The BAD BOYS Are Back After The Slap

Opening today at multiplexes near us all:

BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE

(Dir. Adil & Bilall, 2024)

With only four years between entries, this movie marks the shortest gap between sequels for the BAD BOYS action comedy franchise that began in 1995 (the longest was the 17 years between BAD BOYS II in 2003, and BAD BOYS FOR LIFE in 2020). But what’s obviously more significant is that this fourth film in the series is the first big Will Smith movie, a contender to be a summer blockbuster no less, since the slap that was heard around the world.

And, yes, that slap is referenced in this glossy, glorified, over-stylized production that re-unites the 55-year old Smith, and the 59-year old Martin Lawrence to play the bickering buddy cops, Detectives Mike Lowrey, and Marcus Burnett. We catch up with them in the high octane (it’s all high octane) opening sequence of the tuxedoed duo racing through the sunny streets of Miami to get to the church for Mike’s wedding (to his physical therapist, Christine played by series newcomer Melanie Liburd), and thwarting a convenience store robbery on the way (Marcus had to stop for a ginger ale, Skittles, and a hot dog).

From there it’s on to Marcus paying for his comic gluttony by having a heart attack on the dance floor at the reception, and, after a near death dream sequence, comes to at the hospital that he’s invincible because his slain superior, Captain Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano) appeared to him beyond the grave to tell him it’s not his time yet.

Pantoliano’s Captain Howard, who was killed in the previous entry, has been framed as being involved with the drug cartels, so it’s up to Vice City’s finest to clear his name, but they end up on the run themselves as fugitives with $5 million bounties on their heads.

Mike’s son, Armando Aretas (Jacob Scipio), comes into play as he can identify the movie’s villain, James McGrath (Eric Dane), a former U.S. soldier turned cartel boss that the screenwriters, Chris Bremner and Will Beall, don’t flesh out to be that memorable of a character.

Every beat of every shoot-out, chase (both foot or automobile), and hand-to-hand combat scene has been done to death before, but the fast pace, and disregard for any realism makes it flow entertainingly if not thoughtfully. I hope that much of Lawrence and Smith’s banter was improvised because riffs about Marcus having encountered Mike in a former life as a donkey really don’t feel work-shopped and honed.

One scene features our hip, black, wise-cracking heroes having a run-in with rednecks on their trailer trash property (a Confederate flag can be prominently seen hanging in the doorway of their mobile home), and it’s a lazy piece of comedy with Marcus and Mike trying to fake knowing a Reba McEntire song at gunpoint. Still, the audience at the screening I saw laughed plenty – especially when the cops stole and roared off in the rednecks’ pick-up truck with a country version of “Bad Boys,” by McEntire blares on the soundtrack. I’m not making this up.

The climax at an abandoned alligator-themed amusement park is also standard stuff, with the threat of a 16-foot, 900-pound albino alligator named Duke, and Marcus making Jurassic Park jokes. Along for the ride on Mike and Marcus’s team is Vanessa Hudgens, and Alexander Ludwig as weapons and tech experts of the Advanced Miami Metro Operations (AMMO) headed by Paola Núñez (also Mike’s ex-girlfriend, returning from BAD BOYS FOR LIFE), and Ioan Gruffudd as a Miami mayoral candidate, who everybody can tell is corrupt from his first moment onscreen.

But what about the famous sucker punch that Smith landed on Chris Rock at the Oscars two years ago? Well, Smith, whose premise this time is he’s dealing with trauma that freezes him in action, gets slapped himself during a spell by Lawrence who scolds him as a “bad boy.” Again, I’m not making this up.

Belgian directing duo Adill and Bilall continue the competent job of aping Michael Bay’s glitzy music video/TV commercial aesthetics - the packaging of every Jerry Bruckheimer production - that they did on the third installment, with shots made by always swooping cameras to insure that the audience never gets bored. And that did indeed work as boredom was not a beef of mine here.

Lawrence and Smith can still bring the crude charm, and chemistry, but with only a handful of funny, laugh out loud gags, BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE is a predictably empty, and noisy experience at its worst, and simple dumb fun at its best. I can’t deny that it was a crowd-pleaser as at the showing I attended I even heard someone say, “That’s the best one yet!” at the end, but whether paying moviegoers will give it the same love will be to be seen, as we’re living in times of a lot of high-profile theatrical flops these days.

Fans of the franchise will undoubtedly dig it as it contains around the same quality of the others (maybe not BAD BOYS II though as that’s arguably the worst of the series), and folks just looking for a good diversion on the big screen will find enough amusement enough, but I can’t hail it as a must see. So watcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you? Wait for streaming.

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Oscars 2022 Recap With The Most WTF Oscar Moment Ever

Last night, Rian Heder’s CODA won the Best Picture Oscar beating out THE POWER OF THE DOG, which I had predicted would win. But that wasn’t a surprise as CODA was exactly the kind of feel-good drama that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has rewarded many times over edgier, artsier fare. None of the other wins were surprises either as everyone, myself included, forsaw that Will Smith (KING RICHARD), Jessica Chastain (THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE), Troy Kutsur (CODA), and Ariana DeBose (WEST SIDE STORY) would take home the gold; and that DUNE would have a tech Oscar sweep.

But what was a surprise, maybe even a shock, is the moment that everyone is talking about now, and has already entered into the realm of legend. You know what I’m talking about – Will Smith slapping Chris Rock because of a joke made at the expense of Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Pinkett Smith was sporting a shaved head due to her struggle with alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that leads to hair loss, and Rock, appearing as a presenter for the Best Documentary feature attempted to make light of this by quipping, “Jada, I love ya. GI Jane 2, can’t wait to see it!”

When Rock cracked this joke, the camera cut to this shot of Smith Laughing.

Then the camera cut back to Rock, who was trying to move on in his intro, but had to react (“Uh oh!”) to something we, the home viewers, couldn’t see yet. 

That would be Smith walking onstage towards Rock. It appeared that between the above shot of Smith’s initial laughter, and the long shot of his approaching the presenter, he had seen his wife’s disapproving face, and felt he had to handle the situation.

 

This is where the sound went off on the ABC broadcast, and I watched in WTF silence as Smith slapped Rock then walked back to his seat. In an exchange that I, and many viewers, didn’t hear until later, Rock, litterally trying to keep a good face, said, “Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me,” to which Smith yelled from his chair, “Keep my wife's name out of your f***ing mouth!”

 

Rock, keeping composure, said, “Wow, dude, it was a G.I. Jane joke.” Smith again raised his mouth and with more emphasis repeated, “Keep my wife's name out of your f***ing mouth.” This completely quieted the entire Dolby Theater. It was the moment that we all realized that this wasn’t a bit. Smith was completely serious. “I’m going to,” Rock replied, also as serious as a heart attack. The stunned silence remained until Rock did what he could to reclaim the stage, and the night, with a joke that acknowledged that this was sure to be a much remembered event: “That was, uh, greatest night in the history of television.”

A shaken Rock went forward with his presenting duties, and the show went on. Smith, when accepting the Best Actor award, also was a bit off, leaving one to wonder which parts of what he was saying were prepared or improvised. His apology to the Academy, and his fellow nominees appeared to be referring to the instance with Rock, as did his summation through tears: “love will make you do crazy things.”

One could argue that Rock’s joke on Jada wasn’t really that offensive, especially in the context of the celebrity roast element of the proceedings. I mean, G.I. Jane is a strong female character, and there are tons of other bald targets that would’ve been more insulting, but in the big public arena that is the Oscars, it was calling attention to the actresses’ appearance in a cheap way, and the audience’s reaction was that it was a cruel jab at Jada.

"There’s like, a different vibe in here...," co-host Amy Schumer remarked later in the evening. This line was funnier than most of the material during the broadcast as so many scripted lines fell flat, and prepared bits such as co-hosts Wanda Sykes, Regina Hall, and Schumer dressing up as coach Richard Williams, televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, and Spider-Man were just the epitome of lame award show fodder.

One of the only clever moments for me was the PULP FICTION reveal of the Best Actor envelope.

But despite a few funny lines (I loved Schumer’s DON’T LOOK UP diss: “I guess the Academy members don’t look up … reviews!”), some genuinely touching acceptance speeches (Troy Kutsur, and Questlove’s particularly), and the cool James Bond 60th retrospective video set to “Live and Let Die,” this was one of the lamest Oscars ever.

For example, the In Memorium was mishandled with a choir (singing such appropriate numbers as “Spirit in the Sky”), and dancers drawing attention away from the faces and names of those in the industry who have passed in the last year. There was the nice touch of having tributes presented by Bill Murray for director Ivan Reitman, and Jamie Lee Curtis for Betty White, but there was an awkward air surrounding the segment that felt creepy to watch. And, of course, there were ommisions (Bob Saget, Norm Macdonald, Ed Asner, Robert Downey Sr. to name several).

Honestly, creepy would be a good word to describe the whole event. The Oscars have often been a cringe-fest, but this time the dials were going crazy into the red warning danger-danger zone over and over. 

The Rock/Smith altercation did bring attention to the event - something the Academy (and ABC) was desperate for after years of bad ratings, and audience indifference - but I doubt it will translate into future relevance.

The 94th Academy Awards ceremony will go down in history for Smith’s shocking, awful reaction to Rock’s hosting duty diss. It sure livened up the show, but in such an unnecessary, and unfortunate way. Like everyone I see on social media who is debating about the moment right, I’m still processing what went down. Even after writing this, all I can think of is what Rock said right after the smackdown landed: “Oh, wow…WOW!”

So it was the most WTF moments in Oscar history on one of the lamest, most cringe-festiest Oscars ceremony ever. Yeah, years and years from now, we’ll all still look back at this one and wince.

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Hey Kids! Fun Time 2022 Oscar® Predictions!

Emilia Jones in CODA, a front runner for the 2022 Best Picture Oscar

Yes, it’s that time again - the 94th Academy Awards® Ceremony is tonight, and I’ve got my predictions ready. After last year’s weird ceremony with no official host at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, the show is back at the Dolby Theatre at the Hollywood & Highland Center, and this time, there are three hosts - Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall - who I’m sure will bring the funny.

This Oscars further displays how much the streaming services are gaining ground in these races. Netflix got 27 nominations for 10 titles, while Apple got six, Amazon got four, and Hulu got one. The two front runners (CODA, and THE POWER OF THE DOG) in the Best Picture showdown is basically Apple vs. Netflix. But let’s get right to it my complete, final predictions of what’s gonna go down tonight:

1. BEST PICTURE:  Jane Champion’s THE POWER OF THE DOG

Sien Heder’s CODA has picked up a lot of Oscar buzz late in the game, and many critics from such outlets including the New York Times, Variety, IndieWire, and Vulture are predicting that it’ll win the big one, but I have a feeling that Jane Campion’s THE POWER OF THE DOG, an early major contender will still out. It would be fun to have an upset in this category, like if BELFAST or LICORICE PIZZA somehow got more votes. I won’t be surprised if CODA wins, as it’s so much more of a crowd pleaser than POWER OF THE DOG, but I’m gonna still go with the Campion crowd.

2. BEST DIRECTOR: Jane Champion (THE POWER OF THE DOG) Same deal here.

3. BEST ACTOR: Will Smith (KING RICHARD) 

I’m not the biggest Will Smith fan, but I think he’s excellent in this film as the stubborn tennis coach father bully, Richard Williams, and deserves to take home the gold. Several weeks ago, I would’ve said Benedict Cumberbatch was a lock for TPOTD, but Smith has the edge now, and I bet his acceptance speech will be epic.

4. BEST ACTRESS: Jessica Chastain (THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE)

This may be the toughest category in a program full of tough category as there doesn’t appear to be an actress that doesn’t have a big chance. Nate Jones of Vulture wrote, “Many categories, including Best Picture, seem like genuine fifty-fifty calls. (Best Actress might be 20-20-20-20-20.)” I’m going with Chastain, whose performance as the scandal queen televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker was stunning, despite the actual film being way less so. Like Smith, it’s her third Oscar nomination, so I’m counting on it being the charm.

5. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Troy Kotsur (CODA)

Now, I’ll be very surprised if this guy doesn’t win this. He’s the best thing in CODA, and he’s already won a British Academy Film Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Critics' Choice Award, and stole the show at each ceremony. If he wins, he’ll be the first deaf actor to score the statue (his CODA co-star, Marlee Matlin, was the first deaf actress to win an Oscar for CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD in 1987), so that’ll be a cool thing.

6. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ariana Debose (WEST SIDE STORY)

I don’t have a strong feeling on this one, I’m just seeing that just about everyone is saying this is a lock, and I’m going with the flow.

Now here’s the rest of the categories, the ones that are getting the shaft this year by their exclusion from the live broadcast.

The BAD BOYS Saga Concludes. Or Does It?

BAD BOYS FOR LIFE

(Dir. Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah, 2020)

The 17-year long wait is finally over as the third and final chapter in the mighty BAD BOYS saga opens tonight. This entry has all the things you’d expect from a BAD BOYS movie: it’s too long, it has many instances of crappy comedy, it’s decorated with tons of sweeping shots of Miami (mostly in time-lapse), and it contains gunfire and explosions galore.

Now, the BAD BOYS series has always been about dumb fun as it’s delivered glossy LETHAL WEAPON-style buddy cop action hijinks once a decade since 1995, so it’s silly to be too critical of such a wannabe crowd pleaser, especially one released in January, but I’m still gonna give it a go.

This time, our heroes, Miami narcotics cops Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith), realize that it’s time to hang up their badges and guns and take it easy into old age. Well, not really. Only Lawrence’s neurotic character is leaning that way, now that he’s a grandfather, but Smith’s smooth Mike is in denial as jokes about his dying his goatee attest.

Shit gets real when Mike is gunned down by a mysterious motorcyclist, and he’s laid up for months in the hospital with Marcus waiting by his side (and helping to re-dye his goatee). When he comes to, just in time for Marcus’ daughter’s wedding, he is intent on revenge. With the help of AMMO (Advanced Miami Metro Operations), a group of heavily armed, high tech millennial cops (including Alexander Ludwig, Charles Melton, Kate del Castillo, and possible Smith love interest Paola Nuñez), he hunts down the shooter who turns out to be the leader of a Miami drug cartel, Armando Armas (Jacob Scipio), and turns out to be something else, but no Spoilers here.

Lawrence and Smith, both in their 50s, look pretty good in this last outing – well, Lawrence looks a little pudgy, but that’s no real issue here. They still have the argumentative chemistry they had at the beginning of the franchise, though the shtick of them bickering while dodging bullets got way old in the second one back in 2003. Luckily, there are a number of good lines and laughs to help us through the predictable formula.

Directors Adil & Bilall do a good job replicating Michael Bay’s overly slick and jump cut crazy aesthetics, but they don’t bring much of their own style to the production. As big and cinematic as they want to go, these movies are really overblown TV shows, and these Belgian filmmakers are not much more than directors-for-hire here.

I did enjoy seeing returning regular Joe Pantoliano as Captain Conrad Howard have a more significant part than before, and I accepted most of the contrivances with out much eye-rolling, but just about everything else went down exactly the way I thought it would.

Maybe I’m speaking too soon that this is the concluding chapter in the trilogy as there’s a during the end credits scene (see? Even BAD BOYS movies are adapting to Marvel methods) that indicates that the game may not be up. Okay, fine – go ahead and flog this franchise. If there’s as much as a gap between entries as there’s been in the past, our beloved duo will be nearing 70 next time. Maybe Lawrence’s Marcus will finally learn the correct lyrics to Inner Circle’s Cops theme song “Bad Boys” by then.

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C’mon People, SUICIDE SQUAD Doesn’t Completely Suck!

Now playing at a multiplex near everyone:

SUICIDE SQUAD (Dir. David Ayer, 2016)

Upon leaving the screening for this film earlier this week, I wrote on my press comment card that it was “the best DC movie yet, but that’s not saying much.”

In the days since I’ve seen many variations on that line, so much so that it appears to be the consensus – go Google “better than BATMAN V SUPERMAN” and see what I mean.

Of course there are folks like this guy whose headline declares “Suicide Squad is worse than Batman v Superman. No, we didn't think it was possible either,” but I definitely enjoyed it a lot more than that monstrosity.

It’s not a great film for sure, but there are sections of it that work – the first 20 or so minutes, the set-up so to speak, hits the mark with slick, and funny intros to the main characters.

We meet the bleached white-skinned, blue and pink tipped blonde, bright red lipsticked, crazy sexy cool Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the smooth, wise-cracking career hitman Deadshot (Will Smith); the fire-controlling ex-mobster El Diablo (Jay Hernandez); the reptilian cannibal Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) who’s the “Groot” of the group; and the Australian badass thief Boomerang (Jai Courtney), all behind bars for various crimes that we see in snazzy flashbacks.

Viola Davis plays Amanda Walker, a U.S. intelligence officer decides to assemble these dangerous supervillains (plus a late addition, Adam Beach as Slipknot) a into a black ops team for a top-secret mission that involves saving Midway City, which is basically Chicago, from the destructive forces of an ancient witch called Enchantress (Cara Delevingne).

The team is under the command of Joel Kinnaman (The Killing, House of Cards, the ROBOCOP reboot) as Col. Rick Flag, a character that dates back to the original “Suicide Squad” comics (I just read this online; I’ve never read the comic).

But I haven’t even gotten to the film’s juiciest element, Jared Leto as the Joker, whose look with his neon green hair and weird braces outraged fans when it first dropped online, but it worked well for me in the context of the movie’s aesthetics. Sadly, Leto’s Joker isn’t in much of the film, but he makes quite an impression – more so than Ben Affleck’s Batman cameo – and has electric chemistry with Robbie, whose Harley Quinn is the Joker’s girlfriend.

The movie gets messier as it goes on with the team trotting through Midway on their mission in a manner that recalls the similar scenarios of THE WARRIORS and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK but with less of their classic gusto.

I feel like I did last summer when I bitched that the Adam Sandler movie PIXELS wasn’t as terrible as critics were saying it was (mind you, I still thought it was bad) when I write that SUICIDE SQUAD doesn’t completely suck, but I’m just being honest when I say I didn’t hate it.

Unsurprisingly, the parts that I liked were the ones that were most like Marvel, especially when it came to having more humor than their previous movies (MAN OF STEEL and BATMAN V SUPERMAN were as humorless as you can get). DC has their work cut out for them if they want to compete with Marvel’s incredibly successful business model but there are moments here that show that it may be possible someday.

David Ayer, who wrote the screenplay, is definitely a better director than Zach Snyder, but SUICIDE SQUAD is such a mismatch of different styles – sometimes it feels like the NATURAL BORN KILLERS of superhero movies – that he seems like he’s in way over his head.

I’ll still say it’s worth seeing as a matinee for Robbie, who doesn’t steal the film as much as owns it right off the bat, and Smith, who gets the lion’s share of the film’s laughs. I guess my expectations were low enough that I found some enjoyment out of this very mixed bag. If you go in like that, maybe you will too.

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Awful AFTER EARTH Is More Will Smith's Bad Than M. Night Shyamalan's

Opening today at nearly every multiplex in America:

AFTER EARTH (Dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 2013)

“Together we will survive.” Will Smith, as some sort of intergalactic General, declares this to his son Kitai, played by his real son Jaden, after their spaceship has crash landed on a hostile abandoned Earth, 1000 years in the future in M. Night Shyamalan’s newest.

Thing is, these could be the real-life words of Smith re-assuring his offspring that he can carry a summer sci-fi action vehicle of his own, but, don’t worry, Daddy will be there on the sidelines to talk him through it. You see, Smith’s character broke his legs in the crash, and he’s determined not to smile, make a wisecrack, or do anything that would draw attention away from his kid’s screen-time.

Jaden looks worried and overwhelmed at this prospect, and he should be as he’s far from a polished actor, but his father, who had the story idea (writer/game designer Gary Whitta and Shyamalan fleshed it out somewhat into a screenplay), surely talked him into it with the selling points that sci-fi and the start of the summer movie season have paid off for their family many times in the past.

Well, in this tedious tale decorated by unspectacular CGI (I’ve seen episodes of Battlestar Galactica from five years ago that had more impressive special effects – hard to believe this reportedly cost $150 million), nothing pays off as nothing interesting happens at all.

Jaden is haunted by memories of his sister (Zoe Kravitz) being killed by some monstrous alien beast, and now has to fend off all kinds of crazy creatures (“everything has evolved to kill humans,” Smith explains) as he makes his way to retrieve a beacon in the far-off wreckage of their ship so they can return home to Nova Prime (the planet Earthlings relocated to).

To make the trip, Jaden needs a supply of inhalers to help combat the poisonous air. This means time is of the essence, which doesn’t make sense that they would stop for a lengthy dramatic speech by Smith to his son through whatever they call Skype in the future. I mean, sure it was dark and rainy, but it seems like Jaden should’ve kept moving. Sure wish the movie did.

It all leads up to what’s supposed to be a big ass climatic battle with another alien beast (which again, is crafted from un-compelling CGI), in which Jaden finally heeds his father’s advice and conquers his fears. Yawn.

This family vanity project (it’s co-produced by Smith, his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, her younger brother Caleeb Pinkett, and Smith’s long-time business partner James Lassiter), recalls how Shyamalan based his much reviled flop LADY IN THE WATER on a bedtime story he told to his children.

These big budget acts of nepotism may boast their family’s morale, but they contribute nothing to the art of cinema, nor do they make for anything close to passable entertainment.

With its poorly acted protagonist, complete lack of narrative or thematic drive, and sluggish pacing, AFTER EARTH joins the string of failures that Shyamalan has produced for now over a decade. Even what used to be a sure thing, i.e. a Will Smith summer sci-fi project, couldn’t reverse the filmmaker’s downward spiral.

To be fair, the blame of how bland this movie is should rest more on Smith’s shoulders than Shyamalan’s. It’s Smith’s glorified bedtime story starring his son; M. Night is just laying in it.

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MEN IN BLACK III: Meh

MEN IN BLACK III (Dir. Barry Sonnenfeld, 2012)

Despite a few good ideas - Josh Brolin cast as a young Tommy Lee Jones; a cameo by SNL’s Bill Hader as Andy Warhol – the third installment of the MEN IN BLACK series is exactly what I expected. Every joke and plot point of this series of CGI-saturated set-pieces is mechanically in place in this standard-issue sequel right off the formulaic franchise assembly-line.

It’s been 10 years since MiBII (and 15 years since MiB), and not much has changed.

Will Smith and partner Jones are still up to their top-secret agency’s alien neutral zone policing, only Rip Torn doesn’t return to play their boss Agent Z. Instead they’ve got Emma Thompson, severly underwritten as Agent O, who figures out that there’s been a fracture in the time-space continuum because Smith came to work craving chocolate milk (that’s right). This is after Smith wakes up in a world in which Jones has been dead for 40 years.

You see, when the evil intergalactic criminal Boris the Animal (Flight of the Conchords’ Jermaine Clement) escaped from a Lunar prision (the film’s big opening scene), he traveled back in time to 1969 (via a time-jump device obtained in a pawn shop) and killed Jones, so Smith has got to go back to the past and save his gruff partner. Then they can save the world from, I dunno, alien jellyfish descending on the planet?

This is where Brolin comes in with a pitch-perfect impersonation of Jones. This central gimmick works well initially (Brolin does Jones so much better than he did Dubya), and helps carry the film from half-chuckle to half-chuckle.

Jones really made out well in this outting - he only has to appear in the beginning and end of the film, but still gets his name above the title while a young hot actor embodies his persona for the rest of the picture.

There are a lot of possibilities for larger-than-life laughs here, such as retro aliens a la late ‘60s sci-fi (think Star Trek and Lost in Space), Clement’s bickering with his younger dumber double, andMichael Stuhlberg (A SERIOUS MAN, Boardwalk Empire) as a quirky visionary alien, but as big as the spectacle gets (and with its Cape Canaveral climax it gets pretty big), the attempts at creating actual comedy are few and futile.

It feels as if the film is so slickly streamlined that any notion of inventive wit would only get in the way. A throwaway one-liner spoutin’ Smith kickin’ extraterrestrial ass is always a surefire summer movie-going audience pleasing scenario, so why mess with success?

Basically, MiBIII isn’t a great movie, but it’s a sturdy franchise entry.

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SLEUTH & A Few New DVD Reviews

"The film was a sadd'ning bore, 'cause I wrote it 10 times or more." - David Bowie from the song "Life On Mars"

Bowie's couplet above could serve as perfect criticism of the following film. I wanted to see it on the big screen last fall but it played for only a week at a local theater and was roundly panned. I loved the original so I put it in my queue and wished for the best. 

Well, what I got was the worst:

SLEUTH (Dir. Kenneth Branaugh, 2007)

This entire production screams "high concept!" It's a slick streamlined remake of the much beloved 1972 mystery which pitted Sir Laurence Olivier as a wealthy novelist against Michael Caine as a gold digging hair salon manager who is having an affair with Olivier's wife. 

The high concept here is that Caine now plays the wealthy novelist and Jude Law, fresh from remaking ALFIE, again steps into Caine's old shoes as the young gold digger.

The gothic old house of the original has been transformed into a high tech palace with surveillance cameras and monitors in every corner - a cold and sterile museum of a house that Caine says was designed by his wife but it's hard not to think he took some notes from Batman.

Taking the concept higher is a new screenplay by noted playwright Harold Pinter which throws out all of the original's dialogue and replaces it with even more twisted mental trickery. Branaugh's sharply stylised direction inhabits every frame - the film actually looks shiny like an expensive ad in GQ magazine. So why doesn't any of it work?

Hmm, It's not because it's ridiculous, contrived, and over the top - the original was all those things and even more unbelievable in its conceit.

The conceit being that these 2 men perform a series of double crossing mindgames over the never seen wife. There is one giant plot device that I won't give away, though if you watch the trailer you can probably guess what it is, that is handled so horribly it should have been discarded all together.

Caine has sleepwalked through better material than this but he does give it the old college try. Jude Law, is well...just what I expected - glib but hiding overwhelming insecurities but just like with Caine we never believe these are people with lives outside of this movie. They're both constrained by their empty caricatures.

Like I said before - the film looks great, the actors are apt, and the direction is solid so I guess I can only really blame the script. Pinter's dialogue is simplistic yet over-reaching - he uses all of the original's hot premise points but retains none of their humorous charms. 

If the plan was to break down a grand theatrical melodrama down into a souless modern psychological thriller package with as much depth as a Tom and Jerry cartoon then Pinter is indeed a genius as he's been often called. 

With all due respect to the Nobel Laureate, the original was an amusing trifle; this is high concept tripe.

The 2007 model SLEUTH only has 2 good things going for it: 

1. At 86 minutes it is an hour shorter than the original so at least they didn't try and stretch what was already as thin as Shelley Duvall as Olive Oil. 

2. The prospect that because this film was a critical and financial failure we can be spared any future Jude Law remakes of Michael Caine movies. Though come to think of it though, in the right hands Law could maybe pull off DEATHTRAP - if they stick to the original script, that is.

This next film isn't new but I'm writing about it because there is a recent English language remake that just came to my area. It's not playing in Chapel Hill however possibly because in the light of the tragic death of UNC student Eve Carson it could be seen to be in bad taste. Hearing that the remake is a shot-by-shot replay of the original from a decade earlier by the same director I got it from NetFlix and do strongly feel that yes the timing would be bad.

Not sure though, if the time will ever be right for:

FUNNY GAMES (Dir. Michael Haneke, 1997)

                                         

In a calm soothing manner we are introduced to a cultured Austrian family (A husband and wife played by Ulrigh Mühe and Suzanne Lothar with their son played by Stefan Clapczynski) arriving at their lake house.

10 minutes into the film a couple of creepy young men dressed in white clothes with white gloves appear - the first (Frank Giering) innocently asks to borrow some eggs from Lothar which he supposedly accidentally breaks. He asks for more, breaks those too and an awkward confrontation occurs when the second (Arno Frisch) assaults Mühe with a golf club severely injuring his right leg. 

The home invasion is in full swing now with the family taken hostage and a series of sadistic mind games with rules and deadly consequences set in place by Frisch. Frisch "breaks the frame" early on by winking at the camera then later asking the audience to bet on the fate of his victims: "You're on their side so who will you bet with?" 

Many critics have labeled FUNNY GAMES - high art disguised as torture porn (or vice versa) and point out that we don't actually see much of the violence because it occurs off screen. That may be true but there is still enough voyeuristic violence with screaming and blood in sight to disturb not just the squeamish. Haneke has said that he intended to make "a film about the portrayal of violence in the media, in movies... an attempt to provide an analysis of the work within the work." 

I'm afraid that even with that lofty purpose and artsy asides to the camera we still just have another violent piece of work here - a pretentious and tedious one at that. Repeatedly the suffering family asks their tormentors "why?" - "Don't forget the entertainment value" Giering responds and it is the only thing that ever comes close to a sincere answer. The entertainment value of this pointless exercise however is non-existent. 

If Haneke is making a statement critical of the mass consumption of media violence and he is ideally chastising viewers with his own work then as someone identifying themselves as Fuckhead on a Onion A.V. Club message board * asks "I guess the way to pass this film's test is to not see it? Is that it?" 

Yes, that's it. I failed that test by watching the original. But I expect to pass with flying colors when it comes to the remake. 

* Actually from the comments on the article "A funny response to Funny Games" by Steve Hyden (March 17, 2008) 

I AM LEGEND (Dir. Francis Lawrence, 2007)

                                         

I was planning on skipping this flick but some friends thought it would be good mindless fun one recent eve. They were right - this Will Smith fighting zombies spectacle (big enough to warrant an IMAX release) isn't too dumb for fun. Mind you, it considers itself to be too highbrow to call them zombies or mutants - they're called The Infected or Darkseekers. 

Based on the 1954 novel (which took place in the 70's) by Richard Matheson, the story is simple - in 2012, 3 years after most of the world's population is hit by a massive plague a man (Smith) who believes he may be the last alive on Manhattan Island struggles to find a cure for the virus. 

Dodging constant attacks, Smith talks to himself and his trusty dog Sam (who you just know won't make til the end) as he stockpiles food, broadcasts radio transmissions in hope of finding other survivors, and has several flashes to backstory about his departed family.

Smith captures Infected ones in order to test treatments and thinks he may have found a possible anti-dote.

Of course, this plot seems designed as an elaborate laundry line on which to hang a series of immense bombastic set pieces including a scene involving the Brooklyn Bridge which cost $5 million (the most expensive scene ever filmed in the city at the time according to Wikipedia). 

The CGI demon dogs and Darkseekers provide some genuine scares, while the shoot-out scenes (as one-sided as shoot-outs can be) are actually fairly compelling. 

Despite the sci-fi action formula limits, Smith is able to build upon his acting standard set by THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS last year and again shows he can carry, pretty much on his shoulders alone, another overblown blockbuster with poise. Don't get me wrong though - it's no movie masterpiece; I AM LEGEND is a brisk 1 hour and 40 min. piece of populist entertainment - nothing more. So just put a cork in your brainhole and sit back and enjoy.

More later...