Smart People

When a movie spells it's name with scrabble letters, you know I am going to be interested in it. I was a bit hesitant because the people who produced this also produced the bore fest that was Sideways. I became even more hesitant when I found out this was not only a first time screen writer but a first time director, usually a bad combination. Yet, the reviews I read were generally positive and the preview was pretty funny. Plus, Thomas Hayden Church has always done good work to me, yes even in Wings.

Lawrence Weatherhold(A Pot bellied, limp having Dannis Quaid) is a widowed college professor who seems to hate life. He is disgusted by students, hates his co-workers and cannot remember the name of anyone because he doesn't feel they deserve his memory. He is a dishevelled curmudgeon, but he is very bright and that gives him an air of superiority. When his car is towed he hops over the fence to get his briefcase out and when he is climbing the fence he falls and ends up in the hospital. His doctor, Janet Hartigan(Sarah Jessica Parker), is a former student of his, who had a school girl crush, except he is the reason she started to hate literature. His daughter, Vanessa(Ellen Page), is a creepy Republican robot girl who is trying to score a perfect SAT score and cannot be bothered by him. When Lawrence fell he had a seizure and now cannot drive for six months. His slacker pot head adopted brother, Chuck(Church) moves in to be his driver, but Chuck is very unreliable to do anything but make trouble. Janet's crush is rekindled and Lawrence and her go out on a date. More things happen but Smart People is not a movie driven by plot.

For a first time writer, Mark Poirier has written a pretty good script. It is a Little too clever for its own good at times and sometimes it can really disconnect the audience but overall it is pretty solid. The plotting is a little screwy as the Ellen Page character kind of goes all over the map in terms of plot, character an dialog, but Page handles it all very well furthering proving that she is the go to girl for whip smart young characters. Her character can be compared to her star making turn as Juno, but there are some pretty major differences and Page eases into the role of a creepy Stepford type young lady charmingly. Quaid on the other hand does an okay job, but he is woefully miscast here. I guess Paul Giamatti was busy doing other things because this part is tailor made for him. This is the first movie in which Sarah Jessica Parker did not annoy me. She actually did a good job even though I think her character was the most under written and was written to be prone to pointless relationship panic attacks. The real star though is Thomas Hayden Church. He has the funniest character but also the most interesting character. Some of that is the writing and some of it is just that Church is a very talented character actor. He has this understated delivery that really helps sell some of the funnier one-liners.

Smart People is about how much of a hard time academics have relating to the normal world. It features the line "Self Absorption is underrated" and that kind of underlies the whole film. People obsessed with themselves have to find a way to let someone else in and find a way to exist with others. The story does fall into the trappings of cliche with the pregnancy factor. Why do people who have sex always end up pregnant in movies? Even those who use condoms end up pregnant. It is such a tired plot contrivance to break people up and get them back together. It is just lazy writing in my opinion. I only laughed out loud two times because the comedy in the movie is not laugh out loud funny. It is "Oh that was very clever" funny and that isn't really a bad thing, it is just lacking that something that makes a smart comedy more than just smart comedy. the best smart comedies find a way to meld the snappy dialog with the broad stuff and this movie just is not there. Maybe some day the writer will get there but for now he is content to use clever to the best of his abilities.

Street Kings

Bad cops are a staple in cinema. They always have been and most likely always will be. I have always enjoyed watching the anti-hero cop walk the line of morality in movies. I am fascinated by the idea of someone in power abusing it to personal gains, but still finding time to kill the bad guys. See, in real life I believe in the system of trials and whatnot, but in the movies, I kind of dig that rogue cop doctoring a crime scene to make a murder look justifiable. A part of me thinks anyone who has raped a young girl deserves death before a trial. I know it isn't very liberal thinking of me, but deal with it. I say all of this because, well Street Kings is a bad cop movie.

Anytime a guy wakes up and the first two things he does are put a magazine in his gun and vomit into the toilet, you know the guy might have issues. Such is the case for detective Tom Ludlow(Keanu Reeves). He also buys individual bottles of Vodka and downs them while driving on the job. However, he is the last of the gun-slingers in Southern California. He is the last of the men who would do anything to get the job done. He is not above putting guns in dead perps' hands to make it look like he was fired on. He does what he has to do. Luckily for him he has a whole team of people backing him up including his captain, Jack Wander(Forrest Whitaker). His antics have put him on the radar of the rat squad(a bad cop movie staple). Captain James Biggs(Dr. House) runs the rat squad and he always seems to appear just in time to remind Ludlow what he is doing. Ludlow gets the impression his former partner was ratting him out, so Ludlow follows him to give him a beat down, but instead the two cops end up in a store that is about to be robbed. The two cops try and shoot their way out, but Ludlow's former partner gets bullets unloaded into his body by the dozen and the surveillance camera captures it and it looks as if Ludlow just let it happen. The detective who picks up the case of the dead detective is Paul Diskant(Chris Evans) and soon he and Ludlow are the track of two brutal killers. All the while, there is some serious cop corruption going on that Ludlow appears to be in the middle of.

James Ellroy, who is a whiz at bad cop stories, wrote a very great script and put it in the hands of a director who is also a whiz at writing bad cop stories. With their combined bad cop story skills Street Kings has a lot of flavor, action and menacing cop stuff. It also has what is probably the best type of role for Keanu Reeves- Stoic and laconic. Chris Evans is playing a version of a character he so often plays, but since he does it so well, I was not annoyed and it was nice to see Dr. House doing something other than being a sarcastic grinch. Whitaker though takes the cake, as usual. His method of falling completely into a role no matter what is consistently mesmerizing, but he has a tendency to make other actors look bad when forced into scenes with them, see the climax of this movie with Reeves as an example. Even though it comes in at around two hours, the story never lags and while the twist may seem like a "well DUH!" moment it doesn't take away from the enjoyment of the movie. But not only is the whole thing intense it has some pretty funny moments as well. At the beginning there some nice banter about race and some very politically incorrect jokes that have been missing from the cop films of late. Street Kings plays very much like a throw back bad cop movie.

Ellroy has also proven himself the master of possible non-sequitors and this exchange might be the best one I have heard in a long ass time:
Ludlow: We are the only two who can know about this.
Diskan: That's why we are in the men's room.
Now it may not seem entirely non-sequitor because it somewhat makes sense that two cops who are trying to do something off the books would be alone somewhere, but when you watch the movie it feels very much like "Where the hell is the connection" moment and is what makes this movie much better than it could have or should have been. There are other great exchanges, but I can't find the script on-line to pull them from and I cannot very well take a pen and paper and write them all down, so you'll have to trust me. James Ellroy and David Ayer collaborated on a screenplay before and the result was only sub par but here they really get it right. I know the movie looks like a rip off of something like Training Day, but if you watch the movie you will See it isn't. The twist kind of helps to prove that.

Street Kings takes a character and lets us watch him as he walks the line of doing the right thing the wrong way and just doing the wrong thing. We see a very flawed character with a sense of honor and duty, but going about it in some seriously twisted ways and I think movies like that are interesting. Reeves' Ludlow is not the animal from Training Day because he ultimately wants to do the right thing. Street Kings is flawed like it's hero, but like the hero it finds a way to be good regardless. The climax might seem a little from out of left field and the stolen money might be hidden in the worst possible place, but when the movie ends you are still left like "Damn, I wonder what decision I would have made" and that is awesome.

Final Grade: B+

Prom Night (Spoilers)

One of my resolutions for 2008 was that I was going to avoid bad looking pg-13 horror movies. I did pretty well for the few months of the year, but seeing as how my theater is playing this garbage and the entire staff decided to watch it, I felt like I needed to watch it as well. So, I still haven't paid to watch a bad pg-13 horror movie. I think that counts for something, right? Right?

A few years ago a teacher, Richard Fenten(Jonathon Schaech), became obsessed with a student, Donna Keppel(Brittany Snow), and he killed her family before he was arrested. A few years later Donna is still having nightmares about the night she watched her mom get stabbed to death. She is still in the same town (I know, DUMB AS HELL) but she is living with her aunt and Uncle and is a senior in high school about to go to prom. Detective Winn(Idris Elba) was the detective who worked the case and all of a sudden he receives a fax that Fenten broke out of the psych ward three days ago. Yes, it takes 3 days to get word to the one place Fenten is assuredly going to! Winn believes Fenten is heading to Donna enough to warn her aunt and uncle, but not enough pull Donna away from her Prom, does that make sense to you, me neither! Prom is not prom. Prom is a red carpet Hollywood Premiere event. Apparently no one even remotely close to average looking goes to the school. Fenten, of course, gets a suite at the Hotel where Prom is happening and he even gets it on the same floor as Donna. The killing begins; the screaming begins; the scares, well they never begin.

Prom Night may be the dumbest movie to ever be made. The characters make dumb decisions, the detective is the dumbest detective to ever have a badge and the screenplay is beyond dumb. After Donna is saved from Fenten at the prom they send her home! They don't send her to a hotel or the police station or some place where Fenten might not find her, noooo, they send her home with like 3 cops patrolling the area. So is it any surprise that Fenten shows up to kill her?? I mean how did these cops survive this long making decisions that will surely lead to more deaths. "Hmmm, a psycho killer is assuredly going after one person, we should just send her home with a tiny police escort. No big deal. I mean the guy did just BREAK OUT OF PRISON! He can't be that smart or dangerous, right?" Look, I understand applying logic to horror movies is an exercise in futility to begin with, but Prom Nightlooked at logic and kicked it in the nuts before shooting it in the back of the head. Watching from a distance at prom, Detective Winn loses track of Donna a dozen or so times which just gets laughable at many moments.

When Fenten moves in to kill people, not only do they bust out the ridiculous shaky cam, he actually moves like the zombies from 28 days later. However, there are 2 silver lining moments to be had. First, Schaech is one creepy ass psychopath. Wow, he plays that well. Secondly, after he is killed, he doesn't rise to be killed a second time. Yes, the biggest praise I have is that the killer actually died the first time. I say it is a good thing because if he had come back the movie would have been longer by at least 5 seconds and at that point I might have been forced to kill myself to end the pain. Prom Night is the kind of movie you can't help but scream at because you want the characters to stop being so dumb until at some point you just stop caring and pray to God he kills them all. I am not the type of person to say that all remakes need to stop, and to be honest the original is not a very good movie either, but bad movies need to stop. I know this is going to make money because stupid people are drawn to stupid movies where characters end up alone and screaming as they bump into a lamp thinking it could be a killer, but that will not stop me from ridiculing those types of people. If you enjoy Prom Night because it is cheesy and you find enjoyment out of that fine, but if you enjoy Prom Night because you actually think it is a good movie, well, you are contributing to America being considered the dumbest country on the planet; Nay, dumbest country in the galaxy!

Final Grade:F

Lions For Lambs

This movie was an impossible sell to movie goers in theaters last year. First of all it was an Iraq war movie which is a bad sell to begin with, but if you add into the equation that people of this country have an irrational hatred of Tom Cruise and he stars in the movie, well no one wanted to see it. The fact that people cannot separate Tom Cruise's public persona from his acting is a whole other rant for another day, but it led to Lions for Lambs being in theaters for about a week and meant, even though I wanted to see it, I would have to wait for DVD. The DVD came out this week and I watched it over the weekend.

The movie unfolds in Crash/Magnolia/Babel likeness where three stories somewhat overlap but rarely have direct contact with each other. The first story involves a news reporter, Janine Roth(Meryl Streep) getting one hour of face time with young, hot shot republican senator, Jasper Irving(Cruise). Irving wants to unveil his new plan for "getting a win" on the war on terror in Afghanistan. Irving and Roth spend most of their screen time going back and forth about the mistakes made in the war and blah blah blah. Roth keeps asking about the past while Irving is trying to focus on the present and future. His new plan for war directly effects the second story, that of Earnest Rodriguez and Arian Finch, two army soldiers. Their unit has been told they have to take the top of this mountain because it is easier to win from on high. Things do not go well as their helicopter is shot down and the two young men end up on the snowy mountain top by themselves, both injured and having limited ammunition. As they lay there awaiting certain death, we see flashbacks to when they were young bright college students in a political science class. Their Professor, Stephan Malley(Robert Redford), is the third story. Malley sometimes will take interest in certain students and this semester he has taken an interest in Todd Hayes(Andrew Garfield). Hayes is a bright student but recently has become apathetic to Government and politics and malley has an hour to change his mind.

Lions for Lambs takes a lot of hits for merely being liberal propaganda, which it may very well be, but it is pretty damn well made liberal propaganda. There is also some irony in that the College Professor storyline is all about finding a way to act not just talk, but the movie itself is essentially 90 minutes of pure talk. It is high minded, challenging and interesting talk, but talk nonetheless. Cruise infuses an interesting character into his Republican senator who is the villain, quite frankly, but he makes his plight somewhat understandable. We don't identify with him totally but his comments on how the media shovels as much shit as politicians is a well timed point. Streep does a great job filling out the role of a long time news reporter sick of hearing twisted stories from B.S. leaders, but the lack of resolution to that story, especially from the side of the reporter, is very frustrating. Garfield, to his credit, stands up well with Redford in creating a realistic, if a little too smart, college Sophomore. Redford does his best wise man routine and really lets the words take control, acting more of a conduit than an actor or director(he directed the movie). But again, the lack of resolution was a bit off putting. The story with the soldiers is the most boring and predictable, but at least they get an ending, as unsatisfying as it is.

The screenplay, written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, is really the star of Lions for Lambs. The dialog is what really drives this movie from beginning to end. It is obvious Carnahan had a lot on his mind regarding war, media, politics, apathetic youth and the army. He makes great points about how the young people dying in battle are usually the young people were not even treated well while they were in America. He might not be making terribly new points but he is effective in all of his arguments. He gets to create a dream world where politicians admit their mistakes as well, as the Cruise character apologizes 3 or 4 times for past mistakes. The dialog is easy to follow and understand and it easy for all of the actors to say, but that doesn't mean it isn't effective. Sometimes the easiest way to say something is the best way to say something, Lions for Lambs proves that theory.

With the brisk running time of only 90 minutes, it never wears out its welcome and it never gets boring. Every time we spend too much time on just talking the movie wisely cuts to the two soldiers that, while they are talking, are also doing their far share of shooting and screaming. It probably won't change minds as none of the characters are forced to live with their decisions because when the movie ends there aren't decisions made. A lot of philosophising is done, but no actions are taken, no changes are made, and everyone is left exactly where they started. Maybe that was the plan all along but it left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

Final Grade: B

5 for love; 5 for hate

Every so often I surprise someone by stating that I love or hate a movie about which they think I would have the opposite opinion. I have gone ahead and picked 5 of each that seem to be the biggest surprises. Know ahead of time that some of the ones I love I readily admit aren't very good movies, but there is something about them that I love. Also, they won't be in any specific order. So here we go

5 Movies I Love that surprise people

5. 2 fast 2 furious- You can certainly chalk this movie to the group I know is bad, but still love. I was not a huge fan of the original, but there was something exciting about the sequel. I know the story, acting and script are all terrible, but if I am looking for something to watch, I often find myself pulling this off my DVD shelf. Having Eva mendes in it doesn't hurt, but more than that is the climatic car chase that is so out of hand ludicrous, I can't help but be incredibly entertained by it.

4. Dude, Where's my car- I can often be considered at the forefront of hating stupid comedies, but there are exceptions to every rule and this is my biggest exception. A pot smoking comedy featuring a giant alien chick, a dude stripper, cupboards of pudding, German time travelers and a pre-famous Jennifer Garner can't be all bad, right? right? Actually this line from the movie totally sums it up "Wait a second, let's recap. Last night, we lost my car, we accepted stolen money from a transsexual stripper, and now some space nerds want us to find something we can't pronounce. I hate to say it, Chester, but maybe we need to cut back on the shibbying." Perfect

3. Mean Girls- I am not sure why I have to put this on the list, but it really surprises people to find out I genuinely love this movie and not only for Lindsay Lohan's rack. It is awfully funny, biting and honest and of course has Lindsay Lohan's rack at it's peak. Tina Fey wrote a very funny script and I can put it on anytime and just laugh my troubles away. I am not sure why people would think I would hate it because it seems to have everything I want in my life- hot chicks and fast dialog.

2. The Notebook- OK I admit it, I had absolutely no desire to see this movie at all. If it had not been for a hot girl asking me to, I never in a million years would have sat through it. However, when I did sit through I found myself enjoying it. Then I saw it a second time and enjoyed it even more. Yes, it is a bit hokey and it manipulates the emotions of the audience like no one's business, but it is very effective. At some point I started to believe the characters did in fact have the deepest longest sustaining love in the history of the world. The acting is better than these types of movies usually get and the end is both heart breaking and heartwarming and oh hell with it, it made me tear up! There, I said it. Judge away, bitches!

1. Hostel- Seeing as how I loathe the Saw movies and generally despise the torture porn genre, this might be the biggest surprise and it is the movie I find myself most defending on this list. Now, I know that when I watch this movie I am most likely reading much further into it than was intended by the director, but I think there is something more to Hostel than just torture porn. When I watch it I see a very interesting remark about society and human nature. I see a movie that believes if you have the good in life you have to prepare for the bad. It says to me Utopia comes at a price, plain and simple. I would never recommend it to any living soul, but if you want a more full account of why I love it, just ask me.

5 movies I hate that surprise people

5. Gladiator- It is almost against the laws of being a guy to hate such a brutal movie, but I do. it is slow, over acted, or directed and just fully over done. Russell Crowe was not at all impressive in any way and I just wanted the movie to reach it's climax a whole lot sooner than it did. It pains me to recall sitting through it and I would love it if I never had to sit through all 155 minutes of this bloated garbage ever again.

4. Braveheart- I guess this thing kind of falls into the same category as Gladiator, but people are always shocked to hear I hate it. What guy hates a movie that is so bloody and battle heavy? Well easy, when it is not in battle it is so over the top boring that I barely stayed awake. Mel Gibson can be good, but this is not good Gibson, this is preening, mugging and showy Gibson at his very worst. Just thinking about this movie makes me go nearly catatonic.

3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail- I do not get the whole Monty Python thing and the grail is the movie that comes up the mot. Sure there is some comedy found during the movie, but overall it is just noise that does not entertain me in any way. Add to the fact that it has an insulting ending bordering on the worst ending in any movie ever and you have just some bad movie watching experiences. I know people love it and I know it will continue to be considered a classic, but I will never get it. I just don't find it funny, interesting or redeeming in any way and I would be happy if people would stop trying to explain what makes it so funny.

2. A Beautiful Mind- Apparently it is a crime for hardcore film lovers to hate this movie, but I do. People can never get over my disdain for such a film, but it exists. The movie is oddly paced, overacted, over directed and just lacks a certain quality a movie needs to be interesting. Russell Crowe was not nearly as impressive as people think he was and nothing in it did anything for me. I was so bored I actually considered leaving, but figured it would have to get good at some point, right? Wrong!

1. Christmas Story- This choice actually raises ire more than any of the other ones. I will not sit here and bash the movie because I understand why people love it, but I just don't get it. I find the lead kid to be obnoxious, not likable and I guess the comedy just doesn't work for me. I know it is widely considered a classic and is quoted endlessly, but it really just does not work for me. It isn't very funny and it just doesn't fill me with the warm Christmas fuzzies like a good Christmas movie does.

So there you have it. You will notice left Finding Nemo off the list. That is because at this point no one is surprised by my hatred for that movie since I have made it incredibly clear! Feel free to express your surprise at any of my picks or add your own to either list. I am always curious as what other people think!

Leatherheads

As a director, George Clooney is out to prove he can do it all. His first movie, Confessions of a dangerous mind, was a dark comedic thriller; Good night and Good Luck was a very serious drama shot in black and white; Now he wants to prove he can do something that is a straight up comedy. But, not just a comedy, a screwball comedy that takes it cues from the Hudson Hawk comedies of the later 1930s and early 1940s. You cannot call Clooney lazy and lacking ambition, that's for sure. However, Good night and Good luck was so good, isn't there really only way to go from there? Maybe that is why Clooney opted to make his follow up something more silly.

Dodge Connelly(Clooney) is a man's man. He is rough, tough and loves to drink. He is also a professional football player in the late 1930s where professional football is not such a popular game. Teams are folding left and right and Connelly is soon without a livelihood. Carter Rutherford(John Krasinski) is a college football star and war hero who is coming to the end of his college career. Lexie Littleton(Renee Zellwegger) is a female news reporter trying to derail Rutherford's career by exposing his war hero status as fraudulent. In order to save professional football Dodge sets out to recruit Carter to play for his Duluth Bulldogs. After some haggling with Carter's agent, CC Frazier(Jonathon Pryce) Carter leaves college to play professional football. Soon, professional football is on the rise but with a gain in popularity comes rules and regulations, which do not sit well with the aging Dodge. Dodge has also set his eyes on the lusciously lip sticked Lexie, but she seems to have her sights set on the younger, prettier and more athletic Carter. When Carter's secret is exposed Carter leave the team and joins a much more impressive team and, of course, the movie culminates in a football game between Dodge's team and Carter's new team.

Having seen plenty of those old screwball comedies I knew what I was in for, but the difference between those movies and this one is the running time. Screwball romantic comedies typically run at around 90 minutes, not 110 minutes. That is the first fault with Leatherheads: it is just too long. It is too boring in parts and that kind of overshadows the good stuff hidden inside. Clooney is a man with balls to cast himself as the underdog, seeing as how he is about the most winning man alive, but he plays the role very well. He has a very easy sexual chemistry with Zellwegger and their scenes pop off the screen with quick and witty dialogue. Unfortunately, Zellwegger and Krasinski do not fair as well together. On his own, Krasinski's all american boy winning attitude is used to great effect in the movie but he and Zellwgerr not only have the most boring stuff in the movie, they don't seem to have that all important chemistry. As we all know I am a fan of very fast moving dialogue and Leatherheads has it in spades but not all of the actors are well equipped enough to fully handle it, so it feels forced and almost lost inside the plot. The football sequences do not occupy enough of the scenes to make it a sports movie, but the climatic football scene is fun enough to make up for most of it.

Director Clooney's biggest asset as a director might also be his biggest flaw- he is an actor's director. Jonathon Pryce, who was god awful in all 3 Pirates movies, is the best I have seen him in years and Clooney loves to give lesser actors meaty roles and nice screen time, but that becomes a problem because some of those scenes are just extended to greatly and lose their value. It is called the Law of Diminishing Returns, Clooney, look it up. It is a funny movie, but not a hilarious movie. It is a good movie but not a great movie. It is comforting and entertaining enough, but you are left wanting more overall. That is not to say it does not have great moments because it does. The initial meeting between Clooney and Zellwegger is hilarious and the bar fight towards the end has everything a screwball is supposed to have, including the piano player playing all the way through it and even busting a bottle over a guy's head.

Clonney misstepped a little with Leatherheads, but it isn't a total loss and proves he can do comedy, mostly. I trust as he directs more movies he will learn the value of editing and tightening things up in comedy. Comedy is meant to be fast and short not a bit bloated and muddied within the plot of the movie. He may also be telling us about how the media takes something and runs with it, which is still happening today, but I am not sure this is the movie for that. He has an eye for the physical comedy and the fast dialogue which will go far in the world of comedy. Now he just has to understand when enough is enough. But any time the most popular guy in the world makes himself the aging underdog, it is hard to totally write him off. The funnies thing is, we actually believe he is the underdog!

Final Grade: C+

The Band's Visit

I cannot fully explain the appeal this movie held over me; I just knew I was dying to see it. From the first trailer, I was 100% hooked. I don't know what it is but I have become increasingly more interested in foreign films, especially the ones that don't take themselves overly serious. This is such a film. It sounds pretentious because it is an Israeli film that prominently features Hebrew, English and Arabic, but it really is not, I promise

This plot is fairly simple: An Egyptian police band is set to play an opening ceremony of an Arts center find themselves in the wrong town. There are no buses to the right town that night, so they must find a place to stay in the wrong town. They stumble into a restaurant and the people who work at the restaurant decide to split the band up and take them in. Tewfiq (Sasson Gabal), the conductor of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, is formal and rigid in his demeanor but is able to strike up a friendship with Dina (Ronit Elkabetz). Dina is a very sexual being, but she also has a soft side and while the friendship is awkward, uncomfortable and funny, it also hints at something deeper, which is maybe why Tewfiq does not give in to the possibility of a one night stand. Another band member, Khaled (Saleh Bakri) decides to accompany local Papi (Shlomi Avraham) and his date to a roller skating rink. In a memorable scene, Khaled offers the socially backward Papi some instructions on courting his shy girl friend. It is probably the funniest scene in the movie, playing the awkward humor perfectly. And finally, Simon (Kalifa Natour) plays a lovely but unfinished composition for the clarinet for Itzik (Rubi Moscovich) who tells him that he should end the piece, not with a traditional showy display but with what is there for him at the moment, "not sad, not happy, a small room, a lamp, a bed, a child sleeping, and tons of loneliness."

The Band's Visit is a poignant, touching, hilarious and awkward movie. It does everything right from beginning to end. It is paced gorgeously, acted perfectly from all sides and tells a very simple story in a moving and beautiful way. The moments of awkward hilarity so often done wrong (See Napoleon Dynamite) work in every scene and create a world that we can recognize even though the entire movie takes place in Israel. I was incredibly impressed with Sasson Gabal because while he played the most reserved character he was also the most honest and open. He seems to be a very talented actor and he really made me feel his sadness, his loneliness. I also liked that no matter what language people were speaking they were subtitles. I enjoyed that because it gave equal weight to all languages. It was saying, English is not favored above Arabic or Hebrew. It was a mixing of cultures, languages and personalities, but it all worked together in perfect harmony. There are also moments that are truly side splittingly funny- the business with the pay phone for one.

I am sure this is not a movie for everyone, and that is a shame, but I think a lot of people would appreciate the all out humor mixed with a melancholy sadness, a sad complacency for life being what it is. It is a reminder that besides some obvious cultural differences, we are all people who experience joy and sadness. It is also a movie that fully believes in music changing lives. It is a movie that believes music does transcend language and that music can be the most beautiful thing in the world. And when we finally hear the band play, the music and the words are so incredibly beautiful it made me want to purchase Arabic music!

Final Grade: A

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Dustin Hoffman is an interesting actor to me. He shows up in the most random movies, doing the most random things, but the last few years he has taken to playing wild eccentrics. I am not sure if Wag the Dog started it but it seems as he gets older he only wants to play goofy, aloof and wacky characters. Plus, any time Natalie Portman is in a movie it is reason to watch it, right? Well, this weekend my family rented it and we watched it.

Mr. Magorium(Hoffman) is a 243 year old man who is nearing his demise. He knows this because a long time ago he bought enough of this specific pair of shoes to last his whole life time and he is on his last pair. In order to get his affairs in order he hires an accountant, Henry Westen(Jason Bateman)-side note, Magorium thinks accountant is a mash up of count and mutant, so he calls Westen mutant through the entire movie- and that event seems to coincide with Magorium's magic toy store acting up. Molly Mahoney(Portman) is a 23 year old piano prodigy who manages the magical toy store and will inherit the store upon Magorium's departure. The majority of the movie is spent with Magorium trying to soothe the pains of the people will leave behind and the toy store becomes a character of its own as it throw a tantrum and acts up when it is sad. The Mutant, Westen, also learns a lot from the store and re finds the child in himself as he befriends a young boy, Eric(Zach Mills), who is lovable but too dorky to have any friends. The unlikely friendship formed provides Eric a person to call a friend and provides Westen with a chance to loosen up a bit.

The death of Magorium does not come as a shocker in the movie, but it does provide a powerful message to the film. Family films rarely take on death in such a frank way and Magorium has a monologue that sums up the theme inside the movie perfectly:

"When King Lear dies in Act Five do you know what William Shakespeare has written? He Dies. That's all, nothing more, no fan fare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the world's most inspirational work of dramatic literature is, He Died. It took Shakespeare a genius to come up with he dies. And every time I read those two words I find myself overwhelmed with dysphoria, I know its only natural to be sad, but not because of the words he dies, but because of the life we saw prior to the words."

It is up to Mahoney to continue the story and to find her purpose to make the chapters of her life as brilliant, lively and meaningful as the chapters in Magorium's life story. Of course, Magorium's death does bring fanfare and does have a metaphor attached to it, but that is because of the way he lived his life; that is because of the joy he brought to everyone, the imagination and love he gave to all of the kids and parents within his store. It is a fairly powerful final 20 minutes and it represents a very distinct tonal change in the film. The first hour is fairly silly with all kinds of puns and jokes and all kinds of toys, but it is merely setting us up for the emotional ending.

I was not expecting this movie to move me in any way, but I was moved. I was enriched and challenged to think about my own life and if I was adding to the chapters of my own life story. It is pretty sentimental I admit, but I don't think movies that manipulate my emotions are necessarily a bad thing. To see death dealt with in such a frank way, amongst all of the gorgeously rich colors and effects in the store was jarring sure, but it was touching at the same time. I liked that in order to try and stop Magorium from leaving, Mahoney showed him the little things in life that make life fun- jumping on beds and dancing on bubble wrap to name a few. Maybe i was caught in a moment of weakness, but I really enjoyed this movie, a lot. It made me laugh and it made me appreciate the things I have. The performances are all winning and Hoffman is picture perfect in a role that could have been far too Robin Williams for my taste. But I think the script is what makes this movie really tick and to show that I will end my review with a few of my favorites. Save your jokes about them being cheesy and tell them to someone without a heart.

Your life is an occasion, rise to it.

All stories, even the ones we love, must eventually come to an end and when they do, it's only an opportunity for another story to begin.

Unlikely adventures require unlikely tools.

Final Grade: B+

Revolver

I don't have a paragraph worth of back story on this movie, the director or any of the actors, so I will just jump in with this one

Jake Green(Jason Statham) has spent seven years in jail, for some unknown crime, between a con man in the cell on one side and a chess master on the other. Back on the street, he walks into a casino run by his old enemy Macha(Ray Liotta) and wins a fortune at the table. Did he cheat, or what? I dunno. I don't even know what game they were playing. Macha soon sics some hit men on Green . Then two mysterious strangers Zach )Vincent Pastor and Avi(Andre Benjamin) materialize in Statham's life at just such moments when they are in a position to save it. Who, oh who, could these two men, one of whom plays chess, possibly be? They tell Green he is dying but they can help him if he gives them all of the money he has. They lend it out to needy people, well they are loan sharks and they make Jake a member of their crew. Macha has a bunch of drugs stolen that belonged to the main mob boss and he suspects Green and the Asian gang (yes, the Asian gang)so he sics even more men on Green. Green is often in his own head with an inner monologue trying to figure out what is going on, remembering the rules of cons he learned in Prison and for some reason he must repeat them over and over again.

At the beginning of the film a bunch of pseudo-Proverbs flash on the screen; most are about chess and cons. I am not sure why, but I guess they are meant to set up that we are watching a puzzle film and it will require all of our intelligence to figure it out. It doesn't require that much intelligence if you have a lot and it probably requires a lot if you don't have a lot. Trapped inside a bad script, a truly horrid and needless animation scene is a movie about ego. The inner voice Jake hears is his own ego prodding him to believe he can figure anything out. His ego has trapped him and the two mysterious men are there to help "free" him from that trap. They act as the Id, if you will. Yes, Freud does come up every so often in the movie. One could go as far as to say that the two men were only in Green's head, but since they did kill people, I can not fully buy that theory. But, beyond the pretentious philosophising is a fairly good movie.

Jason Statham is not a great actor, but he does this kind of stoic crazy thing well. Guy Ritchie (the director) doesn't trust any of the actors though. He is needlessly trying trick shots, weird colors, that animation sequence and some truly bizarre editing, although the editing of the scene where the hit man is in the apartment complex is excellent. Ray Liotta plays his character too true to what a real mob boss would be, which is cool, but I think he needed to be more over the top to match what Ritchie was doing in terms of sticking Liotta in a giant tanning room with speedo underwear and only speedo underwear. I didn't know what to expect going in and what I got was this movie that was trying to be bigger, badder and better than it actually is. The theme of controlling one's ego gets lost in all of the unnecessary flashbacks and flash forwards. The crazy editing, noisy soundtrack, random subtitles and constant voice overs repeating the rules of a con keep Revolver from being a totally fun movie.

Final Grade: C

Southland Tales

Richard Kelly thinks highly of himself and of his movies. He fought the studio who wanted to release an edited version of Southland Tales and in the end they gave him the movie and let him do with it what he wanted. Kelly seems intent on creating movies that show how creative or clever he can be without a high regard for continuity or story telling. This movie was booed at film festivals, panned mercilessly by every critic, played in Sacramento for only one week and the Blockbuster employee tried to talk me out of renting it for about 15 minutes. Yet, I had a pull to watch it. I had just come off of Donnie Darko and was ready to be entertained if more than a little confused. Did I make the right decision?

In the near future Justin Timberlake will be stationed on a giant sniper rifle off the pacific ocean and he will be reading from Revelations (The Bible) as The Rock, writes a screen play about the end of the world while banging Sarah Michelle Gellar who will be a porn star, turned pop star, turned marketing whore. In the near future Sean William Scott will be a cop and his twin and Cheri Oteri and Amy Poeller will be liberal crazies trying to destroy the conservative government with Marxist ideology. In this future nothing at all will make sense. Jon Lovitz will appear for no reason at all and in the end, the end of the world may be set off by a guy and his future self finally meeting and touching. Sound like fun? Yeah not so much!

Even if this is a literal adaptation of Revelations (the theory that makes the most sense) Southland Tales may be the single worst movie I have ever seen. The acting is porn star bad, the script is self congratulatory without making any damn sense and even the visuals pale in comparison to Kelly's last movie. The story is so over the top it borderlines on stupid and while it may be trying to grasp at social commentary it all gets lost in the ridiculous stunt casting of former Saturday Night Live performers. However, all of that could be forgiven if I was entertained but on top of all the other faults, this movie is just BORING! I was checking my watch about 5 minutes in and continued to do it throughout this absolute atrocity of a film. It is a slap in the face to real guilty pleasures. If strip clubs are guilty pleasures and hookers just make you feel guilty, Southland Tales is the hooker who follows you home after getting paid and tells your wife about it. I am sure Richard Kelly had a grand master plan when he set out to make it and maybe there are people out there who appreciate this brand of disgusting movie, but I feel like not only was I raped over 2.5 hours of my life, I am dumber, slower, uglier, meaner and more uninteresting because of Southland Tales.

Final Grade: FF--

Donnie Darko (Cult Classic Review)

I have never met anyone who has seen Donnie Darko who had a negative review of it. I have heard it was confusing, but excellent. Everyone who sees it seems to have an affinity for it and that always intrigued me. Until now though, I hadn't really had a desire to see it. A few years ago I caught about 15 minutes of the middle of the movie and wasn't impressed, so I never thought about checking it out. However, after mid-terms last week I had some down time and decided to finally give Donnie Darko a shot.

Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhall) is not your typical teenager- he sleep walks, sees a shrink, oh and he is seeing a 6ft tall bunny rabbit. His sleep walking and following the giant bunny lead Donnie out one night and it turns out to be lucky because that night the engine dropped out of an airplane and the engine dropped through his roof and on to his bed. It would have killed him. Because he was spared, he thought he should start listening to the giant bunny who tells Donnie that the world is going to end soon unless he does the things the bunny tell him to do. The things he is supposed to do involve, arson, wielding axes and things like that. Darko is often picked on, but he finds respite from it all in the form of Gretchen Ross(Jena Malone). Gretchen is a girl with a bad family history and the two make an odd pair but they work because of their oddities. Donnie becomes sure that the giant bunny is from the future and he becomes interested in time travel and his science teacher Kenneth Monnitoff(Noah Wyle) gives him a book called The Philosophy of TIme Travel and soon the screen is lit up with passages from the book trying to explain the significance of each character and what needs to happen to keep the world from exploding. In a side plot, Jim Cunningham(Patrick Swayse) is a motivational speaker who believes all human emotion boils down to only two things- love and fear. His story comes to a fairly obvious, but bad ending.

When this movie was over I was very confused, but I was drawn to it. A day later I was still confused, but I was thinking about it. It is now five days later and I am still interested in the movie. I want to discuss it endlessly with anyone who has seen it and has a better working knowledge of it. I want to delve into it and figure it all out, but I don't have the time. Instead I have my own conjectures about what was really going on. Then, I go on-line and realize everyone has conjectures and maybe that is the point. Director Richard Kelly created a very surreal, disturbing, dark, scary, sometimes funny, pseudo intellectual world with possible time travel and possible fourth dimensions. There are little things that may or may not be important later in the movie and everything appears connected, but you have to really have time to figure it all out. If you don't have the time you get to just sit and wonder in the back of your mind if the world really ended in the world of Donnie Darko.

I am not going to bore anyone with my theory on what is going on in Donnie Darko, but I will say that it is a very interesting and entertaining movie. There are some remarkable visuals (Donnie trying to hit the bunny through the mirror for starters) and there is a lot of philosophizing about good and evil and the role of fate in life. There is also a lot of nonsense and thing sin there that seem to be there just so the director can smirk about how clever he is. The acting is fairly strong all the way around but this movie lives or dies by Gyllenhall and he keeps the movie alive with a dark, brooding, tortured, layered, some times funny performance of the ultimate emo kid.

I cannot recommend this movie to anyone, but I can recommend it to anyone who enjoys mind bending movies or just dark deep movies. I am sure subsequent viewings will enhance my pleasure as I start to pick up the littler things, or maybe more viewings will turn me off to it. I do not know, but I know it is still with me and I like that. I like that with as many movies as I watch, there are still movies that keep me wondering; movies that keep me guessing. Richard Kelly is definitely one to watch.

Final Grade- A-

Stop-Loss

Iraq war movies did not enjoy a very good 2007. The audience was telling Hollywood they did not want war in their entertainment as war movie after war movie bombed, even the big budget ones like The Kingdom were failures. However, Hollywood was not about to listen and here in early 2008 we get the first official Iraq war movie. Only opening in roughly 1,000 theaters in the country, the expectations were pretty small for this testosterone filled, MTV films movie, directed by a woman, Kimberly Pierce who had not directed a movie since 1999's Boys don't cry. It did not open to big numbers, but Saturday night in Davis it played to a nearly packed house of college liberals looking for their next fix of Anti-Bushisms. They were not disappointed.

Brandon King(Ryan Phillippe) and Steve Shriver(Channing Tatum) are best friends who led their Texas high school football to championships, and then joined the Army with misplaced anger from 9/11. They served their 5 year term and they are on their way out. Shriver has a fiance he plans to marry, Michele(The cute as hell Abbey Cornish) and Brandon is not sure what he is going to do, except drink a lot of beer. The entire unit, consisting of Tommy Burgess(the incredible Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and a few other soldiers have been welcomed to King's hometown for some parties. Monday comes quickly and when King goes to turn in his Army stuff he is informed he must go back to Iraq because he has been Stop-Lossed. Stop Loss is an army term whereas on the bottom of your contract it states if the country is at war they can change your contract to keep you in. King calls it a "backdoor draft." King wisely points out the President said the war was over and he would not return. He brakes protocol by punching out some Army guys and taking off, leaving Shriver and Burgess behind to deal with the ramifications of his action as well as their own traumatic stress disorders. King enlists Michelle's help to get to Washington to talk to a senator but when that backfires, King is faced with possibly fleeing the country and starting life as someone else.

Stop-Loss is the uneven kind of movie that hits more than it misses, but is disappointing in a way because you feel it could have been better. Being an MTV film, the editing is,at times, too frenetic and the flashbacks especially feel forced and faster than they need to be. Phillippe does a great job as he shoulders the load representing the 81,000 soldiers who have actually been stop-lossed in this country. He cries well, yells well, but he is most impressive when he is going through the reality of trying to adjust to life outside of the army. There is a scene where he encounters some thieves that is as intense a scene I have seen this year, thus far. Tatum is second fiddle, but he shows a range of acting I had not seen from him in any of his other movies. Yes, he is still shirtless, in fact shirtless and without pants at one point, and he fills out an army uniform well, but he is on his way to making a nice career for himself. The real winner though, is Levitt. Having spent the last few years in amazing indie performances, it is nice to see Levitt get some shine in a bigger picture and while he is very supporting, he haunting on screen. His Burgess uses alcohol to dull the pain of real life and Levitt's portrayal of a man spiraling to self destruction actually gives the film some more heart.

I cannot speak on realities of stop-loss or anything like that, but I can speak on how this movie deals with it and how it deals with the military in general. The opening war scene is shown with a brutal realism and the language of the young soldiers makes them quickly identifiable. Making the kids from Texas was a nice touch, because we see that they come from a pro-war area and are in fact proud to have been over there killing people, but the movie is taking a very anti-war statement showing how difficult these kids' lives are when they return. Shriver is prone to digging bunkers in his front yard in the middle of the night. Burgess is not good at anything but being a soldier and King is worried another tour would kill him and kill his family. In all of this is Kimberly Pierce, finding a way to manipulate the audience emotions almost as well as she did with Boys don't Cry. It all played well in the theater jam packed with hacky sack playing, protest rally attending college kids as there were even cheers during anti-Bush sentiments, but I wasn't completely won over.

I am not against war movies, in fact, when done well I quite like them, and in the grand scheme of it all, this was a pretty good movie. The disappointing ending was probably the most real way it could have gone, but I feel like I wanted more from some of the supporting cast. I wanted to know more about Shriver and why he was so intent on sniper school and I would have loved more screen time for Levitt and his masterpiece of acting as Burgess. Also, I know some late editing was done to cut out the sex, but in doing so they made a lot of unnecessary sexual undertones between Michelle and Brandon. I understand why they decided to leave out the pair having sex, but then it leaves a bunch of scenes leading up to it that don't end up going anywhere. A weird complaint maybe, but if you see it I think you'd understand. Phillippe continues to try and get away from being just a pretty boy and he is proving to be a pretty good actor, but in the end this is still just an MTV movie filled with guys who like to drink beer and shoot guns.

Overall Grade: B-

21

Everything I learned about black jack I learned from a book called Bringing Down the House. It is the book on which this movie is based. My love for the book lead to an unusual excitement for this movie. I say unusual because nothing about the trailer made the movie look like something people needed to see. Add to that the fact that I am not a Vegas guy nor a gambling guy, it seems weird I wanted to see this movie so badly. Also, before I go any further, I try to not be one of those elitist jerks who says "well the book is better than the movie." I understand movies have to do in a little over 2hrs what a book can do in 500 pages. I do not judge a movie based on how the book was or what was in the book. This wills strictly be about the movie, 21.

Ben Campbell(Jim Sturgess) is an extremely bright college student with a rain man like quality when it comes to numbers. He is also from a fairly poor family and is trying to get into Harvard Medical School. If he does not get the full ride scholarship given to only 1 student, he will have to come up with $300,000.00. Ben is a total nerd who spends his nights with his two best friends trying to create a robot car, but he and his friends dream of having a life adventure and he dreams of scoring the hottest MIT girl ever, Jill Taylor(Kate Bosworth). One night as he is studying he is approached by Fisher(Jacob Pitts) who tells Ben he must him. When they reach their destination, Ben sees a room with his favorite Professor, Mikey Rosa(Kevin Spacey), Jill Taylor and two others. They are playing black jack. Well, they are counting cards. Ben is offered a spot on the MIT black jack team and is promised more money and more fun than he could possibly imagine. He is resistant at first, but Jill with her piercing blue eyes and big, sexy pouty lips is very persuasive. Ben is a pro at counting card and he is soon winning ungodly amounts of money, very quickly. Each team member changes persona's depending on the Casino and soon the reserved Ben is a full on big time player in the world of Vegas. It all seems perfect but the more popular and into Black jack he gets in Vegas, the worse things get for him at school and before to long everything he "worked" for is gone and his gambling addiction truly cost him everything.

As movies go, this is one of the most slick I have seen in a while. The clothes, performances, locations, camera shots and everything else are extremely slick and polished, much like everything in Las Vegas. Sturgess, whose dreamy earnest eyes caught my attention in Across the Universe, puts on a very believable American accent and is very good in transitioning between MIT nerd and Vegas hot shot. He looks good in all of the suits and he captures Ben's descent into addiction pretty well. Bosworth is mostly eye candy, and while she is a little too skinny for my taste, she looks damn good all dolled up in Las Vegas. She has a very nice sexual chemistry with Sturgess and actually gives a bit of depth to a stock character. Laurence Fishbourne who shows up as a Casino loss prevention officer on the heels of catching Ben, is a true thug, but a veteran thug who knows his livelihood is nearing its end. The true star though is Spacey. Spacey is in pure snarky, leader of the pack form here. He really gets to let loose as the Professor with a dark past of gambling. He plays the devil almost as he shows he doesn't really care about anyone, just the money. Every time he is on screen the movie gets a bit more exciting, but he never over steps his bounds and lets the young cast get theirs.

I was never bored, even if I felt they could have tightened the story up a bit and the shots of Black Jack actually make the game look a lot more exciting than it really is. The direction is fast and the editing is a little choppy but it actually works with the overall style of the film. Sure, it is probably a lot more style over substance, but that is not to say there is no substance to be found. 21 captures how devastating gambling addiction can be and how devastating losing yourself can be. However, it wraps things up in a pretty little Hollywood bow, which is my chief complaint about the movie. I did not think the mostly happy ending went with the themes, but I understand the American public demands the bad guys get theirs and the good guys find redemption.

Overall this is thoroughly entertaining movie that is not ruined by the typical ending. The performances are strong and the direction is interesting and the pace never gets bogged down. Here comes my little bit about the book- If you enjoyed 21, I highly suggest seeking out Bringing down the House by Ben Mezrich. The movie focuses solely on the Las Vegas exploits, but the book gets to delve even deeper into what happened each of the members of this real life team. While it is a non fiction book it reads as quickly as a fictional story. I really enjoyed the movie and it actually makes me want to read the book all over again.

Final Grade: B+

Horton Hears a Who

Movies based on Dr Seuss books are generally considered to suck. I actually liked the live action Grinch based on my love for Jim Carrey, but I understood why people hated it. Well, Carrey is back in a Dr. Seuss movie but this time it is just his voice. Maybe I am a lone in this but I always think it weird in animated movies for people to voice characters that are vastly different in shape to the people voicing it. I just assume a big character should be played by a big guy, so I had that hurdle to leap over when I first saw the trailer for it. Also featuring the voices of Steve Carrell, Seth Rogen, Amy Poeller, Will Arnet, Jonah Hill, Isla Fisher, Dan Fogler and comedy legend Carol Burnett, you have kind of a who's who of comedy in America right now.

Like most of Seuss' stories, Horton is a fairly straight forward story with a message. Horton(Carrey) hears something on a tiny speck that is flying through the air and he believes he has to help whatever is on the speck. The Sour Kangaroo(Burnett), who kind of runs the jungle, doesn't like it one bit because she believes it will start giving kids ideas about imagination and it will ruin the order of the Jungle. She is determined to get the clover on which Horton has placed the speck. So much so that she sends a Vulture(Arnett in a hilarious cameo) after it and in the end sends an angry mob after it. Horton is affable, earnest and kind of dorky, but he is 100% on the mission of getting the speck to safety, especially after finally making contact with the Mayor(Carell) of the speck. The Mayor tells Horton that the speck is an entire town of people and in the town nothing bad has ever happened. The Mayor is a spastic, awkward, on the edge kind of guy and he doesn't really have the respect of the town or his only son JoJo who should be the next mayor when the time comes. it is a Dr. Seuss book so in the end it all gets worked out and children watching this movie or reading that book learn the valuable lessons of sticking to your word, believing in yourself, using your imagination is fun, and peer pressure kind of sucks.

Carrey still seems like kind of an odd choice for Horton, but I liked him in the role a lot. He really lends himself to animation but it almost always seemed within the realms of the story when he goes on a Carrey like tangent. Carell is pitch perfect as the awkward mayor which is not terribly shocking. As a fast moving mouse friend of Horton's, Rogen is limited but funny and actually all of the voice work is pretty exceptional. The animation is at times gorgeous, sweeping and magnificent and at times very cartoonish and awkward (The Monkeys especially). The movie moves quickly enough and while it doesn't seem like there is enough material for an 85 minute movie, I was not ever actually bored by any of it. It is a great story for children and the movie plays very well to children. There is enough humor for adults though to make it relatively interesting.

My biggest issue with the movie was the anime section, where Horton's fight fantasy is drawn and shot like a Pokemon cartoon. It was from way out in left field and did nothing to enhance my movie going experience. In fact, it was quite off putting and it took me a little while to get back into the story. Also, having kind of an affinity for the world of Horton though Seussical, I missed the songs. I missed the music big time, actually. I know Carrey and Carell can both sing and they threw in a random song at the end but, I really missed the world of Seussical. It is no fault of the movie, but it did hinder my enjoyment a bit.

Overall, while I enjoyed it at times and the voice work is excellent, there were too many random things and unnecessary animation tricks to make this a completely enjoyable experience. I know this movie is not aimed at me. I get that, I do, but if Pixar can continue to make great movie for both kids and adults, why is it too much to ask that other animated movies do the same?

Final Grade: C+

Be Kind Rewind

I always felt like one of the last people in America to convert over to the DVD player. In fact, I still have a box of VHS tapes of movies I have not found on DVD quite yet, and I bust one out and watch it every so often. Sure, they don't have the picture or video quality of DVD and VCRs have been known to chew through them fairly regularly, but I like the nostalgia of the VHS. Apparently, I was not the last one though, because in Michel Gondry's latest bizarre movie, Be Kind Rewind, there is essentially an entire town, Passaic, New Jersey, that is stuck in the nostalgia of the VHS.

Mike( Mos Def) works in a run down, nothing-but-VHS video rental store and Elroy Fletcher(Danny Glover) is the owner of the store and they both seem to live upstairs. Business is not good with a new box rental store (Think Blockbuster or Hollywood) has come in with lots of titles and lots of DVDs. Elroy is not keen on the DVD player because he doesn't want his customers to have to purchase the upgrade. Jerry(Jack Black) is Mike's best friend and his job is to watch some sort of power plant at night, so his house is a trailer on the lot of the plant. Mike and Jerry do not know this, but Elroy has been told by the state that his store is not up to code and it will be knocked down to build new condos in a matter of months if he cannot afford the renovations. Elroy leaves the store in Mike's hands while he goes to spy on the big box store. One night Jerry tries to destroy the plant, something goes horribly wrong and he gets magnetized; he walks into Mike's shop and with his mere presence erases every tape in the store. At first everything seems doomed because the most regular customer, Miss Falowicz, wants to watch Ghostbusters. Then, Mike gets the brilliant idea to shoot Ghostbusters themselves, all low tech like. It turns out to be a hit with the youth in town and soon everyone wants Mike and Jerry's low tech movies that they say are "sweded." They enlist the goofy, cute, Alma (Melonie Diaz) to help them and soon their entire store is full of these sweded movies. They are charging $20.00 per movie and think they may make the money they need to save the store. Things don't always work the way you want them to and in the end the entire town comes together to create a fictional documentary about Fats Waller, a Jazz Musician who may or may not have been born inside the video store.

After I watch a movie I hit the IMDB message boards to gauge the general consensus view on a movie and I was shocked to find this movie being obliterated on the message boards. I am not sure these people saw the same movie I did because I fell in love with this movie from the very beginning. Jack Black is usually one of the most obnoxious actors on screen, but in this movie I found him to be funny and charming and his chemistry with Mos Def's somewhat slower Mike, totally worked for me. The Sweded movies are not only hilarious but creative in a way that makes me want to pick up a camera and start shooting movies. The Ghostbusters scene is the longest and funniest, but the remakes of Robocop, Driving Miss Daisy and Rush Hour 2 are also hilarious. They find a way to make low tech special effects and even animation in a way that shows real heart and passion for movies. Gondry also has fun with Black's character being magnetized in some funny physical comedy side gags. Danny Glover is also a very nice addition as he actually plays quirkiness quite well.

The final 25 minutes of this movie is where the real creativity lies though. When the entire town rallies to shoot this documentary, we see them finding ways to create all kinds of set pieces and props with just the stuff they have around them. Not to mention how having them shoot near fan gives the impression that it is old, from the sound. There is a lot of suspension of disbelief involved in enjoying this movie, but you can wrap your head around the silly premise and get to the heart of the picture I think it is very much worth it. Be Kind Rewind is a movie that believes in movie making magic. It is a movie that believes movies can bring people together in a time of crisis and can unite people in a bigger cause. It believes movies are made with heart and that movies can be good even if they are shot for basically no money. Be Kind Rewind believes in movies the way I believe in movies and the way my friends believes in movies. It is creatively shot, has some very good laugh out loud moments and underneath it all, it is heart warming.

Final Grade: A-

Drillbit Taylor

Judd Apatow and company are cash cows and Drillbit Taylor is the first movie out to really prove that they have the golden touch. See, the script and story for this movie have been floating around since the eighties. Eighties giant John Hughes started writing it back in the day and with studios trying to make as much money as possible off Apatow and his troupe, they gave the script to Seth Rogen to polish off, punch up, and turn it into a big winner. That was the hope anyway. Then they gave the script to a director who handles broad comedy fairly well having directed a few Sandler flicks in the past, put Apatow's name as a producer and sat back to wait for the money to roll in. Then Owen Wilson tried to kill himself. I do not mean to sound insensitive but his reluctance to get back in the swing of promotion kind of hurt the movie's chances, but did it really have a shot to begin with?

Drillbit Taylor(Wilson) is a homeless Army Vet looking for $380.00 so he can leave California and go to Canada. Wade(Nate Hartley), Ryan(Troy Gentile) and Jim(Ian Roberts) are three high school freshmen with a serious bully problem. The bully, Filkins(Alex Frost) is an emancipated senior with serious issues. In a montage of bullying the 3 losers are thrown, hit, flushed, crammed into small spaces, made to piss each other etc. They get fed up and decide to hire a bodyguard; enter Drillbit. At first Drillbit is just trying to to sucker the kids out of $380.00 but soon he realizes they are worth more to he sticks around to swindle them out of more money. As part of his protection plan he pretends to be a substitute teacher and meets Lisa(Leslie Mann) a very horny English teacher. In various montages, Drillbit pretends to teach the kids how to fight and how to look and feel tough. But, in the end the kids do have to fend for themselves as the usual trappings of such a comedy expose Drillbit as a fraud and the kids to fight Filkins on their own. There is also a sweet side romance between Wade and a Little Asian girl.

Typically with comedies I loathe or love them; there is no middle ground. Well, Drillbit Taylor finds that middle ground. It is funny enough to make me like it, but too broad and absurd for me to love it. The three kids, especially the pudgy Troy Gentile, are all quite endearing and funny. Rogen punched up the script with some nice one-liners including 1 or 2 that seem for a more adult movie. Owen Wilson is his usual charming self and he finds a way to deliver lines to make them funnier than they ought to be. He works very well with the 3 kids, but it is something Wilson plays often and it would be nice to see him try something new. Unfortunately most of the jokes come in the first 35-40 minutes and the fun action comedy comes in the final 20 minutes which leaves the middle 35 minutes in which the film flounders. Neither the script nor the director seem too sure where they want the focus to be. Drillbit is essentially a supporting role that over stays its welcome because the kids are at the real heart of the movie. The romance between Mann and Wilson is fun and nice but seems out of place and only succeeds in dragging the movie along instead of having it be quicker.

The movie is also very sitcomy with the treatment of parents and teachers. No one question Filkins fake pleasantries even after it is found out the kids went so far as to hire a bodyguard for protection. Also, how not a single teacher suspected Taylor might be a fraud is too convenient to be taken seriously. But it all ends up worth it for the big climatic fight. yes, the fight does happen and for anyone who was bullied (like I was) there is a twisted joy out of watching 3 losers try and pummel a bully. The fight is choreographed very well with pauses for cheers and laughs and the kids all handle it very well. Also, there is never a moment of "violence doesn't solve anything" nonsense, so the movie is never hypocritical as many movies are. In this movie violence is not only necessary but it can help freshmen grow up and learn to have self esteem.

In the end, I laughed full on big laughs for the first section and I was entertainingly cheering on the kids in the end, so I think the movie accomplished its goal. I am sure it will be compared to Superbad because of the look of the 3 kids, but this is obviously not Superbad and anyone expecting that will be disappointed. However, if you just want to kind of laugh at some goofy kids in goofy situations, I recommend this movie. It has heart; it has laughs and it has a fat white kid rapping 8 mile style. What is not to like about that?

Final Grade: B-

Sleuth (2007)

Pop quiz hot shot, when is a remake not a remake? The answer is when both are based on a play and when the remake has the advantage of having Harold Pinter as the writer of the screenplay. Such is the case with Sleuth, a remake of a 1972 film which was an adaptation of a stage play. In the 1972 version Michael Caine played the young lothario and in this version he is the older of the two men. It is very easy to see how this started as a screenplay as it features only 2 characters, one stationary, if massive, set and very distinguishable scene breaks. However, the scene breaks may have been accented for effect by Kenneth Branagh, the director.

Andrew Wyke(Caine) and Milo Tindle are two men engaged in a battle of wits or one up manship. Tindle is sleeping with Wyke's wife and has come to Wyke's house to coax Wyke into giving his wife the divorce she wants. Whther or not any of that is actually true or not is beyond me and seems to be beyond the scope of the movie and appears just to be a set up to get the two men in a room together. What follows is a very complex game of cat and mouse. In act 1 Wyke wants Tindle to break into his house and steal a necklace so he can claim the insurance on it and Tindle and Wyke's wife can sell it and live off of it. It turns around on Tindle because Wyke was controlling the whole thing. In act 2, Tindle semi-cleverly disguises himself as a detective coming to arrest Wyke for the murder of Tindle. Act 3 takes a bizarre twist and derails the entire movie because in act 3 it is never clear who is who and what is what. We have no basis to believe the homosexuality when it is hastily thrown in our faces and we are not sure what to believe in anymore. In acts 1 and 2 we kind of understood what was going on and there was a clear cut game or trick at play, but in act 3 it seems that maybe Wyke is being sincere, but it isn't fully flushed out.

Sleuth is mostly better heard than seen. Pinter's script is quick and smart and Caine and Law handle it with ease and they both sound pleasant enough. The story moves from point A to point B swiftly without ever losing the wit or charm in Pinter's words. The violin heavy score adds an element of suspense without ever becoming annoying as a lot of violin heavy scores get. On the other hand we have Branagh's decision to film giant sections of the movie through surveillance cameras or giving bizarre close ups at weird moments. He also likes over head shots and quite a lot of shots where people are only half in the picture which can be a nifty trick with great effect, but here is just seems like someone bumped the camera man and no one fixed it. Branagh appears unsure how to handle anything that is going on from the action to the massive house that is almost a character in its own right. The script has obviously gotten the best of the director here and it hurts immensely.

The acting, though, is fabulous. Law, a very strong actor, really lets it rip as Tindle the possible psychopathic actor. He is adept at the disguise that is employed in act 2 (this is not a spoiler because only 2 actors appear in the opening credits)and he reaches crazy heights in the end of act 2. He is menacing, funny, charming, intelligent and down right evil and none of them seem to be too challenging. Caine, the consummate actor, plays Wyke as a very clever yet ferocious possible homosexual. The two men do the best they can in the third act when the script and the direction fail them and between the two of them they almost salvage the movie. They have a very nice chemistry even in times of deep hatred on screen. It is clear Law was not scared to tackle the role first played on screen by his acting partner and with Caine to play off of, Law appears to be in the driver's seat of Sleuth.

Final Grade: C-

Doomsday

Doomsday is another movie in the virus-is-ending-the-world genre. It borrows liberally from I am Legend, Escape from New York, Clockwork Orange, Resident Evil, 28 days later, Mad Max, Gladiator and yes, Pulp Fiction even. It is from the director of The Descent and while it is a very different film he manages to incorporate the same style of blood and guts as that film. Also, this movie features more human beheadings than The Descent. I will leave that up to you whether that is good or bad.

In 2008 a virus is mysteriously unleashed on Scotland and the country is essentially boarded up and forgotten about. The movie in time to about 25 years in the future where we are introduced to a sexy, snarling, one-line spouting bad ass chick, Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) with a detachable eye that gives her vision around corners and what not. She belongs to some sort of national police team (think about V for Vendetta) and when there is a small outbreak of the virus again, shit hits the fan. It turns out that there have been survivors in Scotland as shown by satellite footage and Sinclair will be leading a team into the seemingly abandoned country in hopes of discovering maybe an antidote for the virus. The team is comprised of 4 soldiers, 2 scientists and 2 drivers. As they reach the hospital inside Scotland, they are met with a whole crazy troop of 1980's punk rejects with make shift weapons and Molotov cocktails. The death toll really gets off to a nice start with bloody limbs flying every where and even our group of 8 heroes is very quickly whittled down. This is not the kind of movie where the small group slowly gets smaller, no sir, we lose half of the team right away, and they do not get heroic deaths- throats are cut, brains bashed in and one is just brutally beaten to death. Sinclair is captured by these ruffians who are led by a Clockwork wannabe named Sol. We figure out quickly that they survived by eating dead people. They cook and eat one of the hero squad in a pretty vile scene. Sinclair escapes and helps someone else escape who can help Sinclair find the Scientist who may have the antidote.

Here is where the movie really gets absurd. After traveling through a secret tunnel, Sinclair, the girl she saved, that girl's boyfriend and the last 2 remaining hero squad members somehow go from this weird post apocalyptic city to 1800 Scotland and in doing so are met by archers, a crazy big villain on a horse and yes, a giant Castle! Sinclair must fight the giant villain guy Gladiator style in a very stylized cool fight with pretty gruesome results and Sinclair finds out there is no antidote, just immunities to the virus. The Scientist played by Malcolm McDowell, gives a very Darwinian speech about survival of the fittest and how the virus was God's work to show the people what was truly important, which is apparently dressing like 18th century people and living in a castle that has a gift shop.

Now, it may seem as if I hated this movie and perhaps I should have hated it, but I really didn't. I was thoroughly entertained. From the cannibalism, the be-headings, the bad one-liners, even the fully rubber dressed gimp, I was laughing and cheering up a storm. Sure it is not a very good movie, but it entertained and the sheer audacity of it to rub our faces in how absurd it was really earned it points in my mind. Yes, it is pure B-movie schlock, but it is incredibly entertaining B-movie schlock. There is a very amusing car chase that features some very innovative stunts, funny moments, crashes, burning bodies and a sick ass Bentley and with all of that how bad can a movie really be?

I will not be recommending this movie to anyone really because it is ridiculous. However, if you can check your brain at the door and just go along for the very impossible ride, I think you will find yourself laughing and enjoying the movie immensely. I am sure maybe the director was hoping for a little more out of and maybe he was trying to have some social commentary about Government. cover ups, fearing God and all that stuff, but when you show a bunny being ripped apart by an automated machine gun you kind of lose the right to make a deeply serious point. As a throwback or homage to those 80s post-apocalyptic movies this really hits the nail on the head and I think John Carpenter and George Miller would approve.

Final Grade: B-

The Bank Job

Heist films will always be popular because deep down every guy wishes he could rob a bank or rob casinos. It is just the way of the world. However, heist films have always been getting so high tech, us normal guys cannot conceive being able to do that anymore. We do not have access to the kinds of toys George Clooney and Brad Pitt got in the Ocean's movies and we don't think it is practical to drive an Audi down the halls of a rich person like The Italian Job. Luckily, when people set movies in the 70s we don't have these high tech problems, such is the case with this movie.

Based on somewhat true events, The Bank job is the story of a group of 6 people who decide to take everything they can out of the safe deposit boxes in a bank. The catalyst to the whole event is a former model named Martine Love (Saffron Burrows). After being arrested for a pretty serious drug charge she calls a Government agent she knows to help out of the jam. He agrees to it if she can find a group of people to rob a bank. The Government needs the contents of a specific box but cannot be linked to the robbery. Love drops in on childhood friend Terry Leather (Jason Statham), who is a very small time criminal and he and his boys agree to the job and so it begins. There are also side plots involving high up Government people who go to a brothel and are secretly photographed and a porn king who has a ledger with his police pay offs. All of those things are in the boxes robbed by Terry and his crew. After the robbery the movie kind of tail spins a bit into a kind of predictable double cross, he-who-has-the-money-has-the-power, type of movie with the big climax in public involving all of the stories coming together.

However, before it kind of spins out of control The Bank Job is a fun, easy going movie that feels very much like the time period shown in the movie. The gang of robbers all have fun distinct personalities and the bickering from them is a lot of fun and watching them all work to make the heist happens is not only fun, but it also is a throw back and made me feel like I could actually rob a bank with just a jack hammer and a shovel. AWESOME! The script is tight and none of the scenes feel unnecessary. At times you wonder when they are going to wrap it up, but that is all in the post robbery stuff. The fun is the pre-robbery and the robbery itself. The guys are all guys we identify with and that really adds to the fun. There are some politically charged things in the side plots that can be a bit distracting, but when the focus shifts back to our shifty robbers, the fun quotient revs back up.

Jason Statham is a real man's actor. He is laconic, stoic and full of badassery, but here he actually proves he can act a little bit. He is not going to win any awards or anything, but he does have a nice moment of vulnerability with his wife and it certainly ads to the heightened sense of danger in the post robbery third of the film. He also gets to kick a little of ass towards the end and it reminds me how awesome he is when he is fighting. There isn't a lot of camera trickery here as the director understands to just let the movie fend for itself and his minimalist approach really adds to the seventies quality to the film. He Never loses us when the movie starts playing games with who is good and who is bad and who works for what Government agency which is nice because so often things like that get confusing and can ruin the mood of a movie.

It is sad that movies like this get lost in the shuffle underneath those big mammoth movies because these small quality independent movies deserve an audience. I am sure there will people who are turned off by the nudity and the amount of time spent in a strip club, but again it really makes it feel like the fast, loose and free seventies. The Bank Job has laughs, sex, punch outs, stabbings, shooting, and a freaking bank robbery and if that isn't good old fashion entertainment, I don't know what is.

Final Grade: B+

10,000 B.C. (spoilers)

I know that admitting what I am about to admit could essentially ruin any credibility I have as someone who reviews movies, but I dug The Day After Tomorrow. Roland Emmerich, the guy who directed 10,000 B.C. also directed The Day After Tomorrow as well as the awesome Independence Day, the terrible Godzilla and the alright The Patriot. He makes big spectacle pictures that are often high on fun but low on everything else. I readily admit that The Day After Tomorrow is not a good movie, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. A year after the epic 300 we get 10,000 B.C., the 2008 version of 300. What I mean by that is that we get a big budget movie in the middle of March feature something pre-historic almost. Yet, with Emmerich's spotty record would this turn out like Independence Day , Godzilla or somewhere in between?

I will now attempt to tell you the plot of this movie, but I have to be honest, I am not quite sure I ever really understood what was going on. Some of it was because of bad storytelling and some of it is because during the exposition voice over opening, there was a child crying in the theater. What I understood was this- a little girl with startling blue eyes, Evolet(Camilla Belle is found by this tribe of cavemen (when I say cavemen, don't think of cromagnen people, no these are gorgeous people who speak perfect English)and the spirit mother of the tribe believes this blue eyed girl is the key to survival for the tribe and the guy who gets her will lead the tribe. Our hero D'elh (held backwards because "held" is the German word for Hero, brilliant I know). He is a Mammoth hunter but his father deserted the tribe and he is kind of a weakling, at first. These creepy big guys come into the tribe destroy it and kidnap all the males and of course Evolet. D'elh was not amongst the captured and he sets off to find Evolet. Along the way he manages to meet a ton of tribes of people who all seem to speak different languages, but luckily one guy seems to know them all. These separate tribes of people all join forces to fight the big bad gods. The Gods are kidnapping people to turn them into slaves to build the pyramids, so maybe the Gods are supposed to be Egyptian? If that means they are near Egypt where did the tribe learn English? Who knows?!?!

10,000 B.C. is such a bad movie I very nearly walked out of it. "How could a movie that had access to Saber Tooth tigers be so awful?", you ask. Easy, the Saber Tooth tiger spends 3 minutes on screen and doesn't do anything bad-ass. In fact the Saber Tooth tiger is as harmless as an every day house cat in the movie. The only fierce creatures appear to be some sort of hybrid between a Raptor and a dodo bird. What the hell? The Mammoth's look gorgeous, the tiger looks gorgeous, but they are merely window dressing to try and disguise the fact that nothing in the movie makes sense. The one remaining God fears the one with the mark, which some what turns out to be Evolet, but she doesn't do the killing at all, so the whole mark nonsense turns out to be useless and just a way to add time to the movie. The story makes no sense and every time the movie switches back to the old mother woman I was just lost in the stupidity. The acting is god awful, but at least Evolet is gorgeous. The dialog is useless, as Emmerich seems only interested in creating a faux epic with wide circular motioned shots of sprawling snow capped mountains, but it all amounts to nothing.

This movie lacks the sheer audacity of The Day After Tomorrow, it even lacks the goofy stupidity of Godzilla and the over the top nonsense of The Patriot; in short, the movie has no fun with itself. Emmerich was really trying to make a big drama set in a pre-historic time period and it blew up in his face miserably. The battle sequences are dull, the chases lack a sense of urgency. I mentioned 300 earlier and I think some of the comparisons they are drawing are fair. Both are movies that take a liberal use of history to tell a crazy story, but 300 has fun while telling the story. 300 had amazing visuals, a fun story, incredible action sequences, and a strong presence in the lead actor to mask the awful dialog, whereas 10,000 B.C. doesn't have enough to make up for the obvious shortcomings. The worst thing a movie can be, in my opinion, is boring. Boring is the kiss of death for a movie and I was checking my watch about 30 minutes in because I kind of wanted it to just be over.

I left with an overwhelming sense of disappointment because I was pretty excited about this movie. Not because it is historically accurate or even because I thought it would be this amazing movie, but because deep down, I love to be entertained by over the top messes and this looked like it would at least be that. Instead it was just a mess. It was timid, small scale and I never felt the stakes were high enough for me to care about anything that was going on. I was not alone in my disappointment either. I heard the disgust in the voices of the other people leaving the theater.

Final Grade: F

In Bruges

If you still need proof that the first two movies directed by Quinten Tarantino are the most influential movies to be released since 1990, In Bruges is another movie that is heavily influenced by Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Those two movies were released in the early nineties and here we are in 2008 and we still get movies that probably would not exist without them. A playwright who made a short film two years ago that won the Oscar for short film, Director Martin McDonagh starts off his feature film career with a bang. Part Tarantino and part Mamet, McDonagh looks to have a long established career if his ego doesn't get the best of him (See Troy Duffy).

Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson) are hit men who have been told to go to Bruges (which is in Belgium and doesn't have a bowling alley but has a Pizza Hut) after a hit to await further instructions. Ken is interested in the ancient architecture of Bruges and likes the calm peacefulness that surrounds the quaint little town. Ray on the other hand feels that " If I'd grown up on a farm and was retarded, Bruges might impress me, but I didn't, so it doesn't." Ray is a high strung, sarcastic, politically incorrect, handsome guy, but he is haunted by a secret. Ken is a slow moving, affable, bigger, older and wiser of the two men, and he is a mentor or father figure to Ray. While in Bruges, they spot a movie being made and Ray spots a very pretty girl, Chloe and a dwarf named Jimmy. Chloe and Ray go on a date that ends in two violent acts. However, he still likes the girl, but he steals some of the drugs she sells and ends up in a room with the dwarf and two hookers doing blow and discussing a future where a race war happens and all of the blacks fight all of the whites, including all the black dwarfs fighting all of the white dwarfs. It is all fun and games until we actually learn Ray's deep dark secret. It changes the mood of the movie, some what and it all culminates in a somewhat bloody, and very dark climax.

In Bruges is the perfect blend of silly humor, very dark humor and interesting story telling. Ken and Ray are very complex real characters and Farrell is exceptional as the younger hit man. I have always believed in him and am glad to see him get back to doing good work. He is incredibly hilarious in his line delivery, but his reactionary expressions are what help make this a flat out hilarious movie. Gleeson is the great mix of quiet and intense and really balances Farrell's high wire act. Ralph Fiennes shows up in person in the last 25 minutes and sets the screen on fire with his brutal big boss hit man. He doesn't have worlds of screen time but he really makes the most of it. Clemence Poesy as Chloe is a beautiful minx and while she doesn't have too much to do she is the character we seem to most identify with.

However, the real star of this movie is McDonagh. His dialog pops off the screen with hilarious and biting lines and his directing is top notch as his location shots really make Bruges a motionless character in the movie. He gets great performances and seems to always get the best shot. There is also an interesting morality tale at play here, but to say too much about it would give away the secret held within the story. Listening to hit men go on about morals is always interesting and with McDonagh's hyper literate hit men we really gain an understanding of what McDonagh was going for here. He never drowns us in lecturing because he is always ready with a joke to lighten any tense moment and he captures a brilliant climax that begins as an intense chase, shifts into absurdly hilarious, then transforms into something very dark and bloody before hitting another hilarious moment for the falling action. McDonagh also manages to be mostly politically incorrect without being terribly offensive to anyone, except fat people, but that scene is so incredibly funny that it is hardly mean spirited.

I am not going to lie, if I see 10 movies better than this later this year I might be a bit surprised. From the opening moment of dialog until the very last line, I was immensely entertained and laughing harder than I do in many movies that are just comedies. In mixing the intelligent humor with some great thrills, McDonagh has really proven himself as someone to watch in the future. It is almost a shame this movie has been buried in February, but I am highly recommending this movie to everyone who enjoys very smart, fast moving crime movies.

Final Grade: A