Movie Review Nerdland

Nerdland (2016) 

Directed by Chris Prynoski 

Written by Andrew Kevin Walker

Starring Patton Oswalt, Paul Rudd, Kate Miccucci, Riki Lindholme, Mike Judge, Hannibal Burress

Release Date December 6th, 2016

Published November 29th, 2016 

Nerdland features the voices of Paul Rudd and Patton Oswalt as John and Elliott, loser roommates starving for fame. John is an aspiring actor and Elliott is a screenwriter though neither seems particularly interested in the work that goes into becoming famous, just the fame. There could be comedy to be wrung from a pair of fame-whoring losers but Nerdland pretty much stops at making John and Elliott losers. 

After John fails at a lame attempt to get Elliott’s screenplay into the hands of a dopey movie star during an interview junket the two begin brainstorming awful get famous quick schemes. Among the failed attempts at becoming stars is a YouTube style video where they give a giant check to a homeless person in hope that their charity will go viral. Unfortunately, Elliott fails to record the attempt and the homeless man runs away with the oversized novelty check. 

After fame manages to elude them in several other ways the guys take a shot at infamy, brainstorming a mass murder spree. John and Elliott visit their landlord with the intent of making her their first victim, which should be easy, they reason, because she is very old. Naturally, they fail as killers as well and the film then spins off into a minor media parody after the guys witness a robbery and become the targets of both the police and dangerous mobsters.

Throughout the movie references are dropped regarding a rebuilt Hollywood sign. The reveal of the sign is mentioned several times during the film and it comes up one last time during the film’s climactic scene. Spoiler alert: We never find out why the sign matters in any way. That actually may not be a spoiler as it plays absolutely no role at all in the outcome of the film or the fates of John and Elliott and yet it drags on throughout the entire run of the movie.

The sign bit is emblematic of how sloppy and shapeless Nerdland is but that is not what makes the film so damn disappointing. It’s the talent that made this shapeless, sloppy, mess of a movie that is so disappointing. On top of Patton Oswalt and Paul Rudd, a dynamic comic duo completely wasted, we have the talents of Riki Lindholme and Kate Micucci, AKA Garfunkel & Oates, Mike Judge, Paul Scheer, Laraine Newman, Hannibal Burress and “Seven” screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker.

Chris Prynoski is the director of Nerdland and I have to imagine he is responsible for the final product. Prynoski has a cult following from his similarly odd animated TV shows Metalocalypse, Superjail, and the recent live action and animated series Son of Zorn. Prynoski’s style is combatively unfocused, he seems to actively not care if the audience laughs. Prynoski engages in the kind of anti-comedy that attempts to mine laughs from the absurd lack of something funny. Sometimes this kind of comedy can be exciting as a taunt toward a passive audience. In Nerdland it just feels messy and shapeless, even if you feel like you get the anti-joke.

I cannot for the life of me tell you why the movie is called Nerdland. I guess that John and Elliott could be considered nerds but they aren’t really interesting enough to earn any label other than losers. The one character who could rise to a common stereotype of a nerd is played by Hannibal Burress but he is such a grotesque caricature that he defies any simplistic label. Burress’s character is fat and sloppy and runs a comic book store and has access to the darkest corners of nerd culture; something the movie seems to use for narrative convenience except that Prynoski loses interest in even playing out his narrative clichés.

Anti-comedy is tough to pull off. The intent is to drive away lazy audiences and potentially entertain a few of the like-minded souls willing to overlook the ugliness to find the bold and daring comedy below. Andy Kaufman eating ice cream on stage at The Comedy Store is anti-comedy at its finest, a daring taunt from a comic genius who knows that the absurd silent scene on stage is funnier than most of the written material of any other comic. Chris Prynoski is no Andy Kaufman. His brand of anti-comedy isn’t as well refined or daring, merely off-putting.

The joke of Nerdland seems to be its own existence. It plays as if Chris Prynoski hired an all-star team of comic talents with the intention of doing nothing remotely funny with them. It is most certainly a taunt and it does provoke the audience but it lacks wit. Only Chris Prynoski knows why Nerdland is intentionally unfunny and if that self-satisfaction is enough for him then I bow to him. I don’t recommend his movie but I respect what I assume is the self-satisfying result.

Documentary Review My Date with Drew

My Date with Drew (2004) 

Directed by Brian Herzlinger, Jon Gunn

Written by Documentary 

Starring Brian Herzlinger, Drew Barrymore

Release Date August 5th, 2004

Published November 15th, 2004 

In reviews of Brian Herzlinger's documentary My Date With Drew words like 'charming', 'sweet' and 'cute' are often used. On the other hand, so are the words 'creepy' and 'stalker'. There are clearly two camps on My Date With Drew and I find that I agree with the creepy/stalker side. Yes, My Date With Drew has the admirable quality of extreme low budget filmmaking but it plays more like the audition tape to some dopey reality show. Was Brian Herzlinger making a documentary or just trying to get on MTV before he turned 30.

Brian Herzlinger has had a major crush on Drew Barrymore since he was six years old and first saw E.T. Who can blame him, she was adorable in that film and after some dark detours in her life she has remained adorable. So I can understand Herzlinger's fascination. However that is where we part ways. Where I am happy to admire Drew Barrymore's beauty and talent from afar, Brian Herzlinger took the 1100 hundred dollars he won on a game show and used it to land himself a date with Drew Barrymore and the idea for My Date With Drew was born.

With a camera borrowed from Circuit City that must be back before the 30 day return policy runs out, Brian and his friends set out on a variation of my favorite college drinking game: six degrees of Kevin Bacon--only replacing Kevin with Drew. Operating on the theory that everyone in L.A knows someone who knows someone who's cousin knows someone's facialist, Brian sets out to meet anyone who can get him close to Drew. Indeed he even talks to Drew's actual facialist.

The film features interviews with people like Drew's cousin, who has actually never met Drew despite the relationship. Brian interviews actor Eric Roberts who is on a TV show with Andy Dick who it is rumored is friends with Drew. Roberts offers little other than the fact that he may be slightly creepier than Brian. Roberts is also no help in getting Andy Dick who refuses an interview request. Somehow Brian works his way down the Hollywood food chain to Corey Feldman who dated Drew for two months sometime in the 80's but is no help in contacting her now.

That hint of irony that Brian brings to his encounters with Roberts and Feldman betrays the premise that My Date With Drew is really sincere. Feldman and Roberts have that desperate quality of the C-list celebs who will make time for anything they can put on the resume, and Herzlinger seems to exploit that in scenes that are more sad than funny. Therein lies the biggest problem with My Date With Drew, Brian Herzlinger's lack of sincerity.

I simply did not believe the whole thing was anything more than a career-making stunt. I appreciated his ingenuity but thought his abuse of Ms. Barrymore's persona was creepy and self serving. That eventually Ms. Barrymore see's his motives as pure and clever does not sway my opinion. The film lives and dies by Herzlinger's sincere feelings about Drew Barrymore and her work and I never bought it.

Yes, Brian gets his date with Drew, and her love for the project and sincere appreciation of Brian's persistence nearly made me like him and the movie. Barrymore takes the perspective that Brian is merely ambitious and ingenious and she is happy to help that. But that idea is at odds with much of what came before. Is this about Brian sincerely wanting to meet his favorite celebrity, or is this about his career? The film blurs Brian's real intentions.

There is a story of how Matt Stone and Trey Parker managed to get South Park on the air. They made a tape for some industry guy who passed it around Hollywood. It landed in the hands of George Clooney and, from there, onto the desks of the people at Comedy Central. That rough tape never aired but it opened a lot of doors. One of the reasons I found My Date With Drew to be less than sincere is that it plays a little like that South Park tape. It's rough but quite clever and plays like Brian Herzlinger's ploy to make a name for himself and not as the sincere childhood pursuit of a dream that Herzlinger claims it is.

I did enjoy Brian Herzlinger's encounter with Drew. She seems genuinely enthused and leaves any kind celebrity pretense out of it. She is truly what you would hope a big star would be like if you met her, and seeing that makes me want to like this little movie. Unfortunately I do not, because she is not the star of the picture.

When on the actual 'date', Drew talks about how chasing a dream and having the drive to make it happen is a wonderful thing and I don't disagree. That Brian Herzlinger set a difficult goal and achieved it is quite admirable but what does it say about that dream if realizing it is merely hero worship and opportunism. The emptiness of Herzlinger's goal and the creepy stalker-esque way he goes about achieving it brings a whole other vibe to the movie that I'm sure is unintended.

The very funny comedian Eugene Mirman once said that some percentage of stalking has to work. Brian Herzlinger may just be the proof of that. Okay, maybe it's a little harsh to call Herzlinger a stalker. The film never portrays him to be dangerous or deranged. The word I would use to describe him is misguided. I would think that someone of Herzlinger's imagination and sticktoitiveness could find something more constructive to do with his time than pursue a celebrity.

I can tell you this: I wish I'd had other, more constructive things to do than watch him pursue a celebrity.

Movie Review Night Catches Us

Night Catches Us (2010) 

Directed by Tanya Hamilton

Written by Tanya Hamilton 

Starring Anthony Mackie, Kerry Washington, Wendell Pierce

Release Date December 3rd, 2010 

Published December 7th, 2010 

A number of movies have tackled the story of the Black Panthers as they rose and became a force on the national scene. Their charismatic leaders became icons and their movement became a legend. As the civil rights era wound out the Panthers seemed to lose their way and many of their stories faded with the movement.

Director Tanya Hamilton takes us back to the time just after the Panthers heyday and in “Night Catches Us” gives us a composite story of the people who lived the legend and what happened to them in the wake of such astonishing drama, revelation, struggle, sadness and in some cases triumph.

It's 1976 and Marcus Washington (Anthony Mackie) is returning home to his South Philadelphia neighborhood for the first time in nearly a decade. Marcus left under a cloud of suspicion after one of his fellow Black Panther Party members was shot and killed by police. The remaining panthers came to believe that he ran because he sold the dead man to the cops.

Now, with his preacher father having passed away, Marcus returns to find many of the tensions he escaped still boiling. Marcus's brother Bostic (Tariq Trotter, The Roots) has become a devout Muslim who maintains a grudge but is more civil than most. The remaining Panther leader, Do Right (Jamie Hector) has allegedly turned to crime and intimidation as the tools of revolution.

Do Right makes his feelings clear by vandalizing Marcus's car, leaving the word 'snitch' etched into the side of the black caddie left to Marcus by his late father. The one person who welcomes Marcus back, even into her home, is Patricia (Kerry Washington), the wife of Marcus's former Panther brother who was killed by police.

The history between Marcus and Patricia is thick with meaning and in it “Night Catches Us” has a strong romantic/dramatic hook. Sadly, the rest of the plot hinges on characters whose actions are forced and used only as plot drivers, as if director Tanya Hamilton felt she didn't have enough juice in Marcus and Patricia's relationship to move the film forward.

Amari Cheatom plays Jimmy, Patricia's troubled cousin. Jimmy has a painful encounter with local cops that leads him on a path to the kind of militancy he believes the Panthers stood for. You might think Marcus would try to stop him but there would be no point, Jimmy is a creation of the plot meant to push conflict.

Stronger supporting performances come from Wendell Pierce as a corrupt cop holding Marcus's most difficult secret and young Jamara Griffin as Patricia's 9 year old daughter Iris. Pierce brings back fond memories of his performance as a much better detective on HBO's The Wire. Griffin is a young talent to watch, a natural actress with terrific instincts and a distinctive face.

When “Night Catches Us” is focused on Marcus and Patricia, their past and possible future, it is deeply moving and evocative. Setting their story, their past, with that of the Black Panthers, including archive footage to underscore the importance of the struggle they were fictionally part of, gives it a fiery context that encompasses them, their neighborhood and all around them. 

Jimmy, unfortunately, is a dramatic contrivance that distracts from the main story of “Night Catches Us” and leads us to believe that there is not enough in the main story to give the film the drive it needs to get to a satisfying conclusion. Too bad, Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington indeed do deliver the goods. There was no need for contrivance, no reason for writer-director Hamilton to lack confidence and undermine her main story.

Movie Review Nocturnal Animals

Nocturnal Animals (2016) 

Directed by Tom Ford

Written by Tom Ford 

Starring Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Armie Hammer, Michael Shannon

Release Date November 18th, 2006 

Published November 16th, 2006 

“Nocturnal Animals” is a daring film of unique power and affect. Directed by fashion designer Tom Ford, the film stars Amy Adams as Susan, a desperately unhappy Los Angeles art dealer whose past comes back to haunt her in the form of a book written by her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). Reading the book, alone in her enormous and empty home over a weekend where her new husband (Armie Hammer) is out of town, Susan is struck by feelings for Edward she thought she’d lost years ago.

The book is called “Nocturnal Animals” and it is dedicated to Susan. The book is a revenge thriller about a family traveling through a West Texas desert when they are menaced by a group of criminals. We see the story play out in Susan’s imagination with Edward in the lead role of Tony, a good man but not one well suited for a confrontation with criminals. We watch as the confrontation between Tony’s family and the criminals grows from harassment to kidnapping and to something extraordinarily disturbing.

The film goes on to lay in the back story of how Susan and Edward met, fell in love and eventually fell apart. Susan devastated Tony and created a resentment that lasted nearly two decades. The book he’s written is in many ways a reflection of his hurt feelings but you will need to see the movie for yourself to follow that line of logic as I will not spoil anything here.

Michael Shannon plays a role in “Nocturnal Animals” that I am reluctant to go into in order to avoid spoilers. That said, Shannon is Oscar-level brilliant. Shannon acts with every inch of his gaunt frame and with his devastating glare. The character is not unlike a Quentin Tarentino character full of pith and anger in equal measure but slightly less morally ambivalent. It’s an exceptional performance, easily one of the best single performances of 2016.

“Nocturnal Animals” is the second feature film for Director Tom Ford following his artful debut, 2009’s “A Single Man” which won an Oscar for Colin Firth’s remarkable lead performance. Coming from the world of fashion, Ford has a phenomenal eye. Both “Nocturnal Animals” and “A Single Man” are gorgeous to look at even as they explore the uglier side of life. Even the grittiest moments of “Nocturnal Animals” have a beauty to them that most filmmakers would have foregone in trying to underline the grit. Ford smartly uses the crisp, clear cinematography to show that beauty exists even in the dark.

I must add a bit of a caveat to this review. Though I am recommending the movie highly, “Nocturnal Animals” is not for all audiences. The first moments of the film are taunting and provocative and will cause some people to walk out of the theater in protest. Full disclosure, I turned away from the screen on my first viewing and had to force myself to confront the images the second time I watched the film for this review. The opening has little to do with the rest of the movie but I appreciate how this credits sequence jolts us in the audience to wide attention.

Moviegoing is often a passive experience and the credits sequence of “Nocturnal Animals” breaks through that passivity in no uncertain terms. Could the film have done without the jolt? Probably. The story being told is quite good and the performances of Adams, Gyllenhaal, and especially Michael Shannon are strong enough to jolt audiences on their own. That said, I understand the inclusion of the opening and on reflection I appreciate the jolt even as it is quite forceful.

Movie Review Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Directed by Mark Romanek

Written by Alex Garland 

Starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley, Sally Hawkins, Charlotte Rampling 

Release Date September 15th, 2010

Published November 4th, 2010 

The wonderful thing about “Never Let Me” Go is how its languorousness invites the viewer to project a meaning onto it. Yes, that projection requires ignoring a few things about the characters and what is happening on screen but there is something valuable and even entertaining about a movie that gives the viewer so much room to move around. Some have found parallels to the holocaust. The great Roger Ebert finds a modern equivalent in the sad fate of workers at big box stores like Wal-Mart. Other critics acknowledge a philosophical truth in the film that is just out of their grasp but somehow knowing it is there is enough for them.

Strangely, I find myself somewhere within that last group. I too want to believe and have searched for various philosophic or metaphoric meanings in Mark Romanek's gorgeous direction and Alex Garland's teasing screen adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's moving if also vaguely interpreted novel.

Kathy (Carey Mulligan) fell in love with Tommy when both were young students at an out of the way private school somewhere in the English countryside. Kathy was a self conscious introvert with the soul of an artist. Tommy was an outcast prone to violent rages that only served to make him even more of an outcast.

The center of their world is their relationship with Ruth (Keira Knightley) a popular girl who befriended Kathy in search of a worshiper and fell in with Tommy as a way of preventing that worship from being cast elsewhere. It's clear to us and especially clear to Ruth that Tommy and Kathy should be together but her insecure need for their attention supersedes her ability to let her friends be happy.

This is especially tragic because Hailsham is not merely a country boarding school and the students are not really students at all. As explained in excruciating detail by one of the teachers, Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins), Hailsham students will have painfully short lives in which they will donate their organs until they complete, a nicer way of saying they are spare parts until they die.

The brilliance of “Never Let Me Go” is not in setting up a life or death situation but in the real human ways that these characters take in this extraordinary information and assimilate this knowledge as part of who they are rather than the going concern of some sci fi story of survival.

The arc of the average life is played out with a timeline in mind that lasts a lot longer in our minds than in reality. For Kathy, Tommy and Ruth the arc of birth, life and death is compacted into a mere 30 years at most yet they grow and age and live as if a full life were lived.

They cram their short lives with experiences of love and compassion that a longer life no doubt takes for granted. When Kathy finally gets the opportunity to be with Tommy she doesn't spend much time lamenting, they get right to loving and while there is temporary hope for more life, Kathy is not so concerned about prolonging love as she is about enjoying what she has.

Ruth's is the saddest of all of the stories. Her life is marked by pettiness and a greed for attention. She found weaker kids and forced herself on their attention and in her fight to remain at the center of their world she destroyed them and herself, robbing all of them of the little life they could have had.

Carey Mulligan deserved an Oscar for her work in “Never Let Me Go.” The heart, the love and the compassion she portrays is the heartbreaking force of the film. A soul as wide and as deep as Kathy's deserved more than to be an organ bank and yet that is not what the film is about, it's about what life she brings to what little life she has and much of that is played on Mulligan's wonderfully expressive face.

Mark Romanek captures the essence of Ishiguro's novel in ways that most directors likely would not. Like Ishiguro, Romanek is not really interested in the grander political points about breeding humans for their organs. Rather, that is the setting for telling human stories about what real people would do in these circumstances. The fate of these characters lends a certain tragedy to them but that tragedy is compounded by what unique, fascinating and thoughtful beings these characters are.

The political points, the metaphors and meanings are ours to bring to the film. What Carey Mulligan, director Mark Romanek and screenwriter Alex Garland are focused on are the human beings and the lives they live against this unique and tragic background. It's a wonderfully experimental ploy and it works brilliantly as a movie that makes you think for yourself and moves you deeply.

Movie Review My Soul to Take

My Soul to Take (2010) 

Directed by Wes Craven

Written by Wes Craven 

Starring Max Thieriot, Denzel Whitaker, Raul Esparza, Shareeka Epps 

Release Date October 8th, 2010 

Published October 11th, 2010

How could a director as obscenely talented as Wes Craven turn out a work of such asinine numb-scullery as “My Soul to Take?” It's a baffling question. Do not be mistaken, Craven has splashed his name across a number of horrendous movies as a producer. He even directed the stupefying werewolf movie “Cursed.” That however, was written by Kevin Williamson and had any number of production issues.

For what we know of “My Soul to Take” from script to casting to direction, all was controlled by Wes Craven and this fact leaves one to wonder if the now 70 something director has abandoned his faculties.

”My Soul to Take” tells a vaguely “Nightmare on Elm Street-esque” story of a serial killer seeming to strike back after death. The 'Riverton Ripper' was a serial killer who happened to be a family man suffering from schizophrenia. He has seven personalities, one of which happens to be a deranged killer.

On the night of the birth of his son the Ripper murdered his wife and was thought to have died himself in a subsequent stabbing, shooting, car accident, and explosion and drowning. Somehow, doubt remains. 16 years later the son of the serial killer is unknown but he is definitely one of seven children born the night the ripper died.

Get it yet? Seven kids born the night the guy with seven personalities died? Huh? Maybe, each of the kids got one of the personalities? Maybe, even the serial killer one? Oh yeah, you get it. We get it. Oh, good god do we get it. “My Soul to Take” is dopey on a level of severe mental decomposition. What it lacks in intelligence it also lacks in scares, continuity, fluidity and simple coherence.

The cast of “My Soul to Take” is a group of non-descript youngsters just good looking enough to be pleasant but not interesting enough to be memorable save the poor lass saddled with the Jesus Freak personality, Zena Gray, whose flaming red mane and pale, statuesque skin evoke prurient sympathies even as her arch piety is an extensive put off.

The religiosity of “My Soul to Take” bears mentioning if only as yet another of the film's many punching bags alongside basic movie mechanics and compelling storytelling. The prayer of the film's title is used merely as a foreboding sounding phrase and has no use whatsoever in the film other than as a brief bit of dialogue.

The film's one truly pious character is a stunningly beautiful yet entirely overbearing figure whose beauty and innocence is guaranteed to be punished. There is some mention of a group of parents planning a meeting at a church however, because they were all conspirators in a lie about the son of the serial killer their religiosity is cast as something sinister.

I am the last person to defend religion but this type of amateur hour, faux critique is beneath even the most condescending of atheists and it turns “My Soul to Take” from something merely awful into something strangely offensive to even those that might share its perspective.

What a mind-blowing failure this film is. Granted, my feelings are colored by the fact that “My Soul to Take” comes from a director I have long adored and respected and that has certainly colored my opinion; possibly made my reaction even angrier. That said, “My Soul to Take” likely would not have been any good under any director; under this director it's just all the more sad.

Movie Review Jarhead

Jarhead (2005) 

Directed by Sam Mendes 

Written by William Broyles Jr 

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgard, Lucas Black, Chris Cooper, Jamie Foxx 

Release Date November 4th, 2005 

Published November 3rd, 2005 

Anthony Swofford's 2003 non-fiction account of fear and boredom in the Saudi desert during the first gulf war became an immediate bestseller even as American soldiers were on their way back to those same barren and sweltering lands. Swofford's raw prose drew comparisons to the great gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson but despite strong sales and critical plaudits Hollywood did not call as quickly as we might expect.

Cowed by the patriotic call to arms, studios attempting to avoid any hint of anti-war material avoided Swofford's book. Then someone actually read it. Jarhead is no anti-war treatise.  Rather, it is a highly intelligent, fiercely honest character study. A brilliant deconstruction of the mindset of the young men who choose to give up every comfort in the world to become not a mere human being but a true jarhead.

Anthony Swofford or Swoff (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a third generation Marine grunt whose reasons for joining up have little to do with family pride. In his own words Swoff joined the marines because he got lost on his way to college, a quip that earned him a slap on the back of the head from a severe drill sergeant. Swoff's wit and smarts (he reads Campus during breaks from basic training) are not the skills the marines recruited him for.

Marines must, as stated by Staff Sergeant Sykes (Jamie Foxx), give up their individuality, freedom and their fears to become one with their weapon and fellow soldiers. It is Sykes who recruits Swoff into the elite sniper unit. Where most soldiers will live for the opportunity to engage thousands of enemies at close range, the sniper lives for one shot at one target at long range. The skill is valuable in classic warfare but as Swoff and his fellow snipers will soon learn, the next American conflict does not offer many opportunities for them to exercise their skills.

In 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded the tiny neighbor nation of Kuwait, a US ally. President George H. W. Bush vowed to defend the people of Kuwait and thousands of American soldiers were deployed into the Middle Eastern desert. Aching for the opportunity to engage the enemy, Swoff and his platoon, which include his rifle partner Troy (Peter Sarsgaard), Harris (Jacob Vargas), Escobar (Laz Alonzo), Kruger (Lucas Black) and others, will see no immediate combat as they protect oil fields in Saudi Arabia far from the front line action which is dominated by American air power.

Days pass endlessly one into another with no action and soon a combination of paranoia, fear, sexual frustration, near heat stroke and ungodly boredom begin to bore holes in each of the men's psyches. Stir crazy is one way to put it but imagine stir crazy with high powered rifles and you get the darker inclination of the frustration that builds.

Director Sam Mendes' Jarhead is the Seinfeld of war movies-- it's a war movie about nothing. Nothing that happens to very particular, very interesting characters. Gyllenhaal's Swoff is a fascinating portrait of a too-smart-for-his-own-good type guy who gets a serious dose of reality when he 'accidentally' ends up in the Marines. Swoff learns that a strong intellect, as sought after as it is, is not going to be enough to get you through the trials of being a Marine. In fact, it can be as much of a detriment as it can be a boon.

Swoff's fierce intelligence is what pushes him over the edge between sanity and insanity on more than one occasion. It is a testament to his training and ability to follow orders that he does not snap and just start killing anything in his path. Swoff likely owes a lot to his platoon brothers, especially Troy, a wannabe Marine life and Swift's best friend.  Troy is a calming influence for the most part, though late in the film circumstances bring even Troy nearly to insanity.

So what of the fear that Jarhead was some kind of anti-war allegory to our current Middle East quagmire? The belief that Jarhead is specifically political is a misread. Jarhead is neither anti-war or pro-war. The film is not, as some have said, a recruiting video for the Marines or an effective tool of deterring enlistment. Jarhead is about specific people in a specific situation and the ways that situation changes them forever.

There are moments of politics, particularly from Lucas Black's Kruger who is the only one who wants to talk about the reasons why highly trained Marines are guarding oil wells and not fighting the enemy. The moments of political speech however are cut off by other marines who hold the line that it doesn't matter why they're there and they have a job to do. Even Swoff, who prides himself on his smarts, is not interested in intellectualizing the war. He just wants to do what he was trained to do: kill, kill, kill.

Swofford and his fellow marines are not exactly sociopaths.  Well not all of them.  Fowler, played by Evan Jones, certainly is a sociopath as expressed in scenes where he enjoys playing with the  body of a dead Iraqi and he boasts of shooting camels for sport, but for the most part these are young men of conscience. It is the conflict of morals that makes these characters so fascinating. Kill or be killed is certainly a helpful justification for violence and killing in war, as is defending the defenseless. But, as the film demonstrates, not all violence in war can be justified and the conflicting emotions are powerfully rendered in Jarhead.

Sam Mendes directs Jarhead in a manner that is observant without being intrusive. With cinematographer Roger Deakins, Mendes gives Jarhead a washed out, barren look that enhances the desert setting by making it look even more vast and bleak than it may actually be. The filmmakers use handheld cameras to ground the action to the soldier's eye level, specifically Shroff's eye. We see only what he sees at times, which helps to further draw the audience into Swoff's mind.

The mantra of grunts on the ground in the first Gulf War was "hurry up and wait". Jarhead perfectly captures the essence of this oxymoronic statement as we watch the soldiers attempt to maintain a constant state of readiness as absolutely nothing happens. The lack of action is what makes Jarhead such a fascinating character study. The soldiers are like subjects in a bizarre experiment and the various paths their personal actions take are the scientific results of their exploitation.

Jarhead is dramatic but also quite humorous. The screenplay by Oscar nominee and Vietnam era Marine William Broyles Jr. runs the gamut from sophomoric and crude to sarcastic to absurd black humor. At times the troops in Jarhead resemble a frat house in the middle of the desert, as in an out of control late night Christmas party or some sexual shenanigans in front of visiting reporter observing a desert football game in full chemical warfare gear.

One of the elements of Jarhead that really fascinated me was the way in which sex and violence were linked. George Carlin long ago did a bit about how bombs and bullets all look like male sex organs, a vivid metaphor for the relationship between sex and violence. Jarhead takes a similar metaphoric approach as soldiers openly discuss masturbation in scenes that are crossed with scenes of bonding with their weapons as if that weapon were part of their body. Superior officers played by Chris Cooper and Dennis Haysbert, in minor cameos, talk about the sexual thrill they get from war.

The subtext of Jarhead can be parsed endlessly for many different meanings. One person I know felt the film was openly homoerotic. She felt that the images of shirtless muscular guys in the desert with no women, bonding with one another, masturbating freely without shame and discussing the sexual thrill they get from warfare was some kind of homosexual allegory. I think my friend is stretching a little but it's a testament to how richly metaphoric the script is that such an interpretation cannot be completely dismissed.

There really is a lot to like about Jarhead. The film is at once highly literate and just as often juvenile. The characters, especially Swoff, are vivid, realistic and well observed and Sam Mendes' direction is stronger than it was even in his Oscar winning effort American Beauty. The movie is not for all audiences, especially those easily offended and certainly not for young children, but for people who like complicated characters, metaphors and great all-around filmmaking Jarhead is a must see. 

Movie Review: Derailed

Derailed (2005) 

Directed by Mikael Hafstrom 

Written by Stuart Beattie 

Starring Clive Owen, Jennifer Aniston, Vincent Cassell, Melissa George, Xzibit 

Release Date November 11th, 2005

Published November 11th, 2005 

When Jennifer Aniston was on "Friends" she was undeniably a star. When she co-starred with Jim Carrey in her first blockbuster movie role in Bruce Almighty, again she looked like a star. Unfortunately, outside her hit TV show and without Jim Carrey to fall back on Jennifer Aniston looks anything but a star in the dreadful thriller Derailed, a misguided attempt to recast Jennifer Aniston as a femme fatale.

Alongside an equally miscast Clive Owen, Aniston struggles with a ridiculous plot, poor direction and a thriller concept that is entirely devoid of thrills.

Though Jennifer Aniston is clearly the draw of Derailed, Clive Owen is the star of the film as Charles, a bored husband and father who jumps at the chance to meet a sexy stranger on a train. That sexy stranger is Lucinda (Aniston), a banker, also married with a child but unhappily married as she is rather quick to confess. The two share a few moments on the train, then lunch the following day, drinks the next night and finally a seedy hotel.

It is in the hotel that a minor fling becomes a huge mess. Just as Charles and Lucinda are getting intimate, the door bursts open and in comes Laroche (Vincent Cassel), a petty thief who they assume just wants a few bucks. If only that was all he wanted.  Unfortunately, before he leaves he beats Charles severely and then rapes Lucinda.

Here is where the films logic becomes derailed, pun intended. So should Charles and Lucinda call the police and report what happened? If they do their spouses will find out what happened and they will lose everything. So it's understandable then that they just let it be. Charles tells his wife Deanna (Melissa George) that he was mugged.  She thankfully does not ask about going to the police, and both Charles and Lucinda go their separate ways.

Not long after, however, Charles gets a call from Laroche asking for twenty grand or else he will tell his wife Deanna that he cheated. Charles again has ample opportunity to come clean to his wife and call the cops but because the plot requires his stupidity, he pays the money. This, despite the fact that he needs the cash to pay for the care of his sick daughter Amy (Addison Timlin), who needs constant care for diabetes.

The money puts off Laroche only temporarily as he once again comes calling, even showing up at Charles' house, asking this time for one hundred grand. Can you guess that Charles still is not smart enough to call the cops? Of course he isn't, but to his luck the screenplay by Stuart Beattie provides a street smart African American ex-con named Winston (rapper RZA pronounced "riza") as a mail room worker at Charles office who offers to help him out for only ten grand.

By this point in the film I would not have cared if Charles enlisted the help of the entire Wu Tang Clan to get the bad guys off his back. Derailed is such a clueless mess of a movie that watching it is more frustrating than a game of Sudoku blindfolded. The lapses of logic are staggeringly stupid and though it's become old hat to call bad thrillers predictable I have to break out that old chestnut as well. Ads for the film ask that we don't give away the big twist and I won't, watch two minutes of the movie and you will guess the twist on your own.

Derailed has one of those idiotic plots that could be cleared up with one smart action by the main character or attention to one minor detail by one of the supporting characters. The players in Derailed must remain willfully ignorant in order for this plot to work and that is endlessly frustrating for the attentive movie goer.

Maybe the most frustrating thing about Derailed is the performance of Clive Owen. Sleepwalking his way through this ridiculous role, Owen's Charlie is passive even when threatened repeatedly and entirely manipulated by the plot at every turn. What may I ask was supposed to make Charlie an interesting thriller hero? He cheats on his wife while she is at home taking care of their sick daughter. He blows the savings meant to save his daughter's life to cover up his affair and when his family is threatened directly by the bad guys he does nothing but accept his third ass whipping in the movie. I hated Charlie as much as I hated the lowlife bad guys who took his money.

I feel very bad for Jennifer Aniston. After losing her husband Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie and watching those two strike box office gold with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, she finds her first gig since the breakup to be arguably the worst performance of her career. Worse even than that Leprechaun sequel she was in before "Friends". It's not entirely her fault.  I'm sure someone convinced her to forego her good judgement and believe that this insipid plot could actually work if they sexed it up a bit, but even the sex in Derailed is a letdown.

Clive Owen continues a baffling string of monotone dull performances. Someone in Hollywood desperately wants Clive Owen to be a big star but his performances in Beyond Borders, King Arthur and now Derailed show an actor bored with unchallenging material and allowing that boredom to seep into his performance. When challenged in movies like his breakthrough performance in Croupier, in the thriller I'll Sleep When I'm Dead and the scathing relationship drama Closer, Owen shows he has real acting chops. Stop trying to force Clive Owen to be a star, he clearly doesn't want it.

Derailed is an abysmal movie, a worst of the year list kind of movie. A forgettable, stupid unrelentingly bad B-movie dressed up with A-list actors slumming in idiot parts.

Movie Review Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) 

Directed by Mike Newell 

Written by Steve Kloves 

Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Robbie Coltrane, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon

Release Date November 18th, 2005

Published November 17th, 2005 

Four movies, three different directors and not one slip in quality.  This is the extraordinary track record of the Harry Potter film series. I am of the belief that a visionary director is the necessary component in making a great film series. George Lucas may not have directed all of the Star Wars films but his vision was constant and his aims achieved. Peter Jackson's imprint is the lasting legacy of the Lord of The Rings series.

What the producers of Harry Potter have achieved is astonishing for not having one director guiding the series with one singular vision. What Harry Potter does have is the brilliant work of author J.K Rowling whose hand in shaping the films made from her books cannot be underestimated. Even as she allowed each of three directors to bring something of their own aesthetic to each film, it is Rowling's imagination that finally ends up on the screen and it's the reason why Potter will go down as one of the greatest film series ever.

Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire thrusts you right back into the world of Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) as our hero reunites with friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) for year four at Hogwarts school of magic. Upon their arrival, after a brief and surprisingly dangerous visit to the Quidditch World Cup, they are informed that things are going to be different this year.

This year Hogwarts is playing host to the legendary Triwizard Tournament, a dangerous and deadly trial that introduces two other schools of magic heretofore unknown to us. From France the Beauxbaton Academy with female students as lithe and lovely as their school's name. On the other hand Belgium's Durmastrang students are as menacing as their school name and notably features the stern charismatic presence of Quidditch champion Viktor Krump.

For the Triwizard Tournament each of the schools will place names in the ominous Goblet of Fire, which will magically choose which students will represent their school in the tournament. Because of an age limit Harry, Ron and Hermione are not eligible for the tournament, or so we are told. Viktor Krum from Durmstrang, Fleur De La Course (Clemence Poesy) from Beauxbaton and Cedric Diggory from Hogwarts are supposed to be the only competitors however the Goblet has other ideas. Somehow, the name Harry Potter escapes the Goblet and, rules or not, Harry is forced into the tournament.

Harry did not submit his name for the tournament and one of the mysteries of the plot is who did put him in the tournament and what nefarious reasoning was behind it? Was it the new Dark Arts professor MadEye Moody (Brenden Gleeson), or was it the shady headmaster of Durmstrang Igor Karkaroff (Predrag Bjelac) who has a secret tie to the dark lord Voldemort? It certainly was not Ron or Hermione who were afraid for Harry's safety and in Ron's case a little jealous.

The Triwizard Tournament is yet another of the many visual wonders of the Potter series. Though the dragons of the first challenge are only okay in terms of CGI creativity, the chase scene they are part of is the film's first exciting moment. The underwater challenge, featuring some very unappealing mermaids, is, without a doubt, the best of the film's action. Using magic provided in a way by MadEye Moody, Harry grows gills, allowing him to remain underwater as long or longer than his fellow competitors. The challenge involves saving his closest friends from drowning. Not only does Harry save Ron's life but when Fleur is unable to continue with the challenge Harry risks his life to save one of Beaubaton's students as well.

The final challenge, an ever shifting maze leading to the tournament cup is only a mere precursor for the film's finale which features our first ever look at a living, breathing Lord Voldemort in the person of Ralph Fiennes. If this showdown is a bit of letdown-- it features a dreadful talking killer bit by Fiennes-- it's likely because we have three more chapters left in this film series, plenty of time before we have the true final throwdown.

The main subplot of Goblet of Fire is the ever quickening maturity of our heroic trio. As big a challenge as the Triwizard Tournament is, it may pale in adolescent comparison to the kids' first ever school dance, the Yule Ball. For Harry and Ron, finding a date may be more fearful and daunting than any evil magic they have faced. For Hermione it's only slightly better since she landed the most sought after date in the school, Viktor Krum.

Director Mike Newell, the third director to tackle a Potter movie, is the first British director to try his hand at this very English series and his Englishness comes through in the film's aesthetic. Britain is stereotypically gray and wet and such is the look of The Goblet of Fire often gray and wet. There is very little color and very little light which is also a function of this story's tone which is darker than the films that preceded it. Even in comic moments like Harry's uncomfortable bathing encounter with the ghostly Moaning Myrtle (Shirley Henderson) the look of the scene is so dark and gray you can barely see Myrtle's non-corporeal form.

The contributions of writer Steven Cloves cannot be understated. When producers first received the book from J.K Rowling and found it was an eye-popping 734 pages there was talk of splitting it into two films. However, with director Mike Newell only signed on for one picture it was put to Cloves to pare the book's many plots and subplots into one script and keep it to the series average two and a half hour runtime. 

Kloves' work is extraordinary if you are like me and have only watched the movies. I was impressed with the speed with which we were drawn back into this story. However, some fans of the book are finding some of their favorite subplots, including encounters with Harry's non-wizard family, the Dursleys, and a plot involving Ron's little sister Ginny, missing from the film. There is apparently a whole beginning of the book that was cut, likely in favor of getting back to Hogwarts quicker, that many fans are rather upset about.

Regardless of the few criticisms from hardcore Potter book fans, I doubt director Mike Newell could have made a better version of The Goblet of Fire even in two movies. The characters have deepened, the story has progressed well and while I prefer Alfonso Cuaron's warm inviting visuals, Goblet is better than its immediate predecessor in terms of preparing audiences for what is coming next.

The best compliment you can give a film that is intent on supplying sequels is to say you cannot wait to see what happens next. Well, I cannot wait to see what happens next. Harry Potter and The Order Of The Phoenix comes out in 2007, which feels like an eternity away. I would consider reading the book but I don't want to be disappointed by the cut corners that will be necessary in adapting that book for the screen. I don't want to be disappointed the way some Potter acolytes are disappointed with Goblet of Fire.

It's not a disappointment in terms of outright dislike. Rather, most Potter book fans are going to enjoy this adaptation. It's more of a longing to see played out before them all that they had imagined from the book. Not seeing some of their favorite characters or subplots has dampened some of the enthusiasm for the film but overall fans should be satisfied with Goblet of Fire.

What comes next in the Potter series is likely to be a bigger challenge behind the scenes than in anything in the story. Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix is scheduled for theaters in 2007. It will be the first of the series to not feature a script by Steven Kloves who is taking time to direct his own feature called The Curious Incident of The Dog In the Night. The script for Phoenix will be penned by Michael Goldenberg best known for 2003's Peter Pan and the Jodie Foster movie Contact.

Even more daunting is that the new director will be David Yates, a television veteran who will make his big screen debut in one of the most highly anticipated franchise offerings in history. Even a seasoned veteran might be a little frightened by such a task.

Movie Review: 'Bee Season'

Bee Season (2005) 

Directed by Scott McGehee, David Siegel 

Written by Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

Starring Richard Gere, Juliette Binoche 

Release Date November 11th, 2005

Published November 11th, 2005 

The narrative balancing act between explaining too much and not enough is quite a metaphorical tightrope for a filmmaker. Critics like myself tend to jump on a film that over-explains its plot through dialogue or image or excoriate a film for being too obtuse and inaccessible. In the case of the movie Bee Season, starring Richard Gere, the latter is the problem. The film, based on a novel by Myla Goldberg, is so inside itself in terms of characters internalizing their motivations that following what seems like a simple narrative about family strife becomes a herculean task of assumption on top of assumption.

Saul Naumann (Richard Gere) is a professor of Jewish studies and an avid follower of kabbalah. He is also a loving father to his son Aaron (Max Minghella) and daughter Eliza (Flora Cross) and a caring husband to his wife Miriam (Juliette Binoche), at least on the surface. Underneath it all Saul is driven zealot who has made his son's religious education an all consuming quest.

Aaron is a prodigy of religious studies who can recite passages of the Torah from memory. He flourishes under his father's attention even if it can be suffocating at times. The father-son bond is put to the test when younger sister Eliza shows an aptitude for spelling. Being a follower of kabbalah, Saul believes words are the keys to the universe, a path that leads directly to god. He see's Eliza's gift with words as an opportunity to reach the religious transcendence that neither he nor Aaron have achieved.

Aaron, seeing the attentions of his father taken away, rebels by following a beautiful woman named Chali (Kate Bosworth) into the beliefs of the Hare Krishna. Meanwhile Miriam withdraws from the family into a secret life of kleptomania that see's her breaking into strangers homes and stealing shiny objects.

Each of these plots evolve individually around Gere's character. Saul is an often overbearing presence who's religious obsessions tend to overwhelm good judgement. However, he is not nearly the bad guy the plot seems to want him or needs him to be. Saul is shown to be a very caring father who showers love and praise on his children and his wife, makes dinner for the family every night and wants only for everyone to be happy. For the plot to work Saul has to be more of a problem than he really is.

The script for Bee Season, adapted by by Naomi Foner-Gyllenhaal, seems to want us to believe that Saul's lavishing attention on Eliza is too much for the whole family to take. Unfortunately the film never bothers to demonstrate why this is such a big problem. Neither Aaron or Miriam object to Saul's treatment of his daughter, probably because Eliza is a willing accomplice avidly accepting her father's indulgence.  So what is the problem that causes Aaron and Miriam to rebel?

Aaron's subplot about joining the Hare Krishna is played as both an earnest interest in achieving religious transcendence and as a teenager rebelling against his father. But there are scenes missing that might clarify just which is the more significant motivation. Aaron is alternately a true believer seeking religious enlightenment and an impulsive teenager who follows a hot girl into a cult like behavior that he knows will really irk his devout father. The film is far too vague about Aaron's true motives for us to care why he does what he does.

As for Miriam, the film never thoroughly examines how she is affected by her daughter's success and her husband's subsequent obsession. Though we are often diverted to scenes of Miriam sneaking into strangers homes and stealing shiny trinkets the movie never bothers to explain how this behavior relates to the rest of the film. Is it a cry for help or attention? Is it mental illness? How is Miriam's troubled behavior related to Saul's obsession with helping his daughter win the spelling bee?

Though the plot of Bee Season flows from Saul's actions, the focus of the film is Eliza and her unusual gift with words. Eliza does not so much spell the words given to her as experience them in her mind . In the spelling bee scenes Eliza closes her eyes and the words begin to materialize around her in special effects renditions of the words themselves. Given the word origami, Eliza imagines a paper bird alighting upon the individual letters which she repeats aloud. I suppose this is an indication of some kind of divine intervention but how do you explain how she had this gift before she began studying kabbalah with her father.

In Myla Goldberg's novel it is Eliza's narration that binds these various plot strands together. Her first person perspective guides us through the motivations of the other characters and clarifies the narrative. In the film however, co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel begin with Eliza's narration then quickly abandon it. Bee Season is the rare film that could benefit from narration which often is a screenwriting crutch and in the wrong hands a hack device. The plot of Bee Season is so convoluted and obtuse that only narration could bring together these diverging stories.

12 year-old Flora Cross delivers an extraordinary performance in Bee Season. Her halting voice always just above a whisper and her often downturned gaze hide a spark of ingenuity that provide the few remarkable moments in this otherwise unremarkable film. Cross is riveting in a calm and assured veteran performance from a 12 year-old girl in her first starring role.

If only the rest of the film had been as focused and engaging as Cross. Unfortunately Bee Season can't pull itself together. The script introduces one plot then abandons it to begin another one only to abandon that shortly after. Plots like Miriam's kleptomania are introduced, forgotten, returned to and yet never connected to the rest of the film. Aaron's flirtation with the Hare Krishna is dropped in on but by the end of the movie is all but forgotten.

And somehow through it all, despite his not being a bad guy, all of the family's troubles are heaped on Saul whose sin seems to be that he is too loving and too attentive. Saul could be a little more benevolent in giving attention to each of his children equally and not just when one child meets his various obsessions but for the most part he is shown as a great guy and a caring dad. Gere gives a strong performance but as written the character is basically untenable.

For Bee Season to work Saul has to be a sort of villain. Not exactly a menacing presence but distant, overly driven, a little selfish. Character traits that could help us understand why his family, save Eliza, resents him so much. Without some sharper edges on Saul it's hard to believe the family would fall apart as they do.

It is fair to wonder if the novel Bee Season was simply unadaptable. So much of the family troubles are internalized which is well translated in the written word. But translating inner monologue to outward action is not simple. Movies require a level of explanation that can be difficult to define. How much is too much or too little explanation is impossible to calculate. In the end Bee Season comes up short and it's a shame because the performance of Flora Cross is so good I really wanted to like and recommend this film. But I can't.

Movie Review My Bloody Valentine 3D

My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009) 

Directed Patrick Lussier 

Written by Todd Farmer 

Starring Jensen Ackles, Jamie King, Kerr Smith, Edi Gathegi, Tom Atkins 

Release Date January 16th, 2009 

Published January 15th, 2009 

I love when a movie surprises me. It is one of my favorite experiences. As much as I try to keep an open mind and not prejudge a movie, it happens sometimes that I dread seeing something. It most often happens with horror movies (Thanks Eli Roth). Rarely are my expectations exceeded. So, when they are, it's invigorating and exciting. My Bloody Valentine 3D surprised me. I did not expect to have such a good time with this remake of an obscure 1981 horror footnote.

My Bloody Valentine 3D sets up a Jason/Freddy style murderer named Harry Warden. 10 years ago he killed a bunch of his coal miner coal workers before being nearly killed himself when the mine exploded. A year after the accident, Warden awoke from a coma and set about on 14 murders before being hunted down by cops at the mine and killed.

10 years later, teenagers who survived the attack are now in positions of power in the city. Axel (Kerr Smith) who managed to rescue two friends from Harry Warden, is now the town sheriff. Tom Hanninger (Jensen Ackles) has now taken over ownership of the mines from his late father and has just returned to town to sell the mines.

The woman both Axel and Tom love, Sarah (Jaime King) is now married to Axel but she still thinks often of Tom who she was in love with the night Harry Warden went nuts and Tom disappeared. Now, ten years later, new murders have sparked fear that Harry Warden may have returned.

My Bloody Valentine 3D. has many of the typical cliches of the average horror movie. Most egregious is an awful, manipulative score that spikes when it's supposed to and is completely over the top with the expected orchestral shrieks and dives.

The characters make many of the typical horror movie character mistakes from running the wrong direction to not taking care when checking out strange noises to continuing to underestimate the villain even after he has demonstrated unending malice. The killer too does everything expected, not the least of which is over-complicating his plot to the most unnecessary degrees.

All of those gripes aside, I did have fun watching this movie. Director Patrick Lussier offers an oddly shaped narrative early on that shows the killer to be less than supernatural. He faints and weaves his way through the second half of the movie and despite the cliches, does manage to build some solid suspense and mystery.

Most importantly, for me, Lussier doesn't go weak in the knees when it comes to the R-rated stuff. Lussier smartly goes all in on the classic horror movie gore, overstated to the point where the audience can have distance from the human elements but understated enough to make you watch through your fingers as you squirm in your seat.

That's a balance that has eluded most horror movie makers. The Eli Roth's of the world certainly aren't squeamish but the way he and Rob Zombie seem to enjoy their violence makes it off putting. Then there are the Asian invasion PG-13 horror movies who trade gore for atmosphere and more often than not bore audiences to death instead of scaring them to death.

Lussier finds the balance between reveling in the violence and drawing clear moral lines between victims and killer.

I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the gimmick of 3D. It is just a gimmick and nothing more. There isn't much that an audience will get out of the 3D My Bloody Valentine that they would not have gotten out of the 2D presentation. I like the digital picture clarity and Lussier's crisp shooting style lends itself well to the presentation, he smartly avoids the typical overly dark settings for more modestly lit scenes that allow audiences a better chance to keep track of the action.

In the end, My Bloody Valentine 3D cheats a little for drama and suspense but it works because Patrick Lussier makes good use of the horror movie formula. He isn't reinventing the wheel, he's just putting it to better use than most other genre directors. We can hardly ask him for much more than that.

My Bloody Valentine is a real surprise, a pretty good formula horror movie.

Movie Review My Best Friend's Girl

My Best Friend's Girl (2008) 

Directed by Howard Deutch

Written by Jordan Kahan 

Starring Dane Cook, Kate Hudson, Jason Biggs, Lizzy Kaplan, Alec Baldwin

Release Date September 19th, 2008

Published September 19th, 2008 

Picture in your mind's eye Kate Hudson. Blonde and beautiful with a screwball quality that she got from her mom Goldie Hawn. Now imagine Jason Biggs. The pie guy from American Pie. Twitchy, neurotic far from conventionally handsome. Considering his most recent roles, gay/not gay in Over Her Dead Body, 12 bananna to Paul Walker and a bunch of dogs in Eight Below.

To believe the premise of the new romantic comedy My Best Friend's Girl you have to buy the idea that Hudson and Biggs could ever have been a couple. Then again, if this were the only contrivance of this insulting and stupid comedy, things might not be so dismal.

In My Best Friend's Girl Jason Biggs plays Dusty, a whiny, needy little dweeb who somehow has for five weeks been the steady companion of Kate Hudson's Alexis. After Dusty takes her out to an expensive dinner and fumblingly confesses his love for her Alexis finally realizes just how much time she has wasted. She dumps him.

Returning home, Dusty confides in his roommate Tank (Dane Cook). What luck for Dusty that his roommate has a side business being a misogynist a-hole to depressed women. Tank's gig is going out with girls who have just dumped douchebags, cheaters and jerks. Tank takes the girls out, is a complete pig and the girls go crying back to the ex's who look kind and wonderful by comparison.

So Dusty hires Tank to work his anti-magic on Alexis and.....

If you don't already know where this is going you should consider your mental health alternatives. The plot could not be more insultingly predictable if it were a Dane Cook stand up routine. Directed by Howard Deutsch, who was once the gentle, thoughtful director of Pretty In Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful, My Best Friend's Girl grinds through an achingly conventional plot attempting to liven things up by allowing Cook's Tank to ratchet up his sociopathy.

Apparently we are supposed to find Tank endearing in the same way we found Will Smith's Hitch charming. Both characters are all about helping guys in need right? Yup, they are really alike. Except that Hitch is played by Will Smith with the charm and warmth of.. well Will freaking Smith. Tank is played by Dane Cook in his typically spastic, unpleasant fashion.

As a stand up comic Dane Cook masks bad jokes behind the veneer of gangliness. spasming limbs and pseudo-clever catchphrases. Invariably, ask a Cook fan, usually college age and female, why he is so funny and they will reply that he is "hot". There is no denying that at over 6 feet tall, muscled up and insanely self confident, Cook knows how to draw people to him.

That appeal however has yet to find a film forum. Instead, the roles Dane Cook plays inevitably feel like roles Adam Sandler turned down. He has never seemed natural or comfortable on screen. He strains for every punchline, much like his physical begging for laughs in his stand up, and hides very often behind broad misogynistic or gag reflex humor.

Don't believe the misogynist thing? In My Best Friend's Girl, like the worst of Sandler's shtick, every woman is excitedly in love with Cook. It doesn't matter what a dirtball he is, every woman on screen is commanded to swoon over him. This is the ego of the misogynist. And while some of you will dismiss it as harmless, I worry about the message we are sending to the young girls growing up as Dane Cook fans.

My Best Friend's Girl has an unexpressed bitter sadness to it. The premise is hate filled and desperate and then forces itself toward a saccharine happy ending. Howard Deutsch should know better. Then again, he has directed 3 sequels to films where he did not direct the original. He has developed into a hack and saddled with an awful script and Dane Cook in the cast the writing was on the wall from production day 1.

Kate Hudson's career meltdown is too sad to consider while Jason Biggs is just pathetic. Dane Cook however is a disaster. He was already not very funny. Asked to play a jerk character only amplifies the qualities that make him unwatchable.

Movie Review Munich

Munich (2005) 

Directed by Steven Speilberg 

Written by Tony Kushner, Eric Roth

Starring Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciaran Hinds, Geoffrey Rush, Hanns Zischler, Matthieu Kassovitz 

Release Date December 23rd, 2005 

Published December 22nd, 2005

Despite my liberal political tendencies, I have always held one particularly conservative point of view. That Israel is justified in its actions in protecting itself from Palestinian terrorists. The Palestinians have, in my opinion, never done a very good job in presenting their case that the land that is now Israel should belong to them. It's impossible for me to sympathize with Palestinians who target civilians with suicide bombers over Israelis who react to such attacks with a righteous military assault.

So when Steven Speilberg set out to make Munich, a film that presents a message about how violence only leads to more violence and that Israel is not as righteous as some, like myself, perceive, I was fascinated. Munich is now part of the public discourse and while it is a thoughtful and well-made film about the futility of violence and vengeance, it is easy to understand why some Israelis might find the film to be little more than liberal hand-wringing.

Munich stars Eric Bana as Avner, an agent of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Avner is a former bodyguard to Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) and through this connection Avner is offered an assignment like none he has ever been given before. In the wake of the Palestinian terror attack on Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, the Prime Minister has decreed that vengeance must be taken and Avner will lead the covert operation to gain that vengeance.

With a list of 11 names, each somehow linked either to planning Munich or belonging to the Palestine Liberation Organization which assumedly backed the terrorists at Munich, Avner meets his team and sets about his grisly task. Along with Avner are fellow Mossad operatives Steve (Daniel Craig), the driver; Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), a toymaker turned bombmaker; Hans (Hanns Ziscler), a forgery expert; and Carl (Ciaran Hinds), an expert in covering up after the fact.

Once the team is assembled Munich unfolds like a spy novel complete with covert meetings, shady informants and precisely planned operations. What separates Munich from your average spy movie, however, is the often surprising lack of skill involved in the first few operations. These covert ops are messy and, at times, convoluted. On one occasion Avner himself is nearly killed by a bomb that was much too large for the task at hand. In arguably the film's most breathtaking moment a young girl returns home in time to intercept a phone call on a booby-trapped phone meant for her father.

Speilberg's skill for mass appeal entertainment serves him well in crafting the moments of spy intrigue and operational misfires. The script for Munich by playwright Tony Kushner provides the film's intellectual underpinnings though not as effectively as Speilberg's action scenes. Kushner's taste for speeches that state the obvious and underline the same point again and again grows tiresome by the fourth or fifth time you hear it.

The point that Munich wants to make is that the continuing retaliatory strikes between the Israelis and Palestinians are futile. No progress can be made by continuing to kill one another. As Avner experiences in the film, killing one terrorist means another possibly more committed and horrifying terrorist takes his place. The film questions, quite effectively, the moral grounding of Israel's wont for vengeance. How does one rectify vengeance with their religious beliefs? Not to be too cute about it but 'What would Moses do'?

Eric Bana delivers his first mature and focused performance since his star-making turn in Black Hawk Down. Bana's Avner is nothing like his special forces officer Hoot Gibson, a brash and confident killer who never questions his mission even as it goes horribly wrong. Avner is an efficient killer who is committed to following orders but he is not afraid to question his motivation and express remorse and even guilt for what he does. The two performances together show why so many in Hollywood believe in his leading man talents even after the dual disasters of The Hulk and Troy.

The film's two best performances come from two peripheral characters. Mathieu Amalric and Michael Lonsdale play French operatives who help Avner locate his targets for a price. Where they get the information from, who they work for, and why they do what they do are mysteries the film does not need to solve. Leaving those questions open brings tension to every scene they are in. They leave tantalizing details at every turn like intimations that the Palestinian terrorists at Munich may have been financed by the CIA! The Frenchmen may be the film's most fictional element but also its most intriguing.

Munich works well as a civics and morality play and as a thriller but I would not call it popcorn entertainment. While Steven Speilberg is trying to change the world many an audience member will yawn awaiting the next exciting action sequence. No matter your feelings on the conflict in the Middle East you will respect Speilberg's attempt to contribute to the important discourse, but so much speechifying can turn an audience waiting to be entertained into an audience ready to leave.

Especially when the speeches are repeated and at times extraneous. A scene in which Avner sneaks back to Israel to see his father in the hospital is merely an opportunity for another character, Avner's mother played by Gila Almagor, to underline why it's important for Israel to fight for its existence. It's a well-delivered point but a point made effectively earlier in the film by Lynn Cohen as Golda Meir.

Each of our protagonists, save for Daniel Craig's Steve, is given the opportunity to explain their feelings and qualms, often the same issues, in drawn out speeches that underline the film in ways that take you out of the movie. Ciaran Hinds and Hanns Zischler both deliver similar speeches on the moral repugnance of what they are doing and why they are doing it and while it may be good for the characters to express these points as it deepens them equally, both speeches are delivered as if reading the Cliff's Notes of why the movie Munich was made.

I'm not trying to tell Steven Speilberg to stop trying to moralize and just entertain us. I am saying that there are more subtle ways to underline his points and get them across as effectively. The speeches are not delivered by the actors in ways that are preaching or haranguing but they are written that way and that gets tiresome fast.

Munich is a thoughtful and well-crafted film with its heart on its sleeve. Steven Speilberg truly believes that art can change the world and I respect that. At the same time Speilberg is realistic enough to know that this conflict is too complicated for any one act to change its course. That is, in fact, the point of the film. Both sides should realize there will never be a point in the continuing violence when one side will never strike a winning blow.

On the flip side, Speilberg's Munich may have been more effective in making its points with one speech as opposed to continued speech after speech and finding other equally effective ways to make the same point without stopping the movie to get on a perpetual soapbox. I still recommend Munich on the strength of its well intentioned ambitions and its excellent craftsmanship but I think it could have been much more.

Movie Review Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines (2018) 

Directed by Christian Rivera 

Written by Fran Walsh, Phillippa Boyens, Peter Jackson

Starring Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Lang 

Release Date December 14th, 2018

Published December 14th, 2018

Mortal Engines are a pretty big mess. It’s not terrible but this Peter Jackson produced CGI epic is lacking in numerous ways. Aside from a grand ambition, it definitely has that, Mortal Engines lacking in the kind of engaging, compelling characters that are needed to compete with the massive and rather uninteresting CGI machinery on display. The stars of Mortal Engines are not the actors but the massive machines and those machines, though impressively rendered, aren’t nearly engaging enough to make a good movie.

Icelandic actress Hera Hilmar stars in The Mortal Engines as Hester Shaw. Hester is seeking revenge against the man who murdered her mother, Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving), chief weapons manufacturer for the roving city of London. What do I mean by ‘roving city’ you ask? In this universe, cities are not stuck in one place. Following a massive, apocalyptic event cities became mobile, rebuilding themselves atop massive wheels and running down other cities to steal their resources.

Hester is aboard a small mining city when London attacks it and takes hold of it. Getting on board London, Hester gets her chance to kill Valentine right away and manages to stab him before a kid named Tom (Robert Sheehan) tackles her and then chases her off the edge of the city. Before she goes, Hester tells Tom her secret about Valentine and when Tom tells Valentine what he knows, he kicks Tom off the edge of London.

Forced into the wild, Hester and Tom team up in their attempt to stay alive while Valentine survives his stabbing and sets off after someone who wants Hester dead as much as he does. Shrike is a CGI character with an incredible back story and a far more interesting storyline as a reanimated warrior machine, like a steampunk Terminator. Hester had made Shrike a promise after he saved her life and now he wants to kill her to collect on her debt

Had Mortal Engines settled on the story of Shrike and Hester, it would be one hell of a movie. Shrike is the most interesting and well built character in the movie. He’s incredibly dangerous and volatile but he has this shred of a memory that keeps him tethered to his former humanity. It was that shred that led him to keep Hester alive when he found her near death following the murder of her mother and to raise her from the age of 8 until London arrived on former European shores and she set out for revenge.

The flashbacks we see to young Hester and Shrike are more compelling than anything remotely related to Hugo Weaving’s quest for power or the neutered romance between Tom and Hester which couldn’t be more perfunctory if the studio had announced the romantic plot in a press release. Hilmar and Sheehan have the chemistry of a brother and sister who don’t particularly know or care for each other.

Make a movie about Shrike and Hester that is part Leon The Professional and part steampunk Terminator Judgment Day and you’ve got yourself quite a movie. Unfortunately, the movie we get isn’t nearly as interesting. The characters do grow on you a little as you get closer to the end of Mortal Engine but there is never a moment where they stand apart from or above the monstrous and inhuman CGI.

Even the most skillful computer generated image cannot compete with our connection to another human being. Say what you will about the creation of Gollum in Lord of the Rings or Caesar in the modern Planet of the Apes, they are nothing without the humanity of Andy Serkis behind them. We’re supposed to be impressed by the massive moving cities and the bizarre airships and weapons of mass destruction but without characters we care about around them, it’s like watching a very expensive live action cartoon, minus the laughs.

I have nothing against the young actors in Mortal Engines, they do what they can with these thin characters. The problem is director Christian Rivers who assumes we care about these characters without giving us a reason to care. Rivers has a habit of introducing characters as if their faces matter to the moment. When we meet Tom and we meet Hester, we get reveals of their faces as if we are supposed to recognize them but we don’t.

It’s not the actors fault, they are just not known to most of us watching this movie. Perhaps audiences in Iceland will cheer when Ms Hilmar’s face is revealed for the first time but most Americans will be trying to place her. Sheehan has the bland good looks of an English Justin Long but he lacks any of that actor's modest charisma and likability. One actor, who I can’t even find in the IMDB cast list, is given a reveal as if we are absolutely supposed to recognize him, the camera lingers on his face and he kind of looks like actors we’ve seen before but he isn’t and we're left to wonder. 

I don’t understand many of the choices made regarding Mortal Engines but most especially, I don’t understand the title. I have seen the entire movie and I assumed at some point the title would come to make a semblance of sense. But no, at no point does anyone bother to give a reason for the movie to be called Mortal Engines. I could make something up perhaps but I honestly don’t care enough about this movie to try that hard.

Mortal Engines are far from terrible. It’s competent and passes by well enough. It’s expensive and the expense is all on the screen in the high end CGI but there isn’t anything compelling enough to recommend you spend money on it. The characters are thin and dull, the romance is DOA and the action is of a kind you could get in any of a dozen movies you might actually enjoy and connect with.

The biggest sin of Mortal Engines however, is creating a better movie within their bad movie and leaving us so unsatisfied as we dream of what could have been. No joke, that Shrike and Hester movie had so much potential. Shrike is the best character in Mortal Engines and he’s not even real. He’s given more human qualities and dimension than the male romantic lead and his tragic backstory combined with Hester’s has a depth and complexity the rest of Mortal Engines can’t begin to evoke. I hate Mortal Engines for not being about Shrike and Hester.

Movie Review Morning Glory

Morning Glory (2010) 

Directed by Roger Mitchell 

Written by Aline Brosh McKenna 

Starring Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Patrick Wilson, Jeff Goldblum 

Release Date November 10th, 2010 

Published November 9th, 2010

Can one woman cure the ills of a last place network morning show through the sheer force of her adorable-ness? One might also ask can an actress cure the ills of a troubled dramatic comedy through that same adorable-ness? The answer to both questions, based on the movie “Morning Glory,” is a shocking, yes.

Rachel McAdams is so vibrant, energetic and adorable that she wills this otherwise rickety dramatic comedy; the definition of that oh so vague, made up term ‘dramedy,’ into becoming a sweet, endearing romance of woman and her work oh and yeah there is this pretty guy in there too.

Rachel McAdams stars in “Morning Glory” as Becky, an adorable whirlwind of a TV news producer who, when we meet her, is on the verge of a promotion. Or so she thought. Turns out she was being fired due to budget cuts. As with all plucky movie heroines however this is merely a speed bump on the way to the job she needs.

After a comically fraught job search in which our peppy wannabe big city gal irritates the entire news infrastructure by reading her resume, she finally gets an interview. The job is with the 4th place network in America, IBS, as executive producer of the lowest rated morning show on network TV.

Her new boss, Jeff Goldblum, in all his Goldblum-y glory, has zero confidence that she can turn the show around but she can’t make it any worse. Or can she? On her first day Becky fires the co-anchor; a sadly under-used Ty Burrell from TV’s Modern Family, despite his irreconcilable contract and leaves the show minus its required male co-host.

Ahh, but our heroine has a plan; on the IBS payroll is a news legend that due to his multi-million dollar contract has to work or not get paid. Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) was demoted from Nightly News Anchor because of his bad attitude and slight drinking problem. Nevertheless, he’s a big name with a long track record that would be a perfect opposite to bubbly co-host Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton).

Unfortunately for Becky even if he has to by contract, Mike Pomeroy doesn’t want to do morning news. He refuses cooking segments, entertainment interviews and basically anything that your average morning news shows do. Mike longs for the days of actual journalism but as Becky correctly points out, the battle between news and ‘info-tainment’ was fought long ago and Mike’s side lost.

Can the plucky upstart wear down the cantankerous superstar while rescuing the floundering show and corralling a new boyfriend, a fellow news producer played in perfect bland handsomeness by Patrick Wilson? Admittedly, the stakes aren’t all that high but star Rachel McAdams makes each feel like an urgent concern.

This is the Rachel McAdams many thought was coming when she starred as the lead ‘Mean Girl’ opposite Lindsey Lohan or when she battled Cillian Murphy in the innovative thriller “Red Eye.” McAdams has wandered in the woods the past few years starring in junk like “The Time Traveler’s Wife” and seeming to crush her potential with poor choices.

Apparently, McAdams was just waiting for writer Aline Brosh McKenna and Roger Mitchell to give her something she could really play. Play it she does in “Morning Glory” amping up the kind of adorable that would shame puppies and kitties and yet remaining sexy instead of merely cute and substantial rather than just perky. No matter how delightfully scattered Becky is, McAdams infuses her with bright ingenuity and can-do capability.

The rest of “Morning Glory” is riddled with trouble. Harrison Ford is the least likely network news star since Howard Beale and even more cantankerous. Sure, Ford projects a stately air but with his gritted teeth growl it’s hard to believe that even news junkies took to his Mike Pomeroy, no matter if he was on a battlefield in Kosovo or opposite the President.

Diane Keaton plays cute and clueless a la Kathie Lee Gifford quite well but don’t do not consider her character’s back story for too long as it reveals inconsistencies the story cannot explain. Patrick Wilson’s handsome love interest guy is less problematic; he’s merely under-written and called upon to make uncomfortable attitude turns simply because of plot requirements. But other than that, he’s fine.

“Morning Glory” is riddled with all sorts of minor potholes, including a rather arrogant attitude about morning news shows, but Rachel McAdams overcomes all of those troubles by making the movie all about how plucky, adorable, sexy and smart her character is. She is so winning that we can forgive all of the problems around her which are almost meta when you consider the troubles piled up around both character and actress.

Not kidding at all dear reader, Rachel McAdams deserves an Oscar nomination for “Morning Glory.” Any actress who only through the awesome appeal of her performance can turn around an entire movie at least deserves to be in the Best Actress conversation and McAdams does that in “Morning Glory.”

Movie Review Moon

Moon (2009) 

Directed by Duncan Jones 

Written by Nathan Parker 

Starring Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Kaya Scoledario, Benedict Wong, Matt Berry

Release Date July 17th, 2009 

Published July 17th, 2009 

While the obvious influence of Stanley Kubrick's 2001 is a worthy subject in relation to the sci fi flick Moon the film has an unspoken subject that I find much more interesting. In the ways in which the plot machine of Moon plays out, without what one might expect, it acts as an anti-thriller. Moon sets up a very particular idea that invites a kind of M. Night Shyamalan style twist and then goes about avoiding it at all cost. In doing so the film attempts a cooler than thou attitude toward Shyamalan's populist twisty thrillers and Moon comes off pretentious for the effort.

Moon stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, the lone worker on a base on the dark side of the moon. Sam is a handy man for a self contained machine that harvests Helium 3 from the moon surface. If something breaks down ol' Sammy runs out and fixes it right up. Sam is near the end of what is supposed to be a three year contract and looks forward to returning to earth and the wife and child he left behind.

Why Sam left a budding family back on earth for an empty shell on the moon for three years is one of the intriguing questions that Director Duncan Jones and writer Nathan Parker pose in setting up what one might quite fairly assume is a major twist to come. Whether that twist arrives or not is honestly debatable.

The storytelling style of Moon is muted to the point of whispering. Kevin Spacey gives voice to the Hal-esque computer Gerty, somehow not a cool acronym, and his soothing tone matches the overall tone of Moon, a movie that is quiet with a purpose. The quiet is meant as a near silent rebuke to the noise of almost all modern science fiction and while one can appreciate the gesture, Moon grows so quiet at points that one longs for Bruce Willis to fly by on an asteroid and liven things up.

The thriller aspect of Moon, which kicks in with the introduction of a second Sam Bell in the space station, is played as a knock on the twisty thrills of M. Night Shyamalan. The two Sam's begin a simultaneous search for answers and the audience is led to believe a major revelation or twist is in the offing. I don't mind having my expectations upended but what does happen should be better than what I predicted or hoped for.

The ungainly confused ending of Moon, some would call it open ended but they are only justifying enjoying it, fails to critique Shyamalan's admittedly stale twist endings and especially fails to top them. For all of Shyamalan's failures his jolty endings to The Sixth Sense and Signs remain classic shockers. If you want to take them on you'd better damn well have a better idea. Moon, sadly, does not.