The biggest point of interest for me about Scream 4 (or Scre4m in l337 m0v13 sp33k) was that it was shot in the Detroit area. It wasn't even a movie I was planning on seeing theatrically but got stuck paying full price for when the showing of Fast Five we'd planned on catching with a free ticket was sold out. Drat. While it's not worth full price, it's not bad so I didn't feel too chapped.
Pretty much the whole gang that wasn't killed in previous chapters is here as Neve Campbell's Sydney is coming home to promote her book about surviving the other three movies. Courtney Cox and David Arquette are married (fun fact: their marriage was falling apart during the shoot) and he's the Sheriff of Whereverville these movies happen in. Of course, people start dying and the question is who is wearing the Ghostface mask this time.
The thing about the Scream series from the very beginning was that it was tweaking the conventions of the genre. It's hard to remember what a shock it was for Drew Barrymore's character to get whacked in the opening scene when she was prominently featured on the poster. As a decade has passed, the requirement for how Scream changed the format to be addressed is cleverly handled by series creator Kevin Williamson very meta script. From the very beginning Scre4m knows what it is and makes a running commentary about what it's doing and why. (Check out the trailer for a taste.)
You'll probably figure out the final twists since we're all so cynical and on guard for them in the first place, but director Wes Craven runs things fast enough that we don't have enough time to ponder what's coming. While not even evolutionary, Scream 4 manages to not be a Ghostface-come-lately cash-in. We didn't need this movie; but it's not something that should be killed and buried behind the garage. It's worth a rental, just as I'd planned all along.
Score: 7/10. Rent the DVD.
Weird detail: Marley Shelton, who plays a deputy and was the woman who Josh Hartnett killed in the beginning of Sin City, looks a LOT like Heather Graham; so much so that when a clip of Stab, the movie within the movie in Scream 2 (IIRC), is shown with Heather, we thought it was Marley again.
"Middle Men" Review
Sunday, April 17, 2011
The origins of the online porn industry are flashily portrayed in Middle Men, a brisk and frequently amusing flick that bogs down somewhat in the middle before ultimately telling the viewer at the end that they've been wasting their time if they've been thinking they were learning something.
After a pair of drugged-out morons in L.A. develop a method to collect credit card payments for porn, they rapidly start rolling in dough (and drugs) and their lack of business acumen causes the business and their lives to be in danger. In steps clean-cut nice guy fixer Luke Wilson, a Houston family man who is so straight he wears a suit and tie almost all the time. He straightens up the business and comes up with a means to hide the nature of the charges on credit card statements so that wives don't know what smut their hubbies are blowing the grocery money on.
Of course, the good times can last forever, especially when you're dealing with a pair of idiots, a crooked lawyer, and Russian mobsters and the stakes rapidly rise to life-threatening levels. Also, his Luke's Boy Scout nature is tempted by an affair with the only porn star who doesn't do nudity - come on, Hollywood, it's like the starlets who don't take off their bra while having sex; cast actresses who are willing to give up the goods! - and when the Idiot Twins start their own side bunch of sites, the Feds close in.
While Middle Men starts off with a lot of energy it sags in the middle before pulling it together in the end. The performances are good and it's pretty entertaining except none of it is real. While it's advertised as "inspired by true events" a card in the end credits reveals that while it's kinda sorta based on real events, all the characters, names, places and events have been fictionalized or composited from different people; in other words, it's a total work of fiction based on real events, like Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. Way to waste the viewer's time, folks.
Entertaining, but not enlightening, Middle Men is an also-ran for anyone who was genuinely curious as to how the modern Internet was won.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
After a pair of drugged-out morons in L.A. develop a method to collect credit card payments for porn, they rapidly start rolling in dough (and drugs) and their lack of business acumen causes the business and their lives to be in danger. In steps clean-cut nice guy fixer Luke Wilson, a Houston family man who is so straight he wears a suit and tie almost all the time. He straightens up the business and comes up with a means to hide the nature of the charges on credit card statements so that wives don't know what smut their hubbies are blowing the grocery money on.
Of course, the good times can last forever, especially when you're dealing with a pair of idiots, a crooked lawyer, and Russian mobsters and the stakes rapidly rise to life-threatening levels. Also, his Luke's Boy Scout nature is tempted by an affair with the only porn star who doesn't do nudity - come on, Hollywood, it's like the starlets who don't take off their bra while having sex; cast actresses who are willing to give up the goods! - and when the Idiot Twins start their own side bunch of sites, the Feds close in.
While Middle Men starts off with a lot of energy it sags in the middle before pulling it together in the end. The performances are good and it's pretty entertaining except none of it is real. While it's advertised as "inspired by true events" a card in the end credits reveals that while it's kinda sorta based on real events, all the characters, names, places and events have been fictionalized or composited from different people; in other words, it's a total work of fiction based on real events, like Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. Way to waste the viewer's time, folks.
Entertaining, but not enlightening, Middle Men is an also-ran for anyone who was genuinely curious as to how the modern Internet was won.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
"Hanna" Review
Rather than waste time recapping the plot of Hanna, watch the trailer for me, please:
If it looks like an artsy take on the Hit Girl character from last year's Kick-Ass, you'd be wrong for the most part because Saoirse Ronan's (The Lovely Bones, Atonement) Hanna is a polite girl whose father, Eric Bana, has raised in total isolation in the Arctic Circle with a single purpose: to kill Cate Blanchett, the CIA spook who killed her mother. I don't think she swears once.
When she sets off on her mission and escape, Hanna finds herself in a world she's only read about. She can speak fluent Arabic, but has never seen a TV. When she hooks up with a Australian family of pseudo-Bohos, her inexperience with basic social situations leads to some hilarious awkward moments. ("As opposed to what?!?" is the funniest line of the movie.)
With a taut score by the Chemical Brothers (who beat down the overrated Daft Punk and their TRON Legacy bloops and beeps), good performances all around including the poorly-dressed, creepy German bar owner/assassin Blanchett sets after Hanna, and a very European vibe and look that avoids the usual locations for spy movies, Hanna is a more cerebral take on the adolescent murder girl genre. Yeah, you'll be able to predict the last line of dialogue, but it's OK.
Score: 8/10. Catch a matinee.
If it looks like an artsy take on the Hit Girl character from last year's Kick-Ass, you'd be wrong for the most part because Saoirse Ronan's (The Lovely Bones, Atonement) Hanna is a polite girl whose father, Eric Bana, has raised in total isolation in the Arctic Circle with a single purpose: to kill Cate Blanchett, the CIA spook who killed her mother. I don't think she swears once.
When she sets off on her mission and escape, Hanna finds herself in a world she's only read about. She can speak fluent Arabic, but has never seen a TV. When she hooks up with a Australian family of pseudo-Bohos, her inexperience with basic social situations leads to some hilarious awkward moments. ("As opposed to what?!?" is the funniest line of the movie.)
With a taut score by the Chemical Brothers (who beat down the overrated Daft Punk and their TRON Legacy bloops and beeps), good performances all around including the poorly-dressed, creepy German bar owner/assassin Blanchett sets after Hanna, and a very European vibe and look that avoids the usual locations for spy movies, Hanna is a more cerebral take on the adolescent murder girl genre. Yeah, you'll be able to predict the last line of dialogue, but it's OK.
Score: 8/10. Catch a matinee.
"Death Race 2" Review
Saturday, April 16, 2011
OK, this movie sucked, so let's make quick work of it. Here's the trailer for this direct-to-video steamer:
Did you see the part about how the first half of the movie is spent with gladiator battles? How about how the charisma-free leading man who the producers thought would be an acceptable substitute for Jason Statham? Is it clear that it's a prequel even though the higher number would indicate sequel? OK, that it does, but who cares?
Low-rent and unnecessary - and not even willing to have decent gratuitous nudity to go with all the CGI bloodshed - and not much fun, Death Race 2 is one death race too many.
Score: 2/10. Skip it.
Did you see the part about how the first half of the movie is spent with gladiator battles? How about how the charisma-free leading man who the producers thought would be an acceptable substitute for Jason Statham? Is it clear that it's a prequel even though the higher number would indicate sequel? OK, that it does, but who cares?
Low-rent and unnecessary - and not even willing to have decent gratuitous nudity to go with all the CGI bloodshed - and not much fun, Death Race 2 is one death race too many.
Score: 2/10. Skip it.
"The Next Three Days" Review
Monday, April 11, 2011
The trailer tells the tale:
All that's missing is the details as to how Russell Crowe breaks Elizabeth Banks out of prison. Wrongly convicted - or was she? - of murdering her boss, Crowe reaches out to Liam Neeson (who escaped many prisons and wrote a book and is in exactly one scene) for advice and then plans how to get her out when her final appeal fails. When she is suddenly slated to be moved to another prison, he has only three days to execute his plan.
Written and directed by the most dishonest screenwriter in Hollyweird, Paul "Crash, In the Valley of Elah, Million Dollar Baby" Haggis (which is a gross Scottish dish), it manages to not be as revolting as those stories, but at the cost of being dull and ultimately forgettable. (I'm writing this review on June 24th and can barely remember what it was like.) Crowe is miscast as a desperate husband while Banks is good in a thinly written role. A hot single mom (Olivia Wilde) Crowe meets on his son's playground doesn't even act as a temptation, so why is she here at all? Seriously. I get being all loyal to your wife and baby mama, but she's going away for 20 years or more and OLIVIA WILDE IS RIGHT THERE AND AVAILABLE!! Dude!!!
Finally, without spoiling whether he breaks her out successfully - oh, come on; what do you think happens? - I have to say that getting into Canuckia is a hella lot harder than they show it here. Bah.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
All that's missing is the details as to how Russell Crowe breaks Elizabeth Banks out of prison. Wrongly convicted - or was she? - of murdering her boss, Crowe reaches out to Liam Neeson (who escaped many prisons and wrote a book and is in exactly one scene) for advice and then plans how to get her out when her final appeal fails. When she is suddenly slated to be moved to another prison, he has only three days to execute his plan.
Written and directed by the most dishonest screenwriter in Hollyweird, Paul "Crash, In the Valley of Elah, Million Dollar Baby" Haggis (which is a gross Scottish dish), it manages to not be as revolting as those stories, but at the cost of being dull and ultimately forgettable. (I'm writing this review on June 24th and can barely remember what it was like.) Crowe is miscast as a desperate husband while Banks is good in a thinly written role. A hot single mom (Olivia Wilde) Crowe meets on his son's playground doesn't even act as a temptation, so why is she here at all? Seriously. I get being all loyal to your wife and baby mama, but she's going away for 20 years or more and OLIVIA WILDE IS RIGHT THERE AND AVAILABLE!! Dude!!!
Finally, without spoiling whether he breaks her out successfully - oh, come on; what do you think happens? - I have to say that getting into Canuckia is a hella lot harder than they show it here. Bah.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
"Takers" Review
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Familiarity makes Takers an exercise in mehness. A slick gang of bank robbers gets a tip on a Big Score from a former crew member who got caught on a job and served five years in prison and is back out. Based on the armored truck robbery scheme from The Italian Job, they put together an audacious plan which works after a fashion until the inevitable double-crosses and bad breaks start to cause serious problems and blood loss.
The action scenes are OK and the story structure is a little different - the big heist is in the middle of the movie, hinting that there's more easy-to-guess plot to come - but it tries a little too hard to be stylish with dramatic lighting and color timing. Co-produced by co-star Tip "T.I." Harris, it's an old heist movie story dressed up in slick threads and a mostly minority cast - Matt Dillon, Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen are the only gringos in the top-billed stars - but all the polish can't make it shine.
Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.
The action scenes are OK and the story structure is a little different - the big heist is in the middle of the movie, hinting that there's more easy-to-guess plot to come - but it tries a little too hard to be stylish with dramatic lighting and color timing. Co-produced by co-star Tip "T.I." Harris, it's an old heist movie story dressed up in slick threads and a mostly minority cast - Matt Dillon, Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen are the only gringos in the top-billed stars - but all the polish can't make it shine.
Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.
"Ghost in the Shell 2.0" Blu-ray Review
Friday, April 8, 2011
There are certain anime movies and shows that every self-respecting beginning otaku (Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime, manga, or video games) is expected to have seen: Akira, Cowboy Bebop, and 1995's Ghost in the Shell which was updated in 2008 by director Mamoru Oshii to Ghost in the Shell 2.0 - not to be confused with his 2004 sequel Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Confused? Let me explain.
Oshii has gone back an redone several sequences with CGI animation meaning shots of helicopters and the city and computer screens and the Major's iconic strip-naked-turn-invisible-jump-off-building-kill-people scene are buffed in in 21st Century drag. The problem is that when we revert to the 1995 hand-drawn animation, it's jarring. Purists may hate it, but I liked it.
It's been ages since I've seen GitS and it was probably on VHS so I thought this new Blu-ray looked and sounded terrific. However, in looking up some info on it, I discovered there is some controversy involving the new footage, the color timing changes to make it look like the sequel (this I tend to agree with now that I've seen the comparison), and the voice cast. This guy's video review goes into quite a lot of depth with his criticism (do yourself a favor and skip to the 4:00 mark to get to the pertinent info; the intro is simply stupid and screams, "I'm a nerdgin!") and illustrates his beefs with the update.
It should be noted that the original cut is included on this disc, though it's apparently an uprezzed version of the DVD master and opinions are generally negative toward it. The above-linked video talks about how a proper BD of original version is available via import, but a glance at Amazon's Japan site shows it's about $125 for the three disc set! Pass!!
At the core of Ghost in the Shell is a story about the tenuous grip on humanity a person who is basically a cybernetic vessel encasing her spirit (or "ghost" as they call it) may have and how other A.I. constructs may feel about their existence. It frequently gets dully philosophical, but it's not as talky as the sequel was. For all of Innocence's striking beauty, it was mostly characters quoting philosophers at each other like college students one-upping each other.
Ghost in the Shell was never a flawless movie - though unlike Akira, it doesn't utterly fall apart in the end - and the updated visual bits don't change the ultimate story, but it should be seen by all seeking to have a well-rounded appreciation for disparate forms of entertainment. If you've never seen (or don't remember) GitS, then this 2.0 version is fine if you can rent it or get on sale someplace for $10 or less.
Score: 7/10. Buy it if you're a fan and can get it cheap.
Oshii has gone back an redone several sequences with CGI animation meaning shots of helicopters and the city and computer screens and the Major's iconic strip-naked-turn-invisible-jump-off-building-kill-people scene are buffed in in 21st Century drag. The problem is that when we revert to the 1995 hand-drawn animation, it's jarring. Purists may hate it, but I liked it.
It's been ages since I've seen GitS and it was probably on VHS so I thought this new Blu-ray looked and sounded terrific. However, in looking up some info on it, I discovered there is some controversy involving the new footage, the color timing changes to make it look like the sequel (this I tend to agree with now that I've seen the comparison), and the voice cast. This guy's video review goes into quite a lot of depth with his criticism (do yourself a favor and skip to the 4:00 mark to get to the pertinent info; the intro is simply stupid and screams, "I'm a nerdgin!") and illustrates his beefs with the update.
It should be noted that the original cut is included on this disc, though it's apparently an uprezzed version of the DVD master and opinions are generally negative toward it. The above-linked video talks about how a proper BD of original version is available via import, but a glance at Amazon's Japan site shows it's about $125 for the three disc set! Pass!!
At the core of Ghost in the Shell is a story about the tenuous grip on humanity a person who is basically a cybernetic vessel encasing her spirit (or "ghost" as they call it) may have and how other A.I. constructs may feel about their existence. It frequently gets dully philosophical, but it's not as talky as the sequel was. For all of Innocence's striking beauty, it was mostly characters quoting philosophers at each other like college students one-upping each other.
Ghost in the Shell was never a flawless movie - though unlike Akira, it doesn't utterly fall apart in the end - and the updated visual bits don't change the ultimate story, but it should be seen by all seeking to have a well-rounded appreciation for disparate forms of entertainment. If you've never seen (or don't remember) GitS, then this 2.0 version is fine if you can rent it or get on sale someplace for $10 or less.
Score: 7/10. Buy it if you're a fan and can get it cheap.
"Arthur (2011)" Review
Monday, April 4, 2011
When they announced the totally unnecessary remake of the classic 1981 comedy Arthur with Russell Brand taking over Dudley Moore's role, Helen Mirren as a gender-swapped Hobson (that won Sir John Gielgud an Oscar), and Greta Gerwig (me neither) blonding up the Liza Minnelli role, I had the same question as everyone else which is the same question that is asked when a beloved family member dies, a natural disaster occurs, or Michael Anthony is booted for Eddie's kid Wolfgang: WHY, GOD? WHY?!?
The need to remake everything regardless of whether it's needed re-doing or not has been a close second to sequels as a sign of Hollywood's fearful timidness and general disinterest in originality. You can imagine the pitch meeting for this thing: "Hey, let's remake Arthur with that annoying skinny English twit from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him To The Greek. We'll get that GILF Helen Mirren to be the butler and it will be automatic win and profit! If only it were so simple.
If you've seen the original, you've pretty much seen this one. Arthur's a drunk man-child whose mother orders him to marry the daughter (Jennifer Garner) of a rough and tough, but very wealthy, contractor (Nick Nolte speaking in a worse voice than Batman) in order to provide stability and trust in the family business. He's dated her before, but dumped her because he didn't fancy her, something no other man had done to her before. When he tells Mother that he's not going to do it, she tells him he'll be cut off from his billion dollar trust fund if he doesn't close the deal. He meets a kooky, free-spirited, self-appointed tour guide (Gerwig) at Grand Central Station and is smitten by her. Will true love will out over money or will a tragic murder-suicide cap off this flick?
I'm not much of a fan of Brand's and it has nothing to do with his exclusive access to Katy Perry's glorious joy globes. He's struck me as an annoying one-trick pony and he doesn't disabuse me of that idea still, but he's not as terrible as I'd feared. As Arthur makes his inevitable arc into semi-maturity, Brand does OK. Mirren is as tart as could've been expected, but woefully underused. It feels as if they cast her and figured their work was done and didn't bother to write much for her. What a wasted opportunity.
This Gerwig person is one of those critic's darling babes that all the critics fawn over because she was in a movie you've probably never heard (think: Greta Scacchi), in this case Greenberg, the Ben Stiller blockbuster that grossed $4,234,170 domestically. She's sorta cute in an indie movie way, but feels underwritten. The weird standout is Garner who plays Susan, the arranged bride, as a craven shark with barely any veneer of romance; it's all about Arthur's Benjamins, baybee!
Are there laughs? Sure, but not as many as there should've been and in a far lower ratio than a typical well-done sitcom. (Really, why is it that TV shows can deliver more laughs in an average 22-minute episode for free than a 100-minute charges $10 for?) My girlfriend likes Brand (figures) and found the line he delivers during an AA meeting to be the funniest thing she's heard all year. There are some moments of sweet whimsy, like their first date. However, for most of the time during Arthur 2011: The Unnecessary Remake, I was wondering when a proper DVD release of the original would happen - it's never been released in widescreen format. This movie isn't evil, just irrelevant.
Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.
The need to remake everything regardless of whether it's needed re-doing or not has been a close second to sequels as a sign of Hollywood's fearful timidness and general disinterest in originality. You can imagine the pitch meeting for this thing: "Hey, let's remake Arthur with that annoying skinny English twit from Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him To The Greek. We'll get that GILF Helen Mirren to be the butler and it will be automatic win and profit! If only it were so simple.
If you've seen the original, you've pretty much seen this one. Arthur's a drunk man-child whose mother orders him to marry the daughter (Jennifer Garner) of a rough and tough, but very wealthy, contractor (Nick Nolte speaking in a worse voice than Batman) in order to provide stability and trust in the family business. He's dated her before, but dumped her because he didn't fancy her, something no other man had done to her before. When he tells Mother that he's not going to do it, she tells him he'll be cut off from his billion dollar trust fund if he doesn't close the deal. He meets a kooky, free-spirited, self-appointed tour guide (Gerwig) at Grand Central Station and is smitten by her. Will true love will out over money or will a tragic murder-suicide cap off this flick?
I'm not much of a fan of Brand's and it has nothing to do with his exclusive access to Katy Perry's glorious joy globes. He's struck me as an annoying one-trick pony and he doesn't disabuse me of that idea still, but he's not as terrible as I'd feared. As Arthur makes his inevitable arc into semi-maturity, Brand does OK. Mirren is as tart as could've been expected, but woefully underused. It feels as if they cast her and figured their work was done and didn't bother to write much for her. What a wasted opportunity.
This Gerwig person is one of those critic's darling babes that all the critics fawn over because she was in a movie you've probably never heard (think: Greta Scacchi), in this case Greenberg, the Ben Stiller blockbuster that grossed $4,234,170 domestically. She's sorta cute in an indie movie way, but feels underwritten. The weird standout is Garner who plays Susan, the arranged bride, as a craven shark with barely any veneer of romance; it's all about Arthur's Benjamins, baybee!
Are there laughs? Sure, but not as many as there should've been and in a far lower ratio than a typical well-done sitcom. (Really, why is it that TV shows can deliver more laughs in an average 22-minute episode for free than a 100-minute charges $10 for?) My girlfriend likes Brand (figures) and found the line he delivers during an AA meeting to be the funniest thing she's heard all year. There are some moments of sweet whimsy, like their first date. However, for most of the time during Arthur 2011: The Unnecessary Remake, I was wondering when a proper DVD release of the original would happen - it's never been released in widescreen format. This movie isn't evil, just irrelevant.
Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.
"Country Strong" Review
Sunday, April 3, 2011
It's easy to make fun of the title of Country Strong - which itself sounds like the Hulk titled it - with things like Country Wrong or Country Weak or Country Cheese and the idea of Hollywood blue blood and English resident (married to the singer of Radiohead Lite) Gwyneth Paltrow launching a side career as a country singer has gathered hoots, but the main problem the movie has is a scattered, trope-laden script that stumbles along aimlessly before doing something at the end which turned a mediocre movie into something epically terrible.
Since I'm going to have to spoil the living daylights about the plot, for those unwilling to heed my good advice and skip this movie, this is the end of the road for you. Gwynnie can sing; Garrett Hedlund is actually quite good acting and singing, a shock considering he was last seen utterly stinking up the Grid in TRON Legacy; Leighton Meester almost shakes her Gossip Girl image, but is much better singing; but, overall the movie is a mess before it veers into disaster.
Score: 3/10. Skip it.
OK, here's where the SPOILERS begin, so you've been warned. To understand what's wrong with Country Strong, you have to look at the trailer to see how it was sold:
OK, got that? It looks like a redemption story with All About Eve elements. Gwyneth overcomes scheming rookie Blair with the help of young country hunk Beau. Did you catch the part where Beau is the actual protagonist and Gwyneth KILLS HERSELF about a minute after telling Blair, "That's how it's done."? They show someone slumping to the floor - that would be Tim McGraw, real-life country star who isn't a musician here and is married in real life to Faith Hill whom Gwyneth is clearly patterned after - at the news of her death, but it comes from nowhere in the movie. Movies don't need to have happy endings, but this is so cheap and meaningless it just shows how slipshod the storytelling is.
Let's start from the beginning: It opens with Beau and his band playing for a smattering of oldsters at a honky tonk. He then goes to work and his clothes indicate he's some sort of orderly. He's told to stay away from Gwyneth, so of course we cut directly to him and her collaborating on a song, passing an acoustic back and forth during an obvious roll in the sack. What's their relationship? We don't know. Tim comes in and asks what's going on and announces that she's checking out. Beau protests that it's a month too early and he's her sponsor. OK, she's in rehab and he's her sponsor and apparently f*ck buddy. Moving on...
While Tim and Faith (heh) are driving out, we hear on the radio a news report that she was coming out of rehab after an incident in Dallas several months before in which she was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct while 5-1/2 months pregnant during a show. Hmmm, sounds bad. What happened to the baby? Tim addresses the media that she's ready to get back on the road. So he's her manager? OK.
Next thing, they're in bed together, but it's obviously chilly between them. Oh, he's her husband and manager. Happens all the time. She wants to talk about Dallas but he doesn't. I'm guessing she lost the baby - when someone gives her a "gift" of a box with a bloody doll inside with a note reading "BABY KILLER!" that seals it - but Tim says something about "putting him down" like they have a kid. What the heck is going on here?
We then see Tim checking out potential opener Beau and Blair at some Nashville bar. Blair is a former beauty queen prone to stage fright and she freezes until Beau bails her out. Tim offers them the opening slots on Faith's comeback tour. Huh? Some guy who appears to be banging your wife and a scared girl are the best you can get? After the doll incident, Faith freaks out on stage and starts crying, ending the show and she disappears on a second gig leaving the giant arena gig in Dallas on the line. Fortunately, Faith makes out with the promoter of the gig and it's back on? WTFF?!?
All along, there seem to be TWO triangles going on: Tim-Faith-Beau and Faith-Beau-Blair. There's an attraction between the kids and after a night of drinking - wait, wasn't he Faith's rehab sponsor?!? - they almost seal the deal, but Faith is floating around the perimeter and I found myself shopping for video games online during this long stretch of nothing.
Blah-blah-woof-woof and the Big Show goes down. Beau rocks the house, Blair doesn't freeze up in a packed arena only a few gigs after tanking at the honky tonk, Faith comes out and puts on a triumphant performance, and after the show, she goes to her dressing room and locks the door. Beau notices she's not at the party and goes to her isolated dressing room, kicks in the door and finds her unconscious from an overdose of pills. Wait, WHAT?!?!??!
At this moment Country Strong jumps the shark, nukes the fridge, and makes me wonder what the whole movie was about and how everyone involved in the movie thought this was a good idea? Why did we spend two hours watching this woman try to redeem her life only to take it? A: Because she's not the main character, Beau is. It's not about Faith getting her life together, but Beau getting his career in gear, just like the trailer DIDN'T show. The whole marketing campaign is a bait and switch.
Now it may not have mattered if the movie managed to coherently tell its story, but it doesn't. We don't learn that Faith fell 10 feet off the stage in Dallas causing her to lose the baby until 80 minutes into the film. Why not mention that up front? How hard would it have been to have the radio report wrap all those details up in two sentences? "Not Faith Hill was released from rehab today, only months after an incident in Dallas in which an intoxicated, 5-1/2 month pregnant Not Faith Hill fell from the stage, causing a miscarriage." There, we're all up to speed and not scratching our heads.
There is also a subplot about an orphaned quail she finds on the facility's grounds that she's trying got nurture. Get it? The bird is her lost baby and need to be a mother. Except she takes the box it's in to the bar, gets drunk, and forgets it; something that we never see, is covered in dialogue and never factors into the story again. Again, huh? Did anyone look at a cut of the film before it was duped and sent to theaters? I'll bet I could recut the movie without any of that and it wouldn't be missed.
Because we are never clear about who is doing what and why, nothing ever gels. Hedlund is quite believable as Beau, with a strong baritone voice and charismatic manner and Gwyneth does what she can with the script and sings well, but it doesn't matter and the way she checks out is stupid. She could've slapped down Blair while walking offstage, gone to her dressing room, and had Tim come in to cheer her and say she's back and have her say, "No. I'm done. I'm retired and running off with Beau," or something to get her back in control of her life. Why suicide? Because it would've gotten Paltrow an Oscar nomination? That worked. Not.
Writer-director Shana Feste has no sense of how musicians actually think and act - lots of singing doesn't make it a musical - and the general confusion of the plot started at the script stage and didn't get better. As I detailed up top, we are thrown into a confusing set of relationships and have to unravel the facts as best we can. (This isn't Memento, dammit!)
Only waste your time on Country Strong if you want to see how NOT to tell a story.
Since I'm going to have to spoil the living daylights about the plot, for those unwilling to heed my good advice and skip this movie, this is the end of the road for you. Gwynnie can sing; Garrett Hedlund is actually quite good acting and singing, a shock considering he was last seen utterly stinking up the Grid in TRON Legacy; Leighton Meester almost shakes her Gossip Girl image, but is much better singing; but, overall the movie is a mess before it veers into disaster.
Score: 3/10. Skip it.
OK, here's where the SPOILERS begin, so you've been warned. To understand what's wrong with Country Strong, you have to look at the trailer to see how it was sold:
OK, got that? It looks like a redemption story with All About Eve elements. Gwyneth overcomes scheming rookie Blair with the help of young country hunk Beau. Did you catch the part where Beau is the actual protagonist and Gwyneth KILLS HERSELF about a minute after telling Blair, "That's how it's done."? They show someone slumping to the floor - that would be Tim McGraw, real-life country star who isn't a musician here and is married in real life to Faith Hill whom Gwyneth is clearly patterned after - at the news of her death, but it comes from nowhere in the movie. Movies don't need to have happy endings, but this is so cheap and meaningless it just shows how slipshod the storytelling is.
Let's start from the beginning: It opens with Beau and his band playing for a smattering of oldsters at a honky tonk. He then goes to work and his clothes indicate he's some sort of orderly. He's told to stay away from Gwyneth, so of course we cut directly to him and her collaborating on a song, passing an acoustic back and forth during an obvious roll in the sack. What's their relationship? We don't know. Tim comes in and asks what's going on and announces that she's checking out. Beau protests that it's a month too early and he's her sponsor. OK, she's in rehab and he's her sponsor and apparently f*ck buddy. Moving on...
While Tim and Faith (heh) are driving out, we hear on the radio a news report that she was coming out of rehab after an incident in Dallas several months before in which she was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct while 5-1/2 months pregnant during a show. Hmmm, sounds bad. What happened to the baby? Tim addresses the media that she's ready to get back on the road. So he's her manager? OK.
Next thing, they're in bed together, but it's obviously chilly between them. Oh, he's her husband and manager. Happens all the time. She wants to talk about Dallas but he doesn't. I'm guessing she lost the baby - when someone gives her a "gift" of a box with a bloody doll inside with a note reading "BABY KILLER!" that seals it - but Tim says something about "putting him down" like they have a kid. What the heck is going on here?
We then see Tim checking out potential opener Beau and Blair at some Nashville bar. Blair is a former beauty queen prone to stage fright and she freezes until Beau bails her out. Tim offers them the opening slots on Faith's comeback tour. Huh? Some guy who appears to be banging your wife and a scared girl are the best you can get? After the doll incident, Faith freaks out on stage and starts crying, ending the show and she disappears on a second gig leaving the giant arena gig in Dallas on the line. Fortunately, Faith makes out with the promoter of the gig and it's back on? WTFF?!?
All along, there seem to be TWO triangles going on: Tim-Faith-Beau and Faith-Beau-Blair. There's an attraction between the kids and after a night of drinking - wait, wasn't he Faith's rehab sponsor?!? - they almost seal the deal, but Faith is floating around the perimeter and I found myself shopping for video games online during this long stretch of nothing.
Blah-blah-woof-woof and the Big Show goes down. Beau rocks the house, Blair doesn't freeze up in a packed arena only a few gigs after tanking at the honky tonk, Faith comes out and puts on a triumphant performance, and after the show, she goes to her dressing room and locks the door. Beau notices she's not at the party and goes to her isolated dressing room, kicks in the door and finds her unconscious from an overdose of pills. Wait, WHAT?!?!??!
At this moment Country Strong jumps the shark, nukes the fridge, and makes me wonder what the whole movie was about and how everyone involved in the movie thought this was a good idea? Why did we spend two hours watching this woman try to redeem her life only to take it? A: Because she's not the main character, Beau is. It's not about Faith getting her life together, but Beau getting his career in gear, just like the trailer DIDN'T show. The whole marketing campaign is a bait and switch.
Now it may not have mattered if the movie managed to coherently tell its story, but it doesn't. We don't learn that Faith fell 10 feet off the stage in Dallas causing her to lose the baby until 80 minutes into the film. Why not mention that up front? How hard would it have been to have the radio report wrap all those details up in two sentences? "Not Faith Hill was released from rehab today, only months after an incident in Dallas in which an intoxicated, 5-1/2 month pregnant Not Faith Hill fell from the stage, causing a miscarriage." There, we're all up to speed and not scratching our heads.
There is also a subplot about an orphaned quail she finds on the facility's grounds that she's trying got nurture. Get it? The bird is her lost baby and need to be a mother. Except she takes the box it's in to the bar, gets drunk, and forgets it; something that we never see, is covered in dialogue and never factors into the story again. Again, huh? Did anyone look at a cut of the film before it was duped and sent to theaters? I'll bet I could recut the movie without any of that and it wouldn't be missed.
Because we are never clear about who is doing what and why, nothing ever gels. Hedlund is quite believable as Beau, with a strong baritone voice and charismatic manner and Gwyneth does what she can with the script and sings well, but it doesn't matter and the way she checks out is stupid. She could've slapped down Blair while walking offstage, gone to her dressing room, and had Tim come in to cheer her and say she's back and have her say, "No. I'm done. I'm retired and running off with Beau," or something to get her back in control of her life. Why suicide? Because it would've gotten Paltrow an Oscar nomination? That worked. Not.
Writer-director Shana Feste has no sense of how musicians actually think and act - lots of singing doesn't make it a musical - and the general confusion of the plot started at the script stage and didn't get better. As I detailed up top, we are thrown into a confusing set of relationships and have to unravel the facts as best we can. (This isn't Memento, dammit!)
Only waste your time on Country Strong if you want to see how NOT to tell a story.
March 2011 Review Roundup
Thursday, March 31, 2011
After stumbling in February, we picked up the pace substantially, doubling the year's total in a month and hitting the theater four times.
3/2 - True Grit (7/10)
3/6 - The Adjustment Bureau (9/10)
3/7 - The Mechanic (4/10)
3/9 - Memento Blu-ray (9/10)
3/11 - Lemmy (5/10)
3/12 - Vanishing On 7th Street (3/10)
3/13 - Battle: Los Angeles (8/10); Morning Glory (4/10)
3/14 - Paranormal Activity 2 (4/10)
3/24 - Sucker Punch (7.5/10)
3/27 - Limitless (9/10); Due Date (6/10)
3/28 - Love and Other Drugs (2/10)
3/31 - Run Lola Run (7/10)
Month's Movies Watched: 14
Previously Unseen: 13
Theatrical: 4
Home: 10
=====
Year-To-Date: 28
YTD First-Timers: 23
YTD Theatrical: 5
YTD Home: 23
3/2 - True Grit (7/10)
3/6 - The Adjustment Bureau (9/10)
3/7 - The Mechanic (4/10)
3/9 - Memento Blu-ray (9/10)
3/11 - Lemmy (5/10)
3/12 - Vanishing On 7th Street (3/10)
3/13 - Battle: Los Angeles (8/10); Morning Glory (4/10)
3/14 - Paranormal Activity 2 (4/10)
3/24 - Sucker Punch (7.5/10)
3/27 - Limitless (9/10); Due Date (6/10)
3/28 - Love and Other Drugs (2/10)
3/31 - Run Lola Run (7/10)
Month's Movies Watched: 14
Previously Unseen: 13
Theatrical: 4
Home: 10
=====
Year-To-Date: 28
YTD First-Timers: 23
YTD Theatrical: 5
YTD Home: 23
Cyberspace Open 2011 Scores and Feedback
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
I learned last Friday that my entry into this year's Cyberspace Open screenwriting contest hadn't made the cut for the final round and that was OK; you can't win 'em all.
Unfortunately, once again I managed to snag a reader who didn't know how to read, resulting in hair-tearing feedback as they were so busy missing the point that they probably forgot to DVR the Two and a Half Men marathon that was on. Let's check this twaddle out:
My greatest fear was that unless I hammered all the subtext with underline and italics and a Post-It note explaining everything, it'd get missed by the sub-literate wannabes making a few bucks reading these. My greatest mistake was assuming qualified people would judge this charade. My bad. Dumb me.
The next round is this weekend and I'm going to look at the scene prompt and think about doing what I did last year. Heh.
Unfortunately, once again I managed to snag a reader who didn't know how to read, resulting in hair-tearing feedback as they were so busy missing the point that they probably forgot to DVR the Two and a Half Men marathon that was on. Let's check this twaddle out:
Structure: 24I defy anyone with a working knowledge of the English language to read my scene and tell me that it was ambiguous or needed more obvious conflict!
Dialog: 22
Style: 21
Originality: 22
Total: 89
"There is some interesting use of subtext, and this is a great subject for these types of characters to address. However, this is more of a one-sided conversation that might work better with a less ambiguous conclusion and more obvious conflict. It all comes off very causal, and there is nothing at stake so the conflict is minimal."
My greatest fear was that unless I hammered all the subtext with underline and italics and a Post-It note explaining everything, it'd get missed by the sub-literate wannabes making a few bucks reading these. My greatest mistake was assuming qualified people would judge this charade. My bad. Dumb me.
The next round is this weekend and I'm going to look at the scene prompt and think about doing what I did last year. Heh.
"Love and Other Drugs" Review
Monday, March 28, 2011
There were only two reasons why I had the slightest interest in the alleged romantic-comedy-drama Love and Other Drugs: Anne Hathaway. I call her Yummy Girl and find her just delish and when it was heavily hyped that she was naked (i.e. nekkid, nude, showing the goodies) for 40% of the movie, I was willing to overlook my natural aversion to rom-coms to see it. Yes, I'm a pig who will sell out for a look at teh bewbz. Yummy Yummy Girl boobs.
Big. Mistake.
To properly tear this thing a new one, we need to look at how it was sold:
OK, it looks like a rom-com about a playboy (Jake "Peter Sarsgaard's brother-in-law" Gyllenhaal) sales rep for Viagra who meets a cute babe and falls in love with her, but - oh noes! - she gets sick and he must love her even more even though she runs away but they'll probably live happily ever after since these sort of movies rarely end up in a murder-suicide. Right?
Here's the way it really goes: Jake's a charmer selling boom boxes and big HDTVs in the mid-Nineties. If you're already thinking that one of those things was big in the Eighties and the other wasn't invented yet, you're on my wavelength about how sloppy the details are. After he loses his job for banging a co-worker's girlfriend in the stockroom, we see his family who find him such a disappointment compared to his fat, slovenly brother (Josh Gad, who should change his name to Egad) who is a dot-com millionaire when he looks barely able to spell "Vic 20."
After being set up with a job selling Pfizer pharmaceuticals, we see him turning on the charm with the receptionists to get at the doctors he needs to write prescriptions for Pfizer's Zoloft over competing Prozac. While shadowing a doctor under the guise of being an intern, he meets Yummy Girl, a 26-year-old artist with early-onset Parkinson's. Right away, he knows she's sick and she details all the drugs she needs to take. She pays for her care with a wad of cash, but we are never shown how she's able to afford all this and her giant loft apartment on her wages at a coffee shop. (Perhaps she's turning tricks in the alley?)
She's blunt about just wanting to have sex without entanglements (since she's got a degenerative disease, I suppose, and not that she's just a garden tool) and I'm watching this thinking, "OK!" They proceed to rut about and he falls in love with her and then Viagra comes out and sells itself - seriously, I could sell Magic Boner Pills® when otherwise I'd have trouble selling water to people on fire, so what's Jake's feat? - and Fat Brother's wife kicks him out so he comes to sleep on Jake's couch (that's the scene at the end of the trailer) because that's what successful millionaires do and....wait, what?
Movies usually live and die on their scripts and Love and Other Drugs dies a most horrible death due to disjointed and hackneyed writing. The first 10 minutes are like a bad impression of Aaron Sorkin at his soapboxing worst as characters bray paragraphs of facts and figures at each other like the people with search overload in the Bing commercials. It doesn't get any better as it lurches from incident to episode to theme to whatever and back. There's a section when YG goes to an "unconvention" where we see a parade of Parkinson's patients showing us how funny and human they are so don't look at them as freaks, you judgmental audience members! As if that's not enough, there is a whole passage which devolves into Lifetime shmaltz territory as Jake flies YG all over the country trying to find a cure, which also informs his final decisions in the movie.
The only thing that saves Love and Other Drugs from being an unmitigated disaster is the appealing stars. Jake isn't Donnie Darko and Anne is just magnetic to watch with her big brown eyes and voluptuous lips and alabaster skin and.....................OK, I'm back from my bunk. Where was I? Oh yeah, she's really good at making her character someone who want to hang with even though nothing that the script puts her through is believable. She's so appealing that it made me want to stick with it despite the lousy writing.
Really early on I was starting to feel bad for Jake and YG because the script was such hacky crap that's tonally all over the map. For example, after a breakup, Jake goes to a pajama party (read: orgy) and the physician host gives a little speech about how it sucks being a doctor with all the patients he needs to see every day and all the paperwork involved cuz that's what you do at an orgy. This leads to Jake having a three-way almost against his will, Fat Brother getting laid by some hottie who as the IQ of an air fern, and then Jake having the inevitable Extra Long-Lasting Viagra Boner which makes for wacky fun! Not.
The lumpy structure - it felt like it had six acts and more endings than Lord of the Rings - and general scattershot tension between rom-com and weeper and broad comedy conventions render Love and Other Drugs dead on arrival. And if you're still interested to see Yummy Girl's yummy girls, dude, this is the Internet - go find 'em and save your time. Besides, there's not THAT much skin compared to movies from the Eighties or whatever Kate Winslet's doing now. It's just that it's such a rarity for A-list talented actresses to give up the goodies, it made over-hyped headlines.
Score: 2/10. Watch on a friend's cable so you can make fun of it whenever Yummy Girl isn't showing her wares.
My girlfriend has been informed that in my ideal three-way, the other girl will be Anne Hathaway. (The first is Olivia Wilde.)
Big. Mistake.
To properly tear this thing a new one, we need to look at how it was sold:
OK, it looks like a rom-com about a playboy (Jake "Peter Sarsgaard's brother-in-law" Gyllenhaal) sales rep for Viagra who meets a cute babe and falls in love with her, but - oh noes! - she gets sick and he must love her even more even though she runs away but they'll probably live happily ever after since these sort of movies rarely end up in a murder-suicide. Right?
Here's the way it really goes: Jake's a charmer selling boom boxes and big HDTVs in the mid-Nineties. If you're already thinking that one of those things was big in the Eighties and the other wasn't invented yet, you're on my wavelength about how sloppy the details are. After he loses his job for banging a co-worker's girlfriend in the stockroom, we see his family who find him such a disappointment compared to his fat, slovenly brother (Josh Gad, who should change his name to Egad) who is a dot-com millionaire when he looks barely able to spell "Vic 20."
After being set up with a job selling Pfizer pharmaceuticals, we see him turning on the charm with the receptionists to get at the doctors he needs to write prescriptions for Pfizer's Zoloft over competing Prozac. While shadowing a doctor under the guise of being an intern, he meets Yummy Girl, a 26-year-old artist with early-onset Parkinson's. Right away, he knows she's sick and she details all the drugs she needs to take. She pays for her care with a wad of cash, but we are never shown how she's able to afford all this and her giant loft apartment on her wages at a coffee shop. (Perhaps she's turning tricks in the alley?)
She's blunt about just wanting to have sex without entanglements (since she's got a degenerative disease, I suppose, and not that she's just a garden tool) and I'm watching this thinking, "OK!" They proceed to rut about and he falls in love with her and then Viagra comes out and sells itself - seriously, I could sell Magic Boner Pills® when otherwise I'd have trouble selling water to people on fire, so what's Jake's feat? - and Fat Brother's wife kicks him out so he comes to sleep on Jake's couch (that's the scene at the end of the trailer) because that's what successful millionaires do and....wait, what?
Movies usually live and die on their scripts and Love and Other Drugs dies a most horrible death due to disjointed and hackneyed writing. The first 10 minutes are like a bad impression of Aaron Sorkin at his soapboxing worst as characters bray paragraphs of facts and figures at each other like the people with search overload in the Bing commercials. It doesn't get any better as it lurches from incident to episode to theme to whatever and back. There's a section when YG goes to an "unconvention" where we see a parade of Parkinson's patients showing us how funny and human they are so don't look at them as freaks, you judgmental audience members! As if that's not enough, there is a whole passage which devolves into Lifetime shmaltz territory as Jake flies YG all over the country trying to find a cure, which also informs his final decisions in the movie.
The only thing that saves Love and Other Drugs from being an unmitigated disaster is the appealing stars. Jake isn't Donnie Darko and Anne is just magnetic to watch with her big brown eyes and voluptuous lips and alabaster skin and.....................OK, I'm back from my bunk. Where was I? Oh yeah, she's really good at making her character someone who want to hang with even though nothing that the script puts her through is believable. She's so appealing that it made me want to stick with it despite the lousy writing.
Really early on I was starting to feel bad for Jake and YG because the script was such hacky crap that's tonally all over the map. For example, after a breakup, Jake goes to a pajama party (read: orgy) and the physician host gives a little speech about how it sucks being a doctor with all the patients he needs to see every day and all the paperwork involved cuz that's what you do at an orgy. This leads to Jake having a three-way almost against his will, Fat Brother getting laid by some hottie who as the IQ of an air fern, and then Jake having the inevitable Extra Long-Lasting Viagra Boner which makes for wacky fun! Not.
The lumpy structure - it felt like it had six acts and more endings than Lord of the Rings - and general scattershot tension between rom-com and weeper and broad comedy conventions render Love and Other Drugs dead on arrival. And if you're still interested to see Yummy Girl's yummy girls, dude, this is the Internet - go find 'em and save your time. Besides, there's not THAT much skin compared to movies from the Eighties or whatever Kate Winslet's doing now. It's just that it's such a rarity for A-list talented actresses to give up the goodies, it made over-hyped headlines.
Score: 2/10. Watch on a friend's cable so you can make fun of it whenever Yummy Girl isn't showing her wares.
My girlfriend has been informed that in my ideal three-way, the other girl will be Anne Hathaway. (The first is Olivia Wilde.)
"Due Date" Review
Sunday, March 27, 2011
In getting the trailer for Due Date - The Hangover director Todd Phillips' raunchier version of John Hughes classic Odd Couple travel movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles - I see that almost every funny bit and moment is included. You could almost watch the trailer and save the time on the whole movie unless you want to see what's in between.
Robert Downey Jr. is Steve Martin, an uptight guy trying to get home from Atlanta to L.A. for the birth of his child. Zach Galifianakis (pronounced "that weird guy with the beard") is John Candy, a sad man-child-beast thing who drives Downey crazy. Will Downey get home in time and will these mismatched travelers find love and respect for each other? Duh.
Due Date isn't a bad movie, just a familiar one with occasional outbursts of funny (which are even funnier if you've forgotten or haven't seen the trailer) which are spread too far apart for a 95-minute movie. If you're offended by Downey spitting on the dog shown in the trailer, you may want to steer clear of this one because the best laughs are of the "Oh man, that is so WRONG!" class. I wasn't even sure how to allude to them without spoiling, but dog spitting isn't the worst of it.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
Robert Downey Jr. is Steve Martin, an uptight guy trying to get home from Atlanta to L.A. for the birth of his child. Zach Galifianakis (pronounced "that weird guy with the beard") is John Candy, a sad man-child-beast thing who drives Downey crazy. Will Downey get home in time and will these mismatched travelers find love and respect for each other? Duh.
Due Date isn't a bad movie, just a familiar one with occasional outbursts of funny (which are even funnier if you've forgotten or haven't seen the trailer) which are spread too far apart for a 95-minute movie. If you're offended by Downey spitting on the dog shown in the trailer, you may want to steer clear of this one because the best laughs are of the "Oh man, that is so WRONG!" class. I wasn't even sure how to allude to them without spoiling, but dog spitting isn't the worst of it.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable.
"Limitless" Review
The trailer below sets up the simple premise of Limitless: Bradley Cooper is a struggling writer until he gets a Magic Pill that unlocks 1000% of his mental ability, leading to instant fame and riches and he lives happily ever after. The end.
Just kidding. It all has a downside, like it's a question of whether the drug will kill him before the people who want what he has do? Will he survive the wide open world that chemicals can provide him?
While it's a simple concept and the overall plot doesn't really go to unexpected places, what Limitless does is tell its potentially overly familiar tale with blazing style and momentum thanks to a tight, snappy adapted script by Leslie Dixon (whose CV has some really good AND awful movies on it) and some flashy direction by Neil Burger (The Illusionist) which puts us in the head of Brad as he's seeing the world thru drug-enhanced eyes. While some of the visual details are cribbed from Fight Club, it works.
Cooper is excellent, but it helps when you're handsome with piercing blue eyes, so screw him. (Figuratively.) Abbie Cornish (seen just four nights ago in Sucker Punch) looks like a plumper Charlize Theron and it really bespeaks how lame Robert De Niro has been for quite a while when you've got to praise him for merely making an effort, not that he's also good here.
While Limitless isn't flawless - a subplot with a loan shark shouldn't have happened and a death is never explained properly - it is quite a rush which will leave you satisfied and entertained. This is the first movie of 2011 that I can recommend dropping the full ticket price on. (No refunds to dissatisfied customers!)
Score: 9/10. Pay full price at the theater.
If you watch this again after seeing it, you'll notice a few lines that are changed or don't happen in the actual movie.
Just kidding. It all has a downside, like it's a question of whether the drug will kill him before the people who want what he has do? Will he survive the wide open world that chemicals can provide him?
While it's a simple concept and the overall plot doesn't really go to unexpected places, what Limitless does is tell its potentially overly familiar tale with blazing style and momentum thanks to a tight, snappy adapted script by Leslie Dixon (whose CV has some really good AND awful movies on it) and some flashy direction by Neil Burger (The Illusionist) which puts us in the head of Brad as he's seeing the world thru drug-enhanced eyes. While some of the visual details are cribbed from Fight Club, it works.
Cooper is excellent, but it helps when you're handsome with piercing blue eyes, so screw him. (Figuratively.) Abbie Cornish (seen just four nights ago in Sucker Punch) looks like a plumper Charlize Theron and it really bespeaks how lame Robert De Niro has been for quite a while when you've got to praise him for merely making an effort, not that he's also good here.
While Limitless isn't flawless - a subplot with a loan shark shouldn't have happened and a death is never explained properly - it is quite a rush which will leave you satisfied and entertained. This is the first movie of 2011 that I can recommend dropping the full ticket price on. (No refunds to dissatisfied customers!)
Score: 9/10. Pay full price at the theater.
If you watch this again after seeing it, you'll notice a few lines that are changed or don't happen in the actual movie.
"Sucker Punch" Video Review
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Rather than just type up a quick review in a half-hour after getting home from the show after 12:30 am, I got the stupid idea that such a visual film should have a visual review. If I get a half-hour of sleep before I get up for work, I'll be lucky. (UPDATE: I didn't and almost fell asleep driving in and spent the morning nearly hallucinating. Note to self: Get the reviews up whenever.)
(Hit the link to see it in 720p HD at YouTube)
Score: 7.5/10. See it at a nice theater on a matinee. (I'll be buying the Blu-ray.)
(Hit the link to see it in 720p HD at YouTube)
Score: 7.5/10. See it at a nice theater on a matinee. (I'll be buying the Blu-ray.)
"Paranormal Activity 2" Review
Monday, March 14, 2011
The original Paranormal Activity is the most profitable movie ever made. Shot for $14,000 - which included the cost of the camera, software, and computer to edit on - it went on to gross over $108 million. Of course a sequel was called for, so Paranormal Activity 2 was made and despite the incremental increase in number, this is actually a related prequel to the first film.
The connection to the ill-fated couple from PA is the sister of the wife. She's the 2nd wife to a widower with a teen-aged daughter. They have a new young son and weird things are starting to happen. When their house is ransacked, they install a video security system which documents the...wait for it...paranormal activity over a period of nights. Augmented with camcorder footage including visits from the PA couple, the demonic connection between the sisters is drawn out.
And drawn out is Paranormal Activity 2's largest problem. It mistakes taking their sweet time for building tension. It's well past the halfway mark before the first major incidents happen and the last 10 minutes or so devolve into standard spooky movie tropes. While there are a few good moments of creepiness, the familiarity with the "found footage" genre and too much traditional Exorcist-style shocks undercuts the potential of the material. In trying to make it bigger and better, they ended up making a smaller and less satisfactory serving of shocks.
Score: 4/10. Catch it on cable.
The connection to the ill-fated couple from PA is the sister of the wife. She's the 2nd wife to a widower with a teen-aged daughter. They have a new young son and weird things are starting to happen. When their house is ransacked, they install a video security system which documents the...wait for it...paranormal activity over a period of nights. Augmented with camcorder footage including visits from the PA couple, the demonic connection between the sisters is drawn out.
And drawn out is Paranormal Activity 2's largest problem. It mistakes taking their sweet time for building tension. It's well past the halfway mark before the first major incidents happen and the last 10 minutes or so devolve into standard spooky movie tropes. While there are a few good moments of creepiness, the familiarity with the "found footage" genre and too much traditional Exorcist-style shocks undercuts the potential of the material. In trying to make it bigger and better, they ended up making a smaller and less satisfactory serving of shocks.
Score: 4/10. Catch it on cable.
"Morning Glory" Review
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Morning Glory can be summarized the same way that the Earth was in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Mostly harmless.
Rachel McAdams turns the plucky cuteness knob up to 12 as the executive producer of the worst-rated morning show on 4th-place network IBS. (The movie must take place in a universe where Fox doesn't exist.) Thinking a dose of gravitas to counteract the bubbly Diane Keaton is necessary, she dragoons grumpy Harrison Ford into the gig by exploiting a clause in his contract. He naturally refuses to play ball leaving the show in the lurch and on a countdown to cancellation unless McAdams turns things around. Think she'll be able to save the day?
Really? You're wondering?
The biggest (to be charitable) laughs are from Ford's grumpy, appalled reactions to the indignities of morning television. The obligatory romantic interest, Patrick Wilson, is so superfluous that if he disappeared entirely from the movie it wouldn't change a single thing in the plot. And for some reason, she can't figure out how to mute hew Blackberry so that when she doesn't want to be disturbed, she tosses it in the freezer. Hardy-har. Ahem.
The trailer touts it's from the writer of The Devil Wears Prada (which came from a best-selling novel), 27 Dresses and Laws of Attraction (the last two which I haven't seen but my girlfriend says sucked), so perhaps it's best to watch Prada again and sleep in on Morning Glory. Even better, watch Working Girl again to see this sort of story told so much better including a still-awake Harrison Ford.
Score: 4/10. Catch it on cable.
Rachel McAdams turns the plucky cuteness knob up to 12 as the executive producer of the worst-rated morning show on 4th-place network IBS. (The movie must take place in a universe where Fox doesn't exist.) Thinking a dose of gravitas to counteract the bubbly Diane Keaton is necessary, she dragoons grumpy Harrison Ford into the gig by exploiting a clause in his contract. He naturally refuses to play ball leaving the show in the lurch and on a countdown to cancellation unless McAdams turns things around. Think she'll be able to save the day?
Really? You're wondering?
The biggest (to be charitable) laughs are from Ford's grumpy, appalled reactions to the indignities of morning television. The obligatory romantic interest, Patrick Wilson, is so superfluous that if he disappeared entirely from the movie it wouldn't change a single thing in the plot. And for some reason, she can't figure out how to mute hew Blackberry so that when she doesn't want to be disturbed, she tosses it in the freezer. Hardy-har. Ahem.
The trailer touts it's from the writer of The Devil Wears Prada (which came from a best-selling novel), 27 Dresses and Laws of Attraction (the last two which I haven't seen but my girlfriend says sucked), so perhaps it's best to watch Prada again and sleep in on Morning Glory. Even better, watch Working Girl again to see this sort of story told so much better including a still-awake Harrison Ford.
Score: 4/10. Catch it on cable.
"Battle: Los Angeles" Review
If you go into Battle: Los Angeles looking for Marines vs. Aliens or Black Alien Down - crazy urban combat with hearty hoo-rah jarheads battling weird mech-aliens - then you're pretty much going to get your money's worth. It's crazy, frenetic, shaky-cam chaos with almost non-stop action and mayhem.
Where the movie stumbles a bit is in grafting on a truckload of war movie cliches: Staff Sargeant Aaron Eckhart has already had his retirement papers signed when he's called upon; one platoon member is getting married; one's a virgin; one's from Nigeria; one's brother died on Eckhart's command and thinks it's his fault; and so on. It really feels like the studio ordered up some tropes as if we were going to be able to tell anyone apart once the booming starts and feel something when they buy it. Other than Michelle Rodriguez as the ditzy, blonde Valley girl...just kidding, she's a kickass Latina Air Force intel officer like she sort of was in Avatar, Eckhart stands alone as having a "character."
While the dialogue breaks are frequently rote and predictable, the action manages to be something special for being epic in scale while intimate in detail. We're going to have to wait for the next Transformers movie this summer to get the Bayhem-grade boombitty, but this is plenty asplodey enough.
Score: 8/10. Catch a matinee on a big, loud screen.
One quibble with the plot (not really spoilerish): It is theorized that the aliens are here to steal our water. OK, the surface of Earth is 70% water - why not just land in the middle of the ocean and take what you want without having to blow up the locals?
Also, I think of lot of the negative reviews have come from angry liberal critics who can't stand the idea of American military being portrayed as brave, resolute and heroic. After years of anti-Iraq/Afghanistan war movies that have smeared soldiers and bombed at the box office, they fear this movie being a hit will lead to more movies being made with heroic warriors and are trying to dampen enthusiasm. What babies.
Another thing: Would it kill Hollywood to show a Lieutenant who isn't some book-learned recent graduate of the service academy who is immediately in over his head and needing bailing-out by the veteran sergeant? Yeesh, it's Lt. Gorman from Aliens all over again.
Where the movie stumbles a bit is in grafting on a truckload of war movie cliches: Staff Sargeant Aaron Eckhart has already had his retirement papers signed when he's called upon; one platoon member is getting married; one's a virgin; one's from Nigeria; one's brother died on Eckhart's command and thinks it's his fault; and so on. It really feels like the studio ordered up some tropes as if we were going to be able to tell anyone apart once the booming starts and feel something when they buy it. Other than Michelle Rodriguez as the ditzy, blonde Valley girl...just kidding, she's a kickass Latina Air Force intel officer like she sort of was in Avatar, Eckhart stands alone as having a "character."
While the dialogue breaks are frequently rote and predictable, the action manages to be something special for being epic in scale while intimate in detail. We're going to have to wait for the next Transformers movie this summer to get the Bayhem-grade boombitty, but this is plenty asplodey enough.
Score: 8/10. Catch a matinee on a big, loud screen.
One quibble with the plot (not really spoilerish): It is theorized that the aliens are here to steal our water. OK, the surface of Earth is 70% water - why not just land in the middle of the ocean and take what you want without having to blow up the locals?
Also, I think of lot of the negative reviews have come from angry liberal critics who can't stand the idea of American military being portrayed as brave, resolute and heroic. After years of anti-Iraq/Afghanistan war movies that have smeared soldiers and bombed at the box office, they fear this movie being a hit will lead to more movies being made with heroic warriors and are trying to dampen enthusiasm. What babies.
Another thing: Would it kill Hollywood to show a Lieutenant who isn't some book-learned recent graduate of the service academy who is immediately in over his head and needing bailing-out by the veteran sergeant? Yeesh, it's Lt. Gorman from Aliens all over again.
"Vanishing On 7th Street" Review
Saturday, March 12, 2011
An even-less-populated-than-usual Detroit is the setting for the small-time suspense-horror flick Vanishing on 7th Street, starring Hayden Christensen, John Leguizamo, Thandie Newton, and newcomer Jacob Latimore. If you're from the Motor City, it's fun to spot locations and local Channel 7 newscasters, but there's not much for general audiences to appreciate.
It starts spookily enough with the adults being introduced in scenes where there is a blackout and when the lights come back on, everyone else has disappeared, leaving their empty clothes and possessions where they were when they vanished. Creepy shadows close in held at bay by the dimming flashlights and glow sticks. They eventually end up in a bar with a kid whose mother had gone for help, never to return. A rickety generator is providing light for this sanctuary, but isn't going to last forever.
Director Brad Anderson (who coincidentally helmed last night's Fringe episode) does alright with keeping things creepy, but is stranded without much of a script nor an ending that makes going for the ride worthwhile. Hayden does nothing to erase his "Mannequin Skywalker" rep - what happened to the guy who was decent in Shattered Glass? - and the others aren't given much to do. Even worse, the nature of the shadows is never explained or even speculated upon; they're just a menace to trick and pick off the survivors. Everyone disappears and those who don't have no reason for their fortune. Bah.
Score: 3/10. Catch it on cable.
It starts spookily enough with the adults being introduced in scenes where there is a blackout and when the lights come back on, everyone else has disappeared, leaving their empty clothes and possessions where they were when they vanished. Creepy shadows close in held at bay by the dimming flashlights and glow sticks. They eventually end up in a bar with a kid whose mother had gone for help, never to return. A rickety generator is providing light for this sanctuary, but isn't going to last forever.
Director Brad Anderson (who coincidentally helmed last night's Fringe episode) does alright with keeping things creepy, but is stranded without much of a script nor an ending that makes going for the ride worthwhile. Hayden does nothing to erase his "Mannequin Skywalker" rep - what happened to the guy who was decent in Shattered Glass? - and the others aren't given much to do. Even worse, the nature of the shadows is never explained or even speculated upon; they're just a menace to trick and pick off the survivors. Everyone disappears and those who don't have no reason for their fortune. Bah.
Score: 3/10. Catch it on cable.
"Lemmy" Review
Friday, March 11, 2011
To understand the reverence to which Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister is held, let's take this moment from the movie Airheads:
While Lemmy may be God, it's also a man whom is given a simultaneously over-detailed and superficial treatment in the documentary Lemmy: 49% Motherf*cker, 51% Son of a Bitch. Chock full of fawning testimonials from rockers including Slash, Scott Ian, Dave Grohl, Dee Snider, Henry Rollins and Alice Cooper, we get to see Lemmy in his cluttered LA apartment (which looks like a candidate for Hoarders and made me feel less bad about my place), playing videogames (Crimson Skies on Xbox!), indulging his video trivia habit at bars, jamming with Metallica, and generally being one of the coolest mofos on the planet.
However, for all the access the filmmakers had and the fact that Lemmy doesn't seem to have much he's not willing to talk about, Lemmy is a so-so introduction to the man's long life and career - he was 63 when this filmed and was in bands in the Sixties, having seen the Beatles in the Cavern Club and once roadied for Jimi Hendrix - heavily padded with material which would've been better left in the DVD's Deleted Scenes area. Do we really need to see him and Billy Bob Thornton hanging out and discussing royalty checks? A tighter focus and a half-hour shorter running time would've helped.
Best for those who are already fans, it's got some useful information for those will to slog through the fat to get to the bones of the seemingly unkillable Lemmy.
Score: 5/10. Fans should rent the DVD, otherwise catch it on cable.
While Lemmy may be God, it's also a man whom is given a simultaneously over-detailed and superficial treatment in the documentary Lemmy: 49% Motherf*cker, 51% Son of a Bitch. Chock full of fawning testimonials from rockers including Slash, Scott Ian, Dave Grohl, Dee Snider, Henry Rollins and Alice Cooper, we get to see Lemmy in his cluttered LA apartment (which looks like a candidate for Hoarders and made me feel less bad about my place), playing videogames (Crimson Skies on Xbox!), indulging his video trivia habit at bars, jamming with Metallica, and generally being one of the coolest mofos on the planet.
However, for all the access the filmmakers had and the fact that Lemmy doesn't seem to have much he's not willing to talk about, Lemmy is a so-so introduction to the man's long life and career - he was 63 when this filmed and was in bands in the Sixties, having seen the Beatles in the Cavern Club and once roadied for Jimi Hendrix - heavily padded with material which would've been better left in the DVD's Deleted Scenes area. Do we really need to see him and Billy Bob Thornton hanging out and discussing royalty checks? A tighter focus and a half-hour shorter running time would've helped.
Best for those who are already fans, it's got some useful information for those will to slog through the fat to get to the bones of the seemingly unkillable Lemmy.
Score: 5/10. Fans should rent the DVD, otherwise catch it on cable.
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