AUDIENCE
40th YEAR |
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Audience’s
Stills |
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Kathryn
D’Alessandro, Robert Fontenot, Rus Stedman, Bob
Wilson, Jr. |
AUDIENCE
40th YEAR |
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Audience’s
Stills |
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Kathryn
D’Alessandro, Robert Fontenot, Rus Stedman, Bob
Wilson, Jr. |
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Articles |
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Festivals |
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Stardust |
FoF = 2 |
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 rinces and witches and
one clumsy boy on the brink
 of
manhood chase after a fallen star, given ethereal human form—with just a
tad of “tude”—after impacting in the mysterious realm of Stormhold.
The witches want the star’s heart, since eating it extends youth and
beauty. The prince wants the star to assure his ascension to the throne
of Stormhold. The boy wants to prove to his snippy girlfriend that he
will do anything to attain true love. The star wants some personal
peace, a chance to go back to the heavens, and glowing happiness. They
all come together in Stardust, a sweet faerie tale that includes
unicorns, pirates, and all the sorts of magic essential to the realm of
“once upon a time.”As surprising as the film itself are the off kilter and campy performances of its cast. Claire Danes embodies the crabby Star, Yvaine; Michelle Pfeiffer is fiery as she alternates between beautiful witch and ghastly, decaying old hag. Robert DeNiro outdoes himself as Captain Shakespeare, the buccaneer who adds more swish than swash to his buckling. As understated as its advertising campaign has been, the film is quite a treat, rated PG-13 for some splashy violence (a throat-slit prince shows his Technicolor blue blood, for instance) and scary bits. This film seems destined for constant rotations on TV in a somewhat edited form, so do yourself and the kidlets a favor before it turns into cinematic stardust. Use a summer afternoon for some happily ever after. |
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Hairspray |
FoF = 1
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 rriving
in a summer season whose surprises have
 mostly been
nasty ones, Hairspray is a revelation. Here we have director Adam
Shankman, whose recent shitfecta Cheaper by the Dozen 2, The
Pacifier, and Bringing Down the House defined the comedically
infantile, emotionally shallow, and (in spots) racially offensive
multiplex mess. So just how did he create the best musical in ages, one
that just happens to be comedically mature, emotionally deep, and
socially aware?Don’t ask me, I’m only the art snob. But not loving this remake is like kicking a puppy: it brims over with such honest joy that it could end up the 21st century’s first eternally treasured musical. Shankman essentially performs the same service Frank Oz did for Little Shop of Horrors: he takes a camp artifact, redirects it away from the auteur’s own sensibilities, and gives it a real heart. However, we can thank two more people for doing the advance legwork. First is Mark O’ Donnell, whose Broadway adaptation of John Waters’ 1988 film plays some very clever tricks on its source material. Whereas Waters engineered a triumph of the tacky, a love poem to early-Sixties Baltimore where hair don’ts and racial protest and freak dancing and cellulite were all parts of a gross yet liberating whole, the musical establishes some deeper connections, linking the struggle of our heroine, Tracy (a fat girl trying to get on a local dance show) directly to the larger civil-rights melee. Elsewhere, Tracy’s dad (Chris Walken in full weirdo) nearly falls into a love triangle, and Tracy’s boyfriend loses his nerve when she puts his radicalism to the test. O’Donnell doesn’t just get the songs to tell the story, he gets them to deepen it. And these are excellent songs, more precise artifacts of a time than Dreamgirls’ strident poses; they deliciously skirt plagiarism at every turn. Then there’s Nikki Blonsky. As zaftig heroine Tracy Turnblad, she almost breaks her back bending over backwards to make you forget Ricki Lake, and she does; if advance press is to be believed, she’s been fighting to land this gig for the better part of five years. Even the ostensible weak link—John Travolta in a fat suit, taking on the role that made Divine truly famous—is surprisingly solid; he merely comes off like Lily Tomlin channeling a flustery Carol Channing. If you’d told me that a drag, fatsuited Travolta would perform a Cole Porter-style duel of cutting remarks with Walken, and that it would come off as daffy and sweet as a clip from That’s Entertainment!, well, I would still be sneering. But the musical, finally, is back! |
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Captivity |
FoF = 5
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 ike
so many awful films, Captivity generated more
 buzz with its
gimmicky ad campaign than its less-than-eventful opening; if you
wondered how stupid ad execs were to plaster taxis with shots of star
Elisha Cuthbert being suggestively menaced, along with words like
“Abduction,” “Confine-ment,” “Torture,” and “Termination,” and in Los
Angeles, yet, then you don’t understand how to grab a distracted
audience’s attention today. You have to offend them first. This is not
to condone such a crass exercise, especially at a time when torture is
official US
government policy, but these guys knew what they were doing: the
actual product would’ve never gotten anywhere on word of mouth, not even
as torture porn. Especially not as torture porn.The setup: Cuthbert is a famous model-slash-celebrity train wreck, sort of a cross between Heidi Klum and Lindsay Lohan. (Play along on this.) She’s captured and tortured by a menacing figure in a hooded angel-of-death type outfit. There’s a plot twist of sorts. She gets out. The end. Brevity in itself is not the curse of Captivity, which was created by two people who should’ve known better: Larry Cohen (the screenwriter on the leading edge of exploitation from Black Caesar to Phone Booth) and director Roland Joffe (everything from The Killing Fields to Super Mario Bros.). It’s a paucity of ideas that’s to blame, extending even to some shockingly lame ideas of torture. This causes Cuthbert to do little but whine for the film’s first half, until she meets himbo and fellow captive Gary (Daniel Gillies). He’s gonna bust her out of there. Or is he? What could have been a fantastic exploration of our fascination with celebrity downfall—imagine Paris Hilton being forced to shoot her own dog to survive!—just meanders about waiting for resolution. Not only is there no reason to trap a model in a reverse hourglass or pretend to throw acid in her face, Joffe’s slick but criminally disinterested direction means there’s no emotional incentive to watch it play out, either. Instead, you get quarter-assed attempts at having her come to grips with her past, and no chance for that good old catharsis we get from living vicariously through someone else’s hell. This must be the first entry in its still-infant genre to cross the line into high camp, unless, that is, you think that the ultimate in nihilism is a movie that doesn’t care about being a movie. The debate over torture porn’s lack of humanity rages on, but gorno that’s ambivalent to torture? Now that’s chilling. |
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I Now |
FoF = 4
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Harry Potter |
FoF = 1
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License
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FoF = 6
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 ear
Robin Williams: I’m emailing you a series of hip,
 excuse me,
pimp, cultural references to replace your old grabbag, which stopped
posing as jokes ten years ago and stopped tweaking the popular kids’
cultural nodes ten years before that. This is in response to your latest
attempt at comedy, in which you portray a cross between a Christian
marriage counselor and a Dr. Philzilla (that is, a Dr. Phil on Acid). Is
this all you could come up with? The Exorcist? MC Hammer? Family Feud?
I realize you didn’t have a lot to work with. Certainly the script’s four, count ‘em, four writers couldn’t imagineer a reason why Mandy Moore and John Krasinski’s couple go from meet-cute to altar-ready in five minutes of screen time, which leaves your shtick holding the bag for the other 85. I further understand that Warner Bros. was pushing director Ken Kwapis to hit those Meet the Parents buttons super hard, which probably stifled the creativity of everyone on the set. Of course, the blooper reel over the end credits certainly made it look as if you were all having fun, but you’re Julliard-trained, buddy. And Kwapis, not to mention half the cast, is from the US version of The Office. You all must have known what you were making. What happened? You and Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy were the comedic geniuses of your generation, and look at you guys now. I mean, they never used to saddle you with a kid sidekick to rebound off of, especially not one who thinks he’s the Man Show Boy. (I’ll explain that one in a separate e-mail.) And Kwapis, who’s proven so good at making uncomfortable funny, doesn’t have any funny here, so the big comic dress scenes are just ordinary uncomfortable. That whole thing where you get both sides of the family to slam each other in mean, one-word shots? Come on. But worst of all is the way your idea of hip, ancient as it is, keeps butting up against the character. I suppose no one thought to ask why a religious leader who acts like a Marine drill sergeant would suddenly stop and grace us with a quick Elvis impersonation. The character’s so contradictory he cancels himself out. And since your pathological need for acceptance equals Jerry Lewis’, the movie has to dovetail and assure us you’re warm and wacky, not psychotic. Whew. Anyway, enjoy the new cultural touchstones – and please, Robin, if you’re only going to waste them in shitastic (translated: crappy) movies like License to Wed, let me send you a list of agents as well. |
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Live
Free & |
FoF = 3
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 ell,
now we know why the advance posters for the
 third Die
Hard sequel read “YIPPIE KY YAY MO” instead of “MF.” In their
continuing efforts to make the perfect “must see” movie that absolutely
everyone is allowed to see, the suits behind the return of John McClane
have powered this comeback down to a
PG-13, effectively closing the
circle that began some quarter-century ago, when sticking a few dirty
words and boobs in your film was a sure way to get that coveted R
rating. When you have a pipeline for porn right there in your new
phone, for God’s sake, who needs to hear trash talk? Prepare to be
gently pressed against the back wall of the theater.In the 1988 original, Bruce Willis created an entirely new kind of action hero/movie by restricting the carnage to one skyscraper and creating a hungover anti-hero who wondered aloud if he was getting too old for this shit. Now that the 52-year-old megastar is reaching just that time of the season, however, he’s being asked to save the entire planet – seems some metrosexual nut job (Timothy Olyphant, barely making an impression) warned the government about pre-9/11 security leaks, and since they ignored him, he’s used the scary internets to shut down essential services, spread fear through the media, and generally cause panic. Pushing our 21st Century technofear and terrorism buttons, that is, all in the guise of a Bush smackdown. (Nowhere is Hollywood as creative as in its pandering.) As a genre film, Live Free works fantastically well, providing you don’t mind reverting to a 13-year-old mindset in order to buy the ever more outlandish stunts (trumpeted in the advance press as mostly old-school, non-CGI stuff, which means that the few computer-generated moments are intrusive and hard to swallow). And the chemistry between Willis and Justin Long—the Mac in those Mac vs. PC ads, and one of the few enjoyable things about Accepted—is superb, with the embattled detective lecturing his slacker hacker protégé on what really matters. “This isn’t a system,” he sneers. “It’s a country.” Maybe. But it’s not the Die Hard you know and love, just a solid, straightforward, no-bullshit action film, the kind Willis hasn’t made since… well, since 1995’s Die Hard With a Vengeance. Yet when our hero jumps from a truck onto the wing of a crashing F-14 and then slides off, falling a few stories onto a broken slab of interstate—well, McClane never came close to being that superhuman. Rarely, however, has a sequel that’s completely forgotten its origins been this much fun to watch. |
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Transformers |
FoF = 3
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1408 |
FoF = 2
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s
most good horror writers know, the scariest thing in the
world is you—that is, your own perception of reality. Haunted houses,
for example, become scary because of your knowledge and your
expectations, whether or not there’s actually anything harmful up in
there. Author Stephen King has spent a lifetime describing, with various
degrees of success, the evil that comes from somewhere else, which is
one of the reasons he’s never been taken seriously by literature snobs.
But he is acutely aware of what role perception plays. And so are the
makers of 1408.Based on the author’s short story, this is the tale of writer Mike Enslin (John Cusack), who, consciously or not, deals with the death of his only child and the subsequent dissolution of his marriage by debunking paranormal phenomena, traveling from one boogeyman haunt to another in order to reassure himself that there’s no one at the wheel, good or bad. Laughing, if you will, in the very face of death. Of course, this being King, something damn sure is behind the wheel of Room 1408 in the fictional New York hotel The Dolphin, something which has taken the lives of 58 people in the last century or so. It’s the Superbowl of debunking, and Mike’s ready to rock—even when the manager (a juicy Samuel L. Jackson) tries to dissuade him from entering, even when he starts to notice that the alarm clock is counting down to zero, he remains blackcomically snide and defiant, asking, “Where are the rivers of blood?” In a hack’s movie, there would have been rivers of blood, not to knock Kubrick’s version of King’s other haunted hotel work, The Shining. Taking his cues from the source material, Swedish director Mikael Håfström (regaining his footing from his dreadful English-language debut, Derailed) cleverly positions this as a Kafkaesque portrait of a man tortured by his own mind and his own past. More Barton Fink than the Overlook, in other words, and Cusack, giving a performance worth an Oscar in any other genre, is more than up to the task. Unfortunately, full-length Hollywood features, unlike short stories, have to explain themselves, and 1408 starts to run out of towels after a while, substituting cheap CGI shock for existentialism and wandering to a semi-conclusion. This remains one of the smartest horror films of the last few years, however,—proof not just that King and Cusack are still on their game, but that blood’s not necessarily the scariest thing to spill out of us. |
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Evan |
FoF = 5
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 he
only problem with being the best thing in a bad movie
 is
that the badness tends to rub off. No, Steve Carell hasn’t lost
a smidge of his comic talent by appearing in this, the
sequel-in-name-only-and-barely-even-that to 2003’s
Bruce Almighty. But it does have much the same effect on our
perception of him as the first flick did on our perception of Jim
Carrey—first, you thank God (Morgan Freeman) that he’s there at all,
then you start to feel bad for him, then you barely notice him.
Mediocrity has its own dull pallor, and poor Steve gets it all over him.
In the form of bird poo, usually.This dull exercise, a model of corporate formula designed to appeal to the reddest and bluest states, uses the story of a modern-day Noah’s ark to simultaneously kiss the asses of Pat Robertson fundamentalists and Al Gore environmentalists. Apparently Morgan, I mean God, really does work in mysterious ways: he’s flooding the city of Washington, D.C. merely to get a piece of Earth-friendly legislation passed by Evan (Carell), the prick of an anchorman from the first movie, now somehow transformed into a loving family man and Congressional representative. But wait! Evan’s ridiculously superfast track to success also doesn’t leave him with much time for his family. Neglecting your family being, to modern family comedies, what radioactivity was to Fifties horror flicks. This, indeed, seems to be the movie’s biggest axe to grind. Which seems all out of balance for any sane creator’s priorities, but whatever; good comedy is good comedy, and Evan fails by that yardstick, not because Carell can’t still give good shtick, but because he’s rarely given anything to do. The handful of laughs you get out of this, History’s Most Expensive Comedy To Date, come exclusively during those moments he’s allowed to improvise, like a montage of painful nose hair trimming in the bathroom mirror. It has nothing to do with the movie itself, and thank Morgan for that, because aside from bits that Bill Cosby covered forty years ago (vroopa, vroopa, vroopa, ding!), director Tom Shadyac and writer Steve Oedekirk—responsible, as a team, for Bruce, the Nutty Professor remake, and Patch Adams—can’t use the Noah myth to generate anything funnier than novelty-store animal shit jokes, hence the bird poo that covers our hero and blots out the work of a talented supporting cast. There is an unintentionally hilarious wrapup that attempts to justify this decidedly underwhelming Demillean wannabe of a flood—God loves him some acronyms! —but the wasted energy of Evan Almighty doesn’t even work as good schadenfreude. Not with Our Boy Steve tortured by Hollywood’s biggest demons. |
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Ratatouille |
FoF = 1
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ell,
time to dust off the Big Book of Critical
 Superlatives.
There will come a time in the near future when, at some social
gathering, you may consider yourself free to openly declare Disney/Pixar’s
Ratatouille the best American animated film of all time. You may
be politely disagreed with—tastes vary microscopically but profoundly
way up on this level, and some will naturally nominate one of director
Brad Bird’s other two instant classics, The Iron Giant or The
Incredibles, or honestly prefer other masterpieces from the Pixar
clan like, say, Finding Nemo or A Bug’s Life. Yes, you may
be politely disagreed with. But no one will laugh.Forget the A-list voiceover cast, which matches several of Bird’s favorite unknowns with a little judiciously placed comic star power (Patton Oswalt finally gets his rightful, full spotlight), the writer/director’s legendary facility with storytelling on a folkloric scale, or the delightful musical frisson cooked up by Incredibles composer Michael Giacchino. Discard even the studio’s consistent dedication to breaking new ground in the art of the computer-generated palette, which has now brought us to a place where film is all but unnecessary. (Doubt all you want until you see the physical depth in these shots and the camera angles no camera could ever find.) What makes this movie such a treasure—as, with the best “children’s” movies, for any age—is the blend, and like our movie’s hero, a lowly rat who becomes Paris’ most acclaimed chef, Bird and company have cooked up a sumptuous five-star meal that is more than the sum of its impressive parts. To tell more of the plot would be detrimental to Bird’s script, which somehow manages to keep throwing action curveballs and important plot twists out with the same pitch. Know only that the combination of visual punch, rich character, and organic humor raises the bar for all homegrown animated films. With most such flicks, for example, a visual pun like Patton’s heroic rat holding a piece of grape and then suddenly fashioning it into a wineglass from which to drink would be the highlight of wit. Here, it’s tossed off, because Ratatouille is the kind of rich emotional experience that makes its own gravy. Kudos are in order for Oswalt, Janeane Garofalo, Ian Holm, Peter O’Toole, and relative newcomer Lou Romano for their excellent vocal work (O’Toole’s funereal food critic would have stolen a lesser show), but in the end, this is Bird’s victory, a film sporting all his fingerprints yet actually showing evolution from his earlier masterworks. Is it ironic or merely fitting that a rodent would be the new standard-bearer for the House of Mouse? |
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Sicko |
FoF = 1
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he
first thing one notices about Sicko, the latest
 manifesto
from everyone’s most/least favorite documentar-rian, Michael Moore, is
its tone. In the film’s first movement, Moore removes both himself and
his jocular conservative-baiting black comedy from the proceedings,
which is apt, since he’s present- ing a series of horror stories about
ordinary folks whose healthcare providers let them down. Let them down
in the worst possible way: many of them are now dead. (My sister
worked with a grocery store cashier who contracted cancer, and let me
tell you; America absolutely will let you die.) Mike
doesn’t find the state of the nation all that funny anymore. And, as is
his wont, he’s telling you that you shouldn’t, either.Eventually, of course, he reverts back to his usual, lighter self, the big mook who points out the ridiculousness of greed, if only when he travels to Europe to show how national health care actually works. (And that it actually works.) Yes, he’s problematic: his condescension and fake gee-whiz insouciance are still irritating, even if you’re a liberal who already knows what he’s on about, and he fudges perspective for dramatic effect at times; in the climax, he takes a group of 9/11 first-responders to Gitmo in order to get them the decent healthcare afforded suspect Al Qaeda operatives, and pretends to be puzzled that they won’t open their doors. As usual, he isn’t championing the poverty-stricken but rather the middle-class masses that played by all the rules and were deserted anyway. Love him or hate him, he makes his point. And this latest broadside is different in another way: this is more his interviewees’ film than it is his, and the focus on these true, tragic stories, along with the new no-bullshit sobriety of his delivery, has the happy effect of sharpening his focus. No more wandering through a catalog of various, sometimes tenuously related causes —the fuzziness which destroys many liberal arguments and which marred earlier Moore efforts like Bowling for Columbine and The Big One. Now, Moore’s ideological prey are all in the same pen. The funny stuff makes its own point, too: certainly he chose the most absurdly cheerful French music he could to tweak the notion that any country with socialized medicine could be this magical. And yet that’s the humanity of his argument—anything’s a paradise compared to a system where the very young/old/hurt are allowed to die from our near-zealous belief in the right to a personal fortune. In that, Sicko may yet prove to be Moore’s finest hour, if only because it manages to flip his usual modus operandi. It manages to make the absurd tragic. |
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Hostel; |
FoF = 2
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hat’s
Part Two, horror fans, not just 2; although this
followup to director Eli Roth’s surprise hit (the one that essentially
created the torture porn genre) finds yet another group of pampered
young American backpackers heading to the exact same European
hostel as before, only to be led into the exact same meatgrinder, Roth’s
not just cashing in, Freddy or Jason style. If you thought the original
was just an excuse to cut people up, this sequel will not change your
mind. But the Tarantino protégé has more on his mind than that—he picks
the story up where it left off, and like his mentor, he realizes
nothing’s as shocking as a good plot twist. Happily for horror lovers,
he also seems intent on creating a universe. Albeit not one you’d want
to travel in.The advance press this time out is orchestrated, cannily, around the fact that this installment’s trio of victims is female. Which means one naturally survives at the end to get her revenge; one of the torturers is also a woman, of course, and… well, no spoilers, but the director uses his newfound clout to orchestrate one of the more shocking and bizarre endings in horror—scratch that, film—history. (Very reminiscent of the climax to the notoriously misogynistic Bloodsucking Freaks, even, and that was played for laughs.) Vengeance, after all, is the proper PC ending for a movie where women get tortured, a tradition as old as I Spit On Your Grave; no one here has to settle for the original’s relative booby prize of merely surviving and rediscovering your humanity. But Roth again takes care to get us inside these three beautiful, bickering, doomed travelers’ heads first, the way a hack could never do, and he’s beginning to show us the other side of the brutalization coin, asking the obvious question: What could make someone do such a thing? Not in a fit of anger, but as a planned, premeditated, impersonal, paid event? So while Part II’s most talked-about moments come from scissors, scythes, and soccer fields (you’ll see), its most unsettling moments come from computers: a montage of middle-aged businessmen, heads of families, even, booking their sadistic getaway online. If this is just torture porn, Roth’s at least an honest pornographer; and while this second half lacks the surprise of the first, his vision is clear enough to suggest he may one day create a horror film that transcends genre instead of just challenging it. As a result, those who can’t stomach the Hostel films could soon find themselves watching anyway—not to revel in exploitation, of course, but to study a filmmaker’s growth. |
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Fantastic two views |
FoF = 5
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 omic
books rule the summer box office, but some
franchises are mere pretenders to the throne. Take the second
Fantastic Four sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer. Yes, it
made money, and topped the box office on its opening weekend. But like
the first incarnation of this franchise, the film had very little to
make it memorable, thoughtful, or intriguing. Does anyone actually
remember the first Fantastic Four film? A few diehard fans
perhaps, and the idiot savants of the world who can spout any story
line, no matter how lightweight—the rest of us have better things to
think about. Why, why, why put the world through this… another adventure
featuring the vapid adventures of these four two-dimensional
superheroes? If it’s to see the Silver Surfer (Doug Jones body/Laurence Fishburnés voice), then why not watch the surfing special effects in
Spiderman 3, which at least manages to be less wooden and
uninteresting. You can also see Stan Lee in a cameo there—a conceit that
I personally am woefully tired of viewing. He isn’t Alfred Hitchcock,
that’s for damn sure. As for Jessica Alba’s turn as Susan Storm, spare
me from one-dimensional performance in a two-dimensional movie. Let me
save 92
minutes of your precious existence for you, as my good deed of the week.
If you want to discover—or savor—the Fantastic Four, read the
comic books. |
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FoF = 3
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 kay,
my biorhythms being on the upswing today,
this is gonna be one of those “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say
anything at all” reviews that make my mother so proud—but which leave
the people who know me as a cranky bastard somewhat dumbfounded.
Those folks—at least the ones who’ve seen FF4:TROTSS (or, as
we like to call it around Casa Stedman, “Hey, did that silver dude get
lost on his way to the Terminator 4 set?”), will probably wonder
while reading this, “What he be trippin’ on?”But really—FF4:2 is much better than the original. Of course, leave us not forget that the original Fantastic Four sucked with a rare and mighty gusto, so I don’t be trippin’ all that much. Still, better is better, right? Right. Yes, this unexpected sequel (yet more proof of the paucity of original thinking in Hollywood—the first film only did $150 million) is indeed more watchable, if for no other reason than Michael Chiklis (TV’s The Shield), by far the best actor in this summer super-friends toss-off, no longer looks like a squat orange sponge with legs. It was Chiklis, one of my favorite character guys long before he became a bad-ass on the tube, I felt most sorry for in Fantastic Four: Let’s Piss Away Half Our Flick On A Hellaciously Boring Origin Story, Since We Weren’t Smart Enough To Watch Spiderman To See How To Do It Right (or whatever the last FF movie was called). Playing the wise-cracking Ben Grimm, aka The Thing, would be a challenge for anybody, the poor schmoe having been space-fucked in the DNA by bad radiation and turned into a ton o’ clobberin’ talking rock. But Chiklis had to force out some nuance through that horrible suit in service of a pathetic script while looking, well, more goofy than granite. And that’s just not right to do to The Thing. He’s much better now though—whatever they’ve done with his appliances this time allows him to crack wise, emote and look like he could pound you into sand. Seriously, it’s easy to explain why this sequel is worlds better than its predecessor: No Back Story! In a whiz-bang, check your brain at the door superhero movie such as this, that’s a blessing. Director Tim Story and his crew don’t waste a motion or moment of movie time looking back—FF4:2 hits the ground running and the skies surfing, freeing up the mutant buddies & baddies brigade to have, say, an actual story this time. Perhaps a little time for character development. Okay, perhaps very little, but ya takes what yous can get.  eturning
as the rest of the team are Ioan Gruffudd, still stiff but more
believable as the emotionally stunted (but damned pliable) Reed
Richards; Jessica Alba, thespianically robotic as ever as the Invisible
Girl, Sue Storm, but damned fine as eve to look at when visible; and
Chris Evans, once again having more fun than anyone as Human Torch
Johnny Storm. Or, as Galpal likes to yell out in crowded theaters, for
reasons known only to herself, whenever Torchy turns the heat on, “FLAMEBOY!”On the more villainous side, Julian McMahon is criminally underused as bad boy Doctor Doom, though one must admit that his screen time was wisely cut to give the Silver Surfer his fair share of shiny close-ups, as he heralds (with Laurence Fishburn’s voice) the coming of planet-eater Galactus. ‘Tis here, when story focuses on that legendary cosmic long-boarder, that this follow-up provides everything missing from the low-budget, designed-by-committee original—namely a sense of fun, forward motion, and some cool visuals (don’t believe everything you read on internet sites run by red-headed morons named…oh wait, I’m being nice today, aren’t I?). At the same time, director Story is able to provide the Fantastic Four’s legion of comic book fans enough familiar stuff to glom onto, which of course makes the geeks happy and the movie profitable…and isn’t that what really counts? Anyway, I had a good enough time that I didn’t feel my money was wasted—but then again that “Flameboy!” thing of Galpal’s was worth the price of admission, so I’m easy. But if you like the heroes and could forgive the first film, I promise. you’ll be less disappointed with this translation than you were last time. And that’s as nice as the Intergalactic Film Reviewers Union will allow me to get. Hey man, it’s better than Hulk, right? |
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Ocean's |
FoF = 3
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here’s
a moment early on in this threequel of a remake
(!) where Al Pacino’s superevil bad guy estab-lishes his predatory
persona by stating “I move quick, and when I do, I slice like a hammer,”
later admonishing someone thus: “Don’t make a maniac out of me.” Great
writing—or it would be, except those phrases are lifted right out of
Paul Anka’s infamous backstage rant “The Guys
George
Clooney Brad PittGet Shirts,” widely available through the series of tubes we call the Internet. It’s indicative of the position Ocean’s Thirteen holds in pop culture: smart, achingly hip, but not very creative. This promised final installment goes a long way towards rectifying the needlessly insular and gratingly smug air of Twelve, but it can’t recapture the freshness of the original—assuming you find a remake of a Dean Martin film from 1960 fresh. Credit returning director Steven Soderbergh (again writing the script under an assumed name) for even coming up with a reason to gather Hollywood’s most charismatic forces of nature back in one place. Ocean’s patriarch-of-sorts Reuben Tishkoff (Elliot Gould) has been swindled by Pacino’s character, casino owner Willie Bank, meaning that the crew has to reswindle him in order to bring Reuben back from a swindle-induced heart attack. So they go to work, rigging a simulated earthquake to throw off security devices and loading all the casino games so that absolutely everybody breaks Bank’s bank on opening night. There’s also a clever—and oddly topical—Mexican worker insurrection, a fake whale (read: highest of rollers), and a beleaguered hotel critic guaranteed to have the worst stay of his life. And the result is still too familiar: Damon seduces, Clooney and Pitt banter, Casey Affleck and Scott Caan’s brother act grates, as does Don Cheadle’s traveling accent. (Julia Roberts, having embarrassed herself last time out by playing Julia Roberts, is persona non grata.) It’s all smooth without being slick, and engaging enough, even if the presence of even more new characters means that Pacino, Ellen Barkin as his aging right-hand girl, and about ten of the Thirteen are reduced to near-cameos. If both Ocean’s Elevens were giddy fun, A-list parties you happened to score an invite to, and Twelve was the next morning’s awkward breakfast, Thirteen operates as a love letter to Vegas—that Anka quote is no doubt one of several nods to Sin City that only the obsessive will get. But these guys are too talented to run a con like this…and you have to call hipness into question when it simply panders to a segment of geekdom. I mean, would Frank have cared if you got the joke? |
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Knocked |
FoF = 1
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. |
 ood
news, guys: condoms are unnecessary. At least,
 that’s the
message of this romp, which demonstrates that even if you look like Seth
Rogan (The 40 Year Old Virgin), a little booze will help you nail
the ridiculously cute Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy), and that
when she gets preggers, it’ll just bring you closer together—help you
fall for each other, in fact, even though she’s a smart career girl (in
the television industry, yet) and you’re a dork on disability whose best
friend is his bong.Oh, I don’t know. Yeah, okay, it’s fine: romantic comedies need happy endings at all costs, and slapstick depends on mismatches. But what really makes Knocked Up succeed wildly despite its shaky premise is the keen eye of writer/director Judd Apatow (also responsible for Virgin), who’s suddenly emerged fully grown from a geek icon to an A-list explorer of human relations. This film continues the fratification of the romcom (see: Wedding Crashers and Shaun of the Dead), but it also manages not to pander to the worst instincts of either side—yes, guys, we can come off like big, tribal, hairless apes, and they can be irrational and impossible to read, but that just makes us all the more human and hungry for— if not necessarily deserving of —love. It‘s good to see young and relative unknowns pulling this off, too: Rogen and Heigl manage to make this unlikely pairing seem at least movie plausible, and Apatow once again shows his facility at dissecting the way both genders act when they’re not putting on their best face for the other (Guys: “Marriage is like a tense, unfunny version of Everybody Loves Raymond, only it doesn't last 22 minutes. It lasts forever.” Girls: “You criticize them so much, they get down on themselves, and then they're forced to change!”) These are some frightening, life-changing issues to build a comedy around, but Judd’s balancing act is perfect. “Life doesn't care about your vision,” declares a weird but welcome Harold Ramis in a cameo as Rogan’s dad. “You just gotta roll with it.” Life may not care much about the hopeful implausiblities of Knocked Up, either, but if it’s bullshit, it’s great bullshit—the kind of film that empowers both sexes to get up tomorrow and go back to work rebuilding the fences. See it with someone you’re scared to death of loving. |
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Shrek |
FoF = 3
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. |
|
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Becoming |
FoF = 4
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. |
 ane
Austen defied the conventions of 1800s
society  by
remaining unmarried and having the lofty ambition of earning her own
living with her pen. Her thoughtful, carefully observed prose has become
a much loved staple of adaptations into film or television. Becoming
Jane pulls away from the fictional travails of Pride and
Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and other Austen novels to
focus on the authoress herself, and some of the events in her formative
years that helped hone her witty and insightful take on the morals and
manners of early 19th century life. It does so with the usual bending of
established fact for dramatic purposes, resulting in a conflict for
Austen (Anne Hathaway) between two potential husbands: the man
of substance who lacks fire and backbone (Laurence Fox), and the dashing
cad (James McAvoy) who has little money and prospects only if he pleases
his wealthier kin.Unfortunately, writers Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams cannot manipulate the facts in Austen style; there has been, after all, only one Jane Austen. American Anne Hathaway and UK natives in the cast do a passable job of acting, but this is most definitely Master-piece Theatre Lite, not an enduring classic. Jane, meant to be barely out of adolescence, seems far too precocious and set in her gender rule-bending ways; her indomitable spirit leads her to defy everyone of power, female and male, and to make prescient pronouncements about her fate and future. This isn’t really a representation of Jane at 18 or 20, but Jane Austen the mature lecturer, a character giving us a tour of the writer’s whole life based on two relationships, a handful of parties, and the usual tightly condensed cadre of causal events shoehorned into 120 minutes. Those who enjoy Austen’s writings, the films adapted from them, and costume dramas in general may find this worthy of a rainy afternoon’s viewing, but ultimately, they will hunger for the richer feast that is Jane Austen. |
|
Pirates |
FoF = 4
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. |
|
|
The |
FoF = 6
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. |
udiences
would be hard pressed to find a
pre-summer sneaker that works as hard to offend as this one, the latest
in a series of no-budget misfires from Vince McMahon and the filmic
branch of his WWE
thuggernaut. And yet, its flouting of social niceties—like, say,
attempted rape—isn’t half as offensive as its fumbled manipulation.
You’d think someone who made wrestling so fake it was undeniable, and
managed to make it even more entertaining for all that, would be able to
deliver in the cheap thrills department. And certainly without the
blatant hypocrisy; at least fans of “scripted sports” don’t pretend
they’re offended by their own canned voyeurism.The Condemned mixes a lot of the same colors to paint its primary premise, which has to do with a number of dangerous prisoners bought with bribes so that they can hunt each other down, PPV style, on a remote island: A little Most Dangerous Game interspecies turmoil here, the exploding collars from Rutger Hauer’s Deadlock there. In more capable hands, it could describe the place where Stephen King’s prophetic novella The Running Man will one day meet our current, Survivor-bred rush into “reality.” (There’s even some technofear: this highly illegal enter-prise gets around its status by operating on that interweb our nation’s surrogate mommies get so worked up about.) But the WWE imprimatur was born of chickenshit exploitation, so we get nothing instead but unsatisfying compromise: D-movie writer/director Scott Wiper balances the brutal but unimaginative carnage (nothing you couldn’t see done better on the latest Saw DVD) with endless moralizing about how sick we are for being interested. There’s also a hero—not anti-hero— amongst the felons, a framed former FBI agent (Stone Cold Steve Austin, as if) done dirty by the guvmint everyone loves to hate. And he’s not even given much screen time; The Condemned is too busy con-demning the condemned with a lot of boom boom (and, for the few women cons, sexual brutalization) and then condemning itself for doing so, like an old whore who’s sick of humanity. A stronger backbone or some parodic insight might have made McMahon’s latest garbage-pail baby an exercise in catharsis; as it is, it doesn’t even have the honesty to own up to its own premise. Who wants a sadist with no balls? |
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The |
FoF = 4
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. |
t’s the Sphinx, it stinks.” So once went the common wisdom
regarding Hollywood Pictures and its (in?)famous logo. As the third film
released under that brand since its revival a few years ago, The
Invisible won’t alter that bit of common knowl-edge—from a quality
standpoint, Hollywood The Company is still on a legendary bad streak
(broken very rarely by enjoy-able and sometimes even classic anomalies
like The Sixth Sense and Tombstone)—but it does contain
the seeds of what could have been three or four different, solid genre
exercises.This makes sense, given the film’s pedigree a |
awn.
Another summer, another terrible Adam Sandler movie. Th
arry
Potter is dead.
in the Shrek series didn’t have the S-word on it at all—just the
top of that green head and the words The Third in their
Shrekian font. This speaks volumes about the franchise’s popularity;
like the Beatles with Rubber Soul, they’re assuming not
only that you already know but that you already care. Which is fine,
given Shrek 2’s position as the third-biggest grossing
movie of all time. But when you build your name ridiculing Disney—in
fact, setting yourself up as one of those old Mad magazine
parodies of same, except with heart— getting too entrenched in the
mainstream can take all the fire out of you.
every other form of
entertainment is episodic—but for those biggies, closing the deal is
proving harder than originally thought. Without a Lord of
the Rings-style source already conveniently trilogized (attention
fiction writers: think in threes if you want that deal), the Spideys
and Shreks of the world are hard-pressed to deliver even more
bang for your buck in genres where one-upmanship is everything.