Movie Review She's Outta My League

She's Outta My League

Directed by Jim Field Smith

Written by Sean Anders, John Morris

Starring Jay Baruchel, Alice Eve, T.J Miller, Mike Vogel, Krysten Ritter

Release Date March 12th, 2010 

Published March 12th, 2010 

Anyone who thinks actor Jay Baruchel is an unlikely star of a major mainstream comedy must have never seen him on the brilliant and unfortunately brief TV series Undeclared. Baruchel was a natural comic lead, sympathetic, self deprecating and very funny. He brings that same mix of vulnerability, angst and good humor to She's out of My League and while it's not Undeclared, it is a modestly funny distraction worth the price of a movie ticket.

Kirk (Baruchel) works in airport security with his three closest pals, Stainer (TJ Miller), Devon (Nate Torrence) and Jack (Mike Vogel) because he really can't think of anything better to do. He wants to be a pilot but lacks the ambition to pursue a pilot's license, content to hang out with his friends. Kirk's life gets a jolt when by chance he catches the eye of Molly (Alice Eve) a smoking hot blonde who accidentally leaves her phone at Kirk's security post. She repays him with a date and then another date before Kirk finally understands that she is honestly, romantically interested in him.

Thanks to years of low self esteem and his friend's awful ability to have his back, Kirk has an impossible time believing a woman as beautiful and successful as Molly could really be interested in him. For her part, Molly admits to her friend Patty (Krysten Ritter) that Kirk is a safe choice because he is unlikely to break her heart.

The conflict is believable and while it plays for laughs it works as a strong roadblock for Kirk and Molly's romance. Baruchel and Alice Eve have a strong chemistry playing first the mismatch and eventually settling into a strong romantic vibe. The strength of She's out of My League is Baruchel and Eve's ability to make us care about them while the film whirls from one lowbrow gag to the next.

Playing Kirk's best friend Stainer T.J Miller tries a little too hard to be the missing member of the Knocked Up supporting cast. That said, Miller has a few strong moments, especially when he's playing in his awesome cover band "Adult Education." If you don't know what the band is covering, you aren't trying hard enough. Stainer is pivotal to the film's finish but I could have done without much of his act.

Not all of She's out of My League works but what does is very strong. Jay Baruchel has strong comic instincts and the film plays well to his strengths, vulnerability and a strong sense of who he is. Alice Eve is beautiful and rounds out the character with honesty and self awareness. The romance has depth beyond the wild gags, as the best of this kind of comedy does, and that make She's out of My League worth your time at the theater.

Movie Review: Cloverfield

Cloverfield (2008) 

Directed by Matt Reeves

Written by Drew Goddard 

Starring T.J Miller, Mike Vogel, Jessica Lucas, Lizzy Caplan, Odette Yustman

Release Date January 18th, 2008

Published January 18th, 2008

The monster movie has grand history. Not just the great Godzilla but the subtext that accompanied the great lizard. Frankenstein's monster was both a force of horror and a force of subtext, addressing repression, discrimination and the dangers of mob mentality. The modern monster movie has had less and less on the subtextual front with movies like The Mist reveling in the technology necessary in creating giant monsters rather than crafting a message to work in behind the monster.

Now comes Cloverfield from producer J.J Abrams and director Matt Reeves. Much like The Mist, Cloverfield is mostly about technology and movie magic and not so much about stimulating the brain or making audiences think.

There is however, some visual allusion to deeper meaning. Because Cloverfield is about a monster destroying New York, crushing skyscrapers and such, the spector of 9/11 lingers in the margins. Director Matt Reeves makes a very conscious decision to use imagery of that day in his monster movie and these moments are highly discomfiting. For all the great subtextual moments in the history of the monster movie, some movies aren't worthy of such serious underpinnings or deeper meanings. Cloverfield with it's cardboard characters and giant monster motif simply is too superfluous to refer to our nations greatest tragedy without seeming to demean it.

Rob (Michael Stalh David) is leaving New York for Japan. His closest friends are throwing him a huge going away party. While Rob's brother Jason (Mike Vogel) runs around causing trouble for his long suffering girlfriend Lilly (Jessica Lucas), Rob's best friend Hud (T.J Miller) has been left with the task of filming the whole event for posterity. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the guest of honor, his friends have invited his ex Beth (Odette Yustman) to the party. Actually, Rob and Beth are supposed to be just friends but we know that they have slept together and that Rob screwed things up really bad, so bad that Beth arrives at the party with a date.

All of this personal angst is rendered meaningless when an explosion rocks the apartment building and suddenly the head of the statue of liberty is flung down the street. Soon a mass evacuation is underway and our new friends are frantically running the streets with Hud filming the whole time as is typical of our youtube culture.

I must say that though I find Cloverfield to be shallow, it is quite thrilling at times. Crossing The Blair Witch Project's shaky cam with a big budget CGI monster, Cloverfield creates a viscderally exciting atmosphere where this giant moster attack feels real. Director Matt Reeves made some interesting choices in allowing actor T.J Miller who plays Hud, to actually shoot some of the film with his little handheld camera. Most of the action is captured with a steadicam and skilled operators but all of the action feels authentic in it's slightly goofy, monster movie way.

I'm still hung up on the shallow allusions to 9/11. While I appreciate the history of moster movies and great subtext and metaphor but something about Cloverfield feels unworthy of the tragedy it samples more than metaphorically reflects. Cloverfield plays like 9/11 movie mashed up with a monster movie and the two elements coalesce like Weird Al Yankovich mashed with Radiohead.

That said, I cannot deny that Cloverfield is exciting and compelling. I was caught up in the films run and hide and run some more plot and at a mere 80 minutes, Cloverfield does not overstaty it's welcome. Puddle deep with uncomfortable allusions, Cloverfield is little more than a modern monster movie with new age movie magic employed to good effect. I recommend it for anyone with a strong stomach, all that shaky cam can tend to make some a little queasy.

Movie Review Poseidon

Poseidon (2006)

Directed by Wolfgang Peterson

Written by Mark Protosevich

Starring Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Emmy Rossum, Mike Vogel, Mia Maestro

Release Date May 12th, 2006

Published May 11th, 2006

The 1972 original The Poseidon Adventure was a dopey all star marathon of water logged cheesiness. From Gene Hackman's turtleneck to Shelley Winters swimming, to Red Buttons closeted fabulousness, there is nothing but pure camp fun to be found in this ludicrous disaster epic.

This is why I was not so vehemently opposed to the film being remade. I find it refreshing to find filmmakers leaving the classics alone and attempting to make a bad movie into a good one. The attempt is a miserable failure but at least we aren't left with a shot for shot remake of Psycho haunting video store shelves as the shame of shame.

Poseidon stars Josh Lucas as an inveterate gambler named Dylan who boards the ocean liner Poseidon looking for rich victims to play poker with. Dylan cares about no one but himself, so, of course, when the supposedly unsinkable ship is flipped by a freakishly large wave it is Dylan who must lead potential survivors to safety.

Why Dylan and not, say, the former Mayor of New York and hero fireman Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell)? Probably because Lucas is younger, better looking and studios think he is a star on the rise. At Least that is the cynical answer. The plot however says that Dylan is simply luckier in finding conveniently placed maps of the ship that he uses to find the one spot where people can escape.

Along for the ride, as cannon fodder mostly, are Robert's daughter Jennifer (Emmy Rossum) her fiancee Christian (Mike Vogel), single mom Maggie (Jascinda Barrett) and her son Conor (Jimmy Bennett), Richard (Richard Dreyfuss) a suicidal gay man and Elena (Mia Maestro) a stowaway.

Together they navigate the upside down ship through fiery galleys, explosions above and below and most perilous of all some of the worst dialogue ever enunciated by professional actors in a major motion picture.

The first Poseidon had some serious cheeseball dialogue, especially from Ernest Borgnine and Stella Stevens as the bickering Roggo's, a pairing that has seen more than one brilliant send up on The Simpsons. Unfortunately even Borgnine and Stevens would be embarrassed by the kind of tripe served up as meaningful dialogue in the new Poseidon.

As an example, check the exchange between Richard Dreyfuss's inappropriately flamboyant Richard and Freddie Rodriguez's Marco as poor Marco is navigating a particularly dangerous corridor. Richard picks this moment, as fire and steam and a quickly falling apart bridge threaten poor Marco, to come flying out of the closet and hit on Marco. It's bad enough to make one wonder if Marco chose the fiery depths of the inflamed water over survival. 

The exchanges between Kurt Russell, usually quite reliable even in a garbage picture, and Josh Lucas are just as ludicrous. Listen as Dylan establishes his rebel persona as Russell asks the question we all want to know as the ship begins to sink "Don't you care about anyone other than yourself!". No he doesn't, except maybe Maggie aka the plot device love interest put in place to humanize him, as if a flipped over cruise ship just were not enough motivation.

As bad as Poseidon is, director Wolfgang Peterson is far too talented to make a film so bad it's good. Thus we get some very competent action scenes and some exceptional CGI effects. These elements add up to nothing except incongruity. The competence feels out of place amongst the shoddy whole of Poseidon.

Forget about the media garbage that the disaster in Poseidon is anything akin to the real life disaster of the tsunami or that the passengers' escape is anything akin to watching people flee the twin towers on 9/11. Poseidon is far from a cheeseball for that kind of analysis. Even a wry allusion to these real life disasters in comparison to Poseidon feels crass.

After watching Sony try to sell us Josh Lucas as the hero of Stealth last summer and now watching Josh in Poseidon I've come to the conclusion that Josh Lucas is the New Coke of action heroes. We never asked for him, we don't know where he came from, all we know is that when we went for the new Schwarzenegger or Gibson all we could find on the shelf was this guy.

It's not that Lucas is a bad actor, he was terrific in the little seen dramedy Around The Bend with Christopher Walken, it may just be that action hero is not his thing. Much like his near twin brother Matthew McConaughey, Lucas has that lackadaisical, laid back slacker thing going on. It's an affectation that just does not play in the macho genre but suits him well in movies like An Unfinished Life or his small role in A Beautiful Mind.

As for Kurt Russell in a better movie he could have been a very effective lead. Unfortunately, saddled with a script that gives him one note to play, protective father, he cannot escape the dreariness around him. For me he was the film's most entertaining player but only because during the many, many moments of boredom in Poseidon I would drift off and imagine what Snake Plissken would do on an upside down, exploding boat. I imagine there would be alot of killing and at least one scene of Snake lighting a cigar off of a flaming corpse. Call it Escape From The Exploding Upside Down Boat.

You know a movie stinks when you are dreaming of your own movie while watching it.

It is the rare disaster epic that makes you root for the disaster. Poseidon is that disaster epic.

Movie Review Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Remake)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Directed by Marcus Nispel 

Written by Scott Kosar 

Starring Jennifer Biel, Jonathan Tucker, Mike Vogel, Eric Balfour, R. Lee Ermey

Release Date October 17th, 2003 

Published October 15th, 2003 

When I heard they were remaking Texas Chainsaw Massacre, my first thought was, why? It's already been remade a number of times under a number of different titles. Take House of 1000 Corpses, clearly a complete rip-off of Chainsaw, save for the actual use of a chainsaw. How about the backwoods hicks of Wrong Turn, clearly modeled after Leatherface and his lunatic family? Its low budget look and guerilla shooting style have influenced nearly every horror film released in its wake.

Of course, the number of bad sequels that have provided variations on the original characters are in themselves merely re-imaginings of the first film. A remake would have to first justify itself with a reason to do it. The new Texas Chainsaw Massacre fails that test, never once providing a reason why it needs to exist.

It's the same setup as the 1974 original, a group of comely teenagers trekking their way through backwoods Texas on their way to who knows where, there is a vague allusion to a concert in this new version. Jessica Biel of TV's 7th Heaven plays the re-imagined role originally played by Marylin Burns, renamed Erin for the remake. Her friends are Kemper (Eric Balfour), Pepper (Erica Leerhsen), Andy (Mike Vogel) and Morgan (Jonathan Tucker). 

The kids nearly rundown a teenage girl along the desolate highway, wandering too nowhere. They pick her up and she begins babbling about someone being dead and grave warnings about the direction they are driving. Before she can explain anything more, she meets an ugly end at her own hands, it's actually the film's most effectively gory visual. It's all downhill from there, however.

With the dead girl in the backseat, the traumatized teens stop off in Travis County to find help. What they find however is a sadistic, twisted sheriff (R. Lee Ermey) and his equally sadistic and twisted family, including the murderous chainsaw wielding Leatherface (Eric Bryarniarski) who eats teenagers for breakfast... and lunch and dinner as well.

It's been a while since I've seen Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I can recall it being far more effective than Director Marcus Nispel's slight, slick re-imagining. There was a visceral quality to the original that is greatly lacking in this remake. It's a quality that Nispel tries to make up for by beating the audience senseless with a chase sequence that lasts what seems like hours. The stylized music video slickness is completely at odds with the original film.

The higher production values of the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I gather, are supposedly the justification for the remake. As if trying to answer the unasked question of "What might Tobe Hooper have done with a bigger budget for the original?” Who cares what he might have done, what he did with his miniscule budget is part of the film’s appeal? The low production value and Daniel Pearl's minimalist cinematography are part of horror legend. Pearl returns for the remake and does seem to revel in his newfound technical freedom. However, improving on the look of the original isn't anything anyone asked to see.

The young actors give a good account of themselves in their underwritten victim roles, especially Biel who may have found her niche as a scream queen on par with Jaime Lee Curtis. However, she needs to find herself an original franchise to make her mark in the genre. Somewhere there is a new horror franchise ready to change the genre and directors like Marcus Nispel could better spend their time discovering that new franchise rather than applying modern polish to horror classics like Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Movie Review Grind

Grind (2003) 

Directed by Casey La Scala 

Written by Ralph Sall 

Starring Mike Vogel, Vince Vieluf, Adam Brody, Jennifer Morrison, Tom Green 

Release Date August 15th, 2003 

Published August 15th, 2003

No one will believe me now but it's true. Years ago, I predicted that one day filmmaking would be completely taken away from the artists and given over to the marketing departments of major studios. They will operate without scripts and shot lists, only posters and taglines. They will thinly outline the most marketable elements necessary to sell the film to the selected demographic. They will test market everything right down to the individual lines of dialogue for the maximum marketability. Well the final product of this marketer's wet dream is finally in theaters. Grind is the very first movie made entirely by marketers and unspools like the 90 minute commercial it is.

Let's cut to the chase, it's about four guys who's goal in life is to become pro skaters like their hero Jimmy Wilson (one of the London brothers, it doesn't matter which one). They believe that if they can show Jimmy a tape of their skating he will invite them to join his tour. So like Grateful Dead fans, they begin tailing the tour in a beat up van. All the while they’re chasing female models cast as extras and just missing their hero at each stop.

Along the way there are unnecessary cameos by Tom Green, Bobcat Goldthwaite and Stephen Root doing an odd variation on his character from Office Space. The cameos do nothing to add to this mess and Green's appearance actually brings the film to a screeching halt. Green is such an oddball you must wonder if his character was a practical joke on his part that the producers didn't get and left in the film. I honestly believe Green is that smart, and I had a lot of time to develop that theory as the film grinded away through another banal skating exhibition.

I'm not sure if it was the way the film was edited or if the skating was that dull but I was bored even during what the film was all about, the skating. I haven't been on a skateboard since I was 14 years old and I broke my tailbone, but you don't have to be a fan of the X Games to be unimpressed by the skateboard exhibitions in Grind. Only a cameo by Tony Hawk shows any real talent. Of course the skateboard stuff might have been good but with the way it was shot and edited we won't ever know. What ended up on the screen was not very impressive.

Grind functions as a sports movie, it even has a big game at the end, though it's entirely inconsequential. The sports movie clichés are mixed in between fart jokes and banal dialogue about friendship and being a team.

The cast doesn't come off as badly as their skateboarding talent. Each of the four leads has a modicum of charm but any shred of good acting was left on the cutting room floor. Only Joey Kern as Sweet Lou makes any real impression, his relaxed humor provides the film’s few bright spots. Novice Eric Rivers has the film’s main role and at best I can say I didn't hate him. That said, his bland performance is exactly what the marketers were looking for, good looking, vague, banal and inoffensive. He's not so bad that it's memorable but he's not so good either.

As I write this Grind has failed miserably at the box office. It's a minor victory for artists over the marketing overlords, but they will be back. Armed with their demographics and market research.

Be afraid, be very afraid.