The Upside of Anger: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

A nice upside

(Originally published 2005)

Mike Binder's dramedy “The Upside of Anger” stars Joan Allen as Terry Wolfmeyer, a disillusioned, middle-aged woman slapped with the unexpected ugliness of having to face herself, her life and her presumed lack of prospects when her husband dumps her for that old cliché, his younger secretary.

As far as Terry knows, her husband has skipped off to Switzerland, neatly abandoning her and their four daughters without explanation or word of his departure. He just vanishes and that, understandably, has made Terry furious.

Consumed by betrayal, bewilderment and rage--mostly rage--she doesn’t turn to her family for solace or insight. Instead, she goes straight for those other clichés--sarcasm, bitterness and the bottle, savoring the sort of vodka-soaked bender that would lay waste to even the heartiest of drunks.

The film, which Binder based on his own script, is a tour-de-force for Allen, whose cutting, sometimes cruelly funny performance lifts an otherwise rote story way out of the ordinary.

For Terry’s rage, Binder offers up several sacrificial lambs, beginning with her daughters (Alicia Witt, Erika Christensen, Keri Russel, Evan Rachel Wood), all of whom behold what their mother has become--hostile, leering, soused by 8 a.m.--with the sort of wariness that borders on bemusement and repulsion.

Also in the mix is Terry’s neighbor Denny (Kevin Costner), a famous, once-great baseball star whose retirement from the game has been spent drinking too much beer and slumming daily through a radio talk show he’d like to quit.

Denny is an alcoholic, single and not loving it, and so, when he hears that Terry’s husband has ditched her, he naturally decides to pursue a relationship with her. She is, after all, rather sexy and smart when she’s not half in the bag. Perhaps he has the goods to save her, maybe even himself.

Good luck to Denny.

Dysfunction is a bull that runs rampant through “The Upside of Anger,” but considering the circumstances at hand, that sounds about right, doesn’t it? It’s certainly what gives the movie energy.

Emotionally, the film is riddled with neuroses--it’s a tragedy, a comedy, a drama, and in one hilarious scene, the most spectacular of horror shows. And yet the movie, in spite of its soapy underpinnings and a disappointing final twist, doesn’t implode. You’re never bored watching it, which is a testament to the cast, to the sharp dialogue and to Binder himself, who turns up as a sleazy radio show producer who beds one of Terry’s far younger daughters--and nearly steals the show.

Grade: B+

United 93: Movie & DVD review (2006)

Documenting history

(Originally published 2006)

Toward the end of the Paul Greengrass film, "United 93," the director delivers one of several masterstrokes, layering the hushed prayers of Christianity and Islam over each other until the cabin on that doomed Sept. 11, 2001 flight becomes a divided worship house roaring through the heavens.

In the theater, where speakers surround you in every nook, the experience of hearing Greengrass' growing cacophony of "God" and "Allah" becomes almost otherworldly--a quiet chant. Moments are undeniably melodic, as if the two religions, for an odd instant, create an unlikely kind of music, with the conviction of every soul on that plane joining a chorus to which they likely never thought they'd be a part.

Like so much of this heart-breaking, beautifully handled film, you sit transfixed, knowing the tragic fate of the men and women hijacked by the four terrorists on United Flight 93, but not necessarily knowing what they went through during the final moments of their lives. That's still true--we won't ever know. But by stitching together the telephone calls made by those passengers to their loved ones as the events unfolded--as well as the documented accounts of those in the military and air traffic control towers--the movie gives us a believable, realistic idea that is never sensationalized.

This sense of realism is heightened by a few factors. First, the film is shot as if it were a documentary, with hand-held cameras giving it the claustrophobic immediacy and off-center sense of confusion cinema verite provides. It was exactly the right choice, removing any sense of Hollywood gloss from a production that would have been bastardized by it.

Second, the film employs no known actors--the distraction of a Tom Cruise, for instance, thankfully has no place in this particular war of worlds--with Greengrass going a step farther by using several civilians who were actually there when the planes struck the World Trade Center Towers, then the Pentagon, and then when Flight 93 crashed into that stretch of Pennsylvania field. Chief among those playing themselves is Ben Sliney, whose job it was as FAA operations manager to get a handle on the hijackings. His amazing "performance"--or reenactment, as it were--is a gift to history.

While the movie only ever wants to observe and never to pass judgment--which is its shrewdest move as it allows the viewer to remain firmly rooted in the moment and not in the murky waters of political commentary--it's in its observations that it creates its gut-wrenching run of suspense.

Going into it, we all know how this movie will end, yet watching the terrorists enter the airport and take their seats among those they plan to kill nevertheless forms a knot in your stomach that becomes an anchor.

This is particularly true when the door to the plane is sealed shut. With the passengers still reasonably safe on the tarmac, just above them in the flight towers is chaos--frantic men and women aware of hijacked planes. The idea that none of this was shared with the passengers or with the crew allowed them to exist in a cocoon of false security. The world was learning fast that the world was on the brink of change, but for those in the planes, it was just another flight, a link to another destination.

Later, in the air, with the chaos unfolding inside Flight 93, the passengers and crew realized they had no choice but to unify and to charge into the face of madness. It's a scene that makes the film the most difficult to endure since Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" or Roman Polanski's "The Pianist." "United 93" presses hard on raw nerves and then, in its final frame, it literally crushes them. What Greengrass has created is haunting and unshakable, the medium at its full potential.

Grade: A

Unfaithful: Movie & DVD Review (2002)

A General Foods International Coffee commerical whipped into a froth

(Originally published 2002)

"Unfaithful," the latest cautionary tale about marital infidelity from Adrian Lyne, is fascinating for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is its white-hot trashiness, which liberates the film to become the guiltiest of pleasures--a pure, unadulterated melodrama about adultery--while also rendering large chunks of it an unintended comedy.

It’s never boring, though it is fair to say that a good deal of it is beautifully, unforgettably cheap in its own pretentious way. Imagine a General Foods International Coffee commercial whipped into a sexual frenzy that includes public sex, sadomasochism and some other notable acts of "indecency," and you have a good idea of what to expect in Lyne’s film.

Inspired by Claude Chabrol’s 1969 French film, "La Femme Infidele," "Unfaithful" remains true to the core of its predecessor’s European sensibility while also underscoring an American accountability. It tries to have it both ways, but since it can’t, it doesn’t.

The film stars Diane Lane as Connie Sumner, an upper-middle-class suburban New Jersey housewife who seemingly has it all—a great husband in Edward (Richard Gere), a great son in Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan), a sprawling house overlooking a lake, an active social life and the envy of her friends.

But on what must be the biggest windstorm to ever hit New York, Connie, who’s called "Con" by her husband, begins a whirlwind affair in SoHo after she’s literally blown into the arms of Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez), a swarthy, stubbly rare book dealer from Paris who quickly offers the 40ish Connie the one thing her life is missing—a rock-hard, 28-year-old body that can go all day and night.

Since the film is from Lyne, whose previous forays into the bedroom include "9 1/2 Weeks," "Indecent Proposal" and "Fatal Attraction," "Unfaithful" unleashes the passion between Connie and Peter with all the subltly of soft-core porn. They have sex in movie theaters, cramped restrooms, elevators, hallways, and even on top of one of Peter’s musty piles of books. Their affair is so steamy, it’s enough to make the "Emmanuel" crowd blush.

Lane, who’s been acting for 30 years, becomes so unhinged in "Unfaithful," you half expect her heart to give out midway through. There’s isn’t an emotion she doesn’t feel or express as if it will be her last.

She’s been the adulterous wife before in 1999’s "A Walk on the Moon," but here, her performance is more daring and provocative, the best part of a movie whose over-the-top first three-quarters are redeemed by a final act that turns deadly serious as Edward becomes wise to Connie’s affair—and Lyne brushes the silliness away with devastating moments that recall the more sensational aspects of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and last year’s "In the Bedroom."

Grade: B-

Undiscovered: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

Disenfranchised

(Originally published 2005)

The title of this airy, riffy drama from first-time feature director Meiert Avis gets to the film's non-performance at the box office. Avis pushes "Undiscovered" into the high-strung subcategory of model-musician love--always dangerous, treacherous territory--where characters of no substance demand to be taken seriously or else.

Or else what, you ask? Or else they'll have a bad hair day seems to be the answer.

Problem is, you can't take any of this seriously--the film exists in the ether, where the air is thin and the actors can't breathe. Apparently, neither could screenwriter John Galt, whose script is every bit as literate as the content you'd find in, say, a back issue of "Blender" or "Maxim," with just as much eye candy to bolster the thin material.

Too bad this candy is sour.

The movie stars Pell James as Brier, a delicate model-cum-actress who meets-cute on a New York subway with smoky singer-songwriter, Luke Falcon (Steven Strait). It's a brief connection that involves the romantic, spontaneous tossing of a glove (swoon), with their meeting hitting Luke hard in the heart. If he had the chance, he could drink a whole lot of Brier.

Too bad for Luke that he's off to Los Angeles to find himself and his music. Good news for Luke, then, that Brier has something of a religious calling. She decides she'd rather like to act, which her manager (Carrie Fisher, tragic) rightfully is apprehensive about encouraging. Still, it's off to L.A. for Brier--and you'll never guess what happens next. She eventually meets up with Luke, with their tumultuous love affair hanging in the balance more often than not.

Tossed into this mix are skateboarding dogs, plenty of music video montages, and Ashlee Simpson as Ashlee Simpson--sorry, as Clea--who appears to be saying her lines just fine without any technical assistance. Good for her.

Here, she's Brier's friend, an aspiring actress who likes to sing her heart out, so much so that some might long for a hook to tear her away from the mic. To be fair to Simpson, she's not as bad as the rest of the cast, but that's faint praise considering the talent involved. Still, all isn't lost for this young star of music and reality television. Unlike her older sister, Jessica, she won't ever be the Simpson who spent of the summer of 2005 squeezed into a padded pair of Daisy Dukes.

Grade: D-

Under the Tuscan Sun: Movie & DVD Review (2003)

Keeping the faith

(Originally published 2003)

In "Unfaithful," Diane Lane played a repressed American housewife brought to sexual release and liberation with the help of a French dealer in rare books. No quiet reading time there, but I think we all learned how well the French can turn the pages.

Now, in "Under the Tuscan Sun," she plays a repressed American divorcee brought to sexual release and liberation by an Italian café owner, who knows, shall we say, a few things about steaming one’s latte.

For me, this clinches it.

Lane's career, which reaches back to 1979's "A Little Romance," in which she played a teenager who flees Paris with her boyfriend with the sole intention of kissing him under Venice's Bridge of Sighs, has become a series of General Foods International Coffee commercials.

Most actresses would sag beneath the schmaltz, but not Lane. Her nervy performance was the main reason to see "Unfaithful," scoring her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, and her turn in "Tuscan Sun" confirms what Hollywood realized with Lane’s comeback film, 1999’s “A Walk on the Moon”--she's a gifted actress, one of the best working today.

As directed by Audrey Wells from her own script, "Under the Tuscan Sun" is a romantic fantasy cum dramatic travelogue. Inspired by Frances Mayes' popular book, it’s pure formula, for sure, but in the best sense of the word.

Indeed, in this case, there’s truth to be had in the formula, not to mention a crisp wit, enormously likable stock characters, and gorgeous, postcard-ready views of Tuscany serving as the backdrop. Yes, the movie is slight, but it’s slight by way of Versace.

In the film, Lane is Frances, a recently divorced San Franciscan book reviewer whose closest friends, a lesbian couple expecting their first child, offer her the gift of Tuscany. “It’s a gay tour of Tuscany,” says Patti (Sandra Oh). “Relax. You won’t get hit on.”

And Frances doesn’t, at least not initially. Besides, what she finds in Tuscany is something potentially more valuable--the rewards of impulse shopping.

Drawn to a certain Tuscan villa in need of work, Frances decides to buy it, hoping that rebuilding the house also will rebuild the damage her former husband did to her self-esteem. Hiring a team of horny Polish craftsmen certainly helps and Frances, emboldened if overwhelmed by the task at hand, immerses herself in the remodeling effort, making fast friends along the way while being reminded of an important lesson: beauty attracts kindness.

It also attracts plenty of Italian men, including the smoldering Marcello (Raoul Bovia), who literally sweeps Frances off her feet and into his bed just when she needs it most. But at what cost Marcello? And is a man really what Frances needs?

Those who know the book shouldn’t expect to find it here--the changes are numerous.

However, the changes also are a necessity; without them, audiences would have been left with a poetic discourse in how growing oregano, mastering the preparation of local Tuscan cuisine and repairing a 300-year-old house can help to change your life.

Some of that is retained here for flavor—the poetry of Mayes’ prose, for instance, is delivered in the glorious form of Tuscany itself—but in order to make her film work, Wells needed a dramatic arc. She gives us one in her version of Frances, with Lane’s winning, beautifully measured performance effortlessly stealing our affection and grounding the film’s contrivances along the way.

Grade: B+

Undercover Brother: Movie & DVD Review (2002)

Beating the Man with attitude and a 'fro

(Originally published 2002)

When it comes to beating the Man at his own game, Malcolm D. Lee’s "Undercover Brother" packs a righteous punch. Universal released the film four weeks before "Austin Powers in Goldmember," which is no accident but a direct attempt to goose a box-office conspiracy.

The film, from a screenplay John Ridley and Michael McCullers adapted from Ridley's popular Internet cartoon series is a parody of the blaxploitation films of the 1970s.

For anyone who has seen "Blacula," "Watermelon Man" and especially "Cleopatra Jones," which features Tamara Dobson as a towering "connoisseur of freedom who handles a car like a gun, a gun like a man, and men like Cleopatra--Cleopatra Jones, that is," that might sound redundant considering the blaxploitation movement ultimately came to spoof itself.

But mirroring Keenan Ivory Wayans’ 1988 film "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," Lee remains true to the core of what the movement was all about: A black hero glamorously fighting crime to the funkadelic sounds of a terrific soundtrack.

The crime "Brother" explores is one committed against black culture--which, according to an underground agency called the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D., has eroded over the years thanks to such pop-culture nuisances as Urkel, Mr. T and the sight of Dennis Rodman in a wedding dress.

Further troubling the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D.’s colorful team of crime fighters--Smart Brother (Gary Anthony), Conspiracy Brother (David Chappelle), the Chief (Chi McBride), and Sistah Girl (Aunjanue Ellis) among them--is that a black presidential candidate (Billy Dee Williams) has mysteriously decided to stop running for office and open a chain of fried chicken restaurants that serves, among other things, Nappy Meals.

Who’s behind it all? Naturally, The Man, an unseen white guy with an evil henchman in Mr. Feather (Chris Kattan) and a potent vixen in the impossibly curvaceous sexpot, White She Devil (Denise Richards).

As convoluted as the plot sounds, Lee breezes through much of it with an excellent cast and the glue of Eddie Griffin’s performance as Undercover Brother, an ultra-smooth, retro-‘70s “Robin Hood from the ‘hood” who drives a gold Cadillac convertible, sports an enormous Afro and wears platform shoes that truly live up to their name. Hired by the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. to help put a stop to The Man’s plan, “Operation Whitewash,” Undercover Brother unleashes his kung-fu moves and deadly Afro picks in a film that’s impossible not to like even when some of its jokes--which shrewdly skewer both black and white stereotypes--fall flat.

Grade: B

The Woodsman: Movie & DVD Review (2004)

Dicey, tense "Woodsman"

(Originally published 2004)

Nicole Kassell's "The Woodsman" stars Kevin Bacon as Walter, a convicted pedophile recently released from a 12-year stint in prison who is trying to rebuild his life in spite of the temptations threatening to derail it.

Good luck to Walter.

As directed by Kassell from a script she and Steven Fechter based on his play, "The Woodsman" is dicey, tense moviemaking that rides an uncomfortable edge throughout.

It features a performance by Bacon that was among last year's bravest and most overlooked. He's excellent here, all caged, inward turmoil framed by a face wiped clean of expression. Only his eyes reveal the truth of how he feels - frightened, troubled, wary.

Set in a blue-collar section of Philadelphia, the film opens with Walter leaving prison under the supervised parole of Sgt. Lucas (Mos Def), finding work at a lumberyard thanks to family connections, and then securing an apartment across the street from a grade school.

Allegedly, this was the only apartment complex in the city that would take a sex offender's money, but really, it's just a plot contrivance, allowing us to watch Walter struggle with himself as he watches young girls playing just out of reach below him.

Three additional characters enter the mix -Walter's brother-in-law Carlos (Benjamin Bratt), who is the only family member not to shun him; Walter's co-worker Vickie (Kyra Sedgwick, Bacon's real-life wife), with whom he has a telling affair; and the homosexual pedophile, Candy (Kevin Rice), who is paying too much attention to the boys in the playground beneath Walter's living room window.

Throughout, too many contrivances bump against story, sending it askew, but still it comes recommended, particularly because of Bacon, who is superb here, taking a major career risk to examine the sort of character few actors have the guts to play or, for that matter, few people want to face.

This is an uneasy, sometimes difficult film to watch - rare at the movies these days - and not all will welcome it for good reasons. But as a study in pedophilia, which is especially timely given the claims against the Catholic Church and now with the Michael Jackson trial, there is plenty to be said for the conversation it ignites.

Kassell doesn't make Walter sympathetic and she doesn't demonize him. Instead, she observes him, focusing on his compulsions and treating his pedophilia as a disease. This will be a sticking point for some, particularly given the crimes involved, but it nevertheless proves the right choice for the movie. It allows it nuances, layers and complications it otherwise would have lacked had Kassell gone for straight apologia or outright attack.

Grade: B+

Windtalkers: Movie, DVD, Blu-ray disc Review (2002)

Learning your history from the movies

(Originally published 2002)

At its core, the World War II movie "Windtalkers" is about Navajo codetalkers, Native American servicemen who used their language to confound the Japanese while transmitting sensitive information via radio.

It's an important, overlooked piece of history that deserves to be explored in a movie--and it still does, hopefully soon in a film that will, at the very least, have a genuine interest in the subject.

"Windtalkers" doesn't.

The film, from a script by John Rice and Joe Batteer, fails to fully realize its premise, which is overlooked in favor of those elements that tend to beef up Hollywood's bottom line--exploding landmines, fiercely staged battles, mangled bodies and assorted other disfigurements, such as Nicolas Cage's ear, which, after his character is nearly blown apart in the well-conceived opening battle, comes to look like a waxworks reject from Madame Tussaud's Museum.

Directed by Hong Kong's John Woo, whose more popular films include "Face/Off" and "Mission: Impossible II," "Windtalkers" suggests Woo's own knowledge of World War II wasn't mined from hard research, but from the movies.

Its graphic violence aside, the film is a throwback and a relic, generating rote rhythms and easy cliches without spinning a single surprise or offering a believable character.

Mirroring "Pearl Harbor," the film's dialogue, in particular, is sandbagged with corny sentiment and delivered by a handful of actors whose performances suggest they'd be better off shucking cheese at Hickory Farms than in a film whose $100 million budget apparently wasn't enough to buy a decent script.

In a bombshell, the film's premise goes like this: After surviving a horrific battle in the Solomon Islands, Cage's Sgt. Joe Enders convinces his superiors that he's fit for duty in spite of having a ruined ear and a perforated ear drum. In no time, he's dizzy on the front lines of Saipan, where his mission is to protect Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), a Navajo codetalker--or windtalker-who is crucial to the war effort.

All of this is well and good, but Woo, who is better known for his finesse with orchestrating action scenes than his ability to create a coherent story, glosses over all of it in favor of blowing things up and firing off endless rounds of ammo.

To his credit, some of the battle sequences pack a wallop, but they never end. Worse, by the time Christian Slater shows up as Ox, a grinning, harmonica-playing sergeant who makes stirring music with one of the Navajos, you can't help thinking, "When did Christian Slater get sprung out of jail? And how in hell did he learn to play that harmonica?"

It hardly matters. At that point, "Windtalkers" has already blown itself into the line of its own fire.

Grade: D+

(Also available on Blu-ray disc)

Wicker Park: Movie & DVD Review (2004)

Wooden script

(Originally published 2004)

“Wicker Park,” the astonishingly stupid, convoluted remake of the 1996 French thriller, “L’Appartement,” attempts to press audiences into the grooves of a non-linear story, one that’s so fractured, it breaks onscreen.

As directed by Paul McGuigan from Brandon Boyce’s script, the movie tries for substance, but it never reaches below the surface. It’s weightless, dim-witted treacle. People run the gammet of emotions here, but with characters so poorly formed, the impact of their tears, fears, worries, rage and joy is only marginally felt.

In the movie, Josh Hartnett is Matt, a successful, up-and-coming young businessman about to leave Chicago for Shanghai. On the verge of being engaged to the tart, smart Rebecca (Jessica Pare), Matt is seemingly on the right track when his world is suddenly derailed by another woman.

Indeed, into his life crosses who appears to be the former love of his life, Lisa (Diane Kruger of “Troy”), who mysteriously dumped Matt two years before and then vanished without a word to London.

Without knowing for certain that it’s Lisa he sees rushing from a tony restaurant, Matt is on a mission to find out. Dumping the Shanghai trip, he launches into action, with the movie itself launching back and forth in time in an effort to explain how their relationship went wrong.

Along the way, we meet Matt’s kooky best friend, Luke (Matthew Lillard), and Luke’s creepy girlfriend, Alex (Rose Byrne, also of “Troy”), both of whom add to the considerable (and implausible) twists and turns McGuigan shoehorns into the plot.

“Wicker Park” wants to work by evasion, but it doesn’t generate interest in what it withholds. It wants to keep us off balance and it wants to keep us moderately confuses--that it succeeds is no help. And it’s certainly no compliment.

The film’s lack of structure sucks it of momentum. For its first two-thirds, it has no logic, just throwaway, artistic whims by a director who doesn’t have the finesse to see them through. When its story finally does come together in a crowded airport, it’s too late to care. By that point, this disappointing, hollow movie already has been halfway around a world of nowhere.

Grade: D

The Wicker Man: Movie, DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray disc Review (2006)

I'll have what she's having

(Originally published 2006)

File it under "What were they thinking?" And then file that file in the trash.

The Neil LaBute movie, "The Wicker Man," a remake of the 1973 horror film of the same name, is one of those bad movies that it takes three good movies to get over--and not necessarily for the audience. What they get here is a low, unintentional comedy, a movie so spectacularly rotten, you sit there thinking, "Wow, this is spectacularly rotten." And then you wonder whether you're witnessing a small slice of cinematic history.

Could this, in fact, be the worst film of 2006? Have the dog days of summer finally produced their awful, unmentionable litter? We'll see.

Still, when Academy Award-winning actress Ellen Burstyn appears in her fright wig and "Braveheart" makeup, flapping her arms as she wends around giant, buzzing bee hives and trips through utopian woods with her creepy island “sisters” hot on her tail, there's good reason to wonder.

And let's not forget Academy Award-winning actor Nicolas Cage, the star of the show, who at one point dons a bear suit and dances in what essentially is his own little parade of death. All of this and so much more (and so much less) unfolds in "The Wicker Man," whose plot barely deserves mention here.

So, naturally, we'll mention it.

Cage is Edward Malus, a California cop who begins the film on a bum note. When a little girl throws her doll out of a moving car, Malus pulls the car over, gently chastises the girl and her mother, and then watches in astonishment as the feisty blonde brat tosses her doll back into the busy street. Before Malus can retrieve it, the girl and her mother are creamed by a semi, the car catches fire and boom--they're toast.

Haunted, ruined and hooked on anti-depressants, Malus now is a man questioning his very existence when he receives a letter from his old flame, Willow (Kate Beahan).

Apparently, Willow’s daughter has gone missing. Will Malus come to the secluded island of Summersisle to help find her? Sure, he will. Will Willow's daughter look exactly like the doll-tossing darling Malus watched burn alive? Sure, she will. Will the movie adequately explain all its loose threads and odd connections? The cult-like group of man-hating women who inhabit the island? How LaBute, who wrote the script, convinced this cast to star in this movie?

Sure, it won't.

"The Wicker Man" isn’t as bad as the decade’s biggest misfire, “Battlefield Earth,” but it comes close. It’s the sort of movie in which you hope Ellen Burstyn, once so good in “The Exorcist,” still has a few connections at the Vatican. Her Sister Summersisle character and Cage’s Malus are so embarrassingly conceived, Burstyn might ask for a divine intervention to help us forget them both.

Grade: BOMB

(Also available on HD DVD and Blu-ray disc)

Whoopi: Back to Broadway: DVD Review (2005)

A slightly out-of-touch Hollywood square

(Originally published 2005)

At the start of her career, when Whoopi Goldberg was fresh and hadn't become a caricature of herself, she was superb, using stories from her own life to make her one of the best stand-up comediennes of her day.

Those who remember her when she was first introduced to the masses via an HBO special in the mid 1980s saw something that no longer exists--a raw insight that made her dangerous.

Now, two decades later in "Back to Broadway," Goldberg revisits the Lyceum Theater and her most famous characters, including the drugged-out Fontaine.

Some of the jokes hit their mark, particularly when Goldberg takes on the current political climate, but others are disappointing, seemingly conceived by a very comfortable, slightly out-of-touch Hollywood square.

Goldberg's 1985 performance is included in this collection--and it saves the day.

Grade: C+

White Oleander: Movie & DVD Review (2002)

Pretty poison

(Originally published 2002)

Peter Kosminsky's "White Oleander," a mother-daughter soap opera based on Janet Fitch's Oprah-backed best-seller, is a melodramatic potboiler, for sure, but it’s a harrowing, extremely well-acted potboiler, a movie about the ramifications of emotional abuse that resonates with moments of truth as it follows one girl’s descent into hell.

The film stars Michelle Pfeiffer as Ingrid, an artist-cum-poisonous sociopath whose physical beauty belies a cruel spirit and an ugly heart, and Alison Lohman as her teen-age daughter Astrid, a budding artist whose mother happens to be Mommy Dearest for the new millennium.

For Astrid, life strikes a sour note and sustains it when the unstable Ingrid murders her inattentive boyfriend, Barry (Billy Connolly), and is sent to prison. Over the next several years, Astrid is bounced between foster homes and foster moms while Ingrid, who consistently looks too fresh and pretty for someone serving 35 to life, maintains a fierce emotional grip because she’s either unwilling or unable to let go.

Indeed, each communication and visit with her daughter is seen by Ingrid as an opportunity to play with her mind, undermining what little happiness Astrid has managed to achieve, which isn’t much.

As the film unwinds, Kosminsky follows Astrid’s tumultuous relationships with three foster mothers, including Robin Wright Penn as the sluttish, gun-wielding, born-again Christian, Starr; Renee Zellweger as a third-rate actress with a neglectful husband (Noah Wylie); and Svetlana Efremova as a Russian temptress with a hive of other foster girls who shuck discount clothing at outdoor shopping bazaars.

In their own way, all of the performances are riveting even if (or especially since, depending on how you look at it) some tip the balance into camp, as does Penn’s. Still, in her defense, Penn was handed a role that asked her to tear up the scenery while working her way through a carton of cigarettes and an endless parade of red stilettos. She pulls it off memorably, as does Pfeiffer, who’s so good as the conniving Ingrid, she should consider joining Robin Williams in recharging her career by finding roles that exploit her dark side.

The standout here is Lohman, whose strong performance grounds the movie even as its seams threaten to burst. As the film opens, Astrid states that she doesn’t "know how to express how being with someone so dangerous was the last time I felt safe." As the film ends, Kosminsky allows her to express those feelings in a way that suggests even the most unwanted of maternal ties run deep.

Grade: B+

Welcome to Mooseport: Movie & DVD Review (2004)

Now get out

(Originally published 2004)

“Welcome to Mooseport” is set in Maine, but that’s no reason to see it.

The movie is that rare moviegoing event in which you could actually save yourself the eight bucks by looking out a window. Whatever the view there, it likely will be more compelling than what’s tossed onto the screen here.

As directed by Donald Petrie from a script by Tom Schulman, “Welcome to Mooseport” is a high-concept, feature-length sitcom almost completely devoid of laughs. Its cast is appealing—that’s its hook—but its predictable story is such a lazy tumble of cliches, it never takes off to meet expectations.

The movie stars Ray Romano as Handy Harrison, a plumber in a small, seaside town that might have recalled Kennebunkport if it weren’t for the crowds of colorful, folksy stereotypes buzzing about town.

For instance, there’s the nudist jogger, who inexplicably runs through Mooseport’s busy, picturesque streets during the film’s opening credits without one person raising an eyebrow or, for that matter, the local law enforcement dragging him off to jail.

Instead, everyone here--all of them warm, smiling Mainers dressed in their L.L. Bean best--cheerfully waves good morning to him as if this were a nonevent. As such, the story hasn’t even begun and already it’s on shaky ground.

It never recovers.

The film revolves around Handy’s relationship with two people—his headstrong, longtime girlfriend, Sally (Maura Tierney), who wants the commitment-shy Handy to pop the question so they can formally start their life together, and the former president of the United States, Monroe “The Eagle” Cole (Gene Hackman), who has returned to Mooseport to reside in his summer house during the messy divorce from his soon-to-be ex-wife Charlotte (Christine Baranski).

With Charlotte angling for more money, Cole decides to stick it out in Mooseport, where he is asked by the town’s bumbling officials to run for mayor. Through a series of contrivances, Handy himself tosses his hat into the ring and “Welcome to Mooseport,” wheezing to fill two excruciatingly long hours, follows each man’s fight to win the race—as well as Sally’s affection.

Rip Torn, Marcia Gay Harden, Fred Savage and Baranski try to add life to the film’s several subplots, but only Baranski scores a few laughs toward the end, when she’s allowed some screen time. Fairing less well is Romano, who might want to hold on to his television career, and Hackman, who is skating here.

With this sort of talent involved, it’s difficult to imagine why anyone agreed to make the movie, which is killed by its script. That they did so is their problem. That they decided to set it Maine becomes ours.

Grade: D

The Wedding Date: Movie, DVD & HD DVD Review (2005)

Cute, formulaic

(Originally published 2005)

Clare Kilner’s cute, formulaic romp, “The Wedding Date,” follows Kat Ellis (Debra Messing), a desperate Virgin Atlantic employee who hires a gigolo for $6,000 so she can save face at her sister’s wedding in London, where Kat’s ex-fiance, Jeff (Jeremy Sheffield), happens to be best man.

Since it’s Jeff who dumped Kat, she finds it unthinkable to show up at the wedding alone. Call her crazy, but in spite of all that she has going for her--her sense of humor, her charm, her looks, a successful career--her self worth is nevertheless placed on who she’s with, not who she is.

And so along comes Nick Mercer (Dermot Mulroney), a smoldering wedge of Wellington with a Brown education to match his bedroom brown eyes. Nick is, as they say, a professional escort, which in Kat’s case doesn’t necessarily mean sex for cash, but the sort of guy who can look good on her arm, read a situation, understand his part in it, flirt with her just enough to make Jeff jealous, and provide the necessary mortar to make sure nothing crumbles during their long weekend abroad.

That is, of course, should he and Kat manage to remain emotionally uninvolved.

Based on a script by Dana Fox, “The Wedding Date” is slight and it knows it. It has no pretentious. It’s an odd little fairy tale about a single woman and her paid stud, with obvious echoes of “Pretty Woman,” “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” which also starred Mulroney, running throughout.

A compendium of those films is achieved here, and while much of it fails to be new or believable, “Date” still entertains. The film is brisk, the chemistry between Messing and Mulroney is undeniable, sometimes the dialogue is bright, and the stock characters are appealing, particularly Holland Taylor as Kat’s mother, Peter Egan as her father, and Sarah Parish as her ripe, anything-goes cousin.

As for Messing, she’s a movie star. This is her first starring role in a movie and she proves consistently watchable--even if the material isn’t exactly fresh, and even if she is only playing a variation of her character Grace from “Will and Grace.” Is there something deeper for Messing to reveal? Will a better film show us a different side to her talent? Don’t bet against her.

Here’s hoping “The Wedding Date” does well enough at the box office to allow her that chance.

Grade: B

(Also available on HD DVD)

We Are Marshall: Movie Review, DVD Review, HD DVD Review, Blu-ray Review (2007)

We are not impressed

(Originally published 2007)

In the right hands, "We Are Marshall" could have been an insightful, moving drama about the difficulty of getting on with life in the wake of a horrific tragedy. Its studio, Warner Brothers Pictures, thought this was the case, so they sent out awards screeners to the Academy and to critics groups in hopes that votes would be favorably cast and nominations would ensue.

And they just might, though likely only for the Razzies, since what Warner has here is a cliched, predictable sports movie with cloying inspirational overtones whose mangled execution sends it to the far end of the playing field, where it drops the ball.

As directed by McG ("Charlie’s Angels"), this overly earnest, melodramatic movie follows the residents of Huntington, W.Va., after the Nov. 14, 1970, airplane crash that killed 75 people, including 37 Marshall University football players, eight of its coaches and many supporters.
The film is about a town coming to terms with those deaths and with a university president, Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn), who was forced to acknowledge that the town’s residents might be caught in a haze of mourning if he didn’t find the means to start a new team.

He did so in the face of great opposition from some members of the community, who believed that creating a new team was disrespectful of the dead, but also with great encouragement from many members of the student body, who believed that carrying on with the tradition of a football team was the only way to respect the dead.

Wary of the former but fueled by the latter, Dedmon set out to find a new coach, with his exhausting efforts leading him to Jack Lengyel, who is played by Matthew McConaughey as if the actor has been struck dumb by a brick. His dim turn as Lengyel suggests caricature, not character, a man whose unfocused, caged energy is meant to be endearingly quirky, but which really is distractingly cartoonish.

The film fares mildly better with Matthew Fox as Lengyel’s assistant coach, Red Dawson, and with Anthony Mackie as Nate Ruffin, one of the original team’s few surviving players. But working against them is a sorely miscast Strathairn, who often appears blinking and bewildered by the fate handed him, and especially Ian McShane, who is wasted in a two-dimensional role as a bitter, grieving father of one of the dead football players.

Since "We Are Marshall" only ever plays by the rules of the genre, there are no surprises here — none. It’s a movie that leans hard on its hit-heavy soundtrack of popular music and as such, it just coasts, following its rote story of how Lengyel and Dawson had to take a scrappy, underdog team and turn them into winners in spite of the odds stacked against them. Who wants to guess how that turns out?

For those interested in seeing a good, recent football movie, rent the just-released "Invincible" with Mark Wahlberg instead. That movie lifts this overdone genre in ways that "Marshall" sandbags it.

Grade: D

(Also available on HD DVD and Blu-ray disc)

Gus Van Sant's Last Days: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

A director, very much alive

(Originally published 2005)

Don’t send out the condolences just yet.

The movie isn’t about the director's death--if anything, it proves that Van Sant is very much alive. Instead, it’s slyly about the events leading up to Kurt Cobain's death.

Though the movie never says that Michael Pitt’s Blake, a disturbed rock star, is Cobain, it’s obvious what Van Sant is up to here.

The movie exists in a haze, with time as fractured as Blake himself. Long stretches seem pointless, which is the point; Van Sant wants you to feel his character’s isolation and so he isolates us from him, him from us. Tricky business.

This is not a movie for the masses, who might be put off by how aloof and meandering it is, or perhaps even for fans of Cobain, who likely would prefer more insight into the final days leading to his death. Instead, this is an experimental movie, not wholly successful, that reaches for its own nirvana--something new within the art of moviemaking.

Grade: B-

Buy the movie from Amazon: Last Days (2 Disc Special Edition)

Guess Who: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

Guess what? Not bad.

(Originally published 2005)

The broad new comedy, “Guess Who,” turns out to be Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher’s best film to date. But let’s not pop the corks just yet.

In spite of the nearly three dozen movies between them, each has yet to make a memorable film worth getting excited about.

For instance, is it a compliment to say that “Guess Who” is better than “Booty Call?” More compelling than “Texas Rangers?” Superior to “B*A*P*S?” Guess not.

A quick glance at each man’s film career finds a sloppy trail of miscalculations and poor decisions. Mac is one of today’s better comedians, but he has yet to capture on film the sly, hot-tempered greatness of his television show, “The Bernie Mac Show.” Networks know what to do with him, but studios don’t. Even last year’s “Mr. 3000” swung short.

Kutcher, on the other hand, is more pin-up personality than actor. He’s a male version of Paris Hilton--obnoxious, hollow, manufactured for the moment. His resume is a laundry list of critical and financial flops, including such mind-erasers as “Dude, Where’s My Car,” “My Boss’s Daughter” and “The Butterfly Effect,” the latter of which found Kutcher playing a character given to embarrassing fits of hallucination.

The good news about “Guess Who” is that it requires no hallucinogens to enjoy it. A slight, satirical remake of 1967’s “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”--itself an earnest social drama that won Katharine Hepburn an Academy Award and proved the end of Spencer Tracy--“Guess Who” isn’t half bad, provided you go into it with reasonable expectations.

The film flips “Dinner” on it side, which sounds messier than it is. Instead of being about a black man meeting his white girlfriend’s family--as was the case with Sidney Poitier’s character in the original--it’s about Kutcher’s clean-cut Simon meeting his black girlfriend’s family over one long, tumultuous weekend.

If that sounds as if the film is also ripping-off “Meet the Parents,” that’s because it is. But while the film is never as outlandish as that movie, “Guess Who” is still affable, an urban comedy steeped in stereotypes that predictably finds its mismatched characters coming to respect each other in spite of their differences.

As banker Percy Jones, Mac is the voice of disapproval here, testing Simon at every turn with his cutting quips and bulging eyes. Percy’s daughter and Simon’s intended, Theresa (Zoe Saldana), is pure milquetoast, but Percy’s wife, Marilyn (Judith Scott), does bring a refreshing air of bemused detachment to the proceedings.

As for Kutcher, his character is essentially a long-suffering doormat, slightly more dynamic than a twig, but the straightman role does work for him. Unlike his previous movies, he doesn’t try too hard here, which proves just right. Sometimes, when the camera loves you and the rest of the cast brings the talent, that’s enough.

Grade: C+

The Grudge 2: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

Look away

(Originally published 2006)

The horror movie, "The Grudge 2," begins with the same heady news that flashed upon the screen at the start of its equally dumb, 2004 predecessor, "The Grudge": "When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is left behind. Those who encounter it die, and a new curse is born."

Let's hope they're wrong. Otherwise, should some disgruntled viewer kick the can after seeing this beauty, curses will descend upon cineplexes everywhere.

This screwy, empty movie is a continuation of a story that began in the low-budget, 2003 Japanese horror film "Ju-On: The Grudge," itself a remake, of sorts, of 2000's "Ju-On: The Curse" and 2003's "Ju-On: The Curse 2."

All were such hits in Japan, producer and fan Sam Raimi ("The Evil Dead," "Spider-Man," "Spider-Man 2") commissioned the series' director, Takashi Shimizu, to helm an American version of "The Grudge." Since the box office was there to support a sequel, Shimizu got the nod to direct "The Grudge 2."

Too bad so much is lost in translation. As written by Shimizu and Stephen Susco, "The Grudge 2" is a hot mess, a movie that's so bad, it generates a train wreck of confusion onscreen, with sense and logic tied to the tracks and repeatedly severed.

In brief, the idiot plot: Aubrey Davis (Amber Tamblyn) is ordered by her estranged, bed-ridden mother (Joanna Cassidy, doing her B-movie best to recall a faded Karen Black) to go to Tokyo to retrieve Aubrey's older sister, Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who now is in the hospital after nearly being undone by events in the last movie.

For reasons that won't be revealed here, retrieving Karen proves a difficult to do, though Aubrey's efforts do allow the film to set up one of its endless subplots--she meets journalist Eason (Edison Chen), who presumably is here to help her sort out the ensuing nonsense. Good luck to Eason. Meanwhile, the restless script pulls focus away from them to concentrate on others affected by the curse--several schoolgirls in Tokyo who are stricken by it, and also a family in Chicago (yes, this curse travels).

For jolts, the movie offers nothing new--zip--just the same old bluish ghosts of the murdered mother and son team, Kayako (Takako Fuji) and Toshio (Oga Tanaka), who pop up so predictably, they underscore the movie's total lack of imagination and banality.

These days, spinach is scarier than anything that unfolds in "The Grudge 2." The film is such a waste, it could have benefited from the inspired and truthful title found in the recent "Jackass" movie. "The Grudge Number Two" comes closer to the mark.

Grade: D-

Gosford Park: Movie & DVD Review (2001)

An ensemble cast, up the down staircase
with knives in their backs

(Originally published 2001)

Robert Altman's "Gosford Park" feels like Agatha Christie by way of Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde and P.D. James. It stars everyone currently working in movies--or at least it seems that way--featuring a large ensemble cast that includes dozens of actors, all of whom have obviously shown up to have a grand good time.

And they do.

The film, from a script by Julian Fellowes, is a leisurely interweaving of the Upstairs, Downstairs classes in an English manor house in 1932. It's at once a murder mystery and a social satire, a movie whose story unfolds with the staccato punch of a blizzard of tiny melodramas, most of which have little to do with the unwieldy plot--but all of which add nicely to the experience of watching the film.

The story, such as it is, is centered around a shooting party held at Gosford Park, the sturdy country estate owned by Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon), a crude multi-millionaire industrialist, and his younger wife Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas), a chilly aristocrat who lives her life with the sort of icy detachment that suggests she'd either freeze if she paused long enough for her blue blood to congeal--or that she is, in fact, already dead.

Arriving for the McCordles' party are a whole host of types, from Maggie Smith's showstopping performance as the acid-tongued Constance, Countess of Trentham; Jeremy Northam as the real-life British matinee idol Ivor Novello; Bob Balaban as an American producer of Charlie Chan movies; and Charles Dance as Lord Stockbridge, a bitter pill who can't bear the fact that Sir William has risen within the aristocracy thanks to his wife's fondness for his newer-than-new money.

Others come and go through the film's busy corridors, but no group resonates more than the servants living downstairs--those who have been charged with orchestrating this hellish party while somehow putting up with the glamorous archetypes "bored to sobs" with its proceedings.

Here, Altman mines small, yet perfectly realized performances from Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, Emily Watson, Ryan Phillippe, Richard E. Grant, Kelly MacDonald, Alan Bates, Dereck Jacobi and Eileen Atkins, all of whom define their characters without ever being showy.

Without its murder--and Maggie Smith’s supremely bitchy and funny asides--“Gosford Park” would have been just a charming museum piece set in the days before Hitler's reign, a quaint slog through the English countryside with characters dusted off from a Merchant Ivory production.

But Altman goes deeper. What interests him is the inner workings of the cast system, which he shakes up and captures through this murder. Indeed, the moment the victim is found slumped over a desk, the film’s several loose ends start to gel as truths are revealed, characters are exposed--and then catharsis, long dormant within these rigid walls, is allowed to unravel within one man's bedroom.

Grade: B+

Gigli: Movie & DVD Review (2003)

A Bennifer bust

(Originally published 2003)

When you think about it, what Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have given us over the past year is something to behold if not exactly to treasure--a much ballyhooed romance, a willingness to canoodle on cue, an eagerness to please.

They're like a couple of well-groomed pets, two reasonably talented superstars from modest roots who enjoy the limelight so much, they’ve wagged their tails into a sea of overexposure.

Through their own tireless self-promotion backed by an insatiable public demand, we've learned more about them than we probably ever wanted to know, such banalities as how Ben met Jen, how Ben proposed to Jen, how Jen dumped men to become Ben's Jen.

And let's not forget her engagement ring, the size and color of which made these one-syllable wonders tabloid fodder for months.

It's been a well-choreographed whirlwind, this courtship, with new details of its progress having a way of arriving just in time to boost interest in, say, her new CD, his movie "Daredevil," her movie “Maid in Manhattan,” and now in their first movie together, "Gigli."

The film, a romantic comedy gangster drama set in L.A., suggests that all this exposure finally is taking its toll--in “Gigli’s” opening weekend, the movie made a paltry $3.8 million, ruinous considering the film’s $50 million price tag and the countless additional millions it took to market it.

As directed by Martin Brest from his own script, the film failed to connect not only because of a potential Ben-Jen fatigue, but because of its story, which is lame, and the fact that the movie is never anything more than a self-aware vanity piece, one wholly lacking in energy and chemistry, in spite of the love that apparently bloomed on set.

In the film, Affleck is Larry Gigli (rhymes with “really”), a mama’s boy cum mob enforcer who falls hard for Ricki (Lopez), a fellow mob enforcer hired to keep an eye on Larry while Larry keeps an eye on Brian (Justin Bartha), the kidnapped, mentally challenged brother of an influential judge who’s out to put the screws to another mobster.

Don’t ask.

What matters here is that Larry falls hard for Ricki in spite of knowing that Ricki is a lesbian. He sees in her the “whole package,” a knockout woman who has her own mind, her own look, and especially her own ideas about why a woman’s vagina is superior to a man’s penis, as we learn during one colorful exchange that leads to Lopez gobbling like a turkey.

What ensues is a bizarre cross between "Rain Man" and Affleck's breakout film, "Chasing Amy,” but without the substance. Cameos by Christopher Walken, Al Pacino and Lainie Kazan add interest, but only because they wrestle each scene to the ground and thus divert attention from its preening stars.

Affleck and Lopez have their moments in “Gigli” and they can be appealing in the right roles, but with each moving away from the solid choices that began their careers, they’re testing the limits of what their fans and moviegoers will support.

Grade: D+






S t ART r e K

Ghost Rider: Movie & DVD Review (2007)

Hell--unleashed

(Originally published 2007)

The tagline for the new "Ghost Rider" movie promises that "Hell is about to be unleashed!" Actually, that might be an understatement. After seeing the movie, some might question whether it was the apocalypse that was unleashed.

By why split hairs? In this case, the unleashing of hell really means the unveiling of a new big-budget Nicolas Cage movie, which in the wake of the actor's last movie, "The Wicker Man," at least proves he's on familiar ground.

Here, Cage takes the lead as Johnny Blaze, a lean, leather-clad motorcycle daredevil who, as a young man, signed his soul over to the devil (Peter Fonda) in an effort to save his father from terminal cancer. In spite of Johnny's good intentions, doing so proves a disastrous move. Now, as an adult who at night turns into the fiery, motorcycle-riding skeleton Ghost Rider, Johnny is Mephistopheles' go-to man when it comes to ridding the world of those demons trying to wrestle the devil out of power.

The chief demon leading this cause is Mephistopheles' ungrateful son Blackheart (Wes Bentley), who has enlisted several other demons in a quest to bring his old man down. What Blackheart wants is a contract his father signed with the previous ghost rider, which presumably will allow him to consume enough lost souls to make him the most powerful demon of them all. Key to this happening is Johnny's relationship with Caretaker (Sam Elliott), a grave digger whose secret past will surprise few when it's revealed.

Working hard in a romantic subplot are Eva Mendez's breasts--there isn't a shot in the movie in which they don't dominate the screen or detract from her character, a television reporter once in love with Johnny. Mendez is a washout here--one of Hefner's Bunnies could have played the role to similar effect--but at least she doesn't have to drink jellybeans out of martini glasses while listening to music by the Carpenters and watching monkey karate films, as Cage does.

The good news about "Ghost Rider" is that sometimes it's just bad enough to offer dark moments of camp, which gives the movie an occasional lift. As written by the film's director, Mark Steven Johnson ("Daredevil"), the dialogue is particularly atrocious--the man can't write--though the special effects counter in that they are well done.

So, the result is a mix. This isn't a movie you go to hoping for another "Spider-Man," but a movie you go to if you agree there's fun to be had in the occasional cinematic collapse.

Grade: C-

Running Scared: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

Running with scissors

(Originally published 2006)

When it comes right down to it, the new Wayne Kramer movie, "Running Scared," should have been called "Running with Scissors." Not because it's a dangerous movie (it isn't), but because it's a reckless, unthinking movie that quickly impales itself on its own script.

As written by Kramer ("The Cooler"), there is every indication that this ridiculous, overly stylized movie was conceived on the fly. How else do you describe all that follows?

Scenes are stacked against each other so haphazardly, there's the sense that somebody here, perhaps a grip who fit the film's target demographic of angry young men, was cheering from the sidelines, urging Kramer to take the movie into any number of directions, all of which appear to have led it to the place it most belongs--hell.

Boiled to its essence, the film's idiot plot goes like this: Paul Walker is Joey Gazelle--yes, Joey Gazelle--a bargain-basement thug charged by a mid-level mobster to get rid of the gun that was used to mow down several dirty cops in a drug bust gone wrong. If he screws up and that gun somehow gets on the street, people Joey don't want to tangle with could get in the sort of trouble that will leave Joey wishing he'd done the job right.

Knowing this, Joey drives home, where the lighting is grim, the décor is depressing and his wife Teresa (Vera Farmiga) is cooking spaghetti in a thong. Well, that lifts Joey's mood. Roughly, he tries to have sex with her on the washing machine, but since Teresa is having none of it--Joey's ailing father is, after all, only a few steps away, a ribbon of drool unspooling from his mouth--Joey zips up and scrambles into the basement. There, his son, Nicky (Alex Neuberger), and Nicky's friend, Oleg (Cameron Bright), watch him from behind a stack of boxes as he hides the gun.

Since there wouldn't be a movie if the gun didn't go missing, it naturally goes missing right into Oleg's hands. Next door, at home, Oleg does things to his abusive, meth-addicted stepfather, Anzor (Karel Roden), that involve employing the business end of said gun. What spins from this leaves everyone running scared, with Kramer bringing in hilarious pimps who freely call themselves "Mac Daddies," kind-hearted prostitutes who do the right thing when properly lock and loaded, a creepy New Jersey couple who kidnap and kill children in a sleazy child-porn ring, and a hockey game that closes the show as if it were "Holiday on Ice--Gangsta Style."

And that's not even half of it. At my screening, the audience was divided. Eight walked out (one kindly raised a finger to the screen) while others couldn't contain their stunned laughter in the face of such mounting absurdity. "Running Scared" is a terrible, vile little movie, for sure, but it would be remiss to overlook the fact that with it, a new camp classic is born. For fans of those movies, here is your feast. All others should run the other way.

Grade: BOMB

Robots: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

Chaos and the machine

(Originally published 2005)

In an animated movie, anything is possible. Do it right and a film about two damp dishrags headed straight for the wringer could be the main squeeze of the year--so long as there is a spark between them, a personality within them, a compelling story behind them.

The tricky thing about today’s computer-animated movies is that the temptation is always there to push the terabyte into overload.

There are obvious dangers to that. If a director is too seduced by the visuals to focus on what really matters--the characters, their relationships, the stories that bind them--the film’s soul can be lost.

That was the case in “The Polar Express” and it’s now the case in “Robots,” a technically fine-looking yet dull-as-drill bits movie whose busy animation creates 90 minutes of chaos onscreen.

As directed by Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha from a script by Lowell Ganz, David Lindsay-Abaire and Babaloo Mandel, the film begins with the hopeful young robot Rodney Copperbottom (voice of Ewan McGregor) leaving his quaint hometown of Rivet to become an inventor in Robot City, a sprawling metropolis that makes Manhattan look like prairie land.

The hand-me-down son of a robot dishwasher, Rodney has something to prove, all right, but the good news is that he has the goods to backup his dreams.

He’s a talented visionary who wants to become as great an inventor as his idol, Big Weld (Mel Brooks). But with the evil Ratchet (Greg Kinnear) undermining all at every turn, Rodney finds himself in a pinch. Ratchet plans to rid the world of old robots made of spare parts, which includes Rodney, his family, all of Rodney’s friends, and millions of others ‘bots. What to do?

Let’s just say that when it comes to these buckets of bolts, someone is going to get screwed.

For kids, a worthwhile message is tucked within “Robots”--you can shine no matter what you’re made of. But this doesn’t turn out to be true for the film, which is made of a similar computer code that created the superior “The Incredibles,” “Monster, Inc.,” “Toy Story 2” and “Toy Story.” It’s nowhere near their levels of excellence.

There isn’t a moment in the movie when the dense visuals aren’t overwhelming the already thin story, which itself borrows too liberally from “The Wizard of Oz,” “Metropolis,” “Star Wars” and other films. As such, it struggles to mine an identity of its own. The brassy animation, while intricate, is pure overkill, computer-generated oneupsmanship that gets in your face and slaps it.

With the story and characters caught in cliché hell, the kids at my packed screening weren’t exactly riveted to the screen. Their noninterest was palpable. Most squirmed, some wandered the aisles, others spoke throughout. And who can blame them? Watching “Robots” is like watching someone else play a video game--for awhile, you’re enchanted by the graphics, but once the weak gameplay reveals itself, all interest is lost.

Grade: C-

Rise: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

An unusual movie whose energy lingers

(Originally published 2005)

From David LaChapelle, a terrific documentary about a subset of hip-hop culture born out of the Rodney King riots of 1992.

Set in present-day South Central Los Angeles, the movie exposes a thrilling, underground dance form called “krumping," which finds its soul steeped in African dance, a clown act devised by Tommy Johnson, and the need for self-expression that uses the body as a weapon far deadlier (and sexier) than any gun.

The movie and the young people within it are in the moment, with the latter pressing against their oppression by tapping into something akin to a religious experience.

An unusual movie whose energy lingers.

Grade: A-

The Ring Two: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

If it had a ringtone, it would be a raspberry

(Originally published 2005)

The water budget for the horror movie, "The Ring Two," must have set Hollywood on its can. It's likely the biggest since that old Kevin Costner clunker, "Waterworld."

In the film, bathtubs overflow, ceilings drip, entire houses flood, walls weep, wells vomit, characters nearly drown, yet ironically, the movie suffers from the lows of a creative drought.

As directed by Hideo Nakata from a script by Ehren Kruger, the film joins most of today's mainstream horror movies in that it's bored with itself and with the genre - in your bones, you can feel the ache of its fatigue, and it hurts.

The movie is unique in that it doesn't mock the genre, which has been in vogue since the 1996 debut of Wes Craven's "Scream." Still, maybe a little good-natured hair-pulling wouldn't have been so bad for "The Ring Two." In this case, it might have given the movie the personality it lacks and the beneficial jolts it needs.

A sequel to Gore Verbinski's 2002 film "The Ring" - itself a so-so, Americanized version of Nakata's superior 1998 Japanese film, "Ringu" - "The Ring Two" finds Naomi Watts back as Rachel Keller, a former Seattle-based journalist who nearly died in the first film when she viewed a videotape whose contents were so disturbing, they might have killed her within seven days had her sleuthing not put a stop to the clock.

Now living in Oregon with her creepy son Aidan (David Dorfman), Rachel finds herself in the unenviable position of once again having to deal with a copy of the videotape she thought she had destroyed.

Its contents aren't exactly the stuff of Merchant Ivory. They involve a nightmare of Victorian severity, with humorless, middle-aged women tossing themselves off cliffs and a sketchy young girl with bad hair and worse teeth wreaking all sorts of havoc.

On second thought, maybe this is Merchant Ivory.

So, what gives here? If you've seen the first film and understood its endless haze of puzzles, which kept accumulating until the ideas that fueled them turned on themselves, you'll know what gives - there are no revelations here, not even when Sissy Spacek slums through a kitschy cameo to help sort things out. And if you haven't seen the first film? Well, come expecting a Rubik's Cube without the payoff.

"The Ring Two" has its moments, such as a scene in which several angry young bucks go berserk in a forest, which are well done. Watts also is good, far better than the material, with screen presence to spare in spite of the empty script she inhabits. Still, for her and for Hollywood, this is a bland, underwhelming product, a cash cow meant for a big opening weekend, nothing more.

If "The Ring Two" had a ringtone, it also would be a raspberry.

Grade: C-

Rent: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

Evict them

(Originally published 2005)

Toward the nerve-jangling midpoint of the new movie “Rent,” when the story and its Bohemian-wannabe characters have whipped themselves into a high froth of full-blown camp, I waited for a break in the deluge of song and dance numbers to ask my movie companion a question: “Where in the hell are we?”

“In a movie script” came the reply.

An excellent point. In Chris Columbus’ self-aware adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s robust 1996 stage musical, “Rent,” there never is a question that we're dealing with a film that apparently broke a hip upon its leap from stage to screen. Occasionally, the movie is entertaining and engrossing, but too often for the wrong reasons. It's a mess, collapsing in ways from which it doesn't recover, though God knows it tries.

The problem is that "Rent" never was intended for the screen. It’s designed for the stage, a completely different beast with different needs, starting with the electrical give and take between a cast and its audience. Broadway and Hollywood know the difficulties of pulling off this sort of film, but hope, I'm afraid, is more powerful than logic, and in this case, hope got the best of "Rent." Hope sent it to hell.

A contemporary retelling of Puccini's "La Boheme," the film does bring back much of the original cast, who do their best here, and it's hardly lacking in big issues as it deals with homelessness, death, drug addiction, sexuality, HIV and AIDS. And yet in spite of this, it packs the dramatic punch of a feather. The movie has a rushed, awkward feel to it. It strains to be as engaging as Larson's songs.

Unlike Rob Marshall's excellent adaptation of “Chicago," in which the song and dance numbers ingeniously stemmed from Roxie Hart’s imagination, or the upcoming "The Producers," which exists to spread its wings in the ether, "Rent" demands to be taken literally, which is its problem.

In one scene, a character might be having a perfectly engaging conversation about the dangers of shooting up dope or the worry of not being able to pay the rent, and then suddenly be singing his heart out, setting trash cans ablaze and dancing on tables as if that'll keep on the lights. It doesn't.

What Larson's "Rent" had going for it was rage; it was conceived out of fear and desperation. What Columbus' "Rent" has against it is apathy; it was conceived to make a buck. With the exception of World AIDS Day, in which the mass media finally puts HIV and AIDS above the fold, neither is given the focus they demand. Somehow, in spite of a pandemic that continues its dark march, we've grown so inexcusably comfortable with it, news about its progress has been relegated to the fringe.

That's the real crime this movie does make us face. It's also the reason it can't totally be dismissed.

Grade: C-

Reign Over Me: Movie & DVD Review (2007)

Please--reign somewhere else

(Originally published 2007)

The Mike Binder drama, "Reign Over Me," stars Adam Sandler as Charlie Fineman, a former dentist who lost his wife, his three daughters and the family dog in one of the planes that crashed on Sept. 11 and who now exists in a haze of denial, not unlike the actor himself.

Over the course of his 18-year film career, Sandler has played a wealth of characters, not one of which has come close to preparing him for a role that demands, above all else, the ability to tap into an unimaginable vein of rage and grief.

His vitae is hardly a virtue. He has been Schecky Moskowitz in "Babes Ahoy," a dimwitted waterboy in "The Waterboy," the lisping spawn of Satan in "Little Nicky." Fond of the uncredited performance, Sandler has popped up as Satan in "Dirty Work," Mambuza Bongo Guy in "The Hot Chick," and Javier Sandooski in "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo."

He’s popular with the masses and he has made millions doing his shtick, but is he really our go-to guy for a movie that uses the events of Sept. 11 as its emotional backdrop? That feels about as right as a weekend call from the doctor’s office, but according to Binder, Sandler is exactly the right guy.

Maybe this is because Binder knows that some of our best comedians also are our best dramatists. Trouble is, Sandler isn’t that actor. In 2002’s "Punch Drunk Love," he went for respect and earned it in his best, most credible performance to date. But in his second stab at drama, 2004’s "Spanglish," he was derailed by a shrieking, steamrolling Tea Leoni and failed to leave a mark.

Now, as Charlie, he is fittingly cast as a man who has regressed into something of a child — he rides a motorized scooter through the streets of Manhattan, he’s addicted to video games, his infrequent stabs at humor seem culled from the playground. But Sandler, decked out in a distracting Bob Dylan fright wig, can’t overcome his own limitations as an actor. The idea that he’s paired opposite Don Cheadle as fellow dentist and former roommate Alan Johnson is no help. Cheadle’s gifts as an actor, which are on full display here, consistently underscore Sandler’s weaknesses.

In a movie that finds Alan reconnecting with Charlie after many years apart, the story stumbles forward, with Alan so disturbed by the depth of Charlie’s shattered state, he makes it his duty to get his old friend the help he needs. On one level, this means earning Charlie’s trust; on another, it means getting him to a psychiatrist, in this case Liv Tyler’s Dr. Angela Oakhurst.

Detracting him from his quest to save Charlie are Charlie himself, who rails against remembering what he wants to forget; Alan’s controlling wife, Janeane (Jada Pinkett Smith), who would prefer that her husband spend more time at home; and Charlie’s in-laws (Robert Klein, Melinda Dillon), who want him institutionalized.

It’s a plot designed to allow actors the opportunity to act, and while Cheadle comes through, the out-of-his-league Sandler, crushed by the weight of the material, never stands a chance.

Grade: C-

Red Eye: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

No screen fatigue here

(Originally published 2005)

The new Wes Craven thriller "Red Eye" is among the director's finest efforts, a lean, focused work that concentrates much of its claustrophobic terror within the not-so-friendly skies.

This surprisingly smart, insidious little film from first-time feature writer Carl Ellsworth is really just a collection of cliches, but they are assembled so well and directed with such verve, the familiar groove they create allows for a movie that achieves an admirable briskness.

The film is never dull. It stars Rachel McAdams ("The Wedding Crashers," "The Notebook") as hotel manager Lisa Reisert, who is exactly the sort of person you want in your corner should you ever arrive at your destination with a bum reservation.

Efficient and accommodating to a level that suggests she's next in line for sainthood, Lisa, when we first see her, is busy multitasking her way to LAX, where she plans to board a plane that will take her home to Miami. Problem is, the weather outside is frightful, with a hail of electrical storms keeping her grounded in Los Angeles longer than she anticipated.

This is of particular concern to Lisa since soon to arrive at her hotel is deputy secretary of homeland security Charles Keefe (Jack Scalia), a VIP guest whose own security is of obvious national importance.

Still, what can she do? When it comes to the airlines, we're all at their mercy. So when she meets-cute with fellow stranded passenger Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy), whose disarming sense of humor and quirky good looks heighten her attraction to him, there's the sense in Lisa's reluctant smile that being delayed in the company of a stranger sometimes has its advantages.

And sometimes it doesn't. The moment they board the plane and are seated next to each other, the nightmare for Lisa begins, with Jackson quickly dropping the cute act and demanding that she make a phone call to change Keefe's room to that of another, where he will be assassinated. If she chooses not to make the call, her father (Brian Cox) will be executed. If she does, Keefe and his family will be dead.

And so unfolds Craven's taut cat-and-mouse game, with the director of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies and the "Scream" series moving in a new direction to design a kinetic film that doesn't ingore his past.

The film is at its best while we're on the plane. In its tight, intimate closeups of its jittery stars, what you notice are traces of Hitchcock (the sexual undertones, the reality within the surreal) infused with De Palma's slick, sloping camerawork. It's all sold to you by Craven, who tips his hat to them without forgetting to wear his own.

Toward the end, when we're on the ground running and Craven has unleashed his new modern-day monster, the director holds true to his roots by cleverly recalling another monster. Just who and how won't be revealed here, but it's a nice touch and well worth the ride to find out.

Grade: B+

Racing Stripes: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

This barnyard hits a wall

(Originally published 2005)

The little zebra that could in a film that can't and doesn't.

Frankie Muniz is the voice of Stripes, an abandoned circus zebra who falls into the hands of two people: Nolan Walsh (Bruce Greenwood), a depressed farmer and former horse trainer whose wife died in a riding accident; and his daughter, Channing (Hayden Panettiere), who recognizes in Stripes a zebra who could be as fast as the race horses who tease him from the neighboring property.

If someone would just believe in him--and agree to ride him--Stripes could find himself on a path to greatness. And so Channing rides him (of course she does), which allows for tension to brew at home before Stripes competes in the Kentucky Open.

Only the youngest of tots won't know how this movie turns out; for them, it will work. For others, it's glue, with surprise and imagination stripped from the story.

Designed to appeal to the broadest possible audience, "Racing Stripes" becomes a movie whose gooey sentiment is strangley laced with bathroom humor.

Assisting in the scat jokes are David Spade and Steve Harvey as Scuzz and Buzz, two computer-generated flies who are here to wallow in dung.

Obvious echoes of "National Velvet," "Babe" and "Seabiscut" abound, but the comparisons only sink the film further.Still, Dustin Hoffman, Whoopi Goldberg and Snoop Dogg are highlights, providing excellent voice work for the barnyard of talking animal cynics who do their best to make Stripes feel like an ass.

Grade: C

Twisted: Movie & DVD Review (2004)

A train wreck, with poor Ashley Judd stuck in the caboose

(Originally published 2004)

The new Philip Kaufman movie, “Twisted,” is another one of those glossy, eye-popping crime thrillers starring Ashley Judd as a strung-out woman living a life of peril.

Like its predecessors --“Kiss the Girls,” “Double Jeopardy,” “High Crimes” and “Along Came a Spider”—the movie features a premise that’s such a stretch, it nearly snaps the celluloid on which it’s filmed.

Unfortunately, unlike those other Judd jaunts, this one is so lazily conceived, it never becomes the guilty pleasure it should have been. Without a trace of suspense to sustain it or a thread of logic to needle it through, the movie is so joylessly dull, it can’t save itself from collapsing onscreen.

This time out, in what might be considered a minor break from form, Judd plays a character who isn’t just in danger, but who might, in fact, be the danger. She’s Jessica Shepard, a feisty policewoman recently turned homicide detective who has, shall we say, her share of problems.

Booze is one of them. Jess loves the drink, particular wine, which she guzzles until her eyes roll back in her head, the room spins and she falls flat on the floor.

Or on top of a man. You see, Jess’ other pastime is picking up smoky strangers in sleazy San Francisco bars and taking them home for rounds of aggressive sex, which she enjoys to the point of passing out. Lately, when she comes to the next morning, she does so with the cold news that the previous evening’s trick has wound up dead, with a cigarette burn on the back of his hand and his face beaten to a bloody pulp.

Is she the murderer? Jess doesn’t know—she was too stoned to remember. Still, the movie strains to mount a mystery around that very question, with Samuel L. Jackson, Andy Garcia and David Strathairn rounding out the dim corners.

As directed by Kaufman from a script by Sarah Thorp, “Twisted” is a train wreck, with Ashley Judd stuck in the caboose.

Initially, the scenes in which Judd transforms her cute, tart image into that of an alcohol-soaked tramp are grotesquely fun, with Kaufman nearly creating a camp erotic thriller of note. But as the movie unfolds and the script becomes increasingly implausible, that note turns out to be D flat.

For instance, in spite of standing tall as the only suspect in each of the murders, Jess is inexplicably allowed to stay on the case, in spite of the rather sizable conflict of interest that creates. Kaufman and Thorp try to breeze over that beauty, having one character claim that Jess would lose her career if she weren’t allowed to stay on the case, and in the process, they somehow believe audiences will buy it.

They won’t.

Grade: D-

Troy: Movie Review, DVD Review, HD DVD Review, Blu-ray Review (2004) Director's Cut

Drowning the Aegean in a sea of hair products

(Originally published 2004)

Wolfgang Petersen’s $200 million blockbuster-hopeful "Troy," a sword-and-sandal epic inspired by Homer’s "Iliad" and key elements of Virgil’s "Aeneid," may star Brad Pitt in the lead, but he’s no reason to see the film.

Instead, its Australian-born Eric Bana ("Hulk") who rises from the film’s blood, severed limbs and ashes to deliver a performance that’s so confident, it galvanizes an otherwise lightweight movie undeserving of its 2 1/2 hour running time.

Based on a screenplay by David Benioff, the film is sandbagged by a been-there, seen-that feel, one especially heightened due to years of other movies whose stories also were centered around major battle scenes--"The Alamo," "The Patriot," "Gladiator," "Braveheart" and "The Lord of the Rings" series chief among them.

"Troy" tries to mount interest in its battles, but Petersen ("Das Boot") shoots them in such tight, claustrophobic close-up, all scale is lost just when it’s needed most.

The chaos of war is achieved here, but what’s missing is an emotional connection to the death that hovers over it. This is one of the most ambivalent war movies Hollywood has produced, with the viewer not always clear for whom to root. The result is a great looking yet curiously passionless movie that lacks personality and heart.

The film stars Pitt as Achilles, the Greek warrior God who, in this movie, looks like Fabio by way of Goldilocks. With his plump, dewy lips and impossibly golden curls, some might confuse this Achilles for Helen if Pitt weren’t so newly buff.

As the film begins, Helen (Diane Kruger) has caused more than her share of trouble. After leaving her husband, King Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson) of Sparta, for the likes of Paris (Orlando Bloom), cowardly son of Troy’s King Priam (Peter O’Toole), King Agamemnon (Brian Cox) of Mycenaeans sends his troops to conquer Troy.

He doesn’t do so out of loyalty to his brother, Menelaus, though that is how he makes it appear. Instead, he does so because Helen’s betrayal has given him an excuse to finally take over Troy, even if it means the slaughtering of thousands of his own men.

It’s Bana’s Prince Hector who leads Troy’s troops, and he has just enough smoldering bluster to make you believe Troy is a force even if they’re grossly outnumbered. When he fights Achilles, whom we learn time and again no one can defeat, Petersen realizes his best action scene, one that draws us into the fight because we care for Hector in ways that we don’t care for anyone else in the movie.

There are moments in "Troy" that do linger, such as when Hector casts huge balls of fire toward his enemy, and especially a key scene between Priam and Achilles that comes late in the film.

But where are the immortal gods of Homer’s poem? Was Petersen fearful of creating another "Clash of the Titans" if he allowed them to throw thunderbolts in his movie? Worse is the dialogue, which is stiff and sometimes silly, especially when spoken by Pitt, whose self-conscious performance sends this movie down the Aegean and drowns it in hair products.

Grade: C-

(Also available on Blu-ray disc and on HD DVD)

The Transporter 2: Movie, DVD, Blu-ray disc Review (2005)

Hell on heels

(Originally published 2005)

Early in Luis Leterrier's new action movie, "The Transporter 2," it appears as if we're in for a knockoff of "The Pacifier," in which Vin Diesel reached out to the broadest possible audience by cozying up to kids and changing their diapers while firing off enough ammo to keep his street cred.

The jury's still out on whether that worked for Vin.

In "Transporter 2," the film's five-o'clock-shadowed action star, Jason Statham, looks just as surly as ever as Frank Martin--the man's stubble could scrape the metal off a gun, and likely has. Still, if first impressions mean anything, his personality appears to have softened since 2002's "The Transporter," a frenetic film in which Eurotrash was allowed to go berserk.

In that movie, Frank was a transporter of illegal packages to all sorts of unseemly types slumming throughout the south of France. He was a grim bloke--former military--hired to transport a duffel bag to a crude American named Wall Street. Now, he's schlepping for a U.S. drug czar and his unhappy wife (Matthew Modine, Amber Valletta), who have hired Frank to drive their 6-year-old son, Jack (Hunter Clary), to and from school and to the occasional doctor's appointment.

In the film's opening moments, Frank bonds with Jack in ways that teeter on the verge of being cute, which is especially unthinkable since the last film was about as cute as having a knife at your throat. Still, circumstances lead both to a new brand of heroin chic in Lola (Kate Nauta), a nearly naked she-killer in six-inch stiletto heels, garter belts up to here, a bra down to there, and a lovely tattoo etched along her inner thigh, who is given to removing a good deal of her clothing before letting loose on Frank and Jack with enough fire power to recall, you know, the last movie.

Why the gunfire? And why Lola's interest in kidnapping Jack? Apparently, she wants to deliver him to her lover, Giannini (Alessandro Gassman), an oily assassin with mocha skin who plans to infect the little boy with a virus that will be passed along to his father and thus to several powerful world leaders at an international conference.

All will die. Only Giannini has the antidote.

Obviously, this isn't a movie about logic--it's a movie about action, fast cars and sound editing. The moment leggy Lola starts firing, her raccoon eyes burning holes in the screen and through you, it's clear that "The Transporter 2" came to have a good time, which is a relief. Sequels sometimes can get terribly serious. This one doesn't.

From a script by French director Luc Besson ("The Professional," "The Fifth Element," "La Femme Nikita") and Robert Mark Kamen, the movie is as lively and as fun as it is unapologetically dumb. Those seeking only creatively choreographed gun fights, fist fights, absurd stunts and well-conceived pyrotechnics won't be disappointed, but those hoping for a shred of logic to bolster the thin plot might be left wanting.

Statham is dependable here--he has a swift kick, a gravelly voice, and a tight-fisted gate--though it's still uncertain whether he has a sense of humor, a personality and whether he can act. Probably doesn't matter. What he has is the action hero's necessary bald pate and pumped-up physique. In this genre, that's half the battle.

Grade: B-

(Also available on Blu-ray disc)

Transamerica: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

Pre-op on a mission

(Originally published 2006)

You could call her desperate. She might even agree.

Felicity Huffman's Bree, a Los Angeles-based, pre-op transsexual male a week away from the knife, is on the cusp of calling it quits with her gender when into her life comes something of a surprise. Apparently, when Bree wasn't in heels or on hormones or in a dress--and long before she tossed her birth name, Stanley, to the curb--she fathered a child with a former girlfriend, who has since committed suicide.

Their 17-year-old boy, Toby (Kevin Zegers), now lives in squalor in New York City, where he hustles to pay the bills and has done the sort of drugs that tend to land one in jail. That's where Toby is stewing when Bree is given an ultimatum by her therapist, Margaret (Elizabeth Pena), who demands that Bree either visit Toby and deal with the issues at hand, or the operation is off.

Since the latter is out of the question for Bree, off she goes to New York, where she decides to pose as a Christian fundamentalist missionary eager to help young people like Toby. Having a transsexual play a church lady might sound like a deliberate stab at the far right--and maybe it is--but given Bree's conservative drag and her refusal to use bad language, it isn't the stretch it might seem on paper.

Still, good luck to Bree. What she finds in New York is a murky teenager who aspires to a life of making pornographic movies, not exactly the career move a newfound parent would choose for their child.

From first-time writer director Duncan Tucker, "Transamerica" occasionally feels like a sitcom cross-dressed as a drama, and vice versa. There are a few big laughs here--and one beautifully unexpected moment that comes as a genuine shock--but the undercurrent is serious. When Bree decides to bring Toby back to his stepfather in Kentucky, which collapses for reasons that won't be revealed here, the story becomes a road movie about Bree and Toby's journey across America and into each other's lives. That's a cliché, so it's good news for the movie that it's driven by its unique characters and not by its plot.

With Fionnula Flanagan as Bree's scary mother, Burt Young as her father and Graham Greene as the man who romantically fancies her, the best part of "Transamerica" is Huffman's Academy Award-nominated performance. She's so good in the role, she keeps at bay the average film threatening to seep through.

What she mines in Bree is quiet dignity, desperation, fear and humor, the soul of a person who believes they were born the wrong gender and who is brave enough to face society and discrimination in an effort to fix that wrong. For the actress, that turns out to be the easy part. What's difficult is that she had to overcome the rather formidable hurdle of being a woman playing a man who is one step removed from being a woman.

Not exactly easy, so watching this talented co-star of "Desperate Housewives" pull it off is something of a thrill.

Grade: B

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

Burying more than just the dead

(Originally published 2006)

A stiff shows up with gruesome repetition in the new Tommy Lee Jones movie, "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada," and some will be surprised to learn that it isn't Jones' former college roommate, Al Gore, in spite of how swell he would have been for the part.

Instead, the dead man is Melquiades Estrada (Julia Cesar Cedillo), an illegal Mexican immigrant who is mysteriously shot and killed while working as a cowboy tending to sheep in Texas. Who did him in? Initially, that's the question around which you believe the film will build, with Jones, in his fine directorial debut, weaving through time to piece together the mystery.

But as written by Guillermo Arriago, screenwriter for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's terrific "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams," the movie quickly dispenses with its mystery and exposes the murderer. Since the film's success doesn't hinge on the revelation, it doesn't harm the movie.

What "Burials" has on its mind is something deeper, a character study that recalls the richness of Sam Peckinpah and John Ford--and even a flash of Quentin Tarantino in its bold use of title cards--with Jones creating exactly the sort of movie you'd expect. Like the actor, "Burials" is unpretentious, interesting, laid back, slightly askew. You expect an erotic undercurrent and a violent edge to run through it, and you get it.

The film stars Jones as Pete Perkins, Estrada's employer and friend, who is determined to find out who murdered him, why they murdered him, and make them pay for murdering him.

Dwight Yoakum is the local sheriff who has his own reasons not to get involved, and so he doesn't. Barry Pepper is Mike Norton, the squirrelly border patrol officer who has passionless sex with his wife, Lou Ann (January Jones), while she watches comparatively more interesting soap operas. Once, they were the most popular kids in their high school, with the hope of promising futures pinned on them because of their good looks. But now, they live near poverty in a trailer along the Mexican border, and in spite of their youth, they seem every bit as dried up as the terrain surrounding them.

Looking for new adventures, Lou Ann finds her way to the local coffee shop, where she meets the waitress Rachel (Melissa Leo, marvelous), who loves her husband, Bob, but not enough to be faithful to him--she's sleeping with Pete and the sheriff. In the relationship that builds between the two women, we learn about Estrada, who was trying to earn money to bring his family across the border, while Pete is busy kidnapping one of the other characters in a plot twist that consumes the rest of the movie.

"The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" has no trouble living up to its title--it does indeed bury Estrada three times, and each time with increasing difficulty. By the end of the movie, his corpse has been exhumed twice, ripped apart by coyotes, baked to a crisp in the Texas heat, and then carried to Mexico via horseback for the proper burial Estrada once said in passing to Pete that he wanted.

Only in one scene does Pete appear to truly see Estrada for what he has become; it devastates him. Otherwise, in the blindness and madness that can accompany loss and grief, he's just doing what anyone would do when a great friend passes. Pete is carrying out Estrada's wishes, seeing them through, regardless of who he might inconvenience along the way. There's beauty in that, and it colors the movie.

Grade: B+

XXX: State of the Union: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

Aggressively bad, but wholly amusing

(Originally published 2005)

Early in Lee Tamahori's aggressively bad but wholly amusing "XXX: State of the Union," audiences learn the sad news that the original XXX, Xander Cage (Vin Diesel), has bit the big one in Bora Bora.

What did him in? A natural response might be that he got tripped up in that flashy pimp coat of his and broke his neck. Or perhaps he got poisoned by one too many XXX tattoos.

Whatever the reason, the producers are too bored to answer. Eager to pacify audiences while Diesel changed diapers in "The Pacifier," they have offered up a new XXX in Darius Stone, played here by Ice Cube in a role that's something of a departure from his recent "Barbershop" movies.

Taking a cue from Diesel, Cube plays the part of Stone as if the weight of the world rested on his face--and you can't blame him. According to Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), the National Security agent who recruits Stone to save the president of the United States (Peter Strauss) from certain death by his evil secretary of defense (Willem Dafoe), this new XXX must be more dangerous than the last XXX.

They've found that person in Stone, an imprisoned Navy SEAL who enjoys his own hip-hop soundtrack whenever he's onscreen and who holds the record for the highest dive in SEAL history--250 feet. Impressive? Absolutely. But then everything about Stone is impressive.

With panache, he breaks out of prison and into a tough world of fists, chop shops and guns. With bravado, he hijacks tanks, drives cars at 220 mph, and chases speeding trains without breaking a sweat.

During the course of the film, he even gets his former girlfriend, Lola (Nona Gaye), to put the bling back into his bang. She does so, too, in spite of the fact that Lola looks two implants away from being a man.

Still, it's all good, regardless of the fact that "State of the Union" was slammed by the majority of critics, who apparently wanted the movie to exist on a higher plane. Sorry, but they missed the point. This is video game moviemaking that doesn't want to be taken seriously, a parody of the action-espionage genre designed to offer reprehensible dialogue, impossible stunts, an air of absurdity. If done well, there's fun to be had in that. As such, there's fun to be had here.

Grade: B

X2: X-Men United: Movie & DVD Review (2003)

Surpassing expectations

(Originally published 2003)

Bryan Singer’s “X2: X-Men United,” a vast improvement over the 2000 original, picks up almost immediately where “X-Men” left off.

Leading the good mutants is Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), owner of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, a man who believes in a world in which humans and mutants should coexist in harmony and thrive as one.

Sharing his belief are Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Rogue (Anna Paquin), Storm (Halle Berry), Cyclops (James Marsden), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), and Dr. Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). New to the group are Pyro (Aaron Stanford), who could burn a hole through Hell, and Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), who looks as if he were born there.

After the film’s opening attack on the president, the administration, furious to be so brazenly challenged by Nightcrawler, goes into overdrive in its effort to ruin all mutants. To do its dirty work, it hires William Stryker (Brian Cox), a vet who likes the idea of mass genocide, particularly if those being murdered are mutants.

After injecting a truth serum into Magneto (Ian McKellan), a debonair yet evil mutant locked away in a plastic prison cell, Stryker learns of Xavier’s Cerebro machine, which was built to keep track of all mutants on Earth. Through a series of events that won’t be revealed here, Stryker plans to use that machine against the mutants and kill them all.

As dense as the plot is—I’ve barely skimmed the surface here—Singer goes to great lengths to make certain it doesn’t feel overstuffed.

He takes his time with his tale, fleshing out his tormented characters and allowing them their conflicts, such as with the tense romantic triangle that develops between Jean, Cyclops and Wolverine, the ugly past Wolverine must face through his relationship with Stryker, and the budding love affair that blooms between Rogue and Iceman, which could lead to Iceman’s death should they consummate it.

Across the board, the acting is strong, particularly toward the end, when it becomes downright moving as the film twists into the unexpected. The film’s action scenes are tight and often ingenious, such as when Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) brazenly busts Magneto from his cell, or when Storm generates a few dozen tornadoes to keep the Air Force off her tail.

Like so many scenes in “X2,” that scene doesn’t end as one expects. It doesn’t take the easy way out. Singer and his screenwriters know the value of a surprise and they deliver their share without dipping into the absurd. The result is a movie that surpasses expectations, a superhero flick that can rightfully take its place alongside the best.

Grade: A-

X-Men: The Last Stand: Movie, DVD, Blu-ray disc Review (2006)

The last?

(Originally published 2006)

Well, hopefully not the last stand, though this popular franchise is starting to show some wear.
Leading the good mutants is Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), owner of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, a man who believes in a world in which humans and mutants should coexist in harmony and thrive as one.

But what is Xavier to do when it's announced that there now is a cure for the mutant gene he and others possess, and that it if employed, it will wipe out their very existence?

For Xavier and his posse, which includes Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Rogue (Anna Paquin), and Storm (Halle Berry), the only response is to fight back.

Ian McKellan returns as Magneto, with two new characters introduced to the mix--Kelsey Grammer in a fine turn as the rather hirsute Dr. Henry McCoy and Ben Foster as the bewinged Warren Worthington III. The film’s action scenes are every bit as tight and as ingenious as you expect, though there is a caveat--the series' familiarity is starting to weaken its core.

Grade: B-

(Also available on Blu-ray disc)

Duplex: Movie & DVD Review (2003)

Blowing down the house

(Originally published 2003)

Danny DeVito’s “Duplex,” the dark comedy about how buying a house can destroy your life, stars Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore as Alex and Nancy, a young Manhattan couple longing for roomier quarters but unable to afford them without first moving out of the city and into a more reasonably priced borough.

With the help of their realtor, Kenneth (Harvey Fierstein), they find exactly what they’re seeking in Brooklyn, a gorgeous duplex that seems almost too perfect—three fireplaces, original woodwork, period stained glass, rooms the size of small cathedrals, charm, charm, charm.

Sure, living in the upstairs apartment is the widow Mrs. Connelly (Eileen Essell), a sweet, elderly woman with a nasty cough who legally can’t be removed from her rent-controlled abode unless, of course, she agrees to move or, in fact, dies. Still, to Alex and Nancy, that cough of hers is especially promising, as is Mrs. Connelly’s advanced age, which teeters somewhere near an obituary-friendly 105.

With the odds stacked in their favor that Mrs. Connelly has knitted her last shawl, Alex and Nancy buy the property, hedging their bets that they’ll soon have the entire duplex to themselves.

But when they move in, Mrs. Connelly actually proves rather spry, just healthy enough to become the tenant from hell, so demanding in her requests for assistance and so impossible in her nighttime antics, that Alex can’t finish his second novel, Nancy gets fired from her magazine job, and both are driven mad to the point of considering murder.

DeVito’s directing career has been a string of outrageous black comedies--“The War of the Roses,” “Throw Momma From the Train” and “Death to Smoochy” chief among them. He has the sort of twisted sense of humor that touches a nerve we’d probably rather not recognize as our own, but which DeVito nevertheless asserts is human. In this case, he takes a typical urban couple, both professionals driven to conquer life’s upward climb, and throws a little old woman in the path to achieving their dreams.

What springs from this may not be DeVito’s best movie, but it does have its moments, a controlled farce that finds Stiller, Barrymore and Essell mining several big laughs while DeVito, the cynic, complicates matters--and deepens the dysfunction--with a final surprise twist.

Grade: B

The Dukes of Hazzard: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

The curiosities of the Hollywood hillbilly

(Originally published 2005)

As far as Hollywood is concerned, it's either hell being a hillbilly or a hell of a lot of fun being a hillbilly.

The downside seems to be the bitter taste of moonshine (awful), infighting (brutal), a sheer lack of intelligence (rampant) and a lingering, uncomfortable sheen of sweat that makes one's skin appear like flypaper (gross).

The good news is that there apparently is something to be said for the obsessive caterwauling, hard drinking, fast driving, loose living and utter disregard for the law the Hollywood hillbilly enjoys.

All of this and less is explored in "The Dukes of Hazzard," Jay Chandrasekar's predictably dumb remake of the popular television series that ran on CBS from 1979 to 1985.

This celebration of stereotypes and stupidity is based on a script by John O'Brien. What it has going for it are some of the lowest expectations for a movie to hit theaters this year. To be a success, all "Hazzard" had to do was to be reasonably spirited, sexy and funny. That's all anyone could have asked of it.

But not unlike this summer's other remakes of former hit television shows, "Hazzard" doesn't understand what made its source material a success. It also doesn't understand that what worked on television can collapse when shot for a movie screen, where its flaws are magnified and the running time is a shade longer.

Compounding the problem are the times. When the television show appeared, we were a decade out from race riots of the '60s, and the idea of a show about a couple of bumbling, Confederate-loving cousins up to no good apparently had a certain rebel appeal to it, particularly since the cousins often were the butt of the joke.

For like-minded members of the viewing audience, they could laugh along with them. For those who found them offensive, they could laugh right at them.

For six years, it somehow worked.

Here it doesn't.

"The Dukes of Hazzard" is little more than an endless rumble of car chases, with the plot - if you can call it that - coming down to Boss Hogg (Burt Reynolds) working on the sly to strip-mine Hazzard County. Should he succeed, it will leave Uncle Jesse Duke (Willie Nelson) without a farm to brew his moonshine.

In between, we get Bo and Luke Duke (Seann William Scott, Johnny Knoxville) creating hillbilly havoc with the local authorities while Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke makes fleeting appearances to show off her fancy new bod.

If as much work went into the making of this movie as it did into the making of Simpson's body, we might have something here. But not the case. The movie is too timid to send itself up, too generic to stand apart, too dull to be anything more than a middling effort. There are few, if any, laughs to be had.

If the movie has any effect after its brief run in theaters, it likely will be on a drop in tourism dollars for the state of Georgia. Sure, it would be nice if the movie one day appeared in a double feature with "Deliverance" --one could examine the light and dark side of the hillbilly--but that's for the future and more than a few of us will be happy to wait.

Grade: D

Dreamgirls: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

One star soars

(Originally published 2006)

Given the groundswell of hype surrounding the new Bill Condon musical “Dreamgirls,” there’s every reason to expect it to be on par with Rob Marshall's “Chicago,” which was based on Condon’s script and which was one of 2002’s best films.

The reality, though, is somewhat different.

While “Dreamgirls” is a good movie, what’s missing is the soul that could have made it a great movie. This glittering adaptation of the long-running 1981 Broadway show has fine production values and it’s enjoyable in parts, but it isn't memorable as a whole.

Unlike "Chicago," for instance, or "Ray," "Cabaret," “Moulin Rouge,” "My Fair Lady," "Funny Girl" or the 1954 version of "A Star is Born" with Judy Garland and James Mason, you don't leave the film exhilarated or spent. Instead, you leave it feeling somewhat ambivalent, with one major exception--Jennifer Hudson, who gives the film’s best, most heart-felt performance as Effie White, the brassy member of the 1960s girl group the Dreams, itself a thinly veiled version of the Supremes.

Though Hudson falls short in those scenes where her lip sync is distractingly out of sync, her undeniable talent and powerful voice nevertheless pummel through the movie in ways that give it a generous lift.

An “American Idol” castaway now enjoying her hey day, Hudson may be the film’s novice actor, but she steals each scene she’s in, deftly bulldozing over her seasoned co-stars with a rawness and a confidence that’s magnificent to behold. Her star isn’t just born here, it’s sent over the moon and we’re all better for it.

As you'd expect, her defining moment comes when she sings the powerhouse ballad “And I Am Telling You (I’m Not Going),” which was made famous by the great Jennifer Holliday and which Hudson does proud in an extended sequence that proves the movie's highlight and the story’s turning point.

Just before she sings it, Hudson’s Effie was ousted from the Dreams, which includes singers Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose) and her unexpected rival, Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles, beautiful yet slight). Effie’s trouble is that she’s considered trouble, a diva with a self-destructive attitude that might bring down the group just as they’re on the cusp of stardom.

Worse for her is that her lover and the group's manager Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx, coasting) believes Effie is too ethnic for a country divided by the civil rights movement. And so, by turning his back on her by championing the thinner, more white-friendly Deena as the new star of the group, he essentially has turned his back on his own race.

All of this could have made for a revealing, powerful film about how blacks were treated in the music industry during the 1960s and 70s--and how they had to strategize to be successful--but it doesn’t. Instead, Condon ("Kinsey," "Gods and Monsters") goes for the glitz, the glamour and the infighting, which generates its share of energy but no depth.

Working hard in a subplot is Eddie Murphy as James "Thunder" Early, a James Brown-like entertainer who is on fire as the movie begins, yet whose collapse into disillusionment and drug addiction becomes disappointingly flat when the industry turns against him. The flatness isn't Murphy's fault--he's good here, particularly in early scenes--but a fault of the script, which doesn't allow the actor to have his moment the way it absolutely allows Hudson to have hers.

Grade: B

Down with Love: Movie & DVD Review (2003)

The pre-feminist, challenged

(Originally published 2003)

The new romantic comedy, “Down with Love,” stars Renee Zellweger as Barbara Novak, a blonde puff of good cheer who leaves the family farm in Maine for the concrete cornrows of New York City.

There, in the film’s Technicolor dreamworld of 1962, she and her hot-to-trot editor, Vikki (Sarah Paulson), plan to publish Barbara’s new book, “Down with Love,” a potent pot of empowerment that--41 years ago--would have generated enough steam to fuel a volcano.
Which it does.

The book, a pre-feminist dictum divided into three steps, outlines how women can become just as successful as men. To do so, Barbara suggests they should forgo romantic love, focus on their careers and fulfill their sexual needs by either eating large amounts of chocolate or by limiting themselves to sex “a la carte.”

You know, as some men do.

Before you can say “make your own damn dinner,” the book has made Barbara a star. Soon, she’s everywhere, the biggest thing since the pill, a fact that catches the eye of Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor), a roguish magazine writer who, with the encouragement of his nebbish editor, Peter (David Hyde Pierce), tries to fool Barbara into falling in love with him so he can expose her as a down-and-out fraud.

As directed by Peyton Reed (“Bring It On”) from a script by Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake, “Down with Love” wants more than anything to be as fluffy as the down filling in Michael Gordon’s “Pillow Talk,” the 1959 sex comedy that won Doris Day an Academy Award nomination and found her waxing cute with Rock Hudson on remote-controlled sofas that turned into beds.

“Love” features a similarly rigged sofa--and Tony Randall in a cameo--but in spite of straining to match “Pillow’s” breezy success, it only occasionally manages to do so.

Unlike Todd Haynes’ “Far From Heaven,” which mirrored the films of Douglas Sirk while giving the genre a contemporary lift, and Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me if You Can,” which nailed the look and feel of the 1960s, “Love” is self-aware to the point of distraction. It’s a poseur trying to pull off a parody, winking so broadly at itself and at the audience, you fear it might develop a tic.

Complicating matters is the premise--it’s tough to be down with a movie that wants to warm you with deceit. It’s tougher still to like characters maneuvering at every turn to stab each other in the back.

Hudson and Day were able to create a formidable sexual snap not just because they looked good together onscreen, but because both were fighting against something real--the sexual limitations of the times, Hudson’s closeted homosexuality, the sheen of virginal innocence Hollywood demanded from Day. They turned those roadblocks into tools.

Zellweger and McGregor, on the other hand, have only their dimpled cuteness to get them through this particular movie, which you sense, at least from their mugging, that they believe is enough. It isn’t.

Grade: C+

Doom: Movie, DVD, HD DVD Review (2005)

Firing off rounds of computer code in an inhuman world

(Originally published 2005)

In the growing legion of video games turned into movies, Andrzej Bartzowiak’s grunting, live-action cartoon, “Doom,” has enough manic energy and fiery moments to be among the more watchable of what has long been an undesirable lot.

Those who sat through the hell of “Resident Evil,” “Mortal Kombat,” “Tomb Raider” and that forgotten jewel, “Super Mario Bros.,” might dismiss the movie as junk without seeing it, but the film is what it is and it does what it does better than most will expect.

From Dave Callaham and Wesley Strick’s script, “Doom” is trash sci-fi that achieves a lean, focused center and final act that’s admirable in the tension it creates.

Set sometime in the distant future, the movie stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Sarge, a tattooed beast with a perpetual scowl and an attitude problem who is leading an elite core of Marines on a rescue mission to Mars. There, at an underground research facility led by the geneticist Sam (Rosamund Pike), a mysterious 24th human chromosome has been discovered, studied and found to be wreaking havoc on what’s left of the planet’s residents.

The chromosome is akin to a virus. Should one have the misfortune of coming in contact with it, it either will transform them into a towering monster with a healthy appetite for flesh, a zombie worthy of anything in Romero’s “Dead” series, or it will allow them superhuman powers that can be used for good or evil.

Since the film has no interest in exploring the specifics of such a chromosome or how it came to manifest itself (just imagine the brain cramp the writers would have suffered had they gone there), onward it blasts, with Sarge’s crew rapidly dwindling as they rush through the metallic corridors with guns blazing, dialogue tanking, monsters lurking, pecs bouncing, people being slaughtered at every turn.

With the film’s genesis steeped in computer code, “Doom” predictably lacks soul, but it does generate the raw, sketchy rhythm of a B-movie, which gives it a few gross-out jolts. The film is designed for fans of the game, who will dig the point-of-view perspective Bartzowiak’s creates toward the end (a direct nod to the game), and who likely will overlook the cheesy tough talk and lapses in logic in the wake of the many decapitations, severed body parts, spurting jugular veins and zombies busily littering the landscape as zombies are wont to do.

Grade: C+

The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: Movie & DVD Review (2002)

A tribal scream for drama queens everywhere

(Originally published 2002)

Callie Khouri’s "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" is a tribal scream for drama queens everywhere.

It’s everything it sets out to be and more--so much more--a film about a group of hard-drinking, hard-living, oxygen-tank-sucking, cigarette-smoking, sexagenarian Southern belles who define codependency, live their lives with a passion for meddling in the lives of others, yet who are somehow lovable in spite of being borderline certifiable.

The film, which Khouri, who wrote "Thelma & Louise," and Mark Andrus adapted from Rebecca Wells’ novel, is a chick-flick extraordinaire, a movie whose only oversight seems to be that estrogen wasn’t listed among the film’s producers.

The film stars Sandra Bullock as Sidda Lee Walker, a young New York playwright on the verge of realizing her first Broadway hit when she upsets the balance of her universe by stupidly dissing her mother in an interview for Time magazine.

Sidda’s mother, Vivi (Ellen Burstyn), you see, isn’t just any mother. She’s Hollywood’s idea of a Southern mother, which means that her backbone and temperament are more the stuff of steel than magnolia. No, Vivi doesn’t have snakes writhing in her carefully coifed hair, but she does have a split tongue and a mean mouth, which frequently gets her into trouble and eventually causes a major rift between she and Sidda as the movie opens.

Calling for an intervention, Vivi’s blood sisters, Caro (Maggie Smith), Teensy (Fionnula Flanagan) and Necie (Shirley Knight)--all bound to Vivi by a childhood oath--literally drug Sidda and steal her away to the swamps of Louisiana, where they ply her with booze, fill her in on why her mother is such a controlling witch--and why Vivi is nevertheless deserving of Sidda’s love.

In a series of flashbacks, the film unfolds, dipping into the past to explain the present. As the young Vivi, a vivacious woman whose dreams of becoming famous never come to fruition and whose one true love died in the war, Ashley Judd shows a good deal of poise and restraint until a certain plot element asks her to do neither. What happens to Vivi won’t be revealed here, but it asks Judd to dig deep and act beyond the ease of her pretty smile. The results are just plain humiliating.

Still, as a whole, the movie is good, often winning and funny. With James Garner as Vivi’s long-suffering husband and Angus MacFadyen as Sidda’s long-suffering boyfriend, "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" sustains its hysterical mood and turns it into a badge of honor, which, as these things go, isn’t just the point--but the exclamation point in its characters’ lives.

Grade: B+

A Dirty Shame: Movie & DVD Review (2004)

Shame to miss it

(Originally published 2004)

No shame here.

From John Waters ("Pecker," "Hairspray," "Pink Flamingos"), the director's latest tackles nymphomania, with Tracey Ullman onboard as an unhappy purist who becomes a raging nymphomaniac after being conked on the head.

The rest of the cast are also game for the gags. Selma Blair is outrageous as busty Ursula Udders; Johnny Knoxville apparently was hired for his tongue.

Hardly for everyone, but it is prankish fun. The film wears its NC-17 rating like a badge.

Grade: B

Diary of a Mad Black Woman: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

A drag act, a drug plunge, a sitcom revenge fantasy

(Originaly published 2005)

Adapted from Tyler Perry's stage play, this bizarre movie is many things--a celebration of Christian values, a drag act, a drug plunge, an urban slapstick comedy, a soap opera, a sitcom revenge fantasy.

You leave the film thinking, "What the hell was that?" and realize you may have just left hell itself. The film's mad black woman is Helen (Kimberly Elise), who is thrown out of her house by her husband of nearly 20 years when he falls for another woman.

Now homeless, Helen begins a diary, seeks to rebuild her life, and snags a new stud with good values along the way.

That's the trite base story. What surrounds it is an implausible blizzard.

Perry appears as three characters, including the crowd-pleasing, chainsaw-wielding Madea, who would feel right at home in "Big Momma's House" if she could fit through its doors. None of the film transcends the leap from stage to screen--you wince at its preachiness, blush at its broad strokes of romance, wish it would come off its high horse.

If director Darren Grant was trying to reach the cheap seats, he succeeded.

Grade: C-

The Devil Wears Prada: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

Living the cruel life

(Originally published 2006)

Long before "The Devil Wears Prada" pitched its fork in bookstores, audiences knew the deal--high fashion is hardcore. It's ruthless, it's cold, it's obtainable by only a few. Can't cut the couture? Then cut your Simplicity pattern elsewhere, cookie. This closed club of anorexic insiders, after all, haven't gathered to make a movie called "The Devil Wears Member's Mark."

From David Frankel, "The Devil Wears Prada" is based on Lauren Weisberger’s tougher, meaner best-selling novel.

Since the world of high fashion is always prime for sending up, that's what occurs here, though not at savagely as fans of the book might expect. The difference between this PG-13-rated movie and the R-rated book is that the movie wants to humanize the industry in ways that Weisberger never intended. It's a film at odds with itself, at once condemning the allure of haute couture while also being seduced by it.

So, mirroring the fashion world, it’s a hive of complications and contradictions.

It's also perfectly enjoyable, even if it does sell out its more diabolical scenes in an effort to appeal to the broadest possible audience.

Adapted by Aline Brosh McKenna, the film's chief departure from the book is that it makes Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly, the impeccably stylish, vicious editor of "Runway" magazine (think Anna Wintour of "Vogue"), slightly less of a terror.

Streep is on a quiet tear here, leveling her prey with hooded eyes and dismissive gestures that are so studied and cold, she becomes more menacing and believable than the monster portrayed in the book. It's a memorable performance, one that feels lived in and enjoyed. In a matter of weeks, this quintessential actress and comedian has come from Garrison Keillor's "Prairie" to the runways of Gay Paree without a hitch. Watching the transformation of someone in such complete control of her craft is a thrill.

In the movie, Miranda's prey is Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), a frumpy girl with baggy clothes who has just graduated from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism with big dreams of becoming a writer.

Andy is bright, but she's a naïf. When she turns up at "Runway" for a job as one of Miranda's assistants, she has no clue who Miranda is or the power she wields, no knowledge of the magazine she hopes to represent, and no idea about the history of fashion and its importance, which isn't nearly as slight as she believes. All she sees is opportunity. As she's told by friends, if she can make it through just one year with Miranda Priestley, she will be able to command any magazine job that she wants.

What ensues, of course, is Andy's transformation from duck to swan. It isn't just Miranda's disapproval that shapes her rather extreme makeover, but also the sneering disregard of Miranda's scary first assistant, Emily (Emily Blunt), and the helpful assistance of Miranda's art director, Nigel (Stanley Tucci), who knows his way, shall we say, around a Jimmy Choo. With all of this building to a predictable personal crisis for Andy--can she look this great and be this much of a suck-up without becoming a devil herself?--the movie leans hard on the excellence of its cast to make it the satisfying, glossy film that it is.

Grade: B+

The Devil's Rejects: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

Don't reject them

(Originally published 2005)

If you dig this sort of gross-out throwback to the horror movies of the '70s, by all means, accept "The Devil's Rejects." It is what it is, it stays true to the genre, and in this case, that's pretty much all you can ask of it.

The film, from director Rob Zombie, whose "House of 1,000 Corpses" delivered what it promised, "The Devil's Rejects" follows suit, coming through with its share of murdering-hillbilly-Mansonesque rejects who go on a tear. They are every bit as awful as they are amusing.

The film is a movie for fans of such B-movie horror classics as "Motel Hell," "Cannibal Holocaust," "Street Trash," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "I Spit on Your Grave."
All are outlaw horror movies that exist on their own terms, raising the dead with a rebel spirit that can be entertaining if you're of a mind for this sort of thing. Since this sort of thing features this sort of dialogue: "Gimme some sugar, bitch--and make it sweet," those who are offended by Zombie and his offbeat cult of films should definitely stay away from this one. All others? Enjoy.

Grade: B

Deuces Wild: Movie & DVD Review (2002)

Not for the asthmatic

(Originally published 2002)

While it's doubtful that Scott Kalvert intended to create an instant camp classic with his hilarious new film, "Deuces Wild," that's nevertheless what he pulled off--and what a hoot.

Set on a Hollywood back lot--excuse me, set in Brooklyn, N.Y., in the summer of 1958--the film is "West Side Story" without the songs, "The Lords of Flatbush" without the Fonz, "The Wanderers" without a map, a compass, or its own way.

It's a movie about two rival gangs whose swagger and strut are so incredibly exaggerated, what's amazing about the film isn't how bad it is, but that anyone here got through it without breaking a hip.

From start to bloody finish, "Deuces Wild" is an eye-popping exercise in excess and cliches, a melodramatic cheeseball festooned in black leather, white T-shirts and jeans that hits the screen with such misguided aplomb, it can't help but eventually burst apart like a thoroughly whacked piñata.

In the film, the good-guy Deuces and the bad-guy Vipers come to throws when the Vipers decide they want to start selling drugs in the Deuces' neighborhood. That's a big no-no for the Deuces, who lost a member of their gang--a scrappy kid named Alley Boy--to a drug-related death three years before.

Alley Boy's brother, Leon (Stephen Dorf), now king of the Deuces, is determined to avenge his brother's death by making certain that the Vipers don't put a crack pipe and a bong in every home.

The problem for Leon and his crew of brass knuckleheads? The Vipers, as led by Jimmy Pockets (Balthazar Getty) and the freshly paroled Marco (Norman Reedus), are being bankrolled by the local mob boss, Fritzy (Matt Dillon), who is very comfortable with the idea that the neighborhood kiddies should be addicted to smack.

Toss into this mix a rape, some gang violence shot in slow motion, and a love affair between Leon's brother Bobby (Brad Renfro) and a tough-as-tanks babe named Annie (Fairuza Balk)--who just happens to be a sister to one of the Vipers--and the tension, you can imagine, becomes enough to make these Deuces wild.

At my screening, there were moments when I was convinced I was seeing the film with a group of asthmatics-there were those who couldn't stop gasping at the absurdity. Apparently, even MGM knows it's dealing with a dog. "Deuces Wild" has been sitting on their shelves for two years. The fact that they waited to release it opposite "Spider-Man" says it all for how the studio itself views the movie.

Grade: D-

New to DVD, Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Following is a list of those titles new to DVD, Tuesday, September 4, 2007.

The week's major releases are the fourth season of "Nip/Tuck," which is available on DVD, Blu-ray and HD DVD, as well as "Prison Break: Season 2," "Rules of Engagement: Season 1," "Robot Chicken: Season Two," "The Office: Season Three, "30 Rock: Season One" and "Desperate Housewives: Season Three."

• Nip/Tuck - The Complete Fourth Season, DVD, Blu-ray, HD DVD
• Spongebob Squarepants - Season 5: Volume 1
• Chill Out Scooby-Doo!
• Prison Break - Season 2
• Resident Evil / Resident Evil: Apocalypse (Double Feature Collector's Edition)
• Rules of Engagement - Season 1
• Alvin and the Chipmunks: Scare-Riffic Double Feature
• Robot Chicken - Season Two (Uncensored)
• The IT Crowd - The Complete First Series
• Bobby Z
• Wind Chill
• R. L. Stine's The Haunting Hour: Don't Think About It
• She-Ra - The Complete Season Two
• Kaleido Star: New Wings - True Star Collection
• UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie 4 - Banquet Of Time, Dreams and Galaxies
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Seasons 1 and 2
• The Office - Season Three
• The Real Housewives of Orange County - Season 1,
• Believe In Me DVD
• 30 Rock - Season 1: Volume 2
• 30 Rock - Season 1: Volume 1
• Demetri Martin: Person.
• Delta Farce: DVD and Blu-ray
• Night on Earth (The Criterion Collection)
• Stranger Than Paradise (The Criterion Collection)
• Cheech and Chong: Up in Smoke (Special Collector's Edition)
• The Wind That Shakes the Barley
• Unholy
• The Black Donnellys - The Complete Series
• 30 Rock - Season One
• Disney Princess Enchanted Tales: Follow Your Dreams
• Remember the Titans Blu-ray
• Desperate Housewives - Season 3 (The Dirty Laundry Edition)
• Bosom Buddies - The Second Season

Directory U-Z

U

Unbreakable
Ultraviolet
Undead
Undercover Brother
Underdog
Under the Tuscan Sun
Undiscovered
Unfaithful
United 93
Unleashed
Up
The Upside of Anger

V

Vacancy
Valiant
Valkyrie
Van Helsing
Vantage Point
Venus
Vera Drake
V for Vendetta
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
View from the Top
Vintage Mickey
The Village
The Visitor
Volver

W

W.
Waitress
Waking Life
WALL-E
Walk the Line
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Waltz with Bashir
Wanted
War of the Worlds (2005)
Warner Bros. Tough Guys Collection
The Watcher
Watchmen
We Are Marshall
The Wedding Date
What Happens in Vegas
Whipped
The White Countess
White Oleander
Whole Ten Yards, The
Whoopi: Back to Broadway
The Wicker Man
Wicker Park
Willard
Windtalkers
Winged Migration
The Winter Guest
Woman on Top
The Women
The Woodsman
The World is Not Enough
The Wrestler

X

X-Files: I Want to Believe
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men: The Last Stand
X2: X-Men United
XXX: State of the Union

Y

Young Frankenstein
Youth Without Youth

Z

Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Zathura
Zodiac

Directory Q-T

Q

Quantum of Solace
The Queen
The Quiet American

R

Race to Witch Mountain
Rachel Getting Married
Racing Stripes
Raising Helen
Ratatouille
Rat Race
Ravenous
Ray
The Reader
The Real Cancun
The Reaping
Red Dragon
Red Eye
Reign of Fire
Reign Over Me
Rendition
Rent
Resident Evil: Extinction
Revolutionary Road
The Ring
The Ring Two
The Road to Perdition
Robots
Rocky Balboa
Role Models
Run Lola Run
Running Scared
Rush Hour 3

S

Sahara
The Savages
Saw II
Saw IV
Saw V
Saw: Uncut Edition
Scary Movie 3
Scary Movie 4
School of Rock
Sculptures of the Louvre
The Sea Inside
Secret Agent AKA Danger Man Complete Collection
Secret Window
Seed of Chucky
The Seeker: The Dark is Rising
Semi-Pro
Serenity
Sex and the City
Sexy Beast
Shakespeare in Love
Shall We Dance
Shanghai Noon
Shark Tale
Sherrybaby
Shoot 'Em Up
Shopgirl
Shrek 2
Shrek the Third
Shut Up & Sing
Sicko
Sideways
Signs
The Simpsons Movie
Silent Hill
S1m0ne
Sin City
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
16 Blocks
The 6th Day
The Skeleton Key
Sleeper
Slither
Slumdog Millionaire
Snakes on a Plane
Snow Dogs
Sound and Fury
Spanglish
Speed Racer
Spellbound
Spider-Man
Spider-Man 3
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Spirited Away
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
Spy Game
The Squid and the Whale
Standing in the Shadows of Motown
Stardust
Starsky & Hutch
Star Trek: 2009
Star Trek: Nemesis
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
State of Play
The Station Agent
Stealing Harvard
The Stepford Wives
Stepmom
Step Up
Stigmata
Strangers on a Train
Stuck on You
Sum of All Fears
Superbad
Superman Returns
Supernatural: Complete Second Season
Super Size Me
Surf's Up
S.W.A.T.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
The Sweet Hereafter
Sweet Home Alabama
Swimfan
Synecdoche, New York

T

Take the Lead
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Talladega Nights
Tarzan: Special Edition
Taxi
Taxi to the Dark Side
Team America: World Police
Tekkonkinkreet
Tennessee Williams Film Collection
10,000 B.C.
Terminator Salvation
Thank You for Smoking
There Will Be Blood
The Tao of Steve
The Terminal
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Thin Man
The Thin Red Line
The Trials of Henry Kissinger
Time Out
The Thief
The Triplets of Belleville
The Third Man
The Trouble with Harry
Thirteen
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
Thirteen Days
Thirteen Ghosts
13 Going on 30
30 Days of Night
30 Rock: Season 1
This Film is Not Yet Rated
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Three Kings
2 Fast 2 Furious
Toy Story 2
Transamerica
Transformers
Transporter 2
Tropic Thunder
Troy
Tsotsi
Tumbleweeds
28 Weeks Later
The 25th Hour
Twilight
Twisted

Directory M-P

M

Madagascar
Mamma Mia!
Man of the House
Man on Fire
Man on Wire
March of the Penguins
Margot at the Wedding
Maria Full of Grace
The Marine
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
The Master of Disguise
The Matador
Match Point
The Matrix Reloaded
Ma Vie en Rose
Mean Girls
Meet the Parents
Meet the Robinsons
Melinda and Melinda
Memoirs of a Geisha
Men of Honor
The Mexican
Miami Vice
Michael Clayton
Mighty Heart, A
Mighty Wind, A
Mildred Pierce
Milk
Million Dollar Baby
Millions
Minority Report
Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
Mission: Impossible III
Mission to Mars
The Missing
The Mist
Mr. Bean's Holiday
Modern Times
Moon Over Broadway
Monsieur Ibrahim
Monster
Monster-in-Law
Monster's Ball
Monsters vs. Aliens
The Mothman Prophecies
Moulin Rouge
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Munich
Muppet Show: Season Two
Murder by Numbers
Muriel's Wedding
Must Love Dogs
My Best Friend's Girl
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
My Bloody Valentine 3-D
My Boss's Daughter
Mystic River
My Super Ex-Girlfriend

N

Nacho Libre
The Nanny Diaries
Nanny McPhee
Never Back Down
The New Guy
New York Minute
Next
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
A Night at the Opera
Nip/Tuck: Complete Fourth Season
No Country for Old Men
No Reservations
The Notebook
Notes on a Scandal
The Notorious Bettie Page
Nowhere in Africa
The Number 23

O

Ocean's Twelve
Ocean's Thirteen
The Office: Season Three
Office Space: Special Edition with Flair
Old School
The Omen
One Hour Photo
Open Range
Open Season
Open Water
The Opposite of Sex
Original Sin
Osmosis Jones
The Other Boleyn Girl
The Others
Over the Hedge

P

The Pacifier
Panic Room
Pan's Labyrinth
Paparazzi
Paradise Now
The Passion of the Christ
Pay it Forward
Pearl Harbor
Penelope
The Perfect Man
Perfect Stranger
Persepolis
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
The Pianist
Pieces of April
Pineapple Express
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Pitch Black
Place Vendome
The Polar Express
Poseidon
A Prairie Home Companion
The Prestige
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Prime
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
The Producers (2005)
The Punisher

Directory I-L

I

The Ice Storm
Igor
I Heart Huckabees
The Illusionist
I'm Not There
The Incredible Hulk
The Incredibles
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
In Her Shoes
Innocence
Inside Deep Throat
The Interpreter
In the Bedroom
In the Valley of Elah
Intolerable Cruelty
Into the Blue
Into the Wild
The Invasion
Invincible
The Invisible
I, Robot
Iron Man
The Island
I Spy
The Italian Job
I've Loved You So Long

J

Jackass Number Two
The James Stewart Signature Collection
The Jane Austen Book Club
Jarhead
The Jayne Mansfield Collection
Jersey Girl
Jesus' Son
Johnny English
Jumper
Junebug
Juno
Just Like Heaven

K

Kandahar
Kate & Leopold
Keeping the Faith
Kicking and Screaming
Kill Bill Vol. 1
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Kingdom of Heaven
King Kong (2005)
Kinky Boots
Kinsey
K-19: The Widowmaker
The Kite Runner
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
Knocked Up
Knowing
K-Pax
Kung Fu Hustle
Kung-Fu Panda

L

Ladder 49
The Ladies Man
Ladykillers
Land of the Dead
Land of the Lost
Lantana
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
Lars and the Real Girl
Last Chance Harvey
The Last Days (Documentary)
Last Days (Gus Van Sant's)
The Last King of Scotland
The Last Samurai
The Last September
The Laurel & Hardy Collection, Vol. 2
La Vie En Rose
Laws of Attraction
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Leatherheads
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Letters from Iwo Jima
Let the Right One In
License to Wed
The Libertine
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Life As a House
Life or Something Like It
The Limey
Lions for Lambs
Little Children
Little Miss Sunshine
Live Flesh
Live Free or Die Hard
The Longest Yard
Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 3
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Lord of War
Lost & Delirious
Lost in Translation
Love in the Time of Cholera
Lovely and Amazing
Lucky Number Slevin
Lucky You
Lust, Caution

Directory E-H

E

Eagle Eye
Earth
Eastern Promises
East-West
Eight Legged Freaks
8 Mile

8mm
8 Women
Elegy
Elf

Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Elizabethtown
Emperor's New Groove
Empire Falls
Employee of the Month
Enemy at the Gates
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Evan Almighty
Evening
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Eye of the Beholder

Eyes Wide Shut

F

Fahrenheit 9/11
The Family Stone
Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Fever Pitch
This Film is Not Yet Rated

Final Destination
Finding Nemo
Finding Neverland
Firewall
Flags of Our Fathers
Flightplan
The Fly
Flyboys
The Fog (2005)
Fog of War
Fool's Gold
Forbidden Kingdom
The Forgotten
Forty-Year-Old Virgin
The Fountain
1408
Fracture
Frailty

Fred Claus
Freddy vs. Jason
French Twist

Frequency
Friends with Money
Frost/Nixon
Frozen River

G

The Game Plan

Garfield the Movie
Gattaca
Georgia Rule

Get Carter
Get Smart
Ghost Rider
The Gift
Gigli
Girl Next Door, The

Gods and Generals

Gods and Monsters
Golden Compass, The
Gone Baby Gone
The Good German
Good Night, and Good Luck
Gosford Park
Gracie
Gran Torino
The Great Debaters
Grey's Anatomy: Season Three
Grindhouse
Groove
The Grudge 2
Guess Who
Gus Van Sant's Last Days

H

Hairspray
Half Nelson
Halloween (2007)
Hamlet 2
Hancock
Hannibal Rising
The Happening
Happy Endings
Happy Feet
Happy-Go-Lucky
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Scorerer's Stone

Hart's War
The Heartbreak Kid
Hellboy
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
The Henrik Ibsen Collection
Herbie: Fully Loaded

Hero
Heroes: Season One
Hide and Seek
Hideous Kinky
High Crimes
High Tension
Hilary and Jackie
The Hills Have Eyes
His Girl Friday
A History of Violence
Hitch
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Holes
Hollywoodland
Hoodwinked
Horton Hears a Who!
Hostage
Hotel Rwanda
The Hottie & the Nottie
The Hours
The House Bunny
House of D
House of Sand and Fog
House of Voices
House of Wax
House: Season Three
Howl's Moving Castle

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
Hulk
The Human Stain
The Humphrey Bogart Collection: The Signature Collection, Vol. 2

Directory A-D

A

About Schmidt
Across the Universe
Adaptation
Adventureland
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl
Affliction
Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
Alexander
Alfie
Ali
All About My Mother
Along Came Polly
A Lot Like Love
A Man Apart
Amelie
American Dreamz
American Gangster
American Haunting
American Psycho
A Mighty Heart
Amityville Horror (2005)
Amores Perros
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Anna and the King
The Ant Bully
Antwone Fisher
Anything Else
Apocalypto
Appaloosa
Asphalt Jungle
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Atonement
Austin Powers in Goldmember
Australia
Auto Focus
A Very Long Engagement
The Aviator
Away From Her

B

Babel
Baby Mama
Bad Company
Balls of Fury
Bandits
The Banger Sisters
Bangkok Dangerous
Baran
The Barbarian Invasions
Batman Begins
Battlefield Earth
Beauty Shop
Bee Movie
Bedazzled
Beowulf
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Bewitched
Beyond Borders
Beyond the Sea

Big Fish
The Big Sleep
Birth
The Black Dahlia
Black Hawk Down
Black Knight
Blades of Glory
Blood Diamond
Blood Work
Blow
Blue Crush
Bobby
Bogie & Bacall: The Signature Collection
Borat
The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Brave One
Breach
Breakfast on Pluto
Breaking and Entering
The Break-Up
Bride and Prejudice
Bridget Jones's Diary
The Brigitte Bardot Film Collection
Brokeback Mountain
Brother Bear
Brothers Grimm
The Brown Bunny
The Bucket List
Burn After Reading
The Butterfly Effect

C

Cadillac Records
Calendar Girls
Capote
Cars
Casanova
Casino Royale
Catch Me if You Can
Catwoman
The Cave
The Celebration
The Cell
Cellular
Central Station
Changeling
Charlie and Chocolate Factory
Charlie Wilson's War
Charlotte Gray
Charlotte's Web
Chicago
Chicken Little
Children of Men
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
The Chronicles of Riddick
The Chorus
A Christmas Tale
Chutney Popcorn
Cinderella Man
Clerks II
Click
Cloverfield
Cold Creek Manor
Cold Mountain
The Condemned
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Constantine
The Contender
Coraline
The Core
The Corpse Bride, Tim Burton's
Cousin Bette
Coyote Ugly
Crank
Crash
Croupier
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Cursed
Cypher

D

Dan in Real Life
Dark City
The Dark Knight
Date Movie
The Da Vinci Code
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
The Day After Tomorrow
Days of Glory
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
The Dead Girl
Dead Ringer
Dead Silence
Dear Zachary: A Letter to His Son About His Father
Death Race
Death to Smoochy
Deception
The Deep End
Defiance
Definitely, Maybe
The Departed
Derailed
The Descent
Desperate Housewives: Season Three
Deuces Wild
Devil's Rejects
The Devil Wears Prada
Diary of a Mad Black Woman
Dirty Pretty Things
A Dirty Shame
Disturbia
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Dogma
Domestic Disturbance
Doom
Doubt
Down with Love
Drag Me to Hell
Dreamgirls
Drillbit Taylor
The Duchess
Duets
Dukes of Hazzard
Duplex
Duplicity

Mission: Impossible III: Movie, DVD, Blu-ray & HD DVD Review (2006)

Shooting blanks

(Originally published 2005)

The balance has been tipped and this time, it isn't in Tom Cruise's favor.

Going into the actor's soulless "Mission: Impossible III," what occupies your mind isn't just the hope of having a good time, but also what Cruise has become--a pop-culture oddity, the butt of too make jokes.

Over the past year, the actor has been busy shredding his former persona--that of a private man with a few appealing quirks who dependably handed Hollywood the financial goods nearly every time he stepped up to the box office plate.

But now, in terms of his celebrity, his marketability and his credibility, he has done the sort of damage to his career that perhaps only someone like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston or George Michael could best appreciate.

Just as their sensational pasts will forever color our perceptions of them and anything new they create in the future, the same goes for Cruise, who has stepped out of the protective smokescreen of stardom and shown us exactly who he is. The image of boyish cool with which he once hooked so many has twisted into something coldly unrecognizable.

Cruise's main problem is that all of the noise surrounding him is too distracting. Worse, he doesn't seem much interested in putting a stop to it. We now know too much about the man to suspend disbelief when he attempts to sink into character, which is critical when watching movies, particularly one of his action blockbuster movies.

"Mission: Impossible III" is no exception. As directed by J.J. Abrams from a script he co-wrote with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the movie demands that we lose ourselves in a peculiar world peppered with bouts of silly intrigue, shapeless, faceless people who amount to nothing, and a denouement that really is a denoue-zip. Since we can't do so--and since much of the movie is gobbledygook, anyway--the result is underwhelming.

Predictably, the plot is ridiculous, though not as absurd as in the first film, which was so dense, it turned in on itself until it became nothing.

This time out, Cruise's Ethan Hunt is such an emotional softy, his left eye seems forever on the brink of tears, while his right eye remains curiously dry, as if it were made of glass, not unlike Cruise's new persona. Nice trick, particularly when Cruise's left eye cries him a river, as it is wont to do when an irritating little bomb, for instance, is shoved up his nose, and especially since the plot revolves around the abduction of Ethan's new bride, Julia (Michelle Monaghan).

It's the evil Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who is behind those deeds, but they just are payback because Ethan stole from Owen a nuclear device called the "rabbit's foot," which is never fully explained, and which hardly is as lucky as it sounds. Hustling along the periphery are Billy Crudup, Laurence Fishburne, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Ving Rhames and Keri Russell, each wasted in a movie more concerned with whatever slim intensity Cruise can manufacture for the screen. Some of the movie's action scenes are well-conceived, but not one of them is fresh.

Shouldn't a $150 million budget buy more than just another bridge being blown apart? Perhaps even something more interesting than watching Cruise leap between Shanghai skyscrapers?

Given the interest surrounding Cruise, there is no question that "Impossible" will have a good opening, but it won't be the $100 million blockbuster opening he needed in order to prove that he still is relevant and can rise above the bad press. It should concern him that he hasn't pulled that off.

What should worry him is lack of interest that might come later.

Grade: C-

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

When feathers don't travel

(Originally published 2005)

The Sandra Bullock movie, "Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous," would undoubtedly like to be considered absolutely fabulous, but I'm afraid it doesn't live up to its title. "Armed with a Few Laughs" would come closer to the mark.

"Amputated by a Weak Script" would nail it.

The film is a sequel to 2000's "Miss Congeniality," a slight, funny comedy in which Bullock's mannish FBI agent Gracie Hart was forced to tart herself up in order to thwart a terrorist plot at the Miss United States pageant.

The running joke was that gruff, graceless Gracie could only do her job if she competed in the pageant, which demanded the sort of refinery and polished beauty that seemed out of Gracie's reach.

The film worked because of Bullock's go-for-broke charm, which is infectious, the reasonably witty script, and the fine supporting cast, which included Candice Bergen, Benjamin Bratt, Michael Caine and William Shatner.

This time out, Bergen, Bratt and Caine have gone missing, which sounds like a mistake because it is a mistake. Still, there is Shatner, who is in rare form here, and also there is Regina King of "Ray" as Gracie's FBI nemesis Sam Fuller, a brooding woman with a nasty left hook who brings to the movie the edge it needs, particularly in Bergen's absence.

As directed by John Pasquin from a script by Marc Lawrence, the action picks up three weeks after the last movie left off, with Gracie reeling after being dumped by her beau, Eric Matthews, and having to conquer several new challenges in her life, such as sudden fame and her own ego.

As the new, fresh-faced posterchild for the FBI, this Gracie has assistants to tend to her clothes, hair and makeup, a best-selling book based on her life, a thriving career on the talk-show circuit, fans to spare, and no time for the little people.

It's a stretch to believe that our Gracie could become so self-involved so quickly, and the movie suffers from the disconnect. Still, the story picks up when the winner of the Miss United States pageant (Heather Burns) and its emcee (Shatner) are kidnapped by a group of thugs demanding a ransom. It's an event that leads Gracie and her glittering entourage to Las Vegas, where she and Sam must enter a drag act in full regalia so they can get to the bottom of the case.

There are problems here, starting with the losses of Bergen, whose pluck is missed, and Michael Caine, who has been replaced by a ridiculously gay stereotype played by Dietrich Bader. The movie also is too long, with a sweet-as-soot closing manufactured to put dimples in our cheeks.

It doesn't. Thanks to the obvious telegraphing, you know this is exactly how the film will end.
Still, Bullock is Bullock and that's almost enough. Along with King, she's working hard here, pressing against mediocrity to create a worthwhile diversion for her fans. They'll appreciate the effort.

Grade: C+

Milllions: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

A surprise from Danny Boyle

(Originally published 2005)

From director Danny Boyle, whose “Trainspotting,” “28 Days Later” and “Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise” weren't exactly fodder for tots, comes “Millions,” a fable for children in which the director successfully branches into new directions.

In the film, two motherless brothers--7-year-old Damian (Alex Etel), 9-year-old Anthony (Lewis McGibbon)--find their lives forever changed by a stack of cash that literally falls from the sky.

For Damian, a solemn little boy who has the unique gift to speak with saints--a good deal of whom smoke and have halos twinkling above their heads--it’s obvious that the money is a gift from God and that it should be used for charity. For crafty Anthony, who is forever on the make, charity begins at home. For the crooks who lost the money, getting it back is what gives the movie its delightful narrative pull.

As usual, Boyle is a whirling dervish behind the camera, but really, in this sweetly gripping movie, he could have toned down the technical hoo-ha and still come away with a winner. His "Millions" is touching and fearless.

Rated: PG. Grade: A-


DVD Features

• Available Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Full-length audio commentary by director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce
• Deleted scenes
• Behind-the-scenes featurettes

Miami Vice: Movie, DVD, HD DVD Review (2006)

Beware the mullet

(Originally published 2005)

The first sign that the new Michael Mann movie, "Miami Vice," is going to remove itself from Mann's own popular, 1980s television show, is the moment Colin Farrell slides onscreen sporting a blowout mullet and a blunted Fu Manchu.

Whereas a good deal of the television show became a harbinger for the horrors of what was fashionable during the day--it championed such things a the skinny neck tie, the geri curl, the white shoe and the pastel suit--there is nothing in Farrell's tangled bird's nest of a 'do that suggests that mousse, let alone shampoo, has been applied in days. (The product RID, on the other hand, is a definite possibility.)

This rough-and-tumble version of "Vice," which Mann based on his own script, never finds a story that competes with Miami itself.

At night or at sunset, on the water or along the city's neon corridors, Mann's Miami looks at once hot and cool, dangerous and seductive--just as it should be. Those same qualities should apply to the story, and while they occasionally do, it's only when the characters connect, which they do in just one relationship--and not the one you expect.

It isn't vice cops Sonny Crockett (Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx, barely registering) who have the chemistry here--these two actors are so detached, some will wonder whether they even were introduced before principal filming began. Instead, it's the relationship that builds between Crockett and the mysterious Isabella (the terrific Gong Li) that gives the movie the soul it otherwise would have lacked.

The story that draws them together is a convoluted pastiche of drug cartel cliches we've seen time and again in better movies and television shows. Crockett and Tubbs find themselves investigating a South American drug kingpin routinely shipping drugs into Miami. They go undercover, working the angles as they slip into this peculiar world of oily toughs. Eventually, Crockett meets Isabella, a gorgeous money launderer who not only works for the drug kingpin, but who also is in a shaky relationship with him.

What she finds in Crockett is pure heat. So, naturally, fireworks and bullets ensue.

What's peculiar about "Miami Vice" is how the movie refuses to fetishize the Ferrari Crocket and Tubbs drive, the expensive speedboats they race, the swank locales they visit, the bling that's part of their job. That was a core element of the television show, the reason so many watched, but here, it's as if the sub-culture doesn't exist, which is hardly true, particularly for Miami, where it continues to thrive.

More pressing is the reason the movie exists. If Mann was determined to ditch the kitsch of his television show and make a serious film, the natural conclusion is that he did so to offer new insights into the current drug culture.

So, what is it? What does he have to share that we haven't seen before? Turns out it isn't much. While the movie does feature a fine shootout here, a swell romance there, and lives are repeatedly put on the line, throughout "Miami Vice," there's the sense that Mann became bored with the ideas that propelled his television show onto the screen, and thus his film into theaters.

After seeing it, you might see why.

Grade: C

The Mexican: Movie & DVD Review (2001)

Habla usted mediocre movie?

(Originally published 2001)

Gore Verbinski's "The Mexican” stars Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt in their first cinematic pairing, a collaboration that promises a substantial box office opening before word-of-mouth hands it its last cigarette--and shoots it between the eyes.

The problem with the film isn’t just that its script conspires to keep Roberts and Pitt apart for most of the movie, but that it isn’t interested in being the romantic comedy DreamWorks suggests it is in their television ads. Instead, “The Mexican” is a two-hour road movie that feels like a weeklong slog.

On one level, Verbinski (“Mouse Hunt”) must have been aware of this because, throughout, he tries to compensate by hauling out his cast’s infamous bag of tricks. Sometimes an actor’s quirky personality traits can help to lift a film, but when a director believes they’re enough to carry a film, the entire effort can go south of the border in a hurry.

Such is the case with “The Mexican,” a film that relies so heavily on Julia Roberts’ impossibly wide smile, her ostrich-like gate and her trash mouth--not to mention on Brad Pitt’s devilish grin--it almost forgets it’s supposed to be about something.

In this case, that “something” is a legendary pistol called The Mexican, which Jerry (Pitt), a mob bagman, is ordered to retrieve in Mexico for his evil mob boss (Bob Balaban). But when Jerry’s girlfriend, the psychobabbling Sam (Roberts), learns of the job, she offers Jerry an ultimatum--it’s either her or the gun.

Afraid of being murdered, Jerry chooses Mexico, Sam leaves in a huff for Las Vegas--and into this mix comes the film’s one saving grace: James Gandolfini as Leroy, a hitman whose abduction of Sam results in the film’s most rewarding relationship.

Gandolfini may not be stretching here--Leroy is, after all, modeled after Tony Soprano, the character he plays on “The Sopranos.” But his bearish presence and calm are nevertheless what ground a movie that would have been unthinkably jittery without him in it. What’s better for Gandolfini is that it’s he--not Roberts or Pitt--who surprises us. Just how won’t be revealed here, but the twist surrounding his character is the best part of the movie as it comes as a shock.

Still, for all the hype surrounding the pairing of its two headlining stars, “The Mexican” mostly misfires. Armed with J.H. Wyman’s slight, humorless script and a director not up to the task, the film never strings its handful of good moments into an enjoyable, cohesive whole.

Grade: C

Memoirs of a Geisha: Movie, DVD, Blu-ray disc Review (2005)

Saying to hell with subtlety--but with a pretty face

(Originally published 2005)

On one level, the new Rob Marshall movie, "Memoirs of a Geisha," isn't so far removed from his Academy Award-winning 2002 film, "Chicago." Each is extravagantly produced, each is beautiful to look at, each features storylines that court their share of drama. And yet there is a crucial difference between them that Marshall either overlooked or ignored on his way to directing his sophomore effort.

"Chicago" is intended to be a spectacle. It's meant to be robustly American. Marshall's overblown sensibility not only suited the movie, it would have died without it. The film worked because of the high camp it courted, the melodrama it served so well, the razzle-dazzle that winked and blinked from every corner of the screen.

Watching "Geisha," a rather different story about Japanese girls sold on the open market, enslaved for work and sex, and then humiliated when their virginity is sold to the highest bidder (provided there is one), you have to wonder how a similar sensibility works for this movie. The quick answer depends on what brings you to it.

If you're only interested in the pretty painted faces and the intricate kimonos, or the tense intrigue, savage gameplay and tug of romance you might find in a novel by, say, Jackie Collins by way of James Clavell, then the style suits this blockbuster hopeful well.

But if you know something about the geisha, whose illusion of serene beauty belied a difficult life beyond which most could comprehend, one could argue that a more restrained approach would have been more effective, with the melodramatic moments pared to a minimum in favor of allowing room for depth and subtlety.

As written by Robin Swicord from Arthur Golden's best-selling book, "Memoirs of a Geisha" could have been terrific if it didn't feel as if it were serving a sizable budget.

Taken for what it is--soap opera, nothing more--it can be entertaining, particularly after the awkward first third, in which Marshall overplays every emotion to the point of laying it bare onscreen. What he doesn't seem to appreciate is that his story is set in the East, which handles its emotions a bit differently than we in the West. Still, since his movie is designed for Westerners, who demand an onslaught of emotion from a film like this, the clanging of cultures can nevertheless be oddly fun, regardless of whether that was Marshall's intent.

For instance, when the main character, a geisha-in-training named Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang), finally rises up against her hateful nemesis geisha Hatsumomo (Gong Li)--a teahouse tramp who has been trying to undo Sayuri for years, ever since she was a child dropped at the okiya--the hair pulling, slapping, shrieking and shoving that ensues zips with energy.

Grounding the movie is Sayuri's geisha trainer, Mameha, who is played with reserve and grace by the Chinese actress Michelle Yeoh (Zhang and Li also are Chinese, which has created something of a controversy). Even when she must talk to Sayuri in sexual metaphors about eels finding their way into caves, she does it with tact, gleaning over the dialogue without a trace of humor.

"We don't become a geisha to pursue our own destinies," Mameha says. "We become geisha because we have no choice. Agony and beauty for us live side by side. Geisha paints her face to hide her face. It is not for geisha to want. It is not for geisha to feel. Geisha is an artist of the floating world. She dances, she sings, she entertains you--whatever you want. The rest is shadows. The rest is secret."

Well, not quite secret--at least not in this movie, where every secret is revealed.

Sending the film over the moon is Mother (Kaori Momoi), who bought Sayuri from her destitute parents when Sayuri was still a child named Chiyo, and who can do things with a pipe that border on the obscene. There's Pumpkin (Zoe Weizenbaum in youth, Youki Kudoh as an adult), Sayuri's one-time friend, who becomes so colorful as she ages, she could decorate a Blue Hawaii better than any old paper umbrella.

For pining Sayuri, her love interest is Chairman (Ken Watanabe), who was kind to her as a child and who has had her heart ever since. The question to which "Geisha" builds is whether Sayuri will somehow find a way to be with Chairman. Will her childhood crush be realized, perhaps even consummated? As the movie blasts into the throes of World War II, Sayuri is separated from the Chairman and then brought back to him by circumstance. Filled with self doubt, covered with dirt and nearly ruined by war, she realizes that she must become a geisha again if she is to see him.

"Mother had reopened the okiya," she says, "but my powder box was empty, my charcoal had turned to dust. And yet it was my one chance to see the Chairman again. Would he notice my weathered hands, the threadbare silk? The world had changed completely--had he? And would I finally find the strength to tell him all I felt?"

In this very commercial of movies, where the seams show and the plot becomes threadbare in spite of the Academy Award-worthy costume design, that question is beside the point. It doesn't exactly take some tossed tea leaves to figure out how it will end.

Grade: C+

(Also available on Blu-ray disc)

The Exorcism of Emily Rose: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

Screaming to be heard in a mediocre movie

(Originally published 2005)

"The Exorcism of Emily Rose" isn't what you might expect from a movie about an exorcism gone awry. Levitating tweens, rails of pea soup, and young ladies who lose their manners and their bladders at cocktail parties have no place here.

Instead, what audiences get is "The Trial of Father Moore."

The film is courtroom drama first, an exorcism second. That might disappoint those who would prefer a horror movie focused solely on the expelling of the anti-Christ, but take heart. When it comes to telling the difference between demons and lawyers, the lines of evil are blurred here, with both having their day in hell.

Directed by Scott Derrickson from a script he co-wrote with Paul Harris Boardman, "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" is based on the real-life case of Anneliese Michel, a young Bavarian woman diagnosed with epilepsy in her youth who later died in 1976 after undergoing an exorcism.

Some assumed Anneliese was predisposed to seeing evil, so sensitive to the paranormal that it entered her body and transformed it. Others placed the blame on what they assumed were Grand Mal seizers, which allegedly warped her mind and paralyzed her body, though there was never any proof that Anneliese had epilepsy.

So what gives? Since that's up for debate, the movie takes the most commercial approach--Tom Wilkinson is Father Moore, the beleaguered priest who botched the exorcism of Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter), a troubled woman raised in a staunchly Catholic household whose soul was overcome by six demons, including Lucifer himself.

Bible in hand, Holy Water at the ready, Father Moore goes through the robust motions of an exorcism--in the middle of a thunderstorm, no less, and on Halloween to boot (the real Anneliese died in July).

His efforts prove in vain. After Emily shrieks in a clutch of foreign tongues, contorts her body like someone out of Cirque du Soleil, and screams at the screen until her capillaries burst along with ours, she curls up in a ball and dies, her eyes rolling back in her head like two poached eggs ready to be pulled from the boiling pot.

Simmering at the core of this movie are Laura Linney as Erin Bruner, the agnostic lawyer who takes Father Moore's case only to be disturbed by "evil forces" herself, and Campbell Scott as Ethan Thomas, the religious prosecutor hired to put Father Moore in jail because the man's actions allegedly pushed Emily to her death.

All of this is manufactured to the point of exhaustion, and while the cast is good and the flashback format does allow us to be voyeurs in the theatrics of Emily's possession, there's something uncomfortably cheap about the fact that we never come to know Emily herself. Here, she's merely an ambiguous, frightened shell, the hook for a movie that derives its entertainment from her suffering.

That's nothing new for the genre, but it's what will prevent "Emily Rose" from being taken as seriously as all involved would have enjoyed.

Grade: C+

Employee of the Month: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

Bronze star

(Originally published 2006)

By virtue of its title alone, is it too much to expect "Employee of the Month" to be something special, perhaps a cut above your everyday comedy? Shouldn’t the jokes make that extra effort, as well as the cast? Is it unreasonable to come to this particular movie seeking fresh ideas — maybe even just a few?

Without the film attempting to break free from the old jokes that undermine it, how can one pin a gold star to it?

The movie, which director Greg Coolidge co-wrote with Don Calame and Chris Conroy, isn’t a bust — it’s likable enough. Sometime it makes you smile. Occasionally an actor nails a good line. But big laughs? You won’t find them on Aisle 11 — or any of the film’s other aisles, for that matter.

The movie stars Dane Cook as Zack Bradley, a bright yet unmotivated box, uh, boy (he crested 30 some time ago) at the big-box superstore, Super Club. Zack lives with his feisty grandmother and appears to be stuck in a rather large rut. His mode of transportation, for instance, isn’t a car or even a scooter — instead, it’s a motorized mini bike, one perfectly suited to embrace Zack’s bruised inner child.

Turning Zack’s bruise a shade darker is Vince (Dax Shepard), a cruel, corporate brown-noser who is Super Club’s fastest and, to the public, its most adored cashier. The man is a veritable juggling act behind the register, where the ladies love him — and the industrial-sized can lights above his head appropriately turn his bleached blond hair into ringlets of fire.

From the start, these two loathe each other to the point of distraction, so it’s only natural that war ignites between them the moment a lovely new employee comes aboard and catches their eye.

That would be Amy (Jessica Simpson), who arrives at Super Club on a scarlet red carpet of rumors that suggest she is sexually available for any man who wins employee of the month. Lovely girl. Since Vince is on the fast track to win the store’s award, Zack believes the only way he will have a chance at Amy’s red carpet is if he steps up to the plate and pulls off the win himself.

What ensues is porridge, though at least it isn’t served cold. Warming the film are faint echoes of Mike Judge’s "Office Space," which helps. Also, a few scenes do connect, such as a date shared between Amy and Zack in which he woos her at the store after hours (the boxed wine is a hit, as are Amy’s oversized ears).

More clever is the idea that high up within the towering stacks of products you find at such industrial-sized stores, Zach and his box-buddy pals (Andy Dick, Brian George, Harland Williams) have created a hideaway niche in which they can steal away for a round of cards while forgetting the minutiae shuffling below them.

Sometimes, you sense the more interesting, funnier movie would have taken place there.

Grade: C

Empire Falls: Movie & DVD Review (2004)

Wrestling a good book into a weak mini-series

(Originally published 2004)

It collapses.

From director Fred Schepisi, this underwhelming adaptation of Richard Russo's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, filmed in Maine, will leave native Mainers covering their ears.

The accents are wrong, with the film's lauded cast making the same mistakes so many have made before them--they make us sound like village idiots.

The problems extend to Schepisi's direction and to Russo's script, which generate a soap opera of awkward situations, forced relationships, and slow pacing. Caricatures take the place of characters. The film is so stagy, you watch its hive of interweaving stories from the outside, never really believing there's an inside.

The core of this three-hour journey has its heart in the right place--the movie is concerned with the class differences of small towns, the loss of those small towns when they fall on difficult times, and how those complexities come to affect its characters, particularly its main character, Miles Roby (Ed Harris). But unlike the more interesting book, those complexities fail to transcend the screen; elements become mawkish.

Like any soap opera, "Empire" isn't without its moments--Joanne Woodward gives it her best shot as the wealthy yet one-dimensional Francine Whiting, and Robin Wright Penn does some fine work as the cancer-stricken Grace Roby. Others don't fare as well. Paul Newman is silly and predictable as the town drunk, Max; Helen Hunt is miscast as the sketchy Janine Roby; and Harris' Miles never connects.

When I interviewed Harris after filming had wrapped on "Falls," he said that what he enjoyed about the movie is that "it takes its time in telling its story." Turns out he wasn't joking. "Empire Falls" takes too much time--and then it takes an hour more.

Grade: C-

The Emperor's New Groove: DVD Review (2005)

Same groove

(Originally published 2005)

New groove? Not quite.

This re-release of Disney's "The Emperor's New Groove" is being called "The New Groove Edition," but with the exception of a few deleted scenes and a commentary by the filmmakers, there isn't much new here--save for the packaging. So it's especially nice that the movie is so good.

The film ranks among the studio's fresher undertakings. Inspired by the looser drawings of Chuck Jones and Tex Avery, the movie exists to be fun and it succeeds, particularly with the excellent voice work by David Spade, John Goodman, Patrick Warburton and Eartha Kitt.

The film feels slightly too long even at 78 minutes, but that’s a quibble. With Eartha Kitt's familiar growl punctuating her manic face, her bony Yzma is one of the best Disney villains to come along in years.

Rated G.

Grade: A-

DVD Features:

• Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (DTS 5.1), French (Unknown Format)
• Commentary by: the filmmakersUnknown Format
• Deleted Scenes
• The Emperor's Got Game -- Help Kuzco Get From Pacha's House Back To The Castle
• Rascal Flatts Music Video -- Learn To "Walk The Llama Llama" as Featured On THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE Soundtrack
• Sting's Making The Music Video -- Featuring The Academy Award®–Nominated Song "My Funny Friend And Me"
• Behind The Scenes -- A Fast-Paced Tour Of How The Film Was Made

Elizabethtown: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

Say everything

(Originally published 2005)

Cameron Crowe's “Elizabethtown” is a warm and fuzzy parable about failure and redemption, life and death, love won and love lost--love hanging in the balance.

From Crowe’s own script, the movie is Hollywood all the way. It’s slick and well produced, with a title that makes it sound precious and nostalgic because it is precious and nostalgic.

Here is a film so devoid of hard edges that even a pending suicide is treated as a gimmicky joke. Regardless of how tough life becomes for its main character, Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom)--a failed shoe designer whose bum sneakers cost his company nearly $1 billion in losses--it never feels particularly trying, not even when Drew endures the sort of public ridicule normally reserved for the ultra famous.

Instead, in Crowe's dreamlike world of life lessons learned along this movie's meandering path, real life is tucked neatly away so that the director can make room for the rather sizable suspension of disbelief audiences will need in order to enjoy the film.

The good news is that isn’t difficult to do.

After an amusingly tense lecture given to Drew by his icy boss (Alec Baldwin), who tells Drew that his screw-up is so big, it will affect the global community, Drew returns home prepared to kill himself. And then his cell phone rings. On the line is his sister, Heather (Judy Greer), with the sad news that their father has dropped dead in Elizabethtown, Ky., where he was visiting family, the likes of whom Drew only faintly knows.

According to Heather, their mother, Hollie (Susan Sarandon), is unable to handle the details, and neither can she. Would Drew take care of things? "You're the oldest," she says to him. "You need to do this."

And so Drew does it, fully intending to tend to his father's death so that he can then tend to his own. Since few commercial movies with a substantial budget would allow for that, he meets a potential love interest in Claire (Kirsten Dunst), a quirky flight attendant who might have been considered a stalker if she didn't have such appealing insights into life that tend to get people like Drew back on the right path.

As with Crowe's best and best-known movies, "Say Anything," Almost Famous" and "Jerry Maguire,” this is a soundtrack-driven film whose nostalgic songs give it more emotional weight than it likely would have had without their inclusion.

The cast is strong, but the loose way the movie is assembled and the seriocomic tone Crowe strikes make parts of it feel incomplete, which is ironic since for Crowe, coming to a state of completion is the point of all his films. Will audiences leave "Elizabethtown," saying "He completes me" about Drew and his story?

Doubtful. But they won't have wasted their time, either.

Grade: B-

Elf: Movie & DVD Review (2003)

Here's a good picture

(Originally published 2003)

The first few minutes of the funny new comedy “Elf” features a scene in which a dozen of the little darlings dart screaming from a burning tree house reminiscent of the one famously inhabited by the Keebler elves.

In what’s apparently a cookie-cooking mishap, the elves’ ovens burst into flames, leaving the tree engulfed in fire and the terrified tiny ones running for their lives. If you listen carefully, you can hear one especially frazzled elf commenting that if only he had been a cobbler, none of this would have happened to him.

In the real world, nothing is funny about a fire. Still, the way it’s handled here is unexpected and uproarious. At my screening, it brought the crowd to life, which was a nice change after seeing so many glum faces at “The Matrix Revolutions.”

The Keebler scene has nothing to do with the film’s plot, but it does help to establish the dark, absurdist tone director Jon Favreau favors early on. By its midpoint, “Elf” gives way to a sugary sweet undercurrent that wants to warm your heart with holiday cheer, but Favreau, working from a script by David Berenbaum, walks the line well. He doesn’t overdose on the sugar and, as such, his film becomes a bright spot in the budding holiday movie season.

In the film, “Saturday Night Live” alum Will Ferrell finds his best role