Movie Review Rampage

Rampage (2018) 

Directed by Brad Peyton

Written by Carlton Cuse, Ryan Engle, Ryan J. Condal, Adam Sztykiel

Starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Naomie Harris 

Release Date April 13th, 2018 

Published April 12th, 2018 

Rampage stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as Primatologist, Dr. Davis Okoye. A former military officer, Davis specialized in battling poachers in Africa. That’s where Davis met his best friend, George (Jason Liles, in full motion capture), a giant white ape. Davis brought George to America to keep him away from poachers who would pay a hefty price for such a rare creature. Over the years, George became a leader and he and Davis developed communication via sign language.

The plot kicks in when a plane carrying an experimental serum belonging to an evil corporation that specializes in… being evil, crashes, it exposes George and several other animals to the evil serum and causes them to grow out of control. Aside from George, the evil serum affects a wolf that develops the ability to fly and a crocodile that eventually swims across the country, even where there isn’t a large body of water, to enact destruction upon Chicago. 

The evil corporation, I assume, intends to weaponize the animals afflicted by the serum. When they turn on a beacon on top of their evil skyscraper it sends out a signal to the now monstrously over-sized animals that causes them to go crazy and make a mad dash for Chicago. Only Davis and a former scientist for the evil corporation, Dr. Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris), can stop the animals from destroying Chicago… in a Rampage. Ha! 

Rampage sounds like a lot of fun, in description. Unfortunately, as directed by Brad Peyton, director of the equally forgettably competent, San Andreas, it’s merely a movie that exists. Rampage has no personality, no life, no charm. Everything in the movie is in frame, it looks professional and the CGI is well-produced. Competency however, is only part of a good movie and Rampage is missing those other essential qualities. 

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is one of the most entertaining movie stars of recent times and yet even his charm can’t bring Rampage to life. Like his performance in the recent flop Skyscraper, The Rock’s performance is muted, he doesn’t go for the jokes and appears to be taking the silliness of Rampage far too seriously. There are too many scenes that appear to be going for action movie suspense when they should be going for the kind of goofball, comic thrills The Rock gets in his Fast and Furious franchise. 

Malin Akerman, Jake Lacy and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays a wacky CIA Agent, on the other hand, as opposed to The Rock, appear to know what movie they are in. Though they don’t achieve much flying in the face of the overly serious direction and score, the three supporting players try hard to bring laughs to their roles. These three get that a movie with giant animals on a ‘Rampage’ in a big city is not something to be taken too seriously. 

Morgan is unquestionably the best thing about Rampage, aside from the terrific creature effects. Morgan is grinning and giggling throughout Rampage and affects a bizarre drawl that is laughably over the top. Morgan’s looseness and giant grin are a clear port in a storm of boring exposition and tepid, acceptably well produced action. It’s a wonder Morgan isn’t a bigger star, he’s got personality to spare and as seen in Rampage, he can steal scenes from both The Rock and giant CGI animals. 

The biggest problem with Rampage is an approach that takes the material way too seriously. I get that giant animals attacking a large city would be something we would have to take seriously were it to ever happen but let’s be real here. This is a silly premise that needs to be treated as such for the movie to work. The supporting players get that and act accordingly comic, with Akerman twirling an absent mustache and Lacy being slimy and weaselly and Morgan making a joke of the whole thing. 

Sadly, The Rock, the most charismatic star in the world today, fails to get the joke of Rampage and in the star missing the joke, the movie fails. Director Brad Peyton especially needed to get the joke of Rampage and he completely misses the boat by going for genuine action movie suspense rather than amping up the goofiness ala The Fast and Furious franchise or the recent Jurassic World movies. That kind of approach could have made Rampage a classic. As it is, I don’t even recommend it as a time wasting rental.

Movie Review Skyscraper

Skyscraper (2018)

Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber 

Written by Rawson Marshall Thurber 

Starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Chin Han, Roland Moller, Neve Campbell, Pablo Schreiber

Release Date July 13th, 2018

Published July 12th, 2018 

Releasing Skyscraper on the same weekend time frame when Die Hard was released 30 years earlier was a bad idea. Tributes abound this weekend to the staying power and quality of Die Hard and those who revisit the Bruce Willis classic will not look favorably upon the similarly plotted but far less accomplished Skyscraper. Just how bad is Skyscraper? Not even Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and his megawatt smile can save it.

Skyscraper stars The Rock as Will Sawyer, a former Army Ranger turned FBI Agent and now family man and entrepreneur. After retiring from the FBI following a mission that ended tragically, Will started a family with his wife Sarah, who happened to save his life after he nearly died in that failed raid I just mentioned. Will has also just launched his own security firm. Will’s pal Ben (Pablo Schreiber) has even gone to great lengths to get him his first client and what a client he is.

Zhao (Chin Han) has just opened the world’s largest building; he calls it ‘The Pearl’ for the giant pearl design that sits above the 200th floor. Before he can open the residential section of ‘The Pearl’ however, Zhao needs to get insured and that means a full security systems check and that leads him to Will. Unfortunately, for both Zhao and Will, a group of terrorists want something that Zhao has locked away inside ‘The Pearl’ and they will go to extreme measures to get it.

Director Rawson Marshall Thurber is best known for the Ben Stiller comedy “Dodgeball.” He could have used some of that film’s sense of humor and good nature as Skyscraper is a dry, joyless exercise in simple minded, plot-heavy idiocy. The script, also by Thurber, is bursting at the seams with clumsy, forced, exposition to the point where characters communicate plot points by speaking out loud to no one but the movie watching audience.

I’m not kidding, at one point, the main baddie of Skyscraper, played by Roland Moller, talks to no one in particular and makes mention of something important to the plot of the movie. Later, The Rock is also alone and also expositing plot points to no one but us and the scene is so forced and clumsy that even Rock’s billion dollar charisma can’t sell the line. The Rock could sell ice cubes in the arctic but the awful dialogue of Skyscraper fully defeats him.

I’m a huge fan of Dwayne Johnson and I have been since his early days in the WWE. He’s always had an air about him, a swagger, a star presence that, even in subpar efforts, still shined through. Until now, I thought The Rock was invincible, the kind of actor who unfailingly elevated the movies he chose to star in. Here, however, with Skyscraper, even The Rock’s magnetism is defeated by a terrible script and subpar direction.

This Skyscraper should be condemned! Is what I would say if I were a terrible critic looking to score a cheap giggle. Instead, I will say that Skyscraper is one of the worst movies of 2018, a flat, dull-witted bit of action nonsense that can’t hold a candle to its undoubted influencer, Die Hard which, even 30 years later, feels fresh, fun and exciting and more so when compared to the dreck of Skyscraper.

Movie Review The Condemned

The Condemned (2007)

Directed by Scott Wiper

Written by Scott Wiper, Rob Hedden 

Starring Stone Cold Steve Austin, Vinny Jones, Robert Mammone, Rick Hoffman

Release Date April 27th, 2007 

Published August 16th, 2007

WWE owner Vince McMahon is still ticked off that Dwayne ‘The Rock' Johnson managed to become a major movie star without Vince's help. Ever since The Rock left the WWE for Hollywood Vince has been determined to make movie stars of his wrestlers while they are still working for him. Thus, last year audiences were treated to WWE star Glen 'Kane' Jacobs in the forgettable horror flick See No Evil.

That film was followed by WWE champion John Cena in The Marine in early 2007. Both of those films tanked at the box office but that is not slowing down the WWE owner's determination to make movies. McMahon and company have gone back to the well one more time with the action movie The Condemned.

WWE superstar Stone Cold Steve Austin stars in The Condemned as Jack Conrad, a navy seal left behind in a South American prison after a black ops mission gone bad. Sentenced to death, Jack is plucked off of death row by an American millionaire with some ugly intentions. Ian Breckel (Robert Mammone) is creating the ultimate high stakes reality show and Jack Conrad is going to be the star attraction.

The Condemned is a competition in which 10 condemned prisoners are transported to a remote island filled with cameras. The premise is to have the former death row inmates from around the globe battle to the death. The last man or woman left standing will be released with some money in their pocket. The whole show will be filmed and broadcast worldwide on the net.

It's a premise that's been used a number of times in films as varied as The Running Man and Death Race 2000 to more artful examples like the indie Series 7: The Contenders or the Asian classic Battle Royale. So The Condemned and writer-director Scott Wiper are not exactly treading new ground here. What is different about The Condemned is the oddball way in which The Condemned comes out against the very violence it portrays and intends to thrive upon.

The Condemned is a hard R-rated action movie with some brutal violence and a high body count. It's also a movie with a moralist message that condemns the very violence it proliferates. It's a very strange combination because the movie plays out in such an earnest, straightforwardly violent fashion. The Condemned plays as if the filmmakers were entirely unaware of the irony.

There is a goofy charm in the way The Condemned unfolds it's moralist plot with hardcore violence. Director Scott Wiper is either a madman genius who gets it so well that he can make you think he doesn't. Or he is so blissfully ignorant that the irony of using hardcore violence to condemn hardcore violence is lost on him in the same way Ed Wood could ignore the strings holding the fake flying saucer in his Plan 9 From Outer Space.

The only really knowing aspect of The Condemned comes from star Stone Cold Steve Austin whose performance is so completely in the know it damn near doubles back on itself and becomes a severe parody. Stone Cold bites into every line with relish and extra cheese. He delivers one-liners with the skill and precision of a Schwarzenegger in one scene and with deathly Stallone/Rambo seriousness in others.

The Condemned is a bizarre combination of hardcore violence and oddball moralizing. It's a film whose premise condemns the very violence it thrives upon and does so with such earnestness that you almost appreciate the naivete of the creators. Their seeming lack of awareness of the irony of their plot is strangely endearing. I can't recommend The Condemned, it's just not a very good movie overall, but for the brave irony appreciators out there, those of you with a strong stomach and stronger sardonic nature, you may find something to enjoy in The Condemned.

Movie Review The Game Plan

The Game Plan (2007) 

Directed by Andy Fickman 

Written by Nichole Millard, Kathryn Price 

Starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Madison Pettis, Kyra Sedgwick, Morris Chestnut, Roselyn Sanchez

Release Date September 28th, 2007

Published September 27th. 2007

"We're through the looking glass here people" Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison in Oliver Stone's JFK. How does this quote relate, in any way, to the innocuous family comedy The Game Plan starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson? Well, ffter watching it, I'm convinced that a conspiracy is afoot. The Walt Disney company is hiding something and I think I know what it is. I'll save the conspiracies for later in the review. I will tell you now; that despite this evil conspiracy, The Rock damn near makes this innocuous, ineffectual, family comedy worth throwing away a Saturday afternoon on. Almost.

In The Game Plan The Rock plays 'The King" aka Joe Kingman, the professional football MVP who is leading his Boston Rebels team to the championship. The swinging bachelor parties late into the night, he has a room where he keeps Chanel branded presents on standby for his favorite girlfriends, and he is something of a jerk to teammates, especially those who put family ahead of having a good time.

Naturally, Joe has his comeuppance coming and it comes in the form of 8 year old Peyton (Madison Pettis) who claims to be his daughter. Indeed, she is the daughter of Joe's ex-wife. The marriage broke up not long after they wed. The wife kept the wedding to herself but now that an emergency has called her out of the country for a month, she's ready to let Joe meet Peyton. Well,  that's Peyton's version of events, mom may not actually know what her daughter is up to.

You don't exactly need a map to see where this one is headed. As directed by Andy Fickman (She's The Man), The Game Plan is as rote and formulaic as any Disney, non-animated, movie. Typical Lessons are learned by daddy and daughter, minor crises arise and are resolved, and if you think that daddy and daughter will end up apart, clearly you don't go to the movies very often.

The one thing that keeps The Game Plan from becoming The Pacifier Part Deux is the presence of The Rock. The former WWE wrestling champion is a highly charismatic presence. Highly likable with a tremendous ability to laugh at himself, the Rock keeps The Game Plan from becoming too treacly and syrupy, though he can't avoid the pitfalls of predictability.

There is a strange parallel between this kind of bland, harmless family comedy and movies like Rob Zombie's Halloween and that is a sneaky sort of conservatism. Family movies and horror movies both reinforce so-called traditional family values. In Halloween, for example, sins are punished by a vengeful god figure, reinforcing traditional Christian values by killing people, especially those sinners who engage in premarital sex.

In The Game Plan, traditional family values are reinforced by showing the life of a swinging single male to be empty and devoid of meaning and fulfillment. It is not until Joe meets his daughter and begins building a family, including a potential new mommy in Roselyn Sanchez, his daughter's ballet teacher, that Joe's life begins to gain meaning. There is no biblical punishment for Joe should he not get on the right path but, as laid out in this mindless, Disney universe, Joe's life will be meaningless without the traditional family structure.

Conspiracy? Maybe. But it's not the only conspiracy at work in The Game Plan. Cue spooky X-Files scene transition music. I'm now convinced of a Disney conspiracy alongside my family values conspiracy. The mouse house is hiding a terrifying piece of technology somewhere in the bowels of the magic kingdom. It's a computer running a program that writes bland, inoffensive, family movie scripts that feature the same predictable moments of pathos, bathos, bathroom humor and slapstick, all wrapped up in a happily ever after bow.

Just think what horrors might be unleashed if this technology were to fall into the wrong hands. For goodness sake Disney, destroy this computer before it destroys us all by creating the ultimate bland, inoffensive family comedy and lulls all of us into a state of mild amusement and mindless familiarity.

Ok, despite my conspiracy theories, there is nothing even modestly dangerous about The Game Plan. In fact, if you are desperate for a family movie, you could do much worse than this. Though I won't remember this movie in about an hour, I wasn't entirely bored while watching it because Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is such a charmer.

Though I think The Game Plan will be a hit at the box office I wouldn't worry about seeing it opening weekend. It won't be long before this simpleminded PG rated comedy will run on an endless loop on The Disney Channel or ABC Family, or on some conspiratorial combination of TBS, WGN and TNT, hmm, I wonder who's behind all of this. Sorry, just theorizing again.

Movie Review Gridiron Gang

Gridiron Gang (2006) 

Directed by Phil Joanou

Written by Jeff Maguire

Starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Xhibit, Leon Rippy, Kevin Dunn

Release Date September 15th, 2006

Published September 14th, 2006

Gridiron Gang is yet another formula sports flick with all of the beats, lyrics and tear jerker elements the genre is known for. So how does it manage to be better than most similar formula sports flicks? It's all about the star power. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is a rising star whose massive wrestlers frame is matched by a thousand watt smile, a self deprecating sense of humor, and the kind of charm only seen in the biggest movie stars. The Rock's presence turns the simplistic, slightly tacky, recycled plot of Gridiron Gang into an inviting, entertaining piece of formula filmmaking.

At Camp Kilpatrick, on the outskirts of affluent Malibu, California, guard Sean Porter (The Rock) is fighting a losing battle. Year after year he watches in futility as his teenage prisoners repeat the mistakes that got them to Camp Kilpatrick after they get released. Kilpatrick is a youth facility where criminal teens kill time till they turn 18 and are returned to the street. The stats say that nearly 80 percent of the kids released from Kilpatrick will either find themselves in adult prisons or dead.

One day, as Porter is visiting his sick mother, he passes a High School football practice and is struck with a slightly crazy idea. He thinks he can start a football team at Camp Kilpatrick. In pitching the idea to his boss, Paul Higa (Leon Rippy), Porter points out that the problems these kids have with discipline and working well with others can be addressed by playing football.

Higa is dubious but allows Porter and fellow guard Malcolm Moore (rapper Xzibit) to go ahead with forming a team. Porter takes it a step further by approaching a league of Christian High Schools about allowing the newly formed Kilpatrick Mustangs to play a full schedule of games in their league. Can he get the team to come together in a very short time? Can he get these mostly gang affiliated criminals to put aside their street affiliations and play as a team? These are the questions that drive the plot of Gridiron Gang.

Gridiron Gang is based on a television documentary from the husband and wife team of Lee and Linda Stanley who discovered the story of Sean Porter while researching a documentary on juvenile detention facilities. The story they discovered was one of the few true success stories in the often heart rending system of juvenile detention. As the film explains, the football program at Camp Kilpatrick managed to help 75% of the kids who played on that team to avoid returning to their criminal ways after leaving the camp. That is an extraordinary accomplishment, worthy of having made a movie about it.

Director Phil Joanou, best known for his work on some innovative U2 music videos, brings a documentary feel to Gridiron Gang. The aesthetic is often difficult to square with football scenes that go right inside the huddle and on the field (places where obviously documentary cameras could not go) but it is nevertheless an eye capturing visual approach that does work in non-football scenes.

The most important element of Gridiron Gang however, is the lead performance of Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The former WWE superstar is an imposing physical presence, more than filling the intimidating presence of a prison guard, but it is his charm that really makes this role so surprising and entertaining. Coming from the often meat headed world of professional wrestling; it is quite extraordinary to find someone like The Rock with such natural charisma, presence and talent.

Rather than just be intimidating The Rock also shines in his dramatic scenes in Gridiron Gang. The Rock has a natural rapport with his young co-stars and their obvious admiration for him comes through in their performances. Amongst the strong group of young actors Jade Yorker stands out as Willie Weathers a roughneck young gangster who lost his cousin in a drive by and lives for the chance at revenge. Forced to play football with members of the rival gang involved in his cousins death, Willie becomes a difficult charge. His transformation is slow and painful and the film makes good use of this dramatic device.

I've said it before and I will say it again; there is nothing wrong with formula filmmaking. The key is how the formula is applied. The creators of Gridiron Gang apply this formula with eye catching documentary style camerawork and most importantly; by taking advantage of the star power and charisma of Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. The Rock is a true star in the making whose obvious physicality is made even more impressive by his jovial expressiveness and terrific sense of humor. The Rock raises the formula of Gridiron Gang from typical to entertaining.

Movie Review: Tooth Fairy

Tooth Fairy (2010) 

Directed by Michael Lembeck

Written by Babaloo Mandel, Lowell Ganz, Joshua Sternin, Jennifer Ventimilia, Randy Mayhem Singer

Starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Ashley Judd, Julie Andrews 

Release Date January 22nd, 2010 

Published January 21st, 2010

Dwayne Johnson's unique, to say the least, career path from professional wrestling to honest to goodness movie star is relatively improbable on the surface. On closer inspection however there is a good deal of calculation to how the man once known as The Rock; OK he's still more or less known as The Rock, has crafted his movie stardom.

A balance of high concept comedy and low weight action pics that always play to the strengths of the handsome, hard bodied Johnson make for the perfect mix to make a guy a star in relatively quick succession. “Tooth Fairy” fits perfectly in The Rock's canon. This high concept comedy plays to his strong ability to poke fun at himself while leaving just enough room to display his physicality.

The Rock stars in “Tooth Fairy” as Derek 'The Tooth Fairy' Thompson a hockey thug known for knocking opponent’s teeth out. Derek is beginning to near the end of his career as a new young superstar is quick to point out early in the film. In Derek's personal life he has even more trouble on his hands. Things are good with his girlfriend Carly (Ashley Judd) but when he almost tells Carly's daughter that there is no tooth fairy, of the mythic kind, Carly is ticked.

Someone else is even more cheesed off and that is the head of the real tooth fairy operation. Yes, the tooth fairy is real and it turns out it is run like a tooth collecting corporation by Lily (Julie Andrews). When she hears of Derek's attempted myth killing she summons him to tooth fairy headquarters for punishment and while Derek thinks he is having a psychotic break, the reality is he is being made a tooth fairy until he learns the value of childish myths.

”Tooth Fairy” is a dopey, high concept, family comedy that aspires to be nothing more. As directed by mainstream film carpenter Michael Lembeck the film is assembled from recycled materials, hammered into place with thudding, groaning laughs and smoothed over with soporific clichés about families, acceptance and growing up.

If there is any reason to see “Tooth Fairy” it is the appeal of Dwayne Johnson. While this is not The Rock at his best, the guy has enough star power and charisma to carry off even the cheesiest of cheeseball gags. Dressed in a tutu or in hockey gear, Johnson has the exceptional ability to make himself the subject of the joke without losing his cool. It's a deftness that only those with real star power can pull off.

I can't give “Tooth Fairy” a forceful recommendation; the film is far too mindless for an audience with discerning standards. But, for those in the mood for mindless or for kids who don't yet know any better, you could do worse than the dippy simulacrum that is “Tooth Fairy.”

Movie Review: Fighting With My Family

Fighting with My Family (2019) 

Directed by Stephen Merchant

Written by Stephen Merchant 

Starring Florence Pugh, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Lena Headey, Nick Frost, Jack Lowden

Release Date February 14th, 2019 

Published February 13th, 2019 

As a longtime fan of the WWE I have known Saraya Knight from her earliest days in wrestling’s big leagues. I saw her win the very first NXT Women’s Championship. I watched live when she debuted on Monday Night Raw and won what was then called the WWE Divas Championship. I was also there when injuries and scandal nearly ended her career. Finally, I was there when she broke her neck and was forced to retire at the far too young age of 25. 

Saraya ‘Paige’ Knight has lived multitudes in her 26 years beginning her wrestling career at age 12 in Norwich, England, working for her mother and father’s very own promotion, WAW. As the story goes in real life and in the new movie on Paige’s life, Fighting with My Family, she never wanted to wrestle as a kid, that was her brother Zak’s thing. Once in the ring however, things changed and she fell in love with the business and began regularly wrestling against her mother, a successful wrestler in England for many years. 

Florence Pugh portrays Paige in Fighting with My Family. We watch as she wrestles against her parents all the while she and her brother Zac (Jack Lowdon) dream of getting a call from the WWE. That call comes when Paige is a mere 18 years old. Paige and Zac are invited to a WWE tryout while the WWE is in London in 2012. A trainer played by Vince Vaughn as an amalgam of many of WWE’s trainers over the years, named in the movie as Hutch Morgan, decides that only Paige has what it takes to go on to WWE’s Developmental system. 

This drives a wedge between Paige and Zac who had always been very close until this happened. Nevertheless, Paige accepts the chance to join the WWE and move away from her family to Florida where the fish out of water portion of the movie begins. Paige is not the prototypical WWE Diva. She’s up against models and athletes who didn’t grow up in the industry but were brought into it, the movie implies briefly, because of their looks. 

Part of Paige’s journey, surprisingly, is coming to respect the leggy blondes who are initially her antagonists. This is a welcome inversion of the classic trope. Our outsider hero has a journey here that is not as straightforward and heroic as it would initially seem. Fighting with My Family was directed by actor-comedian and writer Stephen Merchant, a rather brilliant comic mind who does well tapping both his comic and dramatic skills in Fighting with My Family. 

Fighting with My Family is not a serious movie by any stretch but it is grounded in a way that allows for the broad humor of wrestling to stand out against the mundane regular world. The juxtaposition between the broad and strange world of professional wrestling and the regular world outside of wrestling plays well for the most part, aside from characters played by the director himself and Julia Davis who play stock characters, whitebred outsiders who look down on the low culture of wrestling.

There is plenty to enjoy about Fighting with My Family including the wonderful supporting performances of Nick Frost and Lena Headey as Paige’s parents. These are wonderful actors playing wonderful characters. Frost and Headey appear to bring lifetimes to these two characters that we never see and yet they feel real and lived in. Their chemistry is remarkable, they are all in on the romance, the wrestling and the family. 

Florence Pugh is solid as Paige, though she lacks her swagger and lithe physique. As written, Paige is not the character we know from the WWE. Pugh plays the behind the scenes Paige as a shrinking violet, a homesick and cowed young woman, completely opposite of the wild child, charismatic, divas champion we would come to know and cheer for. There is a stock quality to the story of Paige learning to find herself, find her voice and her confidence. I don’t doubt that the real Paige went on that journey, but this is unquestionably the sanitized, safe for work take on that journey. 

Wrestling fans will undoubtedly recognize how compressed the timeline of Paige’s career is. In real life, Paige wrestled in America before her WWE debut in a company called Shimmer. She also was an overachiever in WWE Developmental where she won over the company brass enough to be picked to win the very first NXT Women’s Championship, months before her post-Wrestlemania 30 Monday Night Raw debut which is the culmination of Fighting with My Family. 

The film fails to mention that Paige was the NXT Women’s Champion when she she debuted on Monday Night Raw and many of the fans in attendance that night were fully aware of who she was when she went to the ring that night against Diva’s Champion A.J Lee, portrayed in the movie by current WWE superstar, Zelina Vega. The makers of Fighting with My Family would have you believe that she was some unknown wrestler getting a shot out of the blue. Then again, the movie would have you believe that Vince McMahon doesn’t exist and pull every string in the company or that a wrestler would make it to Monday Night Raw without seeing Vince first. 

An interesting thing about Paige is that her life after the events of this movie is way more interesting than her rise to fame. From the place where Fighting with My Family ends to today, Paige has gone through career threatening injuries, a sex tape scandal, a reportedly abusive relationship with a fellow wrestler, drug suspensions and eventually, a career ending injury to her neck that led to her having to find a whole new place in the wrestling world. 

That, however, is not a movie that Paige or the WWE would want to make. That’s a complex journey that has fewer of the warm fuzzy moments that Fighting with My Family is built around. That’s a gritty movie with much more humanity and frailty than the mythic, sweet and funny journey of self discovery that is Fighting with My Family. You can’t slap a PG 13 on that movie and mass market it to an audience of young wrestling fans. 

That said, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with not making that movie and instead making Fighting with My Family. Indeed, Fighting with My Family is a perfectly acceptable, if somewhat bland comedy and biopic. The supporting cast is wonderfully colorful and the world of WWE, though it is completely whitewashed, has a fun, mythic quality to it that, as a wrestling fan, I find entertaining. It’s the WWE of Vince McMahon’s fantasy world. 

By the way, for those wondering about Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s role in Fighting with My Family, much of what you see in the movie really happened. It was The Rock who informed Paige that she was going to be debuting on Monday Night Raw, a scene of wonderful comedy in the movie. There are some fudges in the timeline of Paige’s life in WWE and Developmental WWE but that scene really happened in a form similar to how it plays in the movie.

Movie Review: Doom

Doom (2005) 

Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak 

Written by David Callaham, Wesley Strick 

Starring Karl Urban, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Rosamund Pike 

Release Date October 21st, 2005 

Published October 22nd, 2005 

I am a huge fan of The Rock. The guy is charismatic, he's cool, he's big and surprisingly funny. That talent was on display in both of his previous roles in the action movies The Rundown and Walking Tall. So what happened to Doom?  Director Andrzej Bartkowiak somehow manages to strip The Rock of his charisma, his humor and any of his other appealing qualities for this human vs. aliens video game retread. Doom had little going for it when it was conceived. Take away the only really appealing element it had in Dwayne Johnson and you have one of the worst films of the year.

On Mars a futuristic research facility has sent out a distress signal of unknown origin. Scientists and archaeologists have disappeared and no one in the facility seems to know why. Enter the Sarge (Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson) and his team of marine mercenaries. Sent to mars to find the missing scientists and help the corporation recover proprietary data, they soon find themselves up against an enemy that may or may not be human.

Hey wait... isn't that the plot for Resident Evil 2? Remove the trip to outer space and toss in Milla Jovovich in some skimpy ass-kicking outfit and you have essentially the same movie. There are even zombies in Doom and possibly, this point was not all that clear, a virus.

Funny thing, there were no zombies at all in the video game on which Doom is based. Of course there weren't any characters in the game either. Instead of The Sarge or Grimm (Karl Urban) or Destroyer (Deobia Oeparai) or the Kid (Al Weaver) you had the first person point of view of a gun that you used to blast alien monsters.

Creative license, I'm sure, was necessary for adapting Doom to the big screen but this departure is rather extreme and made worse by the fact that it's a near complete rip off of another bad video game adaptation. It's bad enough Hollywood studios cannot resist making video games into movies but do they have to make them knockoffs of other video game movies? UGH! 

We might have predicted the kind of disaster that is Doom considering the director. Polish born director Andrzej Bartkowiak, has the kind of resume that only Uwe Boll could envy. Bartkowiak directed two atrocious Jet Li flicks, Romeo Must Die and Cradle 2 The Grave and, most egregiously, he brought Steven Seagal's Exit Wounds to the big screen, a cinematic nightmare of incalculable proportions.

Consider ourselves lucky Bartkowiak did not include Mr. Seagal in Doom. The combination of this already bad idea with Seagal might have caused time and space to collapse upon itself in a cosmic gag reflex hurling us all into the ether. Sorry, I'm just saying maybe things could have been worse.

In a nod to gamers Doom retains the first person shooting scenario that is one of the games trademarks. Unfortunately, once we enter the first person mode, which happens for much of the last 20 minutes of the film, watching Doom becomes very much like watching someone else play a videogame and knowing you don't ever get a turn.

The one thing the film had going for it was The Rock. Sadly, cast as taciturn, humorless pseudo cyborg killing machine The Rock loses every last bit of the personality that made him a star. The action genre that The Rock has quickly risen to dominate, in terms of the classic one man against the world Stallone-Schwarzenegger-Van Damme action genre and not the genre as a whole, is built on physicality and personality. Removed from that mold Rock is just another beefcake behemoth with a gun.

Walking Tall was an old school action flick that played to the strengths of Rock's personality while being just different enough from the old school to seem fresh and fun. The Rundown is an out and out buddy comedy that really allowed Rock to cut loose with that fresh charismatic smile and surly but exciting demeanor that I had hoped would become his trademark. Doom is a major step backward for the man once known in the world of professional wrestling as 'the most electrifying man in sports entertainment'.

Just who is the audience for Doom? Teenage boys who loved the videogame might find something to enjoy. But even the least discerning teenage male must have his limit. Doom is an abysmal mess of genre knockoffs and an outright theft of another movies plot and action. And the movie it steals from, Resident Evil 2, isn't very good either so you can imagine how bad a knockoff would be. 

Throw another hack director into the movie marketplace. Andrzej Bartkowiak joins Uwe Boll and the king of all hacks Paul W.S Anderson in the ranks of directors dragging the standards of Hollywood filmmaking to new lows. Where is the justice? Woody Allen, Jim Jarmusch and other auteurs struggle to find financing for their work, often having to leave the country as Allen did for his latest film Match Point, to find the funding to make one small picture.

Hacks on the other hand are finding ever growing budgets and clout. I know Hollywood is a business but that does not make such practices right. Watch Doom and tell me you disagree.

Movie Review: Crank

Crank (2006) 

Directed by Neveldine and Taylor

Written by Neveldine and Taylor

Starring Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Dwight Yoakam, Erfren Ramirez 

Release Date September 1st, 2006 

Published August 31st, 2006

Jason Statham is right up there with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in the competition to replace the old guard action hero's; Stallone, Van Damme and Schwarznegger. With his two Transporter flicks; Statham established his badass credentials. All that Statham lacks is the easy charisma and sense of humor that The Rock is gifted with. In his latest flick Crank, Statham delivers yet another badass performance but the highly adrenalized Crank also exposes Statham's weaknesses as much as his strengths.

Hitman Chev Chelios (Statham) is having a truly awful morning. He has awakened from one nightmare into another as he finds that he has been killed in his sleep. A rival hitman, Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo), has dosed Chev with a poison called the Beijing cocktail. This poison will slowly snake through Chev's system until it shuts down his heart.

According to his doctor (Dwight Yoakam); Chev has maybe an hour to live unless he can keep his heart rate very high. What Chev needs are massive amounts of adrenaline in whatever way he can get it. Dying a slow death either way; Chev vows to stay alive long enough to say goodbye to his clueless girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart) and to kill Verona and all of his henchman.

Written and directed by the team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, Crank is pure trash, B picture exploitation. Reminiscent of a pair of 2006 chase pictures with similarly lowbrow ambition, Tyrese's Waist Deep and Paul Walker's Running Scared, Crank gets a running start and pauses only for tacky sex scenes and overblown violence.

Crank sets itself apart from the others with a pair of humiliating sex scenes that take the career of poor Amy Smart an flush it down the B movie toilet. In the first of two scenes Smart is raped on the streets of L.A's Chinatown. I say raped, the scene begins as a rape but to make the scene more mortifying she begins to enjoy and participate willingly. Later as Chev's heart begins to slow during a chase scene, Smart's character performs oral sex while Statham drives and shoots bad guys.

Smart is not the only woman treated with little regard in Crank, merely the best known. All other women seen in Crank are dressed in next to nothing and placed in plastic cubes where they are ogled by bad guys. The film also takes time to rip gays and make stereotypical use of its few African American characters. Neveldine and Talyor, I'm sure, would say they are merely being politically incorrect, tweaking the conventions of the masses and other such justifications. That would be interesting if it served a metaphoric purpose; but Crank is just a violent, exploitation chase picture, it lacks the depth to defend its anti-PC attitude.

There is no denying the badass appeal of star Jason Statham. With his bullet shaped head and intense gaze, he is beyond intimidating. Unfortunately, when forced to get to the core of a character -beyond the act of simply killing a man- he is an empty vessel. He is all physicality and no mentality. Statham in Crank is an unstoppable killing machine who takes on an occasional bit of black humor and wit but mostly is just a machine pushed by the plot toward his next violent encounter.

Crank has a visceral power to it that comes from it's propellant plot. That power however, is dissipated by the directors need to be shocking and crude. The two high speed sex scenes in Crank are gratuitous and though the plot tries to makes them seem necessary that does not change their exploitative nature. Watching Amy Smart in these scenes should be titillating; she is a very attractive woman. Rather than titillating however, I felt nothing but pity for Smart who is made to look like an even less willing version of Chloe Sevigny in The Brown Bunny.

Is Jason Statham the next great action hero? The box office will determine that. Myself? I'll take The Rock whose combination of physicality and humor is the perfect combination of action hero violence and wit. Statham is not unappealing; he simply lacks range. Watching Crank you can barely make out any differences between Chev Chelios and the character Statham played in two The Transporter movies. 

Movie Review 12 Rounds

12 Rounds (2009) 

Directed by Renny Harlin

Written by Daniel Kunka 

Starring John Cena, Aiden Gillen, Ashley Scott, Steve Harris, Brian J. White 

Release Date March 27th, 2009 

Published March 27th, 2009 

There is something to say about a movie as energetic and confident as 12 Rounds. Sure, the movie is by few standards a good movie. The plotting is laughable, the performances are wooden, and the screenplay may have been assembled by monkey's with blenders, but the action is kinetic and attention grabbing. Most interestingly, the star is professional wrestling star John Cena, arguably one of the biggest stars on television at the moment. 

WWE superstar John Cena is the star of 12 Rounds as Danny Fischer, a New Orleans police officer about to stumble on a career making bust. He happens to be in the right place at the right moment to bust an international arms dealer, and all around dirt bag named Miles Jackson (Aiden Gillen). Unfortunately, during the bust Jackson's beloved gal Friday is accidentally killed and the baddie vows revenge on Danny.

One year later, Danny and his partner Hank (Brian White) have made detectives thanks to their big bust but they aren't prepared when Miles escapes from federal custody. Soon after his escape, Mile has kidnapped Danny's beloved girlfriend, Molly (Ashley Scott), and has crafted an elaborate series of challenges for Danny to overcome in order to win her safe return. You could say he has 12 Rounds in this fight in order to save his beloved from a cackling mad man bent on revenge. 

12 Rounds of challenges, in fact, that will have Danny racing about like a maniac fighting fires, stealing cars, and rescuing innocent civilians caught unaware that an international arms dealer has made them pawns in an overly complicated revenge scheme. To say that 12 Rounds is derivative of Die Hard and about a dozen other similar trope heavy action flicks would be an understatement. Aside from John Cena's confidently amateurish performance, 12 Rounds would have nothing going for it that wasn't based on nostalgia for the movies that director Renny Harlin is blatantly ripping off. 

If all of this sounds pretty goofball, well it is. It is goofy and that's ok. That really is what 12 Rounds should be. To attempt to take seriously a movie starring a former WWE champion, whose name isn't Dwayne Johnson, and is directed by schlockmeister Renny Harlin, is a fool's errand. 12 Rounds is silly and perhaps not even silly enough. The film is a little up its own backside in the notion of what we are asked to buy into, but with a bar set so low it's more dimwitted than it is egregious or wholly unwatchable. 

The makers of 12 Rounds know they are not making Shakespeare here, they are barely recreating the glory years of Sly Stallone. Renny Harlin and John Cena fully accept their place in the filmmaking world and that gives 12 Rounds a freewheeling air that is almost cheesy enough to be fun. ALMOST. Sadly, the film overstays its welcome by a good 20 minutes or so and by the time that the big helicopter set finale arrives, the cheese has gone cold. 12 Rounds is a bad movie that sadly fails to transcend into full camp potential. Minus that, it's just merely bad and therefore not something I can fully endorse.

Can John Cena act? By the evidence of his first starring role, no, not really, he's got a lot to learn. That said, Cena appears very confident. Cena radiates confidence, not arrogance, genuine confidence. Cena has self-assurance even as he's trapped in a derivative idiot plot. He's giving this role his all and he has an energy to match the intended spirit of 12 Rounds, if not the actual, dreary, final product of 12 Rounds.

Movie Review: Abandon

Abandon (2002) 

Directed by Stephen Gaghan

Written by Stephen Gaghan 

Starring Katie Holmes, Benjamin Bratt, Charlie Hunnam, Zoey Deschanel, Gabrielle Union 

Release Date October 18th, 2002 

Published October 17th, 2002 

The cast of Dawson’s Creek is going to have a tough time shaking their TV characters. As James Van Der Beek showed in Rules OF Attraction, even working with a great filmmaker doesn't allow him to him escape from his TV alter ego. Roger Avery appeared to enjoy using set pieces that traded on the Dawson persona in little winks to the audience that practically screamed "you wouldn’t see Dawson do this!" 

Katie Holmes has a similar problem, her Joey Potter is the picture of cherubic teenage innocence and even stripping in The Gift or going Goth in Disturbing Behavior hasn't separated her from the character that made her famous.  In the new movie Abandon, writer director Stephen Gaghan uses Holmes' TV persona in ways that bring the character a little more depth and makes the film's surprises a little more effective.

In Abandon, Holmes plays Caty Burke an ambitious college senior with a big money job waiting for her when she graduates. Things are not that simple however. Caty is still longing for an ex-boyfriend who disappeared two years previous. The boyfriend, Embry (Charlie Hunnam), vanished without a trace and now is being investigated as a missing person. The company that holds Embry’s million dollar trust wants him to be declared dead so they can move in on his millions. 

The investigation into Embry's disappearance is turned over to a recovering alcoholic cop named Wade (Benjamin Bratt). Wade’s investigation immediately leads him to Caty, the last person to have seen Embry alive. While she isn’t considered a suspect, Wade is suspicious of what she isn’t telling him. The investigation is bringing back a lot of memories for Caty, memories that are keeping her up at night and are beginning to effect her work. Caty is convinced that she has seen Embry recently, and that he is following her with intent to harm her. Not surprisingly she turns to Wade.

It’s not difficult to see where this is going, but director Stephen Gaghan has a few tricks up his sleeve, tossing out red herrings right and left and a brilliant clue early on that makes you feel stupid when it pays off later in the film. Though one too many flashbacks makes the film a little tedious, Gaghan develops enough mystery to keep your attention.

Embry, as played by Charlie Hunnam (best known for TV’s short lived and underappreciated "Undeclared") is such a great character. Embry is this totally self involved artist, the kind of guy every college woman dated for a semester despite the fact that he treated them terribly. Embry is the type of guy who picks up girls by promising to paint their portrait. Hunnam does a fantastic job of portraying the horrible qualities that every woman knows they shouldn’t want but can’t resist. 

Holmes and Bratt don’t have much chemistry, but it was interesting to see a male character as a functionary to a female. Normally in Hollywood it is the female character that is thrown in as a plot point. In Abandon however it is Bratt’s Detective who is the plot point. This is Katie Holmes’s show and while I still can’t get past Joey Potter on the big screen, I’m sure others will be able to put aside the Dawson’s Creek association and enjoy this popcorn thriller. 

Writer-Director Stephen Gaghan, an Oscar winner for his screenplay for Traffic, steps behind the camera for the first time with Abandon and delivers a first-rate Brian De Palma impression, and I mean that in a good way. Abandon is the kind of trashy popcorn flick DePalma made in the 80s with movies like Dressed To Kill, Body Heat and Obsession. While it may not be as memorable as those films, Abandon is nearly as skillfully made and a sign of good things to come from this first-time director.

Movie Review: Batman Begins

Batman Begins (2005) 

Directed by Christopher Nolan 

Written by Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer

Starring Christian Bale, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman

Release Date June 15th, 2005 

Published June 14th, 2005 

Joel Schumacher has committed a number of cinematic sins. His destruction of Andrew Kevin Walker's darkly brilliant script for 8mm or last years 3 hour tin-eared musical Phantom Of the Opera come immediately to mind. But without a doubt Schumacher's most damnable sin is his destruction of the Batman film series. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are atrocious examples of a director completely bent to the will of marketing executives. A director more interested in creating synergistic toy products and fast food tie-ins than in making entertaining movies.

Eight years after Schumacher killed it, and through three years of torturous development Batman has risen from the ashes once again and in the hands of director Christopher Nolan, an artist and auteur of the highest regard, Batman is not merely back, the D.C Comics franchise is better than ever. Rivaling Raimi's Spiderman and Singer's X-Men, Nolan's Batman Begins is a visionary comic book film worthy of the icon status of the character.

Batman Begins is an origin story that brings fans into the mind of Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) before Batman and shows us why a millionaire playboy would put on a bat suit and fight crime. Locked away in some far off Asian prison a scruffy but handsome American certainly sticks out. Battered and bruised Bruce Wayne has fought everyday he's been in this prison but his latest battle against several large thugs at once brings him to the attention of another handsome westerner, Henri Ducard played by Liam Neeson.

Ducard is a representative of Ra's Al Ghul (Ken Watanabe), leader of the League Of Shadows, a thousand year-old order dedicated to vigilantism. The League Of Shadows fancy themselves ninja crime fighters and in Bruce Wayne they see an asset both physically and otherwise. The League is preparing to raze Gotham City, purging the city of its criminality and anything else that might be in the way. Bruce has a choice: join the League and destroy Gotham or return alone to defend the innocent people of the city.

Returning to his home in Gotham City (Chicago standing in, not New York in this version) Wayne finds the metropolis in ruinous poverty. Crime rules the streets led by mob boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson). Among the few good people of Gotham are Bruce's butler, Alfred (the superb Michael Caine), and his childhood friend, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), who works as an assistant prosecutor fighting a losing battle with corruption.

Bruce's fortune is intact, the family business is under the control of a corrupt executive played by Rutger Hauer and working in the shadows is a former family friend, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), whose work on various military projects for the company will certainly come in handy when Bruce Wayne is ready to transform into the caped crusader. It is Lucius Fox who creates the suit, the gadgets and the new military style Batmobile, even cooler than the sports car version from Tim Burton's Batman.

The film plumbs the depths of Bruce's past, the biggest factor to his becoming Batman. A childhood accident bred in him a fear of bats. It's a fear that is also linked to the death of his parents in a mugging outside a theater when Bruce was eight years old. A taste for vengeance is what led Bruce to his Asian adventure and the teachings of Ducard are what lead to his taking his fear of the bat as his symbol when he finally decides to take a stand against crime.

It's an extraordinarily detailed and logical story that fits perfectly into the dark atmospheric universe that director Christopher Nolan and writer David S. Goyer, of Blade fame, have created. This Gotham City is in part the vision of Frank Miller's Year One graphic novel balanced with the Auteurist vision of Nolan who nods to Miller but makes the look and feel of the film his own.

Christian Bale is the perfect blend of movie star handsome and brooding maniac, the essence of the Bruce Wayne-Batman dichotomy. Though Batman holds the typical moral values of a superhero-- he captures but does not kill-- he has a definite weird streak.  As Bruce himself points out, "A guy who dresses up as a bat clearly has issues". Those 'issues' are given a thorough and complete examination in Batman Begins and as played by Mr. Bale, they are given the depth and emotionality that the character has lacked in his former movie incarnations.

The supporting cast is exemplary, especially Gary Oldman as "Sgt." Gordon who we all know will someday be Police Commissioner Gordon. This is his origin as well and, with Oldman in this pivotal role, we have a solid basis for further great stories to be told. Katie Holmes is much better than expected in the role of Bruce's childhood friend and adult love interest. She looks too young and innocent for the position of District Attorney fighting the worst of the worst criminals but she has an unexpected steeliness to her that sells the character.

The villains, the most obvious weakness from the Schumacher films, are given a similar comic book realism to that of Batman. Based more in the reality and logic of the story, the villains in Batman Begins are not super villains with grand schemes of mass murder or world domination but logical extensions of the established corruption of Gotham City. Cillian Murphy is terrific as Dr. Jonathan Crane whose alter ego, the Scarecrow, is no psycho du jour but a functionary of a larger, more logical and ordered plot.

Obviously Nolan's Batman Begins cannot help but be compared with the lofty achievements of Bryan Singer's X-Men and Sam Raimi's Spiderman and it is without a doubt worthy of the comparisons. Batman Begins ranks only behind Raimi's Spiderman 2 as the best comic book adaptation I have seen. An awesomely entertaining and involving action packed feature, Batman is back and better than ever in Batman Begins.

Movie Review: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2011) 

Directed by Troy Nixey 

Written by Guillermo Del Toro, Matthew Robbins 

Starring Katie Holmes, Bailee Madison, Guy Pearce 

Release Date August 26th, 2011

Published August 25th, 2011 

"Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" is a fraud. The marketing of the film, starring child actress Bailee Madison and Katie Holmes, was promoted heavily on the name of director Guillermo Del Toro with allusions to Del Toro's wildly imaginative masterwork "Pan's Labyrinth." "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" however, was not directed by Guillermo Del Toro but rather by first time pretender Troy Nixey.

At a Rhode Island mansion Sally Hurst (Bailee Madison) has been left by her mother in the care of her distant father Alex (Guy Pearce) and his kindhearted girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes). Sally's discomfort with her new surroundings is made worse when she discovers monsters in the basement. From there "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" devolves into a series of teasing set pieces in which Sally narrowly escapes capture while the adults around her question why she has made up a story about monsters. The first adult to discover the truth is, of course, attacked and left unable to warn others until it is too late.

The story is based, not surprisingly, on a TV movie from the 1970's; something you might have intuited from the low rent plotting. With the focus on Guillermo Del Toro in the marketing it's fair to assume that the visual elements of "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" are supposed to be the film's draw. Sadly, the visuals are only slightly more appealing than the plot.

The one bright spot in "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" is young Bailee Madison. As Sally Draper on "Mad Men" Madison is the picture of despairing 60's youth, too young for revolution but young enough for post revolution ennui. Madison was also the sad, compelling face of the long forgotten drama "Brothers" in 2010. In "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" Madison is compelling and sympathetic; something that can't be said of her wooden adult co-stars.

Troy Nixey isn't a bad director. His work in "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" is competent for a first time director. The problem is that Troy Nixey is not Guillermo Del Toro. Nixey can't overcome a thin plot with sumptuous visual pleasures in the way Del Toro did in his otherwise blasé 'Hellboy' sequel. "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" is one of those mediocre movies that you forget moments after seeing it. It's not so bad that you're angry you spent money on a rental but bad enough that if you can be warned away from it you will appreciate the warning.

Movie Review The Extra Man

The Extra Man (2010) 

Directed by Sherri Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini 

Written by Sherri Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini 

Starring Kevin Kline, Paul Dano, Katie Holmes, John C. Reilly 

Release Date July 30th, 2010 

Published August 14th, 2010

The thrill of watching Kevin Kline work has never ceased for me. When Kevin Kline is on he is arguably the most compelling actor of his era. In his latest effort, “The Extra Man,” Kline is on like gangbusters in a role that is beyond quirky and into a realm of peculiarity that few actors could sustain and remain believable.

The Extra Man stars Kevin Kline as a gentleman of leisure, a man about town. Kline's Henry Harrison is a failed playwright living in semi-squalor off of the kindness of wealthy friends. Into Henry's life comes Louis (Paul Dano) a kindred soul with a literary heart who fancies himself the modern incarnation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby.

That is if Nick Carraway liked to dress in drag. Yes, Louis has an issue with wanting to dress as a woman, a fetish opposed vehemently by Henry but indulged by Louis with the help of an understanding prostitute played by Patti D'Arbanville. Is Louis gay? He's not sure; he may or may not have feelings for a co-worker at his new job, Mary played by Katie Holmes.

What is Henry's orientation? A gentleman would never discuss such a thing. Henry's job, such as it is, and the field that he introduces Louis to is as an extra man. What is an extra man you wonder? He is a gentleman who squires older women about town to the opera or a dinner party or a fancy restaurant. Henry lives for his work but whether he performs the duties of a gigolo is yet another thing a gentleman never tells.

No doubt your quirk-ometer is on overload just from my description. What makes “The Extra Man” all the more odd and wonderful is how the characters and indeed the filmmakers play as if nothing were odd about this at all. Director's Sherri Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini direct “The Extra Man” with such quiet dignity and self seriousness that the oddity is tamed into something resembling an existent reality.

”The Extra Man” is weirdly warm, humorous if not laugh out loud funny and has a wealth of charm. Kevin Kline relishes playing Henry Harrison and the life he gives this character leaps off of the screen. Young Paul Dano remains the most quirky of all modern actors. There is a certain pre-destiny in his becoming an Oscar winner yet stardom seems to be something he will fight against with all of his quirky will.

Berman and Pulcini too will likely never become blockbuster, a-list directing talents. They are too independent, too in their own heads to ever compromise enough to create a hit. Like the best of auteurs they will succeed despite their instinct for art over commerce. “The Extra Man” is certainly art over commerce. There was never any hope this would be a hit and never any attempt to make it so. In that sense the movie is as wonderfully quirk ridden as its main character.

Movie Review Mad Money

Mad Money (2008) 

Directed by Callie Khourie 

Written by Glenn Gers 

Starring Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes, Ted Danson, Stephen Root

Release Date January 18th, 2008 

Published January 18th, 2008 

For all her grace, style and class Diane Keaton certainly has poor taste in comedy. Her last picture was the vociferously awful Because I Said So a comedy so witless as to disprove the theory that young Mandy Moore had a bright future in this business. Prior to that Ms. Keaton demeaned herself as the dying cancer ridden matriarch of The Family Stone, a film that proved no matter how many well known actors and actresses you cram into one scene you can't make a bad script good. Now Ms. Keaton demeans herself further with what arguably should have been her first direct to DVD feature Mad Money. This alleged comedy about a down on her luck upper class housewife forced to take a job as a Janitor at the federal reserve where she plots a heist with two stereotypical co-workers is yet another low in the ever devolving career of the woman who once played muse to Woody Allen's finest work.

Mad Money stars Diane Keaton as Bridget, the wife of a wealthy investment banker (Ted Danson, also slumming) who suddenly finds himself out of a job. With their upper class lifestyle on the wane and buzzard neighbors circling their home at the stench of financial death, Bridget forces herself to take a job. Having never worked a day in her life the only work she is qualified for is janitorial. She finds a gig cleaning toilets and taking out the trash at the federal reserve, the place that prints the country's cash. Did you know they destroy the old cash there as well?

Bridget did not know that but once she finds out she hatches a complex plot to steal the cash that would otherwise have been destroyed. She can't do it on her own however, and what luck, the woman in charge of the cash destroying machine (Queen Latifah) happens to be a struggling single mom desperate to get her children out of the 'hood'. She alone is not accomplice enough. They need one more insider and find the help they need in a hippie chick (Katie Holmes) who transports the to be destroyed dollars from one part of the building to the other.

The 'complex' plan involves locks and trash cans... and that's about it. Not much to think about. Director Callie Khouri likely did not want to confuse the film's core constituency of low watt bulbs. The fan base for a film like Mad Money had best not be too bright otherwise they would be watching a better movie. The trailers and commercials have told you already exactly what I have told you, without the witty, cynical banter, obviously. Do our conspirators get caught? What do the respective placeholders who portray their love interests think of this stealing operation?

None of that seems to matter to Khouri or her cast who are more interested in looking cute and reveling in their girl power faux feminism than in actually crafting something that might involve an audience. Mad Money is yet another dismal effort from Diane Keaton whose lack of discernment is becoming a career hallmark dating back to the dreadful First Wives Club and only getting worse from there.

Movie Review Pieces of April

Pieces of April (2003) 

Directed Peter Hedges 

Written by Peter Hedges 

Starring Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson, Derek Luke, Isaiah Whitlock, Allison Pill 

Release Date October 17th, 2003 

Published October 24th, 2003 

It's been a terrific year for first time directors. Artists such as Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), Fernando Meirelles (City of God) and Peter Sollett (Raising Victor Vargas) made their debuts in exciting and memorable fashion. The same can be said of Peter Hedges whose debut feature Pieces of April is a guerrilla-style DV feature made with the catering budget from one days shooting on The Matrix. A visually unspectacular character piece that works because of a smart script and the acid tongue acting of Patricia Clarkson.

The title character is April Burns (Katie Holmes), the black sheep of her upstate New York family who ran away at an early age to New York City and has never looked back. After years of aimless drifting and a tenuous relationship with her family, April is finally in a stable enough situation to reconnect. With the help of her new boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke), April has invited the family to her tiny apartment for Thanksgiving.

April's family isn't all that excited about the holiday excursion to the big city. Joy Burns (Clarkson) has little interest in reconciling with her oldest daughter of whom she claims to have no positive memories. Youngest daughter Beth (Allison Pill) can't stop complaining about the trip, her and April are far apart in years and have had no contact since April left. Timmy (John Gallagher Jr.), April's little brother, has little interest in anything outside the purview of his camera and the haze of pot smoke. April's dad Jim (Oliver Platt) is the only one in the family who has maintained any contact with April. Agreeing to go to April's for Thanksgiving seems to be entirely his effort and he holds the trip together over the loud protest of his kids and the biting wit of Joy.

There is far more to this story than a daughter trying to reconnect with her family. The impetus for the attempted reconciliation is revealed in an episodic way with a little bit of information leaked out as the focus shifts back and forth from the family road trip to April's failing attempts at cooking, including some especially humorous encounters with her neighbors. With a busted oven, April is forced to run from door to door, soliciting help from anyone who will listen. 

Finally April is aided by an African-American couple, Evette (Lillias White) and Eugene (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), who take their cooking far more seriously than April. Also helping, in a way, is Wayne (Sean Hayes) who allows April to use his oven when Evette and Eugene need to use their own for their dinner. Wayne turns out to be way too weird and flaky and April is finally helped by an elderly Asian family who don't speak English but luckily have a visiting family member who does. April's aborted attempts to explain Thanksgiving to them are funny and a few of Holmes's best scenes.

Patricia Clarkson's much praised performance is unquestionably the film’s centerpiece. Her ascorbic wit and spitefulness is explained by the fact that Joy is dying of breast cancer and that this will very likely be her last Thanksgiving. The last thing she wants to do is spend it with the daughter who has been such a painful disappointment, especially since the dinner will more than likely be another disaster to add to the list. Clarkson's performance is painful to watch as she says horrible things about April who does not deserve most of the jibes. We are forced to forgive Joy her mean spirit because she is dying and we do but it makes her jabs at April and her attitude towards all of her family all the more disheartening.

Director Peter Hedges, who received a much deserved Oscar nomination for his adapted screenplay for About A Boy, writes a story sketch for Pieces of April and then turns loose his terrific group of actors to make something of it. With a seemingly bare bones sketch of dialogue, the actors make some obvious improvisations that make the film feel real.

That effect is also brought out by the handheld DV camera and minimalist locations. The minimal lighting, ambient soundtrack, and miniscule budget are straight out of the Dogme 95 movement. While it's not nearly as accomplished as anything by Lars Von Trier and his Dogme crew, Pieces of April invokes a sort of Americanized version of Dogme. It incorporates the realities of American filmmaking that simply won't allow a filmmaker to follow the rigid Dogme rules.

Pieces of April is in spirit a Dogme film and the attempt to subvert the usual Hollywood style of filmmaking is a welcome sight. The film is also an affecting, funny family drama with terrific acting and writing that marks a terrific directorial debut for Peter Hedges. I hope that he will continue to be as interesting with a film that has a budget bigger than the cost of Peter Jackson's morning latte.

Movie Review Phone Booth

Phone Booth (2003) 

Directed by Joel Schumacher 

Written by Larry Cohen 

Starring Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland, Katie Holmes, Forrest Whitaker, Radha Mitchell 

Release Date April 4th, 2003 

Published April 3rd, 2003 

Like many fans of the D.C Comics Superhero Batman I have harbored a good deal of resentment toward Director Joel Schumacher for screwing up the Batman movies. However, whether I've become more mature or Schumacher's films have gotten better, that resentment has lessened. As Bat nipples and bat credit cards recede into the past, I find myself not liking Schumacher's take on the blockbuster franchise, but also not caring nearly as much as I once did about Schumacher having made a bad Batman movie. 

Since his Batman debacle Schumacher has done good work. Schumacher's work on Tigerland, for instance, was astonishingly low-tech yet very artful as the director coaxed a star turn out of then unknown actor Colin Farrell. Now with Schumacher's return to the big budget Hollywood machine, he brings Farrell with him in the minimalist action pic Phone Booth. I find myself once again appreciating the artistry of the man who killed Batman.

In Phone Booth, Colin Farrell is shady public relations guy Stu Shepard. Though Stu is married to Kelly, played by Radha Mitchell, he is also romancing a young starlet named Pam, played by Katie Holmes. When Stu decides to use a payphone booth to call Pam rather than one of his three cell phones, he finds himself the target of a crazed assassin (Kiefer Sutherland's voice). If Stu leaves the booth, he will be shot.

Stu's situation is complicated by a group of prostitutes who want the phone booth and are becoming increasingly more agitated. When the prostitutes get a male friend to try and remove Stu from the booth the assassin shoots the guy and Stu is blamed. As cops arrive, led by Forest Whitaker as the police negotiator, so do the media as well as Stu's wife and girlfriend.

This is quite a daring setup and the execution is flawless. When writer Larry Cohen pitched this story he had to have been met with a number of blank stares. So it comes as no surprise that he's been pitching the story for nearly 20 years. It wasn't until Joel Schumacher signed on that studios began to get interested in this challenging premise. Schumacher's involvement brought some interest from big name stars such as Jim Carrey and Will Smith but it's Farrell (admittedly the cheaper alternative to Carrey and Smith's $20 Million dollar price tags), who took the role and proved to be the perfect choice.

Farrell brings just the right combination of smarm and charm to the role of Stu. Farrel recalls a young Al Pacino, with his sweaty, passionate and energetic performance. Farrell melts down like a pro. As Stu slowly melts from cocky confident defiance to contrite good guy, Farrell never panders to the audience, never begs to be liked. Farrell remains true to the character’s nature, attempting to lie and negotiate his way out all the way to the end, always looking for an angle. 

The real star of Phone Booth however is Joel Schumacher, who's sweeping camera ratchets up the tension from beginning to end. Schumacher does a first rate Hitchcock impression taking this difficult premise and wringing every last bit of tension from it. Using the same real time approach that Hitchcock employed in Rope, Schumacher uses dialogue and stellar camerawork to keep the audience constantly off balance and on the edge of their seat.

Recently Joel Schumacher admitted that he screwed up Batman. That admission and a few more excellent films like Tigerland and Phone Booth and maybe I can forgive him. Of course, there is still 8MM to apologize for but let's leave that for another day. -

Movie Review: Year One

Year One (2009) 

Directed by Harold Ramis

Written by Gene Stupnitsky, Harold Ramis, Lee Eisenberg

Starring Jack Black, Michael Cera, Hank Azaria, Oliver Platt, David Cross

Release Date June 19th, 2009 

Published June 18th, 2009  

It's a nice idea. Get a bunch of funny people together; throw on some funny costumes, make some references to the bible and wait for one the talented performers to say something funny. That is the basic idea of Year One. Throw Jack Black and Michael Cera together with a large group of funny people like Bill Hader, Hank Azaria, David Cross and Paul Rudd and assume something funny will happen. Occasionally something funny does happen. More often however, a premise for a satiric scene is set and everyone stumbles about searching desperately for a punchline.

Jack Black stars in Year One as Zed a wannabe hunter. He stinks at it and the other hunters hate him. Unfortunately for Zed, he stinks at being a gatherer as well and those are really the only jobs in the caveman world. Zed's best friend is Oh played by Michael Cera. Oh is an expert gatherer but pines for a girl who only dates hunters. When he tries to go all caveman on her and drag her back to his hut, she beats him down, his latest in a long series of humiliations to come.

When Zed burns much of the village down he is banished and Oh decides to leave with him. Together they wander into biblical times where they witness the murder of Abel (Paul Rudd) by his brother Cain (David Cross). They move on and witness Abraham (Hank Azaria) offering his son Isaac (Christopher Mintz Plasse) as a sacrafice to God. Finally, Zed and Oh wind up in Sodom where the high priest (Oliver Platt) is a mincing queen and the princess (Olivia Wilde) thinks she can steal the crown with Zed's help.

The bible stuff is odd because Year One is not necessarily a biblical satire. It may have wanted to be but all the movie ever does is introduce biblical characters in their famous context and then waits for the actors to find something funny to do. These are very talented actors, some of whom with years of improv and sketch comedy training but without a solid script to work from even the best of the improv crowd simply flails about searching for something funny to do.

Stuck with an idea and not a character, Jack Black falls back on his well known antics and shows why audiences are growing tired of his schtick. Michael Cera to is in fallback mode as he transports his much loved persona as a gawky, shy, loser who always seems the subject of humiliation into the role of Oh. The same nervous energy that people found charming in Superbad gets old fast out of context in Year One.

Director Harold Ramis must have thought that all he needed were funny people and a lot of goofy costumes and somehow they would find something funny. Instead, we have a lot of funny talented people lurching about searching for punchlines that should have been provided for them by an actual script.

Not only does what there is of a script stink but Ramis's direction is stunningly lax and inept. Scenes arrive and sputter to a finish or, in the case of an early scene where Cera is attacked by a snake and then a cougar, the scene doesn't really end so much as the scene suddenly is abandoned without resolution. This is a stunning level of apathy from such a veteran director.

Year One is one of the biggest disappointments of the summer.

Movie Review: Youth in Revolt

Youth in Revolt (2010) 

Directed by Miguel Arteta

Written by Gustin Nash

Starring Michael Cera, Portia Doubleday, Jean Smart, Ray Liotta, Steve Buscemi, Fred Willard

Release Date January 8th, 2010

Published January 8th, 2010 

Michael Cera is not everyone's cup of tea. His fey, nonchalant nebbish-ness is a put off for some but not for me. From “Arrested Development” to “Superbad” to now “Youth in Revolt” and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” Cera's persona has become a wonderful comic tool that he wields with precision. It's fair to say that “Youth in Revolt” takes the Michael Cera persona to an extreme but it worked for me and will work for anyone who counts them a Cera fan.

Michael Cera stars in Youth in Revolt as Nick Twisp a shy young man living with his slatternly mother (Jean Smart) and her loser boyfriend of the moment, Jerry (Zach Galifianakis). When Jerry gets in trouble with some local tough the 'family' has to go on the run. They take refuge in a trailer park where Nick spies the girl of his dreams, Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday).

Sheeni initially has no interest in Nick but his persistence is flattering and eventually she gives him a break but only after he becomes the bad boy of her dreams. Nick is no bad boy but when he manages to tick off Sheeni's parents it begins an unintended reputation that Nick must foster in order to keep Sheeni's attention.

After Jerry disappears Nick is forced to return home. Once there and torn from his beloved Sheeni, Nick must hatch a plan, a plan that will allow him to move back. This elaborate fiasco involves getting his dad (Steve Buscemi) a job and a place to live near the trailer park. Then, he has to convince his mom to kick him out and force him to live with dad. The ways in which Nick goes about this are part of a tricky, gloriously odd series of events that make up the plot of Youth in Revolt.

Director Miguel Arteta brings wonderfully subtle rhythm to some rather outlandish scenes and the conflict between the tone and the happenings in Youth in Revolt somehow emerges charming and very funny. The ways in which the direction is passive and the action is not clash so perfectly that if pushed in a more or less active direction the movie would tumble over.

Strangely, while the role of Nick Twisp seems custom built for the Michael Cera persona; “Youth in Revolt” is actually based on a series of novels from the early 1990's from writer C.D Payne. I have never read the novels but according to those who have it is as if Nick Twisp predicted Michael Cera and waited for his arrival before he could be brought to the big screen.

There is no other actor who could bring Nick Twisp to life other than Michael Cera. The changes of persona, the ways in which Nick imagines a more confident version of himself named Francois Dillinger, these are seemingly natural shifts for Michael Cera that would seem like comic extensions for other actors. Cera makes the move organic as if creating Francois came from his own mind.

People tend to see the Michael Cera persona as an example of limited range. I however, feel that what Michael Cera does on screen is quite challenging. He's like a modern day Chaplin carrying The Tramp persona from film to film, giving him different dimensions and playing him against different backgrounds and characters to a new and wonderful comic effect.  

Watch Michael Cera in interviews and then watch Michael Cera in movies and on TV and you get the full picture of the Michael Cera character. It is as if his entire career was a performance art piece that he keeps spinning out further in role after role with different names but always the same character in a new and fascinating comic context. It's rather genius if you like what Michael Cera does.

If you aren't a fan then you will call it limited range and dismiss Cera as some one note performer. I happen to be a huge fan and I love his work more and more each time out and I feel like I am in on a wonderful running gag that never stops and grows more and more fascinating with each role. One of these days the Michael Cera persona is going to hit upon a role that will cross over from just funny to poignant and even moving and more people will begin to get it. “Youth in Revolt” likely isn't that movie but for fans it's enough for now.

Movie Review Superbad

Superbad (2007) 

Directed by Greg Mattola

Written by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg

Starring Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, Emma Stone, Christopher Mintz Plasse, Bill Hader, Seth Rogen

Release Date August 17th, 2007

Published August 16th, 2007

There are moments of the teen comedy Superbad that remind me so much of my own teen years that I would have been red faced embarrassed if I weren't laughing so hard. This latest brilliant comedy from under the shingle of Judd Apatow is the movie that Porky's and American Pie wished they could have been. Smart, funny, and balls out filthy, Superbad has a heart as big as its love of penis drawings.

Written by the team of Seth Rogan, star of Knocked Up, and his childhood friend Evan Goldberg, Superbad is so true and authentic that guys between the ages of 18 and 34 will be in hysterics at just the familiarity of the characters and the situations.

Superbad tells the story of one night in the lives of two best friends. Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) have been friends for over 10 years, something you get quickly from the shorthand of their conversation that seems as if it began a decade before the movie began. This is their last night of High School and the boys have been invited to their first High School party.

The party is being thrown by Seth's longtime crush Jules (Emma Stone). By promising to get alcohol for the party Seth hopes he can entice Jules into a drunken, last night of High School tryst. Also attending the party is  Evan's longtime crush Becca (Martha MacIsaac), she is into Evan but he is clueless how to handle that. He too hopes that a little alcohol will grease the wheels, though his intentions with Becca are slightly less puerile.

To get the booze the boys must rely on Evan's friend Fogell who has promised a fake I.D. Unfortunately, when Fogell produces the I.D his name change threatens to blow the cover. Fogell decided to call himself "McLovin", no last name, just McLovin. Nevertheless, McLovin is the boy's only hope to get the drinks and thereby, get the girls.

On my surface level description Superbad sounds like nothing more than American Pie Redux or maybe Porky's 15. In reality however, Superbad, under the skilled direction of Greg Mottola, is much smarter than the American Pie movies and even more outlandish than Porky's. Superbad is the rare teen comedy that delivers strong characters with the extra strength of low brow humor.

Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg wrote the script for Superbad based on their experiences as teenagers. The two have been friends since junior high and that friendly shorthand lends the film authenticity that most other teen comedies can only imitate. Despite having to compound a high school lifetime of experiences into one night, Superbad never feels overstuffed. Director Mottola along with Rogan and Goldberg escape this trouble by simply ignoring it.

The bedrock of Superbad is the loving friendship of Seth and Evan. This is really a platonic male love story about two guys overcoming social pressures to confess that they love each other. Men in this culture are not allowed to admit their feelings for one another, not without a joking reference to Brokeback Mountain or some anti-gay slur to break the awkwardness.

Superbad throws off the social shackles and allows Evan and Seth to be honest with each other, with the aid of a little booze. They are headed to different colleges in the fall and they are going to miss each other more than even the girls whose hearts they hope to win. Now, before you start to think that Superbad is some touchy-feely, male bonding comedy, trust me, there are plenty of dick jokes. In fact, there is almost a dick subplot. I don't want to get too detailed, just keep an ear out for Seth's reasons for not liking Evan's crush Becca.

A great group of actors mixed with tremendous behind the scenes talent, Superbad is among the best films of 2007. Yes, some will be put off by the truly low brow humor but trust me, they will be missing the point. The lowbrow stuff comes from a good hearted place within these terrific characters. It's all in good fun and only occasionally is it gratuitous. In a year where we have seen The Simpsons Movie and Knocked Up it is Superbad that takes the crown as the funniest movie of the year.