Clayholio Watches Movies

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - 2011

2012-02-26T21:19:00.000-08:00

"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" - 2011
Dir. by Guy Ritchie - 2 hrs. 9 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There's something to be said for a well-done, fun franchise movie. You can do so much worse at the multiplex to go see a couple of big stars do a big budget period movie. As long as each installment delivers enough to have you smiling on your way out of the theatre, it doesn't need to be revolutionary or ground-breaking. Every couple of years, you get to visit a character that you like again. That's a fair bargain.

I don't really need to get into who Sherlock Holmes is, unless you're some kind of genius, Sherlock. The characters are essentially the same as last time around, except Dr. Watson (Jude Law) is on the verge of getting married. Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) doesn't look very positively on that development, but he's willing to stand by his friend. Before that, Holmes interjects into a criminal plot being executed by Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), at the behest of Moriarty (Jared Harris). Irene is quickly written out of the film, and Moriarty refuses Holmes' request to leave Watson out of whatever mischief might pass between the two. There is a stag party for Watson, shoddily organised by Holmes, where we are introduced to Mycroft (Stephen Fry), Sherlock's older brother. Later, Holmes is forced to interject during Watson's honeymoon, as Moriarty proves that he's not interested in leaving Watson out of the equation. From there, the larger mystery is a battle of wits between Holmes and Moriarty, sometimes literally, sometimes via physical confrontation, sometimes metaphorically.

I'm of two minds about Guy Ritchie's stamp on the Sherlock Holmes movies. It's easy to see his visual flair and the trademark of his smaller budget films' story-lines: twisting heist plots with a large cast of real men who show a penchant for oneupmanship. Even if it's coached in turn of the 20th century British language and mannerisms, Ritchie's Holmes is swaggering alpha male driven to success almost maniacally, and fueled by exotic substances to keep his motor running. It's different than "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" or "RocknRolla" only on the surface. But as much fun as those movies are, he seems very comfortable making this sort of big-time franchise film. I wouldn't doom a director to make low-budget swear-a-thons for his entire career, so I suppose as much fun as those early films are, they'll always be available to go back and watch while Ritchie continues on this path. Besides, it's not as if the Sherlock films are bad or anything.

I have some sympathy for people who worship the source material; a lifetime of reading comic books has put me in that category for more than my share of films. I've never read a Sherlock Holmes novel, which is probably the best way to go into any given movie. I couldn't tell you whether this was based on anything in particular, and I don't care to find out. When someone is setting out to make any movie, the goal should be to make the best film possible. So while I have no idea if there was a book partially set in a munitions factory, what shows up on screen is an excellent action sequence that goes from a violent direct, face-to-face confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty to a batch of rebels fleeing what seems like an army with that same munitions factory at disposal. The actual fleeing is captured by very good editing and camera-work, and special effects that really do heighten the tension of the scene. For a couple of minutes, we're taken from a crime version of a chess game into a war film, and it works.

And in a general sense, the film works. It's better than the initial "Sherlock" film; it's still fun watching Downey, Jr. simultaneously border insanity and outsmart everyone, there's plenty of cleverness to the proceedings, and what's not clever can be pretty funny. There's even a gag near the end that almost demands a repeat viewing (I, for one, am going to have to re-watch that scene at the minimum to see if there are shortcuts or if it's a matter of misdirection leading the viewer to not catch on earlier). I'd have a hard time imagining that this will be anyone's favorite movie, but it's not supposed to be. It's fun, it's a good sequel, and I'd show up for a third installment, should it come.

3 / 5 - Theatre

The Darkest Hour - 2011

2012-02-25T22:55:00.000-08:00

"The Darkest Hour" - 2011
Dir. by Chris Gorak - 1 hr. 29 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Sometimes, I'm up for some brainless destruction and a kill-the-aliens movie. There's a sort of perverse pleasure in watching Los Angeles (or wherever) get destroyed over and over again. To reach the bar, all the movie really needs is to be loud, destroy stuff, and have cool-looking special effects. No one sees these things for plot or character development, myself included. So if you were going to include some sort of character development in a kill-the-aliens movie, it's pretty important that it doesn't detract from the more necessary elements.

So, what is relevant here? A pair of American twenty-somethings are in Moscow for a business meeting. Almost immediately, Sean (Emile Hirsch) is established as a self-absorbed dick, although I think that I was supposed to view him a little more charitably. Although he's supposed to be kind of slacktastic, Hirsch immediately finds the wrong note for the character. We're introduced to Sean and his business partner, Ben (Max Minghella) on an airplane flight, where Sean decides that's he's too cool to comply with the "turn off all your gadgets" decree. I'm certain the goal to was to show him being a charmer, but instead of coming off as as a smooth talker he instead comes off as an entitled little shit, who is constantly being enabled by Ben. And that kind of makes me hate Ben, as well.

So when the pair arrive at a business meeting to discover that a legal oversight has let their business partner, Skyler (Joel Kinnaman) rip off their surefire hit website idea wholesale, I was thinking that they probably deserved it in some karmic sense, even though Skyler was also a dick about it. If you're keeping score, that's three-for-three on the dick-o-meter regarding the lead male characters. And this presents a problem. When the aliens show up (you can watch the trailer, I assume that if you're watching this film you're not doing so for a bromance between two tech start-up founders), I don't really care that much what happens to any of the main characters. The aliens look cool, vacillating between an electric orange wisp and that sort of visual shimmer like in "Predator," and when they start turning people into grey packing peanuts, I'm not invested in the survival of Sean, Ben, Skyler, or the two random club chicks they hunker down with. Sean's character arc sort of hints at a redemption from underachiever-dom story-line, but since the filmmakers botched their opportunity to get the audience to invest in the main characters (Sean in particular), I don't care who gets picked off and who gets the chance to lead humanity boldly into the future.

That begs the question, what is there of merit in "The Darkest Hour?" The two biggest things is that the aliens are visually pretty cool. Over the course of the movie, you get better glimpses of exactly what the characters are dealing with in an incremental manner. I also liked the alien-vision visuals - it's a black and white sort of digital sketch where the people appear in orange. That'll make more sense if you see it. Also of interest: scenes of post-apocalyptic Moscow. Whether or not they shot the movie there, I have no idea, but things like this are rarely set in Russia in American sci-fi films.

Perhaps my biggest quibble with this film (aside from the off-putting characterization) is the idea of bloodless deaths. It's one of the biggest problems I had with "Sucker Punch," as well. I fully understand that if you can come up with an excuse to divorce violence from it's trappings, you can do just as "The Darkest Hour" does and pull a PG-13 rating, thus allowing kids to see your movie without parental permission. On the other hand, it's the single thing that pushes violent films (which I don't have a problem with) into a sort of violence pornography (which I do have a problem). If you wouldn't allow a teenager to see a graphic death because of the bloodiness of it, you shouldn't be attempting to sell that scene to a teenager sans blood. Actions have consequences, and being dishonest about the weight of those consequences is something that should carry a harsher rating. I mean, that is if you intend the rating system to do any good and not just be a skirt to hide behind.

"The Darkest Hour" is not a good movie for about a dozen reasons. You might have the same irrational affinity for these kinds of movies that I do for bonehead comedies, and I know we've all got our weaknesses. So if this is the sort of thing that you're into, don't mind me. I'm not going to make you sit alongside me while I re-watch "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" for the thirtieth time. I get it. But if that's not you, I'm microwaving some popcorn right now. We can probably find something better (or vastly worse) to watch.

1.5 / 5 - Theatre

Constantine - 2005

2012-02-24T17:21:00.001-08:00

"Constantine" - 2005
Dir. by Francis Lawrence - 2 hrs. 1 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Probably the most important things to know about this movie is that it's "based" on the long-running DC/Vertigo comic book series, "Hellblazer," and that it features a character co-created by Alan Moore (as well as artists Steve Bissette, John Totleben, and Rick Veitch). What does that mean for you? A legion of people who were prepared to hate this movie from the get-go (and I'll get to the reasons in a minute) got to it before others did, and spread their hatred far and wide. Ordinarily, it wouldn't even be worth discussing, but this is a pretty decent film once you divorce it from it's source material (and one of it's creators).

First off, Alan Moore. Whether or not he's right (and that's strictly a matter of opinion), he does have a habit of complaining loudly and publicly disavowing any movie that's made based on one of his creations. Or another way to put it is that someone from the media shows up on his doorstep every time a movie is made based on one of Moore's creations, knowing that he'll say something inflammatory and spectacular. However you look at it, it's like clockwork. He has no problems publicly sabotaging movies based on his work, and does so out of a general moral objection to adapting creative works to different medium. Secondly, what you see on-screen bears little resemblance to the comics work, other than the general idea and the general adaptation of one of the better Hellblazer graphic novels, titled "Dangerous Habits." Whereas the character was initially supposed to resemble Sting (from The Police, not the wrestler) in a trenchcoat and was a cynical Brit, the filmmakers decided to cast Keanu Reeves in the main role. So you can understand why fans of the character might not have been inclined to view this movie in a charitable manner going in.

I don't consider the changes to be necessary ones, but they were made, and there is no imaginary perfectly-strict adaptation to compare this Keanu Reeves version to. That leaves a potential viewer a couple of reasonable options. One is to say that the changes are absurd, and to stay far away. The other is that you have to accept what is here, and take it at face value. What is not reasonable is to watch it so that you can complain about it. Yes, "Hellblazer" would have been an excellent title, but try to get a film with "hell" in the title into multiplexes. Not impossible, but a needless battle to fight during the Bush administration. Yes, it probably would have made more sense to cast a fair-skinned British actor in the lead, but they didn't. It's set in Los Angeles and not London, no matter how much pouting and crying anyone does over that fact. The question is, can you just shut up and enjoy what's here? If not, the exit is to your left.

The story is kind of a tortured religious logic one: there are extra books to the Bible that us common folk don't know about, and they explain how the son of Satan (not the Marvel Comics character) will try to come to Earth. Until then, demons and angles live among us incognito, playing their roles in a cosmic bet between God and the Devil to see who can collect more souls. The demons are becoming more brazen, which concerns John Constantine (Keanu Reeves), but his lung cancer also concerns him. The other main character, Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz), a detective, discovers that her recently-committed twin sister has committed suicide, which she finds unlikely considering the large religious consequences for her soul. John and Angela end up working together to try to unravel what happened to Angela's sister and for the recent aggressiveness of the demons.

Does this measure up to the best "Hellblazer" comics? Probably not. The structure of the movie is Franchise Establishment 101; Constantine has a young apprentice, Chas Kramer (Shia LeBeouf) to spin-off in the future, there's a Magical Negro (TM Spike Lee) in Papa Midnite (Djimon Hounsou) with a shady past (there's your prequel), and there's an implied future romance between Constantine and Dodson. And they don't even kill the big bad guy (that would be Satan himself, played with creepy awesomeness by Peter Stormare). Hell, they've even got the music crossover locked down with Gavin Rossdale's character. The entire design of the story is textbook.

But the execution is pretty fun, and that goes a long way. The settings look fantastic; even Hell is a creepy swirl of warm colors and nasty creatures. Keanu does the Keanu thing, there's some perverse pleasure in watching a British actress try to pull off an American accent, and the bit players rock. Swinton and Stormare in particular are a ball to watch (not at all unusual). If you're open to it, there's fun to be had here. If you're in the mood to nit-pick, there's certainly fuel for that fire as well, but for a spooky/action movie, "Constantine" isn't bad at all. It's not a good adaptation of the source material, but taken on its own, it's a solid movie that could have been the foundation for an on-going franchise if things had played out a little differently.

3 / 5 - Blu-Ray

The Adventures of Tintin - 2011

2012-02-19T17:42:00.000-08:00

"The Adventures of Tintin" - 2011
Dir. by Steven Spielberg - 1 hr. 47 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I feel like I need to preface everything that I'm about to say here about this movie: I'm not a fan of this style of animation. As in, not at all. As in, I usually refuse to see movies with the mo-cap/CGI combination. To my mind, it misses the point and charm of animation, which is to simplify and distort for effect. The idea of creating a photo-realistic world via computer animation is pointless; there's already a perfectly fine HD world that we're already all walking around in. I spent many years as a cartoonist, so my opinion here isn't based on nothing. And it's also not an opinion I'm likely to change.

Having said that, "The Adventures of Tintin" was actually pretty fun. I spent most of the first ten minutes trying to remind myself to have an open mind towards the technique, and to just try to get lost in the story. Thankfully, "Tintin" is a fast-paced, light-hearted, adventure movie above all else, so once I was in, I was in. Tintin, who I couldn't tell if he's supposed to be a small adult human or a big teenaged orphan (he has his own apartment, but his appearance suggests that he's not necessarily an adult), gets dragged into a long-running family feud by virtue of buying a much-desired trinket at an outdoor market. Like any good adventure story, there are different settings (the high seas, a desert, exotic cities), lots of action, a plucky side-kick (Tintin's dog, Snowy) and a buried treasure. Probably best of all, Tintin actually has a distinct personality, and isn't just a blank slate for the viewer to use as their doorway into the film.

The thing that makes "Tintin" the most fun is the light touch that director Steven Spielberg shows. There's two great scenes that last less than a minute apiece that really show off that skill. The first comes in the midst of Snowy trying to keep up with a truck that contains a kidnapped Tintin in it: Snowy takes a shortcut through a herd of cattle, eventually falling down to the ground. Snowy raises his head right into a low-hanging udder, which causes the cow to raise it's head in surprise. Then, rather than showing Snowy smacking into udders or zig-zagging through the hooves, the camera stays above the herd, where one after another, cows raise their head in surprise, indicating Snowy's path. The entire chase is a lot of fun, but this particular detail was very clever. The other scene comes in the middle of the movie, where Tintin is swimming in the ocean below the surface, his trademark poof of hair raised above water level. It's a funny throwback to "Jaws," one that all the parents caught and chuckled at. Those are probably the two best examples of the visual approach that Spielberg takes, but it's consistent all the way through the film.

I could nitpick the techniques used to make the film to death out of spite, but the truth is that the movie was good enough to make me forget about that aspect. In a less sprightly film, the technique would have been a major turn-off for me as a viewer, but Spielberg managed to make it a non-issue. That's probably as much as I could have hoped for. I wasn't terribly impressed with the character designs (mostly, it seems that the extent of artistic license used was putting an exaggerated nose on otherwise sort-of realistic face structures), but that was addressed (sort-of) immediately in the film when we're introduced to Tintin as he's sitting for a portrait in an outdoor market. The portrait is in the style of Herge, the cartoonist who created the character in the first place. So what it comes down it that I enjoyed "The Adventures of Tintin" despite myself, and that I'd probably look favorably on a sequel, should it arrive (one was clearly indicated at the end of the film).

3 / 5 - Theatre

Rear Window - 1954

2012-02-16T17:37:00.001-08:00

"Rear Window" - 1954
Dir. by Alfred Hitchcock - 1 hr. 52 min.

Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

"Rear Window" definitively proves that creepiness and voyeurism never go out of style. Sixty some odd years later, this film is still gripping and thrilling, and that's at least partially because the idea of peeping on your neighbors is a pretty timeless idea. But also, it's because Alfred Hitchcock knew how to make a film.

The set-up is both simple and elegant: L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is an adventurous, even daring photographer. But his last assignment left him injured and confined to his (at that point in time, non-A.D.A. compliant) apartment. He's in a wheelchair and leg cast that goes all the way up to his waist, and just one week away from getting the cast off and resuming work. Understandably, he's a little stir-crazy, and to pass the time watches his neighbors (there's a shared courtyard that gives him view of several different apartments). Jeffries watches each neighbors' situation play out mostly silently. One night, Jeffries sees one of his neighbors, Lars Thorwald (a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr), acting in a suspicious manner, and with his bed-ridden wife nowhere to be found. Is it murder or Jeffries' hyperactive imagination running wild? And how to prove a murder took place, with Jeffries' not being able to leave his wheelchair or apartment?

That's only half of the story, there's also a sizable amount of time devoted to Jeffries' relationship with Lisa (Grace Kelly). Jeffries is resisting Lisa's attempts to domesticate him, perhaps over-romanticizing his vagabond photog-at-large lifestyle since he's spent the last seven weeks of his life being deprived of it. He resents her high-society life and her perfection (which is about the only way to describe Grace Kelly in this role - she's like a ray of light, illuminating the screen every second she's on it); she loves him and wants to spend her life with him. Hitchcock's treatment of female characters is a fertile subject for analysis, and "Rear Window" is no exception. But rather than literally torturing his leading lady (like in "The Birds"), it's all emotional turmoil. Lisa tries and tries to find a way to really get into Jeffries' heart, while he deflects and sometimes pokes at open wounds - after she comments about how the detective always has his Girl Friday, Jeffries notes dryly that the detective never ends up marrying her. There are a number of instances of these painful verbal jabs, and Lisa doesn't try to play them off. They register, and as a viewer, I was conscious of Hitchcock deliberately burning through the good will that audiences offered Jimmy Stewart in any role.

I'm not sure about how to go about describing how this film is one of the best films I've ever seen. Part of it certainly is the set-up. "Rear Window" would almost be achievable on-stage; the entire thing plays out from the confines of Jeffries' apartment. There are interior shots, but the views offered of all of the other characters in the movie come from Jeffries' viewpoint. Through the windows of these apartments, mini-plays play out. We get Miss Lonelyhearts, a middle-aged single woman so desperate for company that she acts out dates in her apartment. There's Miss Torso, a beautiful young dancer who frequently has company over. There's a couple that sleep on the fire escape to mitigate the crazy summer heat, and lower their dog down to the courtyard below to do it's business in a wicker basket tied to a rope. There's a newlywed couple offering Jeffries a glimpse into his potential future with Lisa, there's also a single songwriter who plays piano constantly. There's an sculptor living on the floor level. These characters all have their own stories, and that's before we even get to the main intrigue involving Thorwald and his missing wife. All this in a compressed environment is a real achievement in structure and storytelling.

There's also the gripping main story. The attempt to figure out what exactly Thorwald has done through glimpses across the way is fantastic mystery material. It's no fun when you have everything available to you as a viewer, and Jeffries' imprisonment (of a sort) is frustrating and spellbinding. In the mystery part of the story, the character serves as a proxy for the viewer. Much in the same way that a moviegoer has no control over what happens in the movie itself, Jeffries is unable to act in any meaningful way unless he's able to piece together the fragments of what he's seen. The movie goes from great to all-time great when the voyeur loses his anonymity. When Thorwald figures out who's been watching him, and Jeffries is alone in his aparment, unarmed, it's one of the tensest, most suspenseful scenes I've ever seen play out.

The thing that grounds this story and keeps "Rear Window" from being just an excellently-executed whodunnit is the story between Lisa and Jeffries. We've been treated to probably thousands of movies where the schubby guy has to woo a girl that's probably way out of his league, but here Hitchcock turns the tables. Despite Jeffries' infirmity, despite her station, despite her absolute perfection (seriously, look at her in this movie and tell me you didn't fall in love with her a little bit), Lisa ends up having to figure out how to woo Jeffries. He resents the things that should be her assets - her radiance, her connections, her perfection (the word comes up a lot in the movie, it's not entirely my choice of words). He's used to flying by the seat of his pants, and assumes that she wouldn't be able to keep up. So how's she supposed to win in this situation? Jeffries' treatment of Lisa during the film is at times harsh, and there are points where I both wanted her to walk out on him, but knew that it would be awful if she did. Lisa is the emotional heart of the film, not Jeffries, and the real story is her trying to figure out how to be a part of his life without robbing him of what makes him unique.

It's a thrill to see a movie like this: at the conclusion, I felt something that I haven't felt since seeing "Pulp Fiction" for the first time. It's the sort of giddiness that comes from seeing a film that literally could not have been better. It's the thrill of seeing a master filmmaker at the height of his ability. I've seen other Hitchcock films, and have been deeply impressed with some of them. But none of them prepared me for the experience of watching "Rear Window" for the first time.

5 / 5 - TV

The Sitter - 2011

2012-02-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

"The Sitter" - 2011
Dir. by David Gordon Green - 1 hr. 21 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Well, I've definitely seen worse movies. If that sounds like faint praise for "The Sitter," then I have nailed the tone that I had set out to nail. There are indeed a million movies less funny than "The Sitter," but there are also many, many films that are better as well.

If I had to explain it, I'd say that "The Sitter" is like the neutered cousin of "Cyrus." It's the same set-up, sort of. Jonah Hill plays Noah Griffith, a guy who has failed his way out of school and back onto his single mother's couch. His mother (Jessica Hecht) even has a slight resemblance to Marissa Tomei, who played his mom in "Cyrus." But instead of getting territorial about his mom, Noah gets pressured into babysitting a trio of kids so that his mom can try to hit it off with a doctor. Everyone seems to know that this is a bad idea from the beginning, but they all let this happen anyways. Despite the fact that the kids are comprised of a celebutante-wannabe (Landry Bender), a pyromaniac foster child (Kevin Hernandez) and a pilled-up bundle of nerves (Max Records), things probably would go smoothly if everyone just stays home and minds their own business. Of course, that doesn't happen. Noah's "girlfriend" (I put that in quotes, and it's apparent why from the opening scene of the movie) lures him out to buy her cocaine with the promise of finally having sex with him. So Noah hits the town, kids in tow.

The main thing that handicaps this film is that while you're supposed to dread the idea of Noah babysitting your children, he's fairly likable. Over the course of the one night, he basically fixes each of the children's behavioral problems. This presents a problem: the usual story in this situation is that the kids eventually break through the toughie's facade. But at no point did I feel like they went far enough to make Noah truly awful enough to make his eventual redemption worthwhile. And he's not portrayed as being any kind of threat to the children, they all almost immediately get the better of him. Even when Noah is doing genuinely bad things (like robbing a bat mizvah, for instance), the negative aspect of it is tampered by him re-connecting with a girl that he went to school with. When he does bad things, it ends up well for him, which might make viewers jealous or envious, but it doesn't do much to establish that he's supposed to be the problem that needs solving over the course of the movie.

I just feel like this movie was afraid to take things to a place with genuine menace, which is bizarre, considering it pulled an R-rating anyways. "The Sitter" earned that rating, but if you're already in that territory, why not really go for the jugular? The one thing that was both awesome and oddly disturbing was Noah's initial meeting with Karl (Sam Rockwell), the coke dealer. Between the roller-skating door-man and the bizarre collection of body-builders seemingly filling every corner of the building, it's a truly disturbing scene (and not for any specific reason - the whole thing is just bizarre, and really good comedy as well). That's the one scene in the film that suggests that "The Sitter" could have been a much funnier movie.

I have a hard time getting mad about a film like this. It's a missed opportunity, to be sure, but there are a few laughs here, and it really wasn't aiming to a very high bar to begin with. It would have been better for everyone involved if it had been better, but what "The Sitter" is is a mildly-funny comedy. If you like watching Jonah Hill, you'll get through it quickly and largely painlessly, and also with the awareness that he's done better work. If you don't like Hill, what are you doing reading a review of one of his movies? It's not like there's much else to draw people in, here.

2 / 5 - Theatre

Major League - 1989

2012-02-04T23:18:00.000-08:00

"Major League" - 1989
Dir. by David S. Ward - 1 hr. 47 min.

Theatrical Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

A rag-tag bunch of misfits making a run at fleeting glory is a staple of sports movies. "Major League" did it about as well as any movie has. Or, at least as funny as any other movie has. For all the things that the 1980s did wrong, one thing that it did very, very well was baseball movies. More specifically, the late-80s saw four well above-average baseball films: 1988's "Bull Durham" and "8 Men Out," and 1989's "Major League" and "Field of Dreams." "Major League" is possibly the most formulaic of the batch, but comedy isn't about reinventing the wheel most of the time.

In this film, the wheel looks like this: a Vegas showgirl inherits ownership of the long-suffering Cleveland Indians, and assembles a team of marginal talent in order to drive attendance down to the point where she can legally move the team to Miami. The manager is a thirty-year minor-league manager, the veterans are either disinterested or broken down, and the rookies are eccentric (but also too dumb to know not to try). So there it is, your basic batch of misfits trying to show that they belong. There's also a good romance sub-plot between the Indians' catcher, Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger), and the girl that he let get away in his wilder years, Lynn Wells (Rene Russo). A very underrated aspect of "Major League" is that each of the main characters has appropriate age-related motivations. Jake's aware at how lucky he is to have one more chance, and when he stumbles across his ex at a restaurant, it's like a gift. The younger players are concerned about establishing themselves, the older ones about hanging on. It makes for a good blend of stories.

Of course, a large component to the success of any comedy is the individual performances. And when you look at the cast here, it's no surprise that the performances carry the film. It's got a couple of early leading roles for Charlie Sheen (as ex-California Penal Leaguer Rick Vaughn), Wesley Snipes (as showboating Willie Mays Hayes), and Rene Russo (Jake Taylor's love interest, Lynn Wells). It's got a couple of veteran actors in James Gammon (gruff manager Lou Brown) and Chelcie Ross (junkballer Eddie Harris), and a bonafide TV star in Corbin Bernsen (Roger Dorn). There's even a decent smaller role for Dennis Haysbert, who you might know as the President from "24" or from a series of insurance commercials. And if you've ever wanted to watch the President from "24" lifting weights while chomping on a cigar and wearing nothing but a jock strap, you're in luck here.

And that brings me to a very important point: this is a rough-around-the-edges crew here. They don't necessarily get along, they uniformly swear frequently, are often in a state of semi-undress. It's a batch of men who drink, fight, and screw their way through life. It's almost mind-boggling to imagine any of the major league sports organizations lending their logos and trademarks to such a foul-mouthed film currently; there's not much here that you'd describe as "family-friendly." But it's that shagginess that makes "Major League" an interesting, funny film. It's a throwback to another era, one where every player didn't look like they stepped out of an issue of "Men's Health," one where media training wasn't even a consideration, and a time where every misstep wasn't online in a matter of seconds. There's a certain joy in watching these characters just exist without the sort of meta-awareness that can drain the spontaneity out of anything sports-related.

Of course, none of that would matter if "Major League" wasn't funny. But it is funny, very funny. Out of the four films mentioned earlier, I think that only "Bull Durham" is a better all-around film. When a comedy holds up more than twenty years later, it's not an accident. This is a good movie, and it's fun going back and seeing some talented young actors before their careers had acquired baggage. And aside from 1992's "A League of Their Own," there wasn't another really good baseball movie after this until 2011's "Moneyball." Being on the edge of a drought isn't the film's fault, but it is a long time to wait for another good baseball movie.

3.5 / 5 - DVD

Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgandy - 2004

2012-01-25T23:32:00.000-08:00

"Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgandy" - 2004
Dir. by Adam McKay - 1 hr. 38 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There's nothing better than a comedy that is still funny years later. They're pretty few and far between, and more often due to a timeless premise (like "The Odd Couple") than being built around an individual's performance (like "The Jerk"). But they do happen, and "Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgandy" is still the best thing most of the people involved with this film have done to date.

The premise is simple: Ron Burgandy (Will Ferrell) is an anchorman in San Diego in the 1970's. He's a buffoon, but a beloved one. When Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) enters the picture, the chauvanistic knees all jerk, and the two leads go from lovers to bitter rivals. The setting allows the cast to indulge in all the silly fashion quirks of that era, which would be insufferable in lesser hands. Thankfully, the era itself isn't the point of the jokes. Since the characters in general are so over-the-top, it makes sense for the fashion and decoration to be so as well. Possibly the key to the entire thing is that there's never a moment where anyone figuratively winks to the camera; these characters inhabit their world fully, and do so with enthusiasm.

I couldn't tell you what it is that makes this movie so funny other than what I've just written; I can tell you that I laughed out loud over and over again as I was watching this (and this might have been my fourth or fifth viewing, although I hadn't re-watched it recently). There are a couple of things that are noteworthy (and sometimes unusual with comedies). First, the cast is ridiculous. The actors (and Christina Applegate) in "Anchorman" are responsible for most of the memorable comedies since this film's release. Will Ferrell is the star here, but Paul Rudd and Steve Carell both have gone on to do a lot of really good work since. Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson, Fred Armison and Tim Robbins have small roles, and Ben Stiller, Danny Trejo and Seth Rogen have even smaller ones. Nice b-squad, there. The other notable thing is that while Ferrell is the star, he doesn't hog all the great lines for himself. That's not to say that I'd expect him to, but some comedies are kind of hierarchical in terms of who gets to shine. That's completely not the case here; Ferrell has his share of comedic freak-outs, but literally all of the main characters have at least one classic, memorable line or scene. My favorite line: Champ Kind's (David Koechner) diss directed at Wesley Mantooth's mother. The line I quote most often (to my dog): "You know I don't speak Spanish."

Perhaps the most important member of the cast is Christina Applegate. She's usually the best part of whatever she's in, and it's a pleasure to see her not only knock yet another role out of the park, but to stand toe-to-toe with whomever she's on-screen with. Ron Burgandy is such a strong character (and performance), but it wouldn't be nearly as funny without an equally funny (and strong) foil. Also thankfully, she doesn't play a fun-killer (an unfortunately common role for women in comedies); when Ron spots a rainbow in a fantasy sequence, she says, "Do me on it." She's not putting a damper on things, she's along for the ride and willing to take things one step further.

Now that I've heaped praise on everyone I can think of, there's not a lot more to say than that this movie is shaping up to be a comedy classic. My earlier comparison to "The Jerk" is one that I'll stand by. This is an absurd, fun movie that works according to it's own logic, and is filled with energetically silly performances. I find it impossible not to get caught up in the fun. What's not to like about that?

4.5 / 5 - DVD (Unrated Edition)

Cabin Boy - 1994

2012-01-22T16:56:00.000-08:00

"Cabin Boy" - 1994
Dir. by Adam Resnick - 1 hr. 20 min.

TV Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There has to be a reason why I liked this movie enough to buy it on DVD, but I'm having a difficult time remembering what that reason was. I also don't remember when I got it, but it's been in my DVD library for quite a while. I have watched this film at least a couple of times over the years, but not in a long time. Thankfully, I can now put the DVD on my culling stack, soon to be available at a very reasonable price on eBay.

I'm honestly baffled as to why I have "Cabin Boy," it's not a very good movie. It took me three sessions to work through this eighty-minute film (the first interrupted because my Blu-Ray player is being unreliable, the second interrupted because I fell asleep), and let me recommend that you do not view "Cabin Boy" on a big screen. The DVD is a low-budget affair, firmly in line with the movie itself. On a sixty-inch screen, you will see every bit of dirt and every scratch on the print that they digitized "Cabin Boy" from. That's not to say there's a ton of gloss here, but on a more modestly-sized screen, these problems aren't as apparent.

Nor is it a very funny movie. Chris Elliott can be very funny, but his character seems designed to be off-putting. He plays a Fancy Lad, Nathanial Mayweather, who accidentally boards the wrong ship after graduating the Fancy Lad academy. The set-up isn't bad, a fop accidentally boarding a fishing vessel dubbed "The Filthy Whore," but for the most part, there's just nothing there. It feels like a sketch-comedy bit extended out as far as possible to reach feature-film length. The fisherman aren't very funny; the actors are fine, but they don't have much to work with, and they don't really work well off of Elliott. The only bits that were actually funny were the scenes between Nathanial and Trina (Melora Walters), and to a lesser extent, the scene between Nathanial and Calli (Ann Magnuson). But the bulk of male-male interactions in "Cabin Boy" just don't work. Part of that is that it's impossible to sympathize with Nathanial, between his condescension and deliberately irritating voice, and the other part is that none of the other characters (save for Andy Richter's) are anything beyond stock. Stock characters aren't a kiss of death, but when the lead role is irritation and doesn't hold you're interest, all the flaws of the film are a bit more apparent.

So was there anything good here? Andy Richter's mentally-slow character is pretty good, and David Letterman's cameo is decent as well. There's an un-credited appearance by Alfred Molina, as well. Beyond that, like I wrote before, most of what I laughed at was between Nathanial and Trina. If that had been the focus of the film (instead of late act-two relief from a cinematic sausage-fest), it would have been much, much funnier.

I guess if I had to sum up "Cabin Boy" in one word, it would be "stupid." And not a clever kind of stupid that is used to satirize something else (like "Beavis and Butt-Head," for instance), and not a train-wreck kind of stupid (like "Jackass"), either. It's just dumb and aimless, missing both any characters to root for and any reason to care if any of them do anything at all. Obviously, my virtue of my owning this film on DVD, I must not have always felt that way, but boy did it ever fall flat on this viewing.

1.5 / 5 - DVD

Beavis and Butt-Head Do America - 1996

2012-01-12T23:07:00.000-08:00

"Beavis and Butt-Head Do America" - 1996
Dir. by Mike Judge and Yvette Kaplan - 1 hr. 21 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

The nineties were a big time for cartoons for adults. Sure, there's the Ralph Bakshi movies like "Fritz the Cat" or other adult animated movies like "Heavy Metal," but the nineties was the point in time when that genre finally hit television. Behind the runaway success of "Beavis and Butt-Head," MTV spread the wealth and aired several cartoons that were unlike anything before or after (check out "The Maxx" or "Aeon Flux," for instance). Unfortunately, if you wanted to go back and see what all the fuss was about, you'd be out of luck. Both "Beavis" and its spin-off, "Daria," have fallen victim to a contractual quirk, which means that the rights to the original music used in both shows is no longer cleared. During the nineties, the vast commercial appeal of selling collections of TV shows hadn't really been tapped (or even conceived of), and re-clearing the rights to those songs or videos has become prohibitively expensive. What this whole preamble means is that if you wanted to know why "Beavis" was such a big deal, there's no legal way to do so. The shows, as originally aired, simply are no longer available to the consumer. It's a huge blow; a significant chunk of the funniest moments during the series come from Beavis and Butt-Head riffing on the videos they watched incessantly.

Because of this situation, the earliest complete piece of work available to watch by legit means (and please, use whatever means are available to track down the unedited original series) is the fruit of Beavismania, "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America." Unfortunately, it doesn't really capture the flavor of the TV series, either. The format of the show involved bouncing back and forth between whatever the short narrative cartoon segments and the duo watching videos and commenting on them. Each episode was only fifteen minutes long, so the stories were usually around five minutes apiece. Trying to expand the dynamic that was so successful on television out to a feature-length film is a rocky road, to be sure.

The story of "B&BDA" is a series of misunderstandings. After someone steals their TV, Beavis and Butt-Head leave the house, and get wrangled into a murder-for-hire plot that they interpret as being hired to score with someone's wife. The whole thing is pretty much an excuse to put Beavis and Butt-Head into a number of different places, and it plays out as a chase-movie. Of course, they don't know they're being chased, so they just bumble along from place to place. And while there aren't any actual music videos, there are a few music sequences. The opening sequence is a blaxploitation riff with an original song by Isaac Hayes (pre-"South Park"). There's a lounge act in Vegas that the duo dance to, set to a Red-Hot Chili Peppers' cover of "Love Rollercoaster" that's pretty fun. And there's also a hallucination sequence set to a White Zombie song that incorporates singer Rob Zombie's artwork, to excellent effect. It's not exactly the same, but the effort is appreciated, and the soundtrack is generally very, very good.

But the biggest problem is that the movie just isn't that good. It's slow-starting, not really taking off humor-wise until Beavis' exchange with an old lady voiced by Cloris Leachman. There are good moments, but even at the admittedly short running time, there's just not enough there there. If you arrived at this movie having seen Mike Judge's live-action movies like "Office Space" first, I think you'd be both disappointed and wondering what all the fuss was about. And unlike the "South Park" movie that would come a couple of years after, there's no real point to this film. There's nothing in the plot or in the execution (possibly excepting the Zombie sequence) that demanded to be made into a film instead of being split into another season of shows. Speaking as someone who is a rabid fan of the show (in both it's earlier and current incarnations), I just wanted something more that wasn't there. Mike Judge's work would get a lot better than what's here, so it's not a crushing blow, but it would have been nice to have a better historical document of "Beavis and Butt-Head" to be able to show people if they wondered what the big deal was.

2.5 / 5 - TV

Tucker and Dale vs Evil - 2010

2012-01-08T14:59:00.000-08:00

"Tucker and Dale vs Evil" - 2010
Dir. by Eli Craig - 1 hr. 29 min.

Official Redband Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

"I should have known that if a guy like me talked to a girl like you, somebody would end up dead."

Truer words have never been spoken. It takes a certain gift to be able to turn hidebound material into something truly funny. And I don't mean referentially funny, like the "Scary Movie" series, where pretty much all of the humor is of the "I remember seeing that" variety, but the kind of funny that stands on it's own, regardless if you've seen the source material or not. I'm here to tell you that "Tucker and Dale vs Evil" achieves that feat.

The scenario appears stock: Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) are a pair of hillbillies going into the woods to start working on their "vacation home," and come across a bunch of college kids who are headed to the woods for a weekend of drinking, drugging, and whatever else might happen far away from prying eyes. They encounter each other at a gas station, and the kids are immediately creeped out by the backwoods duo. The two groups' paths keep intertwining, and a series of misunderstandings leads to people dying. You know, just like any good/bad horror film.

Except in this film, the hillbillies aren't twisted, murderous freaks. Dale comes off badly because he gets nervous talking to girls, which gives the wrong impression. But they're generally friendly, and really are just in the woods to work on their vacation home. And the college students aren't put-on, naive kids just trying to have a good time. They're judgmental little shits that leap before looking, led by Chad (Jesse Moss), a mop-headed, white-belted, popped-collar, hatchet wielding lunatic that keeps escalating matters whenever possible. And instead of trying to figure out what's really going on, the entire gang displays their complete incompetence at physical combat of any kind.

There are a number of truly funny moments here, stemming from the misunderstandings between the two groups (and also between Dale and Allison, played by Katrina Bowden). It would be ruining the jokes to explain, but I found myself laughing loudly over and over again. I'm not a huge horror fan, so the enjoyment I got out of "Tucker and Dale" was out of how the characters related to one another and not out of the subversion of genre tropes. That's how I know the movie stood on it's own. I'd probably enjoy a good crime novel spoof, but it would be out of familiarity with the trappings of those kinds of books. Other than knowing that when a group of kids go into the woods in a horror movie, most of them aren't coming back, I just haven't watched enough horror films to have that kind of detailed awareness of common plot points.

Especially for a low-budget sort of film, the comedic acting is really good throughout. Tudyk and Labine work well together, and even a couple of the college kids are good as well. The post-woods ending wasn't as good as the rest of the movie, but it did tie things up in a reasonable manner. But since everything else up to that point was funny, I don't hold it against "Tucker and Dale vs Evil" that much. I feel like I'm probably going to have to watch this one again before too long.

3.5 / 5 - Streaming

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - 2011

2012-01-02T16:45:00.000-08:00

"Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" - 2011
Dir. by Brad Bird - 2 hrs. 13 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Do you know how hard it is to win back a viewer after they've bailed on a franchise? The simple answer: really hard. You might even say... impossible. As a quick background, I refused to see the third installment of the "Mission: Impossible" series because I absolutely hated the second installment. It's been a few years now, so I couldn't exactly tell you why I hated it so much, but I disliked it so intensely that I refused to even admit the existence of a third installment. And it might be selective memory, but I don't remember hearing much that suggested I missed out on much of anything.

So the question is, what is it that would make me reconsider? There are two big reasons. First, the trailer was really, really good. If you want to sell a big, action movie, this trailer is textbook. It promises insane situations, exotic locations, huge effects and action pieces, and is set to a really great song (Eminem's "Won't Back Down"). Secondly, it is the live-action directorial debut for Brad Bird, who has a couple of animated instant classics ("The Iron Giant" and "The Incredibles") to his credit. To sum up: looks good, plus I'm curious about the director.

Going in to a movie like "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol," you know that you're not likely to see a hyper-intelligent, mind-bending film. That's not a knock, you're going to see an action movie, and you can't punch or kick a conundrum. There are different standards for different films. In a big-budget action blockbuster, the keys are whether the action pieces are satisfying, and whether or not there are any lulls that would let a wandering mind start to poke holes in the plot. Thankfully, MI4 succeeds wildly on these accounts.

There is a pretty non-stop string of action pieces from beginning to end, with lulls just long enough to let you catch your breath and start to build anticipation for the next sequence to get underway. Things kick off with a prison break, which is a great way to reintroduce the Ethan Hunt character that Tom Cruise plays (as well as the rest of his team). From there, there are extended sequences in Russia, Dubai, and India. I'd rather not get into specifics (it's much more fun to kick back and enjoy the events not knowing what's coming up), other than to say that there is a fun travelogue-esque aspect to this film, and that the Dubai sequence of events is beyond spectacular. There's also a certain logic to the physical combat in this movie that's refreshing - Hunt in particular may achieve his goals, but it's rarely smoothly or without some personal physical agony. It humanizes his character, and gives a little weight to his nearly suicidal complete lack of regard for his own well-being. It's one thing for a character to attempt death-defying feats if they routinely escape unscathed, but when Ethan Hunt tries something in this movie, you know that it's at his own peril.

"Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" holds up well against the other big action movies of the year. Although the story doesn't have a tremendous amount of depth, it's a true adrenaline ride, possibly more so than other films of it's ilk. It's also a refreshing deviation from wise-cracking action stars delivering punchlines out of the side of their mouths; Ethan Hunt is a machine, but verbal cleverness isn't part of what he has to offer. The character understands what is at stake, and prioritizes success over literally everything else. With that driving the film, even the impossible (like me jumping back on the franchise bandwagon) becomes possible.

3.5 / 5 - Theatre

The Big Lebowski - 1998

2012-01-01T14:08:00.000-08:00

"The Big Lebowski" - 1998
Dir. by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen - 1 hr. 57 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

"The Big Lebowski" is a tough film to write about, much less assign any kind of a rating to. Part of the reason for that is that it's one of the most written-about films since "Pulp Fiction." There are several books about the movie; even more than a decade after it was initially released, there are boxed gift sets and calendars and festivals for this film. It's a very rare beast, one that seems to have outlived it's context. Even rarer: it's not a "geek" film either. The Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings franchises all have inspired that sort of fanaticism, to the point where if you showed up at a comic book convention, you'd be disappointed if you didn't find in-costume representatives of each franchise's respective fan-bases present. But "The Big Lebowski?"

The first time that I watched this film (when it was released), I was a little underwhelmed. I don't want to imply disappointment, I enjoyed "The Big Lebowski" thoroughly. As strange as it seems, a lot of people were in the same boat initially. The Coen Brothers' previous film was "Fargo," which also was the mainstream success that everyone had been waiting for from them. It was also a critical success, winning two Oscars and having been nominated for five more. In case you haven't seen "Fargo," I'll just say that the tone was a little different. That was a very dark film, with it's darkness tempered mildly by the silly accents and Midwestern setting. And this was the expectation for the Coen Brothers, many people having seemingly forgotten the humor and silliness of "Raising Arizona" and "The Hudsucker Proxy." Looking back, it's a lot easier to see the Coen Brothers' pattern of trading off between very tense, dark movies with lighter fare. At the time, "Lebowski" just confused people. It wasn't what anyone was expecting from the duo, and while it did okay at the box office (roughly $28 million), it wasn't a runaway hit.

So what happened between then and now that turned it into a must-see cult classic? I can't speak for everyone, but after I'd watched "Lebowski" for the first time, it kind of nagged at me until I broke down and saw it again. And freed from the yoke of expectations, I liked it a lot more. A LOT more. Once I was able to view "The Big Lebowski" on it's own merit, it became clear that it had a lot to offer. The plot is enough to keep the parts moving, but it's not exactly the focus of the film. The protagonist, The Dude (Jeff Bridges), is referred to as possibly the laziest man in all of Los Angeles, which means that it's unlikely the story is going to be goal-driven. He gets dragged into problems, and then talked into exacerbating them. The Dude is more concerned about his bowling league (one in which one of his teammates pulls a gun on an opposing team in an argument about a scratch). The real joy of the film is the batch of unique characters, The Dude and Walter (John Goodman) in particular, being dragged into detective work that they have no business doing. The Dude gets along (or abides, I should say), surviving calamity through no particular skill.

The plot is good enough, the dialogue and characters sparkle (as much as a pack of foul-mouthed middle-aged bowlers can), and that leaves the visual element as the other strongest point. The Coen Brothers have a strong ability for visual stylization. You can see it in good films like "Fargo," or in less well-received films like "The Hudsucker Proxy." It's a gift that has stayed with them throughout their career. The easiest (and showiest) scenes to talk about are the pair of dream sequences. The first is fun, the second is a Busby Berkeley bowling-themed spectacular that borrows elements from the film-within-a-film, "Logjammin.'" Talking about visuals like these is kind of pointless; both sequences are jammed with surreal settings, but they're not non sequiturs. The first leads into plot points that develop later on, and the second one is a sort of a recap of the things that are hanging over the Duder's head at the time, and also leads into the rest of the film.

There are a number of other elements that I could get into, but would run the risk of turning this into a novel. But just a few of the other things I love about this movie: the soundtrack, Julianne Moore's affected accent, the "brother shamus" exchange, The Dude's car's story arc, Jesus Quintana, Jackie Treehorn's house, and what cell phones looked like in the early 1990's.

Similar to the problem I had with assigning a rating to "Clerks," how can you be objective about a film you've seen twenty or more times? It's not a perfect film, but I can't think of a single thing that might have improved it (and I've read a number of books related to the film - the level of thought that went into making this film is impressive). I guess the fact that I've watched it so many times removes the need to think about it in those terms. It's "The Big Lebowski," one of my favorite films. It's a singular, unique piece of film-making. It might not be to everyone's taste, but there are plenty of us who would disagree with you.

4.5 / 5 - Blu-Ray

The Mechanic - 2011

2011-12-30T14:53:00.000-08:00

"The Mechanic" - 2011
Dir. by Simon West - 1 hr. 33 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Sometimes you need a reminder to trust your instincts. When I first saw the trailer for "The Mechanic," I figured it was just another paint-by-numbers Jason Statham movie. I'm sure that he's even gone so far as to refer to himself as a "mechanic" in one of his other movies (possibly one of the "Transporter" ones?), so this movie looked to lack even the most basic level of creativity. But then at some point, I heard that this was actually a remake of an old Charles Bronson movie, and I became mildly curious. I should have trusted my instincts.

In this context, a mechanic is an alias for a hit-man, albeit a creatively inclined, problem-solving version of one. And just like in every other one of Jason Statham's movies, he's a highly-organized obsessive planner who is smarter than you and probably has better abs than you do, as well. And he's super, super serious, all the time. The plot is simple: Arthur Bishop (Statham) does a job, establishes that his only friend is Harry McKenna (Donald Sutherland), and then ends up having to take a job taking out McKenna. McKenna's son, Steve (Ben Foster), comes along and ends up forcing his way into an apprenticeship under Bishop. It turns out the job on Harry was a double-cross, which leads to Arthur and Steve taking on the firm that had previously employed Arthur. Oh yeah, and stuff blows up a few times.

One of the chief problems here is that the story is pretty much a Scooby-Doo; there are so few moving parts in this story that there's almost no possibility for misdirection, or even surprises of any kind. Even the end isn't ever in question, seeing Statham's propensity for sequels. There's no attempt at character development, either. I don't know conclusively if Jason Statham is incapable of doing anything other than the one character he plays over and over, but there's no evidence to the contrary in "The Mechanic." Those flaws could be overcome, however, if the action sequences were good enough. I'm not so naive to think that people who want to see a movie like this are going because they want to see character arcs and high drama.

I will admit to anyone who cares to ask that I absolutely hate the current shaky-cam standard for fight scenes in action movies. It distracts from the action (or the fact that the actors aren't actually very capable at stage fighting) and is disorienting. But seeing as how I wasn't initially expecting anything that wasn't completely stock from this movie, I suppose it would be expecting way too much for this aspect of the film to be different. For this reason, I didn't really care for any of the hand-to-hand combat scenes here. And other than that, there's a couple of explosion-ridden scenes towards the end of the film involving large vehicles, but neither were spectacular enough to make up for much of anything.

However, there were moments of unintentional hilarity present. My favorite was when Arthur and Steve had succeeded in pinning down Arthur's boss, Dean (Tony Goldwyn). Arthur and Steve stand over Dean, who is trapped and bleeding in an upside-down car, and they unload their weapons into Dean. That is, their high-capacity automatic weapons, wielded side-by-side, legs spread wide. It's for all intents and purposes completely masturbatory, an orgasmic moment shared between master and student. Which is cool, I guess. The other bit of unintentional hilarity is the portrayal of Arthur as being nearly invisible. He escapes from everything without ever being noticed, even in large crowds. He usually does this by furrowing his brow, staring a hole through someone, and walking directly at them. If you saw someone doing that, you'd probably yell at the guy being chased that some crazy asshole was chasing him. It's not just that Statham is super-serious about everything, it's that he seems to be nearly homicidally so. Even basic actions like putting a record onto a turntable are solemn and nearly OCD-worthy. For a character that's supposed to plan things out so well, you'd think that he might have figured out at some point that looking like you want to kill someone when you're trying to escape the scene of a murder is the sort of thing that other people might notice. Or not. Whatever works for a mechanic, I guess.

To sum up, "The Mechanic" is the sort of movie where the only women present in it are either hookers (presumably in the story to prove that Arthur is totally hetero, in contrast to the glances that he and Steve share) or the family of someone, threatened with violence in order to coerce that someone to give up information. The plot is weak, the action is either weak and covered up by editing or really cool and handicapped by awful editing, and the acting possibly could have been culled from the cutting room floor of Statham's other films. The whole thing bears the mark of the post-video game era: leveling up in lieu of actually telling a story. If that sounds like your cup of tea, have at it. Having been through this experience, I'm a little curious about the original movie. It's not like it could be worse.

1 / 5 - TV

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - 2011

2011-12-28T15:20:00.000-08:00

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" - 2011
Dir. by David Fincher - 2 hrs. 38 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

First things first, I haven't read the books, nor have I seen any of the three Swedish movies based on Steig Larsson's books. This movie, directed by David Fincher, is my introduction to the material. So there won't be any hand-wringing whatsoever about how this movie relates to the source material, although I've heard it's pretty faithful. So, if you're like me and have had your head in a hole regarding this material (deliberately - I may eventually read the books, but I wasn't going to get that done prior to seeing this movie), let's have a quick introduction.

There are initially two storylines. The first involves a disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), who has just been found guilty of libel against a businessman. The second surrounds the girl who investigates Mikael for a background check on behalf of another wealthy businessman, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara). The background check on Mikael is for what is publicly purported to be working on the memoir of Henrik Vanger, but is in actuality at attempt to figure out what happened to his niece, Harriet, who was murdered forty years prior. Lisbeth and Mikael end up working together on the case. Going into more detail of the plot seems unnecessary, and would ruin a lot of the movie.

There is a lot to praise about the movie. The plot is somewhat complicated, but not confusing, and all the characters are distinct and have their own motivations. And while it seems weird to call a movie that's more than two and a half hours long taut, it's an apt description. There's a great tension to the story, and no real lulls to hamper that. It's a tense movie punctuated by moments of real violence, and I found myself unprepared for those moments. That's not a condemnation, either. Rather than using violence as nothing more than fodder for entertainment, these events are consequential, and have emotional weight. For instance (and in vague terms), the story between Lisbeth and her guardian Nils Bjurman (Yorick van Wageningen) leads to consequences that are horrific, well-earned, and shocking. That combination of traits is consistent throughout the movie.

The acting is also uniformly excellent, particularly Rooney Mara's portrayal of Lisbeth. She's distinct and believable playing a character that would be easy to overplay. Instead of trying to convince everyone she's insane in a showy manner, she just does insane things in a way that makes you believe that she thinks what she's doing is normal. That leads to a very explosive, dangerous character, in terms of the story. I wouldn't want to slight the other actors, but much of the success of this material rests on Mara's shoulders, and she delivers.

For me, the entire movie just works. Even though I was in a crowded theatre (there were 48 people in a room that had 51 seats), and even though this is a long film, I was never uncomfortable or bored. My attention never wandered, and I was never distracted. Those are barometers I use to judge how much I enjoy a film, especially when the run-time starts veering towards "Spartacus" levels. Even more to the point, I'm completely looking forward to seeing another installment, and I wasn't even a fan going in. This is one of the strongest mainstream films of the year.

4 / 5 - Theatre

Don't Bother to Knock - 1952

2011-12-20T15:45:00.000-08:00

"Don't Bother to Knock" - 1952
Dir. by Roy Ward Baker - 1 hr. 16 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

You may be pondering seeing "The Sitter," as you may enjoy Jonah Hill, and because holiday movie options are ridiculously slim this year. I myself am looking forward to seeing "The Sitter" for those very reasons. But if you like the premise of a horribly dangerous babysitter, and don't want to see it played for laughs, and don't mind watching Marilyn Monroe for seventy-five minutes, may I suggest instead that you watch "Don't Bother to Knock?"

The entire movie is set within the confines of a luxury hotel, McKinley Hotel in New York. Lyn Lesley (Anne Bancroft) is a lounge singer, sullen because she's just broken it off with a pilot named Jed Towers (Richard Widmark). She did this via letter, and thus isn't sure whether it was a clean break or if Jed will show up to figure things out (he shows up). Lyn and Jed discuss the state of things during a set break, and it doesn't go well. Jed is a cynic, and Lyn doesn't like the idea of living the rest of her life cold and indifferent to the people around her. Elsewhere in the hotel, a couple are guests, and need a babysitter to watch their daughter while the parents attend a ball where the father is to be given an award. The elevator operator (Elisha Cook, Jr.) offers his niece for the job. And this is where things go insane.

With the little girl asleep, Nell (Marilyn Monroe) starts rummaging through the parents' stuff, and decides to try on some finery. She gets busted by her uncle when he stops by to check on her, and assures him that she'll take off the clothes and jewelry, but never seems to get around to it. Meanwhile, Jed is sulking in his room on the eighth floor after having his heart handed back to him, when he notices Nell across the courtyard and through the windows. He consults a floor plan, and rings up the room. He invites himself over, unaware of the child sleeping in the adjacent room, which Nell accepts. When Jed gets to the room with a bottle of rye, he splays himself out on a chair and goes about flirting with Nell.

But it becomes quickly apparent that Nell is off her rocker (her boyfriend had died in the war, and she never fully recovered). She's desperate for the attention of Jed, and does whatever she can think of to keep him in the room. It would be spoiling the movie to say what all Nell does, but it starts with threatening the little girl when she won't stay asleep, and progresses from there. Jed is suitably freaked out by the situation, and ends up regretting his situation with Lyn.

At this point in Marilyn Monroe's career, she hadn't hit her stride of classic films, but it wasn't far off. It's unmistakably her; even though she's largely unglamorous, there's no mistaking that voice of hers. And surprisingly, she's very effective in her role. Her breathy, little-girl voice seems almost a perversion at times in "Don't Bother to Knock;" what seems playful and knowing in other roles comes off as damaged and very fragile here. And more to the point, you believe that she's capable of doing harm from her delusional point of view. So when the final blow-out occurs, not only do you worry about the little girl's safety, but each of the characters have been established as to why they have an interest in the situation.

I'll make no secret of it; part of what I enjoy about seeing old films is the anachronistic aspects of them. The things that would seem out of place in a current film are enjoyable when you view them in their own context. It's a visual treat to see a world that's alien - different phones, people smoking wherever they please, the way people dressed in another era. Ordinary things are just different enough that you still know what they are, but little things that don't necessarily have great importance are fun to watch just for the novelty factor. But that wouldn't mean much if the story didn't work, which it does. And the story doesn't really sugar-coat things: Jed tries to pick up a girl to get over Lyn (a cad move at best) and Nell is a lunatic who has tried to kill herself (and has the scars on her wrists to prove it). Given the short running time, the plot plays out with brutal efficiency, and I found it very easy to get swept up by the story.

While "Don't Bother to Knock" isn't one of Monroe's classic best films, it holds up. It's a quick, solid film, and if you've already explored her more well-known movies, this is a good choice from her second-tier.

3.5 / 5 - Streaming

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - 2011

2011-12-18T16:07:00.000-08:00

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" - 2011
Dir. by Rupert Wyatt - 1 hr. 45 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Considering there have been a number of "Planet of the Apes" movies over the years, all the way back to the original with Charlton Heston to Tim Burton's remake, a big question is where this film ranks. I've seen the Heston original but none of the sequels, and I've seen the Tim Burton version. This one doesn't quite measure up to the original, but easily outstrips Burton's version. Another important question: do they get the "damn, dirty ape" line in there? You know they did.

There are two big successes in this film. The first is giving a reasonable science-fiction explanation for what seems sure to come, given the title of this film. And the second is grounding that explanation in a very human way. There aren't a ton of human characters in this film; fittingly, much of it is set in a laboratory of one kind or another. Will Rodman (James Franco) works at Gen-Sys, a company devoted to developing new medicines. One of Rodman's projects ends up showing some promise, but after an incident at the lab, the drug is put on the shelf, and all of the test-subjects chimpanzees are to be put down. Robert Franklin (Tyler Labine) discovers the reason for the incident (a previously undiscovered pregnancy), and refuses to put down the newborn chimp. Rodman sneaks the chimp out of the lab and home with him. He names the chimp Caesar, and ends up raising him. As you might guess, Caesar is no ordinary chimp.

In the first two acts of this movie, Caesar's development is paired with Rodman's father's (John Lithgow) descent into Alzheimer's Disesase. Rodman decides to roll the dice on some home-brew science, which works spectacularly for a while. The father/son story is pretty integral to this story - Will Rodman isn't a madman scientist acting without regard for morals or consequences, he's an outstanding scientist who has both his father and the cure for his father's condition slip through his grasp. He pushes himself, hoping that he can beat the buzzer, so to speak. What he comes up with inadvertently gives rise to intelligent apes.

Caesar has a tough existence, as well. He's not just a smart ape, he can hold down entire conversations in sign-language. But he also has the body of a chimpanzee, which means that his losing his temper has dire consequences. He ends up in a primate sanctuary, which is run akin to a prison. It's from this point where "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" really takes off. I don't want to ruin any of it, but it's riveting action material, largely unspoiled by too-clever dialogue or ham-fisted witticisms. The last half-hour of this movie delivers on all the promises made. There will be primate revenge, and it's spectacular.

Perhaps remembering too strongly how little I enjoyed Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes," I wasn't that excited to see this new installment. It's amazing how having characters that you can empathize with (Rodman and Caesar, both) makes such a difference. James Franco does a good job juggling conflicting emotions, and Andy Serkis provides a great physical foundation for what the computer animators did with Caesar. The result is not a great film, but a solidly good one. And I'll definitely revise my expectations for the next installment in the franchise.

3 / 5 - Theatre

Real Steel - 2011

2011-12-12T16:24:00.000-08:00

"Real Steel" - 2011
Dir. by Shawn Levy - 2 hrs. 7 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There are a number of contradictory statements that I need to get out of the way in regards to "Real Steel." First, this movie was a lot better than I figured it would be. Secondly, just because something is better than you think it's going to be doesn't mean that it's a good movie, necessarily. Thirdly, that also doesn't mean that because a movie is better than you expect and isn't exactly what you'd call good doesn't mean that it's bad, either. Got all that?

"Real Steel" is a movie about the world of robot fighting, which has replaced actual people fighting in the future, mainly due to the blood-thirsty nature of people who want to watch combat sports. So you can understand why I'd be a little skeptical - when the movie's quickie description boils down to CGI Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, it's easy to roll your eyes. Add into that stock characters like the down-and-out fighter, the estranged son, and the put-upon woman who's at the end of her rope with the fighter, and it's getting easier and easier to think that the only thing you're going to get is a big, dumb, loud movie. All the stock plot elements are there, as well (the hard-ass who gets won over by his kid while putting his life back together: redemption through offspring). I will not stand before you and testify that there is anything important I'm leaving out here; if you've seen more than a handful of sports movies, there's nothing here that will catch you by surprise.

But, like a catchy pop song, when you hit the right notes in the right order and keep things fun, things can happen. You may have heard the melody before, and the lyrics don't really bring anything new to the table, but that doesn't mean you can't shake your ass a little every now and then. That's what "Real Steel" brings to the table. The plot isn't special, but it does hit the right emotional points at the right time. And also, you get to see ten feet tall robots punch the crap out of each other. It's surprisingly satisfying; it's dehumanized carnage, and you don't have to worry about the health of the combatants. One of the funniest moments of the film occurs during one of the fights. Noisy Boy (yes, the robots all have names) loses one of his arms in the course of a fight, and a panicked Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) tries to throw a punch with the arm that isn't there. What ends up happening is that Noisy Boy sprays his oil all over the other robot, and you know there's going to be Hell to pay at that point.

The action in the film consistently delivers, which is pretty key here. The fights are logical, not just nonsense edited together into more nonsense. It might have taken a lot more work to put together logical fights that made sense, but if your central point is that robot boxing is the pre-eminent combat sport, it matters. The characters also do a fun job: Hugh Jackman has a sort of swagger to him that is consistent with the character that he's playing, and his conscience Bailey Tallet (Evangeline Lilly) is a welcome source of beauty and soft curves in a film that's comprised largely of testosterone and small Transformers.

"Real Steel" is a fun movie, a big, dumb movie, and a guy version of a tear-jerker at times, too. The whole package doesn't give any reason to expect much, but it does over-achieve. As I put it earlier, that doesn't make it a good movie, but it's also not a terrible one. That's a kind of a victory. If you can check your mind at the door, it's not a bad way to blow a couple of hours.

2.5 / 5 - Theatre

The Ice Harvest - 2005

2011-12-09T13:53:00.001-08:00

"The Ice Harvest" - 2005
Dir. by Harold Ramis - 1 hr. 32 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I'm not much of a Christmas person, generally speaking. And I especially dislike Christmas movies. I've never seen "Miracle on 34th Street" or "It's a Wonderful Life," and Tim Allen's propensity for Christmas-themed movies means that I haven't seen anything he's done since "Galaxy Quest." And usually, at this time of year, literally everything goes green, red, and garnished. The last thing on Earth I want to do is further indulge the season by watching Christmas-related programming of any kind.

It's not entirely fair to peg "The Ice Harvest" as a Christmas movie. What this movie actually is is a neo-noir film (and a pretty sharp one, at that) that happens to be set on Christmas Eve. It's not inconsequential to the plot; pretty much all of the characters here are in a general state of irritation just to be existing in their lives, and the idea that they should all suddenly be jolly and thankful once a year for no good reason is another straw on the camel's back. I can relate to that. But what this is not is a movie filled with all the trite tropes of Christmas movies, or really even a feel-good movie. It's a crime movie that takes place on Christmas, which effectively juxtaposes the general unhappiness of criminal enterprise with the ideal of a happy Christmas.

Mob lawyer Charlie Arglist (John Cusack), with the help of local pornographer Vic Cavanaugh (Billy Bob Thornton), decide to actually go through with ripping off local mob boss Bill Guerrard (Randy Quaid), to the tune of a little over two million dollars. They do this on Christmas Eve, presumably to delay Guerrard's discovery of the theft, giving them time to get away. Unfortunately, the weather in Wichita is frightful, and they are going to have to wait until the next morning to leave town. This leaves both men in the position of having to fulfill their duties and not tip anyone off that something's going on. This leans more heavily on Arglist, who makes the rounds at local peeler bars that Guerrard controls. One of the owners, Renata (Connie Nielson), figures out what's going on by Arglist's uncharacteristic behavior, and tries to take advantage of his long-standing crush on her to find a way out of Wichita. Before long though, Roy Gelles (Mike Starr) is onto the scheme.

While the crime plot is pretty straight-forward (stay out of harm's way and play it cool until Charlie and Vic can get away safely), the smaller stories are very interesting. Arglist, and his friend (possibly his only friend - he comes across as a very lightly-reformed not-entirely-pleasant guy to be around) Pete (Oliver Platt, an absolute riot here) are both mired, and trapped by the circumstances of their lives. Charlie's ex is Pete's current wife, and there are a lot of tensions between all of the characters. Charlie and Pete also both drink nearly constantly, with vastly different results. Charlie is subdued, the crime story-line means that he's largely playing out his string, seeing a lot of people for the last time one way or another. Pete's a mess, a social disaster, pushing buttons with glee and ferocity for as long as he can stand upright. Charlie offers advice, but lets Pete get into trouble, and then helps dust him off once whatever is going to happen has happened.

There's a sequence in this film that's a glimpse into an entirely different type of film, had anyone cared to take this material in a different direction. Charlie takes Pete to his family's holiday dinner, both soused. Pete is loud and delights it in, while his wife and her parents smirk through it with a sort of stiff-upper-lip condescension. Charlie's children are there; the young daughter just misses her father, the teenage boy is all fury and takes everything the worst possible way. It's a great scene, a ton of information packed into just a few minutes of film. But what makes it great is the little bit that immediately precedes Charlie and Pete's arrival at the dinner. Standing outside on the sidewalk, looking at the happy family (happy possibly because of Pete's absence), Pete admits to Charlie that there was some overlap between their respective relationships with the mother of Charlie's question. Pete invites Charlie to take a swing at him, but instead of doing that, he lowers the boom. Pete asks why he isn't angry, Charlie responds (in the way that only John Cusack can), "Actually, it makes me curious. It makes me wonder who she's fucking now."

It's not necessarily said with malicious intent - it's both a forgiveness and a freeing of Pete. He's in a miserable marriage with no way out, but the awareness that he's in the same boat that Charlie had been in forges a further bond between the two. Also, it's the setting of the fuse for Pete to finally unload on everyone once inside, which is also one of the primary joys of watching Oliver Platt in just about anything he's ever done. I don't know how to factor this into a review of "The Ice Harvest," but watching Platt drunkenly shake a turkey leg at people in an accusatory manner has to be worth something.

The pacing of this movie is unusual, also. It's a ninety-minute movie, so it's not what you'd call long by any means. And the pressure definitely gets to Arglist's character (there are a number of fantastic shots of Cusack looking progressively more disheveled as the movie goes on), but it definitely doesn't feel like things are happening very quickly. That's not to suggest that there's a lack of content, or that the side-plots aren't fulfilling on their own, but "The Ice Harvest" lacks the sort of narrow-minded focus that a lot of noir-ish films have. I suspect that's because there's no time devoted to the actual commission of the theft; it's all aftermath. This movie feels a lot longer than it actually is, which is often a kiss of death, but here I didn't mind it.

I don't want to get into hyperbole, and suggest that this is a must-see movie. But I will say that it's the only good film director Harold Ramis has made since "Groundhog Day." And "The Ice Harvest" isn't as good as that film, but it does have healthy doses of the same kind of dark emotional states that lend some heft to the funnier material. It's a quality movie that I've seen a handful of times now, and not just when I'm trying to find an anti-Christmas Christmas movie.

3.5 / 5 - DVD

Pearl Jam Twenty - 2011

2011-12-04T13:35:00.001-08:00

"Pearl Jam Twenty" - 2011
Dir. by Cameron Crowe - 1 hr. 49 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There's a sort of a caveat that seems required when talking about most documentaries about bands: for fans only. Most music documentaries end up like that - it's rare that what's being captured ends up being far more interesting than the appeal of the people involved might suggest. It does happen, though, like in "Hype!" (for which this film serves as an excellent companion) or "Dig!" (my guess is that the exclamation mark makes all the difference), but most of the time, what you're in for is a look at a band, and whether you already like the band pretty much dictates whether or not you're going to be interested in the film in the first place. The only other approach that seems to be take is the "Behind the Music" approach, that focuses on the misery that breaks bands and people, and in a very voyeuristic manner.

"Pearl Jam Twenty" is neither of those things; it's a celebration. That's not to say that there haven't been low moments in Pearl Jam's history that could have been exploited, but this movie is very much a survivor's tale. And that story is vastly different than other band's stories, the ones that burnt out or faded away. The basic rock story arc demands a spectacular flame-out at the end; you must pay if you fly too close to the sun. That might be a lot of musicians' story; a quick ascendancy brought low by missteps. Unlike every one of their peers, Pearl Jam still sells pretty well, packs out arenas, never broke up. The members of the band got their tragedy out of the way early (Andy Wood's OD death before Mother Love Bone's first album could come out). That's not to suggest that there haven't been problems along the way, but they're still around and ticking twenty years later.

This film is built on piles and piles of archival footage, from their earliest days (one performance is a mere six days after their forming as a band) to current day. It includes everything from rare concert footage shot in tiny dives to concerts in front of sixty thousand people. There's even footage of bass player Jeff Ament shooting hoops by himself in the early 90's. You know how I know it was from the early 90's? Ament was rocking the running shorts over bike shorts look that was popular in the NBA for about a season and a half (google "Roy Tarpley" images, if you're curious). This is where this film fulfills it's promise to fans; if you like Pearl Jam, you're going to love this. Maybe you'd like to see Eddie Vedder and Stone Gossard writing "Daughter." Or maybe you want to see them get booed like crazy for playing "Bu$hleager" in front of an unappreciative audience. Perhaps you'd be interested in any of a million interesting clips that you've probably never seen before. If so, you're completely in luck.

In storytelling, failure is almost easier to deal with than success. Failure marks a distinct end to a particular era, even if that's not exactly how things work in life. Pearl Jam existing successfully for twenty years is an achievement, but it's not an easy story to tell. There is (at this point) no end to that story, and even the members of the band seem not to have a perfect grasp on how they've survived this amount of time. Fortunately, one explanation exists in the form of the soundtrack. Whatever personal squabbles have arisen, it wasn't difficult to put together nearly two hours of their music, and it doesn't lag. It's not a nostalgic set-list either, including everything from early songs to ones as recent as their last album. Now, this isn't a film that's going to convert the unconverted (unless you've just never heard them play before, and this serves as a first exposure to their music); most people have settled on loving Pearl Jam or just being indifferent to them at this point. If this is the sort of thing that you're into, it's very, very welcome.

4 / 5 - Streaming

Cowboys & Aliens - 2011

2011-11-28T12:52:00.001-08:00

"Cowboys & Aliens" - 2011
Dir. by Jon Favreau - 1 hr. 58 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I'm going to level with you here. I did not have very high hopes for this movie going in. Everything from the title (there have already been a couple of other comic books with genre mash-up titles recently) on down didn't inspire much confidence in me. There was no part of me that was interested in seeing this in a theatre for $10 (thank goodness for second-run theatres). And I'm not going to look you in the eye and say this was a good movie, exactly. But when your expectations are that a movie could be close to terrible, and then it doesn't end up being terrible, that adds up to a win.

The plot is perfunctory. Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in a field, bleeding, amnesiac, and with a curious metal bracelet on his arm. A trio of unfortunates decide to try to take him in for a bounty, and get dealt with quickly and completely. Lonergan pillages the bodies, and takes a horse (and a dog comes along, as well) to the nearest town. He immediately gets in a confrontation with Percy Dolarhyde (Paul Dano), the son of the wealthiest man in town, Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). Percy and Jake end up in jail for different reasons, and as they're about to be sent off to Santa Fe to deal with the feds, Woodrow and his posse roll into town to spring Percy. And then, aliens.

There are more plot points, sort of, but this isn't the sort of movie that the plot matters. A more accurate description is that Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford swagger around like bad-asses, lots of things blow up, and Olivia Wilde provides the eye-candy (of a sort - I don't want to imply that she's running around naked or anything, other than that one scene. She's a welcome ray of beauty in a movie overflowing with hideous aliens and scowling men). And Sam Rockwell provides the comic relief. Then, more things blow up.

If that doesn't sound particularly challenging, know that it isn't. And without the star-power that Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig bring, this movie could have very easily fallen flat. After the "Iron Man" movies, it's no surprise that director Jon Favreau knows how to handle an action movie, and a certain amount of the action seems to be torn from the "Iron Man" playbook: particularly the flying scenes over sweeping vistas. It works. The movie does work, despite not really having much to work with. It hits the plot points it needs to, and uses archetypes effectively in lieu of actual character development. And, to Favreau's credit, the film has the balls to show these aliens in broad daylight instead of just having them lurking in shadows and cloaked in darkness.

That all adds up to a big, loud, dumb movie that is just good enough, but "Cowboys & Aliens" doesn't do anything that would make it essential viewing or that would make it better than a genre exercise. Still, that's a lot more that I figured I'd be able to give it credit for. I found it enjoyable, but your enjoyment depends on a lot of things. But if you watch the trailer and think, yeah, that's a movie for me (or the opposite), you're likely going to be right. There are no surprises in sight.

2.5 / 5 - Theatre

J. Edgar - 2011

2011-11-25T15:31:00.001-08:00

"J. Edgar" - 2011
Dir. by Clint Eastwood - 2 hrs. 17 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

At this time of the year, it seems like most of the movies turn very, very serious. Part of that is the Oscar-bait strategy (as in, no one remembers what came out in January). "J. Edgar" is no exception to that strategy. It's a very serious biography (of a sort) film of the man who brought legitimacy to the FBI. I have to admit that, while I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, I think that I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't staring down the prospect of two months of ultra-serious, heavy films, placed primely for awards. That might not seem fair to director Clint Eastwood or "J. Edgar," but no film exists in a vacuum.

Depending on how much you know about J. Edgar Hoover (and the opinions that you might hold of him, based on how much you know), you might be surprised with the restraint that Eastwood shows here. Hoover was, to put it simply, a complicated man. He was also a driven man with few friends, and was highly successful in taking the FBI from an organization with a lowly reputation to one of the most highly-funded organizations in all of government. He was an early pioneer of finger-printing and forensic science as crime-solving tools. One of the aspects that this movie captures is that Hoover didn't do that through straight-up means; he held secret files on many notable Americans, and didn't seem shy about using the dirt contained within to extract favors from whomever he wanted to. And also, the movie speculates on why Hoover didn't trust much of anyone, and why he never married over the course of his life.

This is a pretty well-rounded portrayal of a man who may not have deserved as much empathy as this film offers him. There many times where Hoover toes or crosses lines to get done what he wants done, and he comes off like a petty tyrant at times. At the same time, it's clear that he truly believed in what he was doing, which is probably why he was willing to go to the extremes that he did. If you despise being lied to by politicians, your stomach might curdle as some of the things that Hoover did as an un-elected official.

The best traits of this film are exactly what you'd think they might be going in. Leonardo DiCaprio does a good job with the character, humanizing someone who has become a bit of a caricature in history. Clint Eastwood's direction is also outstanding, implying and nudging the story along without hitting you over the head. It's a movie that asks you to pay attention, and rewards you for doing so with details that really enhance the story. And the central figure to the movie, J. Edgar Hoover, is a compelling, secretive figure that could use a little light shed on.

And if you really enjoy historical biography films, this is going to be right up your alley. It's quality through and through, another hit for Clint Eastwood. It's not his finest work, but it's also pretty damned good for something that's not in a director's top tier of work. I don't want to short-change that in any way. But in a larger sense, it also feels like the beginning of a season of films that take themselves very seriously.

3.5 / 5 - Theatre

The Masque of the Red Death - 1964

2011-11-22T15:25:00.001-08:00

"The Masque of the Red Death" - 1964
Dir. by Roger Corman - 1 hr. 29 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

"The Masque of the Red Death" is one of eight movies that Roger Corman directed based on Edgar Allan Poe's stories over a span of five years in the early sixties. This, and all but one other, starred Vincent Price. I know that Corman has a reputation for being something of a low-budget king, but you might not know that from watching this film.

Being based on Poe's work, you know the story is going to be somewhat macabre. It's set in the 12th century, in the middle of an outbreak of a plague called the red death. Vincent Price plays Prince Prospero, a satanist with a giant castle, in which the fortunate are allowed to stay for their own protection against the plague. Their only form of amusement are debauched balls, where pretty much anything goes (being shot in the early 60's, the sexual content is largely implied, although heaving bosoms and dancing ladies are plentiful). Prospero is transported through a village where an old lady has died from the red death. One of the villagers mouths off to Prospero, the result is that he, his wife, and her father are taken to the castle for Prospero's amusement while the village is burned to the ground. The men are locked in the dungeon, and are to be pitted against each other in battle; Francesca (Jane Asher) becomes something of an obsession for Prospero, he wants to corrupt her from her devout Christian ways.

Francesca is cleaned up and introduced at one of the balls, where Prospero humiliates his minions by demanding each one conducts themselves as animals (which doesn't actually humiliate the revelers - the implication being that they've traded their dignity for their safety inside the castle). Prospero demands that Juliana (Hazel Court) show Francesca the ropes, she does the bare minimum. Juliana has other things on her mind, deciding to betroth herself to Satan, something that she'd been reluctant to do before the younger Francesca showed up and clearly caught Propsero's eye.

There's a fair degree of camp to this story; it's clearly the product of another era of film-making. Actors talk with that bizarre actorly affectation, and carry themselves similarly. But while the acting has a high level of artifice, the setting is ornate and lush. The inside of the castle and the costumes are fantastic, and the entire setting seems like it's from an entirely different world. In a movie now, any crowd scene would include a bunch of dressed-down schlubs, that's simply not the case here. Honestly, much of what made this movie enjoyable was a peek into a different era. The super-widescreen shots taking in the scenario, used instead of close-up camera work (seriously, I think I've seen up every modern actor's nose into their skulls at some point), great use of the setting, themed stage costumes. It's a product from when movies were supposed to grand, even if they were about a satanic prince trying to seduce a Christian to the dark side.

Even more fun: listening to Vincent Price deliver lines like, "The way is not easy, I know, but I will take you by the hand and lead you through the cruel light into the velvet darkness." That alone makes me curious about checking out some of the other Poe films that Corman and Price did together. There were a couple of somewhat literary visual things that are worth noting, as well. Red Death was actually a character in the movie, a man cloaked in red. At the end of the film, he re-united with his brothers, other color-themed plagues. That, and the series of color-themed rooms inside the castle that ended in a black and red room housing a Satanic altar were touches that feel literary and look fantastic.

I found "The Masque of the Red Death" to be pretty enjoyable, not entirely because of the plot. If you're accustomed to current films, this is going to feel like aliens dropped this thing off without any explanation. It's literally contrary to every current film-making trend, from the lush colors (as opposed to the de-saturated look common now) to making the most out of one setting, an admittedly awesome castle. So even if you're not into the somewhat simplistic plot, you can kick back and enjoy the visual treat in front of you.

3 / 5 - Streaming

Contagion - 2011

2011-11-21T13:35:00.001-08:00

"Contagion" - 2011
Dir. by Steven Soderbergh - 1 hr. 46 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

In the age of Purell, germs are the last frontier of horror. There's a proud tradition of mystery viruses in movies, whether it be action movies that have villains trying to sicken everyone (like "Mission: Impossible"), or one that take a closer look at the actual outbreak ("Outbreak," to give a terrible example), or ones that follow the aftermath of such an outbreak (like the original "The Andromeda Strain" or even "28 Days Later," in a way). These movies vary vastly in quality, but the best of them are both plausible and maintain a tension throughout the film.

"Contagion," to some degree, follows the standard plot in these situations. People die, the CDC clues in, and scientists and the government try to work out a cure or vaccine before it's too late for a ridiculous amount of people. That's fine, because that's pretty much how things really work. It's a solid premise that works. But this film has a few things working for it that takes that basic framework and turns it into a very good film.

First off, a lot of credit goes to director Steven Soderbergh. He's one of the most consistently excellent filmmakers over the last twenty years or so, whether he's doing sub-$1 million budgeted experimental work (like "Bubble" or "The Girlfriend Experience") or big-budget, star-studded extravaganzas (like the "Ocean's Eleven" series). One of his hallmarks is always having the camera in the right place, and not being particularly showy about it. It's understated excellence: he wants you to pay attention to what's on-screen, not his awesome technique. Even so, once you've seen more than a couple of his films, it's always apparent that it's his work. So it's no surprise that he gets all of the little details right. Just in the opening sequence alone, instead of needing some prologue explanation of what's going on, the entire situation is conveyed visually. It's a master-class in effortless film-making. Instead of hammering on the people who have become sick, the camera lingers for a moment on something that the sick person has touched; you know what's happening without having to be told.

Another big point in "Contagion's" favor is that it does an excellent job of humanizing what is a fairly large cast. People live sloppy, complicated lives, and that point is made. You'd expect the main actors to have enough time to get that across (especially with actors like Matt Damon and Laurence Fishburne), but even the small roles are well done. That shouldn't really be a surprise, given Soderbergh's earlier ensemble work in movies like "Traffic" or the "Ocean's Eleven" series, but it's also true here.

"Contagion" also begs comparison to one of my favorite science-fiction films, "The Andromeda Strain," and holds it's own. There's a heavier emphasis on the science aspect in "The Andromeda Strain" (which was copied to some degree in the "Resident Evil" series of films: look at the underground bunker structures to begin with); it's the germ-horror genre's version of a police procedural. One of the things that I immediately noticed a similarity in was the score for the two films, and I really liked the score to "Contagion." The tension throughout both films was excellent, and when you're talking about maintaining tension while watching scientists perform lab work, that's a nice accomplishment.

"Contagion" is on the high upper end for this sort of movie. Good acting, good direction, and a good story all add up to a really good film.

Gil Melle - "Desert Trip" - from "The Andromeda Strain" soundtrack

Cliff Martinez - "Placebo" - from "Contagion" soundtrack

4 / 5 - Theatre

Star Wars - 1977

2011-11-09T15:43:00.000-08:00

"Star Wars" - 1977
Dir. by George Lucas - 2 hrs. 1 min.

Original Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

How do you judge a phenomenon that has almost nothing to do with the original movie? The Star Wars empire is broad and nearly endless: there's no shortage of officially-produced merchandise to spend your money on, no matter how deep your pockets. It's an entry-point into nerd culture (which I dispute, and I'll get to that in a bit), an excuse to play dress-up, an inexhaustible supply of TV shows and video games, books and comics. It's gotten to the point where people can pass off TV shows spoofing the Star Wars canon as original work. But what has all that got to do with the movies themselves?

To start off, the version that I watched was from the 2004 box set of the original trilogy. Everyone already knows the plot (even if it's via spoofs), so there's not much point in getting into that. The original "Star Wars" is a good kid's movie. It's got all the elements - a kid (of the whiny variety, Luke Skywalker), a sage wizard (Obi-Wan Kenobi), oppressive parental figures (Luke's uncle and aunt), a beautiful woman (Princess Leia), and a rebel force trying to oppose an insanely powerful dictatorial force with unimaginable fire-power. And it's in space! And there's a million different critters, as well. It's as if this film was genetically engineered to blow a twelve-year old's mind.

Honestly, the series of films that start here cast a pretty large shadow over science-fiction films. It's to the point where anything set in space is going to draw inevitable comparisons to the Star Wars films, if for no other reason than it's a common reference point. With all the archetypal characters, you'd have to work very hard not to repeat something that was contained in these films. On an entertainment and creative level, that's an accomplishment, and this is a good, entertaining film.

My main issues with "Star Wars" and the rest of the franchise aren't so much with the films themselves (although the more recent trilogy isn't quite as good), but in the aftermath. There's at least two TV shows that have recurring "Star Wars"-themed episodes as if they were Christmas specials. There's the obsession with the films, passing off minutiae as if it was clever and funny. It was clever and funny when Kevin Smith did it nearly twenty years ago, but now it feels like buying tickets to a Pearl Jam concert and finding out you're going to be seeing Nickelback instead.

Then there's the attempt to tie this stuff into the nerd/geek culture, which is plainly absurd. What made that culture unique was the attention to forgotten, esoteric material, not reciting lines from one of the most famous (and profitable) movies of all time. Re-contextualizing obscure bits is art, but quoting "Star Wars" makes about as much sense as quoting "Titanic" and thinking it's clever. "Star Wars" is the second-highest grossing film of all time adjusted for inflation. It's not some little indie film that people stumbled on, it's like thinking that "The Bible" is some book that nobody's ever heard of, and then mining it for in-jokes. This is one of the biggest films of all time.

So this is what it comes down to for me: I enjoy watching "Star Wars" from time to time, and find myself utterly annoyed with everything else that surrounds it. The constant referencing of this film and its sequels degrades the impact of this film (also how I feel about "Citizen Kane"), and is a big hint that people who rely on those references might not be as funny as they'd like to believe. George Lucas' handling of his franchise is as extreme as Bill Watterson's handling of the merchandising of "Calvin and Hobbes," and that shameless hucksterism is hard to push out of my head when I'm trying to watch the movies. Is that fair? Maybe not, but if Lucas feels slighted, I'm sure that he can dry his eyes with some of his millions that's he's earned from his enthusiastic approach to merchandising.

3.5 / 5 - DVD

The Rum Diary - 2011

2011-11-06T14:45:00.000-08:00

"The Rum Diary" - 2011
Dir. by Bruce Robinson - 2 hours

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

"The Rum Diary" has a few background details that are pretty interesting. This film is based on a book of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson, which was written in the early 1960's, but remained unpublished until 1998. It's the only published fiction book by Thompson (there is supposed to be a second, as yet unpublished fiction novel written). The story is largely based on Thompson's own experiences in Puerto Rico, so having Johnny Depp playing the main character (Paul Kemp) is a sort of call-back to his portrayal of Thompson in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." And this is also director Bruce Robinson's first film in something like twenty years. That's a lot of background!

Kemp (Depp) is a near alcoholic writer who has managed to wrangle a job as a reporter in Puerto Rico with an English-language newspaper. It's not particularly prestigious, and the editor, Lotterman (Richard Jenkins), largely views the newspaper as light reading to entice Americans to come down to spend some tourist dollars on bowling and gambling. All of this is in the early-1960's, and in contrast to the near-constant violent protests in the streets, there are also wealthy American moguls angling at the best way to extract insane profits from the islands. Kemp gets wrangled into one of the schemes organized by Hal Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), partially by virtue of his position as a writer for the San Juan Star, but also easily lured in through his barely concealed interest in Sanderson's wife, Chenault (Amber Heard). Like most of the other newspaper employees, Kemp is nearly always drunk, and is urged on in this pursuit by his flat-mate, Will Sala (Michael Rispoli), and it nearly always ends badly.

So, there are two main questions to be answered about this movie. The first: how is it as a movie? Not bad, not bad at all. There's a lot of charm to the setting (the island is beautiful, as are the period cars and ramshackle structures), and the story works. Kemp shows up in Puerto Rico hoping to jump-start his attempt at writing novels, but laments his inability to find his "voice" as a writer, even after ten years of writing. This is the main theme to the movie; Kemp starts off as someone who doesn't seem to have a strong opinion about much of anything aside from the need for another drink. But as his drunken antics end up getting him caught up in situations beyond his control, he also finds himself genuinely seeing and reacting to the situation around him (namely, the nearly obscene poverty that many Puerto Ricans find themselves in, and the contempt that Americans like Sanderson treat the locals with).

When Kemp tries to use what skills he has (namely, writing) to attempt to address the situation, his article is quashed by Lotterman, and he's basically lectured that no one wants to hear bad news, and that his job is to make people think that they're living in an island paradise. Any deviation from that will result in the financiers of the newspaper pulling the plug, and everyone will find themselves out of work. With that avenue closed, Kemp is drawn further into Sanderson's business plan to develop a small island into a resort hotel, island inhabitants be damned. You can see Kemp's empathy for the locals turn to disgust at what's going on around him, and in this he starts to find his voice as a writer.

The second question about this movie: how is it compared to the book? I've read a handful of Thompson's books, and enjoyed this one (even if I didn't feel it was up to "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" or "Hell's Angels"). It's not a super-famous novel with legions of fans that are going to revolt at the slightest deviation from the holy scripture. And that's good news, because much of what is taken from the book are the broad strokes (the Thompson-esque main character, the settings, the island development plot). The flavor is there, and that's more important that slavish imitation.

Unfortunately, the movie deviates from the book at the worst time: the ending. In the novel, the characters are forced to scatter because of more legal troubles in the middle of the night. They help each other out in whatever way they can manage, but they're all ultimately on their own. It has the feeling of a brotherhood of scoundrels parting with fondness for one another. In the movie, events wrap up much less dramatically, and with a big, fat Hollywood bow tied around it.

SPOILER!!!

Kemp literally rides off into the sunset, having stolen one of Sanderson's boats, with the intent of tracking down Chenault in New York. We even get the "Animal House" ending (without the benefit of the gang pulling off some giant prank in triumph before) - at some point during his travels on the sea, Kemp turns into Thompson, becoming a revered journalist and getting the girl.

END SPOILER!!!

Granted, the movie isn't aiming for the same tone as "Fear and Loathing" or as in Thompson's writing, but the end kind of took the sails out of the movie for my tastes. It was literally about as trite and artificial ending as you can come up with, and felt kind of unearned (particularly after the sequence of events surrounding Carnival). That's frustrating, especially since I was pretty much on board up until that point.

There's some really good acting in this movie. It's fun to watch Depp do his Hunter S. Thompson again (especially after so many pirate movies), Giovanni Ribisi is fantastic as the greasy, filthy Moburg (greasy isn't enough to describe him; what would you call a concentrated grease?), Michael Rispoli really inhabits his "been there too long" sidekick Sala. Amber Heard is beautiful enough to blind, and it's not hard to believe that Depp's character would be smitten with her at first sight. And generally speaking, this was a decent movie based on a decent book. Unfortunately, the two don't share the same mistakes, each one has it's own problems to deal with.

3 / 5 - Theatre

In Time - 2011

2011-10-31T14:29:00.000-07:00

"In Time" - 2011
Dir. by Andrew Niccol - 1 hr. 49 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

"In Time" is a throwback sci-fi movie, in the best way possible. It's got the same sort of great high concept that movies of it's ilk from the 1970's had, with a more modern execution. The metaphor that holds the movie together (time as currency) is easy to grasp, and the consequences of this system seem both fully formed and very timely.

In this world, time is literally money. People live for their first twenty-five years for free, and then a meter in their forearm starts ticking. They stop aging at that point, and they get one year of currency to start with. When their meter hits zero, they die immediately. But if you don't hit zero, you live as long as you can manage, forever twenty-five in appearance. In a larger sense, the world is broken down into "time zones," which is an approximate class system. In order to travel from one time zone to another, you have to pay, and pay an amount that pretty much keeps everyone exactly where they start. Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) lives in the ghetto, living day to day, in an apartment with his mother (Olivia Wilde). He works at a factory making bank devices that hold time.

Unwinding in a bar one night, a rich stranger (he's got over a century on his meter) nearly gets caught by a gang of thieves, but Will helps him escape and hide. The man has lived for over one-hundred years and doesn't want to live anymore. Long story short, the man gifts Will all of his time while Will is sleeping, and zeros out off of a bridge. This transfer of time (and the suspicious death of the man, a very famous and wealthy man slumming in the wrong time zone) raises the attention of the Timekeepers, which seems to be the only real police in existence. Timekeeper Raymond Leon has been on the job for fifty years, and takes on the Will Salas case.

There are two aspects to this film that I really enjoyed. In the tradition of science fiction, "In Time" takes a look at a current situation through allegory. And this is a very timely movie, taking a hard look at the class stratification and removing poisonous contemporary politics from the discussion. What's invisible in our world is made visible here through the time zones. They're nearly impossible to get out of for a variety of reasons (business manipulating prices to keep people mired, ghetto residents preying on one another, lack of opportunities in general). The wealthy take the view that the lower classes exist so that the rich may be immortal. The classes don't merely have a difference of opinion, they're diametrically opposed. Unfortunately, the poor are held down so that nothing can ever change. Timberlake's character's populist views run in his family, and his actions also play on both sides of the idea of being able to change your own destiny (if you believe in such things).

The other aspect of the film that I really enjoyed was the visual approach taken. Not only do the time zones have distinct looks, everything in this world feels custom. Details like the toll booths (sort of) are different than anything you'd see in reality - rather than a mechanical arm, there's a sort of rolling cement device. The buildings are fantastic, and the automobiles are even better. The cars are customized, clearly starting with real cars, but the grills and details are changed so that it's like a slightly alternate reality. The entire world is stylized in a consistent, pleasing way.

The story plays out somewhere in-between "Logan's Run" and "Bonnie and Clyde," which is a solid place to be. It's always more interesting when the characters are trying to uphold what they think is right, even if that's not the same thing from character to character. The Timekeepers are just trying to uphold the system, even if they're misguided or confused at times. Will Salas wants to upend the system that's keeping people down to benefit a lucky few. Even the wealthy have a view that makes sense to them. So instead of a black and white world, you've just got people with competing interests, also competing to make those interests reality. Between the timeliness of the subject matter, having a solid allegory, and the interesting visual approach, "In Time" is a fun ride.

4 / 5 - Theatre

Apollo 18 - 2011

2011-10-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

"Apollo 18" - 2011
Dir. by Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego - 1 hr. 26 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

"Apollo 18" isn't a bad movie. For what it is, it's not bad at all. And, for the record, what it is is low-budget horror/sci-fi movie with a conceit that could have come out of the 1950's. The material isn't approached in an-over-the-top manner, but that's a double-edged sword.

The idea of the film is that someone has anonymously uploaded eighty-four hours of footage from a secret NASA mission in the 1970's to the internet (for those that aren't history buffs, there were only seventeen Apollo missions). That "found" footage was then edited down into this film, "Apollo 18." It's definitely "The Blair Witch Project" in space. As the manned mission to the moon continues, things start to go haywire. It becomes apparent that the two men who have been sent to the moon (there is a third who stays in orbit the entire time) have been sent under false pretenses. I don't think it'd be spoiling the movie to say that things end badly; no one does a fake documentary that ends up awesomely for everyone involved.

The first thing that was done well here was to cast people who aren't immediately recognizable. The three main characters, Captain Anderson (Warren Christie), Lieutenant Colonel Grey (Ryan Robbins), and Commander Walker (Lloyd Owen) are anonymous enough not to immediately blow the faux-documentary conceit of the film. And in general, I respond better to science-fiction material than I do straight horror material. One of the cool things here is that you get to see vintage space-exploration ephemera casually presented. A lot of time is spent in the shuttle (and there's also a Russian shuttle shown, as well), and it's kind of neat to see nuts and bolts stuff presented.

But a lot of the success of the film hinges on the double-edged sword I mentioned earlier. This is a low-budget movie (made for around $5 million), and all of the things that allow a film to get made for such a modest budget (non-star actors, the documentary approach, not requiring locations to shoot at) also end up hampering the movie. The lack of storytelling flourishes that could make things more interesting (there's not even a soundtrack, much less any kind of liberties taken with editing technique) wind up leaving things to fall flat at times. And especially when you're dealing with a story that's fairly predictable (at least in broad strokes), anything that might have distracted from the long, straight road that you as a viewer are on would have been appreciated. Even the ending is something out of a scare-film; what happened here could happen in your town! To someone you love! Or maybe even you!

Like I wrote before, "Apollo 18" isn't a bad movie. It's predictable, doesn't aim for much, and other than the space equipment, the scenery isn't presented in a particularly impressive manner. But it's short, hits the points it has to in order to function, and at least the idea of secret NASA missions isn't a bad one. And though I know this is faint praise, you could probably do worse.

2 / 5 - Theatre

Our Idiot Brother - 2011

2011-10-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

"Our Idiot Brother" - 2011
Dir. by Jesse Peretz - 1 hr. 30 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

The title of this movie sounds like one of those playful jabs you'd lob at a family member or close friend, but for the bulk of "Our Idiot Brother," the main character's sisters act like they mean every syllable of it. It's kind of troublesome, but would probably be nearly unbearable if not for the easy-going, good-natured charm of Paul Rudd.

Rudd plays Ned, a guy who bears an uncanny resemblance to early-90s Eddie Vedder, who's so trusting that he ends up getting busted for selling marijuana to an in-uniform police officer, and gets sent to jail for it. When he gets out early, he discovers that his organic-farming girlfriend has moved on to another man, and didn't bother to tell Ned about it. She's supremely passive-aggressive, to the point where she won't let him stay there (Ned also worked on the farm, so he's out a girlfriend, a job, and a place to stay, all without notice), and refuses to give Ned their dog, Willie Nelson. Ned successively strikes out with all three of his sisters, unintentionally sabotaging their relationships along the way with his naive honesty.

There are some very funny scenes along the course of this movie, particularly the ones involving Ned and his ex-girlfriend. They have super-passive-aggressive arguments steeped in hippie talk, which ends up being hilarious. But the bulk of the movie is dedicated to Ned's generous geniality pitted against his family's individual determination to lie and act behind other people's backs. It's clear that the audience is supposed to chuckle at Ned's overly generous view of humanity, and possibly identify with his sisters' attempts at alpha-femaling being undone by Ned. The only actress who manages to strike the right note here is Zooey Deschanel, which is probably because her character bears the closest resemblance, personality-wise. Elizabeth Banks' character is too bossy and focused to accommodate much of anything, and Emily Mortimer's is too haggard and worn down by her children and ass of a husband (Steve Coogan) to pay attention to much of anything.

It takes Ned returning to jail (under similar dubious circumstances) for the witches three to realize what's good about Ned, and they rush to his defense. It's less of a triumphant moment than a "what took so long?" moment. I'm not sure exactly what the resistance is to a person just wanting to live happily (and avoid the career-based pitfalls of his sisters), but it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that should take two acts to arrive at. On the other hand, most of the joy of this film is in watching Paul Rudd be easy-going and charming. I can't stress that enough: while it's frustrating watching Ned's family reject him one after another, I didn't feel at all cheated because it was that much fun just watching Ned be Ned.

2.5 / 5 - Theatre

Cool as Ice - 1991

2011-10-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

"Cool as Ice"- 1991
Dir. by David Kellogg - 1 hr. 31 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

When you've got an ultra-hot pop star, it makes sense to throw him or her into a low-budget, quickie movie, so as to extract more cash from their fans before their star fades. I don't fault any of the people involved for making that decision; it's a basic career move for anyone in that position. If you luck out and unexpectedly make something not terrible, you've got new avenues open. If it goes the other way, it probably didn't cost much to make in the first place, and hopefully people will just forget about whatever cinematic abortion you've just created. To give you an indication of which way "Cool as Ice" headed, understand that the film was never released on DVD. There is a nearly endless list of truly awful movies that did get released on DVD, but "Cool as Ice" never made the cut.

What you need to know about Vanilla Ice, according to this film: he's a martial-arts expert (there are two fight scenes, including one where he finishes off a guy with a palm-thrust to the chest!), his every-day wear includes a leather jacket that has "sex me up" written on it in large letters, he's largely incapable of delivering more than one line of dialogue at a time, he rides neon-painted motorcycles with the least intimidating hip-hop biker gang ever, he holds an unnatural sway over little boys (I think that the love interest's little brother loves Ice more than she does), and seduces women via public pelvic thrusts and dance floor dry-humping. Got it? Yep yep.

I'm not going to bother with much of a plot description, but here goes. Ice rolls into a small town, but one of his buddies' motorcyles breaks down. Ice sees girl, chases girl. There's also a b-story about the girl's parents being chased down by some thugs, which is mainly an excuse for the parents to scowl at Ice, but ultimately get proven to be a good guy. So there you go! There are also three musical segments within the film (the first six minutes are basically a Vanilla Ice music video, and the last few minutes are basically the same, with a different song), only one of them plays into the plot at all. In the middle of the film, Ice and crew eject the house band, and deliver the bar patrons into their own special version of hell. Ice starts performing (it's unclear what he does other than ride motorcycles, in the context of the film), spots his love interest, Kathy (Kristin Minter), and then decides to do a song for her. Before he even gets to the first lyric, the first thing he does is go "uh!" and deliver a pelvic thrust all up in her business. Did I mention this was also in front of Kathy's boyfriend? And the entire bar? There are more pelvic thrusts to be had, as well as Ice laying her down in the middle of the dance floor and air-humping the shit out of her, before returning to the task at hand, rocking the mike.

It's hard to get mad about things like that, though. If you're hitting "play" on "Cool as Ice," odds are you're not expecting a quality film. There is, without question, wall-to-wall unintentional absurdity on display, and literally everything present is standard issue. And even the music is second-rate; there's an undeniable catchiness to "Ice Ice Baby" or "Play That Funky Music," even if it's largely due to the source material being sampled. And none of that catchiness is evident in any of the songs here. That should be the one given if you're making a movie about a musician, and even that falters.

So, if this movie is really as awful as I say it is, why not give it a goose-egg on my rating? A couple of reasons. First, there is a lot of unintentional comedy here, from Ice's monosyllabic lines to Ice absolutely wearing out his "Blue Steel" face. And a laugh still counts as a laugh. But probably more importantly, though Vanilla Ice's credibility was shaky even at his peak, this has to count as an early hip-hop movie. Ice's taste is questionable, but he's committed to what he's doing, and this is an attempt to bring hip-hop culture to a wider audience. Believe me, I wish that Public Enemy or Run-DMC or even Digital Underground had been given $6 million to make a movie during this time period. But they weren't. Kid 'n Play did "House Party" the year before, so if you want to see what the early days of rap's chart success looked like, these two films are your then-contemporary options. So even as a spectacular failure, it succeeds on the basis of documenting a particular time and place. That might sound like faint praise, but at the time, everyone wasn't toting a video camera around in their pocket in those days. It may have been a gaudy, neon-encrusted, ridiculous point in fashion history, but at least it's on film. Sure, a painfully bad film, but it's there.

1.5 / 5 - Streaming

Death Wish - 1974

2011-10-16T15:53:00.000-07:00

"Death Wish" - 1974
Dir. by Michael Winner - 1 hr. 33 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

"Death Wish" isn't a bad movie by any stretch, but it's probably more interesting as a cultural artifact than it is just on it's merits as a movie. It came after "Dirty Harry," but continues along the same notion of taking matters into your own hands, in the most extreme manner possible. Partially, you just have to shrug and say, "It was the 70's." But that's not really the entire story.

As for the plot, Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) has his wife and daughter attacked in his own apartment by a gang of hoodlums (including Jeff Goldblum's movie debut). The attack is savage (and benefits from not having been filmed during the last twenty years - instead of the now-standard "shaky-cam" approach, a more documentary, fly-on-the-wall approach is taken); Kersey's wife dies from a beating, and his daughter goes catatonic post-rape. Who knows what to do after something like that happens? Paul reluctantly accepts an out-of-town temporary assignment from his employer on the advice of his son-in-law (who confusingly (and a little whiningly) keeps referring to Paul as "dad"). The trip seems to help, and Paul is befriended by Ames Jainchill (Stuart Margolin), which reintroduces Paul to guns, which he grew up with. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention that Ames drives the sweetest whip ever to grace Tucson, Arizona.

Upon returning to New York, Paul finds out that his daughter's condition has worsened, and that she's going to have to be institutionalized. At this point, Paul snaps (sort of; Bronson's a pretty stoic actor), grabs the pistol that Ames gave him as a present, and starts trolling the streets of 1970's New York City, hoping for someone to try to rob him. He is obliged, and ends up shooting a mugger in the chest. It's a transformational experience for Paul. Up to that point, he's explicitly described as a bleeding-heart liberal, and had been a conscientious objector during the Korean War. He returns to his apartment and literally throws up, but it's not the end of his vigilante rampage. After a series of confrontations, one goes wrong, and Paul is apprehended by the police, but not jailed.

The idea of vigilante justice isn't a new one at the point that "Death Wish" was released, but the particular flavor of it is telling of it's time. It feels like a push-back on the counter-culture movement of the 60's and 70's; straight-laced and responsible people felt threatened, and as if their world was spinning out of control. At one point, Paul asks his son-in-law, "I mean, if we're not pioneers, what have we become? What do you call people who, when they're faced with a condition or fear, do nothing about it, they just run and hide?" The son-in-law stammers out an answer, but the unspoken reply is that it would make you a coward. In this situation, the only "reasonable" response to bewilderment or discomfort is violence. The answer lies at the end of a gun's barrel.

What makes this interesting is the extremes to which people must have felt themselves pushed to embrace vigilantism as an answer. It was the 70's, but in NYC, historically speaking, things hadn't even reached their apex (or nadir). David Berkowitz or Bernie Goetz hadn't achieved infamy by this point, that sort of overt madness was still bubbling under. Thinking of New York now, it seems almost absurd to think that a movie about shooting street thugs would be popular to any extent. But this is a different movie about a different New York.

Charles Bronson's stoicism works well for this character; it's not hard to put yourself into his shoes (especially given the circumstances, ones that would test any man's character). But it's the attack scene early on that really makes this movie work. As I mentioned earlier, if this movie was filmed today, it likely would have been done with shaky camera work and hasty edits. I find myself increasingly numb to that sort of approach; it's gimmicky and ineffective. The trio of thugs (Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Logan, and Gregory Rozakis) are there for money and kicks, and not to entertain an audience. The violence is played as matter-of-fact (and they beat the hell out of the two women, Hope Lange (Paul's wife) and Kathleen Tolan (daughter) and savage. Goldblum's character (Freak #1!) tears off Tolan's clothes and forces a sex act on her, but what we don't have here is titillating close-ups on Tolan's breasts, or even on Goldblum's bare tuchus. Again, director Michael Winner understands the point of the scene, and keeps on point. This is important to the rest of the film, because if the initial attack scene works, the movie doesn't have to keep justifying Paul Kersey's actions each time. And because it does work, the specter of this attack hangs over every one of the other criminals that ends up getting shot. All of the criminals are paying for the sins of the first gang, and in terms of internal logic, the film holds together.

I ended up liking "Death Wish," probably because it's a less-sanitized version of the current incarnation of vigilante movies, the comic book superhero film. It's not fanciful and acrobatic, but it's also no less morally lacking. Obviously, people watch films all the time where they don't agree with the actions of the characters. As entertainment, the movie holds together pretty well, and gives a plausible explanation of how someone could go from being a conscientious objector to gunning down thugs in the middle of the street. Whether or not you think that shooting criminals is a reasonable reaction to crime isn't important; it poses an extreme answer to a problem, which is then the viewer's responsibility to work through and debate for themselves.

3.5 / 5 - Streaming

Friends with Benefits - 2011

2011-10-11T14:20:00.000-07:00

"Friends with Benefits" - 2011
Dir. by Will Gluck - 1 hr 49 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Pleasant surprises are pleasantly surprising. I didn't have much hope for this move based on the trailer, but as you may have guessed from my first sentence, I was pleasantly surprised by "Friends with Benefits." A lot of my indifference going in was based on dreading yet another movie about twenty-somethings trying to circumvent a traditional relationship model, but instead got both a charming romantic comedy and a commentary on how self-awareness hamstrings some people's happiness.

Going in, it's impossible to not know the basic over-arching story. It's the same romcom plot that has been repeated endlessly (and will continue to be repeated endlessly, likely in inferior forms); Dylan (Justin Timberlake) flies to New York at the behest of a headhunter, Jamie (Mila Kunis). They meet cute (in this case, Jamie is chasing a flier around a baggage carousel at the airport), and on the heels of recently ended relationships (Emma Stone and Andy Samberg in small roles) they agree to engage in a sexual relationship, so long as both of them keep their feelings to themselves. At some point, there's a misunderstanding that causes the relationship to go sideways, and they've both got to get to an emotional point where they can reconcile and ride off into the sunset together. In broad strokes, this is exactly a conventional romantic comedy masquerading as an anti-romantic comedy.

However, there are two mitigating factors. As always, when you're dealing with a formula story, the execution is key. Timberlake and Kunis seem to really enjoy each other's company, and have a steady, biting repartee that carries large chunks of the film. While they're trying to be cynical and practical about matters, there's a feeling that it's not a perfect fit for either of them, and that leaves some hope that they're not just soulless beings settling for an imperfect situation. The smaller roles are uniformly well-done as well: Woody Harrelson in particular is a riot as a gay sports editor for GQ (and takes advantage of another opportunity to play basketball in a film). In terms of execution, the pacing is steady and never lags.

The second, more interesting (and slightly less entertaining) element to this movie is the notion of self-awareness. There's a movie-within-a-movie here, an uber-cheesy romantic comedy that stars Jason Segel and Rashida Jones dutifully acting out every awful trope. Both Timberlake and Kunis' characters have a love/hate relationship with the movie - they are aware of the saccharine quality and impossible standards that romantic comedies have set for people, but still want to have a version of it. There is a reason why this story gets told over and over again: the falling-in-love narrative is a universal experience, even if it plays out in a less-glamourous and less-fanciful version in real life. The characters' awareness of this narrative at times keeps them from fully embracing their experiences (one of their shared traits is a difficulty in emotionally connecting with partners), due to a variety of fears.

Instead of just leaving the character development at that, there is a stretch of the film that's pretty rough to watch, where the audience discovers exactly why Dylan and Jamie are the way they are. In short, it's due to flawed relationships with their parents. I have to give credit where credit is due: it would have been very easy to just throw some more R-rated content in the film, and not really start digging, emotionally. But this is where "Friends with Benefits" turns from lame-ass product into something more worthwhile. Dylan is having a very difficult time dealing with the reality of his father's frailty and his mother's disappearance, and it's not glossed over. Jamie's mother is present at times, but highly unreliable, and she seems to have a difficult time staying anchored. In this portion of the movie, the characters go from characters to people.

I'm sure that there are parts of this movie that will age poorly (I've got my eyes on the flash mobs, in particular), but the core is solid, and Timberlake and Kunis have good chemistry. It's a fun movie, except when it needs not to be, and the run-time flies by. This is a perfect example of a movie that doesn't aim that high (or at least pretends to be nothing more than a slightly more raunchy version of a romantic comedy), but through execution and an interesting approach ends up being more than the sum of its parts.

3.5 / 5 - Theatre

Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island - 1983

2011-10-09T14:22:00.000-07:00

"Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island" - 1983
Dir. by Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Robert McKimson, and Phil Monroe - 1 hr. 18 min.

Credit Sequence

by Clayton Hollifield

For my money, Warner Brothers' "Looney Tunes" is the apex of animation. Literally, it does not get better than their best work. There are have been cartoons that I liked better, but they're a different animal. A lot of more modern animation focuses on the writing end, and then gets away with whatever they can get away with visually. But knocking a show like "South Park" on that basis misses the point of the show. I can't think of a modern show that had the double-punch of being really, really funny, and also had it's animation crews stretching themselves to the limit of their abilities. That sort of effort is now reserved for big time special effects movies (and I'm steadfast in calling that animation).

"Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island" is a hybrid of new animation and re-packaged "Looney Tunes" short films. The new animation, which is a story concocted to stitch together the short films, has Daffy Duck (and Speedy Gonzales) stealing a treasure map from Yosemite Sam (and the Tasmanian Devil). Daffy finds a wishing well that grants his wish of creating a resort on the secluded island, and then sells other characters a wish apiece for $500. It's all kind of a spoof of "Fantasy Island," complete with Speedy delivering the "the plane, the plane" line. It has everyone from Foghorn Leghorn to Sylvester's wife asking for wishes, which segue into the re-purposed shorts.

This film is a clever idea for it's time: home video was in it's infancy (and there was certainly nothing like the definitive "Looney Tunes Golden Collection" sets available for those who wanted to watch old cartoons), and if you hadn't stumbled across these ten cartoons on shows like "The Ramblin' Rod Cartoon Show," all of it was new to you. The shorts range from pretty good to really good ("Stupor Duck" and the Sylvester short, "A Mouse Divided" in particular), and while some of the new material's humor is a bit dated (it's a spoof of a thirty year-old show, so that's not unexpected), on the whole the movie holds up well.

Having done a quick Wikipedia cross-check, it looks like six of the ten cartoons here aren't available in any of the "Golden Collection" sets, which increases this movie's value quite a bit. For the ones that are available, it's probably preferable to watch the complete versions, credits and all. It's amazing, and a testament to the Warner Brothers studios that they could release nearly five hundred short films, and still have great cartoons like "A Mouse Divided" unavailable. Besides, I promise you you'll never regret spending an hour or so watching "Looney Tunes."

3.5 / 5 - Streaming

Putney Swope - 1969

2011-10-04T16:51:00.000-07:00

"Putney Swope" - 1969
Dir. by Robert Downey Sr. - 1 hr. 24 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I almost feel like I don't know where to start with this one. One problem with satire is that when you use a timely subject to mock, it can lose relevance over time. "Putney Swope" doesn't have that problem. If anything, the heartlessness, emptiness and ubiquity of the advertising world has increased since 1969. There were some things that went over my head (particularly with the character Swope's behavior), but there was also a lot that remained sharp, funny, and topical.

The movie is set in a standard advertising agency, where the boss keels over dead mid-rant in the board room. The other board members lay out the body on the conference table, steal his wallet and jewelry (and contemplate stealing his cuff links), and then set out to determine who will be the new chairman. According to the rules, no one can vote for themselves. Composer Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson) gets the bulk of the votes - as it turns out, everyone voted for him because they collectively figured that no one else would vote for him. I'd be remiss in not pointing out that Swope is an African-American; a constant source of humor is the idea of Swope taking over a previously whitey-led company in a white land. Swope cleans house, renames the agency "Truth and Soul, Inc.," and sets about ushering in a new style of advertising (and business practices: the cost of an ad is a cool million, in cash). There is constant conflict with those around him, partly based on Swope's refusal to make ads for cigarettes, liquor, or war toys, partly because President Mimeo (played by Pepe Hermine, a dwarf) wants him to do an ad for a poorly-designed automobile.

Swope's methods baffle those around him, but the results are golden. There's a never-ending demand for his services. There are several highlights in the film, but the ads themselves are consistently great (and they're filmed in color, while the rest of the film is in black and white). It's easy to see this movie's influence on other ones, particularly ones like "Kentucky Fried Movie." The commercials don't really serve the plot in any real manner, other than to illustrate what Swope and his agency are doing. They're more important as self-contained jokes, and it makes sense that other filmmakers would expand on that idea and do movies that sacrifice ongoing narrative in favor of a randomness and continued level of entertainment value. And after watching the Lucky Airlines TV spot, it's not impossible to believe that Bill Hicks drew inspiration for his vision of a Coke commercial from this movie.

NFSW Warning!!!

This is a rock-solid piece of low-budget film-making from the 60's (the budget was estimated at $120,000), proof that solid ideas can trump money. For it's time, and for being a narrative film, there are some experimental touches, and the point of it remains sharp. Unless I'm missing the point, it seems to say that most people won't get what you're doing unless there's money involved, and that most people do nothing more than chase money around. The very idea of choosing morals over money is ludicrous in the business world, which is completely upside-down. There have been plenty of movies made about the advertising world, but they're usually made with a nod towards the reality of what advertising is and does, but are commercial enterprises themselves. This movie makes no concessions, which is why it holds up well.

4 / 5 - Streaming

Orgazmo - 1997

2011-10-02T15:33:00.000-07:00

"Orgazmo" - 1997
Dir. by Trey Parker - 1 hr. 34 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Now that "The Book of Mormon" is a huge Broadway hit, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at an earlier Mormon-themed movie that Trey Parker and Matt Stone made (right before "South Park" hit the airwaves). "Orgazmo" is about a LDS missionary in Los Angeles named Joe Young (Parker), who gets lured into starring in a super-hero-themed porno film. He does it for the money, so that he can marry his sweetheart Lisa (Robyn Lynne) in the temple in Salt Lake City, which isn't cheap. Of course, "Orgazmo" (the movie within a movie) becomes a huge success, which complicates his attempt to stay anonymous. Rounding out the cast is the sleazy, evil porno producer Maxxx Orbison (Michael Dean Jacobs), Orgazmo's sidekick Choda Boy (Dian Bachar), Matt Stone playing a confused PA, and a host of actual adult film stars (Ron Jeremy and Juli Ashton, among others).

First off, yes, it's pretty funny, but it's not up to par with Parker and Stone's best work. Part of the reason for that is that Parker and Stone have developed into very sharp cultural satirists, but it took a few years to get to that point. At this extremely early point in their careers, the anything-goes sense of humor is there, but the level of cleverness and insight isn't. Putting a Mormon into the adult film industry sets up for a number of very easy jokes (funny ones, but still...), and "Orgazmo" doesn't get past that, ever. Since Parker and Stone haven't really hit their stride here, they settle for faux-ineptness at times instead of really committing to the material in a more satisfying way.

So what did I like about "Orgazmo?" A lot. For one thing, it's paced pretty well. There aren't any self-indulgent lulls (a pitfall when the director is also the star of the film), the jokes come at a steady pace, and things flow logically (at least as logically as they can). Trey Parker plays wide-eyed pretty well, as does his on-screen girlfriend. There's a few instances of going unbelievably (but hilariously) cheesy with "special effects," like when Young kicks Ron Jeremy's character in the face, or the mansion fire. I found myself laughing all the way through - I can understand why some might not (the shock humor stuff isn't universally successful when not in service to a larger point, as Parker and Stone would correct in later work), but I did.

Unfortunately, the circumstances around the film are almost more interesting. It's an ultra-low budget affair (filmed for $1.3 million) that got some attention because of the "South Park" explosion. It also got slapped with a NC-17 rating (which is discussed in some detail in the MPAA documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated"), which meant that despite Parker and Stone's new-found fame, there was practically no way to even advertise this film through traditional means. There wasn't any real way to edit the movie down to an R (despite the fact that nearly all the nudity in the film are male asses, the setting, language, and abundant use of sex toys for gags would have gutted it), and re-submitting to the MPAA would have been too costly on such a shoestring budget.

"Orgazmo" is funny on a level of the first season of "South Park:" there's a lot of dirty language, shock humor, and fish-in-a-barrel targets. Everyone's got to start somewhere (and yes, I know this is their second film), and this is pretty funny for what it is. But, if you're going back and checking out Parker and Stone's work retroactively, it might be a little disappointing. They don't aim very high, but being able to put together an entire movie on their own (and this cheaply) is a kind of achievement of it own. Making an indie film free of pretentiousness and just focusing on being entertaining makes it unusual for it's time. And I did laugh, even though I had already seen it a handful of times previously. That means I'll probably watch it again at some point.

3 / 5 - Streaming

Moneyball - 2011

2011-09-25T15:12:00.000-07:00

"Moneyball" - 2011
Dir. by Bennett Miller - 2 hrs. 13 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I had to go back and check (because I wouldn't want to lie about something like this), but "Moneyball" is easily the best film I've seen from this year. And it's not even very close, at this point. There are a couple of ways to encapsulate this movie that would make it sounds either dull (how advanced statistical analysis gained a foothold in professional baseball) or a paint-by-numbers genre exercise (an under-achieving former major-leaguer assembles a rag-tag batch of misfit players to make a run at a championship), but that doesn't accurately portray what's here.

This film is based on a book of the same name, authored by Michael Lewis, which focuses on the 2002 Oakland A's season. Lest you think this is just a baseball movie, most of the film occurs off-field and behind the scenes. In professional sports (all of them, not just baseball), there's a sort of class warfare between the big-market teams (think the Yankees or the Lakers) who can afford to pay whatever they feel like paying for talent, and small-market teams, who have to make do with significantly lower amounts of revenue (based partly on the discrepancy in revenues for things like television deals and merchandise sales). As a result, teams like the Yankees are constant contenders, able to avoid the pitfalls of "rebuilding" (a dirty word to any team's fans) by simply buying top talent at top dollar.

In 2001, the A's overachieved, making the playoffs, and paid for it by having their top free agents wooed away by big market teams in the off-season. General Manager Billy Beane (the aforementioned under-achieving former pro, played by Brad Pitt) is faced with the task of having to replace top-tier talent, but not having the resources to do so. The A's owner will not budge on the payroll issue, and that's that. During a routine bargaining session with another team, Beane has a deal thwarted by a whisper. It turns out that the whisperer is Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), who is an economics graduate from Yale. Brand (a pseudonym - it's based on a real person who didn't want to be involved in the movie), in a secretive meeting with Beane in a parking garage, explains his view that many baseball players are valued incorrectly due to things like star power or physical presence, and mired in an ineffective means of scouting. Instead, using a system pioneered by Bill James called Sabermetrics (a form of advanced statistical analysis, abhorred by pretty much all of baseball, which is hammered home in the form of snippets of sports talk radio dialogue that runs as a form of commentary through the film), it's possible to do the impossible: to assemble a team of "misfit toys," undervalued (for whatever reason, including walking funny) and lowly paid players that could do certain things well enough to compete with the big market teams.

Having explained all of that, it's not entirely what "Moneyball" is about. In the largest sense, this is a film about what it's like to convince a tradition-bound business to try to approach things from a new angle. Most are completely unwilling to even listen, and virtually everyone is hostile (from the scouts that Beane is usurping, to the constant chatter of talk radio dj's who can't figure out what Beane is trying to do, even down to the A's manager Art Howe (played here by Philip Seymour Hoffman)). Perhaps the hostility is best summed up by a scene between Howe and Beane, where Howe refuses to play a couple of the players that Beane has designed the players around. Howe tells Beane that he has to run the team in a manner that he can explain when he's interviewing for a new job next season. Even if that meant failure, Howe was not willing to stick his neck out to try Beane's method.

I can't think of one thing about this movie that didn't click for me. Pitt and Jonah Hill work together very, very well, their sort of uneasy friendship leads to a number of laugh-out-loud scenes. The character of Billy Beane is humanized deeply - the failed marriage, his love for his daughter is clear, and the piece-by-piece explanation of how his own playing career feels like weights being added to his burden as the movie plays out. It reaches a climax during the "Streak" portion of the film: even Beane's successes can feel like failures to him. The direction was also fantastic - there are a number of baseball scenes where the sound drops out into absolute silence, a familiar feeling for those who are in absolute focus. And for baseball fans, it helps that they got the details right: actual jerseys, real stadiums, etc. Everything just works.

Obviously, something important happened during the season, otherwise no one would have bothered writing a book (or made a movie about it), but it's something that's best experienced on your own ride. This is a tight movie, and the run-time flew by. It just works, every little bit. It's got the right amount of levity, it's dramatic, it's got enough sports for the guys and enough relationship stuff (and Brad Pitt) for the ladies. There's not much more to say than that. "Moneyball" is a damned fine film.

4.5 / 5 - Theatre

Classic Albums: Pink Floyd - the Making of "The Dark Side of the Moon" - 2003

2011-09-23T15:39:00.000-07:00

"Classic Albums: Pink Floyd - the Making of 'The Dark Side of the Moon'" - 2003

Dir. by Matthew Longfellow - 49 minutes

Part One

by Clayton Hollifield

I'm not the biggest Pink Floyd fan out there, but I don't mind listening to them every now and then. So, coming from that perspective, there's not a ton here that would qualify as "must-see." It's not bad, I certainly do enjoy watching music documentaries, and it's always interesting to watch musicians performing and dissecting their work. However, this neither veers towards "Behind the Music" territory (any troubles that the band members may have had with one another is either ignored or referred to obliquely), nor does it really get heavily into the recording sessions.

This documentary consists of interviews with some of the band members, and relevant on-lookers (like Rolling Stone editor David Fricke and producer Alan Parsons). As far as archival footage, there isn't much. There are clips from a period live performance, and pretty much everything else is photographs with narration. Particularly in a "making-of" documentary, it's helpful to have a rare or noteworthy piece of footage to use as a hook, but aside from a snippet of the demo version of "Money," I didn't notice anything that would qualify. Another note - none of the people interviewed are ever on-screen at the same time. It would have been much more interesting to see the band members discussing the album while whatever interpersonal dynamic exists plays out, instead we have reserved people calmly discussing things from their respective caves (several of the interviews are conducted over a mixing board in recording studios).

This documentary (the title is far too long to keep typing out, forgive my repetition) assumes a basic familiarity with the material (which is fair, considering the importance and popularity of the album), but also commits the fatal flaw of never going through a full version of any of the songs. I can't stress enough how frustrating that is, it's like being forced to listen to a Girl Talk version of "Dark Side of the Moon" when all you really want to do is relax in whatever manner you're accustomed to, slip on some headphones, and dive into the album itself.

So, I'll end on some positives. The whole time I was watching the movie, I really just couldn't wait to listen to "Dark Side" again. It was interesting, if not definitive. And I like to believe that Alan Parsons likes to get stoned, put on his frilly shirt, and go into the studio to listen to albums, separating the channels on a whim (as it appears he does here). But there is one moment in the film that made it worthwhile. While the story veers towards the importance and popularity of the album, David Gilmour wishes that he could have the experience of putting on "The Dark Side of the Moon" and listening to it for the first time with fresh ears. It's an interesting take, as the band members are the only people who really can't ever have that eye-opening experience. That's the cost of making a masterpiece, I guess.

3 / 5 - NF Streaming

Bad Teacher - 2011

2011-09-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

"Bad Teacher" - 2011
Dir. by Jake Kasdan - 1 hr. 32 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There's a fundamental problem with a comedy when all of the funniest scenes don't have the star in them. That's not to say that Cameron Diaz doesn't have some funny scenes, but she kind of gets lapped by her co-stars here. The timing for "Bad Teacher" could hardly be better, following hot on the success of the female-led, raunchy "Bridesmaids." But this movie just isn't in the same ballpark.

The plot is straightforward. A gold-digging ho (Diaz, playing Elizabeth Halsey) has her dream marriage fall apart (meaning one that is primarily for money), along with her dreams of leaving the teaching profession behind. She begrudgingly returns to teaching, hoping to land another golden calf. Fortunately, Scott Delacourte (Justin Timberlake) shows up as a substitute teacher; he's from a family that makes luxury watches. Elizabeth gets it into her head that in order to land Scott, she's going to need some anatomical enhancements, but on a teacher's salary they're hard to come by. And while she's got her eyes on Scott, the gym teacher (Jason Segel) is making a play for her. And all along the way, she's completely indifferent to her students - doing nothing but showing movies for weeks on end, instead preferring to engage in a game of one-upsmanship for the affections of Scott with another teacher, Amy Squirrel (played with a unhinged candy-coated nastiness by Lucy Punch). And she smokes a lot of pot and drinks a ton, too.

I don't know whether to lay the blame for general unfunniness at the feet of Cameron Diaz, or at the writers'. There's certainly an issue with Diaz' performance; while the character's behavior is unquestionably bad, there's a sort of awareness lurking that makes it feel more calculated than natural. That's a problem, it's one thing to enjoy this sort of thing when the character makes the choices she does out of a compulsion or because she just doesn't know better. Instead, it feels like she's aware of what the right choice is, and chooses over and over again to be nasty or selfish. An easy comparison movie is "Bad Santa," where Billy Bob Thornton really inhabits his character as a nasty piece of business, but it feels like a person behaving naturally (if comedically and poorly). Here, it's like a singer not quite hitting the note. Cameron, you're a little pitchy, dawg!

At the same time, the character as it's written is flawed, too. While Diaz is beautiful, she's nearly forty years old, playing a character that's written as a first year teacher. Much like Will Ferrell needing to stop playing athletes due to diminishing believability, Diaz is at least a decade too old to play this role using youthful naivety as the excuse for her behavior. The writing never gives any explanation as to how the character came to be the person she is, which is fine when the character is supposed to be an early twenty-something. But, if you're going to cast a star who doesn't fit into that slot, you need to adapt the story a bit. Forty year-olds don't exist without some sense of history, they don't pop out of nowhere. Even in a raunchy, check your brains at the door comedy, it's a failure at some stage (whether it be writing or editing such explanations out). So, while Diaz's performance was a little tone deaf, the writing didn't give her what she needed to make the character work.

What does work here? Justin Timberlake is pretty funny with his ridiculous earnestness, and Jason Segel's gym teacher is really good, especially when goading Timberlake's character. Lucy Punch is really great - her manic, super-"nice" character works really well as a foil to Cameron Diaz's cynical character. Pretty much all of the smaller roles are knocked out of the park. But when you can't find a way to root for the main character (because it just doesn't quite click, due to the aforementioned issues), it's a nice side dish in an otherwise terrible meal.

Man, I wanted this to be a funny movie, but it wasn't even close. At least Diaz looked really good in the car wash scene...

1.5 / 5 - Theatre

Land of Doom - 1986

2011-09-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

"Land of Doom" - 1986
Dir. by Peter Maris - 1 hr. 27 min.

Title Sequence (I guess even YouTube has it's limits)

by Clayton Hollifield

If you ever wondered what would happen if you jammed "The Road Warrior," an educational film against rape, and "Return of the Jedi" together, and then filmed the resulting script on a budget of zero dollars, here's the answer. And don't be fooled by that "unrated" status either. Unless you get off on swearing or a cast costumed at a leather sex shop clearance sale, there's not much to warrant that rating here. No, we're in no-budget, blockbuster knock-off film hell, and we're in it together.

To make an hour-and-a-half story short, some sort of worldwide war has thrown the world into chaos. Everyone rides custom motorcycles and dresses like Demolition, and spends their time raping and looting. In the midst of this hellscape, a capital-s Survivor named Harmony (Deborah Rennard) comes across an injured man, Anderson (Garrick Dowhen). She's skeptical, but they end up travelling together, largely on the promise of a utopia that he doesn't quite know where it is, but swears he can find. As it turns out, Anderson was booted from the Raiders (the bad guys who run things, not the football team, although it holds up as an NFL analogy as well) for trying to make them less rapey and looty, which means that they eventually get caught and have to bust out of the Raiders' stronghold. This is where the Star Wars nonsense comes in: Anderson and Harmony succeed based on help from some short, hooded figures from the desert (that would be Jawas, if my memory serves).

So you've got a film that roughly (very roughly) approximates the look of the two highly successful "Mad Max" movies (up to that point - and I like to forget about the third one anyways), but is stripped of any of the oil industry criticism, or any point. The action is brutal, in the sense that it's so bad that it took me out of the story repeatedly (see the scene where Harmony bashes a would-be rapist in the head with a rock. Or perhaps I should say that in the absence of a gimmicked rock, she gently touches him in the head with a real one, and gently touches the ground near his head over and over again, with lethal results). The actors point guns at each other, but they rarely visibly fire. It would have improved things immeasurably if the actors had just made "pew pew" noises instead of relying on realistic sound effects. The explosions are real, but not really connected to the action (watch the edits).

I'm of two minds about movies like this. There's a certain amount of amusement in the fact that someone thought this was going to be awesome, and the crew made this film to the best of their abilities, and we still have the results that we have. There's no shame in failure if it's the result of honest effort, and it certainly feels like that. At the same time, it's just not a good movie. And to some degree, laughing at people who actually made a (bad) movie feels shitty. It's cringe-worthy, like watching a sporting event where someone who clearly doesn't belong on the field ends up on the field. You know that something awful is about to happen, and the fact that no one's going to step in and stop it from happening just makes it worse. Watching "Land of Doom" makes me part of the group of people who didn't do anything to prevent the carnage from taking place.

1 / 5 - NF Streaming

Airplane! - 1980

2011-09-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

"Airplane!" - 1980
Dir. by Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker - 1 hr. 28 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

It's so unbelievably rare that a comedy ages well. There are a million reasons for that: topical humor, changing humor tastes and trends (have you tried watching one of Jim Carrey's 90's comedies recently?), targets that lose relevance, etc. "Airplane!" doesn't entirely dodge all of those pitfalls, but it pioneered a particular style of comedy that no one has managed to do quite as well (it's hard to imagine any of the Wayans brothers movie spoofs in a universe without this film).

The script is heavily based on 50's movie ("Zero Hour!"), and it centers around the pilots and passengers of a commercial flight getting food poisoning from the in-flight meal. Only one man on the flight can fly a plane AND didn't have fish for dinner, Ted Striker (Robert Hays). But he's still hung up on a mission gone wrong during the war (time-wise, which would have occurred in the mid 70's - part of the humor of the movie), and hasn't flown since. Like many good comedies, the plot serves somewhat as an excuse to keep things moving along, and provide new backdrops for gags. And there are so many gags in this movie! It's the movie equivalent of Will Elder's "chicken fat" drawing style from Mad Magazine - jokes layered on top of jokes on top of jokes. It's a relentless parade of gags for an hour and a half, and the jokes don't even end when the credits roll.

It's really difficult to get into why something like this works. Part of it is the relentless pacing, which helps when a gag falls flat (and some of the humor is dated). But for every bit that doesn't work now, there's a steady flow of absolute classic bits. For the most part, the actors play things deadly serious, even when something absurd happens right in front of them. I think that it's that level of stone-faced commitment that elevates the material (witness Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, or Peter Graves here). And while most of the gags fly by, there are a couple of continuing gags that run through the course of the movie. The first, an abandoned taxi-cab passenger waiting for Ted to return (while the meter runs, of course), the other is how characters who arrive at the airport handle the religious glad-handers (as it turns out, Stack's Rex Kramer is a martial arts practitioner). Those gags, stretched out over the course of the movie, help keep "Airplane!" from coming off as a slightly more focused version of ZAZ's scattershot (yet also very funny) earlier movie, "Kentucky Fried Movie." It's a small step in the direction of storytelling, but an important one.

For all the things that come off as anachronistic (religious zealots harassing people at the airport (!), a "Saturday Night Fever" spoof sequence, suicide as a running joke), it's just a classic comedy. Thirty-plus years out, and it's still one of the funniest movies that I've ever seen. It launched Leslie Nielsen's comedy career (during a college anthropology class, I remember sitting through a National Geographic film he narrated probably in the 70's, waiting for the gags to kick in), which is worth something on it's own. I don't necessarily think it's the greatest comedy ever, but it's on the short list.

4 / 5 - NF Streaming

Horrible Bosses - 2011

2011-09-15T14:02:00.000-07:00

"Horrible Bosses" - 2011
Dir. by Seth Gordon - 1 hr. 38 min.

Red Band Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

This is the second film I've seen where Kevin Spacey plays a boss who terrorizes his underlings to the point of physical retribution (the first being "Swimming With Sharks"). Sure, that other movie was nearly 20 years ago, but Spacey's so good at being an overbearing boss that I look forward to another one of these kinds of movies in another 20 years or so. I'm not sure which approach I prefer, though.

In contrast to "Swimming With Sharks," a darkly humorous indie film, "Horrible Bosses" has three buddies who all hate their bosses (and not without good reason), and end up talking themselves into killing the bosses to escape their shared, separate unbearable situations. Kevin Spacey plays Jason Bateman's boss, who has been dangling a promotion in front of him in order to extract ridiculous hours and performance out of him. Colin Farrell plays Jason Sudeikis' boss, a cokehead fuck-up who inherits a chemical company and a disdain for his father's ethics. And Jennifer Aniston plays a sexually aggressive dentist who keeps harassing the freshly engaged (and also registered sex offender) Charlie Day.

The most obvious movie to compare this to is "Office Space," in the sense that it shows people who are completely unequipped to pull off major crime bumbling through the process. And while the characters' intense frustration with their work situations is the basis of what comes, the point of the movie is showing these three guys (Bateman, Sudeikis, and Day) interacting and screwing things up. After watching years of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," it's kind of strange watching Charlie Day try to act in a morally positive manner, but not to fear, he still has plenty of opportunities to show off his manic persona. In an early scene, the three men break into Farrell's apartment to do some "recon," which ends up with Day and Bateman accidentally ingesting some cocaine. Boom, Day is wound up like a watch.

Yes, killing your boss for personal gain is a dark plot, but considering that there are predecessor movies with this same idea, I can't hold that against "Horrible Bosses." Besides, the bosses are caricatures, there's little attempt to paint them as anything more than monsters who have earned their fate. But the biggest positive to the movie is that it's funny. The characters work well (the bumbling criminals idea is built to last), and the smaller cameo roles are pretty good, too (especially Jamie Foxx, playing a "murder consultant" named Motherfucker Jones, which gets funnier every time it rolls off of someone's tongue"). I was actually laughing out loud, not just chuckling, and that's not too shabby.

3 / 5 - Theatre

Grandma's Boy - 2006

2011-09-13T13:27:00.000-07:00

"Grandma's Boy" - 2006
Dir. by Nicholaus Goossen - 1 hr. 34 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Is this a good movie? Well, that's a complicated question. A movie can be good without being good, in the sense that a candy bar is sometimes exactly what you need to eat. Would a carrot be better for you? Perhaps, but you may not always be in the mood to eat a carrot. "Grandma's Boy" is that kind of good - it's a candy bar when you need it.

One thing I appreciated very much about "Grandma's Boy" was that, in spite of numerous opportunities to turn itself into a paint-by-numbers "save the house" movie, it never really turns in that direction. Early on, Alex (Allan Covert) is evicted from his house because his roomie has been spending both of their rent money on exotic massages, but instead of rallying to save that situation, it leads to a couple of dicey guest stints (a memorable one involving Nick Swardson's character, a co-worker who still lives at home and sleeps in a race-car bed). Eventually, Alex lands with his grandmother (Doris Roberts) and her two similarly-aged roommates (Shirley Jones and Shirley Knight).

With that settled, the story settles into two-pronged approach - a love story involving a consultant called in to help keep production deadlines (Alex works at a video game publisher), and the professional story about keeping those deadlines. Since this is a light comedy, you probably already know where these storylines are going to end up, but since this is a light comedy, it's all about the ride. And the ride is pretty damned funny. Two of the main actors (Allan Covert and Peter Dante) show up in pretty much everything that Adam Sandler has ever done, and are clearly used to working with one another. In smaller roles, Nick Swardson and Jonah Hill get the chance to chip in asides and one-liners, which works pretty well for them. Kevin Nealon plays a suitably odd, new-agey boss, and the sort of villain (J.P, played by Joel David Moore) is so bizarre and socially awkward that it feels like someone like that could really exist.

Probably the best thing I can say is that, while this isn't a great movie, it's infinitely re-watchable. I've seen this one around half a dozen times, and I still laugh all the way through it. "Grandma's Boy" doesn't set huge goals, but it does stay entertaining all the way through, and if it's on TV, I'm definitely not changing the channel.

3 / 5 - DVD

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - 2011

2011-09-04T20:20:00.000-07:00

"Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" - 2011
Dir. by Rob Marshall - 2 hrs. 16 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Now that was a long movie. And in a sense, I am thankful for that, as I got the maximum amount of air-conditioning value for my movie-going dollar. But in most other senses, I'm not as thankful for that as you might imagine. You might imagine a movie filled with people in fancy costumes (including frequent appearances of powdered wigs and frilly shirts) prancing and chewing scenery might be pretty enjoyable, and while it's not something I'd generally hold against a movie, it didn't help much in this case.

The fourth installment of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise continues the downhill slide. While the first one was a surprise hit (and surprisingly very enjoyable), with each passing film, it's become more and more of a needle-in-haystack search for positive qualities. Part of that might be familiarity - having seen all four, I expect to see large visuals, cool looking ships, physical humor, and chase scenes when I watch a "Pirates" movie. Those things are here, but it felt manufactured and formula this time around instead of grand and playful. But there's also diminishing returns with Jack Sparrow, both in terms of how much of a movie relies on his character, and just generally having now been through four full films with this character.

Here, in "On Stranger Tides," Sparrow finds himself conscripted against his will on Blackbeard's (Ian McShane, one of an army looking magnificent in eyeliner) ship, Queen Anne's Revenge. In an attempt to buck a prophecy foretelling his death at the hands of a one-legged man, he's on a mission to find the Fountain of Youth. Sparrow is lured onto the boat by Angelica Teach (Penelope Cruz), later revealed as Blackbeard's daughter, who has been impersonating Sparrow and recruiting a crew for the mission. Also on the trail of the Fountain are a fleet of Spaniards led by the Spaniard (Oscar Jaenada), and an English expidition led by Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), who has somehow lost his leg in a tussle with Blackbeard. From this, it's a classic adventure plot - collect the items (in this case, a pair of silver chalices from Ponce de Leon and a mermaid's tear), and instigate a ritual.

While the plot manages to generally keep things moving in a forward motion, the characters undercut any suspense. Nearly everything seems designed to irritate Depp's Jack Sparrow, from Angelica's deliberately poor imitation of him to Barbossa's loss of the Black Pearl, but the character itself seem incapable of actual anger or genuine emotion. Mild irritation, perhaps, but nothing that would spur him into action. Sparrow's flamboyant, willy-nilly behavior works as a side dish, but when you thrust that character into the prominent role of the movie and don't sufficiently answer the question of what would motivate that character, much of the conflict and action falls flat. For the most part, everyone else's motivations are either clear or become so, but Jack Sparrow is both the star and selling point of this film. Additionally, once you've driven your character insane (as in "At World's End," which was easily the best part of that movie), is it even possible to push Sparrow emotionally without veering into a surreal fantasy land? If not, whatever is presented as a challenge is going to come off as unimpressive and minor compared to what's come before.

For me, the big action sequences and visuals didn't have much impact (nor were they as clever as anything in the first installment) as a result. And what that means is that "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" felt really, really long. That's about as damning of a comment I can make about an action-oriented film; the best ones fly along until they're over, and you can't believe you've been watching for a couple of hours. This movie really didn't deliver on the things that made the previous ones fun: a sense of cleverness and playfulness, fun, sweeping action scenes, and Jack Sparrow kind of being a dick to everyone around him before pulling back and being more helpful. I admit, I hope this is the end of the line for this franchise; it's been profitable and a good thing for pretty much everyone involved, but new installments have ceased to add anything interesting to the series.

1.5 / 5 - Theatre

Cedar Rapids - 2011

2011-09-04T14:13:00.000-07:00

"Cedar Rapids" - 2011
Dir. by Miguel Arteta - 1 hr. 27 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There's something about Ed Helms that makes me want to see bad things happen to him (on screen, of course), and then watch him freak out about it. That's the basis of both of the "Hangover" movies, and to a much lesser extent, "Cedar Rapids." But don't worry, there are a couple of classic freak-out scenes here.

Helms plays an insurance salesman pressed into giving a presentation at an insurance confidence with little preparation, in an attempt to win an award that his colleague had won each of the last three years. So, no pressure there. His character, Tim Lippe, is the sort of guy who has never left his small town or flown, who offers butterscotches to a prostitute, who wants desperately to please the people around him. During the course of the conference, the wheels fall off of pretty much everything in his life, which ends up being a positive development.

The movie itself is a sort of "welcome to the real world" story, steeped heavily in Midwestern charm and normality. One thing that's pretty notable about "Cedar Rapids" is that the humor isn't as shocking as you might expect, given Helms' other work. But when you set the bar for normal behavior at the unrelentingly friendly and wholesome, you don't have to go as far to get the same laughs. When Tim has a fling with Anne Heche's character, the plot point that godliness is one of the things Tim will be judged on in the running for the Two Diamonds award, I was rooting for him even as he was throwing his opportunity for that award down the drain. This also sets the stage for his first real freak-out, the "I'm a philanderer" scene.

Most of the humor comes out of the differences between the characters. Tim Lippe is a straight-arrow, one who has to have his arm twisted to even have a drink. Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly) is a frequently drunk, just-as-frequently coarse walking argument for ignoring a moral code. Ronald Wilkes (Isaih Whitlock Jr.) is Urkel grown up and gone insurance salesman, who has an affinity for the HBO program "The Wire." Joan (Anne Heche) is, as Tim puts it, "weird." She's married with kids, and relishes the yearly opportunity to be someone different at the conference. They're kind of caricatures, but sharply-drawn ones, and they work very well off of one another (which can happen when you've got a bunch of really good comedic actors). It ends up being believable that they'd end up being friends with one another.

"Cedar Rapids" is pleasant, it's funny, it's proof that you don't have to do an "R-Rated Comedy" to have an R-rating and still be funny. It's very much an adult movie, in the sense that it's not hard for an adult to relate to the motivations of the characters (things like being stuck in a rut, having to perform at your job "or else," the unexpected joy of finding new friends as an adult) and their reactions to certain situations. That's a neat accomplishment for any film.

3 / 5 - DVD

Super 8 - 2011

2011-08-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

"Super 8" - 2011
Dir. by J.J. Abrams - 1 hr. 52 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

"Super 8" wasn't exactly what I was expecting, based on the trailer, and thank goodness. It ended up being much, much better. Generally speaking, movies heavily featuring children aren't something I'm eager to watch. In this case, writer/director J.J. Abrams pulls a Tarantino, taking stock movie elements and turning them into something clever, suspenseful, and highly entertaining.

The movie opens in the aftermath of tragedy, the death of a parent. With that hanging over one of the characters, Joe (Joel Courtney) and Charles (Riley Griffiths) continue working on their zombie short film. While shooting a scene late at night, they find themselves at ground zero of a train derailment, which turns their small town upside down. Dogs (as in all of them) run away from home, appliances go missing, and the military shows up to lock things down. All of the kids seem at least mostly focused on completing their movie, until the plot threads intersect. At this point, they're drawn into things largely out of their control, but aren't completely stymied by it.

Points of praise: the characters all had their own motivations, and weren't just there to further the plot. That's something that frequently gets lost in more fantastical movies, but each person acting consistently in a way that makes sense definitely helped to build drama. Also, the batch of teenagers that held up most of the film did a good job, and Abrams has a deft touch with their dialogue. Overall, the movie didn't sag, even in slower parts. The run-time flew by, which is key for action-oriented movies. And, most importantly, they ran the entire zombie movie the kids were shooting during the credits, which was a riot.

I don't have anything to complain about with "Super 8"; it's a quality mainstream summer action movie, and one that doesn't insult your intelligence. That's too rare of a feat. The children didn't turn into superheroes, the emotionally heavy scenes weren't sledgehammers over the head, the fantastic elements were handled well (in the vein of the original "Alien" movie). It's just a job well done, and I'd like to see this one again.

4 / 5 - Theatre

Caligula - 1979

2011-08-28T20:00:00.000-07:00

"Caligula: the Imperial Edition" - 1979
Dir. by Tinto Brass, Bob Guccione, and Giancarlo Lui - 1 hr. 41 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Well, it looks like the version of "Caligula" I watched was the most heavily-edited version. I'm not sure that more of the sort of thing that was cut would make much of a difference in the quality of this movie, and I'm not certain I would have even finished a version that was a full hour longer.

"Caligula" straddles an odd line - somewhere between a historical epic and a full-on porno film. It's a bad combination; if you want titillation, you're going to be very frustrated by the extended plot sequences. If you want a historical epic (albeit a graphic, baudy one), at some point you'll probably want Caligula to stop molesting his sister (just kidding, it's totally consentual here) and get on with the plot. Also, the constant need to have half-dressed or naked people in virtually every scene is kind of giggle-worthy. I mean, if you were going to break rocks with a pick-axe with a gang of other men, even if you thought that letting your doodle flap in the wind was safe (and you could get OSHA to agree), you still might want a pair of shoes or sandals or something.

So let's get into the plot, since I was deprived of all the truly graphic material. Tiberius Caesar (Peter O'Toole) is old and dying, so Caligula (Malcolm McDowell) decides to help him achieve death in a more timely fashion (but not with his own hands, because he's kind of prissy that way). With Tiberius dead, Caligula is the new Caesar, and is free to shape Rome in whatever way he desires (which would lead back to the aforementioned incestual relationship with his sister, Drusilla). Caligula quickly turns out to be a somewhat unreliable choice, which is amplified by the death of his sister. Ultimately, he is killed and replaced as Caesar. But pretty much everyone is either half-naked or surrounded by fully naked people all along the way.

And yeah, "Caligula" is pretty much just as bad as it sounds. Even with the copius nudity as enticement to make it through, eventually my eyes grew numb to all the flesh, and all that was left was Malcom McDowell prancing around all over the place, with Helen Mirren looking on lustily. I kind of feel like that, having suffered through the meat of the movie, there ought to be a version consisting ONLY of the pornographic and soft-core elements that I can be rewarded with, without the distraction of Caligula trying to bang his sister over and over again breaking up the more salacious elements of the story. Without that disc of bonus material, there's not much point to this film at all.

1 / 5 - NF Streaming

The Man Who Fell to Earth - 1976

2011-08-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

"The Man Who Fell to Earth" - 1976
Dir. by Nicolas Roeg - 2 hrs. 19 min.

Re-Release Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

"The Man Who Fell to Earth" is a product of another time, first and foremost. There are two kinds of sci-fi movies (of which this loosely qualifies); ones based around ideas, and ones based around visuals. I tend to be of the opinion that special effects ruined science fiction: why spend the time developing mind-blowing ideas when you can just make something look cool instead? This film decided to take someone who was cool (David Bowie), and build a fish-out-of-water story around him. The sci-fi elements remain in the background of the story for much of the film (while Bowie is playing a spaceman, he is a stranded one who must amass an Earthly fortune in order to even attempt to return home. Spaceships ain't cheap!), and the focus is more or less on Thomas' (Bowie's character) relationships; a romantic one with Mary-Lou (played by Candy Clark) and a professional one with Nathan Bryce (Rip Torn).

The film takes advantage of Bowie's image at the time (a somewhat distant, affected one), so I'm uncertain of whether he's a talented actor (Bowie won an award for his role in the 26th Berlin International Film Festival) or the beneficiary of perfect casting. Either way, it works. Torn and Clark have more difficult roles, playing several different ages while Bowie's character never ages at all.

As for the plot, it's present, but not very insistent. This is a leisurely-paced film, at times more concerned with having Bowie acting weird and distant, or with showing it's characters naked (not even getting into the women, both Torn and Bowie go full-frontal at different points). Director Nicolas Roeg takes full advantage of the natural beauty of New Mexico, there are numerous, languorous shots. While this makes sense, it's also problematic. When you're trying to get across something is boring, it's pretty important not to actually bore your audience. Thomas is clearly impatiently killing time until he's made enough money (and developed technology far enough) to attempt to return home, but there are too many times where it feels like the film is just killing time, too. For the era it's from, a little meandering isn't unexpected, but this movie is nearly two and a half hours long.

Visually, there are some interesting things going on (Bowie's lean, angular frame being part of that), but it's not quite the equivalent of other then-contemporary fantastic films (in the sense of fantasy - wild visual ideas spread across a big screen). I wanted to like this movie, and I did, but I wasn't blown away. I especially liked the sort of mundane approach that an alien had to take to try to return home (filing for lucrative patents isn't that glamorous, but clever in a sophisticated way), but the film's insistence on taking a scenic route to whatever the point is ultimately makes it hard to love. There are a few graphic, shocking scenes along the way to break things up (Thomas' apparently losing his mind in front of a wall of TVs while Mary-Lou wails at him, Thomas' reveal of his alien form to Mary-Lou, a scene late in the film involving a gun), but it's just not enough to add up to a satisfying experience. I appreciate the vastly different track taken with a science-fiction idea, and would like to see more films in this vein, but this was not a home-run.

3 / 5 - Theatre

Revenge of the Nerds - 1984

2011-08-22T13:15:00.000-07:00

"Revenge of the Nerds" - 1984
Dir. by Jeff Kanew - 1 hr. 30 min.

Official Trailer

Comedies rarely age well, but "Revenge of the Nerds" fares better than a lot do. A small reason for that is that it felt like half the cast went on to have decent careers (everyone from Anthony Edwards, to John Goodman, even people with small roles like James Cromwell). But the biggest reason is that this is a pretty tight movie - mostly killer, very little filler.

Lewis and Gilbert are off to college (played by Robert Carradine and Anthony Edwards, respectively), where they fully expect to engage in the sort of behavior that they've been led to believe college is all about. The catch? They're nerds, although they don't really seem to realize that. This point is made at their expense, as the college football team burns down their house, and forcibly take over one of the dorms. The batch of misfits, including Lewis and Gilbert, are left to bunk at the gym until they can find accommodations on their own (which sounds absurd, except that the same thing happened when I was in college in the dorms. The school deliberately oversold dorm accommodations, and whoever didn't get a room had to live communally in the common area until enough people got fed up and found apartments on their own). They do eventually find a house and apply for membership with a fraternity, and are thoroughly despised by the more traditional Greek houses.

From there, it's a battle to be taken seriously (and not have their house trashed by the football team on a whim). After smaller acts of revenge (such as a panty raid, natch), they compete in a sort of athletic fraternity competition for control of the Greek council, which would protect them from having any investigations into their treatment being railroaded and ignored.

One of the interesting things about this movie is how much things have changed. Jocks vs. the nerds is an eternal battle, but we live in a time now where literally everyone is trying to lay claim to nerd-dom or geekery.
Beyond that, there's a lot of borderline behavior here that wouldn't fly in a contemporary film (seriously, a panty raid? We have internet porn for that sort of thing now), whether it be considered hazing (the 20-lap, beer-a-lap tricycle race), bullying (take your pick, and it comes from every direction), borderline rape (Lewis' initial intimate encounter with Betty), or racial insensitivity (Booger's "What the fuck is a Robster Craw?"). Having said that, I still laughed at all of it (except the panty raid. Seriously...), so I guess the bottom line is that something's only offensive if it's not funny.

"Revenge of the Nerds" isn't outrageous as some modern comedies (at least not in the same way - selling cream pies with a nude pic of the girl you're trying to get a date with is an interesting approach, to say the least), but it's paced really well, there are a number of memorable scenes, and it's got a good cast. You could do a lot worse than kicking back with this one.

3 / 5 - NF Streaming

30 Minutes or Less - 2011

2011-08-19T16:50:00.000-07:00

"30 Minutes or Less" - 2011
Dir. by Ruben Fleischer - 1 hr. 23 min.

Official Trailer

This was a movie that I was actually pretty excited to go see, and now that I have seen it, I don't have a whole lot to say about it. Yes, it is about as funny as you'd expect. If you're a fan of Danny McBride, Jesse Eisenberg, Nick Swardson, or Aziz Ansari, you're not going to be let down (although I thought Michael Pena knocked his role out of the park). If you're going because it's from the director of "Zombieland," well, it's not on that level.

Basically, you've got a film about how male friendships survive stress (in the guise of a dumb criminal caper plot). One of the things that is done really well is feeling like the pairs of guys (McBride and Swardson, and Eisenberg and Ansari) actually have been friends for a long time. That's the sort of thing than can float fairly inconsequential movies (like David Duchovny and Orlando Jones in "Evolution"), and take the air out of films when done poorly (which happens more often than I could count). And while I know it's a staple of this sort of film, the directionless of the core of main characters kind of drags things down. That sense of directionlessness isn't necessarily a movie-killer (see "Slacker" or "Clerks" to start with), but here I felt like it needed to either be amplified or addressed in some meaningful way. Yes, even in a superficially dumb comedy, these things need to be worked out.

Well, that's more words than I figured I'd squeeze out on the topic of "30 Minutes or Less." Yes, I laughed, and yes, I enjoyed it. You probably will, too. But there's not much about these 83 minutes that resonate beyond the cinema.

3 / 5 - Theatre

Green Lantern - 2011

2011-08-14T15:26:00.000-07:00

"Green Lantern" - 2011
Dir. by Martin Campbell - 1 hr. 54 min.

Official Trailer

By Clayton Hollifield

It's not often that a movie completely blows it right off the bat. And by that, I mean within the first five minutes of the film, "Green Lantern" was completely ruined. Before we even get to nerdy points of contention like casting, how the costume looks, or how close to the source material the film remains, "Green Lantern" was a piece of burnt toast. Sure, there are other things along the way that are laughable, violate basic storytelling laws, or are just plain stupid, but to screw the pooch so immediately and vigorously is a rare feat.

I'm not going to recap the plot in detail. Buy a "Green Lantern" comic (or hit up your library and borrow a book) if you want to know. Basically, Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is a pilot who finds a dying alien, who then bestows a ring and green lantern on Jordan. This turns him into a superhero. So now you're up to speed.

Back to the problem at hand. This movie blows both the "journey of a hero" story and sucks all of the joy out of a sci-fi spectacle at the same time. The opening scene is set on a cosmic scale, explaining who the Green Lantern Corp are, and how the whole thing works. Well, mystery solved. Opening the film in this way serves two purposes, neither of them positive ones. First, it eliminates the sense of wonder that comes when a sci-fi story goes from everyday to cosmic. "Green Lantern" saves nothing for the wedding night. One of the principle joys of these kinds of film is the gradual discovery and understanding of a world larger and more spectacular (hopefully) than our own. But that only work if you keep your legs together, to further the metaphor. Instead, this film becomes a piece of meat splayed out, served on a platter. Secondly, when Hal Jordan goes through the inevitable "whoa" phase, he looks like a nimrod because the entire audience is already three paces ahead of him. Jeez, Hal, we already saw O'a. Catch up already.

As for the journey of the hero story, the writers (there are four of them credited) apparently thought it would be a good idea to, whenever Hal Jordan aspires to do something more than sit around and be reliable, have women and children start crying. I wish I could say this happened only once, but I remember a minimum of three times this happened. That's a hell of a heroic message: anything other than couch surfing will make every one you know weep (and call you a child, which happens at least as frequently). I began to think that the true heroic tale of this story was not Green Lantern vs. Parallax, but Hal Jordan rising about his awful, manipulative friends and family to make anything out of himself at all. All the people around Jordan drill him constantly about being irresponsible and a child, which leads to another point: show, don't tell.

"Show, don't tell" is a basic storytelling maxim. It means that whenever possible, it's better to have things like character traits be explained by actions or scenes than to do it in dialogue. And when you're dealing with a huge budget, sci-fi, special effects extravaganza like "Green Lantern," you'd think that might be the one area that they'd knock out of the park. Instead, we get things like Hal's family and friends alternating between berating him and crying over him, extended expository sequences explaining O'a (the home planet of the Green Lantern Corp), how the ring/lantern combo works, and training sequences. Just way too much talking, and not nearly enough spot on character work.

That's kind of understandable though, since most of the actors don't really do much with what they've got to work with. Ryan Reynolds was fine, but his love interest, Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), was awful. She's part of the berating/crying crew, and was a Smurfette to boot (the only other significant female role belonged to Angela Bassett, but she didn't interact with many of the other characters). To me, when there's only one woman around in a sea of men, her relationship with the star doesn't mean much. It means that he's the alpha male and she was simply what was available. If that's not what a filmmaker is trying to imply, then you need more female characters around to turn Carol from the town pump into someone worth pursuing. It's understandable that Hector Hammond (played by Peter Sarsgaard) would be jealous over Carol and Hal's relationship; short of mail-ordering a bride from Russia, the village's allotment of women has officially been claimed. It annoys me to no end to have to point this sort of thing out, but it's just another point on a checklist of reasons why this movie was really, really bad. There are hoes in many area codes, so why not throw a few of them a payday to patch up a plot hole?

I could get into how this movie shamelessly and ineffectively rips off the Star Wars saga at every opportunity, but why beat a dead horse? For exercise, I suppose. The special effects were kind of underwhelming. They bluntly state in the film that the ring can do literally anything that Jordan can imagine, but he doesn't appear to have much of an imagination. DC Comics is now responsible for two of the worst films I've seen in recent years (this and "Jonah Hex"). Even though the run time wasn't excessive, I got fidgety and bored at several points. This is the sort of thing that I have a soft spot for, but a bad movie is a bad movie.

1 / 5 - Theatre

Fritz the Cat - 1972

2011-08-13T15:16:00.000-07:00

"Fritz the Cat" - 1972
Dir. by Ralph Bakshi - 1 hr. 18 min.

Teaser Trailer

"Fritz the Cat" is, at this point, more of an important film than a good one. The lessons it has to offer have been largely absorbed: adult-oriented animation is it's own genre now. At the time "Fritz" was made, that was pretty far from the case. The proof of that lies in it's pulling an "X" rating.

"Fritz" is an anthropomorphic movie, based on a R. Crumb comic. Fritz, the character, is a disaffected NYU student, a writer longing to live life to the fullest. He's a part-time musician, full-time tail-chaser, occasional dope-smoker. Most of the movie is a satire of Fritz and his lifestyle, pretty much everyone except Fritz can see through his aspirations. He accidentally burns down his dormitory because his roomies are immersed in their studies instead of carousing, he goes to a crow bar because he wants to understand the plight of the crows, after a night of smoking weed and running around with a hooker, Fritz incites a riot that sees the crow that had befriended him get shot by the police (while he escapes untouched). One of his girlfriends tracks him down and offers to drive them out to San Francisco, and to get a secretarial job while Fritz works on his poetry. After that falls apart, Fritz falls in with a radical anti-establishment group, and finally realizes that it's all a load.

So where did "Fritz" earn it's X-rating? By today's standards, there's a lot of sexual content. Today's adult-oriented cartoons seem to largely ignore sexuality, lean heavily on swearing, and offer a wink and a nudge toward drug use. Here, all three are front and center. It doesn't feel out of place, director Ralph Bakshi offers a coarse world full of people concerned only with physical pleasure, and in that regard it nails it's target perfectly. It would be difficult to satirize the 60's with any insight at all without confronting this behavior, so I didn't really feel the material was prurient or solely for titillation. So I guess it's a matter of taste. I wouldn't claim that "Fritz" is for everyone, but it didn't feel like the controversial material was there without purpose.

My favorite scene in the whole movie doesn't have any controversial material in it, however. When Fritz's New Yawker girlfriend decides that it's time to eat in the middle of their road trip, Fritz goes off on this tangent about how he wants to find a greasy spoon diner, so that he can talk with the truck drivers about what life on the road is really like (as if they'd give him the time of day). He gets very excited about the idea, and she spots a place and makes a beeline for it. They find themselves in a Howard Johnson, Fritz looking like he'd rather kill himself than eat there. Post-meal, the girlfriend says something about always being able to rely on Howard Johnson for a good steak. It's a sharp piece of business, delineating how much their expectations out of life differ, and foreshadowing their blow-up later in the film.

"Fritz" is pretty interesting - I'm always fascinated by low-budget animated films come to be. It's a trailblazing film, although when you're satirizing something very current, time isn't always going to be as kind as you'd like. It's difficult to imagine that today's crop of adult-oriented cartoons would exist without "Fritz" existing, if only for the idea that cartoons didn't need to be for children. Plus, if you ever wanted to see a cat try to hump a crow, "Fritz the Cat" has it covered.

3 / 5 - NF Streaming

Cheech & Chong's Next Movie - 1980

2011-08-05T15:37:00.001-07:00

"Cheech & Chong's Next Movie" - 1980
Dir. by Tommy Chong - 1 hr. 39 min.

Official Trailer

It's really hard to hold incoherence and a meandering pace against this movie, especially since you may or may not be in an incoherent and meandering state of mind when you enjoy it. I also can't really explain much of the plot, as it's not even secondary here. Instead, it's a series of connected skits (sort of) that exist just to be funny and entertaining, and definitely do not advance plot or story. It's Cheech and Chong, man!

So what's the good side to "Cheech & Chong's Next Movie?" There are some, actually. First, I was impressed with the fact that Cheech and Chong managed to stretch out a minimal story over 99 minutes. Seriously, there's not a lot going on, but it doesn't exactly drag as you might expect. Part of the reason for that is that they seem willing to let others get some. There's a scene at the welfare office that has Michael Winslow (that guy from the "Police Academy" movies that makes noises) doing his thing while Cheech tries to get frisky with a girl in the behind him, and Chong just sits and enjoys the show. It's a funny sequence, and despite it being somewhat of a non-sequitur, it makes sense in the context of a bunch of guys with nothing better to do than pass time at the welfare office. This movie also introduces Edie McClurg (whom you should know from a lot of stuff, but probably as the secretary from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"). Yes, Cheech and Chong get her stoned, and they get a lot of mileage out of that, as well.

But the biggest secondary part belongs to Paul Reubens. Yes, Pee-Wee Herman is a character in this movie, years before he'd get his own movies and TV show. Reubens plays a hotel clerk, naturally at odds with Cheech (playing a second role, a cousin of Cheech's normal character) and Chong. At one point, frustrated with the fact that the police won't help him out, he claims that they look like Iranians (this, on the heels of the Iranian hostage crisis), which seemingly brings out the entire police force. They end up hauling Reubens in, though. Later in the film, Reubens does Pee-Wee in a comedy club scene. He gets frustrated at Cheech & Chong's heckling, which leads to impromptu comedy bits from Cheech, Chong, and McClurg. So, credit where credit is due - Cheech & Chong do let other comedians have their moments, which adds to the finished product.

I did kind of enjoy this one, although it's not on par with "Up in Smoke." Part of it may be that there's not a level of freshness to the characters, but that's what happens over time. On the other hand, they do know their audience, and deliver exactly what their fans want. I respect that; hitting your nail squarely on the head is nothing to be ashamed of.

2.5 / 5 - NF Streaming

Larry Crowne - 2011

2011-08-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

"Larry Crowne" - 2011
Dir. by Tom Hanks - 1 hr. 38 min.

Official Trailer

"Larry Crowne" is a very pleasant movie, which is both it's appeal and downfall. Also, as a film-goer, you should probably already have a strong opinion on whether or not you want to watch Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in a middle-aged romantic comedy. I didn't find the idea all that offensive, and there wasn't anything better playing at the theatre that I hadn't already seen, so that was good enough for me.

Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks) is a multiple-time Employee-of-the-Month award winner who is abruptly fired from his job at UMart, chiefly because his lack of higher education means that he'd capped out how high he could go in that organization. Also, he's upside-down on his house, as a result of having bought out his ex-wife's half on the wrong side of the housing bubble. When his job search proves unfruitful, Larry bites the bullet and enrolls in his local community college. While it's unclear, it seems that the Dean of the school encourages Larry to enroll in a speech class as some sort of prank on the instructor. Mercedes Tainot (Julia Roberts) is the other half of the love story, a perpetually drunk, ill-tempered community college instructor who is unfulfilled both in career and love.

That description sounds nearly hellish, but despite the rough circumstances and timeliness of the details, it is not. Again, both Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are capable of super-human levels of charm, and the determined, somewhat stoic way that Hanks reacts to getting through whatever problems he encounters is kind of inspiring. Problems can be dealt with, sometimes even in a way that leaves you better off. I found that part particularly interesting; this film serves as a sort of pep-talk to America right now, but it seems to be one that's been largely ignored.

I don't want to suggest this is a brilliant film or anything, it's a very light romantic comedy. It's somewhat successful on those terms, but it doesn't really play with the form or the format in any meaningful way. "Larry Crowne" is charming, almost in a retro kind of way. It's also a smooth film, the work of talented people who know what they're doing. They hit all the emotional points along the way that they need to hit, but it never deviates. There's nothing wrong with a bit of escapist fluff, especially one as relentlessly positive as this one, but it only goes so far.

2.5 / 5 - Theatre

Dagmar's Hot Pants, Inc. - 1971

2011-07-29T15:26:00.000-07:00

"Dagmar's Hot Pants, Inc." - 1971
Dir. by Vernon P. Becker - 1 hr. 31 min.

Official Trailer

Two things: it took me four separate sessions to get through this movie. Second, I have no idea what the title refers to. The titular (that refers to someone's name being in the title, sicko) main character (played by Diana Kjaer) didn't wear hot pants that I can remember, and certainly wasn't any CEO. No, Dagmar is a hooker with a heart of gold and an eternal smile (and a passing resemblance to Emma Stone), and she's on her last day of work. It's a busy day, though, there are a lot of clients with needs to be tended to, and a lot of loose ends to tie up. Why is she leaving, and where is she going? That's on a need-to-know basis, buster.

"Dagmar's Hot Pants, Inc." is a fantastic title, even if it's a bit misleading. I don't mean to imply that the film was awful exactly by mentioning how much I had to break it up in order to get through it, although it's not really a good film, either. You have to judge these things by what they're trying to accomplish, and it's clear aim is to be a 70's European sex comedy (you can always tell these things by the horn-heavy music and the fact that the women can't seem to keep their clothes on). On that basis, there's a lot of nudity and good looking women, there's a parade of implied sex (client after client after client), and it's definitely in Copenhagen. As for the comedy, well...

There is actually one good scene, a wordless one where Dagmar visits a classical conductor (I'm assuming) who's cranking his reel-to-reel, and they end up in throes of passion choreographed to the blaring classical music. As for the rest of the scenes, did I mention the frequent nudity and that the lead actress kinda sorta looks like Emma Stone? Anyhow, Dagmar's plans go awry when her pimp shows up right before she's scheduled to hop on an airplane, and grounds her with the limpest pimp slap I've ever beholden. She manages to slip away after her gazillionth shower of the movie, and wings her way to (SPOILER ALERT) her new husband, who she's been putting through medical school with her horizontal ways.

Look, there's a big part of me that thinks it's disingenuous to have some universally-liked, happy hooker who apparently has no bigger problem than a limp pimp and over-scheduling. And I'd certainly be more forgiving of that if the movie was funnier to begin with. But just how I started by telling you two things, I'll leave you by telling you two things. First, this movie's about the boobs, stupid. You and I know going in the whole point is light titillation. Secondly, after watching "Dagmar's Hot Pants, Inc.," I kind of miss tan lines. A bare-white ass is miles funnier than a tanned one, and it's also kind of charming to not have to imagine a parade of bare asses all jammed up in a tanning booth, one after another, not to mention more hygenic.

2 / 5 - NF Streaming

Captain America: the First Avenger - 2011

2011-07-25T14:45:00.000-07:00

"Captain America: the First Avenger" - 2011
Dir. by Joe Johnston - 2 hrs. 5 min.

Official Trailer

I've got to give credit where credit is due: Marvel Studios is doing a great job of making fun adventure movies out of comics characters I do not, and have never cared about. For the fourth time in a row, I've been pleasantly surprised by their offerings (preceded by the two Iron Man movies and this year's "Thor"), so it might be time to re-adjust my expectations. Then again, going by the "The Amazing Spider-Man" trailer shown before this movie, maybe I'm going to want to wait one more movie before doing so.

Captain America, in case you didn't know, was a comics character created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in the midst of World War II, and was a huge success. The character actually pre-dates Marvel Comics, but was included in the original Avengers team (which shouldn't be a spoiler, unless you really don't know anything about Cap and where these Marvel movies are headed). The quick version of the character is that Steve Rogers is a scrawny kid who desperately wants to join the Army and fight for his country, but is medically unfit to do so. However, there is a loophole, the Super Soldier Project, in which Rogers happily enrolls.

The film is set in the early 1940's for the most part, although courtesy of Hydra (Hitler's radical science division), there is some anachronistic technology. The fight scenes and war material are fantastic (in the sense that it's not rooted in reality), and I didn't mind that, seeing as how the character is essentially war propaganda (and there is a nice take on that following Rogers' physical change in to Cap). Captain America (played by Chris Evans) eventually takes on the task of wiping Hydra off the map, and directly taking on Hydra's leader, the Red Skull. Along the way, the movie hits all the points it needs to, both in a storytelling sense and in a continuity sense. There are nice nods to "Thor" and the Iron man movies (there's a macguffin from Thor's world, and Tony Stark's father, Howard Stark is a prominent character here), which is important to the sort of people who would be pre-inclined to see a Captain America movie.

I don't know how to discuss the film without getting into plot points, which I'd rather not do. I'd rather say that this was a satisfying movie, and definitely did it's job in setting up the next film in the series. Captain America comes across as a total hero (which he is), has a bittersweet love story with a beautiful woman (Hayley Atwell), and the bridge between the WWII era and the modern day is a lot better than in the comics version (where Cap was pretty much an ice cube that washed ashore). My only real gripe is a comic geek one: Chris Evans has now played the Human Torch (in the Fantastic Four movies) and Captain America, which could cause the universe to cleave in half. I guess that would be a bigger problem if the FF movies hadn't been so lame.

3.5 / 5 - Theatre

BASEketball - 1998

2011-07-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

"BASEketball" - 1998
Dir. by David Zucker - 1 hr. 43 min.

Official Trailer

Now that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are established, respected satirists, it's interesting to go back and take a look at one of their early, non-South Park works. "South Park" built a quick buzz, and this is one of the few external attempts to cash in on that buzz. Actually, that makes it sound like a bad thing, which it isn't. They were very hot for a period of time, and a lot of people wanted to capitalize on that. For the most part, Parker and Stone stuck to "South Park," but this is the one movie they made that they didn't have complete responsibility for.

"BASEketball" is actually the last live-action film Parker and Stone worked on after "South Park" began airing ("Orgazmo" was filmed before they started working on the TV show) to date. "South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut" was animated and "Team America" was a puppet movie. David Zucker (of "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun" fame) co-wrote and directed this film, which is the only time Parker and Stone haven't assumed those duties, as well. So "BASEketball" is kind of an odd duck in their careers.

The movie itself is a satire of professional sports (starting with a dead-on montage sequence explaining how sports found themselves in such a lowly state). Cooper (Parker) and Remer (Stone) are twenty-something layabouts who end up inventing the sport of baseketball at a party in a futile attempt to impress some former classmates. The sport takes off, going from driveway pastime to nationally televised, thanks to millionaire Ted Denslow (Ernest Borgnine). Between the machinations of the evil owner of the Dallas Felons and the inevitable toll getting rich quickly takes on Coop and Remer, things threaten to fall apart.

Having seen a number of Zucker films, I find it hard to believe that Parker and Stone didn't at least take a crack at re-writing the script. I've read a version of the script that doesn't give them credit (and they're not credited with writing at all), and while the structure and general idea are present, not much of the dialogue in the finished film is there at all. And what's in the movie is much closer to what Parker and Stone do than what Zucker generally does. Another interesting bit - this was the first film that Zucker had directed in seven years, and he wouldn't direct another one for five more years (a TV movie notwithstanding). So I guess what I'm getting at is that Parker and Stone were super-hot, and Zucker wasn't at this point in time, and it feels like the dialogue in particular is really close to what Parker and Stone generally do, so it feels like they're more responsible for this movie than they took credit for.

Between the two comedy camps, what's here works fairly well. Parker and Stone offer a willingness to cross the lines of propriety, and Zucker brings a gleeful ping-ponging across pop culture touchstones. Maybe the best example of how that worked was the foul-mouthed "Unsolved Mysteries" segment with Robert Stack, which came after Coop had "disappeared" for a couple of days. It's a great gag, plus there's the joy of hearing Stack suggest that Coop might be "hanging in his closet from his fucking neck" without a hint of insincerity. There's a ton of great gags along the way in the same vein - Bob Costas and Al Michaels doing off-color and oblivious commentary, Reggie Jackson's cameo towards the end, the Roadkill: Caught on Tape recurring gag (a take-off on "When Animals Attack"). The Psyche-Outs are pretty funny along the way as well, particularly Parker's.

So that leaves the nagging questions of what doesn't work, and why didn't this movie do squat at the box-office? One of the big problems with the movie lies within the love story. First off, Yasmine Bleeth isn't generally regarded as one of the finest actresses of her generation (nor is the actress in the other prominent female role, Jenny McCarthy). The main function of the love story (particularly in a "save the house" film") is to shine a light on what might be an overlooked potential in the underachieving hero. In other words, it serves towards a likability factor, and gives a solid reason for an audience to root for the hero to achieve whatever it is that he needs to achieve. When the love story falls flat (as it does here, for a couple of reasons I'll get to in a second), the audience doesn't necessarily still root for the hero.

In this case, and ignoring Bleeth's acting skills (she got famous for wearing a swimsuit on "Baywatch," and she's rather modestly dressed throughout this film), there's a fundamental problem with the set-up for the character. Jenna Reed (her character) runs a dying wish foundation, which means that she's nearly always in the company of half a dozen sick children. It drains any sexuality out of her character (it's like looking at the Octomom with brood), and there's not much chemistry between her and Parker anyhow (and how you have a movie that's clearly going to get an R-rating, and then take an actress who's famous for her curves and hide them as fastidiously as possible is beyond me. Forget it, Clay, it was the 90's). It's like a placeholder love story - the only way that it makes any sense is that she's practically the Smurfette here. It's Bleeth or nothing in the context of the film, but it just flat out doesn't work. And since that doesn't work (and since the "save the house" portion of the story is introduced way too late, there are a lot of things that are funny but don't have anything driving them. The relationship between Parker and Stone is far more interesting (and even culminates in a full-on dude-on-dude kiss), and is the unspoken focus of the story, but Jenna's inclusion muddies things (if her character doesn't actually accomplish the purpose it needs to, why have her in the story at all?).

"BASEketball" is funny, light, totally watchable. It is not a particularly pointed satire (it's a lightweight topic, although it definitely nails some things on the head), it's not as awesome as "SP:BLU" or "Team America," nor even any of your favorite two dozen or so episodes of "South Park." If you're a Parker/Stone fan, you probably should check this out, if only for the brief glimpses of Parker doing Cartman and Mr. Garrison voices over the course of the film. But also understand, they didn't take any credit for this film beyond appearing in it, either.

3 / 5 - NF Streaming

CB4 - 1993

2011-07-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

"CB4" - 1993
Dir. by Tamra Davis - 1 hr. 29 min.

Official Trailer

Full disclosure: I love "Fear of a Black Hat." At around the same time, another film that has almost exactly the same description was released, "CB4." Both are low-budget mockumentary-style comedies based on Gangsta Rap, which was around it's peak in 1993. And while I've seen "Fear" a handful of times, I'd never bothered to watch "CB4" until now. And now that I've seen both, it's really hard to discuss one without the other (as they hit almost exactly the same points, even down to which rappers get made fun of, which means that either neither dug very hard for material or that they both were well-done). I'll try to separate the two, though.

Chris Rock, Deezer D, and Allen Payne play middle-class suburban kids who like rap, but can't quite get their act down at open mic nights. After getting thrown out of the club, Rock returns the next morning to apologize, and instead walks in on a Costco-sized cocaine deal, which quickly turns into a drug bust. The club owner, Gusto (played by Charlie Murphy in his first film role), thinks that Rock is responsible, and vows revenge while being hauled off to jail. In this moment, Rock's character has a flash of inspiration, and decides to pattern his group after Gusto, stealing both his name (Rock becomes MC Gusto) and his cell block for the group's name, CB4. And it totally works.

But that story is sandwiched in another - there's a mockumentary story in the vein of "This Is Spinal Tap," although the timeline and structure of the movie is pretty sloppy in this regard, and it's to the detriment of the film. There's also a storyline involving a politician (played by Phil Hartman) who tries to make some political hay off of moral outrage at such songs like "Straight Out of Locash" and "Sweat of My Balls." Unfortunately, there's not much more to it than Hartman's comedic false rage and watching his son sing and dance to the songs - he doesn't present much of a threat at all. At one point, Hartman's character threatens jail if CB4 plays "Sweat of My Balls" at their big show in Sacramento, which they of course play, and get hauled off to jail. But even that's played for laughs; the other inmates want an audition with the hot rap group, and when MC Gusto is released the next day, his family members just want to know how jail was.

Again, strictly on it's own merits, "CB4" is okay. If you liked SNL in the late 80's-early 90's, you'll appreciate seeing Chris Rock, Chris Elliott, and Phil Hartman again. If you were raised on this type of music, you'll appreciate the digs at the C&C Music Factory and MC Hammer, although none of the humor cuts very deep. I think that's my biggest problem, is that nothing cuts very deep at all, although I will cut some slack considering the idea of a film about rappers wasn't very commercial at all when this was released. I can't even imagine how Chris Rock would have explained a harder hitting concept to money-men at this point, and this was also in the era of rappers getting shot and shot at, which is a whole other nightmare to deal with.

So if this is the sort of subject you have any affection for at all, you'll probably enjoy "CB4" (although Chris Rock was still very much a work in progress at this point). And while it's both unfair and completely inescapable to compare it to "Fear of a Black Hat," I've got to say that "CB4" comes in second place in that race.

2.5 / 5 - NF Streaming

Behind the Burly Q - 2010

2011-07-11T12:55:00.000-07:00

"Behind the Burly Q" - 2010
Dir. by Leslie Zemeckis - 1 hr. 37 min.

Official Trailer

"Behind the Burly Q" works better in the realm of nostalgia than as an informational documentary. Part of it is the cognitive dissonance of having women who earned a living based on their physical beauty and stage routines constantly shown at uniformly advanced ages (I should say almost uniformly - Lili St. Cyr is represented by an interview she did with Mike Wallace in the black and white days of television) - it's a trip to see retirement-aged women talking about stripping. I don't know any way around that either, the only successful way I've seen interviews conducted at a much later date integrated into such a youth-oriented subject matter was in Julien Temple's "The Filth and the Fury," where the interview segments were lit to appear in shadow only, but that would be a bizarre way to approach material that's inherently visual in nature.

So let's get to what's good and what's not so good here. There are a lot of interviews with a lot of burlesque performers, some of which were conducted not too very long before the performers passed away. There's also some attention paid to the structure of the performances (contrary to what some might believe, it was a variety show that incorporated a number of different acts, nearly always headlined by the comedians), as well as how the laws differed in different cities, and things of that nature. In that respect, there's a lot of good information, and most of the people that were interviewed didn't seem to regret their involvement in burlesque.

As for what's more problematic about the movie, some of the women that anyone would have heard of weren't directly involved. Both Blaze Starr and Lili St. Cyr were represented by archival footage (understandable in St. Cyr's case, as she passed away more than a decade before this movie was made). I don't know that it would have made a difference, but to someone with a passing interest (or less) in the subject matter, the star power isn't there. Also, some of the more negative aspects of the business were only touched upon briefly, which is appropriate for the nostalgic romp that this is, but also is an approach that doesn't lend much weight to the subject at hand.

"Behind the Burly Q" is a fairly light, fun look back at a bygone era. It is not a tell-all, it's not a substitute for late-night Cinemax, it's just an explanation of what average people looked for in entertainment in that era. So enjoy it for what it is.

3 / 5 - NF Streaming

The Last Waltz - 1978

2011-07-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

"The Last Waltz" - 1978
Dir. by Martin Scorsese - 1 hr. 57 min.

Official Trailer

"The Last Waltz" documents The Band's final concert, which took place in San Francisco in 1976. If you're not exactly sure who The Band was, they're probably best known for the song "The Weight," or for the time during the 70's when they backed Bob Dylan. This movie is frequently hailed as the best concert movie ever (and was directed by Martin Scorsese), so I had pretty high expectations going in.

While The Band's catalog of songs can hold their own, one of the things that's particularly fun about this concert is the steady stream of big name guest stars who drop in for a song or two. The real highlights were Muddy Waters performance of "Mannish Boy," and Bob Dylan's pair of songs, "Forever Young" and "I Shall Be Released." Also of note is the performance of their best-known song, "The Weight", featuring the Staples Singers. I had a great time watching Neil Young's performance, but not necessarily due to the song itself. The filmmakers had to retouch Young's footage, as he had a chunk of cocaine in or around his nose region, at great expense. Other than that, the whole night's worth of music is consistently really good, though.

There were interview segments interspersed through the movie that effectively told the story of The Band, although it's not a "Behind the Music" sort of thing. It was enough to give a sense of the personalities at play and the road to success, which combined with the performances, is a fantastic package. I think that "The Last Waltz" is up there for best concert movie, although it's not a clear, runaway winner. It's not a let-down by any means, and if you're into this kind of music it's a must-see.

4 / 5 - TV

The Van - 1977

2011-07-04T14:41:00.000-07:00

"The Van" - 1977
Dir. by Sam Grossman - 1 hr. 32 min.

Trailer

This movie was so terrible, I had to poke around on the internet to try and find out more about it. And to my horror, it appears that I watched an edited version of this film (most of the reviews mention copious nudity, which was nowhere to be found in the version streaming on Netflix right now). I had just figured that it was a poorly done made-for-TV movie, as there were periodic points where there was a black screen for several seconds. Instead of being for commercial breaks, I guess they were sloppily-done edits to stand between myself and boobage. This begs the question of why on Earth you'd want to edit out literally the only interesting thing in an awful movie, but that seems to be exactly what had happened.

I can't offer a fair assessment of a butchered movie, but I doubt it would have helped much. Bobby (Stuart Getz) graduates from high school, which means that he can finally accomplish his life-long dream of owning a custom van. Unfortunately, the van turns this happy-go-lucky kid into an absolute monster. That's really a shame, since the van is completely awesome (it features a white fur interior, a waterbed with a mirror mounted directly above it, the then-state-of-the-art duo of a CB radio and 8 Track stereo, a mini-fridge, and even a toaster). But under it's evil influence, Bobby passes on college, gets into multiple high-speed chases with the police, drives under the influence repeatedly, sexually assaults women, kidnaps his true love, and ends up having to drunkenly drag race the town alpha male, Dugan (Steve Oliver), in order to make his car note. And nobody calls Dugan a turd! Except Bobby, of course, who also completely slept with Dugan's girlfriend to console himself over another girl who didn't want to talk to him a couple of nights previous. And Danny DeVito's in this movie for a handful of minutes as well, proving that he was born looking pretty old.

Since all the fun bits were cut out of the version I unwittingly was subjected to, the complete awesomeness of the van itself is the only thing left that was any good (although I have to imagine that in the event of an auto accident, literally all the cool stuff in the van would fly out of place and fully murder it's driver). So, please don't bother watching this, and especially don't watch the edited version on Netflix right now.

* / 5 - NF Streaming

Moog - 2004

2011-06-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

"Moog" - 2004
Dir. by Hans Fjellestad - 1 hr. 12 min.

Official Trailer

Structure, dammit! It's almost more important to a documentary to have some sort of narrative arc to make sense of things than it is to fiction films. Things happen in real life, but without any context or sense of progression, none of it ends up mattering.

"Moog" is about Robert Moog and his namesake, the Moog synthesizer. You might not know the instrument by name, but if you've ever listened to prog rock of any kind (like ELO or Yes), you're certainly familiar with it's unique sound. It's an early synthesizer (an analog one, at that), and has dozens of knobs that allow a musician to manipulate a sound in many different ways. Mr. Moog began building theremins in his teens, which sparked his interest in creating electronic instruments, which ended up with the Moog.

The bulk of this documentary is comprised of contemporary interviews both solely with Moog, and between Moog and other people who were instrumental (ha!) in the history of the Moog. There's also a decent amount of performance footage, both contemporary and archival, featuring musicians like Keith Emerson, Money Mark, and Mix Master Mike. The film isn't as structured as it needs to be; I enjoy watching people talking about the things they're passionate about, but far too many details just fly by as asides in the midst of these conversations. There's not much detail on how Mr. Moog made the leap from making theremins to creating an entirely new instrument, and what is there is sprinkled throughout in bits and pieces. At another point, Keith Emerson mentions that one of the original Moogs cost as much as a house, which would have been an excellent point to provide some context on how the instrument fit into it's own time, but instead stands as a missed opportunity. And the last portion of the film has Moog mentally wandering into metaphysical territories without much purpose.

If you're really fascinated by the Moog (or theremins, as there is some theremin performance pieces in the movie as well, including a song by Moog himself), this film will hold some interest. But the frustrating lack of context and structure limit it's appeal to the hardcore. And I have to admit, I found myself on the outside of that group when watching "Moog."

2.5 / 5 - NF Streaming

Fast Five - 2011

2011-06-27T14:43:00.000-07:00

"Fast Five" - 2011
Dir. by Justin Lin - 2 hrs. 10 min.

Official Trailer

I'm just going to get to the nitty-gritty here: it's fine if you don't like the "Fast & Furious" series of movies, but you've had something like a decade to complain about them already, so save your breath. This installment, in particular, plays like a bro-tastic version of one of the "Ocean's Eleven" films. That's a pretty big compliment, too.

"Fast Five" comes on the heels of the fourth installment, "Fast & Furious." Dom (Vin Diesel), Brian (Paul Walker) and Mia (Jordana Brewster) are all on the run, meeting up in Rio de Janeiro. After a fundraising job goes haywire, leading to the deaths of three DEA agents, the U.S. government is sufficiently pissed off to send Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and a special forces team down to Rio to haul Dom and crew in. Things quickly complicate from there, loudly and spectacularly, culminating in a daring heist of a vault from the Rio police headquarters.

There are a couple of big things to consider in a movie like this. First, the big action sequences have to deliver. And I felt that they did just that. There are several sequences worth mentioning, like when Brian and Mia boost Dom from his jail transport, or the initial foot chase through the favelas between Hobbs' crew and Mia/Brian/Dom. But the big two over-deliver, and are both spectacle and spectacular. The botched train robbery of some very nice cars early on is great and suspenseful, and ends impressively.

Once the main characters get their bearings a bit, "Fast Five" turns into "Ocean's Eleven" (to the point where they even mention needing to put a team together). This is where literally every character from the series who's still alive returns to get a piece of the action (which is $100 million in cash). This is both the benefit of following a series of films, and the benefit of having some on-screen history to work with. But instead of jazzy sophistication, sharp suits, and a Vegas back-drop, we get a non-stop parade of lust-worthy vehicles, jacked-up guys and slinky, sexy women, and Rio de Janeiro (which is a visual feast).

The last third or so of the film is the heist itself, and it's pretty awesome (in the sense that it's awe-inspiring). Dom and Brian tear a huge part of Rio a new one (seriously, the amount of destruction they cause in their escape is both impressive and horrifying), and the twist works well. I'd be more specific about things, but the whole sequence is something that a viewer should probably experience on their own for the first time. And the whole thing just works. It's easy to complain about the dialogue or the tough-guy posturing over the course of the series, but again, you already knew that going in, and dialogue doesn't really matter when Dom and Brian are flooring it, trying to get away from an entire city's police force, meanwhile leaving a wake of destruction behind them.

I know that when you hit a fifth movie in a series, people pretty much already know if they're interested in a fifth installment or not. Although there are some elements to this series of films that aren't exactly topics for serious discussion, I respect the fact that each film hasn't been the exact same thing. So if you do go see this one, don't leave until the credits are done. I was kind of pissed off and simultaneously excited after the short end scene - now I need to see the sixth one.

3.5 / 5 - Theatre

Radio Bikini - 1988

2011-06-24T17:26:00.000-07:00

"Radio Bikini" - 1988
Dir. by Robert Stone - 56 min.

Full movie

It's difficult to judge things out of their time, sometimes. Usually, a good documentary either is based on fascinating subject matter, or it reveals something shocking and factual. This documentary, released in 1988, is about the Bikini Atoll nuclear bomb tests between 1948 and 1956, and features a ton of archival footage, presumably shot by the military at the time. It was nominated for several awards, including the Best Documentary, Features in the Academy Awards that year.

So I was expecting a bit more than I got here. First off, when I went to the Wikipedia page to find the Bikini Atoll page link, I was surprised to read that there had actually been twenty-three nuclear tests done at this site - the film focuses on only two of them. It's entirely possible that the others were mentioned, despite the short run time, I had to split this film into two sessions to get through it. Secondly, and this is admittedly an admission of my cynicism, I have absolutely no shock left in me when it comes to the US of A steamrolling a small group of people. Relocating an entire island population (granted, only about two-hundred people) so that the military could blow up and irradiate the island over and over again? It not only sounds plausible, but in comparison likely and and entirely reasonable. During the same time span, the U.S. government was also responsible for the Tuskegee experiments and Japanese Internment Camps, so why wouldn't they have done this?

And that's what I mean about it being difficult to judge things outside of their time, sometimes. Twenty-plus years ago, I couldn't just pepper in Wikipedia links to prove my point, and providing information about an atrocity of sorts (I think that the military personnel that were deliberately exposed to radiation were treated more cruelly than the Bikinians, although that particular battle is not a contest I'd want to be competing in) was a much more revolutionary act. But right now, if I learn more about a given subject by reading the Wikipedia entry than I did by watching a feature-length (almost - an hour is pretty short for a movie) film on the same subject, then time hasn't done the film any favors.

2 / 5 - NF Streaming

X-Men: First Class - 2011

2011-06-19T16:53:00.000-07:00

"X-Men: First Class" - 2011
Dir. by Matthew Vaughn - 2 hrs. 12 min.

Official Trailer

I was not entirely on-board for an X-Men reboot going in. There are several reasons, chief among them that I already paid for and watched three X-Men movies (with varying results), and just like with the Spider-Man movies, I feel like there's not a good creative reason for a reboot. Granted, there's been literally thousands of comics books made of these characters, but the entire point of doing movie versions is to cherry-pick those stories and hit a grand-slam every time you commit two hours of film to one of them. The second you start to dip your toes into sub-excellent material, it's better to wrap things up. I guess the best way to put it is that if Marvel is going to start re-telling stories they've already made into films, I'm done. Tobey Maguire is my generation's Spidey for good or ill, and I'm not that interested in starting the hero's journey over again with someone I've never heard of.

Another big source of my hesitation: the trailers didn't do a lot for me. Honestly, I don't even remember them, which is kind of sad.

So let's get into the things that helped me enjoy this movie. First, it's more of a soft reboot, in that it serves as a prequel (and one that's set many years back, instead of being a direct prequel with cheaper actors). That definitely helps deal with seeing different actors playing the characters that have already been established over the other three X-Men movies. Second, as it turns out, sharp suits, rad cars, and mini-skirts with go-go boots go a long way with me. I can't stress this enough, we all dress like complete slobs now, and even the teenagers here look sharp as a tack (and in a believable way, too). It's not just a product of the time, it's the very existence of dress denim as a concept that's the problem. A little style goes a long way, and "X-Men: First Class" has more than a little style. Even Kevin Bacon, as the main villain Sebastian Shaw, always cuts a dashing figure, regardless of the evil he's up to.

Another thing that helps here is that the movie has a flawless structure (and realizes it, and then doesn't mess with what's always worked in the X-Men comics), in that the emergence of mutant-kind is really all about the civil rights movement. Placed in the context of the 1960's in America, and with the viewers having knowledge of everything that's ensued since then, a heavy cloud hangs over the rhetoric exchanged between Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender). There's always been a comparison that Xavier was Martin Luther King, Jr., and Erik (Magneto) was Malcolm X, but where this movie really succeeds is showing how each man arrived at their philosophy, and not condemning either view. And it's made clear that the two men achieve more working together than they do separately, which is a statement for modern times if there ever was one.

I won't bother with a plot recap, other than to say this is a version of the original X-Men origin story, explicitly using Cold War tensions to advance the story (which is a million times more interesting than the standard action movie plot of a baddie stealing some virus which will kill mankind). While there is a good guy/bad guy plot, there's also the matter of whether or not people with very different ideas about how to live can work together in any meaningful way. This story came together in a believable, tense way. For a movie that I was nearly completely unexcited to see, I ended up really liking what I saw. From bringing some much needed fashion-sense to geekdom, to a really great cameo for the folks who have seen the other three X-Men movies, to not being afraid to give voice to both Malcolm and MLK, it all works, and it's a really good movie.

4 / 5 - Theatre

Bridesmaids - 2011

2011-06-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

"Bridesmaids" - 2011
Dir. by Paul Feig - 2 hrs. 5 min.

Official Trailer

Thank goodness! Not because I was worried that it wouldn't be as funny as I'd been led to believe - this batch of actresses led by Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph could polish just about any turd. And not because I was worried that it would be too girly - the characters are well-rounded enough to not need to be pigeonholed into a standard issue chick flick. No, thank goodness that this was a really good comedy.

The plot is something of a combination of "Knocked Up" and "The Hangover," and just happens to star women. I can't stress that enough, this is not a "Sex in the City" situation, and I feel kind of yucky for having to emphasize that. At the same time, the fact that I feel it's necessary to do so says a lot about how infrequently comedies are made with female leads. Wiig plays Annie, who's childhood friend (Lillian, played by Maya Rudolph) gets engaged. Annie gets Maid of Honor duties, which plays in direct contrast to how Annie's life is playing out. A string of bad luck has her dumped, working at a jeweler (instead of running her own pastry business, which went under), rooming with a pair of creepy British siblings with boundary issues, and being third on Don Draper's booty-call list. Like "Knocked Up," she's in over her head, and like "The Hangover," her precarious footing leads to a series of events that would be considered bottoming out, if they weren't soon to be trumped by a new low.

The thing that really made this comedy tick for me is that while the things that happen are kind of outrageous, the actresses largely react how you'd expect people to react in a similar situation. It also helps that the batch of bridesmaids (Wiig, Rudolph, Jessica St. Clair as Wiig's rival, Reno 911's Wendi McLendon-Covey, Elie Kemper, and Melissa McCarthy) are all distinct personalities that behave in distinct ways. I can't stress that enough - it's enough of a problem in male-oriented comedies (there's always an overabundance of indistinguishable quick-witted jackasses who's only differing character traits are their stature in these kinds of movies) that it almost feels revolutionary here. That's not a condescending pat on the head, either. It's acknowledging some really fucking good writing and comedic performances. If it were easy to do that, there'd be a million films this good and this funny. But there aren't, and "Bridesmaids" makes it look kind of easy.

By my count, this is a really funny comedy that's sharply written, full of great performances (I need to also single out Melissa McCarthy - she was a riot in every scene), and just flat out works. I'm pretty eager to watch this one again, which is as good of a compliment to a comedy as I can offer. So, you know, maybe go check this one out if you get the chance.

4 / 5 - Theatre

American Grindhouse - 2010

2011-06-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

"American Grindhouse" - 2010
Dir. by Elijah Drenner - 1 hr. 20 min.

Official Trailer

I always enjoy watching documentaries about film history - I've watched a ton of movies, but my actual education in film can be largely attributed to one class I took in my senior year of college (a really good class that started with James Cagney's "The Public Enemy" and wrapped with "Pulp Fiction"). I spent those years of voracious ingestion of history and minutiae pointed squarely at comic books, instead. So when I get the chance to see a movie that shines a little light on an area of film history I haven't really stumbled across, I jump in it.

"American Grindhouse," as the title indicates, is a documentary on the seedy, murky, filthy, and a little bit sticky history of grindhouse movies in the U.S.A. It's narrated by Robert Forster, and has interview footage with both directors who were into these kinds of disreputable films (Joe Dante, John Landis, and Allison Anders, to name three), as well as some of those responsible for the films themselves (like Herschell Gordon Lewis and Don Edmonds).

Over the course of this documentary, these non-Hollywood studio productions are variously credited as pre-punk (Allison Anders offers the DIY, fast/cheap/dirty, low-budget nature of these films as being spiritual kin to the punk movement in the 1970's), educational and empowering for women (there was a span of "educational" films, which were sometimes the only means through which women could obtain information about sexual health), a trendsetter for actual Hollywood productions (for the most part, whatever grindhouse movies would do would end up in Hollywood movies in some manner in a matter of years), and as no different than Hollywood productions (a direct comparison of Hitchcock's "Psycho" and Lewis' "Blood Feast"), budget aside.

The commentary is intelligent and enthusiastic throughout, which is a relief. Probably the best part of this film for me is that it was a way to sample a ton of marginally-known films, and find a few that I wanted to check out in full. Beware though, for that privilege, you have to sit through a clip of an actual live birth. I'm not sure those things even out, but it's a good, concise history of grindhouse films.

3.5 / 5 - NF Streaming

From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money - 1999

2011-06-10T12:56:00.000-07:00

"From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money" - 1999
Dir. by Scott Spiegel - 1 hr. 28 min.

Trailer

I want to be as fair as possible when I write about movies, even when they do really unfair things back. For instance, everything I've ever read about this movie mentions that Bruce Campbell is in it (and he's easily the biggest name involved), but his role is probably best classified as a cameo rather than a role. And even though the fact that this was a straight-to-video (or straight-to-DVD, I'm not sure where the market was at in 1999) sequel should have tempered my expectations a bit, it's still a sequel to a collaboration between the two filmmakers who have the best handle on how to make trash entertaining (Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez).

As far as sequels go, this one doesn't carry over much from the original. There are the vampires that can turn into bats, and Danny Trejo is still tending bar at the Titty Twister (he doesn't have much of a role here, either), but there's only one scene at the bar, and there's a passing mention of the Gecko brothers. So, to be fair, I almost have to discount entirely what's come before, since "Dawn 2" doesn't make any substantial use of it.

So what's here? Buck (Robert Patrick) is assembling a crew for a bank heist in Mexico, a haul possibly up to $5 million. Meeting Buck in Mexico is Luther (Duane Whitaker), who runs his Jeep into a bat in the middle of the night, which starts a chain reaction of people turning into vampires. Despite this, they still attempt the heist. And there's a long, drawn-out gun fight that comprises pretty much the entire third act.

To be fair, this isn't a very good movie (even if I was to extend it every benefit of the doubt possible). On it's own merits, it fails. There's just too much bad acting (and not in an entertaining way), too many scenes that are drawn out beyond any reason (probably to fill time, and this still clocks in under 90 minutes), too many bad special effects (but again, not bad enough to be awesome like the "Evil Dead" series). There's an inexplicable abundance of "potato-salad cam" shots (the first time I really noticed the POV shot was in some movie that had a woman walking through a dinner party with a tray of potato salad, inside of which was the camera). There's the push-up cam, there's a safe combination dial cam, there's a Luther's head cam (when he arrives at the Titty Twister, there's a POV shot that has the brim of his hat visible), there's even a vampire's tonsils cam that's used repeatedly. That's probably only half of the uses of that particular shot, and it's such a bizarre visual tic to decide to use over and over again.

If I was going to be unfair, I'd probably note that following up a Tarantino movie or a Rodriguez movie with your weakest sauce is a bad idea. Granted, this kind of movie isn't going to have the benefit of George Clooney or a script by Tarantino, but there are plenty of things that were interesting in the original that could have been imitated (even badly). Too bad they went for the vampire angle, instead.

1 / 5 - NF Streaming

The Hangover Part II - 2011

2011-06-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

"The Hangover Part II" - 2011
Dir. by Todd Phillips - 1 hr. 42 min.

Official Trailer

Let's get this out of the way: "The Hangover Part II" is not quite as good as "The Hangover" is. It's not a bad movie at all, it has much of what made the first installment great, but it's just not quite as good. Part of the reason is likely that instead of watching a string of horrors unfold, a viewer is now expecting the horrific (in a funny way, as long as it's not happening to you) events to come. There's more than enough here to keep you entertained and interested if you liked the first one, but since this is structurally extremely similar, the element of surprise is lost.

Stu (Ed Helms) is getting married in Thailand (and not to Heather Graham's character, who isn't in this film). The rest of the Wolfpack are attending, and things quickly go south. As a lot of the humor relies on surprises, it's not really fair to say much more than that. If you saw "The Hangover," you know where it's headed anyways. There are two fundamental changes in the sequel: the missing person is Stu's fiancée's little brother, and Bradley Cooper's character (Phil) turns into a raging asshole. I don't remember Phil being quite that much of a dick (it seemed that previously, when the characters mistreated one another it was reacting poorly under substantial pressure), but Part II starts off nearly immediately with Phil turning into a fairly unlikeable character. And I'm not talking about a charismatic, best friends messing with each other kind of asshole, but just a dick.

While this time around, you're no longer wondering whether things have bottomed out each time something awful happens to Stu, Phil, and Alan, "Part II" makes up for it by upping the ante each time. Setting the movie in Bangkok ("Holla! City of squalor!" says Chow, played by Ken Jeong) allows things to get pretty dark pretty quickly. The fundamental mystery of where Teddy (the previously mentioned little brother) has disappeared to works well, keeping the Wolfpack moving and discovering just how bad their previous night had gotten, bit by bit.

Director Todd Phillips has a couple of classic comedies to his credit now ("Old School" and the original "The Hangover"). "Part II" isn't that good, but it's better than "Starsky & Hutch" or "Road Trip," and that's fine by me. The best thing I can say about this movie is that if there was a third installment, I'd more than probably go see it, too. Being able to maintain an audience along sequels is a tricky task, and I felt like it was successful at that.

3.5 / 5 - Theatre