film babble blog

The Film Babble Blog Top 10 Movies Of 2011

2012-01-23T01:14:00.000-05:00

2011 was a pretty unremarkable year for movies.

I saw over 130 films on the big screen and the vast majority of them sucked. Few films caught on at the art houses, and the multiplexes were dominated by super hero movies and sequels - 9 out of the top 10 grossing films were sequels, and the only one that wasn't was THE SMURFS which should really tell you something about how sucky the year was.

However, there were a handful of excellent films, so here's my top 10 favorites:

1. THE TREE OF LIFE (Dir. Terrence Malick)

The reaction to this film has been extremely divisive (my wife hated it for example), but no other film this last year made a bigger dent into my cinematic pysche. In my review last summer, I wrote that “the visual thrust is stupefying; it’s like Malick is actually trying to capture God on film.” Read my review here.

2. HUGO (Dir. Martin Scorsese)

Scorsese's first film in 3D is very personal tribute to the magic of filmmaking, focusing on a young French boy (Asa Butterfield) who discovers the toy shop owner at the train station is the legendary Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley), who has been called the world's first Cinemagician. It's a stunning and touching piece of work that is an amazing addition to Scorsese's incredible canon. Read my review here.

3. DRIVE (Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)

Ryan Gosling plays a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver in this moody, stylish thriller that has a '80s retro feel. Winding Refn brings out standout performances from Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, and especially Albert Brooks, who should really get an Academy Award nomination for his turn as a murderous mobster.

4. THE ARTIST (Dir. Michel Hazanavicius)

When "talkies" start taking over cinema in the late '20s, a silent film star (Jean Dujardin) finds his fame fading while an actress dancer (Bérénice Bejo) he helped get into show business becomes a big star. It's a beautifully shot black and white (and actually silent) homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood, and I savored every second of it. Read my review here.

5. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Dir. Woody Allen)

This charming comedy, which features Owen Wilson as a writer who is somehow transported to Paris in the '20s, is Woody Allen's highest grossing film ever, and it's his best film since VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA. Read my review here.

For my full reviews of the rest – please click on the highlighted titles:

6. MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE (Dir. Sean Durkin)

7. PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES (Dir. Andrew Rossi)

8. 50/50 (Dir. Jonathan Levine)

9. BRIDESMAIDS (Dir. Paul Feig)

10. RED STATE (Dir. Kevin Smith)

Man, I hope 2012 is a better year for movies.

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Gina Carano owns Steven Soderbergh's HAYWIRE

2012-01-20T23:07:00.011-05:00

HAYWIRE (Dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2012)

Although I had not seen a trailer or read anything about it going in, I caught on quickly that this film is simply an excuse to string together a series of acrobatic fight scenes showcasing the mixed martial arts skills of Gina Carano.

Thing is, it’s a pretty good excuse.

The plot, something about the CIA trained Carano getting set up and betrayed on a mission, really doesn’t matter, because this movie is all about the kinetic, extremely well choreographed, and superbly shot fight scenes.

Surrounding Carano is a cast of familiar faces: Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum, and Michael Fassbender, but I believe had those same roles been played by a bunch of unknowns, it would have the same effect, because, again, it’s all about Carano’s game.

On the run from an international manhunt, Carano hijacks the car of the scruffy Michael Angarano in upstate New York, and she tells him (and us) how she got there, so we get flashbacks of set pieces in opulent settings.

For instance, a hotel suite in Dublin in which Carano and Fassbender have a brutal scuffle; it’s polished violence with class as the couple is outfitted in expensive evening wear.

With its snazzy jazzy soundtrack by frequent Soderberg collaborator David Holmes, HAYWIRE bops along enjoyably from brawl to brawl. It’s a durable diversion especially compared to its competition (*cough* CONTRABAND) in this January dumping ground.

From 1989’s SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE to last year’s CONTAGION, Soderbergh has dabbled in just about every genre (can’t wait for him to tackle Westerns), so why not an espionage revenge thriller with a kick ass hottie, who actually can kick ass in real life?

Here Soderbergh throws his new heroine into the ring with Laura Croft, “The Bride” from KILL BILL, and Lisbeth Salander (either Noomi Rapace or Rooney Mara - it doesn't matter), and by the end of it you’ll be convinced that Carano would be the last one standing.

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THE ARTIST Is Chock Full Of Charm

2012-01-20T00:43:00.000-05:00

THE ARTIST (Dir. Michel Hazanavicius, 2011)

There were a few times during this film that I forgot I was watching a modern movie.

So beautifully and affectionately does Hazanavicius and co. recreate the era and the aura of the Golden Age of Hollywood in this black and white wonder, that I felt like I was in an old revival movie house instead of the bland big box multiplex where I attended the screening.

For the first silent movie since Mel Brooks took on the genre in SILENT MOVIE in 1976, we get the story of a silent film star whose time in the spotlight may soon be over because the talkies are the wave of the future. Despite that arc, this film doesn’t have any spoken dialogue - except for a single scene that still has no talking but some sound effects – it’s silent from start to finish with white-on-black title cards to boot.

Jean Dujardin suitably plays George Valentin, who we first meet at a lavish film premiere of his latest movie in 1927, basking in the love of his audience. One of his fans, a wide-eyed wannabe starlet named Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), through some cute circumstances, breaks into showbiz and her talking pictures take off, while Dujardin’s lose favor.

With only his Jack Russell terrier named Jack (Uggie in real life – who actually has a IMDb page) Dujardin loses his fame and fortune, and spirals down into squalor.

Of course it’s up to Bejo to be Dujardin’s saving angel.

As for the supporting players - John Goodman, as a cantankerous studio boss, is great as always, but he really only seems to be there to help this French film crossover to us Yanks. The also always great James Cromwell plays Dujardin’s valet, Penelope Ann Miller plays Dujardin’s long suffering wife, and Malcolm McDowell has a cameo as a butler. And, as a thousand other critics have already written, Uggie the dog often steals the movie out from under everyone.

Despite a fairly shallow storyline, THE ARTIST is chock full of charm. It’s also full of gorgeous cinematography by Guillaume Schiffman, who shot Hazanavicius’s hilarious retro spy satires OSS 117: CAIRO, NEST OF THIEVES (also starring Dujardin and Bejo) and its almost as funny sequel OSS 117: LOST IN RIO.

This clever and amusing old fashioned flick pays tribute to so many films over its 100 minute running time that it would be pointless to try to list them (I’m sure there’s a site out there that does), but I’ll just note the dining room scene nod to Orson Welles’ CITIZEN KANE, the homage to Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BOULEVARD in Dujardin’s washed up re-watching of his old films over and over, and the use of a bit of Bernard Herrmann’s score for Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 thriller VERTIGO at a crucial emotional moment.

That last one I mentioned because of VERTIGO star Kim Novak’s recent claim in the magazine Variety that the use of bits of Herrmann’s score (which they paid for and credited) equates “rape.” I think that’s ridiculously extreme – lots of music from classic movies has been reused over the years, and the idea that this Award winning crowd pleaser tarnishes the famous Hitchcock thriller at all is ludicrous.

I felt that composer Ludovic Bource, who otherwise fills the film with appropriate piano backing, and Hazanavicius were incredibly sincere in this execellent tribute.

But, hey, one man’s homage is another man’s rip-off, amirite?

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CONTRABAND: An Action Thriller Failure, But It's Not Mark Wahlberg's Fault

2012-01-13T00:18:00.003-05:00

CONTRABAND (Dir. Baltasar Kormákur, 2012)

It’s not Mark Wahlberg’s fault that this film is such a forgettable failure of a action thriller.

Wahlberg shows up, punches the time clock, and puts in a workman like performance, but director Kormákur and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski don’t give the man much to work with.

Based on the 2009 Icelandic film “Reykjavík-Rotterdam” (which starred Kormákur), “Contraband” has Wahlberg as a New Orleans family guy trying to go legit after years of smuggling, grand theft, and espionage.

Just when Wahlberg thought he was out, he’s pulled back into that world to pull off one last job involving millions in counterfeit bills, because his brother-in-law Caleb (Landry Jones),wife (Katie Beckinsale), and kids are being threatened by a sleazy shaky drug lord Giovanni Ribisi (even sleazier and shakier than his turn in last year's THE RUM DIARY which I didn’t think was possible).

So a lot of the movie is Wahlberg on a barge, helmed by the great character actor J.K. Simmons who is one of the film’s few plusses, to and from Panama, with precious little action or thrills to speak of. Back home, Ben Foster, as Wahlberg’s best friend, squirms through his role as a guy caught up in the scheme who we never believe that anybody would ever trust.

It’s tired faux gritty heist plots like this that make me appreciate more the 2 Boston set crime flicks that Ben Affleck has made (GONE BABY GONE, THE TOWN). Affleck's films certainly weren’t masterpieces, but they had a much better sense of character and tonality when it came to the working class townie tough guy milieu.

CONTRABAND has none of that, and it's too full of quick cuts which makes it seem like a giant trailer instead of a real movie, with no room for audience connection to anything but the bare basics of the uninteresting narrative.

There weren’t even enough instances of visceral violence to keep my mind from wandering.

I was so bored during this tedious slog that I imagined what if Wahlberg had played the lead in “We Bought A Zoo” instead of Matt Damon. It would be like the Saturday Night Live sketch with Andy Sandberg doing a dead-on Wahlberg talking to animals – “Hey, chicken, how's it hanging? A lot of people want to eat you, but I just want to talk to you, okay?”

That’s how bored I was.

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TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY: Gary Oldman Comes In From The Cold War

2012-01-06T03:39:00.000-05:00

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (Dir. Tomas Alfredson, 2011)

“Don't trust anyone, especially not in the mainstream.”

This warning, which appears in the first few minutes of this film, may be overly familiar to anyone who has seen just about any paranoid political thriller, yet spoken by John Hurt as “Control”, the ailing head of MI6, it can't help but carry considerable weight.

That can also be said of much of the dialogue in this new adaptation of John le Carré’s 1974 novel (especially coming from the mouths of such refined Englishmen as Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Toby Jones), but in the case of Gary Oldman as British Intelligence officer George Smiley, its the long silences that are the most stirring.

In fact, it's a bit into the film before we even hear Oldman speak.

When the man finally does talk, his dulcet tones recall Alec Guiness, who portrayed Smiley 30 years ago, in a 1979 mini-series adaptation of le Carré’s book, and a 1982 followup Smiley's People.

In London in the early '70s, Oldman's Smiley comes out of enforced retirement to investigate allegations that there is a "mole, right at the top of the Circus." Meaning that a Soviet spy has long infiltrated the highest echelon of the Secret Intelligence service.

The title refers to the codenames given to the suspects: "Tinker" (Jones as the new Chief of the Circus), "Tailor" (Firth as Jones' Deputy), "Soldier", and "Poorman" (Ciarán Hinds and David Dencik as close allies in the Circus).

After that you're on your own with the plot, which is so murky and shadowy that many folks may have trouble following it (the people in the audience around me sure did, as I heard murmered questioning throughout the screening I attended).

However, if you pay close attention right from the beginning, you should be able to make sense of it (and maybe even guess who the mole is) - to a degree. There's still some plot points I'm not sure I understand.

No matter, Alfredson's film is still extremely immersive, with it's sparely lit wide shots of dusty office spaces and drab apartment houses as backdrops to back-stabbing treachery.

Oldman gives a tour de force of minimalism as the never smiling Smiley. Only showing intense emotion in one scene, Oldman's restrained and deadly serious demeanor navigates through the movie with precision. Throughout his career the man has gone to dizzying extremes - witness his over-the-top work as Sid Vicious, Count Dracula, and Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg (the villain in THE FIFTH ELEMENT) - but here it's all about what he's thinking; his inward turmoil.

The rest of the cast is spot-on as well - particularly Firth in his comfort zone of charm, Jones nicely settled in his stogginess, and Cumberbatch nailing his character's nervousness and confusion.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY is edgy espionage at its finest. Just take note that it's not a film one can watch casually. To fully get it, you have to quietly concentrate on the proceedings of these old grey men in high places of power, and listen intently to every spoken word, parsing every utterance for clues.

In other words, you have to be just like George Smiley.

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Blu Ray/DVD Review: BLACKTHORN

2012-01-05T20:16:00.001-05:00

BLACKTHORN (Dir. Mateo Gil, 2011)

This film builds on the legend that the infamous outlaw Butch Cassidy didn’t die in the Bolivian army ambush in 1908, as depicted in George Roy Hill’s 1969 classic BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID - he lived into his old age as a rancher in the mountains of Bolivia, going by the name James Blackthorn.

Mateo Gil, working from a screenplay by Miquel Barros, gives the great grizzled Sam Shepard in the title role, getting caught up, on his way back to the states, in one last adventure involving a young Spanish thief (Eduardo Noriega) who has a posse after him because he stole $50,000.

Stephen Rea has a stand-out part as a broken down Irish lawman who suspects Cassidy is still alive. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Pádraic Delaney play the young Butch and Sundance in flashbacks that aren’t really necessary, but don’t distract too much from the grand old man Western here.

A suitably winding plot, Juan Ruiz Anchía’s stunning cinematography of the Bolivian landscape, and a powerful performance by Shephard make this recommendable, even if it is a bit slow going at times.

However, slow doesn’t necessarily equal boredom as some excellent modern Westerns – like THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD and MEEK'S CUTOFF – have shown. These fine films, BLACKTHORN included, well know that the wide terrain of the Old West should'nt be rushed through.

Special Features: Deleted Scenes, “Making of BLACKTHORN”, Short Films by Director Mateo Gil, HDNet: A Look at BLACKTHORN.

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THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO - Now In English!

2011-12-25T05:24:00.001-05:00

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (Dir. David Fincher, 2011)

Despite the fact that the opening title sequence, a montage of shiny black bondage imagery synched to Karen O and Trent Reznor’s blaring cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”, is as in-your-face as the director can get, this is oddly the least stylish of David Fincher’s films.

It’s clear that Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillion have set out to do a second adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s bestselling novel (the 1st in the “Millenium” trilogy), rather than a remake of the 2009 Swedish film, but it so often follows the storyline in the same icy manner that it feels unshakably redundant.

That is, unless you absolutely can’t stand subtitles and will only watch movies in English. Then this is the version for you.

Taking a break from Bond, Daniel Craig takes on the part that Michael Nyqvist (who can be seen currently as the villain in the new MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie) originally played in the Swedish THE GIRL… series, financial magazine reporter Mikael Blomkvist, who accepts an offer from wealthy industrialist Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to investigate a 40 year old disappearance right after he loses a libel suit.

In order to do research on the long missing person, Plummer’s great niece Harriet (a teenager at the time of abduction), Craig is provided with a guest house on the fictional Hedeby Island in Stockholm that is inhabited by the suspicious members of the family, including an extra creepy Stellan Skarsgård. Plummer calls his relations: “The most detestable collection of people you will ever meet.” When we learn secrets of Nazi connections and sexual abuse, we know that’s no exaggeration.

Craig is being investigated himself, by the punk bad-ass hacker Lisbeth Salander played by Rooney Mara, who does a great job matching Noomi Rapace’s pointed portrayal. Mara is definitely the best thing about this one.

Craig and Mara soon start working together on the case, in procedural sequences that echo Fincher’s ZODIAC, and getting it on – in sex scenes way steamier than the original’s, so it wins on that front.

This version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO has moments of sublimity, but never gels enough to have an identity of its own. Craig, who plausibly plays a character way less confident than the iconic 007, and Mara have palpable chemistry, but when it comes down to the love triangle ending, involving a wooden Robin Wright waiting in the wings, we never feel like the leads are supposed to be together anyway so the emotional impact falls flat.

I know there will be plenty of folks who will go to see this movie who haven’t seen the original Swedish one, and they will likely be more satisfied with this one than I am. I mean, it has higher production values, “name” actors, and, yes, it is in English.

However, for folks already familiar with this material, these elements have the unfortunate effect of reducing Larsson’s scenarios into just slightly above average American thriller fare.

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A couple of Spielbergers to go: one with extra cheese, one with extra action

2011-12-25T00:21:00.003-05:00

WAR HORSE & THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

Without a doubt, Steven Spielberg is the most celebrated film maker of our times.

With JAWS, he practically invented the notion of the event blockbuster, and his movies, including the iconic Indiana Jones series and the JURASSIC PARK franchise, have grossed billions more than any other film maker.

This year, along with the usual CGI-saturated multiplex mayhem that owes a debt to the man, Spielberg was paid tribute to in Greg Mottola’s sci-fi fanboy satire PAUL (in which he had a voice only cameo), and J.J. Abram’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS/E.T. homage SUPER 8 (which he co-produced).

‘Tis the season for Spielberg to step up to the plate himself, as the man has 2 movies to unleash on holiday movie-goers: the WW I epic drama WAR HORSE, and the CGI-animated THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN. Both are set in the first half of the 20th century, and both are, you know, for kids!

WAR HORSE evokes the golden age of Hollywood, when movies were first making the change from black and white to vivid Technicolor. A friend, Will Fonvielle, said it was “like a John Ford” film, and that nails it precisely – so much so that it looks like every other critic is making the comparison. In telling the simple story of a horse named Joey, who leaves a small farm in the English county of Devon to serve in the first World War.

Through a series of extremely well orchestrated battle scenes, Joey goes from serving the British to aiding the German army, before finding his way back to his original owner Jeremy Irvine.

Emily Watson and Peter Mullan play Irvine's parents, with Tom Hiddleston, David Thewlis, and Benedict Cumberbatch portray solidiers in the trenches, but, hey, you know it's all about the horse, as we can see in lots of Joey's close-up reaction shots.

Spielberg heavily lays on the sentiment, John Williams’ score leaves no moment unpunctuated by swelling strings, and long-time Spielberg cinematographer Janusz Kamiński fills the screen with gorgeous scenery that looks like it was all shot at golden hour.

In other words, WAR HORSE is another powerfully cheesy crowd pleaser by the master of powerfully cheesy crowd pleasers.

Based on the world popular, yet not so well known in America, series of comic books by Belgian writer/artist Hergé, THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN is also a crowd pleaser, but one that tries way too hard. I read the Tintin books when I was a kid, and I really don’t remember them being jam packed with high octane action, yet that’s what you get in Spielberg’s first animated film as director.

Spielberg was reportedly turned onto Tintin when a critic made a comparison between RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and the globe-trotting tales of Hergé’s boy hero, and therein lies the problem – even with the involvement of purist Peter Jackson (co-producer), Tintin and his world is too Indiana Jones-ified.

Tintin, voiced by Jamie Bell, and his white fox terrier Snowy (who like all animals in Spielberg movies is as smart or smarter than the humans - a trait he must’ve learned from Disney), join with the crusty boozing Captain Haddock (a hilarious but often indecipherable Andy Serkis), and the bumbling cops the Thompson Twins (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost), on a wild treasure hunt involving scrolls found in model ships, which are sought by the sinister Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig).

The performance capture imagery has come a long way since THE POLAR EXPRESS, with beautifully brisk vistas flashing by as Tintin engages in chases, fights, and all kinds of frantic, fast paced fury, but it’s way too busy to be truly engaging.

The plot may be impenetrable to those unfamiliar with the books, John Williams’ score cribs too heavily from his Indiana Jones soundtrack work, and it has a way too blatant set-up for a sequel, a la the end of BACK TO THE FUTURE (which, of course, Spielberg executive produced), but a franchise is what Jackson and Spielberg have been planning for ages, so that’s a given.

That said, the fun witty spirit of the original Tintin does rear its head every now and then. If only they slowed down the onslaught of nonstop thrills enough to get a better glimpse of it.

It’s funny to note that even in an animated Spielberg feature there’s lens flare going on. Old habits die hard, huh?

Despite their ample defects, WAR HORSE and THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN, are both prime popcorn pictures that don’t care about anything but entertaining tons of people.

That they will do this Christmas weekend, when many folks will be looking for a good excuse to get out of house. Spielberg’s brand of family friendly fare will surely suffice.

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-12-21T08:02:00.004-05:00

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL (Dir. Brad Bird, 2011)

Unless you've been living under a rock lately, you've heard about Tom Cruise's death defying stunt scaling the tallest building in the world (Dubai's Burj Khalifa) without a stuntman in the newest MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movie. It's a pretty damn impressive feat indeed, especially as it was one of several key scenes filmed with IMAX cameras.

What's more impressive to me is that not only can Cruise can keep the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE franchise sucessfully afloat with this, the 4th in the series - GHOST PROTOCOL, he's also conquered the screen in what I believe is the strongest action movie of the year.

And Cruise does it looking like he's only aged a couple of minutes after the last one ended back in 2006.

Now, even though I'm not really an action genre guy, I re-acquainted myself with the other M:I movies (I hadn't seen the first or second one since they were released well over a decade ago, and I always put off seeing the third), and I have to admit that they are state of the art escapism. Sure, they are souped-up vanity projects on one level, but each, helmed by a different hot-shot director - in order, Brian de Palma, John Woo, and J.J. Abrams - is slick high speed fun, and great to exercise bike to, I've found.

With Brad Bird (Pixar's THE INCREDIBLES, RATATOUIE) making his live action directorial debut, and a sharp screenplay by André Nemec and Josh Appelbaum (Alias), Cruise's Ethan Hunt chooses to accept another globe-trotting adventure with a crew made up of Simon Pegg (reprising his role as tech agent Benji from M:I:III), Paula Patton, and Jeremy Renner.

There's no way to not make the plot sound convoluted, but trust me it flows better than this description: We catch up with Cruise doing time in a Moscow prison. Cruise's IMF (Impossible Missions Force, duh) helps him escape, and they are given the mission to infiltrate the Kremlin (that's right) to extract top secret files.

After exiting the scene, a bomb goes off (one of the first notable IMAX moments) blowing up the Kremlin, and the IMF is implicated. In an all-too-brief cameo, the always reliably stodgy Tom Wilkinson shows up the Secretary of State of IMF to tell them they have to go underground to clear their name.

This involves faking a trade for nuclear codes between a French assassin who works for diamonds (Léa Seydoux) and Samuli Edelmann, the right-hand-man of the movie's villain (Michael Nyqvist), who want to annihilate the world's population in order to begin again.

This is where Cruise's skyscraper stunt comes in, eye-poppingly shot by ace cinematographer Robert Elswit (THERE WILL BE BLOOD) which is genuinely breath-taking. Although Cruise's Hunt is a cocky bastard most of the time, he does show some believable fright in this and other heart pounding scenes, and that enhances the intensity greatly throughout.

And then, just when you think they can't top that, Bird and co. serve up a chase through a sandstorm which is just as thrilling.

Just when you start wondering, hey - what about, Michelle Monaghan, Cruise's wife from M:i:III? Pegg, among his many amusing one-liners, mentions in vague terms that she ended the relationship, but, of course, we just know that there's more to it that that.

Sure, the plot is routine, Nyqvist (who was the protagonist in the original Swedish GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO films) isn't a very memorable villain, and the last third, mostly set in a palace in Mumbai, too resembles something out of 007 in OCTOPUSSY, in its excuse to have our hero in a tuxedo in an exotic location, yet M:i:4 is still worth an overpriced IMAX ticket for, not only the awesome Burj Khalifa sequence and several choice action set-pieces, but for the sheer entertainment value of a high fallutin' formula done right.

Renner, who does his hot-head shtick here to perfection, is rumored as a candidate to take over the series from Cruise, but you wouldn't know it here - Cruise sure doesn't look like he's pushing 50 in one pummeling set-piece after another; it is as if he's been outfitted with new bionic body parts just so he can make 3-4 more of these.

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In YOUNG ADULT, Charlize Theron Can't Go Home Again

2011-12-16T00:34:00.001-05:00

YOUNG ADULT (Dir. Jason Reitman, 2011)

With Mavis Gary, a divorced writer of young adult fiction, Charlize Theron has her juiciest role since…well, MONSTER. It’s a doozy of a pathetic character that spends most of the movie looking like she’s gone to seed slouching as she shuffles around in sweat pants, Hello Kitty t-shirt, and a hoodie, but when she dolls herself up, a process we see in excruciating detail, she can still bring it as a head-turning beauty.

Theron only brings it in hopes of stealing back her high school boyfriend (Patrick Wilson), who is happily married with a new baby. When she hears about the newborn, Theron travels back to her small Minnesotan hometown to relive her teenage glory years, and put her misguided plan in motion.

YOUNG ADULT re-unites the duo behind 2007’s sleeper hit JUNO, director Jason Reitman and Oscar winning screenwriter Diablo Cody, but thankfully this time there’s less snark and more edge. This is largely due to Theron’s fearless portrayal of a highly unlikable embarrassingly immature woman, and the odd connection she makes to Patton Oswalt, as one of her former class-mates, who has to walk with a crutch because during his not-so-glory high school years, he was beaten severely – a victim of a mistaken hate-crime.

Oswalt is the voice of reason, telling Theron she’s crazy for trying to rekindle a long gone romance, but she, of course doesn’t listen. Once again playing a grinning dolt, Wilson is oblivious to Theron’s motives; in Elizabeth Reaser he has a good wife (who’s coincidentally on the show The Good Wife), with plenty of stability, so why would he want to get tangled up in his ex’s messy world?

So Theron crashes face down drunk on her hotel bed night after night, and we wonder if this cringe-inducing selfish nut will ever be redeemable. While we contemplate that, Reitman includes shots of the generic landscape of strip malls, chain restaurants, and cheap hotels, that are attempts at making a statement about the homogenization of America (Wilson boasts about a Chipotle opening in town as if it’s big news), but they still don’t serve as much more than backdrop to wallowing in Theron and Oswalt’s desperate existences.

It’s a standout performance for Oswalt, who tops his intensity in 2009’s BIG FAN simply by being himself – a self aware geek with a cutting remark for every occasion.

That said, there really aren’t that many satisfying laughs in YOUNG ADULT, and the predictability of the storyline is annoying, but spending time with these risky characters is appealing during this Christmas season clogged full of overblown fantasies.

Even during her most despicable moments I was still rooting for Theron, who embodies the part so completely you will actually feel sorry for her, but not to succeed at winning back Wilson, but to move on. Obviously the woman isn’t familiar with Thomas Wolfe’s “You Can’t Go Home Again”, but after this disastrous trip she should definitely take it to heart.

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THE DESCENDANTS: Quaffable, But Far From Transcendent

2011-12-09T00:58:00.002-05:00

THE DESCENDANTS (Dir. Alexander Payne, 2011)

In his consistently fine films, Alexander Payne excels in capturing his characters’ descent into desperate goofiness.

From school teacher Matthew Broderick’s scheming to have an ill-fated affair in ELECTION, to Paul Giamatti’s reacting to news that his book has being rejected by yet another publisher by swigging the spit bowl at a public wine tasting in SIDEWAYS, Payne has nailed some hilariously pathetic behavior.

Which is why I kept waiting for Payne’s latest protagonist, a well-to-do lawyer in Hawaii played by George Clooney, to lose his cool. Oddly, except for some doofish running in flip-flops, and darting behind bushes, Clooney mostly keeps it in check.

Clooney’s wife is in a coma after a boating accident, he’s responsible for handling the sale of the 25,000 acres of Kaua’I island land his family owns, and his 2 daughters (the rebellious Shailene Woodley and the foul mouthed Amara Miller) are more than a handful.

There’s also that Woodley, home from private school, tells her befuddled father that “mom was cheating on you.”

With all that I expected more of a breakdown than a simple sobbing at a creek, but Clooney shows admirable restraint, only allowing his emotions to flow at appropriate points. Even when confronting the dorky real estate agent who his wife was seeing on the side, Clooney does teeter on the edge of desperate goofiness, yet still saves face.

Clooney narrates us through the tropical world where businessmen look like beach bums, as he tolerates Woodley’s druggie boyfriend (Nick Krause, who gets way too much screen-time), and the meddling members of his family (including the gruff as ever Robert Forester, and the easy going Beau Bridges).

Like with his last 3 films, Payne has adapted a contemporary novel, this time Kaui Hart Hemmings’ 2007 book of the same name, and changed crucial details to make it his own.

It has a lot going for it in its execution, Clooney’s performance, and the lushness of Hawaii is as strikingly shot by cinematographer Phedon Papamichael as the wine country he shot in SIDEWAYS was (no ‘70s-style split screen action though this time), but THE DESCENDANTS is not as sharp or vital as Payne’s previous work *, because of a padded story-line which makes its premise lose power over the course of its nearly 2 hour running time.

There’s also the difficulty of fully feeling sorry for or relating to Clooney’s character. Despite how much of a schlub they try to make him, he’s still George Clooney in all his charms, and it feels too pat that all he and his daughters need to do to heal their pain is to sit together on a sofa, eat ice cream, and watch MARCH OF THE PENGUINS. As comforting a notion as that may be to some people.

In Payne’s most popular film SIDEWAYS, protagonist Giamatti appraises one wine as being “quaffable, but far from transcendent.”

Ditto for THE DESCENDANTS.

* My personal favorite of Payne’s films is ABOUT SCHMIDT (2002) starring Jack Nicholson. Definitely see that if you haven’t already before, (or instead of) THE DESCENDANTS.

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Martin Sheen Shines in THE WAY

2011-12-08T12:19:00.005-05:00

THE WAY (Dir. Emilio Estevez, 2010)

At The Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen a few months back, comedian Jeff Ross joked: “Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez said that they would’ve been here tonight, but they had a family obligation.”

Consider Estevez's THE WAY to be that obligation.

For his fifth film as director, Estevez recruits his father Sheen to play a widowed opthamologist who decides to walks the Camino de Santiago to honor his son (played in flashbacks and apparitions by Estevez), who died while hiking the same route.

The stodgy stern Sheen is a man of few words who doesn’t share his grief or reasoning with the group of folks he befriends on the pilgrimage.

Deborah Kara Unger as a sardonic divorcée from Canada, Yorick van Wageningen as an over-eating Dutchman, and James Nesbitt as a writer working on a book about the historic walk, are Sheen’s fellow travelers.

Despite such iconic work in such classics as BADLANDS and APOCALYPSE NOW, as well as his stint as President Barlett on The West Wing, Sheen has often been neglected as an actor.

His Oscar worthy performance here should change that. Sheen’s gruff perserverance carries the film and makes you feel as if you are on the journey with him. Sheen, who can't help but bring the mighty gravitas that actually made me wish the man was the President during the George W. Bush era, proves that you can never be too old to have an adventure. You don't need any Tiger Juice either to get you going.

Although there's some existential cheesiness in the dialogue and it’s overly conventional in its construction, Estevez, who wrote the screenplay based in part on the book "Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim's Route" by Jack Hitt, has earnestly and effectively made a moving travelogue that both pays tribute equally to an ancient tradition, and a grand old actor in his autumn years.

Fancy catching up on some of Martin Sheen's back catalogue? Rent titles including The West Wing, Catch Me if You Can and Apocalypse Now with LOVEFiLM. You can also stream movies to your computer, PS3, Xbox and even internet enabled TV!

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THE SKIN I LIVE IN: This Year's #1 Creepiest Movie

2011-12-02T01:03:00.003-05:00

THE SKIN I LIVE IN (Dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2011)

Congratulations to Almodóvar for making the creepiest movie of the year.

Reunited with his former leading man, Antonio Banderas, for the first time in over 2 decades, the highly acclaimed Spanish film maker has fashioned a psychosexual thriller that unnerves more than it entertains.

Banderas portrays a noted plastic surgeon who is developing a synthetic skin that can be grafted on to burnvictims. In Banderas’ pristine mansion in Toledo, which is complete with a lavish laboratory, he has a young woman (Elena Anaya) held captive that only his housekeeper (Marisa Paredes) knows about.

As it unravels what’s behind this situation, the film is as twisted as it is twisty with such disturbing details as suicide, rape, and sex reassignment surgery coming to the fore. Also in the mix is the aptly sleazy Roberto Álamo slinking around in a leopard skin suit, and Blanca Suárezas Banderas’ mentally shaky daughter.

With all those eclectic elements, you’d think you’d have a potent brew of prime Almodóvar, but not only do they not blend, they clash with one another no matter how subtly well-acted and well made the film is.

THE SKIN I LIVE IN is gorgeously shot by longtime collaborator cinematographer José Luis Alcaine, so I’ll call it lusciously creepy, but extremely creepy all the same.

I really wasn’t getting what Almodóvar was going for here, and the anticlimactic ending doesn’t help his case. This is a depraved tale that makes no statement about obsession or the theft of somebody’s sexual identity or anything really.

It’s a cold unpleasant experience that never got anywhere close to getting under my skin (yes, I know, I’m not the only critic who will say something like that).

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ARTHUR CHRISTMAS: The Meek Shall Inherit The Mirth

2011-11-23T01:49:00.001-05:00

ARTHUR CHRISTMAS (Dir. Sarah Smith, 2011)

Aardman Animations, the home of Wallace and Gromit, takes another step further away from clay animation with this 3D CGI holiday spectacular that roots for an underdog who wants no child to be left behind this Christmas without a present.

The underdog is Santa Claus's youngest son, the lanky accident-prone Arthur (voiced by James McAvoy), who gets in the way of his brother Steve's (Hugh Laurie) high tech military operation-stlye method of distributing gifts throughout the world from a ginormous STAR WARS-style air cruiser with a war room-esque bridge manned by elves.

Steve is primed to take over the Santa business, but his father (Jim Broadbent) announces that he's not stepping down just yet from his position at the North Pole. Meanwhile, Grandsanta (Bill Nighy), the oldest living Santa from a long line of St. Nicks, gripes about the newfangled technology calling Steve "a postman with a spaceship."

Arthur discovers that their "Christmas Accomplished" banner is premature as one present was not delivered, and with the help of Grandsanta and his oldschool sleigh, a spunky elf from the giftwrap battalion (Ashley Jensen), and, of course, flying reindeer, he sets out to right the wrong and save the day - or at least one child's day.

Like many 3D productions (with the mighty exception of Martin Scorsese's HUGO), the in-your-face imagery looks kind of cool at first, but that sensation fades fast. I wouldn't recommend spending the extra money, unless you happen to be a diehard fan of the 3D format.

ARTHUR CHRISTMAS has a lot of entertainment value, especially when it's satririzing the ridiculous logistics of Santa's 1 night a year occupation, but it feels more frantic than funny at times, and the stakes don't feel high enough.

It's still likable enough as a lark, though the premise of a lovable loser that wins out because of his purity has been done ad nauseum.

However, kids will be too caught up in all the swirling shininess on screen to care.

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Martin Scorsese's Amazing First Foray Into 3D

2011-11-23T00:38:00.000-05:00

HUGO (Dir. Martin Scorsese, 2011)

As I've reported many times, I'm not a fan of the current 3D trend. I've found it to be a headache inducing gimmick that gets in the waof, rather than enhances, the movie-going experience.

However, I was still incredibly eager to see what master film maker Martin Scorsese could do with the format, so I put my bias aside and happily donned the glasses to take in his grand adaptation of Brian Selznick's 2007 novel "The Invention of Hugo Cabret."

I was delighted from start to finish, as Scorsese's HUGO is an amazing experience in the third dimension.

Asa Butterfield portrays the title character, a 13 year old Parisian orphan who lives inside the walls of the Gare Montparnasse train station in the early 1930s. While not maintaining the station's many clocks, Butterfield spies on a toy stand run by the cold Ben Kingsley.

Butterfield is trying to finish building an automaton (a mechanical man) that his father (Jude Law) was working on before he death. Kingsley catches Butterfield stealing parts from his stand, and confiscates his father's notebook filled with important instructions.

While attempting to get the notebook back, Butterfield befriend's Kingsley's goddaughter (Chloë Grace Moretz), who happens to have a heart-shaped key that perfectly fits the automaton's key hole.

To maneuver through the mysteries of the movie, Butterfield gets help from Moretz, a wise old bookshop owner (the great Christopher Lee), and as a kind film historian (Michael Stahlberg), all while staying one step ahead of a bumbling station inspector (Sasha Baron Cohen who has just the right light comical approach to what could've been a standard fool on the sidelines role).

Butterfield learns that Kingsley is the legendary French film maker Georges Méliès, whose technical innovations in the art of movie production had folks dubbing him the world's first "Cinemagician."

There is certainly a lot of cinemagic on display in Hugo. From the inner workings of the train station's clocks, to the depth of details making up the Paris surroundings, there are a wealth of intoxicating visuals.

However, what's really stunning about HUGO is how touchingly personal a film it is. Scorsese successfully recreates the sense of wonder that he felt as a kid in the audience of a Brooklyn movie palace, with his love of movie magic culminating in a breathtaking mixture of original Méliès footage, and wondrously faithful re-creations.

Scorsese's first family film (indeed his first PG-rated film in almost 20 years) contains the best use of 3D imagery I've see yet, but it's such a work of overwhelming beauty that it would still be fantastic in 2D.

As the film's wide-eyed protagonist, Butterfield brings a lot of infectious spirit which is charmingly complimented by Moretz's precocious pluck. The subtle power of Kingsley's presence is also nicely matched with the poignancy of Helen McCrory as his wife who was once an actress in his films.

A cinematic love letter from one master to another, this film is as deserving of your ticket money as it is another Best Picture Oscar for Scorsese (Robert Richards' cinematography deserves an Academy Award too).

HUGO is one from the heart that will go down in history.

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THE MUPPETS: Go Ahead, Call It A Comeback

2011-11-23T00:07:00.005-05:00

THE MUPPETS (Dir. James Bobin, 2011)

It’s not surprising that somebody would try to reboot the Muppets. I mean, every other franchise in the world has been dusted off in the last decade so why not Jim Henson’s once wildly popular creations?

And it’s not surprising that that somebody would be Jason Segel, the oafish man-child best known for his work with Judd Apatow and the hit TV series How I Met Your Mother. Segel is a huge Muppets fan, who previously proved he could provide puppetry power in the Dracula musical climax of FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL, so there’s that.

But what is surprising is that THE MUPPETS is really good.

Segel, with the assistance of co-writer Nicholas Stoller, and director James Bobin, has wonderfully captured the spirit of the Muppets I knew as a kid in the ‘70s and ‘80s, making it feel like the muddled Muppet movies made in the ‘90s never existed.

The film has quite a lengthy, yet quite enjoyable, buildup before we see our old felt friends in which we meet a new Muppet named Walter (voiced by Peter Linz), who lives in a small town (named Smalltown) with Segel as his brother Gary. You see, somehow Muppets can be related to humans – we never see their parents or get any explanation, which is just as well.

Segel, and his longtime girlfriend Amy Adams, take Walter to Los Angeles to visit the Muppet Theater and Muppet Studios, only to them find them to be abandoned cobweb-covered tourist attractions that an evil oilman named Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) is targeting to tear down so he can drill for oil.

So it’s up to Walter, Segel, and Adams to re-unite the Muppets so they can save their old digs. They find Kermit living in a dark mansion alone with his memories (well, and an ‘80s robot that serves Tab and New Coke – nice fitting retro joke, huh?).

Once they convince Kermit to join them, they’re off to find Fozzie Bear (in a sleazy Reno casino tribute band called “The Moopets”), Miss Piggy (now Fashion Editor of Paris Vogue), and the Great Gonzo (currently a corporate CEO of a plumbing empire). Most hilarious is Animal in court-appointed anger management therapy with Jack Black as his sponsor.

With the help of a montage they locate the others (Rowlf the Dog, the Swedish Chef, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Beeker, Dr. Teeth, etc.), and they got a back-to-basics ‘hey, everybody let's put on a show' thing a-happenin'.

They have trouble getting a network to broadcast their telethon, as TV executive Rashida Jones tells them: “You guys aren’t famous anymore.” However Jones still gives them a shot, and the gang go full throttle to put on a money-raising spectacular in which almost every Muppet gets a chance to shine.

Bret McKenzie, from Flight of the Conchords, whose series was also helmed by director Bobin , wrote a few catchy songs for the production including the recurring theme “Life’s a Happy Song," and the Linz and Segel sung “Man or Muppet.”

I could’ve done without a few of the song/dance numbers – Amy Adams/Miss Piggy’s “Me Party” is a screen time waster, and Cooper’s rapping on “Let’s Talk About Me” is just plain awful - but for a great deal of its breezy 2 hour running time THE MUPPETS is a lot of fun.

Even the tacked on Segel/Adams rom com subplot (i.e. he forgets their 10th anniversary dinner in the midst of Muppet madness) doesn’t detract from the large amount of pure cinematic happiness on hand here.

I loved how so much of the meta material was laugh out loud funny, really enjoyed the abundant cameos which I won’t spoil, and was impressed at how dead-on the Muppet voices are – especially Steven Whitmire who has been doing Kermit since Henson died in 1991, and has often sounded a little off, but thankfully not here for the most part.

It’s certainly the best Muppet movie since Henson died, but it’s much more than that. Segel and co. have pulled off a tribute that revitalizes the furry family friednly franchise in the most welcome way.

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MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-11-17T05:56:00.000-05:00

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE (Dir. Sean Durkin, 2011)

If you can get past the title, this is a stunner.

Elizabeth Olsen is Martha, but while she was living with a cult for 2 years in the Catskills she was called “Marcy May.” “Marlene” is the name all the women group members are given to identify themselves when answering the phone (the men go by “Michael”).

Got it?

The film begins with Olsen fleeing the cult’s farm, and calling her older sister (Sarah Paulson) to come pick her up. Olsen stays with her sister and her husband (Hugh Dancy) at their Connecticut vacation house as she recovers.

But getting back to normal is going to be difficult as she is haunted by memories of what she’s been through.

“Do you ever have that feeling where you can’t tell if something is a memory or if it’s something you dreamed?” She asks Paulson, summing up what most of the movie is like.

As many scenes form, we are unsure if what is happening is past or present. We see flashbacks involving John Hawkes as the cult’s leader, who is as scary as he is charismatic. Hawkes trains the cult members how to handle guns, perform home invasions, and participate in forced sex rituals. Even when softly singing an old ‘60s folk song (aptly titled “Marcy’s Song), Hawkes is creepy as can be.

Olsen is understandably frightened about being abducted again, constantly feeling she’s being watched. Her behavior is unnerving to Paulson and Dancy who are trying to have a baby. At one point Olsen climbs into bed with them as they are having sex. Yep, the girl ain’t right.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE is a disturbing, unsettling experience. A lot of it drifts like a dream, but the kind of dream that's on the edge of a nightmare.

First time writer-director Durkin has crafted a stirring film, a different kind of psychological thriller than the formulaic fodder that usually goes by that label.

The material here may be a bit vague – we never get much of a backstory to the cult, and don’t get how Olsen got caught up with them in the first place – but this is a movie about moods and a fractured mindset, it’s not about details or exposition.

The ambiguous ending is sure to put many people off, but I found it to be fitting in keeping with the film’s eerie atmosphere.

Olsen’s performance never falters. It’s a challenging character that she infuses with an effective frazzled fragility, which is really impressive for her first leading role in a feature film.

Recently it was reported that the President ordered up this film for a screening at the White House.

Interesting choice. Maybe that will add some Obama buzz to the hugely favorable reviews this has already gathered. This is not a film to be ignored, and since the Commander in Chief himself sought it out, with hope many moviegoers will follow suit.

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Michael Shannon Needs Shelter From The Storm

2011-11-12T00:03:00.011-05:00

TAKE SHELTER (Dir. Jeff Nichols, 2011)

Ever since Michael Shannon stole REVOLUTIONARY ROAD out from under Leo DeCaprio and Kate Winslet a few years back, I've been waiting for the man to own a movie as the lead. Here, he gets his chance as a man tortured by apocalyptic visions.

Shannon plays a blue collar father in a small town in Ohio - so small that everybody knows each other - who continually sees ominous clouds, strange formations of frightened birds, and rain that looks like orange soda when it pours into his palm.

Nobody else sees this scary stuff so his wife (Jessica Chastain), best friend/co-worker (Shannon's Boardwalk Empire co-star Shea Whigham), and everybody else think Shannon is going crazy.

Shannon thinks he may be going insane too, as there is a history of mental illness in his family - Kathy Baker has a brief bit as his mother suffers from dementia.

Still, his awareness of his possibly delusionary state doesn't stop his from building a bomb shelter in his backyard.

There have been many stories about protagonists who may be crazy, or they may be on to something (that saying about paranoiacs being the people that know what's really going on comes to mind) - it's Twilight Zone 101.

I wish I could say that TAKE SHELTER brings something new to the table, but it doesn't. It's far from fully fleshed out, there's one too many fake-out nightmare scenes, and I don't think I took away what they wanted me to take away from the ending. I say I don't think so, because I really don't know what director Nichols (who also scripted the film) wanted folks to take away from it.

Chastain doesn't really have much to do as Shannon's wife except look worried - a part that resembles her role in THE TREE OF LIFE - but she brings a believable presence regardless.

It's Shannon's show though, and he owns the movie indeed. It's Oscar worthy work that's pretty much the sole reason to see this movie. His brow has never looked as furrowed before than in this excellent portrayal as a honest working man plagued by fear.

It's a performance that will stay with you for days.

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The MacGuffin in MARGIN CALL

2011-11-11T17:15:00.010-05:00

MARGIN CALL (Dir. J.C. Chandor, 2011)

Most movie-minded folks know what a “MacGuffin” is, but for those who don’t – it’s a term popularized by Alfred Hitchcock, meaning an object or event that drives the plot. From the Maltese Falcon to the Ark of the Covenant to the Dude’s rug, MacGuffins are inescapable plot elements in many many movies.

In “Margin Call”, we are introduced to the MacGuffin in the form of a USB drive that Stanley Tucci, just downsized from risk management at the fictitious firm the film is set at, gives to one of his former underlings (Zachary Quinto) with the warning “be careful.”

Quinto appraises the flash drive’s content after his co-workers leave, and, after crunching some numbers, he urgently calls everybody back to the office. Senior trader Paul Bellany calls Kevin Spacey as a senior broker, stressed out about business as well for his dying dog, and the news spreads throughout the firm leading to a tension filled all-nighter.

I was less concerned with the timely play-out of how our current financial crises came into being here, than I was how Chandor’s intricately plotted scenario handled its MacGuffin. All the characters (including Simon Baker as head of securities and Demi Moore as head of risk) take a glimpse at Quinto’s computer screen and are shocked by what they see.

We never see the screen, which is understandable because it would just be a bunch of numbers we couldn’t make sense of, but we get from everybody’s reaction (“Are you sure these numbers are correct?” they all seem to ask) that the info indicates that their firm is in major trouble.

The news is so dire that CEO Jeremy Irons arrives to take control. In a heated meeting, Quinto (who is one of the film’s producers) lays it out to the steely Irons: “Sir, if those assets decrease by just 25 percent, and remain on our books, that loss would be greater than the current market capitalization of this entire company.”

It is way less complicated than it sounds. Simply stated, the MacGuffin in MARGIN CALL is like a hole in a sinking ship. All the shipmates try to fix the hole, but it’s too late.

As the Captain, Irons takes desperate measures to ensure survival, but at costs that may ruin the future of the ship, and poison the waters around them.

Cold and humorless, yet still incredibly involving, MARGIN CALL takes us into the scary isolated heart of Wall Street before the rest of us had any clue as to what was going down. Its flawless cast (particularly Quinto and Spacey, who does his best work in ages), and intense tone kept me compelled from start to finish, even when I could see right through its MacGuffin.

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Faulty "Tower Heist" has a few laughs

2011-11-04T01:00:00.002-04:00

TOWER HEIST (Dir. Brett Ratner, 2011)

This began life as a notion Eddie Murphy had for a “black OCEAN’S 11’” but they threw some money at it and made it into a concept, and then later turned it into an idea.

That idea is a Ben Stiller movie with Murphy as a supporting player, ganging up with Matthew Broderick, Gabourey Sidibe (PRECIOUS), Michael Peña, and Casey Affleck to rob a billionaire (Alan Alda) who stole their pensions.

Unfortunately, even with that incredibly capable cast and that promising premise, TOWER HEIST is a half baked comic crime caper that comes close to bringing big laughs, but never quite delivers.

There are a fair amount of small laughs throughout the film, and I caught myself smiling at the shenanigans onscreen a few times, but the all-too-familiar construction of the material kept holding back the funny.

The first half is all set-up with Stiller as the by-the-book building manager of a luxurious Manhattan high rise (obviously modeled on the Trump Tower) realizing how evil Alda is after the Ponzi scheming penthouse owner is charged with financial fraud.

With the help of small-time crook Murphy, Stiller enlists his co-worker co-horts (Sidibe, Peña, and Affleck) and Broderick, as a down on his luck Wall Street broker just evicted from his tower apartment, to pull off a big-time job – stealing 20 million from Alda’s penthouse safe.

The film has been touted as a comeback for Murphy, and while there’s an undeniable charge to seeing him again assume the foul mouthed quick tempered persona that he had abandoned for family fare over a decade ago, too many scenes have no payoffs.

In one scene in which Murphy is training the crew to be thieves he gives them bobby pins and locks them on a building’s roof in the extreme cold. Once Murphy says his lines (like “here’s your punk ass bobby pin”) and leaves, the scene is over – we don’t get seeing the guys attempting to pick the lock because I think screenwriters Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson couldn’t come up with anything funny there and thought Murphy’s shtick would be enough.

This is a method they seem to employ throughout: let’s just get these guys bickering in set piece after set piece and people will be laughing so hard they won’t notice the predictable plot mechanics.

Director Ratner doesn’t provide a strong enough balance between laughs and thrills to make TOWER HEIST anything special - at its best it’s likably perfunctory. I also could’ve done without the Téa Leoni as an FBI agent who is on to both good guy Stiller and bad guy Alda subplot, but usually I can do without Téa Leoni so there’s that.

Like I said, I did lightly laugh here and there (not just at Murphy as Broderick, Sidibe and Peña also have their moments), and I felt a little excitement during a scene involving Alda’s Ferrarri (allegedly once owned by Steve McQueen) being dangled from a cable from the top of the tower, but with its many plot-holes and lack of payoffs this is nowhere close to how good it could’ve been.

Here’s hoping Murphy’s newly proposed project that remolds his original black ensemble comedy notion into something titled JAMAL AND TYRELL AND OMAR AND BRICK AND MICHAEL'S WACK-ASS WEEKEND gets a lot further past the idea stage.

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PUSS IN BOOTS: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-10-28T00:45:00.005-04:00

PUSS IN BOOTS (Dir. Chris Miller, 2011)

After what’s been a pretty unremarkable year for animated kids movies, one in which even the mighty Pixar faltered with the lackluster CARS 2, it‘s a pleasant surprise to find that DreamWorks delivers a worthwhile romp with PUSS IN BOOTS. And since it’s a prequel spin-off of the SHREK series, that’s saying a lot.

Antonio Banderas, in full Spanish swashbuckler mode, voices the fearless furry outlaw hero in this lively adventure that’s part Western, and part fairy-tale pastiche.

Puss teams up with Humpty Alexander Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis) and Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) to steal the goose that lays golden eggs from a castle in the clouds. They have to contend with the murderous thieves Jack and Jill (wonderfully voiced by Billy Bob Thornton and Amy Sedaris) who have discovered an ancient power that could destroy the world.

We follow Puss and his cohorts through a sprightly series of sword fights, chases and near escapes at dizzying heights, all handled with great gusto.

I particularly liked a saloon-set “dance fight” scene between Puss and Kitty Softpaws with its kinetic display of fancy footwork and saucy wit.

Thankfully, unlike SHREK and its sequels, there is a minimum of modern pop culture references – lines like “the first rule of Bean Club is that you do not talk about Bean Club” are sparse.

The film is more concerned with cat-centric humor. Puss can easily be distracted by a laser pointer like dot of light darting around, and the way he laps up milk from a shot glass won’t just make fans of felines laugh.

Banderas infuses Puss with vigor which makes it sound like he means it when he declares “My thirst for adventure will never be quenched!” He’s perfectly matched with the sultry Hayek.

Galifianakis gives an energetic voicing to Humpty Dumpty, but it isn’t a very distinctive character. A number of current comics like David Cross or Patton Oswalt could’ve done the part with very little difference.

That’s a tiny quibble for PUSS IN BOOTS is a fast paced and funny good time. The only other complaint is the obligatory 3D presentation that every CGI-ed family film seems to be outfitted with these days.

I took my brother’s kids to see the movie at the local IMAX theater (at Marbles Kids Museum in Raleigh) and they oohed and aahed at the in-your-face visuals…for about 5 minutes. After that, they told me later, they were annoyed by the once again unnecessary embellishment.

The 3D didn’t do much to enhance the experience for me either. So save your money. The exquisite terrain that this kitty tackles – a well designed world that has a more appealing take on Spaghetti Western aesthetics than RANGO – will shine just as bright (or brighter) in 2D.

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Johnny English is back! But why?

2011-10-21T00:28:00.011-04:00

JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN
(Dir. Oliver Parker, 2011)

Of all the unnecessary sequels this year, (THE HANGOVER PART 2, PIRATES 4, CARS 2, etc.) this is the most perplexing. I mean, there really can’t be many out there who were fans of “Johnny English,” which came out nearly a decade ago, right?

But it was a huge hit and that’s all it takes for Hollywood to approve a follow-up so here we have it: the return of Rowan Atkinson as the bumbling blend of Mr. Bean and James Bond.

It’s standard superspy satire stuff, the kind that we’ve seen tons of times with a secret evil organization’s assassination plot thwarted through a series of comic action sequences.

This amounts to one groaner after another, yet every now and then there’s something that’s almost amusing. One such bit has the suave yet daft Atkinson, who we first catch up with training in Tibet to become a Martial Arts master, engaged in a roof-top chase.

Obviously a call-out to the BOURNE series (JOHNNY ENGLISH RE-BOURNE?), the scene features Atkinson catching up with his prey without death defying stunts but calmly approaching through sly maneuvers and even taking an elevator to the ground while the bad guy climbs down scaffolding. I almost came close to a slight chuckle.

The rest is tired terrain as you can guess the villain right off the bat, and sense every joke coming way before they arrive. Mixed up in these pointless shenanigans is The Wire’s Dominic West as Atkinson’s colleague, X-Files’ Gillian Anderson as their boss “Pegasus,” and Rosamund Pike as the obligatory love interest.

The best I can say about JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN is that it’s slickly made (Oliver Parker’s direction is sharp and Danny Cohen's cinematography is shiny), and kids will probably enjoy it as Atkinson is a likable bloke who can pull off some sturdy slapstick.

None of it made me laugh out loud, but folks around me were laughing hysterically so I guess there’s an audience out there for this brand of obvious lowbrow humor.

If you do happen to be a fan of Atkinson’s shtick make sure you stay through the end credits because there’s a bonus scene highlighting the man’s cooking skills that, like I said about a few other bits here, is almost amusing. Almost.

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RED STATE Now Out On Blu Ray, DVD, and Netflix Instant

2011-10-17T01:07:00.008-04:00

RED STATE (Dir. Kevin State, 2011)

Last month, I went to a one night only special showing of Kevin Smith’s new film RED STATE at the Galaxy Cinema in Cary. I was a bit hesitant to go because tickets were $20, which is a bit much for a movie even with the event featuring a live interactive Q & A with Smith via Twitter.

Remembering that in response to the negative critical reaction to his previous film COP OUT, Smith tweeted that critics should have to pay to see his films like everybody else and even held up a sign at this year’s Sundance that said “God hates press screenings,” I decided I should pony up the money to see RED STATE.

I figured that I had seen his last several movies free, and it was payback time. I strongly disliked COP OUT and agree with Roger Ebert’s quip: “Kevin Smith thinks critics should have had to pay to see COP OUT. But Kev, then they would REALLY have hated it,” but dammit I’ll still take the bait.

If I didn’t know Smith had made RED STATE, I never would’ve guessed. It’s refreshingly out of his cheap comedy comfort zone and smack dab into the world of scrappy cheap horror, with Smith taking chances in a way I thought he never would. It starts out like PORKY’S with a few high school kids trying to get laid, and winds up like Waco, with a compound of extreme religious fundamentalists under siege.

Michael Angarano, Kyle Gallner, and Nicholas Braun are the teens who are captured by members of the Five Points Church led by Michael Parks as Pastor Abin Cooper. As the frightened captives squirm – Angarono in a cage, the others in a crawl space beneath the church’s stage – Parks sermonizes at grueling yet enrapturing length with gravely-voiced intensity about the homosexuals being Satan’s instrument on Earth hastening the demise of us as a species, then dismisses the children present: “It’s gonna get grown up in here!”

Realizing that they are going to be murdered by the crazy cult for being immoral fornicators, the frantic trio try everything they can to escape.

The always awesome John Goodman as an agent for the A.T.F. gets called in by a Sheriff played by Stephen Root, who is a closeted homosexual, and a shoot-out bloodbath results.

There are sloppy edits and some jarring set-ups, but this is easily Smith’s best work in ages. In the Q & A afterwards Smith said that he “got tired of making ‘Kevin Smith movies, as much as people were tired of seeing them.” Here he proves that he’s not a hack with a powerfully paced, engagingly plotted film that features some of his best dialogue and, in Parks, actually has a performance worth nominating for an Oscar. Can’t think of another Smith film you could say that about.

It looks like Smith raided the casts of Breaking Bad and Treme for RED STATE as Anna Gunn, Matt L. Jones, Goodman, and Melissa Leo (playing the woman that is used to lure the teens in with an online sex ad) are on hand.

Although I see that a lot of critics aren’t as enthusiastic about it, I really enjoyed RED STATE and think many will take to it too now that’s available on Blu ray, DVD, and Netflix Instant starting today. I’m not sure it was completely worth the 20 bucks I spent to see it, but I can honestly say I didn’t feel ripped off. Now, if I had paid to see COP OUT at any price mind you – that would REALLY be a different story.

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THE THING '11 - A Prequel And A Remake

2011-10-14T01:10:00.007-04:00

THE THING (Dir. Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., 2011)

Since the original (titled THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD) was released in 1951, and the John Carpenter version came out in 1982, it looks like we’re gonna get a remake of THE THING every 30 years. But wait, this new one isn’t supposed to be a remake – it’s a prequel to the ’82 one. However since it has the exact same narrative, I’m going to consider it a prequel and a remake.

Carpenter’s THE THING starred Kurt Russell and a great cast of character actors including Wilfred Brimley, Keith David, Richard Dysart, David Clennon, and T.K. Carter as a research team in the Antarctic who battle a shape-shifting alien that can assume the appearance of the people that it kills.

There was not a woman in the cast, barely any in the crew either, so the film makers rectify that this time out by having Mary Elizabeth Winstead take on the Russell protagonist part. Beat-by-beat, Carpenter’s film is recreated but with none of the mystery or claustrophobic edge.

Set in the days right before the events of the original (uh, original remake?), THE THING ’11 focuses on the Norwegian team that encountered the killer creature from outer space before it got to Russell’s crew.

Writers Eric Heisserer and Ronald D. Moore, who both separately have had their hands in several fanboy franchises like Star Trek, FINAL DESTINATION and the A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET reboot, have obviously studied Carpenter’s film to an insane degree, attempting to make a movie that forms a strong connective tissue to the earlier work – one that ends exactly how the ’82 remake begins, and replicates many details – sets, wardrobe, lens flares, etc.

Unfortunately that framework does nothing to hide that this is a pointless rehash, typical of the quality of just about every other remakes of ‘70s and ‘80s horror flicks that have been hitting the multiplexes over the last decade.

Despite that her wide-eyed reaction shots fill the screen for most of the movie, Winstead (a North Carolina native) barely registers as the heroine of the piece. Ripley she ain’t. Winstead had a lot more magnetism in SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THEN UNIVERSE.

The supporting cast doesn’t fare much better, but Joel Edgerton, Eric Christian Olsen, and especially Ulrich Thomsen as the Norwegian chief of alien research have some stand out moments with their stock characters.

Sure, this one’s special effects are better than Rob Bottin’s in Carpenter’s film, but nothing any more impressive than those on Falling Skies or any other T.V. sci-fi these days.

The aliens have some sort of large device or wall (not sure which) on their buried spaceship that looks like a giant glowing Tetris game. That at least gives us a tiny bit of TRON-like light in this tediously dark and murky monster movie.

As I've said before, sometimes the only good thing about a reboot, remake, prequel, or whatever you want to call this is that it calls attention to the original movie.

At least this retread suceeds in doing that.

Postnote: John Carpenter’s THE THING is available on Netflix Instant now so check it out if you haven’t seen it. It's definitely a better use of your time than this prequel/remake/whatever.

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A Hilarious Hillbilly Horror Comedy If There Ever Was One

2011-10-11T07:45:00.001-04:00

TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL (Dir. Eli Craig, 2010)

There really isn’t “evil” in this movie. It’s just a little misunderstanding that leads to a series of senseless killings where a lot of college kid blood gets on the hands of a couple of innocent backwoods rednecks.

The title characters of this low budget Canadian production are portrayed by Alan Tudyk (Firefly, DEATH AT A FUNERAL), and Tyler Labine in his first starring role, who encounter a group of camping coeds when visiting their new acquired “vacation house” in the Appalachian Mountains. The house is a crumbling old cabin, which looks like it’s straight out of the EVIL DEAD movies or every other horror film ever - and that, of course, is precisely the point.

When undressing to go skinny dipping with her school mates, 30 Rock’s Katrina Bowden falls off a rock and almost drowns, but Tudyk and Labine who are doing some late night fishing, save her and take her back to their place in their canoe, leaving her friends to think they’ve abducted her.

Led by the crazed Jesse Moss, the college kids attempt to rescue Bowden, but that ends up resulting in multiple accidental deaths involving impalings, fire, a chain-saw, and a wood chipper.

Tudyk and Labine, who chalk this up to a “doozy of a day,” think the college kids have made a suicide pact, so there’s that clouding up the murky maniacal mix.

There’s as much a Coen brothers in farce-mode feel to the material, as there is the goofing on a genre jibing of Edgar Wright (SHAWN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ) happening. I was reminded by the relationship of the escaped convict duo of John Goodman and William Forsythe in RAISING ARIZONA, in the funny exchanges of the leads.

Despite their limited intellect, Tucker and Dale have a very funny and actually endearing grasp on a wide vocabulary (Dale claims to remember everything he’s ever heard), and a working understanding of psychological issues which helps when Bowden, who is studying to be a therapist, tries to get everybody to sit down and work things out.

A hilarious hillbilly horror comedy if there ever was one, TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL never runs out of steam. It briskly piles up a bounty of slasher movie clichés with delicious absurdity.

No doubt there’s a following out there for this that will build bit-by-bit by word of mouth, because I definitely sense a future cult classic.

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REAL STEEL: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-10-07T18:34:00.001-04:00

REAL STEEL (Dir. Shawn Levy, 2011)

A father and son bond over robots bashing the bejesus out of one another in this piece of cliché-ridden formulaic fluff that is sure to be a ginormous crowd-pleaser. I'm basing that on the audience at the preview screening I attended who applauded many times throughout the film.

Like the TRANSFORMERS movies, I'm feeling a "critic-proof" vibe here. Watch this be a huge hit despite critical consensus rating it low, because, hey, people aren't going to take their kids to see THE IDES OF MARCH this weekend, are they?

The movie is set in the future, just 9 years from now mind you, where not much is different except that there's a “World Robot Boxing” league (the WRB). Obviously, it's Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots as a global sport, and Hugh Jackman as a former boxer, wants to take a bot to the big-time.

Jackman is the ultimate movie underdog - he's crusty, washed up, and heavily in debt, trying to make ends meet by entering old rusty robots in rodeos and state fairs. Then his long lost son shows up, a precocious (read: smartass) Dakota Goyo, to join Jackman on the road.

Goyo takes to a outdated robot he finds in a junkyard. It only takes a montage for the robot, named Atom, to be trained and wired into shape in order to win match after match.

This all leads to a climatic fight with the undefeated champion, Zeus, a mega-robot created by Karl Yune as an arrogant Japanese designer, partnered with an icy Russian robot owner Olga Fonda who Goyo refused to sell Atom to.

The CGI-ed animatronic robot action is certainly convincing, enough to make the packed crowd around me react as if they were watching a live event happening right in front of them.

But while they clapped, I cringed.

I cringed at the ultra-hackneyed dialogue – Hope Davis as Goyo’s rich aunt actually says to Jackman: “You'vebeen working with those robots so long you've become one,” a line that I bet made Davis cringe inside.

I cringed at the by-the-numbers plotting in which there was not one unpredictable moment.

I cringed at the dance moves Goyo does with Atom (they do “the Robot” of course) that appeared to be sponsored by Dr. Pepper from the huge amount of product placement.

I cringed at the tacked on romantic subplot that has Lost’s Evangeline Lilly cheering the father-son-robot team from the side-lines.

As unbearably cheesy in its noisy boxing ring scenes as it is in its quiet attempts to pull the heartstrings, REAL STEEL is like a robot itself – a mechanical contraption made out of parts from other movies that has no emotional depth. I know that’s an easy dig to make, but it’s what this treacly tripe deserves.

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THE IDES OF MARCH: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-10-07T18:28:00.002-04:00

THE IDES OF MARCH (Dir. George Clooney, 2011)

Ryan Gosling continues his dominance of the silver screen this year in George Clooney’s 4th film as director, a political drama that’s flawed yet still a gem.

As a presidential campaign advisor, Gosling utilizes the same cool confidence he had in last month’s DRIVE in his back room dealings to get Clooney, as a Democratic Pennsylvania Governor, into the White House.

Gosling answers to Philip Seymour Hoffman as Clooney’s harried campaign manager whose rival on the competing Republican candidate’s team is Paul Giamatti, which is great because I’ve wanted to see Hoffman and Giamatti in a film together for ages.

Hence the title, the film takes place in March right before the crucial Ohio primary and deals with a scandalous secret involving a young staffer (Evan Rachel Wood) who Gosling has a fling with.

Wood just happens to be the daughter of the present head of the National Democratic Party, so a tangled web is being weaved when Gosling learns incredibly damaging information about his man in the race.

Giamatti wants to woo Gosling over to his side, and that might not be such a far-fetched option, but not one he’s going to leak to Marissa Tomei, Hoffman’s co-star from BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD, as a New York Times Reporter.

To have these big names reciting lofty dialogue in this tightly directed film goes a long way. Sure, it’s a story we’ve heard many times before about corruption and compromise, idealism vs. empty ambition, but with these acting heavyweights aided by a sharp screenplay it’s an essential experience.

Except for a few major moments, Clooney mainly stays in the background while Gosling carries the movie. It builds to a chilling confrontation between the 2 men that I really wish television ad spots for the film wouldn’t show clips of. It’s not a spoiler that ruins the movie, but it’s still a little too revealing.

THE IDES OF MARCH doesn’t reach the heights of Clooney’s GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, for there are some convolutions in the plot mechanics. It’s a bit of a stretch to believe that Gosling alone would be able to manipulate the situation so cunningly, but the film gets so close to brilliance that it’s easy to look past such gaps in logic.

With a stellar cast, excellent cinematography by Phaedon Pappamichael, an un-imposing score by Alexandre Desplat, and a screenplay written by Clooney, Grant Heslov, and Beau Willimon (the film is based on Willimon’s play “Farragut North”), this is certainly the definition of a prestige picture, or more crudely Oscar bait.

It does has power aplenty to take it through to awards season, but I bet it will hailed more for its performances over any statement about dirty politics that it tries to make.

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BELLFLOWER: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-10-02T18:15:00.009-04:00

BELLFLOWER (Dir. Evan Glodell, 2011)

Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy torches girl’s stuff with a flamethrower he built himself.

That’s one way to put what happens in Evan Glodell’s directorial debut “Bellflower” which he also wrote and stars in.

Named for the street it mostly takes place on (Bellflower Avenue in Los Angeles), Glodell’s film is a frenetic mix of sex and violence shot through dirty lenses that comes off like cinematic graffiti.

Glodell plays Woodrow, who you’d label a slacker as he has no visible means of support, who with his best friend Aiden (Tyler Dawson), is preparing for the apocalypse by building weaponry and outfitting their car, because they were highly influenced from watching MAD MAX on VHS over a 100 times in their youth.

At a dive bar, Glodell meets a bleached blonde (Jessie Wiseman) in a disgusting cricket eating contest. There’s chemistry between the couple, but you just know it’s going to be explosive, not in a good way, especially when she says “You don't want me to be your girlfriend, because I will hurt you.”

Translation: Girl is going to cheat, most likely with her roommate (Vincent Grashaw) one can easily guess when seeing the ominous shot that introduces him.

Glodell and Wiseman take a road-trip to Texas on their first date, all the while drinking whiskey in Dixie cups dispensed from a nozzle on the dashboard of Glodell’s Volvo. “It’s like a James Bond car for drunks!” Wiseman says.

Seeking out the sleaziest, most dangerous roadside dinner they can find, Glodell ends up getting punched in the face by a redneck pick-up trucker, which won’t be the last time our protagonist will take a beating.

When the bottom falls out shortly after they return home with Globell getting in a motorcycle accident after discovering Wiseman’s infidelity, Dawson presents his injured friend with a black muscle car dubbed “Medusa.”

BELLFLOWER is messy, but it’s not a mess. Its emotional element is undercooked, but its chaotic construction belies a purposeful production that makes the most of its extremely low budget, which was reportedly around $17,000.

In addition to his writing, directing, and lead acting duties, Glodell also actually ate bugs, got punched in the face, and built the flamethrower, car, as well as the camera he used to shoot the film.
All of which makes BELLFLOWER one of the most impressive debuts in recent memory.

To get a sense of a filmmaker’s hopes and dreams is one thing, but to as effectively capture, with great gusto, their fears and nightmares can be just as beautiful.

However, I wouldn’t call this film beautiful, for it is often outright ugly, but its oversaturated visuals displaying grimy desperate terrain burned well into my psyche nevertheless.

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50/50: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-09-30T14:14:00.014-04:00

50/50 (Dir. Jonathan Levine, 2011)

Mining the misery of coping with cancer for comedy may not sound like a promising premise, yet 50/50, based on screenwriter Will Reiser’s bout with the illness, pulls it off with humorously heartfelt aplomb.

When Seattle public radio writer/producer Joseph Gordon-Levitt is diagnosed with the disease he’s unsurprisingly devastated, but he has a devoted girlfriend(Bryce Dallas Howard), and a supportive best friend (Seth Rogen) to help get him through.

Uh, make that just a supportive friend, as Rogen discovers at an art gallery that Howard is cheating on Gordon-Levitt and has photographic evidence of this on his cell phone. Howard is soon out of the picture, and Gordon-Levitt turns to Anna Kendrick as a therapist who’s adorably awkward in her newness to the job as she admits he’s only her third patient.

You got to love a movie that makes a convincing case for exploiting your ailment to get laid, a plan that anyone could guess was the scruffy Rogen’s. After helping shave Gordon-Levitt’s head with his “ball trimmers,” Rogen takes his friend out to a club in one of the film’s funniest scenes where they learn that “I have cancer” is not an effective pick-up line.

So the profane, yet mildly profound 50/50 is essentially a bromance in the Apatowian tradition, but it doesn’t try too hard for laughs, they come naturally from conversations and situations that feel lovingly adapted from real life.

Take the case of Gordon-Levitt’s parents. The always welcome Anjelica Houston has the well-worn worried-sick mother part, but doesn’t overplay it. Likewise Serge Houde as the father who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Neither character is exaggerated for comedic effect, or absorbed in messy melodrama and that’s incredibly refreshing to witness.

I was amused as much as I was touched by this film. I’m fine with Gordon- Levitt doing big ass Christopher Nolan flicks, and Rogen trying to find his footing in stoner superhero movies (or whatever the Hell you’d call the upcoming JAY AND SETH VS. THE APOCALYPSE), as long as they do funny small scale stories with emotional pull like this every once in a while.

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MONEYBALL: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-09-23T14:11:00.001-04:00

MONEYBALL (Dir. Bennett Miller, 2011)

Some of the best camaraderie I’ve seen on the big screen lately is in the exchanges between Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill throughout this unorthodox take on the traditional inspirational sports story.

Pitt plays the real-life Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, who recruits Hill, as a Yale economy major based on Paul DePodesta, to help him think outside the box in putting together a baseball team on an extremely low budget.

There’s a delicious deadpan thing happening with Pitt and Hill as they employ a statistical approach to scouting for new players, no doubt due to the thoroughy witty screenplay written by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian. It’s a pleasure to see Pitt as basically a regular relatable guy - a divorced dad who is driven to shake things up in his career - trading ideas with Hill, in one of his most likable and believable roles.

A dour Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the field manager of the team, doesn’t quite get what Pitt and Hill are up to so there are some flare-ups, but a rag tag roster of players is assembled (including Chris Pratt, Stephen Bishop, Casey Bond, and Royce Clayton) that pulls off a 20-game winning streak.

Despite such factors as Pitt’s overly precocious daughter (Kerris Dorsey) and his ex-wife (a barely registering Robin Wright), there’s not much of an emotional impact to this material, but the backroom break-downs which make up the bulk of this film are engaging enough to draw one in.

Subdued yet extremely sharp, MONEYBALL isn’t a movie just for baseball fanatics, it’s for anybody who enjoys character driven drama about people experimenting with new methods with compelling determination. Pitt provides one of his most down to earth performances that carries the film superbly, and the inventive pairing of him with Hill works way better than one would think.

Not being a baseball guy, or a sports guy at all for that matter, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this film. It has the drive of the best docudramas – the ones that educate as much as they entertain – and folks should walk away with a good sense of how a couple of everyday guys can really be gamechangers.

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Blu Ray/DVD Review: CONAN O'BRIEN CAN'T STOP

2011-09-13T00:02:00.005-04:00

This documentary drops today on Blu ray and DVD:

CONAN O'BRIEN CAN'T STOP (Dir. Rodman Flender, 2011)

The title shot of this film has Conan O'Brien backstage strumming his guitar framed exactly like Bob Dylan was in the title shot of the 1965 documentary DON'T LOOK BACK. The font is even the same so it appears that director Rodman is attempting to do what D.A. Pennebaker did definitively for Dylan: capture an icon on tour during a pivotal period of transition.

Sadly, this is hardly a definitive or essential piece of work. It's a sloppily assembled, horribly uneven, and only fitfully funny film that jumps around spastically as much as its subject often does during his monologues - only it's less annoying when Conan does it.

I expected so much more from the director of LEPRECHAUN 2!

At the beginning Flender sums up the situation that I'm sure everybody reading this surely knows, so I'll try to keep it brief - after losing his Tonight Show gig on NBC in early 2010, Conan contractually could not appear on television, radio or the internet for 6 months, so he went out on a tour dubbed "The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour."

Okay, so that wasn't very brief.

There are a lot of clips of amusing stage antics, and some entertaining excerpts of the stable of songs (mostly rockabilly) played on the tour, but the choppiness of the presentation prevents immersion into the material.

The soundbite nature of the editing makes the interview bits unable to provide much insight. We hear Conan talk about the raw deal he was given (at point he says "sometimes I'm so mad I can't even breathe"), but you're better off with the 60 Minutes interview from last year if you want anything approaching relevations.

Still, Conan is an extremely funny guy so the film can't help have some hilarity - you gotta love a guy who says "it's in God's hands now" after sending a tweet. Sometimes Conan comes off mean with his constant comical verbal abuse of his assistant Sona Movsesian, the school boy punches to the shoulders of staff members, and the merciless ribbing of 30 Rock's Jack McBrayer - but hey, that's just the man's patented attention seeking persona. He acknowledges as much: "I might be a fuckin' genius and I might be the biggest dick ever, I don't know. Or maybe both - that's what Patton was."

It's obvious that Conan is always "on" when he's in front of a camera (I bet a lot of the time off camera too), so its a documentary that will be most enjoyed by hardcore fanatics i.e. Team Coco.

Although CONAN O'BRIEN CAN'T STOP isn't a great documentary, it's a worthwhile Blu ray/DVD because of its abundant special features.

The commentary with Conan, Flender, and the crew is much funnier than the movie (Conan says he wanted the tour's lengthy name to be even longer: "I wanted to call it 'The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour Because of Jay Leno Tour'"), there's a fairly insightful 11 minute interview, and a nice smattering of watchable outtakes which are listed below.

Special Features: Commentary with Director Rodman Flender, Conan O'Brien, Andy Richter, Mike Sweeney and Sona Movsesian, Interview with Conan O'Brien, Interview Outtakes, Additional Scenes.

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ATTACK THE BLOCK: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-09-11T12:32:00.012-04:00

This British sci-fi comedy is playing exclusively in the Triangle at the Colony Theater in Raleigh:

ATTACK THE BLOCK (Dir. Joe Cornish, 2011)

A breath of fresh air after this superhero/sequel saturated summer, "Attack the Block" posits a teenaged South London street gang versus an alien invasion with thrillingly funny results.

There's a bit of a GOONIES filtered through the sensibility of SHAWN OF THE DEAD (Edgar Wright co-executive produced) thing going down as the kids race around a grimy low-income apartment building known as "the Block" (as in Block of flats), battling black furry monsters with green glowing teeth that they call "bear/wolf/gorilla motherfuckers."

The leader of the gang is the unsmiling John Boyega as Moses, who seems destined to the life of a go nowhere drug dealer until this unexpected attack puts him to the test. Boyega's crew is made up of Simon Howard, Alex Esmail, Franz Drameh, and Leeon Jones.

The underaged hoods first encounter the aliens in the middle of mugging a nurse (Jodie Whittaker) on her way home to the same complex they live in. Whittaker gets away as the gang go after the creature and kill it figuring that it's something they can maybe sell on Ebay.

Moses stashes the dead monster at the apartment of deadly drug kingpin Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter), who has a weed selling underling played by Nick Frost (there's some of that SHAWN OF THE DEAD vibe I was talking about).

Despite their prickly first meeting, Whittaker joins forces with Boyega and his boys (boyz?), while the spot-on Luke Treadaway, as a geeky stoner gang member wannabe, also gets wrapped up into the warfare.

The film builds into a chaotic action-packed blast as the kids pull their resources (mostly fireworks) to battle the bunch of bear/wolf/gorilla motherfuckers (just wanted to type that again), and there are tons of laugh-out loud lines (like "this is too much madness to fit into a text!"), every step of the way.

The movie is a bit too dark - not thematically, but lighting-wise - as some shots are hard to follow through the murky shadows, yet its small scale special effects work well enough to serve the story and tone.

ATTACK THE BLOCK looks destined to be a future cult movie, perfect for late night viewings, but don't wait until then - this is well worth seeking out now while it's still on the big screen.

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CREATURE: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-09-09T03:00:00.002-04:00

CREATURE

(Dir. Fred M. Andrews, 2011)

With its skinny dip in the swamp beginning featuring the full frontal nudity of Jennifer Lynn Warren, we get a good sense of what’s in store in the low budget directorial debut of Fred M. Andrews. Warren is attacked from underwater by an unseen entity, and she frantically tries to swim back ashore. She loses her legs then her life, so there we have it - the first casualty of CREATURE.

The film has the familiar set-up of a group of young couples on a road trip camping out in dangerous territory. The guys (Mahcad Brooks, Dillon Casey, and Aaron Hill) are Marines, and Serinda Swan, Lauren Schneider, and Amanda Fuller play their girlfriends. They stop at a old country store run by Sid Haig, where they learn about the local legend of Lockjaw, a half-man, half alligator that they first dismiss as a “Southern fried version of Bigfoot.”

They soon find out otherwise when they make the mistake of setting up tents in the backwoods of the Louisiana Bayou.

On the way to that destination we get the intense back story that the creature began life as an inbred man named Grimley, portrayed by Daniel Bernhardt. It’s cool that the monster is not a CGI creation, but Bernhardt in a full body costume – a scary sight that was effective enough to make the cover of Fangoria magazine.

There’s lots of blood and gore plus plenty of violence, and the before mentioned nudity so brace yourself for a gripping, if at times grueling, good time.

In an ensemble cast of unknowns, Haig stands out. Film fans should recognize him from movies such as HALLOWEEN (the Rob Zombie remake), KILL BILL 2, HOUSE OF A 1000 CORPSES, and many more.

It obviously recalls SWAMP THING, and, of course, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, but director Andrews, who co-wrote the screenplay with David Morse, pays homage to those movies by playing it straight.

In a phone conversation with Andrews, he told me that he thinks of the film as an “anti-horror horror movie.” I think that’s a good way of putting it.

Although it's a bit disjointed and definitely not for the squeamish, CREATURE is a creepy cheapie that should delight old school horror fans and lovers of monster movies. Exploitation die-hards will likely embrace it too.

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THE DEBT: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-08-31T01:56:00.004-04:00

Opening today at nearly every multiplex in Raleigh and the Triangle area:

THE DEBT (Dir. John Madden, 2011)

How can a film that features impassioned performances from such acting heavyweights as Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and Sam Worthington among others, be such a dreary drag?

I believe it has something to do with the plotting. THE DEBT goes back and forth from 1966 to 1997 to tell the story of 3 Mossad secret agents (Mirren, Wilkinson, and Ciarán Hinds) who have been keeping a secret about the fate of a Nazi war criminal (Jesper Christensen) they had once kidnapped in East Berlin.

Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Marton Csokas play the agents in the '60s who track Christensen who is known as the Surgeon of Birkenau. When he escapes after a brutal fight with Chastain, they agree to lie about his death. 30 years later they learn that Christensen may still be alive, so Mirren travels to the hospital he's reportedly in to finally finish him off forever.

The movie miserably goes through the motions, with no sense of a compelling narrative. It's perplexingly tension-free especially considering the subject matter. There is a strand about a love triangle between the 3 leads, but it's handled in such a murky unaffected manner that it feels like it doesn't matter. Maybe that's because it doesn't.

It also has one of the most unsatisfying endings of a drama that I've ever seen.

The premise of revenge on an aging Nazi war criminal is really tired at this point too. I sure hope it was handled better in the 2007 Israeli film that this is a remake of. As gritty as it is with solid work by a fine cast, THE DEBT adds nothing notable to the genre.

The studio (Focus Features) must have known that too by dumping it into theaters now (on a Wednesday for some inexplicable reason) instead of waiting for closer to Christmas when movies dealing with monsters of the holocaust usually drop.

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Blu Ray/DVD Review: THE PERFECT HOST

2011-08-30T03:56:00.002-04:00

Out today on Blu ray and DVD:

THE PERFECT HOST (Dir. Nick Tomnay, 2010)

As the affluent, refined Warwick Wilson, David Hyde Pierce can't help but bring a healthy bit of Niles Crane to the character. The major difference is Warwick is a demented psychopath who has dinner parties with his many imaginary friends - who just might be his hallucinations of the people he's murdered.

A very Ray Liotta-resembling Clayne Crawford, as a fugitive being hunted by the police for robbing a bank, accidentally crashes one of Pierce's parties in order to get off the streets.

This is a huge mistake Crawford soon learns as Pierce drugs his wine ("It's a cheeky little drop, isn't it?"), and he wakes up tied up at a table set for 6. We see the guests Pierce sees in some shots played by actors including Cooper Barnes, Tyrees Allen, and Annie Campbell, and they disapear in others.

A pyschological power play is at hand, with Pierce looking like he's having a blast as the cunning host who delights in showing off his scrapbook of polaroids of former party guests, and dancing in a non-existant conga lines.

In his drugged up stupor, Crawford flashes back to strained moments with girlfriend (Meghan Perry) where we learn she was an accomplice in his crime, and the film film randomly checks in with the Detectives (Joseph Will and Nathaniel Parker) who are on the trail.

Funnily enough, "I Am Woman" singer Helen Reddy has a cameo as a noisy neighbor.

For most of its running time "The Perfect Host" has an enjoyably wicked wit, mostly due to Pierce's sharp confident performance, but it breaks down a bit towards the end.

To say how would be too much of a spoiler, and this review has already had too many of those so I'll just say that there may be one twist too many.

No matter, the fun that Pierce haves with this juicy part is contagious, and the film is a promsing debut for writer/director Tomnay. It has "worthwhile rental" written all over it.

Special Features: A "Making THE PERFECT HOST with Writer/Director Nick Tomnay", the Theatrical Trailer (which you can watch above on the left), and "HDNet: A Look at THE PERFECT HOST.

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ANOTHER EARTH: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-08-27T01:48:00.000-04:00

This sci-fi tinged indie drama is now playing in the area at the Colony Theater in Raleigh, and the Galaxy Cinema in Cary:

ANOTHER WORLD (Dir. Mike Cahill, 2011)

Director Mike Cahill and actress Brit Marling's feature film debut, which they also co-wrote, has an intriquing premise: what if a dupicate world to ours, one that contains doppelgangers of every single person on the planet, was revealed after hiding behind the sun all this time?

Marling plays a young woman just accepted into MIT's astrophysics program who hears about the phenomenal discovery on the radio driving home drunk after a party. She looks to the sky to see it, causing a major automobile accident which kills a woman and her child, while putting the father (William Mapother) into a temporary coma.

After Marling is imprisoned for involutary manslaughter for 4 years, she is released and takes a job as a janitor at a local high school, as news about what is now called "Earth 2" blares from every radio and television in her radius.

Wracked by guilt, Marling tracks down Mapother (best known as Ethan from Lost) to apologize for her tragic crime, but she freezes in the moment at his country home, and tells him she's from a cleaning service. Oblivious to her identity, the despondent Mapother hires her, and a bond forms between the two, despite the stickiness of the situation.

The stretches stretches dealing with these lost souls' egg shell existence are lengthy enough to almost make one forget the fantastical Earth 2 scenerio, but many shots of the mirror earth looming in the sky above keep reminding us (the film is low budget, but this effect is fairly convincing).

Marling enters a contest to win a seat aboard a shuttle to Earth 2 as she struggles with how or when to confess to Mapother. Things get more tangled as a possible romance blooms between them.

ANOTHER EARTH can be ponderous as it pussyfoots a little too much about getting to the meat of the matter, but its not pretentiously contrived. It's thoughtfully engaging at its best, and just drags slightly at its worst.

Through their touching on-point performances, the leads' fascination with the lives of their doubles can be sincerely felt in such moments when Mapother says: “I can't stop thinking about it; another me up there.”

You won't be able to stop thinking about it either. Well, at least for a day or two. And these days moviewise, that's a very good thing indeed.

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Blu Ray/DVD Review: TROLLHUNTER

2011-08-23T10:38:00.001-04:00

Dropping today on Blu ray and DVD:

TROLLHUNTER (Dir. André Øvredal, 2010)

With its opening text telling us that this film is a rough cut made from 283 minutes of footage found in an anonymous package received by the Norwegian production outfit Filmkameratene, there's an undeniable BLAIR WITCH PROJECT vibe going on, but don't worry because TROLLHUNTER is a much better, and more thoroughly thought out horror mockumentary.
And it's funnier and scarier than BLAIR WITCH too.

In choppy yet very watchable chunks resembling digital video we follow a 3 Valda college student film crew (Tomas Alf Larsen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, and Johanna Mørck) as they investigate a series of mysterious bear killings.

The trio stalk a hunter (Otto Jesperson) who they believe is a poacher, but one dark crazy night they learn different. Jesperson refuses an interview initially, but after they witness some shit go down he lets them tag along, and before long they witness him killing an amusingly animated giant 3-headed troll.

The grizzled Jesperson, who is working for the government (the "Troll Security Service") and has to fill out "Slain Troll Forms" after every killing, warns the youngsters that the trolls can smell Christian blood. This he shares along with other tricks of the trade, and random bitching about European bureaucracy.

We learn that the troll problem has spread since trolls have broken out of their designated territories (Jesperson points to normal looking power lines informing us that they are "electric fences to keep the trolls at bay").

The film concludes with a gritty dawn-lit showdown with a King Kong-sized troll called a Jotnar in the snow covered mountains of Norway that has moments of genuine grip.

Although it drags in places, TROLLHUNTER is a crafty comic thriller of a mockumentary that is played so straight that it feels convincing, that is when there aren't CGI-ed trolls on screen.

Special Features: Deleted Scenes, Bloopers, Extended Scenes, Visual Effects, a "Behind the Scenes" featurette, Photo Galleries, and HDNet: A Look at TROLLHUNTER.

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ONE DAY: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-08-19T13:30:00.002-04:00

ONE DAY (Dir. Lone Scherfig, 2011)

This British rom drama, based on the David Nicholls bestseller, traces the entangled lives of Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgis from 1988 to 2006. All the significant events of their will they/won’t they relationship apparently only take place on July 15th, which is St. Swithin’s Day (I’d never heard of it before either) which is apt because this is a pretty swithy movie. I know “swithy” is not a word that means anything – don’t bother to look it up – but I’m going to assign it the definition of “too convoluted and corny.”

ONE DAY is not without a modicum of charm; Hathaway convincing accent wraps itself around some witty lines, there’s beautiful photography, and a nice new Elvis Costello and the Imposters track (“Sparkling Day”) plays during the end credits, but mostly it’s failed fluff.

Hathaway and Sturgis, best known as the McCartney-esque bloke from ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, meet on July 15th, 1988 at the University of Edinburgh and almost hook up, but they decide to be friends – half naked in bed, mind you. We check back in with them almost every year after that on the same day, and see them through relationships with other people (he marries model Romola Garai; she moves in with comedian-wannabe Rafe Spall), and various careers.

Along for the ride through time are Ken Stott and Patricia Clarkson as Sturgis’s parents, and Tom Mison as his overly slick school chum.

Problem is, they’re supposed to be soul mates but the 2 leads have precious little chemistry.

Sturgis is such a cad, a spoiled rich brat who goes up and down the ladder of success as a TV talk show host, then bottoms out in a blast of raving cocaine clichés (showing us that it’s the mid ‘90s) that he’s too obnoxious to care about and we never get what Hathaway sees in him.

Hathaway fares better, but as an aspiring children’s book author, her character is transparent and boring. Still, there’s a little fun to be had seeing her sport a series of period hair styles throughout the years.

Towards the end the film flashes back to the beginning of the story so we see that there was more to that first St. Swithin’s Day than they let on, but it doesn’t resonate in the sentimental manner it’s supposed to. Likewise, a manipulative shocker attempt in the last third.

I don’t want to just write off ONE DAY as a chick flick that guys won’t see unless they’re dragged to, although that’s what it is, because director Scherfig (AN EDUCATION) does add some attractive gloss to this tripe.

It’s just that ONE DAY is way too swithy for its own good. See? I bet I can get that word to catch on.

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30 MINUTES OR LESS: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-08-12T13:12:00.008-04:00

30 MINUTES OR LESS (Dir. Ruben Fleischer, 2011)

“2 guys in masks jumped me and strapped a bomb to my chest and now I have less than 9 hours to rob a bank.”

Right there a frantic Jesse Eisenberg sums up the premise of this comedy to his best friend Aziz Ansari as a wise-cracking school teacher who responds just as frantically: “And your first thought was to come to a school filled with young children?!!?”

This is one of many spastic exchanges between Eisenberg and Ansari as they run around through this fast, and very funny farcical heist flick set in Grand Rapids, MI.

Like in his directorial debut ZOMBIELAND, Fleischer takes a well worn genre and jazzes it up with a winking wit.There’s shades of PINEAPPLE EXPRESS in the plotting (along with the casting of Danny McBride), along with RAISING ARIZONA and even bits of BOTTLE ROCKET in the mix, but those elements aren’t what makes 30 MINUTES OR LESS tick.

It’s the ton of hilarious lines and amusing moments, many of which were the obvious results of improv (and many out of the mouth of Ansari), and the infectious spirit of how these folks play off one another.

McBride and Nick Swardson are the slacker criminals who kidnap pizza delivery boy Eisenberg and outfit him with a bomb, and it’s because they want the money he’ll rob to hire a hitman (Michael Peña) to kill McBride’s father (Fred Ward) for the inheritance money.

Meanwhile Eisenberg is in love with Ansari’s sister (Dilshad Vadsaria), which is a romantic subplot that doesn’t really matter except for some third act leverage, but I didn’t mind because it raced by like the rest of the action onscreen.

I laughed a lot during this movie. It’s definitely one of the funniest movies of the year, up there with BRIDESMAIDS and HORRIBLE BOSSES. In a chaotic car chase scene with Glenn Frey’s “The Heat is On” blaring on the soundtrack, recalling BEVERLY HILLS COP, I had the sense of being in on the joke more so than in those other comedies.

Though the story comes close to falling apart in its last half, it’s a brisk but bountiful laugh fest (be sure to stay through the credits for a bonus scene) with the everyman Eisenberg, an amped-up Ansari, a much more on point than in the Medieval misfire YOUR HIGHNESS McBride, and the best big screen work of Swardson I’ve ever seen (though that’s not saying an awful lot judging from his filmography).

30 MINUTES OR LESS is getting some attention because of the similarities to a real life happening, but that incident is quickly forgotten once you get with the tone and the timing of this film, and that took less than 30 seconds for me.

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BEATS, RHYMES & LIFE: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-08-11T00:51:00.001-04:00

BEATS, RHYMES & LIFE: THE TRAVELS OF A TRIBE CALLED QUEST (Dir. Michael Rappaport, 2011)

Actor turned documentary director Rappaport doesn’t re-invent the band bio-doc format here, but he’s crafted a solid engrossing piece of prime infotainment that pulls no punches in telling the story of hip hop legends A Tribe Called Quest nonetheless.

Rappaport opens the film backstage at a 2008 reunion gig at which band members Q-Tip and Phife Dawg clashed, having never resolved differences since their last album: 1998’s “The Love Movement.”

From there we are taken through the history of the group from Queens with photos, performance footage, clips from music videos, and interviews with Q-Tip, Phife, Jarobi White, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of Tribe as well as testimonials from many of their peers like Mos Def, Ludacris, Common, De La Soul and the Beastie Boys.

It may feel at times like a big Behind The Music episode as it tells the story hundreds of music documentaries have told before that a band’s future is often jeapordized by a couple of guys who can’t seem to get along, but this tale is so compellingly told with tons of infectiously head bopping music pumping throughout that it transcends the overly familiar framework.

Rappaport’s voice can be heard from behind the camera in a few scenes, but he wisely doesn’t incorporate himself into the film. As he’s a huge fan of the band, he obviously wants to pay tribute, but he also wants to get to the bottom of how this band imploded. By the time the film winds back to that 2008 reunion run-in we fully get via the blunt statements from Q-Tip and Phife Dawg more than an inkling of what went down.

Tribe has one more record left on their contract with Jive Records, but the vibe on display here tells us we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for it.

I only knew a few tracks going in, but this background schooling has made me seek out more Tribe – picked up a copy of “The Low End Theory” (1991) on CD today as a matter of fact. “Beats Rhymes & Life” is an excellent example of a documentary that will satisfy hardcore fans yet at the same time it serves as a great gateway drug for the uninitiated.

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RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES: The Film Babble Blog

2011-08-05T12:40:00.003-04:00

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
(Dir. Rupert Wyatt, 2011)

Here's a movie that answers the question that I didn't know anybody had been asking - how exactly did Earth become the Planet of the Apes?

According to this prequel/reboot/whatever, it sprang from a San Francisco scientist's (James Franco) attempts to cure Alzheimer's.

Franco experiments with genetic engineering on a test subject ape named Caesar (a CGI monkeyified Andy Serkis), and before long it's check out the big brain on Caesar-time!

The movie moves fast with short scenes forming a dark and supremely suspenseful set-up. We see Franco, with a little help from his simian pal, hook up with Frieda Pinto (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) try to help his ailing father (John Lithgow), and, as anybody whose seen even a quick TV spot for this film knows, deal with the ginornous revolt of thousands of newly intellectually enhanced apes fixated on destroying the city.

Before we get there we've got to see that humans are the villains here, not the apes, so there's Tom Felton as a douchey facility guard who taunts Caesar (couldn't wait to see him killed), and David Oyelowo as a clichéd corporate baddie. There's also David Hewlett as Franco's complaining neighbor who gets tangled up in the origin story in a clever way I won't reveal.

There are some nice shout-outs to the original 1968 PLANET OF THE APES: Felton gets to say Charleton Heston's classic "damn dirty ape" line, and you can see Caesar playing with a Statue of Liberty toy at one point.

Serkis's Caesar dominates the movie with his powerful presence. We feel like we can fully follow his thought processes as he carries out a plan against the humans. Most folks looking for summer blockbuster fun will mainly be waiting just for the destructive finale, and it doesn't disappoint - especially the much hyped Golden Gate bridge sequence - but the thoughtful vibe and tense tone throughout should be equally enjoyed.

Although filled with action and mayhem, the last third is a bit anticlimatic as it ends just as it starts to really get going, but I know, that's the point of such a set-up for a new take on the franchise.

I'll have to wait 'til next time for complete world domination by the apes, but for now this is one Hell of a tasty appetizer.

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An Extremely Skippable R-Rated Switcheroo

2011-08-05T11:26:00.001-04:00

THE CHANGE-UP (Dir. David Dobkin, 2011)

Let me just start by putting this out there – I like both of these guys.

Jason Bateman is an effective everyman who has shined in a string of lame ass comedies (this summer's HORRIBLE BOSSES isn't bad actually), and Ryan Reynolds can be obnoxious sure, but there's a good actor underneath all that smarm (see last year's BURIED if you don't believe me).

But this gross-out switcheroo puts their likability to the test. The premise of body switching was tired back in the late '80s, and smothering it in profanity and loads of disgusting pee, poop, and porn jokes does nothing to freshen it up.

In the first couple of minutes of the film there's a baby feces scene that unfortunately sets the terrible tone. I won't go into any detail, I'll just say that so much of the movie consists of things that most people would pay not to see.

So we have Bateman as a settled down family man, Reynolds a hard partying womanizer living in Atlanta (the location really doesn't matter except in skyline shots and a few minor references - it could've been set anywhere) who drunkenly one night when peeing in a fountain say in unison "I wish I had your life!"

The next morning they wake up and are in each other's bodies and have to deal with it - and so do we.

Bateman's wife doesn't believe them, and they find that the fountain has been moved so they are stuck in this filthy FACE OFF predicament for a few weeks until they find out where the Zoltar Speaks machine, sorry the fountain, was moved.

The only slightly amusing factor is Bateman and Reynold's mimicry of each other's amped up antics, otherwise this is a profoundly unfunny experience that just makes you feel sorry for everybody involved including Olivia Wilde (COWBOYS AND ALIENS) and Alan Arkin who luckily is only in a couple brief scenes.

This hasn't been the greatest summer for comedies, but this is the lowest of the low. Even if you're looking for a air conditioned reprieve from the current extreme heat, I'd opt for sweating. The stench with that is so much more bearable.

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THE DOUBLE HOUR: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-08-01T07:13:00.002-04:00

This Italian thriller that more than lives up to its tagline ("Nothing is what it seems") is now playing in Raleigh at the Colony Theater:

THE DOUBLE HOUR (Dir. Giuseppe Capotondi, 2009)

I didn’t know anything about this film going in and for that I'm grateful as I'm sure seeing a trailer or even a cursory look at a plot description would've ruined some of the suspense.

That said, I'll try my best in my summary not to spoil this film's at times confusing yet fascinating twists and turns.

Here goes: Ksenia Rappoport is a hotel maid in Turin who meets former cop turned security guard Filippo Timi at a speed dating event. Romance is in the air, but on a date at the villa he guards, armed masked men assault the couple and tie them up during the theft of tons of priceless paintings.

A scuffle ensues and Rappoport wakes up to find out Filippo was killed.

In a tramatic state she tries to go about her daily routines, but she's haunted by Filippo who she sees on a monitor at work and in the darkness of her apartment.

To say anything more than that would be a crime as THE DOUBLE HOUR (which means the time of day when the hour and minute are the same like 11:11) is full of wonderfully unpredicatable moments.

It's a keep guessing what's what experience, sensitively shot, with ace acting by the two leads, especially Rappoport whose frazzled tormented demeanor carries the film.

In his directorial debut, Capotondi, who's well experienced in the world of music videos, shows that he really knows how to create an effective engrossing mood. I was caught up in this film's aura from start to finish and was very satisfied by the ending, even if I was reminded a bit of the cold cutting conclusion of BODY HEAT.

Wait, was that a spoiler? I so tried not to do that.

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COWBOYS AND ALIENS: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-07-29T12:04:00.003-04:00

COWBOYS AND ALIENS (Dir. Jon Favreau, 2011)

When I first heard about the summer movie concept of fuckin' James Bond and Indiana Jones (Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford respectively) fighting aliens in the Old West, I was all 'sign me up', especially since it was being helmed by IRON MAN's Jon Favreau. But less than halfway through this messy overly formulaic film, massive boredom set in.

It started out promisingly with Craig waking up in the desert with a strange piece of artillery clasped to his wrist.

Craig is a man who can't remember his name, obviously because of an alien abduction as we see in quick fleeting light-filled flashbacks, and we follow him as he can takes out a crew of wranglers on the trail, on his way to the protypical wild west town of Absolution.

The town's sherrif (Keith Carradine) arrests Craig, along with the trouble-making gun toting brat Paul Dano the son of a ruthless cattleman (Ford) who acts like he owns the town, because he does.

Ford demands that his son be let free, but before they can sort anything out the town is under alien invasion, with a bunch of figher jet type spaceships laying waste to property and literally lassoing away various townsfolk.

007 and Dr. Jones, sorry Craig and Ford, form a posse to go after the aliens and get back their loved ones, and we get a long dull stretch full of old timey philophizing and poorly constructed character development.

When we finally see the aliens, like in a close-up shot stolen from ALIEN, it's disapointing how generic they are. They're the same green scaley disgusting man-creatures with hidden orifices and tons of teeth. Minus the multiple legs they look like the Skitters from the new show Falling Skies or from hundreds of other alien attack scenarios from T.V. and movies.

The profusely predictable plot concerns infiltrating the alien's headquarters, hidden in the picturesque terrain, which by the way is beautifully shot by Mathew Libatique (IRON MAN, BLACK SWAN), to save the abducted, with a ginormous battle climax in which cowboys join forces with Indians and outlaws to bring down the intruders from outer space.

It's not Craig or Ford's fault - nor love interest Olivia Wilde's, or Samuel Rockwell as a sensitive saloon owner - it's the undercooked treatment given to overdone material. The special effects are fine but far from mind blowing (they make the claim that the aliens don't see well except when it's dark so we get a lot of murkiness), and when the alien's motivation for world domination is revealed it's in one or two flimsy throwaway lines.

Craig's stoic beefiness matched with Ford doing his gruff old man routine to greater effect than his last few films, does make for some fanboy pleasing moments, but they aren't enough to make this anything more than a barely passable popcorn picture.

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CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-07-29T11:51:00.002-04:00

CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE (Dirs. Glenn Ficcara & John Requa, 2011)

At the beginning of this ensemble rom com, after an opening montage of the feet of restaurant patrons playing footsy, Steve Carrell is told by his wife of 25 years (Jullianne Moore) that she wants a divorce. This sets off a chain of vignettes that are more about clichéd silly lust than what the title wants us to think.

This is a simple-minded movie more concerned with setting up cheap gags than actual character connection. Like in the scenario where Carrell befriends a womanizing Ryan Gosling at a bar.

Gosling assigns himself as Carrell's wingman, so, of course, there's a shopping mall montage where Carrell gets new hip clothes and a snazzier haircut, and before you know it he's a success with the ladies. This kind of sequence should've been retired the second the '80s ended.

Meanwhile, Carrell and Moore's 13-year old son (Jonah Bobo) has a crush on their babysitter (Analeigh Tipton) who he's over-texting, Moore is fending off the further advances of a sleazy co-worker who she had an affair with (Kevin Bacon, who's really getting around this year), and a seemingly unconnected Emma Stone is pining for Josh Groban as a dorky lawyer.

There are 2 twists that are revealed in this material - one which you can see coming if you are paying attention, and the other is of the "oh, come on!" variety. I won't spoil what they are, but I will say that one of them involves Marisa Tomei as a squirmy, and completely unconvincing woman that Carrell has a one-night stand with.

The cast defintely has plenty of comic chops (as in EASY A, Stone has a way with one-liners), and there are some juicy jokes here and there in CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE, but I cringed much more than I laughed. It contains a lot of talk about soul mates, but that's just audience pandering talk. I never believed it ever really cared about matters of the heart.

In one scene, Carrell watches sadly as Moore drives off and it begins to rain. Carrell: "That is such a cliché." It sure is, yet at least in that moment the movie owns up. If only it did at its other dishonest cloying turns, then maybe it would be a movie with a soul instead of a big screen sitcom that might as well have a laugh track dubbed in.

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PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-07-25T16:29:00.003-04:00

I saw this film last April at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham and really love it. I saw it again this weekend at the Colony Theater in Raleigh where it will play through next week. It is also playing in the Triangle at the Galaxy Cinema in Cary.

PAGE ONE: INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES (Dir. Andrew Rossi, 2011)

Andrew Rossi's new documentary poses the question: are we witnessing the death of print media due to the internet, or are we just in a transitional period in which institutions like the New York Times will figure out how to adapt to the changing technological landscape and ultimately survive?

This film convincingly argues the latter, but it's going to be quite a struggle in the face of online competition such as the bloggosphere and Wikileaks.

Rossi's unprecedented access to the media desk of the New York Times for a year (2009-2010) has us listening like a fly on the wall to key players including Executive Editor Bill Keller, blogger turned Times writer Brain Stelter, Media Marketing Editor Bruce Headlam, and Baghdad bureau chief Tim Arangoand media and culture columnist David Carr who steals the movie over and over with his dead on acerbic comments.

We learn about the "New Times Effect," in which what the Times prints one day will set the agenda for what every other news outlet prints the next.

We learn about how Judith Miller's false reporting of Weapons of Mass Destruction damaged the Times' credibility.

From old grainy footage we learn about the newspaper's history, especially in clips of Allistar Cooke visiting the Times from the program Omnibus in 1954 I'd sure like to see more of.

As I said before Carr steals this film, but he also symbolizes the fight that the Times has left in it. One particularly amusing scene has the former crack addict turned media columinst vaporizing (his word, not mine) a blogger opponent at a SXSW panel.

PAGE ONE is a masterful piece of infotainment that captures a turbulent time for the Times. Since we're still in that time it really shouldn't be missed by anybody who has even a passing interest in the state of modern print media. Or by those who love an extremely well made engrossing documentary.

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CAPTAIN AMERICA: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-07-22T14:30:00.002-04:00

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER (Dir. Joe Johnston, 2011)

Although I am not a comic book guy, I have more and more been developing an admiration for how Marvel has been expanding their movie universe.

Now Captain America joins Iron Man, Thor, and the Hulk, in this surprisingly solid summer super hero movie that just might be the best of the bunch so far.

Much like the recent X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, this is an origin story crossed with an alternate history scenario, and also like that film, it largely works.

Here our hero played by Chris Evans, who we first meet convincingly CGI-ed as a scrawny runt constantly rejected by the military, gets genetically modified into a tall muscular super soldier for action in World War II by a German scientist (Stanley Tucci).

The villain, the intense Hugo Weaving as a Nazi official with a sinister secret, is planning on destroying the United States with his HYDRA terrorist organization ("Hail, HYDRA!"), and, of course, it's up to Captain America with the help of love interest Hayley Atwell, best friend Sebastian Stan, and the always reliably gruff Tommy Lee Jones as a stern army Colonel to stop the looming wave of world domination.

Weaving, especially after being revealed as Red Skull (not sure I want to try to explain that), appears to be having a blast with his scenery-chewing-and-spitting out prowess, and his treatment of Toby Jones as a beleagured Nazi chemist/lackey is terrifically savage stuff.

The star-spangled man with a plan (as Jones calls Evans) is as engaging as he is unshakable in fight scene afer fight scene. Evans mostly acts with a stoical demeanor, but its not without humor.

There's a satisfying use of circular dialogue throughout in which key lines are effectively repeated, and Evans holds his own with the exceedingly capable cast.

Director Johnston handles with film's aesthetics, at times metallic; at times grimy, beautifully, with all the gravitas that GREEN LANTERN was so sorely missing, and he sets a sturdy tone that takes itself just seriously enough.

There were some pacing problems here and there, and Alan Silvestri's generic action movie score was a bit intrusive, but since CAPTAIN AMERICA is such a smart and ginormously entertaining mainstream Marvel movie, I feel like a heel complaining.

As for the Marvel Universe aspect, you can always expect cameos from franchise characters such as Iron Man's dad Howard Stark (this time played by Dominic Cooper), and Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury (that can't be a SPOILER! right? I mean, he's in all of these films).

You can also expect the traditional Stan Lee cameo, and more importantly, the after-the-credits scene which here doubles as a teaser trailer for next summer's THE AVENGERS which, as you probably know, assembles several of their super hero strands into one big ass Marvel movie event package.

Here's hoping that will be as solid and super as this is.

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Old School Pooh

2011-07-15T22:21:00.003-04:00

WINNIE THE POOH (Dirs. Stephen J. Anderson & Don Hall, 2011)

The good news up front: the new WINNIE THE POOH isn't an all CGI-ed modernized re-imagining with pop culture references and big name celebrity voices. It's an old school hand-drawn throwback to Disney's classic '60s and '70s Pooh period, with a tasteful choice of un-imposing actors (narrator John Cleese and Craig Ferguson as Owl are the most recognizable names here), and a light infectious sense of whimsy.

The bad news is that its so slight it could get blown away by a gentle breeze.

A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh ,Tigger (both voiced by Jim Cummings), Rabbit (Tom Kenney), Piglet (Travis Oates), Owl, Eeyore (Bud Luckey), Kanga (Kristen Anderson-Lopez), and Roo (Wyatt Dean Hall), mistakenly think a note from their best human friend, schoolboy Christopher Robin (Jack Boulter) is stating that he was captured by a Backson.

Robin wrote "back soon" you see and somehow the cuddly gang concocts an evil dangerous monster of the woods that they must capture if they want to rescue.

Easy mistake to make, right?

The characters are all well played as they get in such predicaments as getting trapped in a pit they dug to catch the creature, bickering with humorous disconnected dialogue, but such scenes still feel sketchy.

Pooh isn't a very interesting protagonist as he only cares about finding honey (or "huny" as its often spelled in the film), and his comical air-headed demeanor wears out its welcome early on. Still, there is a neat honey fantasy sequence that is one of the movie's highlights.

The directors, Anderson and Hall along with almost another dozen of writers worked on the story, and there are 18 songs (several featuring Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward), so it's surprising that it's only a little over an hour long. To somewhat make up for that there is a animated short "The Ballad Of Nessie", about the Loch Ness monster, narrated by Billy Connolly, which isn't bad.

Take note that WINNIE THE POOH is a film that will most likely please toddlers much more than older kids, but some nostalgic parents may appreciate its charms. If you do take the kids, stay through the end credits because there's a final bonus bit that shouldn't be missed.

With a film this short and slight, you should definitely get your moneys worth.

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BEGINNERS: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-07-12T16:53:00.003-04:00

BEGINNERS (Dir. Mike Mills, 2011)

Mills' second feature posits itself as a more poignant piece than his dorky debut THUMBSUCKER (2007). It involves an earnest, soft spoken as usual, Ewan McGregor dealing with the death of his 75 year old father (Christopher Plummer) from cancer.

Previously Plummer came out as gay after his wife of 40 years died. Through his daily depression, McGregor has many flashbacks that tell the story of his father's dying days from the personal ad dating scene to his dying bed.

McGregor inherits his dad's dog, a Jack Russell terrier, who he talks to, and the dog answers in comic subtitles like "While I understand up to 150 words - I can't talk." Cute, huh?

McGregor works as a cartoonist or illustrator (not quite sure which) for a firm that working on album art for an indie band called The Sads. Isn't that cute too?

At a costume party with his co-workers, McGregor dressed as Sigmund Freud meets Mélanie Laurent (INGLORIOUS BASTERDS) dressed as Charlie Chaplin who writes on a notepad to communicate because she has laryngitis. Got that? A major meet-cute.

Set in 2003, the film is full of a sort of slide-show framing device in which McGregor narrates over photos of people and places from previous periods in order for us to get the proper perspective. "This is what the sun looked like, the stars, this is the President" etc. Again we're drowning in cuteness.

If you haven't already guessed, this film struck me as way too cutesy.

The despair over losing a loved one, especially one whose real identity you are just beginning to process, is only touched on affectingly in the final scenes. Otherwise it's a eye-roller with little depth or narrative thrust.

Plummer is an excellent actor who puts a lot into his performance here, but it's an underwritten role. His relationship with the much younger Goran Visjnic, his first openly homosexual relationship, is thankfully not treated cheaply, but it just hangs there as a unexplored thread.

The film has unfinished thoughts as well about McGregor's career, his inability to commit to Laurent even after he asks her to move in, and his off kilter mother (Mary Page Keller) who we see in flashbacks acting all weird at home and embarrassing her son at an art gallery.

I feel somewhat Scrooge-ish in dissing this film, because I know there's an autobiographical element here (Mills' father died after coming out) and on the surface BEGINNERS is a perfectly pleasant indie movie with likable leads, a listenable soundtrack, and, yep, a lot of cuteness that some folks will think is just fine.

But to me it was cloyingly incomplete. An edgeless experience.

If Mills would flesh out his characters more and cut down on the cuteness, I would be inclined to get on board with his work since there's certainly heart there, but I just can't get on board with BEGINNERS.

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HORRIBLE BOSSES: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-07-08T20:57:00.000-04:00

HORRIBLE BOSSES (Dir. Seth Gordon, 2011)

As the most recent in a spate of crude R-Rated comedies, HORRIBLE BOSSES is just funny enough to recommend. Although maybe just as a matinee.

Anybody who clicked on this review surely knows the plot, but I'll state it anyway: 3 guys want to murder their bosses and concoct a plan to do so with comical results. As the 3 guys we've got Saturday Night Live's Jason Sudekis, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia's Charlie Day, and Arrested Development's (as well as the everyman in every other comedy movie made these days) Jason Bateman.

The bosses are Colin Firth with a combover as a chemical company coke-head who takes over Sudekis's workplace after his father (Donald Sutherland) dies, Kevin Spacey as a corporate asshole (shades of his likewise character in SWIMMING WITH SHARKS) who denies Bateman a promotion, and Jennifer Anniston playing against her girl-next-door type as a dentist who sexually harrases Day as her dental assistant ("Yours doesn't sound so bad" Sudekis says about Day's predicament).

Think STRANGERS ON A TRAIN + THROW MOMMA OFF THE TRAIN (both of which are referenced in this movie), with a sprinkling of 9 TO 5 thrown in for good measure. It takes a bit to really get going, but when it does the frantic scheming of the 3 leads makes for some big laughs especially from Day doing his patented screaming, not-the-sharpest-knife-in-the-drawer, It's Always Sunny stuff.

Sudekis with his sex-snarkiness seems so much like his character in HALL PASS that I kept expecting him to call his wife back home, and Bateman is playing the same nice-guy notes he has in many a movie, but these guys' recognizable and relatable personas all anchor the movie nicely.

Spacey, Firth, and Aniston have fine funny moments, but none is funnier than Jamie Foxx who steals every scene he's in as a "murder consultant" the guys seek out in a seedy bar when they are looking for somebody to do their dirty work.

Scripted by John Francis Daley (who played protagonist Sam on Freaks and Geeks), and Jonathan M. Goldstein, the film feels oddly restrained at times - like it never quite goes over the top.

However when it busts out a car chase/phone sex climax it's gets mighty close.

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Blu Ray Review: HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN

2011-07-07T20:08:00.002-04:00

HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN (Dir. Jason Eisener, 2010)

This is the second, and with hope the last, movie to be spun off of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s fake exploitation double feature GRINDHOUSE (2007). Like last year’s MACHETE, it’s based on one of the trailer parodies that were the best part of that failed experiment. Also like MACHETE, it’s a lame ass excuse for a film that should’ve remained a 2 minute piece of funny filler.

One of the only things the Canadian made HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN has got going for it is Rutger Hauer (BLADE RUNNER, THE HITCHER) as the title character. Hauer is intensely invested in his part, actually taking it seriously, while the movie around him is grueling and ugly. It's a simple story of a man who gets off a freight train in a ficticious hellhole of a city where gangs rule the streets, the cops are corrupt, and every woman is a prostitute.

There's a vicious slick-backed Brian Downey as the crime lord in charge who declares war on all the homeless after Hauer's attempt to clean up the streets with a newly acquired shotgun. One of the few laughs in the film is the headline: "Hobo stops begging, demands change."

The hobo befriends a hooker with a heart of gold (Molly Dunsworth) who, of course, he'll have to defend in the ginormous violent orgy of blood that concludes the film.

The conclusion cant come soon enough as this is one of the most unpleasant and least entertaining film I've seen since, well, MACHETE. There's little sense of fun or satire here, it's just a series of sick scenes with disgusting dialogue (like "First I gotta wipe this guy's ass off of my face") and pointless imitations of cheap '70s and '80s filming styles, or lack of styles more accurrately.

I know some folks enjoy this kind of carnage, but I couldn't stand seeing shots of Hauer eating glass, a schoolbus of children getting torched, or any of the irritating tortuous actions of Downey's amped-up sons Nick Bateman and Gregory Smith.

It's feels futile to call this a horrible movie, because that's what its trying to be - a purposely sleazy piece of cinematic crap, you know like they used to make and the kids used eat up. But as GRINDHOUSE and MACHETE have shown, the kids aren't eating up this stuff. They both flopped bigtime and HOBO has only made a third of its 3 million dollar budget so the phony exploitation thing really isn't flying.

Maybe now they'll give up the grindhouse and we can all move on.

Special Features on 2 Disc Collector's Edition: Digital Copy, Shotgun Mode (Behind The Scenes Interactive Movie Feature), Commentary with Jason Eisener and Rutger Hauer, Commentary with Eisener and writer John Davies, producer Rob Cotterill, and David Brunt, "More Blood, More Heart: The Making of HOBO AND A SHOTGUN", Deleted Scenes, Alternate Ending, Video Blogs, Camera Test Reel, Fangoria Interviews, Redband Trailer, and other stuff I'm too tired to type.

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LARRY CROWNE: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-07-01T05:02:00.006-04:00

LARRY CROWNE (Dir. Tom Hanks, 2011)

Initially, it's kinda neat to see Tom Hanks as just another average Joe for the first time in ages. He's playing a divorced man who prides himself on being named Employee of the Month repeatedly at the ficticious U-Mart (a Walmart-like big box store) he's worked at since retiring as a Navy cook.

Thing is, Hank's wide-eyed ernest title character never went to college, so he gets told by the store's higher-ups (including Rob Riggle) that they have to lay him off.

Hanks buys a motorscooter at his neighbor Cedric the Entertainer's permanent yard sale, so he can save money on gas, and applies to every retail outlet in the area. He learns over and over again that times are tough. Mainly because folks keep saying that out loud.

Hanks enrolls in community college where he befriends a fellow scooter rider classmate Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and falls in love with his professor (Julia Roberts somehow seeming bored and smug simultaneously) who teaches a class called "The Art of Informal Remarks." No really.

If it feels like I'm rushing through the plot it's only because there isn't much of one. A UP IN THE AIR-type premise about the bleak job situation doesn't go anywhere, and neither do any of the cutesy collection of comic bits that Hanks strains to set up.

Hanks' first film as director, THAT THING YOU DO (1996), was a trivial but highly likable musical comedy, so I had hopes that his second try at helming a vehicle would have something more going for it than what the trailers were suggesting. No such luck.

This flimsy film also features Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston in a horribly written role as Roberts' no good writer husband who spends more time looking at internet porn than working at home, and That '70s Show's Wilmer Valderrama as MBatha-Raw's jealous boyfriend, which is also a thankless uninspired part.

Only Lietenant Sulu from Star Trek himself, George Takei as a Economics proffesor has a few moments of something slightly resembling funny.

Hanks has blandly assembled a half-assed rom com out of very limited material, stitched together with empty quasi-inspirational sentiment, and Tom Petty songs.

After watching this film I can't answer who Larry Crowne is. Hanks' everyman appeal fades in the first 10 minutes and we never learn nothing about why his marriage ended or why he so loved his retail job before he was canned.

There's nothing interesting about Roberts' character either - she's a jaded educator, that's all I got. So why should we care if they get together?

I can't think of a single reason.

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THE TRIP: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-06-25T19:20:00.003-04:00

THE TRIP (Dir. Michael Winterbottom, 2010)

The best parts of this eccentric comedy featuring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, as fictionalized versions of themselves is when the pair try outperform each other's impressions of British celebrities, especially of Michael Caine.

There's some other stuff happening too, as they travel the North English countryside from one Bed and Breakfast Inn to another on a restaurant tour Coogan is writing about for The Observer. Coogan is on an unhappy break from his girlfriend (Margo Stilley), who was originally supposed to go on the trip, and Brydon, who is going in her place, has a new wife and child that he's leaving behind for this week-long excursion.

There's angst about aging, career paths, and flawed friendships, much of it poignant (though maybe a bit slight), but it's the hilarious dueling imitations that make the movie.

Coogan, who is a bigger star internationally than Brydon, carries a considerable amount of mental baggage around as he suffers the fool he thinks his aggravating partner in whining and dining is.

Brydon has a glibber, more laid-back demeanor than Coogan's crank, but he's obviously blanketing a bunch of insecurities under his charming ability to do an impeccable Hugh Grant impression, among many others.

THE TRIP was edited together from 6 episodes of a BBC program which explains its over-long length (107 min.) and it's disjointedness, yet it contains enough laughs and genuine emotion to carry you through.

Having previously worked together in a lot of projects (24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE, TRISTRAM SHANDY, lots of British television), Coogan and Brydon have a great naturalistic energy in their largely ad-libbed exchanges.

Aesthetically, the scenery is pretty, but very grey toned (it is England, of course), and there are a nice amount of delicious looking shots of fine food.

But, as I said before, it's those funny as Hell impression-offs that make me rate this movie so highly. For the record, although it's really close, I think Coogan does the better Michael Caine.

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CARS 2: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-06-24T00:37:00.004-04:00

CARS 2 (Dirs. John Lasseter & Brad Lewis, 2011)

CARS and it's new sequel opening today, CARS 2, are the most commercial and formulaic films of all the Pixar productions. But that doesn't mean that they suck - no, they are both fairly entertaining animated kids flicks. It's just that this new entry in the franchise has a major problem that can be stated simply: too much Larry the Cable Guy.

Way too much.

As Tow Mater, the rusty redneck tow truck friend to Owen Wilson's Lightning McQueen, Larry the Cable Guy (man, I hate typing that - he'll be LCG from here on) has been promoted to the lead character here. LCG gets mistakenly caught up in a secret spy mission involving Michael Caine as a British agent Aston Martin model (obviously 007-ish), and his partner in espionage Emily Mortimer, also a sleek European car outfitted with snazzy gadgets.

Meanwhile, Wilson is competing with John Turturro as an arrogant Italian race car in the first World Grand Prix to determine the world's fastest car. This takes us to the gorgeously rendered locations of Tokyo, Paris, and London which often distracts from the flimsy predictable plot. Eddie Izzard voices a army green SUV billionaire who's promoting a green gasoline substitute fueling the vehicles in the Grand Prix.

So Caine and Mortimer with the scrappy help of LCG work to take down the bad guys trying to discredit the threat to traditional gasoline. If you can't guess the identity of the mysterious villain way before it's revealed then you're probably not paying attention. Or Pixar has succeeded in dazzling you enough that you don't care.

LCG was fine in small doses in the first CARS, but its a major malfunction to make Mater the central dominant character. His one note bucktoothed presence grated on me in every scene, and the tired premise of his dumb luck reeks of comic desperation, which is very surprising in a Pixar film.

No Pixar palette should ever attempt to balance the likes of Michael Caine and Larry the Cable Guy (felt I should type it out this time).

As I said, CARS 2 isn't awful, it's just awfully average for a Pixar film. There are some fun sequences, but after the company's heights of the last several years (RATATOUILLE, WALL-E, UP, TOY STORY 3) this sequel feels like treading water. And with its over abundance of country bumpkin crap via one of the unfunniest and irritating comedians of all time, it barely keeps afloat.

Oh yeah, there is a amusing TOY STORY short called "Hawaiian Vacation" before the movie so that's a definite plus.

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BAD TEACHER: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-06-23T23:50:00.005-04:00

BAD TEACHER (Dir. Jake Kasdan, 2011)

If you've seen the trailer for this crude Cameron Diaz classroom comedy, you've already witnessed all the best lines and all the relevant plot-points. But since none of that stuff was that great to begin with, it's quite a tiring task to make it through this 90 minute mess of a movie that has maybe 3-4 solid chuckles in it.

Daez plays the foul mouthed, hard drinking, pot smoking, gold digging, and completely immoral title character who gets dumped by her rich boyfriend (Nat Faxon) at the beginning of the movie. She has to return to the job she doesn't give an "F" about, as the movie's tagline goes, teaching at John Adams Middle School (JAMS).

Diaz gets through the day by putting on DVDs for her students of movies about teachers (STAND AND DELIVER, LEAN ON ME, DANGEROUS MINDS, etc.) while she drinks from mini liquor bottles or sleeps at her desk.

As the school's gym teacher, a smirking Jason Segel clearly has the hots for Diaz, but she's got her eyes on a Justin Timberlake as a nerdy substitute teacher. Lucy Punch plays a goofy goody two-shoes rival colleague of Diaz's, who is also after Timberlake's affections.

The sloppy narrative concerns Diaz trying to raise money for breast implants. That's right, that's the plot. She puts on a sexy car wash complete with a rock video (or beer commercial) style montage. She steals standardized test answers so her class can get the highest scores and she can receive a large cash reward. She, uh, does wacky corrupt stuff for her own selfish purposes - you got it, right?

Unfortunately, precious little of this is funny. Diaz doesn't really bring anything but the bare minimum effort to her role, Timberlake is likable but not believable, and only Segel seems to have the right laid-back approach to this lazy lackluster material.

BAD TEACHER feels like a series of deleted scenes on a lame comedy's DVD special features menu. The kind you watch and think 'I can see why they cut that. Because it didn't work.'

That pretty much sums it up - much like its superficial protagonist, BAD TEACHER rarely works.

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THE TREE OF LIFE: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-06-17T14:52:00.001-04:00

THE TREE OF LIFE (Dir. Terrence Malick, 2011)

This is sure to be the most debated film of the year.

Just a cursory glance at internet message boards shows that while some people are labeling it “pretentious crap,” another thread of folks are calling it “one of the best movies ever.”

Consider me in the latter camp.

For his first film since THE NEW WORLD in 2005, the none-too-prolific Terrace Malick (BADLANDS, THE THIN RED LINE) has made a non-linear epic of incredible photography, lavish reconstructions of astrological history, and classical music.

It’s an overwhelming work that obviously a lot of people simply won’t get. I myself am still trying to piece it together, but I think I get it. I think.

Through beautifully fleeting imagery, we follow Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as the parents of three sons in 1950s Waco, Texas. One of the sons dies, the cause of which is never explained, and the family is in mourning with Chastain asking the Heavens: “Lord, why? Where were you?”

Malick attempts to answer that question by going back to the beginning of time in a mesmerizing series of shots of thick engulfing clouds, glowing globules of every color, shining light, fire, flowing lava, etc.

History comes alive via CGI, and we even get to spend a little time with a few dinosaurs.

The visual thrust of all of this is stupefying; it’s like Malick is actually trying to capture God on film.

I’m really not sure if he succeeded, but that a film maker would try so hard and in some flashing moments appear to get so close is amazing to behold.

The timeline catches up with the ‘50s family again, as we see the boy who died being born. A strict disciplinarian, Pitt practices tough love on his boys (Hunter McCraken, Laramie Eppler, and Tye Seridan) while Chastain offers nothing but unconditional motherly love.

The vivid cinematography by four-time Oscar nominee Emmanuel Lubezki is astounding. Whether it’s exploiting the lush splendor of nature or zeroing in on the characters in emotional despair, the camera is always moving, exploring the space of every frame.

Close-ups are handled in a manner I haven’t seen in a film in ages. Even when the boys join a roving group of trouble making pre-teens, a feeling of isolation around McCracken is felt. His misguided desire to fit in with the window breaking, animal abusing brats is captured in the restless energy of the camerawork.

As the troubled eldest son Jack, McCracken is arguably the protagonist. His angry brow dominates the screen as he grows to resent his father. It’s a spare yet piercing performance – a noteworthy film debut.

An older version of Jack is played by Sean Penn, a businessman in the modern world still suffering over the loss of his brother and estranged relationship with his father. Penn’s part is one of the film’s only weaknesses. Penn, who gets more grizzled looking every movie he makes, mainly broods with his presence threatening to stop the film’s immersive flow.

As the last third becomes engulfed in surrealism, Penn is seen, suited up, wandering around a desert landscape. These images are pretty, but ultimately superfluous.

Many moviegoers (and critics) are going to be baffled by THE TREE OF LIFE. It’s a challenging and dense work that comes off at times like STAND BY ME filtered through the Kubrickian kaleidoscope of the last ten minutes of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.

To me it’s not just a massive breath of fresh air during this sequel saturated summer, it’s a near masterpiece about life, death, the universe and everything.

In other words, here’s the year’s first major contender for Best Picture at the next Academy Awards.

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MR. POPPER'S PENGUINS: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-06-17T14:37:00.001-04:00

MR. POPPER'S PENGUINS (Dir. Mark Waters, 2011)

Isn't Jim Carrey too old to be doing this kind of movie?

A decade ago it seemed like Carrey was moving towards a more thoughtful phase in his career based on work based on work in such fine films as THE TRUMAN SHOW, MAN ON THE MOON, and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. However at the same time the man still had, and still has, a fondness for doing broad commercial crap, which is exactly what MR. POPPER'S PENGUINS is.

In what must be screenwriting leading man character archetype #1, Carrey plays a divorced corporate big wig, who loves his kids (also still loves his ex-wife), but is too business-minded to be in touch with his soul. So a crate coming from his recently deceased globe-trotting father containing a penguin in it will, of course, melt his cold heart, right?

Carrey comically protests the penguin and calls everyone he can think of (Antarctica, animal control, the zoo, etc.), but then another crate containing more penguins arrives, and his kids (Madeline Carroll and Maxwell
Perry Cotton) love them so the put-upon protagonist makes his Park Avenue pad into a winter wonderland.

Carrey's shtick is always giving everybody hip snappy nicknames as he glides though films, so it comes in handy naming the penguins: Captain, Lovey, Bitey, Nimrod, Stinky and Loudy. The birds can be fun to watch, but as a large percentage of their antics are via CGI it's more and more cringe inducing than cute.

Angela Lansbury is in the thankless role of the potential client Carrey is trying to score for a big real estate deal, and guess what? The penguins get in the way, particularly in a silly set-piece that turns the Guggenheim into a massive seabird slide.

That's actually one of the better scenes, as the film is bogged down in schmaltz and poop jokes. And I mean, a lot of poop jokes. Enough to make the "poop picnic" in JUDY MOODY seem positively understated.

Clark Gregg as the movie's villain - a creepy animal control guy who wants to take the penguins for his own supposedly evil purposes is a considerably contrived element, but in this fluffy formula he fits right in. Entourage's Carla Gugino as Carrey's ex-wife basically just shows up on time for her standard issue lines.

With it's icy subject matter, I wondered why MR. POPPER'S PENGUINS wasn't earmarked for a Christmas season release, but maybe since it's really all about the air-conditioning people seek during the heat of summer, it's probably a great marketing move.

Carrey, who's pushing 50, apparently sees himself as a post-modern Don Knotts - that is, a family friendly funny man caught in outlandishly wacky situations - and that's fine, but he's got the chops to shape his career better.

This at least proves that he's a good actor, because you've got to have talent to act like bland cash-in kid's crap like this isn't beneath you.

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MIDNIGHT IN PARIS: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-06-11T16:38:00.010-04:00

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Dir. Woody Allen, 2011)

At first glance, Owen Wilson looks like an unlikely Woody Allen surrogate.

Yet in Allen's best film since VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA, it's an inspired piece of casting that works. Wilson puts real effort into the character of Gil Pender, a Hollywood hack screenwriter who wants to give real writing a try, and finish that difficult novel he's been tinkering with for months.

On vacation in France, Wilson's fiancée (Rachel McAdams) accuses him of romanticizing the past - particularly Paris in the '20s, an era he would most like to live in. Wilson clashes with McAdam's conservative parents (Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy), and her friends including a wonderfully snobby Michael Sheen, so he takes off on a walk around the city taking in the sights.

At the chimes of midnight, an old timey car pulls up him, and the drunk passengers plead with him to get in. After some hesitation, he joins them.

Somehow this takes him back to, you guessed it (or saw the trailer), Paris in the '20s. It's a rollicking party of an era where everybody he meets is famous figure of the arts. At a party, with piano accompaniment by Cole Porter (Yves Heck) no less, he meets F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and his wife Zelda (Alison Pill).

There's also Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway, Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein, Marcial di Fonzo Bo as Pablo Picasso, and the best one of all: Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali.

Wilson meets a fetching model (Marion Cotillard) who he falls for on the spot. So every night back in the present, he makes the excuse to McAdams that he wants to go out on a walk, and goes back to hobnob with history. The predicament of choosing the past over the present becomes a sticky one, as there's the possibility of another love in the form of Lea Seydoux as an antiques dealer "in the now."

There's a wonderful wit and whimsy to how Allen plays this all out. It's his warmest film since, uh, I can't remember when.

In other words, it's the most satisfying Woody Allen film in ages.

Wilson's delivery of Allen's choice one-liners is infectious, and he quotes from the greats, such as Faulkner's "The past is never dead, It's not even past." convincingly enough to make one forget the man-child of "Hall Pass" from earlier this year.

The film is at its most radiant when it's in those sequences set in the past. In a neat little twist, Cotillard dreams of living in the 1890's; turns out everybody has their dream era.

One personal thought is that I wish the Woodman would've filmed this in black and white. It's not just because the opening montage of shots of Paris was strongly reminiscent of the opening of MANHATTAN, I feel like B & W would've brought out something more in the photography, the depictions of both present and 20's Paris, and the performances of the people playing historical personalities.

As I said that's just a personal quibble. I'm just an aficionado of the man's B & W work so don't mind me.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS isn't gonna to make me rearrange my top 10 Woody Allen movies, but it's a lovely lark that I predict even non-fans would enjoy. I think most people can relate wishing for a simpler more inspiring time to live in, and I think they'll be greatly amused with this simple and inspiring story.

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SUPER 8: The Film Babble Blog Review

2011-06-10T17:50:00.002-04:00

SUPER 8 (Dir. J.J. Abrams, 2011)

Having grown up during the golden age of Spielberg (i.e. the late '70s-early '80s) I was immediately in tune with the vibe Abrams was going for here. It helps that mood and tone that SUPER 8 is set in a small mid-western town in 1979, and centers around a group of pre-teen kids.

Joel Courtney, who's never acted in a movie before, stars as a shy model building C-student whose mother is killed in an accident at her factory workplace. His grieving father (Kyle Chandler) is the town's deputy, and for obvious reasons things are strained between father and son.

Courtney's pushy friend (Riley Griffith) is making a super 8 zombie movie, and with a small crew of kids, including fire-works crazy Ryan Lee, klutzy Zach Mills, and geeky Gabriel Basso, they sneak out late one night to work on it.

Griffith invites Elle Fanning to play the lead character's wife, and because she has a car, to the excitement of Courtney who has a crush on her.

In the middle of filming on the platform of an old rickety train station, a freight train comes nosily down the tracks. Griffiths wants to get it on film citing "production values," but Courtney sees a truck racing towards the train, and then there's a ginormous crash, completely derailing the engine and all the compartments in a series of fiery explosions. The kids escape unharmed, well, one claims he was "scraped", and recognize the driver of the truck as one of their school teachers.

They frantically leave the area when a bunch of shadowy men with flashlights descend on the wreckage.

That's the set-up, and it's a great one. From there a entertainingly tangled narrative involving a military cover-up, a budding romance between Courtney and Fanning, and, yes, a mysterious alien creature that was in one of the train's compartments unfolds.

A wide-eyed sense of wonder coupled with cynicism about government misinformation effectively evokes the atmosphere of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and E.T., which is no surprise as Spielberg produced, and the film is a collaboration of Amblin Entertainment and Bad Robot Productions.

Like with his STAR TREK reboot, Abrams shows that he has a great grip on face-paced storytelling. As the movie lays out all its alien cards, the proceedings get a bit predictable, but the compelling craft on display never falters.

Abrams also gets the Spielbergian sentimentality down. No other recent sci-fi CGI blockbuster lately has had this much heart.

It's a promising debut for Courtney, who endearingly captures the awe in this tale of how kids can outsmart the authorities, figure out a complex conspiracy, and help an alien get back home.

As for the rest of the cast - Fanning brings poise to a standard damsel in distress part, the set of smart- alecky kid are perfectly cast, and Chandler infuses his troubled cop character with intensity.

However, Noah Emmerich as a U.S. Army representative is standard one note villain. He still kind of fits here because it's a common theme in this genre that the real bad guys are the government powers that be, not the aliens. Sure, there's a lot of killing at the claws of the creature, but that's because of military mistreatment and wrongful imprisonment, you see?

With a nice blend of nostalgia, emotional pull, and incredible special effects, SUPER 8 is as touching as it is a lot of fun.

Any be sure to stay for the end credits. I'm not going to tell you why, but trust me - you won't want to miss it.

More later...