See If You Want:
Body of Lies
"Director Ridley Scott is back with collaborator/muse Russell Crowe, but to get a little more bang for his big budget’s buck, he’s borrowed Martin Scorsese’s current collaborator/muse to take the role that once would have been Crowe’s.... The action scenes goe on for an awfully long time though – and for a good hour, they seem almost pointless. They certainly establish Leo’s bona fides as a tough guy, and they set up the relationship between DiCaprio and Crowe very well, but it’s not all that obvious that they’re accomplishing anything – or what their goals even are. It’s going to take some patience to get through it all."
Full review at moviejungle.com
Nights in Rodanthe
Fans of the movies inspired by Nicholas Sparks’ novels... won’t be surprised by what they find... It’s a place where people always have wine with dinner, listen to jazz and sit on adirondack chairs by the water. It’s a world where people still write letters to each other by hand, and hear the voices of the writer as they read them. It’s a world where eventually one or both of the lead characters drawn to each other no matter how they fight it will have to scream at the other: “What are you afraid of?”
Full review at moviejungle.com
Pineapple Express
(please read my review at moviejungle.com)
The Perfect Game
(please read my review at moviejungle.com)
Hancock
Hancock is lucky he’s played by Will Smith, otherwise he wouldn’t stand out amongst summer’s superheroes. When you’ve got a movie as good as Iron Man or (fingers crossed) The Dark Knight, you really have got to work hard to stand out.
But the idea of a disgruntled superhero isn’t even an original one. Did you see Superman II? Spider-Man II? Spider-Man III?
OK, the idea of a superhero who doesn’t want to be one is a good one – Stan Lee owes his millions to it. And with Will Smith’s personality and charm, he could have made it work. But what should have been light-hearted fun takes a dark turn halfway through and essentially forces in another storyline that should have been Hancock II. There are some laughs early on, but in the end you wonder what Hancock's "signature" storyline is supposed to be.
Son of Rambow
(please read my review at moviejungle.com)
Sex and the City
I’m not ashamed to say I know how Sex and the City on HBO ended. In fact, I’ve seen every episode. Each character all settled down in ways that fit each of them -- Carrie ended up with Big after all, Samantha took control of her boy toy Smith’s career and had him at her disposal, Charlotte adopted a baby girl and Miranda and Steve started a family and made significant sacrifices in their respective lives.
It was actually a pretty good ending. All those years of discussing every possible sexual issue under the sun finally paid off as the women moved to new stages of their lives. There really weren’t any loose ends.
Ah, but Michael Patrick King, Sarah Jessica Parker and the other creative minds behind SATC must have had another ending in mind. 1A worked very well on HBO, but they must have been thinking about a 1B. So they made it.
And 1B isn’t too bad for awhile. The first 45 minutes to an hour of the movie are pretty entertaining as we see Carrie and Big ponder their relationship and prepare to take it somewhere else. The buildup is pretty good and the dramatic moment leading there is the best part of the movie (I’m trying so hard to not write spoilers, but I feel like an idiot being so vague).
Then we get ending 1C, which is like the three most boring episodes of SATC strung together. The aftermath of 1B is exactly what you think it would be, and then this fairly unnecessary movie is pretty much made up of unnecessary scenes, unnecessary concepts and unnecessary characters. The ladies zip off to Mexico for a meaningless jaunt where nothing happens (you’d think in a movie with the word “sex” in it, one of them would get some action in another country). The writers remember that the franchise was built on women talking frankly about sex, so they throw in token conversations about Halloween costumes for women and Miranda’s self-grooming. At that point, the ladies are doing impressions of their past glories – the conversations aren’t exactly revelatory. Then there’s the addition of Jennifer Hudson as Carrie’s assistant – a bland character poorly acted that makes me think Hudson’s going to need to sing to win another Oscar.
So I’m at like 5 out of 10 on SATC. The women I talked to? 8! 9.5! 10 out of 10!
They get essentially the 2 ½ hour family reunion they’ve been dying for, so good for them (speaking of reunions, was it necessary for the women to scream every time they were reunited with Samantha, who now lives on the West Coast. Once would have been enough and I would have gotten it – she lives in another state).
So yeah, I know it wasn’t made for me, and the fans loved it. If you weren’t one of the fans: don’t bother. This movie will mean nothing to you.
If you are one of those fans, I just want to address you for a moment. I’m talking to the kind of fan who went with their gal pals in groups, drank Cosmos ahead of time, and walked side-by-side into the theater like the women in the series walked everywhere in Manhattan (and how do you walk side-by-side like that in Manhattan without bumping into anyone?). You know that guy dressed like Boba Fett at the last Star Wars movie? OK, you don’t actually, you think you’re too good for him, and you don’t know who Boba Fett is. You know that guy dressed like Harrison Ford’s character in one of those Star Wars movies? You’re the same. You’re doing the same thing. I’m just saying.
Speed Racer
(Please read the review posted at moviejungle.com)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
(Please read the review posted at moviejungle.com)
21
(Please read the review posted at moviejungle.com)
Vantage Point
There are all kinds of ways to look at Vantage Point. It’s part-JFK, part-Lost, part-24, and part-Rashomon, which could have made it pretty cool. But it’s also part-French Connection, and while there’s certainly nothing wrong with a good car chase in a good movie, it’s just thrown in and proves they had no clue how to end this thing.
In the middle of a rally on a crowded Spanish street, someone takes a shot at the President of the United States. It’s seen from many different angles by an all-star cast, including Dennis Quaid, Sigourney Weaver, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Fox and William Hurt as the Commander-in-Chief himself.
We see everything Sigourney Weaver’s TV producer (the noblest of all jobs really) sees for about 10 – 15 minutes, then the film rewinds itself back to the beginning, and then we see it again from Quaid’s perspective. Then it rewinds again to another character’s vantage point -- each time we learn just a little more and see how the different vantage points tie together. It’s intriguing, and after awhile, you look forward to each rewind. The audience even makes little noises each time it happens, like they would if they collectively watched an episode of Lost or 24.
But after the last rewind, we discover maybe it’s not as intricate as we thought. Quaid’s apprehensive secret service agent suddenly becomes a Jack Bauer-type who can do no wrong (and is really an exceptional driver). I don’t mind a movie about a super government agent, but I need to know early on that he is one. The intriguing ideas become a mess, the movie becomes noisy and it stretches reality too far.
And as it turns out, I totally called the big plot twist.
From my vantage point, they blew it.
The Brave One
The Brave One is a good movie, but it’s not the movie it thinks it is.
Honestly, it’s really just a variation of a Charles Bronson Death Wish movie, but because it stars a woman and is shot more artfully, it thinks it’s more of a thought-provoking message movie.
Jodie Foster plays a liberal radio talk show host for the kind of program nobody listens to but smart people say they do because it makes them sound smart. She’s a storyteller; she wanders her beloved New York City with a microphone and goes on the air to talk about the sounds she captures. One day, she and her boyfriend are brutally attacked (and it is brutal), and her perspective on life changes—so much so, she becomes a gun-toting vigilante out to clean up the streets herself.
Some of the action scenes are pretty good, and there’s an intriguing game of cat-and-mouse between Foster and a detective played by Terence Howard. Foster is effective as a vigilante who wonders what she’s become, much as in real life she may wonder how she became an action hero in movies like The Brave One, Panic Room and Flightplan.
Her soul searching is of course there to make us, the viewers, sit and think about violence and punishment. The problem is once you start thinking too much, you realize how ridiculous Foster’s new world is. Someone who is the victim of a horrible crime would look at the world differently, but in The Brave One, it’s not her perspective that changes, it’s her physical world. Post-attack, crime is everywhere. It’s not just that Foster looks at her fellow New Yorkers with more suspicion—it’s as if the crime perpetrated on her opened the flood gates for more crime in New York. It follows her around at a ludicrous rate, so much so, that The Brave One becomes Death Wish 6 (I think that’s where they left off).
There’s nothing all that wrong with putting out Death Wish 6, but the makers of The Brave One figure they need a female Oscar winner if they’re going to get us asking questions. But really, there’s no reason an intelligent mind can’t watch Death Wish and still do some thinking.
Resurrecting The Champ
Resurrecting The Champ is less about boxing and more about journalism, so it mostly held the attention of this journalist.
The boxer is long past his prime. In fact, he couldn’t be more out of his prime. “Champ” (Samuel L. Jackson) is homeless, wandering the streets rambling about his former glory as a championship contender. Sports writer Erik (Josh Hartnett) stumbles upon him and the story that could make his journalistic career.
The film is based on a magazine article by journalist J.R. Moehringer (and stay away from the movie’s official site which gives it all away. I’m glad I didn’t look up the name “J.R. Moehringer” until after I saw the film). Not knowing the story, I followed Erik’s writing, research and its aftermath with a lot of interest. But then again, I don’t know my boxing history. Certain things may not take everyone by surprise.
Samuel L. Jackson’s presence almost always takes over in any movie. Now we know it’s not just for his booming voice. Champ’s throat is shot from years on the street; it’s odd to hear such a weak voice come from Samuel L. Jackson. But he’s totally into this homeless character and is impressive as the most “un”-Samuel L. Jackson-like I think he’s ever been.
The movie loses some points for a ridiculous cameo by Teri Hatcher as a Showtime executive trying to recruit Erik for a job as a boxing commentator. She’s way too slick and her lines sound as if they were written by a blogger who hates TV sports coverage.
It also suffers because we don’t quite know why poor Erik and his journalist wife are on the outs. They clearly have a strong relationship, and it’s never really explained why he isn’t living at home. The only thing I can see is that maybe she’s a better writer than he is and he’s living that sports movie cliché of “chasing his father’s ghost.”
Finally—a little moment I want to point out to anyone reading this who’s also from Canastota, NY: Watch for the part when Erik asks his research assistant: “Is there a Boxing Hall of Fame somewhere?”
License To Wed
The producers of TV’s The Office must have sent a memo out about Summer 2007: “Make movies but please make them bland. We don’t want your outside work to overshadow the very funny stuff we do here.”
Steve Carell has done great work in movies before, but he’s wasted in the very bland Evan Almighty (see below). Now, it’s The Office’s John Krasinski (he plays Jim Halpert) who gets his chance to be bland in License to Wed. Fans of the show will be interested to know the people who play Kelly, Kevin and Angela are all in this movie, and none of them really stand out either.
But this isn’t a review of The Office.
In License To Wed, Krasinski seeks his license to wed with Mandy Moore, as cute as usual, but she too has done edgier work (Saved, American Dreamz). Together, they’re a chemistry-free couple going through the motions of a romantic comedy. They’re also going through kind of the Pre-Cana from Hell with Robin Williams’ Reverend Frank testing their relationship before he’ll agree to marry them. Williams too is going through his Patch Adams motions.
The movie is saved from a complete trashing by the robot babies Reverend Frank has the couple carry around to see how they’d do with a real one. The babies are disturbing to look at and do all kinds of disgusting things. The sequence with them is hysterical. They’re the couple worth talking about.
Evan Almighty
There was a time when Evan Almighty might have seemed like Son Of The Mask or Dumb and Dumberer: an attempt to capitalize on a Jim Carrey movie while not paying the big bucks it would take to get Jim Carrey involved. Steve Carell was a scene stealer in Carrey’s Bruce Almighty as anchorman Evan Baxter. But could that character carry a movie?
But Carell went and became a star since then. He’s the star of one of the funniest shows on TV (The Office), has carried his own movies (The 40 Year Old Virgin) and in movies like Anchorman has made his small parts seem like big parts (that’s what she said.)
So Evan Almighty? It falls somewhere in between The 40 Year Old Virgin and Son Of The Mask. It doesn’t make the most of Carell’s talents, but it doesn’t ruin the original movie.
Unlike Bruce, Evan isn’t given God’s powers. Instead, God (Morgan Freeman) visits him and asks him to build an ark. He and his kids take up the challenge, even though the rest of the community thinks Evan has lost his mind. The movie has more in common with John Denver's Oh God! than Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty.
Actually, John Denver could probably have made Evan Almighty. It’s a very family-friendly story, with a loving wife, three cute kids, wacky sidekicks and plenty of cute animals. I’m not sure how John would have felt about all the bird crap, but he wouldn’t have any problem with the story or its message.
John Denver’s movie may not have been as stocked with as many popular friends in cameos as Evan Almighty is. (OK, at the time, maybe Teri Garr and Dinah Shore were good gets). Evan includes appearances by Carell’s Office-mate Ed Helms, the always dependable John Michael Higgins, Wanda Sykes and even Jon Stewart.
I probably shouldn’t apply too much logic about a movie based on a giant ark and faith, but I did have a little trouble getting over how few people believed Evan. I’m not saying they need to buy into his “I talked to God” story entirely, but if they see bears and elephants following him around everywhere, wouldn’t they think there’s something more going on than just one guy acting like a lunatic? And since his Noah-beard keeps growing back instantly (and miraculously), couldn’t he just shave in front of his wife so she’ll believe him?
Details like that may not be too important considering what the movie really is: a children’s book version of a Bible story. It’s sweet, it has a nice message, but you know all involved could have done something with a little more edge.
Spider-Man 3
I’ll begin by telling you how I choose what comic books to read every week.
I’m not just doing that to bore you, but because this is Spider-Man we’re talking about. And just to establish my bona fides, Amazing Spider-Man and Sensational Spider-Man are on the list of comics I have pulled for me every month at the comic book store.
What I do, because I get so many titles, is take a quick peek at the last panel to see if the story might have a “To Be Continued” there for me. If it does, I set it aside and wait for the next issue of that title. I like to read the whole story at once, because I’ll forget from month to month among all the comics I read.
Sometimes, those cunning comic book editors trick me though. The story has ended on the next to last page, and the little “To Be Continued” is just tacked on at the end as a little teaser.
Spider-Man 3 is a lot like that. It’s actually three different Spider-Man stories tacked together, and when one ends, another begins. They tie them all together towards the end, but by then it’s been a little too long and seems a little forced.
There IS a lot to like in Spider-Man 3. It was made by the same people who made 1 and 2, and they were among the best super-hero movies ever made. The entire cast is back: if you enjoyed Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson and even JK Simmons as the very funny J. Jonah Jameson, you’ll like them all here.
Perhaps more importantly, director and Spider-Man fan Sam Raimi is back. He knows how to put together great action sequences. If you liked the action in 1 and 2, you’ll love the action here. The subway sequence in Spider-Man 2 was a favorite, and the aerial fights in Spider-Man 3 are just as good. Spider-Man and the villains he fights don’t fly per se: they fall, they glide, they swing, and they bounce off walls— all at fast speeds with intricate moves. They are a lot fun.
Now let’s talk about those villains Spider-Man fights. There are maybe one too many of them. Taken one-by-one:
-- The Sandman, played by Thomas Haden Church (Sideways): From all I’ve read, Raimi wanted The Sandman in the movie, the producers wanted comic fan favorite Venom. Sandman is made of sand and can shift his body accordingly—sifting through things or turning solid and very strong. He’s got a great look for a movie with computer-driven special effects. He however was always very boring in the comics, and to stretch things a bit, Raimi throws a wild coincidence into his back story that lets him “dance with the devil in the pale moonlight.” (That is code for fans of comic book movies. My apologies if you don’t get what I’m trying to say here).
-- The New Green Goblin, played by James Franco: If you saw Spider-Man 1 or 2, or read Spider-Man comics, you knew this one has been coming. In a slow build, Peter Parker’s best friend Harry Osbourne’s resentment of Spider-Man has been growing to the point where we’ve known he’s going to follow in his father’s footsteps and become The Green Goblin. The Spidey-Goblin fights are great, but I’m disappointed that after the long slow build, Harry’s story gets sandwiched in between two other villains'.
-- Venom, played by Topher Grace (That 70’s Show): Venom deserves his own movie and should have been saved for Spider-Man 4. Eddie Brock is like a Bizarro-version of Peter; he certainly looks like him, is out to replace Peter as the Spider-Man photographer at the Daily Bugle and is interested in Peter’s lab partner Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard). Eddie lacks Peter’s morals though and will do anything to get ahead.
In a never-really explained twist-of-fate, an alien parasite attaches itself to Peter and becomes his new costume—turning Peter into a darker version of himself. Eventually, Eddie goes through the same thing, and the alien turns him into the villainous Venom. Venom is just cool. He’s a twisted version of Spider-Man—his body morphs into different shapes, Eddie’s face moves in and out of him—and he has fangs! He looks fantastic.
It’s a shame we don’t see Eddie as Venom until about an hour and 45 minutes in, but that’ll happen if you try to cram too much in. The aforementioned Gwen Stacy is huge in the Spider-Man mythos, but the love triangle she creates and her back story get lost here. To try and please us nerds, they threw in a little bit of her background, including her father, Police Captain Stacy. But they don’t do anything with him, so what’s the point?
My hope for Spider-Man 4 (and you know there will be one) is that they bring back Venom and Gwen—and then stop tangling the web up so much.
Meet The Robinsons
Disney is promising us the next phase in CG animation with the Digital 3-D of Meet The Robinsons.
It’s definitely neat to watch and kind of fun to look around at a theater full of people wearing 3-D glasses, but aside from being computer animated as opposed to hand drawn, the experience is really still just a novelty. Audiences won’t mind putting on funny glasses every once in awhile, but this is hardly the wave of the future.
Meet The Robinsons also isn’t a memorable enough movie to set off the wave of the future.
It’s cute enough to be a fine way to pass an hour and a half, but it’s not a landmark in storytelling. It also has a misleading title, because it takes forever for the Robinsons to show up. You’ll spend a good chunk of time early on wondering “Is his last name Robinson? Who are the Robinsons?” It’s like watching a monster movie as a kid: they take forever to get to the Godzilla content.
Still, there are a lot of cute moments before the Robinson-reveal. Young Lewis is an orphan (what would a Disney movie be if the hero wasn’t orphaned?) who is also a brilliant inventor. He scares adoptive parents off because he’s an overzealous science nerd. Frustrated, he builds a machine that he hopes will let him look back in time to see who his real mother is. At a science fair, he befriends Wilbur Robinson (there they are) who is actually from the future and has come back in time to enlist Lewis’ help in a mysterious mission.
In the future, we meet the Robinsons, the wacky family that the movie is named after. They’re bizarre and animated (in the lively sense), and are probably who Disney plans on making merchandise out of. But I actually preferred the first half of the story. Lewis’ desires to be adopted and to make his inventions work were more touching and more engaging than the madcap things that happen in the future.
I also wonder if kids will be able to follow the time travel plot. Time travel stories can be incredibly confusing even to the most seasoned of sci-fi fans.
If you enjoy modern animated movies for the celebrity voices, I’ll tell you now you can save yourself the stress of trying to figure out the voices you’re hearing. I was under whelmed by the names in the credits (although there is one surprise voice toward the end that was a smart idea).
Parents and grandparents will want to get to the theater on time: Meet The Robinsons is preceded by a newly-restored 1950s Donald Duck/Chip and Dale cartoon.
Shooter
It’s Lee Harvey Oswald—Action Hero.
Oswald must have crossed the minds of the makers of Shooter, but you can’t make an action movie out of him. So you a) make him innocent (I’m not weighing in on that fight, let’s stay focused on the movie); b) make him look like Mark Wahlberg; and c) you don’t have him kill a police officer and get caught in a movie theater—you make him not kill anyone during his escape but kick lots of ass and take lots of names. Jack Ruby would not have a chance.
Wahlberg plays a former military sharpshooter who was abandoned after a mission went bad. He lives in a shack away from the rest of the world, looking at conspiracy theories on the internet. He gets recruited by some mysterious government types who want him to scout out a way to assassinate the President. They don’t want to do it—they think a plot is afoot to assassinate the President, and they want him to study “how he’d do it if he were to do it.” Then, while he’s in what looks like the Texas Book Depository, someone fires a shot from the Grassy Knoll, and he realizes he’s been made to look a patsy.
I’m giving the movie even less of a recommendation having just read the paragraph I just typed.
Why would this paranoid hermit fall for what these guys in suits and black cars tell him? Why would a smart guy who understands strategy fall for a ploy that sounds like the title of O.J’s aborted book?
I’ll give Shooter credit. I honestly didn’t think much of those flaws until I sat down to write. The action sequences are good enough that I didn’t think about things like that. Wahlberg is pretty good as an action hero (like in last year’s Four Brothers), and even though I didn’t understand a word of the movie’s frequent “gunspeak”, I got caught up in the urgency of the situation and the skill Wahlberg has as a sniper.
Until I started writing, my biggest problem with the movie was the ending and the way it threw some real-life politics in. Now that I look back, I see I got caught up in the shootouts and didn’t realize Shooter didn’t quite hit all its targets.
Premonition
I know what’s going to happen. Audiences leaving Premonition are going to be either disappointed or kind of confused.
Like in Sandra Bullock’s underrated The Lake House, our heroine finds herself in a fantasy world, where she’s not quite sure what’s real and what’s not. Unlike The Lake House, this is not a romance. She wakes up one day to find her husband has been killed in a car crash and that her family life is in disarray. Then she wakes up the next day to find him alive and everyone happy. She wakes up the day after that and finds he is dead after all. And so it goes, like it’s Groundhog Every Other Day.
So what is going on here? I think I get it, and I think I figured it out early (but there's a couple of gaping holes in logic.) The mystery is enough to sustain interest, although the action moves a little slowly. You know there’s going to be a car crash (or is there?), but it’d be nice to have more things happen in the meantime.
One reason it drags a little bit: Sandra Bullock is pretty much the only person in this movie. Her husband—supposedly someone with great influence on the course of her life—has nothing to do but his best impression of Patrick Duffy in Dallas (fans will get it. Think of the infamous season that wasn’t). He’s played by Julian McMahon, who we know can carry a drama from his work on Nip/Tuck. He’s wasted, as is character actor Peter Stormare, who is good in everything from Prison Break to Volkswagen commercials. He’s underutilized as a psychiatrist, which is really weird for a movie about whether or not some poor woman’s gone crazy.
300
The Ancient Spartans do not kid around. They come from a place where children are literally thrown to the wolves to test their strength, where an officer can send his son into battle knowing “I have one to replace him”, and where the women are allowed to speak because “only Spartan women give birth to real men.”
300 is an adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the Spartans last stand at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. With the Persians threatening to take more and more land as they approach Sparta, 300 of Sparta’s bravest—led by alpha male King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) head them off at the pass. While flipping around the channels, I stumbled across a History Channel documentary on Thermopylae, which detailed the Spartans’ real life fighting style, and this movie does take special care to recreated those details.
But no History Channel documentary is going to have the visuals 300 has. It is spectacular to look at, even when it gets very gory (the beheadings leave nothing to the imagination). The fight scenes are slowed down or sped up at just the right moments, and it’s hypnotic to watch Leonidas hit and chop his way through the invaders.
Like Sin City, the last movie based on a Frank Miller graphic novel, 300 perfectly recreates Miller’s artwork and turns it three-dimensional. It’s a graphic novel (adult comic book) come to life. The warriors are chiseled supermen, their enemies look absolutely demonic, there is a traitorous hunchback… even their opposition forces are led by a self-proclaimed god, who is maybe 10-feet-tall and speaks with a booming voice.
Why then does this comic book geek not give 300 a full recommendation? 1) The fight scenes are great to look at, but you could rewind this when it comes out on DVD and get the same effect. After awhile, it’s the same fight scene again and again, with different looking villains to kill. 2) It’s as easy to immerse yourself in the world of 300 as it is to immerse yourself in the world of Sin City. But when you’re caught up in Sin City, you feel kind of cool. If you get caught up in 300—and really think about it—you’ll feel a little silly. The target audience of Dungeons & Dragons players and Dwight Schrutes will no doubt leave the theater shouting “Spartans!!!!!.”
Ghost Rider
As a comic book series, Ghost Rider never really took off. But as a comic book figure, he’s one of the more memorable super heroes.
Why wouldn’t he be? He’s a leather-bound stunt cyclist with a flaming skullhead. That is cool. That’s the kind of thing people get tattooed on themselves.
How stunt rider Johnny Blaze became Ghost Rider is a little convoluted, as is his mission in life (death?). The hard-to-explain concept is probably the reason why Marvel Comics hasn’t published Ghost Rider on a regular basis, but the cool look is probably the reason they keep trying.
Now Hollywood is giving Ghost Rider a shot, with a big-time star in the title role. Nicolas Cage, a long-time comic book fan finally gets a shot at playing a super hero (Cage took his stage name from Marvel Comics’ Luke Cage, he gave his son Superman’s Kryptonian name and he has owned some of the most sought after comics ever printed), and he obviously is having fun.
Ghost Rider could be a dark, goth kind of film with its concept: Blaze sells his soul to The Devil, who collects on the deal by recruiting Blaze to become his bounty hunter. In the presence of evil, Blaze becomes Ghost Rider and forces evil-doers to confront what they’ve done. Now, if you say that out loud, it’s pretty ludicrous, and to the movie makers' credit, they don’t take it too seriously. This is a "comic book movie" if there ever was one.
Cage is a lot of fun as Blaze, a tortured soul, but he adds a lot of humor to his character. It’s more of a deadpan kind of torture. Sure, he feels guilty he sold his soul to the devil, but he never forgets he loves the Carpenters and anything on TV featuring monkeys.
Sadly, the movie lost me when Blaze actually does become Ghost Rider, which happens in the second half. Ghost Rider looks cool, but he’s a complete CGI creation with no personality. I’m not entirely sure that’s even Cage’s voice anymore. And as the fights get underway, things happen that seem to contradict the explanation of who Ghost Rider is and how he got that way. The concept shouldn’t matter too much if you’re just trying to have fun, but it becomes so ludicrous, it’s hard to care.
I really liked one nice touch: casting Peter Fonda as The Devil. When you think about it, that would be Easy Rider helping create Ghost Rider. (And a quiz to see if anyone’s really reading: why else is it cool to have Peter Fonda in the role? Hint: it has to do with Marvel Comics)
Ghost Rider’s limitations as a comic book series translate to the screen, which probably means we won’t have a new franchise here. That would explain why this is a February release and not a summer blockbuster. But before Ghost Rider I saw two previews Ghost Rider fans will like: Spider-Man 3 and Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer. So consider Ghost Rider an appetizer for now.
Norbit
This was almost the creative pinnacle of Eddie Murphy’s career.
He is up for—and deserves-- an Oscar in a couple of weeks for playing James “Thunder” Early in Dreamgirls. Now while Dreamgirls may be the best movie Eddie Murphy’s been in, the best “Eddie Murphy Movies” are the ones where he disappears behind layers of makeup and/or plays multiple roles. The Nutty Professor is a sweet movie, and Coming To America is an absolute classic. I’m even a fan of the underrated Bowfinger and Murphy’s performance as a nerdy wannabe actor.
I’d hoped Norbit could have ranked with those movies, and we could talk about an Eddie Murphy renaissance. Norbit has some ok Eddie Murphy performances, but it’s not a very good movie.
Murphy plays three roles here: Norbit himself—a mousy loner who marries the only option he thinks he has; Rasputia—the overweight, overbearing and downright evil woman Norbit settles for; and Mr. Wong—the racist, offensive head of the orphanage where Norbit was raised. Mr. Wong is sometimes incomprehensible, but if you can figure them out, he probably has the best lines.
Norbit may be the title character, but it’s Rasputia who’s the star. Murphy and the Rick Baker makeup team have created a truly vile character. If you think fat jokes are funny, you’ll laugh at Rasputia. We never saw Nutty Professor’s Sherman Klump in a bathing suit, but we do see Rasputia at a water park in a skimpy bikini. Despite myself, I found myself laughing at that and some of the other fat jokes, telling myself at least she’s a villain so it's alright to be cruel.
Norbit though isn’t much of a hero. Yeah, nerds in movies aren’t supposed to be strong characters at first, but the movie spends so much time on Rasputia that we don’t get enough time with Norbit to feel sorry enough for him. His character exists for Rasputia to torture, not for us to root for.
Ah well, we still have Thunder Early.
The Good Shepherd
We may never know the real identities of the people who founded the CIA, so director Robert DeNiro has given us a fictional spy to take us through the early days of the organization. This "good shepherd" is Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), a member of the mysterious Skull and Bones Society at Yale. He's recruited into intelligence at the onset of World War II and is eventually a key figure in the new Central Intelligence Agency.
Not all of the immediate events that happen around Wilson really happened, but many did: the War, the fall of Berlin, the election of President Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs. The failure at the Bay of Pigs is one of the central mysteries of the movie: someone with inside information connected to Wilson is responsible for leaking crucial intelligence on the invasion. Wilson investigates, and as his investigation unfolds, the movie flashes back through more than 20 years of his life-- all tied to his mysterious and dangerous career. Wilson's life parallels the CIA as it gets more complex and arguably more corrupt and morally questionable.
Damon, who continues to impress, does a solid job of playing a young man at Yale and an older man with a grown son. I didn't think I could buy the former Will Hunting as a man in his 40's, but he pulls off a maturity we haven't seen from him before.
Angelina Jolie does an alright job as his wife, but her role is so small compared to Damon's that it's hard to judge her on an equal basis.
DeNiro (who plays a small role himself) is certainly ambitious with how much ground he tries to cover, and it's fascinating to speculate on what may have been going on "behind the scenes" of history. Unfortunately, the movie's big mystery doesn't have a satisfying payoff. The solution becomes obvious at one point, and then we have to wait a long time for the big reveal.
Then again, we wait a long time for the end too. At nearly 170 minutes, the movie feels like it's almost an hour longer than it needs to be. So many scenes could get to the point much sooner than they do, and just when you think it's over, DeNiro tacks on an overly dramatic and unnecessary plot twist to drive home a point we already got.
The Holiday
Either of the two movies that comprise The Holiday would be a “Go See,” but since they're melded into one, it can’t earn a full recommendation.
Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz play women who live, respectively, in L.A. and a little village near London. Each has her own man problems and needs a getaway, so they swap houses and vacation in each other’s locales for a couple of weeks. They of course take on new romantic complications with Jude Law, Jack Black and in a way, Eli Wallach.
It might sound a little like Trading Places or even an episode of Wife Swap, except there is no real storyline reason for these women to have traded places with each other. They don’t really swap lives, and the locales mean nothing to the plot. The exact same things could probably have happened to them in their own homes. The swapping makes the movie that much longer, since time could have been saved by taking out the unnecessary “fish-out-of-water” scenes.
Individually though, the stories are pretty good. Diaz’ is just a little better. She’s a movie trailer producer who hears the voiceover guy narrate her own life like it was a trailer (they use the guy who voices trailers-- you'll know him when you hear him. As a movie nerd, I loved that and would have loved to have had more of it) and gets involved with Winslet’s brother, played by Jude Law. They hop into bed early and then have to decide where they go from there. Law is the best he’s been in a while, playing a charmer rather than a cad.
Winslet’s storyline is also decent, although not as sexy. She ends up restoring the confidence and health of an elderly screenwriting legend (Wallach) while striking up a flirtatious relationship with Jack Black. I feel a little bad for Black and Winslet, who might have been told they aren’t the sexier couple.
Sexy or not, they’re all attractive people who it’s not all that bad to spend a little time with-- just not as much time as I did.
Casino Royale
Batman got to begin again, Superman returned, so why shouldn’t James Bond get a fresh start?
In some ways, restarting Bond is more of a challenge than redoing a superhero. Batman and Superman are more timeless—Bond is a creation of the Cold War, and no matter what the Pierce Brosnan movies did with him, he’ll always be tied to that era.
And to make skeptical fans even more skeptical—they cast a blonde.
So how is Daniel Craig as Blonde, James Blonde? We still don’t really know. The movie is either a set up for when Craig really gets to play Bond or a way to hide the fact that Craig isn’t the guy.
Casino Royale is based on the very first Ian Fleming Bond novel (although it takes place this year. Cell phones are important from the beginning, and Judi Dench’s M announces “I miss the Cold War” to make sure you get it). He’s just earned his “double-O” status (license to kill) and is still a little green and prone to some mistakes.
He’s also not “James Bond” yet. He is a womanizer, but he’s more silent action hero than suave superspy. He has no fancy gadgets; instead he relies on his physical strength and speed (Bond does a lot of running). He does very little talking, and while there’s some charm there, there’s none of the quips we expect from him. This is not the same guy. That’s especially true toward the end—just when you think the movie is over, he acts so un-Bond like, it’s almost a turn-off.
Casino Royale is also not really a typical Bond movie. With no gadgets, there’s no Q. There’s no Moneypenny. That might be a refreshing change for you, or it might be a disappointment. There is action. The movie starts with a great chase at a construction site, and later we get an explosive scene at Miami’s airport before the movie flies to Venice and Montenegro for more action. (Although I’m going to take away points for the action coming to a halt during a way-too-long poker game).
Bond does get some of the “other” kind of action we expect from him, but Casino Royale doesn’t give us any Bond women that will rank with the most memorable of them. Eva Green does an okay job, but she seemed plain to me as Bond women go. There’s certainly nothing as iconic as Ursula Andress or Halle Berry in their bathing suits coming out of the water. Although if you’re a Craig fan, you’ll enjoy him in his bathing suit. Craig and the filmmakers are obviously very proud of Craig’s muscles.
There are hints that we could see the “real” Bond before long. So for now: As an action movie, Casino Royale is passable. As James Bond, we’ll judge Daniel Craig when he plays him.
Babel
...four interlocking stories, three of which are gripping. The one about the Japanese skank left me too disturbed to recommend it. And at the end, I didn't see the point of having them all jumbled together into one movie. (Sorry for the short review. I saw this around the time the hammer fell at the old place)
Open Season
In the world of animation in the last couple of years, it must have been open season for scripts about animals out of their element.
So if you've got the DVDs of Madagascar or Over The Hedge or the close to half a dozen others like them, you could save your money and let your kids watch this.
If you don't, there's nothing necessarily all that bad about Open Season, and this movie could be the first of its kind you see. Sony Animation's first computer animated film is about Boog the grizzly bear (Martin Lawrence) raised in the comfort of a forest ranger's home, who after a series of mishaps (which come awfully close to Martin Lawrence's real life) ends up living in the wild far from the comforts of his garage. Helping him along the way is an equally helpless buck named Elliott (Ashton Kutcher), who is too much of a runt to run with his herd.
Both stars do some good voicework on their characters, and there are some cute as well as funny moments. The different animals they meet on their quest to get home are pretty funny, especially the squirrels and the stronger deer in the herd. Their final battle includes some pretty ingenious weaponry and is a lot of fun to watch.
But by the time it's over, Open Season will seem very familiar, even if you haven't seen Madagascar or Ice Age or Barnyard. Look at Boog and Elliott and tell me that's not Shrek and Donkey. Elliott even longs to be Boog's best friend. It's one thing to rip off the also-rans, but it's another to rip off a classic.
Flyboys
Maybe in 1916, they weren't cliches.
But 90 years later, what we're seeing in Flyboys is pretty standard stuff for any war movie, be it a classic serial, Top Gun or even Star Wars.
That's too bad, because Flyboys has two plot elements that could have been turned into an effective historical drama. 1) The flyboys from the title are Americans who, for different reasons, fight World War I alongside the French before the U.S. enters the conflict. 2) They are the very first fighter pilots: in 1916, these things called "planes" hadn't been around all that long.
It is interesting to think about what the first fighter pilots went through, especially compared to the fantastic machines they fly today. These guys have to spin their own propellers when they're in a hurry, establish visual contact with their enemies to fight them (looking them right in the eyes in midair!) and keep a handgun nearby in case their planes go down and they'd rather go out quickly.
Sadly, the too-long movie is bogged down with the same old flyboy stuff. You'll know right away that James Franco's Maverick... er... Blaine Rawlings... will be a hotshot that has trouble with authority but will eventually be the hero. You'll figure out which members of the ragtag group are trouble but will learn some valuable lessons. You'll recognize the romance Rawlings has with a local girl (the key to her heart of course: play with the kids!). And you'll know who dies and how he'll be honored.
The real life guys this movie was based on probably deserved a better honor.