she has attempted to branch out a little more (Donnie Darko and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind being the two that stand out for me), but the past few years have seen an abundance of romantic comedies, and some very bad ones at that. In fact, I'd even go far to say that I enjoy Hugh Grant much more than Drew Barrymore when it comes to the romantic comedy...but that could be my penchant for caustic sarcasm rearing its ugly head.
Music & Lyrics, therefore, is probably going to be a "love it or hate it" type of movie. Grant plays former pop star Alex Fletcher (ironically of a band named simply "Pop!"), who has been reduced to performing at county fairs and class reunions in front of screaming middle aged women. He finally gets a break, however, when his agent, Chris (Brad Garrett), tells him that current superstar Cora Corman (newcomer Haley Bennett), being a huge fan of Pop when she was a child, wants Alex to write her new hit song. Alex finds himself in a bind, for he was never much of a lyricist, and needs to find a partner to put words to his melodies. That's where Sophie Fisher (Barrymore), the girl who waters his plants, enters the picture. Sophie has a natural talent for writing poetry, and after persistent pleading from Alex, she relents and decides to help him write the song for Cora.
So far, seems somewhat bland, doesn't it? Music & Lyrics doesn't shine because of the plot, but rather what the movie is able to do with the plot. The opening music video for Pop!'s smash hit, "Pop goes my heart," is pure eighties-throwback-goodness. Grant and Barrymore have great chemistry, and both of them seem to be on their A-game for this movie. Grant's deadpan one-liners are as strong as they've been in any of his movies, and Barrymore plays off of them very well. The main weakness of the movie, besides the conventional plot, is Bennett, whose Cora is bland and annoying. Although a satire of the vapid personalities of modern pop stars, the scenes with her seemed to drag the energy down to unmanageable levels, and neither Grant or Barrymore are able to recover it until she has left the screen.
Just because movies are derivative does not mean that they are automatically bad. Yes, Music & Lyrics' story plays out like any other romantic comedy, but has the good fortune to have better than normal dialogue, and great performances from its two leads. It had no pretense of being a "great" movie: no Oscar hopes, no strive to be remembered as one of the best movies of 2007. And that's okay. I don't go enter a romantic comedy hoping to be blown away. I go in hoping to laugh, hoping to have an enjoyable 90 or so minutes, and come out smiling. On that front, Music & Lyrics is a definite winner.
Benjamin Wood; We've now posted your last 2 reviews to the main page of our site. Thank you and keep them coming! ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
Benjamin Wood
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Movie Review: Iron Man (2008)
Score: 4.5/5
Superhero movies have, for the last five or ten years, become a consistent blockbuster summer release. There tend to be at least three or four every year, and for the most part, their quality has been suspect, relying heavily on CGI action sequences while sacrificing engaging stories. The one that seems to defy this is Batman Begins, which succeeded most likely because of Christian Bale's tremendous performance as Bruce Wayne and the fact that director Christopher Nolan played to his strength, which is making dark, brooding cinematic experiences. Iron Man, at first glance, seems to be pandering in the normal Superhero direction, going for action and the occasional slapstick, while constructing only the skeleton of a story around its special effects. When one looks deeper, however, it becomes obvious that Iron Man is much more than a by-the-numbers movie, and definitely sets the bar high for the rest of the summer blockbusters.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is an engineering genius, graduating from college while most kids were still in high school, and being hailed as the person who "wants to save America." He inherited his father's weapons company, and has turned it into a multi-billion dollar company. He is also a hopeless womanizer and a borderline alcoholic, and ditches award ceremonies to drink and gamble at a casino. Things change, however, when he is taken hostage after a weapons demonstration in Afghanistan, and he is forced to use his amazing intelligence to escape.
Even under the constant watch of his captors, Stark builds a weapon-laden suit of armor, which he locks himself into, and proceedes to burn down the rebel base where he was kept at. Returning home, Stark has a newfound sense of duty, and vows to stop making weapons and instead divert his company's resources to helping people, not killing them. This decision is not received well by many people, most notably Stark's business partner Obadiah Stane (a wonderfully creepy Jeff Bridges) and his military commander friend Jim "Rhodey" Rhodes (Terrence Howard). Stark, however, doesn't care, and proceeds to build a more sophisticated robot suit than the rudimentary one he built while held hostage, and devotes the use of this suit to helping those in need (his first "mission" is to save an Afghani village that is being assaulted by insurgents).
Downey plays Stark with the exact right mix of cynicism, sarcasm, and new-found activism that the character demands, and is not for a minute unbelievable in this role. In fact, if Iron Man does spawn sequels (which the movie hints at constantly), it could easily serve to resurrect Downey's career and serve to silence those that thought his best days were before he nearly ruined himself with drugs and alcohol. In fact, Downey's career mirrors Stark's in many ways, and for that reason lends even more credibility to the role.
Bridges plays Stane effectively, although his character is fairly one-sided, and Howard does a serviceable job as Rhodes. More impressive is Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Stark's assistant Pepper Potts. She is devoted to her boss, and goes out of her way to help him, although it's clear that she harbors a crush on the eccentric billionaire and is somewhat hurt by his constant womanizing. Paltrow, an actress I usually find myself underwhelmed with, plays the role extremely well, and gives the second best performance in the movie.
Director Jon Favreau manages to capture the essences of all of these characters while also maintaining the intense action sequences and momentary slapstick diversions. No area of the film seems shortchanged, although sometimes the action sequences linger a little longer than was probably necessary. Really, the only major faults I can find with the film is that it felt long (it probably could've been just as effective if it had been shortened by about 15 minutes), and it doesn't always attempt to break completely free of the traditional superhero movie box, although it definitely plays at the very limits allowed by the genre.
Rarely are superheroes allowed to have fully fleshed out characters, and even more rarely are they allowed to really grow as characters outside of those moments where the plot demands that they do (generally when a close friend is killed or their love interest is taken hostage), and Iron Man manages to have both in spades. Stark's character constantly transforms throughout the movie, growing and changing in response to the events at hand in a way that would be expected of (gasp!) normal people. It, along with Batman Begins, shows how good a superhero movie can be when the hero is not an alien (Superman) or a mutant (Spider-man, the X-Men, the Hulk, etc), but is rather a person who just happens to possess great natural talents. It allows for them to be great heroes while keeping their humanity intact, and makes for a much more enjoyable cinematic experience.
Oh, and stay after the credits for one of the best bonus scenes ever tacked on to the end of a film. Honestly, it's not to be missed, and left me giddily anticipating a possible sequel to Iron Man.
Benjamin Wood; We posted your review of Iron Man to the main part of our site. Thanks and keep 'em coming! ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
Supersize Me
When is the last time you went to McDonalds, and just dug right into a large fries, slurped a shake, or took a big bite from a Big Mac? How about ninety times in one month? We all know that junk food is bad for us and that fast food is one of the worst culprits. When two young girls tried to sue McDonalds for making them obese Morgan Spurlock asked: Is McDonalds making us fat? So he went on a thirty day McDiet to find out. What he found out is what we already know: McDonalds is not good for us. However the way in which he did it is what makes the film so compelling.
Spurlock begins by covering all his bases, and seeks the treatment of three doctors and one nutritionist; even though his vegan girlfriend looks on in disgust. Despite the raw evidence that McDonalds is unhealthy and just the basic facts Spurlock embarks on “Every eight-year-old’s dream”, and after making it over the three day hump he’s well accustomed to his McDiet. He quickly starts to gain weight and experiences other health difficulties including a “whoosh feeling in his penis”, but did we expect him to remain completely healthy? Despite warnings from all his doctors to stop he sticks with it.
Spurlock has received criticism that his documentary is unrealistic. Such as, spending excessive amounts of money on a single meal, eating a lot in a single meal, or guzzling down so much soda! The average American does not eat that much. However, we have to ask ourselves would we have a reaction otherwise? Would Spurlock’s diet have hit home, with the same impact? The answer is no. Americans are ignorant people and we like our junk food. We are going to try and get away with as much calories in our diet as we can rationalize in our minds. So, it is necessary for Spurlock to throw a curveball of this nature.
He has also been criticized because he only ate McDonalds. Well let’s think about it. Spurlock passed several McDonalds on his way, and there are more McDonalds than several other fast food chains combined. Plus, which fast food chain spends the most on luring its customers in? McDonalds again. So, it is necessary that Spurlock singles out the biggest bully in the crowd. In doing so he grabs our attention as the audience.
His documentary is not completely based on his McDiet. Spurlock also discusses the horrors of school lunch programs. Most of the ones he went to are unhealthy so he reveals to us how it is possible to eat healthy in school, based on the lunch program of an Appleton, WI school. In doing this he reveals the ignorance of American youth. Apparently curly fries are a vegetable, and it is extra good accompanied by cola. All the while the adults, that are supposed to be promoting good health simply turn away because it will cost too much to change it. This situation, along with the growing realization that America is a fast food nation shocks us all.
Throughout the course of the month Spurlock undoubtedly gains weight, amidst other serious problems concerning his health. He gives America the swift kick in the tail that we need. Sure, some of us will go on living our lives normally, but maybe some of us will not. Watch Spurlock’s documentary and see first hand his transformation; perhaps it will inspire a different transformation of your own.
Rebecca P; Thanks for submitting your review of Supersize Me. We have now posted this to the main part of our site. ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
Benjamin Wood
walrusgod movie reviews
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Movie Review: Speed Racer
Score: 3/5
Speed Racer is a movie that, despite having a slew of flaws that are generally fatal in the movie world, manages to be highly enjoyable, although never as great and important as it thinks it is.
Let's get the bad out of the way first, and trust me, there's plenty of it:
- Speed Racer's story is so basic and contrived that it's not only difficult to take seriously, it's also difficult to even muster the energy to pay attention to. In short, it's the story of phenom race car driver Speed Racer (Emil Hirsch), who is trying to follow in the footsteps of his equally talented brother Rex Racer (Scott Porter), who died in a mysterious car crash years ago. After winning a big race, Speed's parents, Pops (John Goodman) and Mom (Susan Sarandon), are approached with a deal from slimy race car owner Royalton (Roger Allam). If you've ever watched a sports movie, you basically know how the story is going to end up, and The Wachowski Brothers do nothing new with the formula. There's also a sports corruption subplot that centers around the enigmatic Racer X (Matthew Fox), but it follows the same cliched formula as the main plot
- The acting in Speed Racer doesn't fare any better, with most of the actors operating in one of two modes: Sleepwalking (Emil Hirsch, Matthew Fox) and gross overacting (John Goodman, Roger Allam, almost all of the other race car drivers). The only person who manages to overact without seeming distracting is Christina Ricci as Speed's girlfriend, Trixie, but perhaps it only seems palatable because of how bad the rest of the acting is in the movie.
- The movie is also directed with such an uneven pacing that it's distractingly face paced one minute and then "I can barely stay awake" slow moments later. The Wachowski Brothers have never been known as expert directors, but Speed Racer is easily their worst directorial effort yet (and only The Matrix Revolution's horrible plot keeps it being their worst overall movie).
And yet, despite all of those flaws, Speed Racer is a special effects tour-de-force, and manages to fit more colors into a 2 hour movie than would be found in a ten hour Crayola documentary. Although initially disorienting, the rapid-fire nature with which the special effects are presented makes the racing sequences in the movie intense and enjoyable.
Although bearing relatively few similarities to the anime it was based on, Speed Racer turns bad dialogue and a by-the-numbers plot and transforms them into not only an exciting movie for children, but one that can keep the parents and adult anime-nerds entertained as well. The kids will enjoy the bright colors and over-the-top silliness, while parents can enjoy laughing at the ridiculous plot and get a kick out of just how sophisticated special effects can be. The visual wizardry in Speed Racer makes the first Matrix movie look relatively tame, and for that alone I can recommend at least giving Speed Racer a chance. By all means see the vastly superior Iron Man first, but if you still have free time afterwards, turn your brain off for a couple hours and bask in the energy of Speed Racer.
Benjamin Wood; We have just posted your recent review of Speed Racer to the main part of our site. Thanks and keep 'em coming! ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
Super Size Me
Welcome to McDonald’s, how may I help you? The answer to this question is varied. Out of the millions of Americans who journey to the highly prophesized golden arches some may order a hamburger, others a McChicken, and still others the fabled Big Mac. And would they like fries with that? Of course they would. Would they like something to drink? Most likely they want some sort of soft drink or sugar loaded, caffeine filled refreshment. Would they like to super size their order? They will super size it in a heartbeat. In his documentary Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock goes where many people have gone before. He goes to McDonald’s. At first glance, making the not so strenuous journey to the closest McDonald’s seems quite simple. There are four McDonald’s per square mile in Manhattan. And even if it just is not in his schedule to walk to the restaurant, he can always get it delivered, for free. To many Americans this seems like a paradise. McDonald’s everyday for every meal, for one entire month seems too good to be true, or is it? Spurlock’s trips to McDonald’s are meant, not to bring more people to McDonald’s, but to keep them out. He questions the highly accessible fast food diet and puts it to the ultimate test; he will eat only McDonald’s and film himself while doing so.
Please, pay at the first window. At first glance Spurlock’s documentary might seem a bit over the top. He spends more money on his food than a family of three would. But to achieve the ultimate effect, he has to go a bit overboard. Spurlock risks his own health, and life, to show the public the deadly affects of fast food. His message is initially interpreted as a call to stop eating fast food, but it is much more than that. Spurlock effectively derides fast food, no exercise, and finally the people who purchase the food themselves. These are the ones who give the fast food companies the money to stay in business; they encourage the production of unhealthy food.
It is true that Spurlock’s very documentary can be at times a bit disgusting. He vomits in the parking lot after his first gorge on McDonald’s food. He shows a stomach stapling. He also slightly crosses a line by showing obese people at random intervals throughout the film and not disclosing why they are obese. The reasons can be inferred, but there may be other problems that the audience is not made aware of. It is also mildly nauseating to watch Spurlock eat his gigantic meals and then feel sick afterwards. This documentary is not for those who easily feel nauseous. Another criticism of Super Size Me is that Spurlock seems to have a blatant disregard for his own health. When the nutritionist recommends that he should be taking aspirin and vitamins Spurlock does not seem concerned. He replies that he can only take those if McDonald’s sells them, which of course they do not.
Here is your change; your food should be ready in a few seconds. Even with the somewhat disgusting scenes, Spurlock makes many valid points. He centers his attack on McDonald’s, but then he expands it to American’s lifestyles and the way the fast food industry functions. Spurlock makes it loud and clear from the beginning that McDonald’s, as well as other junk food industries, choose children as their targets. Children are the most easily influenced, and therefore the logical target for fast food companies looking to earn billions of dollars. Advertisements are their key weapon. Fast food companies advertise to children by strategically placing their commercials in time slots where children will see them. Spurlock presents the fact that fast food and junk food companies spend hundreds of times more money on advertising than health food companies. These unhealthy companies believe that if they can make children their consumers, that they will have these same people as consumers for their entire life. Spurlock reveals the sad fact that through the millions of advertisements that children see, they will be more likely to recognize Ronald McDonald than Jesus or President Bush. Marketing to children is a favorite of fast food companies, especially McDonald’s, whose Happy Meal is targeted at children. A new action figure, a little stuffed animal, or a colorful new plastic gadget can be obtained. A hamburger or chicken nuggets and fries accompany the highly coveted new toy. The children will eat the unhealthy, calorie packed meal if only to obtain the toy they so desire. The playlands at McDonald’s are meant to draw the children in, and keep them there to eat. Spurlock explains that especially in low-income areas, these playlands may be the children’s only chance at fun, fun they desire with a chocolate sundae on the side.
Please, drive to the next window to pick up your order. Spurlock makes it clear in his documentary that exercise and physical activity are important. He restates that every person should get at least thirty minutes of activity each day. He then visits a school and reveals the shocking revelation that many schools just do not have the money to provide this time for physical activity. Maybe people should spend less money on fast food and more on improving schools. In attempt to show the effects of a lack of exercise, Spurlock limits his physical activity. Everyday he can only walk a certain distance, much of which is used on his walks to McDonald’s.
In an effort to show that Americans do still have hope to improve, Spurlock offers some alternatives to the fast food diet. He contrasts the unhealthy, government provided, school lunch food with a lunch program in Appleton, Wisconsin that provides healthy all natural lunch food. Contrary to what most people would think, this healthy alternative costs the same, or even less, than the unhealthy food. Is there a reason the schools serve unhealthy foods when all natural foods are available at comparable prices? Spurlock makes it clear that there should be a switch to healthier foods. To provide his audience with another alternative to fast food, Spurlock introduces his girlfriend. She is a vegan. She appears to be happy with her healthy diet, but she can get annoying at times, which detracts from the appeal of alternative diets that Spurlock suggests.
Super Size Me achieves its goal of drawing attention to the growing issue in America, obesity. Spurlock then finds an easy target to place the blame; he chooses McDonald’s because it had recently been sued for serving its unhealthy food. Spurlock argues that the fast food companies are to blame, as well as their advertising techniques, and the American lifestyle in general. He wants people to think about what they eat, especially after they see the effects that fast food had on Spurlock’s body. When next asked if they should super size it, he wants Americans to think twice. Do they really need all those extra calories? Or just as important, do they even know what a calorie is? Many do not as Spurlock proves in his documentary. Spurlock seeks to educate the public on the horrific affects of a fast food diet, and he succeeds in doing so. He also succeeds in offering plausible ways to prevent obesity and improve lifestyles. Super Size Me offers a somewhat biased, but basically true version of the American fast food diet, and once people see the documentary they may think twice about going to McDonald’s or eating junk food. Thank you for choosing to eat at McDonald’s, have a nice day.
Let’s see here, from the $9.00 menu we can select: Gore with an Extra Side of Guts, Romantic Love Story Glimmering with Sap, Lough Out
Loud Comedy with Slapstick Antics, or 30 Day Fast-Food Binge Documentary Complete with Disgust and a Super Size of Bias. We could try that documentary on for size, or we could spend our dollars worth at America’s and the globe’s favorite stop for a tasty treat: McDonalds. Morgan Spurlock’s documentary Super Size Me analyzes if the addictive chain is indeed the cause or at a least possible McBlow to the hearts and livers of Americans. Not your typical run-of-the-mill documentary, Spurlock personally subjects himself to health dangers to determine if McDonalds is entirely less inviting than constant Big N’ Tasty’s, freedom fries, and secret sauce. Playing off rumors of Americans of the famous establishment and subjective insights, Super Size Me provides a tasteful watch with a meaty center, but lacks the finishing sesame bun.
Sassy Spurlock sets out on a 30-day food-fest quest to determine whether eating McDonald’s food religiously could cause any major health failures, or even if it could be done. After all, it is clear that Spurlock is a health-nut. Perhaps influenced by his granola girlfriend, Morgan Spurlock starts the starvation from real nutrients with a hand wounded. This is the one of the first biases of many that nearly overpowers the piece. This clearly contrasts with the heart of his argument: McDonalds is a vicious cycle of addiction and fast acquiring fat that is polluting our nation of space. After all, that is indeed what Spurlock knew he would find, a weight gain within his 30-day period of feasting. Within those few weeks, Spurlock managed faithfully gain over twenty pounds. Ridiculous! Of course, not many of McDonald’s happy customers are served three times a day, and usually over $10 a meal, it is no doubt that people gain weight from the overindulgence in deliciousness. Despite an early weight gain, Spurlock is determined to accolade the cashiers when a Super Sized question is taken from the fryer.
The supersized meals from McDonalds were always bought if the magic question was asked for Morgan. He most likely figured that the majority of people who regularly bought from the manipulative McDonalds would agree to a larger meal for a bit more change. Simulating the day of a strict fast food dieter, our leader shows the vicarious cycle McDonalds can package when consuming continuous product. In fact, in Day 2 of Spurlock’s experiment, he literally purges the supersized meal, as if he is disgusted beyond all belief. Clearly over exposed, the act of vomit is clearly zoomed to cameraman perfection, and the crowd feels the nausea. Borderline on symbolism, the purging could represent not only the body’s but the mind’s rejection of the nasty stuff, but instead is a poor representation of what McDonalds can do to person.
That is the fact of the matter. Morgan Spurlock focuses on what McDonalds can do to you. But what can you do to McDonalds, or even what can you not have to do with McDonalds? Spurlock tries something that nutritionists and doctors advised him to omit. Yet he continues to prove his point when his liver is comparable to a drunken sailor. He does express the American way to eat: quickly running in, no, driving aside to pick up cheap mystery meet and a frothy soda. The reality of Super Size Me is clearly biased as each day is depicted, but his message remains true. American does have an abusive relationship with fast-food chains. The grab us, link by link, one by one, until some parts of a nation are obese in one of four people. Spurlock had something to say, but the hype and argument was overpowered by too many claims and meals.
In Morgan Spurlock’s documentary Super Size Me, he addresses the new obesity epidemic that is crippling many Americans. Spurlock focuses on the many causes for these new obesity trends and sheds light upon America’s commitment to healthy lifestyles, or lack there of. Additionally, Spurlock throws around the idea of where the line is drawn between corporate responsibility and individual responsibility towards America’s larger than life society. Recently, the media and American’s have been lambasting fast food restaurants, such as McDonalds, for their food being so fat ridden that it is the direct link to America’s growing obesity problem. McDonalds has gone on record as stating that their food can be a part of a healthy diet. In this documentary Spurlock challenges McDonalds balanced diet assertion by committing himself to a 30 day McDiet. Spurlock attempts to find out just how damaging a diet completely built around Big Macs and Fries might be. The results are truly astounding.
Underlying Spurlock’s radical McDiet is the root of his argument, America’s failure and unwillingness to commit to a healthy and nutritional lifestyle. Throughout Spurlock’s documentary he examines why 60% of all Americans get little to no exercise each day. A prime excuse given by many of those Spurlock interviewed was that there is no time for exercise when juggling a job, a family, and an American obsession with driving. Two overweight mothers stated that their exercise is chasing around their children all day. Another reason given by Spurlock for so many inactive Americans getting little exercise is due to the food one in four Americans eat everyday, fast food. Spurlock experienced first hand the ill effects of the delicious Quarter Pounder: shortness of breath, laziness, and fatigue. With so many Americans suffering from their McDiets, as Spurlock did, it is clear why America holds the title for the fattest country of them all. Who could compete with us, it’s the American way, bigger the better.
Furthermore, Spurlock uses his documentary of epic proportions to shed light upon the school systems and how they are influencing a tubby society. Spurlock truly believes that change towards a healthier America has to start at the bottom, with the future of America, the children and teenagers. The school systems argue that they are offering the best nutritional education possible for their students. Making students aware of the dangers but still allowing them to make their own choices in the cafeteria. This is where Spurlock reveals the discrepancies between what the schools are preaching and how the students are responding. Spurlock travels to a school in Illinois that reveals a student body that instead of buying a banana and simple sandwich for lunch is rather purchasing the crunchy, dangerously cheesy Cheetos along with a side of golden brown, fresh out of the fryer, French fries. Spurlock shows how teaching our young students to make healthy lifestyle choices but still flaunting fattening snacks in front of their face is only confusing them not benefiting them.
Along with not promoting healthy eating habits Spurlock reveals how schools are also failing to promote physical activity. In another visit to a school in Illinois, Spurlock examines how school budget cuts are cutting into the physical education of students. In this school students are only required to attend physical education for 45 minutes per week, even when the FDA advises that an individual receive 30 minutes of exercise each day. Schools that outwardly express their commitment to teaching students about well-rounded lifestyles are not carrying out their promises, but rather are feeding the fire.
Many McDonalds advocates say that many Americans have the choice at McDonalds to choose healthier options. But is this really true? With McDonalds introducing their new premium salads and fruit yogurts they really are attempting to offer to the public “better choices”. On the contrary in Spurlock’s documentary it is shown that a premium salad has just as many calories as a Big Mac and yogurts cram in as many calories as a strawberry sundae. McDonalds truly is committed to creating a healthier, fitter America. Now with the choice of having a Big Mac or a Big Mac Salad at least we are eating healthier titles. We Americans can now sleep easy at night, unless sleep apnea gets us first.
Morgan Spurlock delivers many valid points throughout his documentary Super Size Me but at what point does his experiments and arguments become so over the top that they lose their validity. Spurlock definitely walks a thin line, as he commits himself to McDonalds for every meal through a thirty-day span to reveal its ill affects. I would assume that there are few people that actually eat fast food for every meal. But how far off is Spurlock, the medical data doesn’t lie. Spurlock’s experiment is very swayed and extreme, but not very far off from the fact of the matter; America has an insatiable appetite for fast food and corporations like McDonalds are willing to keep feeding us until society decides enough is enough. Spurlock delves into many of these ideas, and asserts that responsibility resides in both society and the corporations to work together, in order to small fry our behinds.
Whaley attempts therapy onscreen
by dane youssef
danessf@yahoo.com
Frank Whaley's "Joe The King" has been called by the filmmaker himself "semi-autobiographical." And such a story about so much pain and misery just makes to almost want to see it just to see how this guy got where he is today.
It so damn downbeat, you have to ask yourself, "How does all this turn out? This poor little guy... Is there a happy ending?"
Like a lot of actor-helmed vehicles, this one is loaded with big name walk-ons. They work, but at the same time, they disappoint. None of these characters are on the screen enough to make enough of an impact.
"Joe The King" is chock-full of trite and truths to life--the lead that seems to be born into the hard-luck life, the abusive, alcoholic loser father, the weak-willed, weak-spirited, whimpering mother who doesn't care if her husband pounds on her kids as long as he doesn't pound on her, the guidance counselor who's all thumbs--aren't they all? Not just a cliché' in movies, but what guidance counselor has ever been worth in damn in life? Was yours?
There is a moment where it is "Careers Day" in an elementary class where it is revealed that Joe's dad is the janitor. He is ridiculed an lashes out (very mildly) at an obnoxious little teacher's pet and the Dickensian teacher drags Joe and spanks him in front of the entire class. The knife is further pushed and twisted when she makes the whole thing personal by muttering angrily so he can hear, "Just like your father..."
Whaley is clearly dealing with old wounds and knows how to use them so they feel fresh and make you cringe (or worse, relate).
The movie is full of downbeat moments and times where life shows it's ugly face. It seems as if God is very skillfully finding ways to torture Joe... and then skewering it further in smaller ways. In a moment of desperation, Joe attempts to do what his parents can't seem to... save the day.
Joe is not only starving, he descends into petty theft. Then takes it even further. He attempts to dodge his father's outbursts and reach out to his brother, who is trying to eke his way into the "in-crowd" and doesn't want Joe's jinx streak to rub off on him, even to the point of at one point getting out of bed and going to go sleep the closet to get away from his brother's sad vibes.
But "Joe The King" is not just one long crying jag. There is humor, sweetness and tenderness. People may differ about the nature of the ending, but in the strangest, saddest way, it offers some hope.
The children swear in the tradition of "Stand By Me," the child-abuse or disregard in the tradition of "Radio Flyer" and the atmosphere is reminiscent of many other films about working-class life. Unlike "That '70's Show" or "Detroit Rock City" or "Dick," this movie doesn't feel like it belongs solely in the era. It takes place in the 1970's to be sure, but a story like this feels timeless.
Lead actor/title character Noah Fleiss gives one of the best performances he's probably ever given, although how many movies has he really made? And how many of them really have allowed him to shine? This is definitely the one.
Val Kilmer gives a just plain awesome turn as Bob, Joe's stinking, deadbeat drunk of a dad who's one of the biggest problems in Joe's life. He owes money to more than half the town. He dodges his creditors like bullets, drinks himself into a pathetic stupor and lashes out monstrously at his family.
Kilmer, known for playing dazzling roles and pretty-boy parts, puts on a great deal of weight and shows nastier edges that he has since "The Doors."
Since writer/director Whaley and Kilmer first worked together in that film, Whaley obviously saw how powerfully Kilmer could play a violent sadist, always under the influence of drugs. Kilmer has had trouble getting working because he's so damn difficult to work with, so the two were clearly doing each other favors. Another pal of Whaley's, Ethan Hawke plays a friendly, but utterly useless guidance counselor who hopes to get Joe out of his slump at school. And because it's Joe, he makes things a lot worse.
Karen Young is adequate in a brief supporting part as Joe's mother. And Hispanic wunderkind John Leguizamo, a natural comedic talent, takes a more dramatic turn here as a flamboyant busboy in an extended cameo at the local rat hole diner where Joe is working illegally. When the s**t hits the fan and Joe is at the center of it, it doesn't really come as a surprise that he's the only one who knew all along.
Whaley seems to capture the flavor for this kind of working class life and he seems to bring out the best in child actors, as well as his more distinguished adult friends and peers. He also sends us back to the era without hitting us hard with period music on the soundtrack from the day.
I myself was kind of surprised that this screenplay won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award (along with Audrey Well's "Guinevere"). The Open Palm nomination for the film itself, that, I can see. The dialouge is altogether realistic, without being nessicarily sharp or too memorable. And the characters are believable without being too fresh.
Writer/director Whaley does an effective job of capturing the atmosphere of this Upstate New York working-class life and bring out the best in child actors and his big-name celebrity walk-troughs.
Whaley has said that much of the story is inspired by the childhood of himself and his older brother, Robert Whaley, who is featured on the soundtrack and has a bit part.
Good ol' Frank himself also has a directors cameo walk-on as one of many who the deadbeat Bob owes money to. He makes a personal house call, and he seems madder than the others Bob owes money to. He acts as a professional collector--the leg-breaking kind. He seems ready to kill Bob and after it's over, the sins of the father are, once again, visited on the son.
So this is the Whaley E! True Hollywood story. More or less.
There is a painful sadness that runs all throughout "Joe The King," and when you look at Frank Whaley, the roles he's taking on and heard him just talk as himself, you kind of see there's something here that Whaley has in him which he brings to his roles.
Whaley deserves extra kudos for getting as far as he did after being dealt such a bad hand. A backhand, even. What of Joe? What of his friends, family, enemies, acquaintances? If you drink in this one, you can't help but wonder...
"Joe The King" doesn't break any new ground whatsoever. But this is a slice-of-life film, and while technology, trends, art, ideas and ideals are constantly changing, some things remain trite and true no matter what era or part of the universe you're living in. Whaley chooses some appropriate music for his movie and some nice visuals.
"Joe The King" is kind of an acquired taste, like many coming-of-age stories. It's more of a confessional than anything else. If you've lived a life somewhat like this, or in this part of the world or in this enviorment remotely, you'll understand...
"P.S."
One Of The Best Of 2004. The Cast Sparkles and Beams.
by dane youssef
danessf@yahoo.com
"P.S." is one of those rare movies that tells a story which feels too good to be true--the kind that's escapist-fantasy and only seems to happen in movies and in our most desperate dreams.
But then again, sometimes we see and here that it does happen in real life. Once in a blue moon. It's every great success story. Like movie-star Lana Turner getting discovered when working in a pharmacy or Muhammad Ali's almost inhumanly-impossible success with his career in the ring, who talked like a professional wrestler.
"P.S." is a movie like that. It tells a story as sweet as a fairy tale, that maybe could happen in life. Where a woman feels like when she loses someone, she loses her chance in life. But then something else comes along that is so incredible, it feels like the divine hand. Is God giving her a do-over? And not being so subtle about it?
Laura Linney continues her streak of must-see movies and Oscar-caliber performances here as Louise, a middle-aged admissions director who's been through a real losing streak throughout her life.
She's recently divorced from her husband, a compulsive sex-addict who's diddled anyone who's set toe in his class. Her best friend seduced away her boyfriend in high school and is now married in an upper-middle class suburb to a man she threatens to cheat on if he doesn't fulfill his "husbandly duties." She's living the kind of life every woman wants to in her most cynical, vengeful, self-absorbed fantasies.
Laura's getting older, life's getting harder (and it hasn't been very charmed to begin with). She begins to see all her hopes and dreams fading fast. And things get even more interesting when see has a private one-on-one interview with a potential art student.
This guy is just her type. Not only, but... he bares an uncanny resemblance to her late college boyfriend, an art major with a passion that matched hers. This guy doesn't just look--he sounds, acts, behaves and his art is even similar. Louise is in shock.
What is this? Coincidence? Incidental? Has she been working herself too hard? Stress? Reincarnation? An escapist-fantasy movie-plot? Whatever it is, Louise is rubbing here eyes while warming up to this guy. Getting to know him... finds herself feeling something.... While trying to keep her feelings at bay. She's a skeptic. She's got one heck a heck of a track record.
One of the most refreshing things about the actress Laura Linney is that she's not just another manufactured beauty from off the assembly line. She's not just another actress. She's not "one of a million." She's just so real. She's not movie-star-ish.
She doesn't wear designer clothes wherever she goes, live in a six-story mansion of Muhulland Dr, smoke cigarettes from a long black holder and have a private trophy room for all her honors. When she acts, it doesn't feel like acting. You feel you know her. She's a real person.
The same hold true for Topher Grace, which explains his success as an actor. He seems so adult, so grown-up for his age. Grace is charismatic and seems smart, his gift and his power on-screen doesn't come from a natural Brando-like acting talent, but his face, his body, his voice, his personality. Somehow, everything he says sounds like he means it. He's so square, so on-the-level. All he has to do is speak to convince you that he's legit.
As an actor, Grace has a style all his own which may or may not be intentional. He has an Anti-Brando method. He never changes his appearance or voice at all in his roles, but he has an earnest, open-faced, true-to-life and genuinely human way in every movie he so much as touches. Which explains why Hollywood keeps throwing mountains of scripts his way and why every movie he's in, he's given a nomination for something.
This is some of the best acting either Linney or Grace has ever done so far, pure and simple.
Gabriel Bryne, one of the finest actors in the world brings his trade-mark debonair and charisma in the role of Peter Harrington, Louise's ex-husband who's nasty habit primarily caused their divorce. There scenes that poke fun and make light of his "f-----g" habit are almost worth the rental price.
Which is why he takes home award after award for nearly every movie he does, because something about his whole appearance and personality makes it come across like he's just himself being himself, not an actor.
While "P.S." may just come across as a woman's picture (and it may well be), this isn't just a moody, sensitive, overly-emotional "chick-flick" to be seen on a "woman's day." This is a movie about some people who are seriously dealing with the trials of life at a turning point of age.
Paul Rudd, who been the key performance in some damn good movies, has basically just a little cameo, but as the estranged brother, he gives us further magnified scope into Louise's little life. He's a reformed junkie with a condescending, sadistic streak towards his big sis.
The movie has a deep, human, true-to-life atmosphere all throughout. There's nary a moment that is written or executed in a way that feels contrived. Nothing in "P.S." needs willing suspension of disbelief. Everything feels so beautiful and natural as the falling of the rain.
I've read an endless number of reviews for this movie which charge Dylan Kidd with making a picture less impressive than his previous effort. Ah, the sophomore jinx. I didn't see his freshman effort, "Roger Dodger," so I'm not particularly biased. And anyway, shouldn't a film be judged solely on it's own merits? Even Steven Spielberg made "Always," "Hook" and "1941."
Listen folks, seriously, so many filmmakers are accused being cursed with the dreaded "sophomore jinx" because when it comes to art, there are people who rate novelty above all else.
Movies like "Birth and "Return To Me" have tackled this subject before, but here it feels so legitimate. Like "Rocky," this one makes us believe clichés can happen... and make us care.
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"THE NUTCRACKER"
Of all the "Nutcrackers," this shines brightest...
by dane youssef
danessf@yahoo.com
Perhaps the best interpretation of "The Nutcracker" ever made. Baryshnikov's finest hour. And as even the most ballet-ignorant know, that bar's set pretty high.
I have seen Mikhail Baryshnikov dance in the much-praised chick-flick "The Turning Point." And I have seen him dance his own interpretation of "Don Quixote." Good. Great, even. But not as much as fellow Russkie ballerino Nureyev's stab at "Quixote." And I have seen much more of him dancing. The man defies gravity, as well as many other laws. A ballet dancer, in the country of America, has been treated like a movie star. But this may very well be his best work, artistic-wise.
Mikhail Baryshnikov is man who hardly needs an introduction, as he is a man who is synonymous with ballet. The man is a household name, Baryshnikov is at his best here, which is more than difficult, even for him. Celebrated USA ballerina Gelsey Kirkland (who was a regular partner and even girlfriend of dear Misha at the time) actually proves to be a credible match. And even takes it to a higher level than he does in HER solo scenes.
This was the first "Nutcracker" I've ever seen. I have seen several interpretations of "The Nutcracker" since then, and this one still stands as the best of the lot. There are no real children in this cast. The children's roles are played by adults in adolescent-looking wigs.
The idea to make this a movie rather than a live stage piece kind of works. It allows for more visual effects than a straight live piece would have.
There is a moment where Ms. Kirkland dances a solo all by herself, that sequence actually left be breathless. When she shakes her pointed feet like bells, the music jingles in pitch-perfect sync. She doesn't seem to be following the music at all. The music seems to be following her.
It's so beautifully and perfectly done, that as someone who takes ballet and has danced on the stage, that it actually hurt to watch.
The day that I can move as gracefully and exquisitely (on her worst day, I mean) may never come. Kirkland actually, in that one scene, manages to steal the movie away from Baryshnikov. Baryshnikov's leaps, turns, jumps and pirouettes are as breathtaking as always, and somehow never seem to get old. Misha's striking presence and Peter Pan-like mobility just.. well, makes you want to get up and dance. Or just jump around. He doesn't so much leap as much as soars.
Baryshnikov puts some little touches of humor here and there. There's a lovable old man at the Christmas Party who attempts to dance and hurts himself, as well as a toy soldier who stubs his toe. Baryshnikov has always seemingly had the soul of a child and the heart of a clown.
The Arabian Coffee Dance has been deleted for running time, I'm sorry to say. As has Mother Gigogne. Not to mention The famed "Waltz Of The Snowflakes" is a powerhouse, the ballet corps sway to the music so beautifully, for the briefest moment, we actually forget about Baryshnikov and Kirkland.
Is Baryshnikov trying to give himself more screen time, Clara or the ballet itself? Alexander Minz proves to be invaluable as a supporting player in the role of Drosselmyer. I was reminded of Fred Astaire. He moves around with his long, willowy limbs in a way that seemed almost inhuman. I seriously doubt ever got half the credit he deserved throughout his life.
He had an effective, amusing cameo in "The Turning Point." Baryshnikov continues to prove time and time again what we already know--the greatest ballet dancer of any generation will always be a Russian.
The choreography is riveting, some of the best I've ever seen. Although, the honor for "World's Greatest" go to "Singin' In The Rain." Maybe the Russian could put dances together now. He's reportedly a great teacher of dance as well.
While many of the special-effects look a bit outdated, it remains a riveting experience. After all, most ballet movies are just filmed dancing and this one takes the effort to actually be something of a movie.
The acting is not much, nor is there as much plot as is traditional, a as this "Nutcracker" focuses more on the dancing and music. The pyrotechnics (the dancer's rapidly-moving muscular limbs and the way they and the music truly gel).
Despite Mr. Baryshnikov in the title role and given prominent first billing, the star of "The Nutcracker" is Gelsey Kirkland as Clara, as this is all Clara's story.
Mnay movies have attempted to translate this legendary dance story to the screen, usually with disastrous results. For example, the mistake the 20th Century Fox movie "George Balanchine's The Nutcracker" made was if they were going to made the ballet into a movie, they should have done something for the movie that they couldn't do for a live production. Alas, they did not. It moved so slowly and the whole movie was so badly-lit, it looked like somebody boot-legged the whole thing with a camcorder.
The solo duets are just as enjoyable. The dancers, are in fact, so good that they almost threaten to outdo the leads.
It's a beautiful story, more with flair and style in it's depth. It's a revised fairy tale.
When Misha and Gels prance together, their body movements almost in perfect parallel... it's beautiful and breath-taking. They seem to be connected internally somehow. These are two people... brought together by dance. It's every little girl's dream... and that's exactly what the "Nutcracker" should be.
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"Coonskin"
Don't let the title throw you. This is one to see. From the one and only Ralph Bakshi.
by dane youssef
danessf@yahoo.com
"Coonskin" is film, by the one and only Ralph Bakshi, is reportedly a satirical indictment of blaxploitation films and negative black stereotypes, as well as a look at life black in modern America (modern for the day, I mean--1975). Paramount dropped it like a hot potato that just burst into flame.
But this is a Bakshi film, controversial, thrilling, and a must-see almost by definition alone. Not just another random "shock-jock" of a movie which tries to shock for the sake of shock. It's by Ralph Bakshi. Anyone who knows the name knows that if HE made a movie, he has something big to say...
Although it's roots are based in cheap blaxploitation, "Coonskin" isn't just another campy knock-off of mainstream white film or any kind of throwaway flick. "Coonskin" wants to be more. It aims it's sights higher and fries some much bigger fish.
The movie doesn't just poke fun at the genre. Nor does it just indict black people, but actually seems to show love, beauty and heart in the strangest places.
"Coonskin" tells a story out of some convicts awaiting a jail-break. The fact that it's even possible to break out of a prison in the "Coonskin" world alone makes it old-fashioned.
One of the inmates tells a story about a trio of black brothers in Harlem named Brother Bear, Brother Rabbit, Preacher Fox who want respect and a piece of the action and are willing to get it by any means necessary. The Italian mob is running all the real action.
Big name black musicians star: Barry White and Scatman Crothers, as well as Charles Gordone, the first black playwright to take home the Pulitzer. Something big is happening here obviously.
The movie plays out like a descent into this world, this side of the racial divide. From an angry, hip, deep, soulful black man with a hate in his heart and a gun in his hand.
Bakshi's films never know the meaning of the word "subtlety." This one looks like it's never even heard of the word. But maybe a subject like this needs extremism. Real sledgehammer satire. Some subjects can't be tackled gently.
Bakshi is god dammed merciless. Here, no member or minority of the Harlem scene appears unscathed.
The characters here are "animated" to "real" all depending on what the mood and situation are. The animated characters and the human ones all share the same reality and are meant to be taken just as literally.
Bakshi never just shows ugly caricatures just for shock value. He always has something to say. Nor is blackface is gratuitously. Here, unlike in Spike Lee's "Bamboozled," he seems to be using it to try and really say something.
Like 99.9% of all of Bakshi's films, this one incorporates animation and live-action. Usually at the same time. Bakshki isn't just being gimmicky here. All of this technique is all intertwined, meshing together while saying something.
Somehow, this one feels inevitably dated. Many of these types of films (Bakshi's included) are very topical, very spur of the moment. They reflect the certain trend for the day, but looking back of them years later, there's just an unmistakable feeling of nostalgia (as well as timeless truth).
Even though the music, clothes, slang and the city clearly looks like photos that belong in a time capsule, the attitude, the spirit and the heart remain the same no matter what f--king ear it is. Anyone who's really seen the movies, the state of things and has been in company of the people know what I'm talking about.
Even some of the of the black characters are a bunny (junglebunny), a big ol' bear and a fox. One of the most sour and unsavory racist characters is a dirty Harlem cop who's hot on the trail of these "[...]" after the death of a cop. But for him, it's not just business. Nor is it for the rest of the brothers who wear the shield. It's just pure sadistic racist pleasure of hurting blacks.
The sequence involving the Godfather and his lady is one of the most moving pieces in the whole film, of which there are many. It plays out like an opera or a ballet.
The promo line: WARNING: "This film offends everybody!" This is not just hype. Proceed with extreme caution.
You have been warned...
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"Giving It Up"
The Bastard Lovechild Of 'Sex & The City' and 'What Women Want.' A quirky re-inventive romp that makes us believe in cliches'!
by dane youssef
danessf@yahoo.com
Kublan's "Giving it Up" is a movie which is scarce in the indie field. A romantic comedy, rumored to be the worst, sloppiest, unentertaining and most formulaic of the entire genre.
But very surprisingly, "Giving it Up" is a smarter, more-thinking person's romantic comedy. A movie that seems to have filtered out the obnoxious slapstick, trite plot points, dumb characters, monotone dialouge and Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan's routines.
Oh, there are quite a few cliches' in this movie, all right. The playboy who's tired of the game and wants to settle down and develop as a person, the bookish love interest who has no patience for his antics, the sexist supporting characters, the geeky best friend, the unobtainable finally obtained... only to realize that...
And although it sounds like the storyline from "What Women Want" (which also featured Feuerstein), no two movies could possibly be more polar opposite.
But "Giving it Up" is more than that. It doesn't rely entirely on that as so many other rom-coms do.
"GIU" is a well-played, thoughtfully-written, smartly concieved look at men, women and their views on sex and drelationships.
In "Giving it Up," a New York advertsing executive who specializes in selling sex to sell products is living the "almost ideal existance." He has devoted his life to attracting the opposite sex.
And it seems to be working. He has a new stranger in his bed every night. He's making fat cheddar. His hard-nosed, sexist boss (Dabney Coleman "9 to 5," "Tootsie," "Recess: School's Out" and "You've Got Mail") loves him. His apartment is lavish and full of cosmetics to polish his vessel and keep it clean. And his superhuman libido fuels his creative fires.
Enter his new boss, Elizabeth, who has heard of him and his reputation. She's smart and genuinely attractive. And quite down to earth. Ralph (Mark Feuerstein "Woman on Top" and "What Women Want"), the playboy in question is instantly smitten with her. But she's heard the word on the street and smiles, giving him the brush off.
Ralph is obsessed. He wants her. He can have every woman except the one he truly wants. Ain't it always the way? Ralph's less-lucky-in-love buddy, Peter (Ben Weber-- "Twister" and TV's "Sex in the City") asks Ralph why? Why does he want to give up the life? Apparently, Ralphie boy feels empty. He decides to "give it all up."
He's the Falling Casanova. He tries to go celibate. He meets up with Elizabeth and informs her of his newfound desire to live a life with something besides sex and even tries to win her over with his outside sex-interests. Like his joy for Billy Wilder's Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn classic "Love in the Afternoon."
Kublan's script is smart in a "Sex in the City"-type of way. Full of realsitic conversations between men and women about dating, relationships, sex and their own views and look at it all.
The cast is paticularly strong for an indepenedent film. Feuerstein is a real charmer, Weber and James Lesure (From "For Your Love") are convincing and likeable as his best friends. Ari Larter as the foul and lecherous super-supermodel Amber is also good for a few laughs. Amy Redford is really 100% believable as a smart, intellegent, confident (and beautiful) businesswoman who hates her self a bit for falling for this falling Casanova.
See it alone for the near Oscar-worthy performance of the magnificent Dabney Coleman, more hard-nosed, sexist and snarling than ever.
Whatever it's called, wherever you live: "Giving It Up," "No Sex 4U." A rose by literally any other name. Or by it's original title: "Casanova Falling."
It's worth falling for.
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"Who Framed Roger Rabbit
What can I say? What's left to say? It all been said... it speaks for itself...
by dane youssef
danessf@yahoo.com
Gee... What can I say?
What can be said that hasn't been said a zillion times about this movie before? By film critics, film buffs, the other user posters on IMDb and every other person who saw this one?
But you know what? I'm not here to really promote this movie, or analyze it... I'm here to write my love letter for it. We're all here to share our movie-going experiences, aren't we? Well, f*ck it, here's mine.
I still remember being a little prepubescent boy sitting in the theater watching this movie, totally amazed and astounded by what I saw. Seeing this wacky cartoons going through a routine Tom-and-Jerry-type episode... and then... it was amazing how these movie actually tricked you, convinced you to believe that human and cartoons can exist in the same universe and dimension of reality.
There are many a great pleasures and moments in this movie, one of them is the duet at a "toon" night club called "The Ink & Paint Club" where Eddie goes to get information about Roger's wife, and the opening act is a dueling duet on the piano featuring two great legends, Daffy Duck and Donald Duck (I doubt there's any biological relation there) together at last. Why did it take so long for these two to get together? Well, they are rival entertainers for rival studios, so...
But of course, the dueling duet ends in an all-out war. Come on, we both know the hatchet wasn't going to stay buried very long.
The whole movie is worth renting just to see the two great legends, Daffy and Donald, put their differences aside for one memorable dueling piano duet ALONE.
"Roger Rabbit" pioneered not only animation and film-making style, but acting, writing, directing and a meshing together of different genres.
Imagination, luck, brilliance, skill... it's all been blended so perfectly here... just like the animation and live-action.
Funny, sharp, satirical, smart, thrilling, skillful, bright, bold, hard-boiled, colorful... at even at times, a little scary.
It one three Oscars, not to mention an Honorary Award for it's Technical Advancements.
Hell, it deserved every single Oscar it got! And a few it didn't. It should've won every single Oscar that year. Maybe some from others...
God, you know, I still remember finding my little Rescue Ranger toy in my pocket and running in back-and-forth through my fingers... I remember being very careful not to loose it as I watched this. And it was hard, damn it, all of what was going up there on the screen.
There's the best of the everything here. Everyone should see it, pure and simple. It's a movie... for pretty much everybody. A masterpiece in more ways than one.
So help me God, I cannot think of a better actor for the role of the classic, hard-boiled, rock-bottom, not-too-smooth P.I. than Bob Hoskins. I don't think he's ever played a better role in his whole life. He seems to be a strange collision of Sam Spade and W.C. Fields, in some strange way.
Christopher Lloyd proves yet again (as he does in all his roles) that he's one of the most underrated actors in the business. He's known for playing the bizarre, the crazy, the wired. But his ability to play villains, particularly more sedate and low-key ones, is overlooked so much, it's grounds for a discrimination lawsuit.
Kathleen Turner is damn perfect as Roger's Mrs; especially considering that all she does here is a voice.
Roger Rabbit" pioneered not only animation and film-making style, but acting, writing, directing and a meshing together of different genres. Literature purists and scholars (yes, I mean geeks) will note that this movie is adapted from a novel by Gary K. Wolf, who specializes in science-fiction.
For those of you who are enamored with this movie and just learning this, are actively considering dropping this review right this instant and running to your nearest library and bookstore to pick up a copy to read as an addition to the movie or just out of curiosity, I should warn you that the movie is completely unfaithful to the novel.
Oh, both are clever and well-written spoofs of the whole "hard-boiled private-detective mystery noir genre," but the two are so completely different, in writing-style, character dialouge, plot, theme, even ending, you wonder why they even bothered to get Wolf's permission and pay him a royalty. Gee, usually these Hollywood types are a little more snaky and know how to exploit all these loopholes.
You've no doubt heard the old saying, "You can't please everyone, so don't even bother." Because when you try, you wind up ultimately pleasing no one. Least of all, yourself. It's strange, this movie seems like an exception to that one little rule. I mean, I know there's an exception to every rule, but this is one you're sure is completely iron-clad. This is a movie for everyone. This is a movie that will please everyone. And you know what else? It never got the credit for that. Think about what a big train-wreck this movie could have been. How many things could have gone wrong.
How many years Disney and Warner have been at war, all this time, money for a experiment that could have gone worse than than the killer bees and the atomic bomb. And yet, glory be, it didn't. We all live for days like this, filmmakers, film critics... and film lovers.
The best part? After it was all over... Roger and Baby Herman went on to star in several of their own cartoon shorts before the movie for real ("Dick Tracy" and "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids").
Good for them.
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"North"
If they outlawed paddling, the cane and CHILD MOLESTATION... they should outlaw THIS.
by dane youssef
danessf@yahoo.com
Here is a movie so wrong-headed, wrong-hearted, wrong-made... so worng, you'd think the old axiom of a broken clock that's right twice a day would prove. But nope. It doesn't. Not by a long shot.
One of my most depressing experiences as a child was seeing Rob Reiner's "North." In fact, as extensive internet research has shown me, it was a painful experience for many as children and stayed with him throughout adulthood.
One of the worst movies of the year. One of the worst movies of the decade. One of the worst movies ever made. One of the worst ever. And when I say "worst", I'm comparing it to thinks like the Black Plague, the Holocaust, World Hunger, AIDS and Leperocy.
Elijah Wood is a wonderboy who is constantly ignored by his parents despite his best intentions and efforts that make most parents beam like the sun with pride. He spends a lot of time feeling ignored and sits in a chair in a furniture store at the mall to think. He decides he deserves better parents than the ones he's got (who doesn't?) and divorces them.
His folks are comatose from shock, but who cares? He's already in search of better ones.
He travels all over the globe and finds surrogate folks which are not right for him. Not loving, caring, nuturing... or very funny or interesting.
His best friend from school is enthusiastic about the divorce and gets the word out to all parents that children deserve better and thing better change or else.
I was actually in physical pain watching how badly the film's plot is handled.
While it is a thrill to see Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus together as a married couple and action legend Bruce Willis in an easter bunny suit... believe me, it doesn't last. The bad outweighs the good. Oh, HOW the bad outweights the good.
The big-name celebrity bit-players are many: Dan Aykroyd, Reba McEntire, Jon Lovitz, Bruce Willis, Graham Greene, Abe Vigoda, Richard Belzer, Ben Stein, Alexander Godunov, Kelly McGillis, John Ritter, Scarlett Johansson, Lauren Tom and Alan Arkin. Films with a big-name cast doing walk-ons is kind of tricky. Often this leads to a bunch of actors embarassing themselves in bit throwaway roles for a quickie paycheck and "the sake of work." It all really depends on the film itself--the screenplay and the director.
When a film with such a high pedigree of actors and filmmaker, Mr. Rob Reiner, you have to wonder why this whole damn thing went so incredibly wrong. And then kept going. And going and going. I am reminded of the legendary quote, "Only those who dare to fail greatly, can achieve greatly." And just about all who flaunt this picture have achieved greatly at one time or another. So... there you go. The ying to the yang.
The result can be "Traffic" or "Gosford Park." And the result can be "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues" of "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas."
You know, it's funny. When I first saw the trailer for "North," I thought to myself, "Wow. This looks like a good movie. I'm gonna see this one." And yes, the trailer damn well made this look like a good one. It just goes to show you... advertisements can make anything look appealing. Hey, remember "Babe: Pig In The City?" The ads didn't make the movie look like much. But the movie was... wow.
Hey, come to think of it-- I would like to advise to eveyone who was unfortunate enough to see any more of this one that what they used for the trailers (so much as a frame more) to go out and rent "Babe II." It's an ideal antidote.
Of course, you may need a few days of bed rest and antibiotics right after seeing "North," but after that... please... don't let this one put you off movies. Or any of the truly gifted people who were associated with this abomination.
Wood is one of the most talented actors ever to grace the business and the man seems unable to do a bad job on screen. Just check out "Radio Flyer" or " for evidence. But hey, like I need to tell you, right?
But while his acting is on-par with Brando, Guiness, Hopkins and Kilmer, not every movie to come his way compliments his talents. Just after the disastrous misfire "The Good Son," this one floated it's way into theaters like a chunky, nutty, crooked turd after a whole year of improper diet. Adding further insult to injury.
It is perplexing--to the point of going cross-eyed and your whole head exploding "Scanners"-style--trying to figure out what in God's name the filmmakers were thinking.
Seriously, I actually picture Jesus H. Christ himself on the cross, thinking to himself, "I died for this... ? If I'd known, I wouldn't have bothered."
We all make mistakes, even collosal ones. Even the best of us.
Hell, especially the best of us!
Walt Disney was an anti-Semite. L. Ron Hubbard was a pedophile. R. Crumb is a racist and misogynistic sycophant. And I myself...
Well, I could go on, but you get the idea. Honestly, avoid this one about as much as you hepatitis A-through-Z. A sulfur plant leaves he aroma of an autumn meadow perfume compared to this one.
In summary, "North" is a childhood trauma that refuses to be repressed. For many, including myself. Don't let it be yours.
Still, we are all mortal. We are all human. We all make mistakes, we stumble, we falter.
No one of us are infallible. Rob Reiner has delivered us "When Harry Met Sally," "The Sure Thing," "This Is Spinal Tap," "The Princess Bride" and "The American President." Surely, we can forgive "North." Can't we?
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly."
And Reiner has clearly done both. Let us at this as one of humanity's greatest follies... and try to find laughter in it. Not at the movie itself, which is clearly impossible, but at the movie's expense.
Like many Jewish comedians have done with WWII, the Holocaust and the years of slavery they were subjected to in Egypt, this is just one more thing we have to learn to laugh at. Not with, AT.
OK, Mr. Reiner. You are officially forgiven. Good luck... and let's hope another abomination like this isn't in the works.
Peace...
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"True Colors"
Very well-played, but almost written at the level of an after-school special.
from dane youssef
danessf@yahoo.com
The Brat Pack actors are certainly a talented bunch. Everyone has a favorite. For me, it's a toss-up between James Spader and Anthony Michael Hall.
John Cusack was mesmerizing back in his early-days. He was a teenager, but he looked, sounded and acted very adult for his age. "The Sure Thing" put him on the map and "Say Anything..." made him a household name.
But while Crowe's "Say Anything..." was obviously a great movie, it was both a blessing and a curse for Cusack, who has rarely played anything else in his career. I know, I know. He's been in countless other movies. But "a rose by any other name..." His character, no matter what the movie, is essentially always Lloyd Dobbler.
Spader sometimes played other types besides the oily Steff from "Pretty in Pink." His typecast-breaking turn came when he played the lead in this movie.
But I know Cusack can do more. I keep waiting for him to. Which was one of my guilty pleasures of this movie.
The story and plot are the right out of the old fable about the rich man and the poor man who come together and create something special... and then the rich man betrays the poor man and casts him aside. And the poor man plots to take revenge...
Another big twist that "True Colors" has is it's twist in typecasting. Cusack specializes in playing sharp, calculated, smarter-than-average teenager... who's heartbroken and devastated... and is desperately trying to win back the girl. Here, Cusack plays a character who's as smart as the heroes he usually plays, though here he uses his intellectual gifts for evil instead of good. His goal is usually to win the girl's heart. Here he betrays the girl (and his close friend) in order to get what he wants.
And Spader usually plays blue-blooded, silver-spoon fed, upper-class yuppie scummy villains. Here he's still a rich blue-blooded yuppie. But a hero, who uses his financial connections to right wrongs and do just.
The two meet the first day of law school where there's a fender-bender and brief scuffle. Cusack angrily attacks Spader violently and blames him for the whole thing and the two have to be pulled apart. Later on, things get worse as they discover... their assigned to be roommates. Cusack smooths things over by admitting the whole thing was his fault. You'll see why.
Afterwords, the two form a fast friendship and Spader even uses his financial backgrounds and connections to help Cusack out. Later we find out that Cusack is lying about his background to fit in and the payoff feels lifted out of a soppy, moralizing and insipid sit-com where today's moral is... "If you have to be someone else to get a friend, then they're really not your friend."
Richard Widmark is great as well as the ailing senator who sees potential and ambition in Cusack after he sees what looks like Cusack doing him a favor, little realizing how dangerous Cusack is. Spader girlfriend considers breaking off the relationship for Cusack who can keep her bringing in big cash. She doesn't realize that Cusack is willing to betray her too, in order to get what he wants.
One of the major problems is that their true colors are obvious from the beginning. Cusack is clearly someone not to trust from the start and Spader all but actually walks on water. Another is that the movie is too thin. There isn't enough entry.
The movie... skims too much of the surface. And Spader's big plan and the finale is pretty tacked on.
The movie aspires to be a movie like "Patriot Games" or "Citizen Kane." But everything is routine and predictable and there are precious few new touches to this tired formula. If screenwriter Kevin Wade could've given the script a bit more depth and discovery into these characters and done a little more with the formula, this could have really been something special. The cast does what it can, but inevitably, a good cast can only take a movie so far. Still, it's worth seeing just for Cusack turn towards the dark side and Spader as a yuppie with heart.
Oh, well.
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Benjamin Wood
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Movie review: Dirty Harry (1971)
Score: 2.5/5
It's always tough for me to rate "classic" movies. On the one hand, it's easy to give the movies great reviews, showering compliments about the "innovation" of the movie and how, for its time, it was like the best in the business. At the same time, many "classic" movies have not aged well, and today look extremely dated and are, to put it frankly, amazingly boring by today's standards.
I was not enamored with Dirty Harry. Clint Eastwood's performance as the title character was good but not spectacular, the supporting actors were for the most part non-factors (except for the crazy serial killer, who was distracting with just how much he hammed up his performance), the story was drawn out way beyond its logical limit, and the film itself was not all that exciting or tense. In fact, the only moment I found myself truly drawn in was a scene where Eastwood has to run a bag of money around town, jumping from pay phone to pay phone as a kidnapper gives him directions that are increasingly more difficult to follow.
There's no denying that Dirty Harry was wildly influential, as you can see many of its elements seeping into later action films: gratuitous nudity that serves no real purpose, main characters who are badass yet seem to lack in actual development, the crazy killer who is the antithesis to the "wholesome" values of the protagonist, and a line repeated in a movie by the protagonist in the hopes that it is vividly remembered long after the movie has ended (in Dirty Harry's case, it's "Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"). Unfortunately, all of these elements have been repeated so many times that they have become horrible action movie cliches, and it's difficult to watch Dirty Harry in retrospect without thinking, "Man, I've seen all of this before somewhere."
One aspect, however, that continues to bug me is the constant stereotyping of minorities and gay men in the film. Black men and women are depicted as stereotypes, as criminals and those who only speak in heavy "urban slang," while gay men seem to be displayed as limp wristed and hyper-effeminate. I understand that the early seventies was still a time of bigotry and that the entertainment business is still a cesspool of horrible stereotypes (although they are much more insidious and subtle nowadays), yet I can't help but be irked by these portrayals. Am I supposed to forgive a film for these caricatures because the film was from a different era and the makers might "not have known any better?" Am I supposed to think it's funny that Dirty Harry hates everyone, "especially Spics?" Am I supposed to forgive Harry for his sexism and racism because he's trying to stop a child murderer? It creates a paradox that leaves you feeling dirty no matter which side you take: You can either root for a sexist, bigoted asshole, or you can root for someone who murders children. The film's simplistic dichotomy leaves no middle ground, and paints Dirty Harry in such a positive light that it's clear that you must be "for" or "against" certain characters.
Unfortunately, that aspect of the film has also carried into today's cinema, with heroes who have unforgiveable flaws, and yet we're forced to root for them because the antagonist has flaws which are even more unsavory. In the end, judging Dirty Harry for its influence on the action genre is easy to do. Asking whether this influence was a positive thing or a negative thing, however, is a very different question, and one that is rarely asked, and less often answered. My personal feeling is that Dirty Harry does more harm than good, but there are plenty who would disagree with me, who would say I'm reading too much into things. I'm not telling anyone to agree with my assessment of the movie, but rather I'm urging those watching to at least give thought to the topic. I can easily see people that cannot forgive Harry for his views, yet will still view this as a quintessential action movie. And maybe if I had found the action sequences to be more exciting and suspenseful I would be one of those people. Unfortunately, the film itself falls short, making it much tougher to forgive Harry for his views.
Gone Baby Gone (15) – 114 min
“Ben should stick to directing and let Casey do the acting”
Starring: Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, Amy Ryan
Director: Ben Affleck
5/5
Reviewer: John Park (gpd1991@gmail.com)
A young girl is kidnapped from her house. Two young private detectives (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan) decide to help the mother on the verge of breakdown (Amy Ryan). A police captain (Morgan Freeman), who has lost a child himself, and a cop looking for justice by any means necessary (Ed Harris) join in the hunt for the missing child in which nothing is what it seems.
It is not surprising that Amy Ryan received so many critics’ awards in the States. Although she did not have a lot of screen time, whenever the camera was on her she was fantastic. However, she was criminally side-lined by the major awards, such as Academy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild. It was a shame that she did not end up getting the attention that she deserved.
This film proved two very important things: a) Casey Affleck can act and b) Ben Affleck is a much better director than he is an actor. Casey Affleck was a promising young lead. If he manages to maintain his brilliant qualities I believe an Oscar is an absolute guarantee. He would have won this year if it had not been for Javier Bardem (ruthless in “No Country For Old Men”). As for the rest of the cast, they worked very well together. Ed Harris appeared absolutely merciless in his role and Morgan Freeman was definitely skilful in his. Over crowded by famous and talented names, Michelle Monaghan did not seem to have a lot of room to breathe but she held her own.
As more and more was revealed about different characters, the plot began to take deep and sudden turns. A storyline that just started with a simple kidnapping developed into something much bigger with more and more shocking twists constantly being added. At the end of the film an extremely questionable decision is made, from which the audience must draw its own conclusions – effectively maintaining suspense to the very last. The film did not provide a single boring moment and was a deeply effective cop drama.
The release date of this film was pushed back to June 2008 in the U.K due to the Madeleine McCann incident but that should not in any way affect its performance: this was quite simply one of the best cop dramas I have ever seen.
We just published several movie reviews submitted over the past couple of weeks. Thanks for the great reviews and keep them coming! ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
Benjamin Wood
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Movie review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Score: 2.5/5
A trilogy is, as defined by Webster's Dictionary, "A series of three dramas which, although each of them is in one sense complete, have a close mutual relation, and form one historical and poetical picture." Trilogies have been around since the days of Ancient Greece, where tragedies were often performed in sets of three. Quadrilogy, meanwhile, has no current dictionary definition, and has seemingly only entered the public vernacular recently, in regards to movies that could not stand pat at being merely trilogies. Unfortunately, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (henceforth known simply as Crystal Skull) turns the great Indiana Jones trilogy into a flawed and unnecessarily long Indiana Jones quadrilogy.
The Indiana Jones trilogy always had the bad fortune to be Harrison Ford and George Lucas' "second best trilogy," paling in comparison to the Star Wars trifecta. That being said, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were both excellent films, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was a good film, most likely being remembered poorly because it was sandwiched in between two far superior films. Temple of Doom, however, is now no longer the worst of the Indiana Jones series. Crystal Skull makes Temple of Doom look like Raiders of the Lost Ark, and threatens to put a slight damper on many fond memories
Crystal Skull suffers mainly from two things: (1) The story is horrible. Not just bad compared to the other three Indiana Jones movies, but bad in general. It tries to roll four or five separate storylines into a single one, and ends up coming off as schizophrenic and ridiculous. (2) The action in Crystal Skull is hokey and requires the viewer to suspend their disbelief far beyond the levels that were needed to enjoy the first three movies.
The main plotline in Crystal Skull involves Indy trying to escape from Soviet agents, surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator (how's that for having to suspend one's disbelief?), escape from more Soviets, recover an ancient relic in Peru (the crystal skull for which the movie is named), escape more Soviets, take the skull to an ancient temple located somewhere in Brazil, escape a variety of traps and (gasp!) more Soviets, and ultimately find out what the power is that the relic holds. Unfortunately, it all comes off as half-assed and disjointed, with Cold War sentiments combined with government conspiracies, ancient Mayan treasure, and an ample dose of psychic powers and paranormal events. There we go, no fewer than 4 urban myths trying to combine into some sort of uber-story. Unfortunately, the whole is much, much less than the sum of its parts.
In fact, the story seems more like a George Lucas parody than anything. The main plotline combines stale historical events like the first three Indiana Jones movies with paranormal events that seem like Star Wars rejects. Spielberg's directing doesn't fare much better, with the film coming off as A History of Spielberg instead of an actual movie. He borrows ideas from many of his classic movies (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Last Crusade, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind), yet does nothing of real interest. Part of that could be the horribly obtuse story, but the laziness of his latest few works seems to have seeped into Crystal Skull as well, and the entire thing is plagued by a tinge of boredom.
All that said, there are a couple of positives which keep Crystal Skull from being a complete disaster. The actors all seem relatively comfortable in their roles, with Harrison Ford being the most exciting, showing flashes of the old Indiana Jones despite being in his mid-sixties. Karen Allen does a great job of reprising her role as Marion Ravenwood (now Mary Williams), and the chemistry between her and Ford doesn't seem nearly as forced as expected. Cate Blanchett does what she can with the material she's given, giving a fairly good (if stereotypical) Eastern European accent, and making her character bearable, something the script didn't do. John Hurt and Ray Winstone do serviceable jobs with their roles, although neither is spectacular. The weakest member of the cast, Shia LeBeouf, surprised me by not being annoying as hell as sidekick "Mutt" Williams, but he didn't win me over with his performance, either.
Secondly, the film does have some of the lighthearted humor that made the first films so enjoyable, and the banter between characters is, for the most part, enjoyable. It's nothing special (and at times you start to suspect that the "homages" to the earlier films might've just been screenwriting apathy), but it helps keep the viewers from being too bogged down by the unnecessarily stupid main plot.
It's a shame that Crystal Skull was nothing more than a mediocre retread, but it was not unexpected. More and more we seem to be buried in sequels to long dead movie franchises, and for every one that is good, there are five or more that make you yearn for the films of old. If anything, the most positive thing about Crystal Skull is that it expediated the release of the special edition DVDs of the older films. Those show what both Lucas and Spielberg are capable of.
Benjamin Wood
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Movie review: Henry Fool (1997)
Score: 3/5
Hal Hartley is a one man film-making machine. According to the Internet Movie Database, he has directed 23 movies/short films. Of those, he wrote 17. In addition, he has solely (or at least helped) to compose the music for thirteen of his films. If anything, Hartley has to be called ambitious.
But are his movies any good? Henry Fool is my introduction to Hartley's film world, and unfortunately, my first response is one of mixed emotions. On one hand, Henry Fool is an almost ambient look at a drifter with delusions of grandeur and a garbage-man who finds his inner poetic genius. This aspect of the story is generally handled well, with the dynamic between Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) and Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) for the most part was able to keep me interested in the story, and wanting to see more. The peripheral storylines, however, involving Simon's sister, Fay Grim (Parker Posey), his mother (Maria Porter), a cynical priest (Nicholas Hope), and a "holier-than-thou" senator and his cronies, leave much to be desired.
The main problem seems to be that the main story is so strong that the momentary diversions seem unnecessary, adding little to the characters that the conversations between Henry and Simon did not. The story's focus is on Henry's personal demons (why he was in prison years before, why he refused to share his "Confessions" with anyone) and Simon's reluctant rise from being labeled "retarded" by his family to being a poetic prodigy, and that's where it should've stayed. The other storylines, the mother's depression, the priest's cynicism, the right-wing senator's campaign, all come and go with little fanfare, and yet take up at least a half hour of the movie.
The movie lives (and dies) on Hartley's dialogue and the performances from Ryan and Urbaniak. When they are together onscreen, the chemistry is palpable, and the dialogue seems both crisp and ambiguous. Apart, however, the dialogue drifts, and for the most part the supporting characters spout off petty annoyances rather than engage in developed introspection.
Hartley also makes two stylistic choices that continue to baffle me slightly. First, there's a scene (which seems to last at least a minute) where a character is a on a toilet and there are very loud flatulent sounds. It seems that, in a movie that seems constantly concerned with promoting the profundity of the story without alienating the viewer completely, a scene such as this only made me wonder whether the story really was all that profound, or was a ruse, much like Henry Fool's own deluded view of his own self-importance.
The second choice that puzzled me was that, for the first two-thirds of the movie, it seems that Simon Grim, and not Henry Fool, is the main character, despite the title of the movie. The last forty minutes, however, feature almost exclusively on Henry, with Simon's presence glaringly absent. The shift in focus mid-film is somewhat abrupt, and the lack of the Henry/Simon dynamic make the end portion of the film seem even slower than the rest, which is not a good thing for an already slow movie.
Henry Fool is not a failure, however. The dynamic between the two leads is engaging, and the segment of the story focusing on whether Simon's "magnum opus" is "art" or "pornography" is developed fully and powerfully. Unfortunately, the movie continues to trod along far after this storyline has reached its apex, and the ending is surprisingly rushed and anti-climatic.
It seems a shame that a movie with such promise should flounder so horribly in the end. Hartley definitely has a world-changing poem within him, but for now, it's hard to tell whether he's more Henry Fool or Simon Grim.
Movie review: Kung Fu Panda
Contributor: Jason Lutterloh
Contributor URL: http://www.compjason.com
I have seen Kung Fu Panda twice since its release and immediately fell in love with it within the first thirty minutes of the movie. How can you not enjoy watching a chubby panda wish he was a kung fu hero amongst all other animals?
Going into the movie, I figured it would be one of those cute kiddie movies that are only entertaining for, well, kids. I’m glad I was wrong. This movie would be great for kids but teens and adults as well. My abs got a good workout by the end. How can one not be amused at the power of the “Mushu (or wushu, not really sure) Finger Hold” or the scene at the end where Po (Jack Black) thinks Shi Fu (spelling?)(Dustin Hoffman) is dead? (You’ll have to see the movie to know what I’m referring to here.)
While the movie lasts a mere hour and thirty minutes it is full of gut-wrenching humor and a cute storyline about an unlikely hero. wait, what? You say you’ve seen enough movies about unlikely heroes and underdogs? Go see one more. This one can’t compare to some great sports movies like “Remember the Titans” but its a good relief from everyday stress or a good way to get out of the sun for a while.
I strongly encourage you to go see this movie with your family, friends, or whoever. It’s good, clean, fun entertainment. That is something we lack in America, and it was refreshing to see this movie. If you have any other questions or comments, please respond.
“Skidoosh!”
Hitman Movie Review
Do you like gore? Meaningless gore? Excessive gore? Do you like plotlines that you can’t follow and don’t even want to? Do you like lame sex scenes and pointless topless screenshots? Then Hitman might just be the movie for you!
Maybe the reason why I’m so irreversibly pissed off about this movie is that my hopes were so high. Don’t ask me why—I should have seen the galumphing, gas-leaking, rickety and falling apart train wreck of a movie for what it was from the get-go. But on the contrary—I felt cheated by the movie. The opening credits were so cool, and then, the aforementioned train wreck took place.
Through creepy, mystical music, the names of the movie director, the producer, and the starring actors floated onto the black screen…and now I saw rows of blue-coated orphans executing martial arts moves in perfect synchrony. On the backs of their heads, bar-codes glowed in the eerie luminescence emanating from the TV screen. Man, I thought, this movie is going to rock. I already knew what it was going to be about. A futuristic, totalitarian government, using the martial mastery of children, estranged from their parents at a young age, to bring the merciless and raw power of the government down upon insubordinate heads. A hero amongst the orphan mercenaries, who rises above and sees the evil of his government; forms a revolution and overthrows the dictator—but in doing so, falls prey to greed and temptation and descends into darkness.
Boy, was I wrong.
As the opening credits drew to a close, the scene opened on a darkened living room. As a mysterious looking man entered, he found himself face to face with another mysterious looking gentleman (the mysteriousness didn’t last, in case you were wondering). Mysterious man 1 inquired if mysterious man 2 was going to kill him. The second man replied that if he was going to kill him, mysterious man 1 would already be dead (or some variation on that inevitable line). Okay, I thought, it’s a little cliché, so what? This movie is still going to rock the house down.
Man 2 (this is about when they stopped being mysterious) then inquired when it was right to kill. For a movie that posed such a deep and profound moral quandary, it didn’t show a whole lot of respect for the living—I didn’t notice any qualms or internal struggles when 47 (yes, that is the name of the main character) blew the brains out of a politician with a sniper rifle, to say nothing of the massive body count the movie accumulated.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. No, wait…I’m actually not. For reasons best known to himself, 47 felt the urge to assassinate a politician. Don’t ask me why, as far as I can see it never tied in with the rest of the movie. Cool, cool, I thought, when he aimed at the guy’s head. So it’s fast paced, there’s nothing wrong with that.
It didn’t get any better. I wasn’t particularly excited about the brains and blood splattering, and then, at the secret agent guys insistence, replaying the tape several times—rewinding it, even, to figure out some other hidden mystery, so I saw the whole gross ordeal over again.
It was at this point that the intricate ice sculpture that was my fantasy of this movie began to melt. There was no intelligent plot. 47 poured machine gun bullets into his enemies with an eagerness that was probably supposed to be cool. It wasn’t. I just found myself wanting the fight scenes to be over. Well, no, not quite true. When the fight scenes ended, a new element of the movie arose that was even worse: the love story. Actually, ‘sex story’ would be more fitting here—I don’t feel it was worthy of being called a love story, whatever it was.
After a few minutes of crying over all the unspeakable (but I’m sure manly and necessary) violence that 47 was committing against her associates, the lover declared that he was “actually quite charming when he wasn’t killing people.” Whatever charm she detected was lost on me; however, that appeared to be all it took—five minutes later she was topless and straddling him.
It was at this moment (another sign that this movie must have been a serious bore) that I crumpled backward onto the floor. My ornate ice sculpture of darkness, glory and political intrigue had been sledge-hammered; what remained was a slush of gore, sex, and crappiness.
I don’t even remember what happened in the final third of the movie. Except the grand finale—that was pretty hard to miss. The movie wound down with a heroic shot of 47 hefting a gun, off to blow the brains out of more politicians, and ruin an hour and forty minutes of more innocent movie-goers lives.
Hitman Movie Review
Do you like gore? Meaningless gore? Excessive gore? Do you like plotlines that you can’t follow and don’t even want to? Do you like lame sex scenes and pointless topless screenshots? Then Hitman might just be the movie for you!
Maybe the reason why I’m so irreversibly pissed off about this movie is that my hopes were so high. Don’t ask me why—I should have seen the galumphing, gas-leaking, rickety and falling apart train wreck of a movie for what it was from the get-go. But on the contrary—I felt cheated by the movie. The opening credits were so cool, and then, the aforementioned train wreck took place.
Through creepy, mystical music, the names of the movie director, the producer, and the starring actors floated onto the black screen…and now I saw rows of blue-coated orphans executing martial arts moves in perfect synchrony. On the backs of their heads, bar-codes glowed in the eerie luminescence emanating from the TV screen. Man, I thought, this movie is going to rock. I already knew what it was going to be about. A futuristic, totalitarian government, using the martial mastery of children, estranged from their parents at a young age, to bring the merciless and raw power of the government down upon insubordinate heads. A hero amongst the orphan mercenaries, who rises above and sees the evil of his government; forms a revolution and overthrows the dictator—but in doing so, falls prey to greed and temptation and descends into darkness.
Boy, was I wrong.
As the opening credits drew to a close, the scene opened on a darkened living room. As a mysterious looking man entered, he found himself face to face with another mysterious looking gentleman (the mysteriousness didn’t last, in case you were wondering). Mysterious man 1 inquired if mysterious man 2 was going to kill him. The second man replied that if he was going to kill him, mysterious man 1 would already be dead (or some variation on that inevitable line). Okay, I thought, it’s a little cliché, so what? This movie is still going to rock the house down.
Man 2 (this is about when they stopped being mysterious) then inquired when it was right to kill. For a movie that posed such a deep and profound moral quandary, it didn’t show a whole lot of respect for the living—I didn’t notice any qualms or internal struggles when 47 (yes, that is the name of the main character) blew the brains out of a politician with a sniper rifle, to say nothing of the massive body count the movie accumulated.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. No, wait…I’m actually not. For reasons best known to himself, 47 felt the urge to assassinate a politician. Don’t ask me why, as far as I can see it never tied in with the rest of the movie. Cool, cool, I thought, when he aimed at the guy’s head. So it’s fast paced, there’s nothing wrong with that.
It didn’t get any better. I wasn’t particularly excited about the brains and blood splattering, and then, at the secret agent guys insistence, replaying the tape several times—rewinding it, even, to figure out some other hidden mystery, so I saw the whole gross ordeal over again.
It was at this point that the intricate ice sculpture that was my fantasy of this movie began to melt. There was no intelligent plot. 47 poured machine gun bullets into his enemies with an eagerness that was probably supposed to be cool. It wasn’t. I just found myself wanting the fight scenes to be over. Well, no, not quite true. When the fight scenes ended, a new element of the movie arose that was even worse: the love story. Actually, ‘sex story’ would be more fitting here—I don’t feel it was worthy of being called a love story, whatever it was.
After a few minutes of crying over all the unspeakable (but I’m sure manly and necessary) violence that 47 was committing against her associates, the lover declared that he was “actually quite charming when he wasn’t killing people.” Whatever charm she detected was lost on me; however, that appeared to be all it took—five minutes later she was topless and straddling him.
It was at this moment (another sign that this movie must have been a serious bore) that I crumpled backward onto the floor. My ornate ice sculpture of darkness, glory and political intrigue had been sledge-hammered; what remained was a slush of gore, sex, and crappiness.
I don’t even remember what happened in the final third of the movie. Except the grand finale—that was pretty hard to miss. The movie wound down with a heroic shot of 47 hefting a gun, off to blow the brains out of more politicians, and ruin an hour and forty minutes of more innocent movie-goers lives.
I apologize for the state of the review. I am not sure what happened; some wierd symbols got thrown in where there were supposed to be apostrophies and other hyphons. The first addition was also not paragraphed. I fixed the paragraphs and re-entered it, but the wierd symbols remain. Apologies!
Jason & Miles; Thank you for your reviews of the movies "Kung Fu Panda" and "Hitman." These have now been posted to the main part of our site.
Myles, Note that this weird character thing is usually due to a review being written in MS Word then pasted in. In the process of dressing up text with things like curly quotes, MS Word makes some of the characters unintelligible to text based programs. We fixed this. To avoid this, you could simply create reviews in notepad, textpad, or some other text program. For your review just posted, we fixed these before putting them into the main part of the site. Thanks again. ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
Review: The Dark Knight
By Jason Schwartzman
The Dark Knight, the sequel to 2005's Batman Begins, has set a new precedent for what the comic book movie can be. It is dark, intense and fast, demanding the viewer's attention for the entirety of the film's two and a half hours. The movie is wholly superior to Tim Burton's heralded Batman (1989) and of course the Batman films that followed it, most notably Joel Schumacher's failed Batman and Robin (1997).
The Dark Knight builds on the success of Batman Begins, but goes in a different direction stylistically. Whereas Batman Begins was tight, focused and built around Christian Bale's Batman, The Dark Knight follows the path of it's iconic villain, The Joker. The movie is wide-open and wildly chaotic, just like the Clown Prince of Crime. Heath Ledger's Joker is a vast improvement over Jack Nicholson's. Ledger's Joker is genuinely scary. His twisted stories and freakish mannerisms overshadow Batman. Ledger's performance, his last completed work before his death, lives up to the hype, and even has inspired talk of a Best Supporting Actor nod. His unique characterization develops into perhaps the best villain since The Silence Of The Lamb's Hannibal Lector.
The plot picks up as The Joker is hired by various villains to assassinate Batman in order to protect their suddenly vulnerable money. Batman, however, finds a new ally in the DA, Harvey Dent, a man not accidentally labeled The White Knight of Gotham City. Dent is played by Aaron Eckhart, who offers the arrogance and the towering, intimidating presence required for the role that means to project a real alternative to Batman and vigilantism.
The common thread though is Ledger's Joker, who has no logical motivation and whose origin is a mystery lest you believe the sickening but contradictory tales he offers about how he receives his grotesque facial scars.
Other players include Batman and Dent's love interest, Rachel Dawes, played by an underwhelming Maggie Gyllenhal (replacing Katie Holmes) and two veterans of the first movie, the always solid Michael Caine and Gary Oldman as Alfred Pennyworth (the butler) and Officer Jim Gordon respectively. Morgan Freeman has a small, but strong role reprising Bruce Wayne's right hand man, Lucious Fox.
The film is just as much a crime drama as a superhero movie. It carries the heavy themes of chance, fate and entropy just as Batman Begins revolved around fear.
The action is nearly non-stop, the chase scenes breathtaking and the dialogue razor-sharp. This isn't George Clooney's forgettable caped crusader; this is Christian Bale's Dark Knight, developed not for young kids, but instead an older, more intelligent audience.
In the wake of almost unimaginable hype, The Dark Knight does not disappoint.
Thank you for submitting your review of The Dark Knight, which has now been posted to the main part of our site. ~AmateurMovieReviews.com
This is a short review and recommendation of "Inglourious Basterds." I posted my full review on a copyrighted site, but this is such a great movie. It is about so much more than Brad Pitt running around killing Nazis. The supporting actor and actress make it the plot possible and plausible. If you thought this was just another war movie, think again. Tarantino adds depth to his violence. Check it out.
Full review: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2707447/inglourious_basterds_movie_review.html?cat=40
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