Iron Man: Movie Review (2008)

From mid-life crisis to superhero

Directed by Jon Favreau, written by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, 126 minutes, rated PG-13.

At its core, Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man” is about one man’s massive mid-life crisis, and all the drama that springs from it.

It goes down like this: While in Afghanistan shucking his company’s latest slew of weapons to U.S. military officials, the cocky, ultra-smart billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., perfect) is forced to look back upon his life when the Taliban suddenly ambush him with his own weapons.

It doesn’t take Stark long to realize that the U.S. has been selling Stark’s wares to the enemy--and what does that say about his own contributions to the state of the world?

Making matters worse for Stark is that he starts having chest pains--not that that’s a surprise. During the ambush, a bomb blew shrapnel into Stark’s chest, which now threatens his heart. Finally, since no mid-life crisis would be complete without flashy new duds and a swank new relationship, Stark creates a suite of virtually indestructible Iron Man suits that allow him the power of fight and flight, and then he falls for his assistant, Pepper Potts, who is played with cool knowingness by a very good Gwyneth Paltrow.

It’s the culmination of all this (and more) that leaves Stark to decide he needs to do something meaningful with his life, which for him means changing the direction of Stark Industries. At a press conference, he unleashes the surprise that his company no longer will make weapons for the government. It’s a statement that creates ripples throughout the world, the stock market and most notably within Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges, bald and bearish), who helped to build Stark Industries from its infancy and who isn’t about to let Tony ruin it now.

Without given any more away, what unfolds is one hugely enjoyable popcorn movie, and not necessarily because of its special effects, which are as seamless as anything audiences enjoyed in last year’s “Transformers.”

For the most part, the movie’s pleasures come from the attention paid to its script, its accomplished performances and the fact that the movie is driven by its characters first, its action second.

About the action. As impressive as it is (watching Stark learn how to fly as Iron Man is a highlight), the reason the movie works as well as it does is for the very reason most good movies work as well as they do--you care about the characters, the plot is involving, the production is polished.

Based on Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway’s script--which itself is based on the Iron Man character Stan Lee helped to created in 1963 in response to the Vietnam War--“Iron Man” finds all involved skirting the typical superhero pitfalls (specifically, teen angst) to break new ground within an otherwise overworked genre. In the process, they’ve come through with one of the freshest, most satisfying outings the medium has seen in awhile.

Grade: A-

Forbidden Kingdom: Movie Review (2008)

Three masters, and one is behind the scenes

Directed by Rob Minkoff, written by John Fusco, 113 minutes, rated PG-13.

The new Rob Minkoff movie, “Forbidden Kingdom,” would be little without its superb martial arts sequences, so its good to report that the movie isn’t just filled with them, but that each fight was choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping.

Those in the know will know that Wo Ping is one of great martial arts fight choreographers. His resume includes such films as “Kill Bill: Vol 1,” “Kill Bill: Vol. 2,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” every one of the “Matrix” movies, and dozens of other films, most of which are reference guides as to how entertaining this genre can be when the fight scenes are conceived as ingeniously as they are here.

Wo Ping is the best in the business, and what he brings to “Kingdom” is a thrill that rises to the promise boasted in the film’s marquee names--Jackie Chan and Jet Li. For the first time in their careers, these two modern-day kings of martial arts cinema take to the screen together, and while the story and the script sometimes lets them down, that never is the case when Wo Ping designs for them one of his gravity-defying battles.

With its broad echoes of “The Karate Kid” and “The Wizard of Oz,” the movie begins on cluttered, shaky ground, with John Fusco’s script generating cringe-inducing dialogue in its strained opening moments. Since exploring the film’s ridiculously complex plot would essentially mean taking over the entire Lifestyle section, we’ll just strip it to its bare essentials.

The film follows Jason, a lonely Boston teen who finds solace in the kung-fu movies he purchases from the elderly shop owner, Old Hop (Chan, covered in waxy old-age make-up), who is in possession of a magical staff once used in ancient battle by the imprisoned Monkey King (Li). Jason doesn’t know how to fight himself, so when he’s knocked senseless by a group of thugs who order him to help them steal Hop’s cash, he’s bullied into doing so, with potentially tragic results.

And then something odd happens. While clutching the staff, Jason is punched through the “gate of no gate” and tumbles back to ancient China, where, like Dorothy before him, he is befriended by three people--in this case, the drunken Lu Yan (Chan), Silent Monk (Li, not so silent) and Golden Sparrow (Lie Yifei).

All want to help him get the staff back to the Monkey King so the king can break free from the voodoo that binds him. To do so, they must teach Jason how to fight, combat the evil Jade Warlord (Collin Chou) and the white-haired Ni Chang (Li Bing Bing), and protect one person’s right to immortality.

While none of this is new and the acting can be risible (those toughs Jason fights in Boston are over-the-top awful), the production values are excellent (the film was shot in China), the villains are sufficiently nasty, and Chan and Li share an extended, memorable fight scene that’s the movie at its best.

Grade: B-

View the trailer below:

Hidalgo: DVD, Blu-ray Movie Review (2008)

“Hidalgo” DVD, Blu-ray

A bloated oater, long in the tooth.

Set in the 1890s, this epic horse drama is about Frank T. Hopkins (Viggo Mortensen), the real-life Pony Express rider whose real life isn’t explored here. It’s fictionalized, so much so that the truth is stretched so far, it snaps.

Of course, that wouldn’t matter much if the movie had been consistently entertaining, which it isn’t.

Named after Frank’s heroic mustang, “Hidalgo” finds Hopkins taking on a hive of unseemly types led by Omar Sharif’s Sheikh Riyadh and racing them on one massive, 3,000-mile journey across the Saudi Arabian desert.

In spite of the sandstorms, the locusts, the wildcats, the kidnappings and a host of other dangers, "Hidalgo" isn’t content to just offer robust entertainment.

It also wants to strike serious undertones and form elements of a drama. That’s where it tries to have it all--and that’s where it fails to do so.

Rated PG-13. Grade: C

The 6th Day: Movie, DVD, Blu-ray Review (2008)

The second man

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, written by Cormac Wibberley and Marianne Wibberley, 124 minutes, PG-13.

In this futuristic thriller about human cloning, Arnold Schwarzenegger is Adam Gibson, a family man who lives in a world where parents regularly clone their children’s dead pets so nobody ever has to suffer the hardship of finding Fluffy doubling as a hassock in the living room.

But when Gibson returns home one evening to find a clone of himself seated at the dinner table with his family, it becomes clear that this whole cloning business has gotten out of hand. Now under siege by a bunch of clone-happy operatives led by Tony Goldwyn and Robert Duvall, Gibson predictably hits the road running in an effort to stay alive while trying to find out why he was targeted for cloning.

Cormac and Marianne Wibberley’s script distills the ethical and moral issues surrounding human cloning into neat soundbites, some of which are intentionally funny, but most of which, in their amusing effort to be profound, only manage to bear the combined intellectual weight of the Doublemint twins.

Not that anyone will be renting this film to decide whether it’s morally right to resurrect grandpa from the grave. They’ll be expecting action, which “The 6th Day” has, but it’s never as thrilling or as ingeniously conceived as the action scenes in Schwarzenegger’s best films, “The Terminator” and “Terminator 2.”

Indeed, a good part of “The 6th Day” is so caught up in ethics, it forgets it’s supposed to be an action film. Throughout much of it, audiences might be better off closing their eyes and counting the offspring of Dolly the sheep.

Grade: C+

Rollerball: Movie, DVD Review (2002)

Roll on past it

Directed by John McTiernan, written by Larry Ferguson and John Pogue, based on the short story and screenplay by William Harrison, 98 minutes, rated PG-13.

(Originally published 2002)

John McTiernan's much-delayed thriller "Rollerball" is one of those movies you never quite forget--which is why, I suppose, we have psychotherapy, mood-enhancing prescription drugs and neighborhood bars to help us cope.

Based on the 1975 original starring James Caan and Maud Adams, this new version, from a script by Larry Ferguson and John Pogue, is determined to overlook everything that made its inspiration so prescient.

Instead of exploring why pop culture is fascinated with extreme sports, it’s only content to exploit the violence and the blood within the sport. Instead of focusing on how these sports are shaped and fueled by major corporations, it overlooks their influence in favor of featuring a string of head-banging, heavy-metal riffs.

The film stars Chris Klein as Jonathan, a fresh-faced kid from San Francisco who leaves his meaningless life in the states to become a meaningless sports star in Kazakhstan, Russia, a post-communist bloc country that’s absolutely certain its ticket to free trade rests with the game of Rollerball.

I want you to think about that for a minute. It’s a revelation that will either make you laugh or cry.

For those who haven't seen the film's trailer or television ads, the game of Rollerball is a wild cross between motorcross, lacrosse, roller derby, Polo and the World Wrestling Federation. It's so cutthroat, it could give the XFL--or figure skating, for that matter--a run for its ruble.

Running the show in Kazakhstan is the evil Petrovich (Jean Reno), a mustache-twirling, neuvo-capitalist with a perpetual sneer who's determined to turn Rollerball into a smash success. His ultimate goal is to snag a U.S. cable television deal, but in order to pull that off, Petrovich feels he must do what any soulless individual working in television management would do--he undermines his players in the name of ratings.

In this case, that means making the game as violent as possible, a shrewd business move that lifts the show's ratings to meteoric heights. Petrovich’s problem? Oddly enough, none of his players is willing to sacrifice their lives so Petrovich can get rich.

With LL Cool J as an accountant-turned-Rollerball superstar and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as a Russian minx whose performance suggests she worked for scale and a case of Stoli, "Rollerball" takes its place beside "Battlefield Earth" as one of the worst movies Hollywood has shucked out in the past five years.

As "Roller Boogie" is my witness, they don't make them any worse than this.

Grade: F

Bad Company: Movie, DVD Review (2002)

Bum movie

Directed by Joel Schumacher, ritten by Jason Richman and Michael Browning, 111 minutes, rated PG-13.

(Originally published 2002)

Another week, another nuclear weapon, another dirty Hollywood bomb. Ka-fizzle.

This time out the film in question isn’t “The Sum of All Fears” but Joel Schumacher’s “Bad Company,” an appropriately titled comedic thriller that doesn’t star Ben Affleck as the hotshot on which our national safety and security hinges but, alas, on the comedian Chris Rock.

Allow me to wipe that tear from your eye.

Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and written by Jason Richman and Michael Browning, “Bad Company” is a mismatched buddy movie that asks audiences to suspend disbelief to such an absurd degree, they might hang themselves trying.

Originally set to hit theaters just weeks after Sept. 11, “Bad Company” was swiftly shelved and its release date pushed back until June 7, which just happens to be the very week the official clean-up ended on what was once the World Trade Center Towers.

No, Disney’s Touchstone Pictures can’t get a break with this film--and, considering their movie is all about mining laughs from a plot to blow up Manhattan, they don’t deserve one.

In the film, Anthony Hopkins is Oakes, a gum-snapping, toothpick-chewing CIA agent eager to prevent a Yugoslav terrorist named Dragan (Matthew Marsh) from purchasing a nuclear weapon from a Russian Mafiosi named Adrik Vas (Peter Stormare).

His key man in the operation was Kevin Pope (Rock), a refined agent posing as an antiques dealer who’s life is snuffed early in the film. For Oakes, tracking down Kevin’s twin brother, Jake Hayes (Rock), to complete the deal, isn’t the problem. Instead, the problem rests in getting him to do the job competently--which, ironically, can also be said for director Schumacher.

Paired with Bruckheimer (“Pearl Harbor,” “The Rock,” “Armageddon”), for whom subtlety and character development are clearly as important as plausibility, Schumacher delivers a film that’s peppered with jump-cuts, explosions, car chases and some pseudowitty banter between Rock and Hopkins--all of which might have been fine had the film only backed its action with a story that wasn’t riddled with holes and with a sense of excitement that was reasonably fresh.

Schumacher does neither, but he does prove the rule--you really are as bad as the company you keep.

Grade: D

Black Hawk Down: Movie, DVD Review (2001)

In the chaos of war, some characters are lost

Directed by Ridley Scott, written by Ken Nolan, based on the book by Mark Bowden, 143 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2001)

Ridley Scott's unflinching war movie, "Black Hawk Down," features one of the best re-enactments of man-to-man land combat ever captured on a movie screen.

The film, which is based on Mark Bowden's 1999 best-selling book of the same name, is technically stunning yet icily detached, a visceral orgy of guns, bombs and carnage that captures the madness of urban combat and the bravery of U.S. forces, but which is so far removed from its characters, too much of its power resonates through its explosions--and not through the men being harmed or killed by them.

Working from a script by Ken Nolan, Scott's film is about the real-life Battle of the Black Sea, the Oct. 3rd, 1993 U.S. mission to remove Gen. Muhammad Farah Aidid's militia from the ravaged city of Mogadishu, Somalia.

As outlined by Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison (Sam Shepard) to the Army's elite Rangers and Delta Force, the mission should have been relatively simple, taking under an hour to execute. But because of poor planning, arrogance on behalf of the soldiers and a string of bad luck, it turned into a botched, 15-hour nightmare that went horribly wrong.

Indeed, after two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by Somali gunfire, 100 troops became trapped on hostile ground. Suddenly, the mission's focus shifted away from capturing Aidid's men to getting our men out of Mogadishu alive.

For the next two hours, audiences are slammed with the battle as it erupts and blooms. What Scott has captured is ferocious and unrelenting; there's never a false moment, never a time when it feels as if any of this has been staged. It's a brilliant, devastating feat of filmmaking that ends with 73 Americans injured and 18 dead--including two men from Maine, Staff Sgt. Thomas Fields of Lisbon and Master Sgt. Gary Gordon of Lincoln.

Audiences will recognize some of the actors--Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Jason Isaacs, Orlando Bloom and Jeremy Piven, among dozens of others--but because the cast is so large, it's impossible to connect with them individually. Instead, audiences must bond with the group, which is difficult to do given Scott's determination to make a war movie focused purely on battle--and not on the lives being destroyed by it.

Grade: B

Never Back Down: Movie Review (Video Version)

Below is the video version of "Never Back Down":

Kill Bill Vol. 1: Movie, DVD Review

The movie kills

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, 93 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2003)

Read the review of Kill Bill Vol. 2 here.

In "Kill Bill, Vol. 1," Quentin Tarantino comes out swinging with the sort of restless, overcharged ferocity that, when properly channeled, tends to send you back in your seat - way back in your seat - straight to its springs.

This kinetic, outrageous movie, the second half of which will be released this Friday in theaters, finds the director on a tear, quite literally, chopping off more heads and severing more limbs than a slaughterhouse.

Is there a point to the violence? Absolutely. "Kill Bill" is a celebration of '70s grindhouse cinema. It was made in tribute to the director's favorite genres - blaxploitation, the spaghetti western, Japanese anime and Yazuka, and the sort of Chinese martial arts films that Jackie Chan made in his youth.

Armed with his encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture and a terrifically cast Uma Thurman as his leading lady, Tarantino begins his movie with an unflinching black-and-white close-up of Thurman's smashed-in face. Her character, Black Mamba, also known as the Bride, is lying on her back on the floor of a blood-splattered chapel in the middle of a southwestern nowhere. She's decked out in a ruined wedding dress, she's about eight months pregnant, and she's surrounded by a heap of dead bodies, all of whom - including the unidentified groom - fell victim to the massacre that just took place around her.

Leaning over her is Bill (David Carradine, though we never see his face), a mysterious bloke who puts a bullet through the Bride's head the moment she finds the courage (or is it the rage?) to tell him that the baby she's carrying is his.

What spins from this ugliness is hardly linear - Tarantino fragments time, dicing it as if by Ginsu knife. Still, the gist of what unfolds goes like this: Four years pass, the Bride awakens from her coma and makes a list of the people who must die for doing her and her dead baby wrong.

Now an avenging angel with revenge eating at her heart, the Bride seeks out all of these evildoers, with Tarantino dividing the ensuing confrontations into chapters, each of which employs a different style of genre fighting. What ensues is a fantastic postfeminist display of showmanship from a director actively encouraging style over substance.

When one gives in to such an impulse, there's always a risk the movie will suffer an emotional death, but "Kill Bill" doesn't. Taking a cue from silent films, Tarantino leans hard on his cast, particularly Thurman, to rough out the emotional corners of his story by focusing on their physical response to their internal conflict. The result is pure pop art.

Grade: A

The Punisher: Movie, DVD Review

A masochist's dream

Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, written by Michael France and Hensleigh, 124 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2004)

The latest superhero movie to be plucked from the pages of Marvel Comics is "The Punisher" and my, does it live up to its title. The film is a masochist's dream.

It stars Thomas Jane ("The Sweetest Thing," "61*") as Frank Castle, a buff, brooding undercover FBI agent whose entire family is massacred by the Saint, an ironically named villain played by John Travolta in the sort of big, humiliating performance he already gave in "Swordfish."

The Saint is a wealthy, smoky tough from Tampa who enjoys sweeping into rooms in full tantrum, sputtering about who did him wrong and how they're going to pay for it, all in an effort to rally the legion of black-suited minions toiling after him.

Though the Saint would never admit it, he's essentially a diva. He makes paranoid accusations about his enemies, ridicules those close to him, dresses impeccably and makes outrageous demands from everyone in sight. If he weren't in a suit, he'd be in "Connie & Carla."

And yet who can blame him for his histrionics? The Saint is seeking revenge for his son's death, which he directly attributes to Castle. Now arch enemies, Castle and the Saint have at each other in a movie filled with so much gunfire and beef, it becomes hamburger onscreen.

Indeed, as directed by Jonathan Hensleigh from a script he co-wrote with Michael France, "The Punisher" earns its R rating by putting Castle, a.k.a. The Punisher, through the bloody wringer for much of the film's two-hour running time.

Like Batman before him, he has no superpowers, though he does have rage, which apparently makes him immune to such life-threatening events as being blown up, repeatedly shot in the chest, stabbed, crushed and thrown through cement walls.

The movie is too long by a third and it will fade from memory quicker than "The Shadow," but it's hardly the worst of the superhero lot - it's no "Flash Gordon," for instance, and God knows it's no "Daredevil" or "Howard the Duck."

When it's not startling the screen with its surprising run of graphic violence, it's actually rather good. Its action scenes are creative, Jane holds your attention and Hensleigh manages to find pockets of humor, particularly with the Punisher's interactions with his down-on-their-luck neighbors Joan (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos), Mr. Bumpo (John Pinette) and Spacker Dave (Ben Foster), a social outcast who predictably comes to regret the numerous piercings crisscrossing his face.

Grade: C

Never Back Down: Movie Review (2008)

Back the hell down

Directed by Jeff Wadlow, written by Chris Hauty, 113 minutes, rated PG-13.

Given the rush of recent gems that have tumbled from the heavens of Hollywood lately, you’d swear the holidays were upon us again. Lot’s of little movie gifts everywhere. Who wouldn’t be satisfied by the product pouring into cineplexes?

A glance back reveals such noteworthy efforts as “Step Up 2 the Streets,” “College Road Trip,” “10,000 B.C.,” “Doomsday,” “Semi-Pro,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Jumper.”

And now, Hollywood has come through again, this time with the genius that is Jeff Wadlow’s “Never Back Down.” Essentially, the movie is about pretty boys posing, preening and pummeling each other until they knock themselves senseless. Oh, and it’s also about fetishizing their abs, not that anyone here would admit it.

Based on Chris Hauty’s script, the film is a cross between “Fight Club” and “The Karate Kid,” though without the latter’s A-list cast. Yes, that’s right, its A-list cast. When compared to the D-listers assembled in “Back Down,” Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio are so A-list, it hurts.

The film follows Sean Faris as Jake Tyler, who years ago didn’t take the wheel for his drunk dad and who now blames himself for the car wreck that took the man’s life while he was half in the bag.

Filled with rage but essentially good at heart, Jake is a squinty-eyed scrapper, so incapable of dealing with his guilt, that his eyes burn at the idea of a fight when the opportunity presents itself. His tough-love mother (Leslie Hope) is at a loss with how to handle him--she just throws dinnerware as if can afford to do so, which she can’t--but his younger brother, Charlie (Wyatt Smith), still looks up to him, which Jake understands is a responsibility, not that he initially cares much.

When the Tyler family leaves Iowa for Florida, where Charlie is to study to become a tennis pro, Jake finds two outlets for his rage. The first is in Ryan McCarthy (Cam Gigandet), a high school sociopath who enjoys beating the living hell out of people. Since Jake has come to Florida with a bad reputation (apparently, his previous fights have gone viral over the Internet), he’s no exception--Ryan wants a piece of him. So does a saucy minx named Baja (Amber Heard), who is Ryan’s reluctant girlfriend, sure, but who’d rather be swapping blows with Jake.

The second outlet for Jake’s rage is at a gym called Combat Club, which is owned by the secretive Jean Roqua (Djimon Hounsou). There, Tyler learns how to fight, but under the strict condition that he never use his newfound skills at a public fighting event.

So, what are the odds that he does just that? And could it be that Roqua ejects him from the gym when he finds out? And what of Baja, who might not be the sweet piece of hard candy she initially seems to be? Is she really in it to win it with Jake, who predictably comes to fight Ryan in the film’s feverish denouement?

If you don’t know and still are intrigued, “Never Back Down” is for you.

Grade: D

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Movie, DVD, Blu-ray Review (2003)

Extraordinary? Not so much

Directed by Stephen Norrington, written by James Dale Robinson, 110 minutes, rated PG-13.

(Originally published 2003)

The adventure film, “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” an oxymoron if there ever was one, is a weapon of mass destruction, a movie rigged with so much TNT, the damned thing keeps blowing itself up.

Throughout, whole cities explode, submarines explode, mountainsides explode and people explode, and yet the movie, without the assistance of an explosive script, quickly counts itself among the destruction.

Loosely based on Alan Moore’s darkly imagined comic books, "LXG"--as the ghetto-fabulous folks at Twentieth Century Fox are marketing it, presumably to catch the eye of the attention-deprived hip-hop set--has a terrific premise and squanders it.

It takes a handful of the Victorian era's more infamous heroes and villains, and asks them to stop an evil force called the Fantom from conquering the world.

In the books, that idea moved like a snake to a rat. Fueled with Moore's ferocious wit and the clever, sudden jags he hooked through the corners of his story, there was no stopping the brutal, high-minded fun.

Director Stephen Norrington's film, on the other hand, jacks the books' energy with such an overbearing 21st-century sensibility, it quickly dumbs down the proceedings with an overkill of action clichés.

The result? A summer blockbuster as overstuffed as a WWE locker room, but with none of the fun and all of the odor.

Set in 1899, “LXG” imagines a world on the brink of war, with Britain and Germany gearing up for a major battle after the mysterious Fantom lays waste to each with his seemingly endless supply of bombs. With both countries blaming the other, the head of British intelligence--not coincidentally named M (Richard Roxburgh)--is ordered by the Queen to get to the bottom of things.

M does so by reaching out to Sean Connery's Allan Quatermain, the roguish adventurer from H. Rider Haggard's "King Solomon's Mines," who reluctantly agrees to join the fight by forming a literary league of superheroes.

The team he gathers is impressive: Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer (Shane West), H.G. Well's the Invisible Man (Tony Curran), Jules Verne's Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), Robert Lewis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde (Jason Flemyng), and Bram Stoker's Mina Harker (Peta Wilson).

With special effects that are just a step above what you see on the Sci Fi channel and a script by James Dale Robinson that favors flash and fire over nuance and logic, "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is actually rather illiterate, a disappointment that has its moments, particularly with the charismatic Connery, but which is rarely as extraordinary as its title suggests.

Grade: C-

The Italian Job: Movie, DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray Review (2003)

Mini Coopers--and maximum action

Directed by F. Gary Gray, written by Donna Powers and Wayne Powers, 110 minutes, rated PG-13.

(Originally published 2003)

In "The Italian Job," a smart, blistering remake of Peter Collinson's 1969 film of the same name, Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron and Edward Norton star in a film whose $35 million gold heist isn’t just the prize but the problem.

At least for the characters.

The film, which director F. Gary Gray based on a screenplay by Donna Powers and Wayne Powers, lacks the original’s inspired casting (Noel Coward and Benny Hill as thieves), but it offers greatly improved stuntwork and gives a fun update to the three Mini Coopers so crucial to the plot and action.

Energetic and lean, beautifully shot and well-acted, Gray’s film is a caper whose hip style is generated almost entirely from within. That infectious style is given a lift from the looseness of its cast, which helps to create a breezy, ultra-cool mood that never feels manufactured, unlike in this year's other caper, the mildly disappointing "Confidence."

Befitting the title, the film opens in Venice with a daring heist that leads to a wild boat chase through the city's clogged canals. It's a rousing opening, one that seamlessly introduces all the major players and their individual strengths amid the action.

There's Charlie (Wahlberg), the architect behind the heists; John (Donald Sutherland), the veteran safe-cracker; Steve (Norton), whose personal connections prove vital; and Handsome Rob (Jason Statham), who knows how to handle women as well as he knows how to handle the wheel of a car or a boat.

Also on board are Lyle (Seth Green), a computer geek who claims he’s the mastermind behind Napster, and Left Ear (Mos Def), whose partial deafness proves he knows a few things about blowing things up.

Together, they’re a formidable team. But when one member of the group gets greedy and turns on the others, brazenly stealing the $35 million in gold they hauled out of Venice and leaving one man dead, the remaining members strengthen their bond and set out to destroy the dirty thief and vindicate their friend’s death.

They do so by enlisting the help of Stella (Theron), a gifted safe-cracker who has personal reasons for seeing this vendetta through: the man who was murdered was her father.

Bolstered by a brisk pace and its solid performances--Theron finally realizes her potential here, but then so does the Mini Cooper, which sees its star shine brighter--“The Italian Job” proves that for a heist movie to get the job done right, audiences will forgive minor lapses in logic in favor of style, chemistry and inventive action. F. Gary Gray comes through with just that--and then he surpasses expectations by coming through with more.

Grade: B+

10,000 B.C.: Movie Review (2008)

Eat the director

View the Hi-Def Video Review here.

Directed by Roland Emmerich, written by Emmerich and Harald Kloser, 109 minutes, rated PG-13.

Sometimes, there’s just nothing good that can be said about a movie, so the best recourse is to just bury the mother and move on.

Such is the case with the dumb new Roland Emmerich movie, “10,000 B.C.,” which is hamburger onscreen—and not the lean variety. This movie is about 90 percent cinematic fat. The other 10 percent? Gristle. Maybe a bit of bone.

Based on Emmerich and Harald Kloser’s script, “10,000 B.C.” doesn’t know where it is, let alone what year it is. Since it’s either too lazy to look back into history and do its homework or too cynical about its audience to believe that they haven’t done theirs, it just charges forward with zero knowledge of the time it’s trying to evoke.

With irritating casualness, the filmmakers set their movie during a specific time and then ignore the realties of that time. This is a movie that makes the similar “Apocalypto” look like a history lesson. What Emmerich has created is his own 10,000 B.C., tossing a hive of elements onto the screen in hopes that they’ll stick without the audience erupting into snorts and sniggers. Let’s wish him well with that.

In its most streamlined form, the cluttered plot goes like this: Steven Strait is the dreadlocked D’Leh, a member of the Yagahl tribe who hunts woolly mammoths for food and who possesses a powerful love hunger for Evolet (Camilla Belle), a blue-eyed goddess-witch who looks like a cross between Fergie, Carmen Electra and Lindsay Lohan, but a bit more rough-and-tumble, if that’s possible.

Strife strikes when Evolet and others are stolen away by a competing tribe. When the Yagahl’s psychic Old Mother (Mona Hammond) falls into one of her creepy hypnotic trances and sees D’Leh’s future laid out in front of her, she instructs him to go after Evolet. This generates all sorts of trouble, not the least of which involves D’Leh coming to throws with some hilarious-looking giant birds, the lot of which are about as real as Rod Hull’s aggressive puppet, Emu, from the 1960s.

Also against D’Leh and his stoic sidekick Tic’Tic (Cliff Curtis) are, well, any number of things--a saber-toothed tiger, which looks as if it sprang out of a weak PS3 game; the most truncated journey ever across barren deserts and mountain ranges; and naturally, since the movie is, after all, set in 10,000 B.C., a lost city filled with pyramids, which the Egyptians apparently built 7,000 years earlier than we thought. Who knew?

Not Emmerich, or maybe he did know and doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. At least his characters aren’t fighting tooth decay—they all have amazingly white, perfect teeth. And at least many of the men were able to find a BIC in the B.C.--most are shaved, including their chests. But enough. As with any movie that stretches history to suit its needs, “10,000 B.C.” could have been forgiven every one of its missteps and shortcomings had it been a blast, which it isn’t.

This is a movie you actually forget while watching it.

Grade: D-

View the video review below:

I, Robot: Blu-ray Movie Review

Below is our video review of the Will Smith movie "I, Robot," which is just out on Blu-ray disc.

Vantage Point: Movie Review (2008)

The movie also is down for the count

Directed by Pete Travis, written by Barry L. Levy, 90 minutes, rated PG-13.

Pete Travis’ new political thriller, "Vantage Point," is set in Salamanca, Spain, which is one of that country’s most beautiful, undiscovered cities.

Years ago, I spent several months in that city, and everything one would appreciate about it — from its awe-inspiring twin cathedrals to its central market area with its lively mix of restaurants and tapas bars to the formidable presence of its renowned university — is overlooked in a movie that doesn’t know what to do with any of it.

Turns out there’s good reason for that.

While Travis does nudge establishing shots of Salamanca into his movie, his film mostly was shot in Mexico. There, at a rundown mall located on the southern tip of Mexico City, he built a model of Salamanca’s massive Plaza Mayor, which happens to be one of Spain’s most stunning and architecturally important plazas. Though Travis is betting that Salamanca is so obscure a city that many won’t know the difference, what he fails to create in his awkward sleight-of-hand is a clear sense of place about a very specific place.

It’s strange. Since Salamanca hardly is considered a political hub, the only reason Travis had to set his film there was to capture the city’s charm and beauty. And yet he doesn’t capture it because he filmed his movie in another country located on another continent. The result is unusual, to say the least, an oddly generic-looking film about an unforgettable place rich in detail and history.

Based on Barry L. Levy’s script, "Vantage Point" is an intentionally fragmented movie that involves terrorists shooting the president of the United States (William Hurt) just as he’s about to deliver a speech on terrorism. The irony!

The film’s gimmick, reminiscent of the technique used in Kurosawa’s superior "Rashomon," is revealed in its trailer. Through the vantage points of several different characters, the audience presumably will piece together the mystery of who shot the president and why.

This tactic proves interesting for the first part of the movie, but as the film literally keeps rewinding through time in an effort to reveal new angles and fresh clues, it becomes tiresome and comical. Perhaps bored himself with the film’s structure, Travis doesn’t adhere strictly to its code; he does a sloppy job keeping us in each character’s moment, with multiple viewpoints sometimes shared at once.

Instead, after introducing Sigourney Weaver as a television news producer and then kicking her to the curb (we never see her again), he gives himself over to exploring the uninteresting lives of his other stock characters.

They include Secret Service agent Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid), who once took a bullet for the president and who now is seeking redemption from his colleagues, including Taylor (Matthew Fox); a man (Forest Whitaker) estranged from his family who is on vacation in Salamanca, where his video camera catches plenty of the action as it unfolds; a Spanish cop (Eduardo Noriega) coming to terms with his sketchy girlfriend; and the terrorists themselves, who possess their own little dramas, none of which, much like this disappointing movie, are as captivating as you’d like them to be.

Grade: C-

View the trailer here:

Beowulf: DVD, HD DVD Review (2008)

"Beowulf" DVD, HD DVD

Robert Zemeckis' "Beowulf" has a great ending--powerful, fiery and exciting. It’s a nice feat of showmanship, the best part of the film.

You should know this because what comes before it, with few exceptions, can be long and tedious.

Set in Denmark and based on the 6th century Anglo-Saxon poem, the movie updates it all for the present with hot bods, nudity and sex--just what we need.

It follows the great warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone) as he accepts the challenge of a king (Anthony Hopkins) to kill the giant Grendel (Crispin Glover), who is busy wreaking havoc upon the king’s land.

It’s a situation that escalates into Beowulf also battling Grendel’s slinky minx of a mother (Angelina Jolie, of course) and finally their offspring, who has the ability to morph into a fire-breathing dragon.

Along the way, Beowulf drinks his share of mead, becomes king, garners the love of a queen (Robin Wright Penn), enjoys a lover on the side, grows a conscience and keeps his rock-solid abs throughout.

So, at the very least, plenty of the film’s target audience of young males will want to be him, but here’s the thing: The film follows Zemeckis’ 2004 movie, "The Polar Express," in that it uses performance-capture technology to turn its large cast of human actors into something that wavers between human and humanoid.

What we have here is a movie that renders beautiful interiors and landscapes but which fails to faithfully capture the human form. The characters’ eyes, for instance, are unnervingly without soul. As such, there are problems with the technology that make for a distracting experience, one the movie struggles to overcome--but doesn't.

Rated PG-13. Grade: C-

Read the unedited review here.

View the trailer below:

Justice League: The New Frontier: DVD, Blu-ray review (2008)

"Justice League: The New Frontier" DVD, Blu-ray

Quite a league.

Based on Darwyn Cooke's award-winning graphic novel, this two-disc, direct-to-DVD set from Warner features Superman paired with Wonder Woman, The Flash, Batman, Green Lantern, Manhunter, J'onn Jonzz and a host of others, all of whom join forces to fight a bevy of assorted creeps threatening to bring down the world.

Fans get their money's worth, with Neil Patrick Harris, Jeremy Sisto, Miguel Ferrer and Lucy Lawless among those doing the fine voice work.

More importantly, the animation intentionally captures the look and feel of a comic book, and it succeeds, seamlessly evoking the printed page.

Grade: B+

View the trailer below:

Run Lola Run: Blu-ray DVD Review (2008)

“Run Lola Run” Blu-ray

From Tom Tykwer, a smashing, kinetic rush of style that uses a nonstop techno soundtrack and periods of animation to help propel it into the stratosphere.

When Lola (Franka Potente) receives a frantic telephone call from her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), her life changes and changes and changes in ways that are so surprising, they won’t be revealed here.

Manni’s problem? It seems that while leaving the subway, he stupidly left behind a bag filled with 100,000 deutsche marks, which a delighted homeless man came upon--and quickly ran off with.

It gets worse. The money didn’t belong to Manni, but to a vicious drug dealer who will kill Manni if Manni doesn’t come up with the stolen loot within 20 minutes.

Manni’s solution? Rob a grocery store.

Lola’s solution? Demand that Manni wait where he is while she runs across the busy streets of Berlin to her father, a banker, whom she will beg for help.

At only 81 minutes, “Run Lola Run” is a lean action film that's tweaked so tightly--and feels so urgent--the pace never lags.

Rated R. Grade: A

View the trailer below:

The Legend of Zorro: Blu-ray DVD Review (2007)

“The Legend of Zorro” Blu-ray

Legend? An overstatement, at least where this movie is concerned.

This self-aware, overblown follow-up to 1998's entertaining "The Mask of Zorro" is a misstep, with Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones reprising their roles, albeit without the sexual snap that drove the first film.

Set in 1850, the film finds Don Alejandro de la Vega (Banderas) and Elena (Jones), parents of 10-year-old Joaquin (Adrian Alonso), splitting when Vega, a.k.a. Zorro, decides he must help the people of California, who are about to be duped as they prepare for statehood.

The actors look fetching, but there's the sense that they already know this, which turns the production inward.

The film can be stultifying in its excess.

Rated PG. Grade: C+