Movie Review Resident Evil Apocalypse

Resident Evil Apocalypse (2004) 

Directed by Alexander Witt

Written by Paul W.S Andersn 

Starring Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Jared Harris, Mike Epps

Release Date September 10th, 2004

Published September 12th, 2004 

As bad as the first Resident Evil film was, written and directed by Paul W.S Anderson (ugh), could the sequel be any worse? Paul W.S Anderson stepping aside as director was a good first step, as is a script and story more faithful to its videogame source material. However first time director Alexander Witt, who's assistant director resume includes Speed 2, XXX and The Postman seems uninterested in improving on the original, unless you call being bigger, dumber and louder an improvement.

We begin where the last film left off. Our heroine Alice (Milla Jovovich) has just escaped from the Umbrella Corporation's evil underground lab The Hive, where she spent the previous night fighting the undead. Temporarily captured by Umbrella's evil scientists for a quick genetic upgrade, Alice finds herself in the chaotic remains of Racoon City, which has been overrun by zombies.

With most of the once peaceful town infected, and the evil Umbrella scientists having closed the only way out of town, Alice must team with the remaining survivors to fight the zombies and find a way out. With Alice are former cop Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), armed forces specialist Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr), former pimp L.J (Mike Epps) and a small band of cannon fodder who are picked off in rather predictable fashion.

As the survivors battle the zombies, the chance to escape comes from a former Umbrella scientist Dr. Ashford (Jared Harris). The good doctor will get them a helicopter if they will go to the town’s only school and retrieve his young daughter Angie (Sophie Vasseur). Standing in their way are an assortment of zombie children and a return of those feral organs-on-the-outside Dobermans from the first film.

Let's start with some good things like star Milla Jovovich who, though she has limited range as an actress, is amazingly hot and has a terrific physical presence. She's agile and good with a gun and a believable action heroine. In a better action movie she could be quite effective, but in the midst of this film’s mindlessness she's reduced to repeating herself into tedium.

The supporting cast of Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr and Mike Epps don't have much time to make an impression in between all of the explosions, zombie bites and gunfire. Epps at least has a couple of humorous moments that he is well suited to deliver. The film could have used a little more of Epps' humor but that would require a far better script.

We cannot be surprised that a script this witless and banal was written by the master of witless banality, Paul W.S Anderson. Every line of dialogue, every moment of exposition is just killing time till the next explosion of big, dumb, loud violence. This can work if you have the slightest bit of wit or sense of irony but Anderson has none. Director Alexander Witt doesn't have any either. His visuals consist of properly framing for the explosion and.... well, that's it.

This plot is at the very least more closely related to the popular video game, a fact that might appeal to fans of the game but is of little comfort to non-fans. Compared to the first film, this Resident Evil manages to be bigger, dumber and louder than the original and that is certainly not an improvement. On the bright side it's still a better video game based movie than Tomb Raider.

Movie Review On the Basis of Sex

On the Basis of Sex (2018) 

Directed by Mimi Leder

Written by Daniel Stiepleman

Starring Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Justin Theroux, Sam Waterston, Kathy Bates 

Release Date December 25, 2018

Published December 21st, 2018 

On the Basis of Sex stars Felicity Jones in the life story of sitting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We join the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as she became one of the first classes at Harvard to allow women, all the way back in 1954. Mrs Ginsburg was already married to her beloved husband, Martin (Armie Hammer) and was eager to start a family all while navigating the sexist and incredibly demanding schedule of a Harvard Law student.

As if her life weren’t difficult enough, in short order, Ruth becomes a mother and her husband develops testicular cancer and cannot attend his own Harvard law classes. So, Ruth attends and takes notes in Martin’s classes, attends her own, writes papers for herself while taking dictation from Martin for his coursework and while the two are raising their baby daughter. To say this woman was driven and brilliant is quite the understatement.

When Martin graduates and accepts a position at a high powered New York City law firm, Ruth completes her Harvard coursework while also attending classes at Columbia to be close to her husband. She then struggles to find a law firm that will hire her despite graduating at the top of her class. Ruth ends up accepting a teaching position at Rutgers where she finds herself at the center of a cultural revolution as her students are taking to the streets to demand social change.

Inspired in part by her students and by her daughter, Jane (Cailee Spaeny), Ruth finds a lawsuit that challenges the status quo in a way that will reverberate through the years in the battle against sexism. A Colorado man was denied a caregivers tax break because only women were allowed to be caretakers to family members who were incapacitated by illness. If Ruth can prove that the tax law is discriminatory against a man, it could create a precedent that could knock down dozens of laws that give different rights to men than to women.

On the Basis of Sex was directed by Mimi Leder, a solid pro director who brings a strong polish to this otherwise very straightforward biopic. There is certainly a remarkable amount of hero worship going on but it’s not entirely unearned. As played by Felicity Jones, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is some kind of real-life superhero, a rebuke to anyone who says you can’t have it all. Top of her class, married, two kids, and one of the most notable legal careers of modern American history. Indeed, that is heroic.

If I have any issues with On the Basis of Sex, it’s with the compressed timeline of the film. At times, because of the editing and the odd transitions, it can be difficult to track where we are in time. The film employs time jumps to get to the juicier parts of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life but in that, we have a moment where she goes from having one child to suddenly having a toddler son in such an abrupt fashion that you might miss a scene just catching up to where we are in time.

On the Basis of Sex is just a tad sloppy here in there from a structural standpoint but that’s a relatively minor issue. It’s one of those things that separates a good movie from a great movie. On the Basis of Sex is quite a good movie in my estimation but it’s not great. Leder’s approach to the life of Ginsburg is just a little too antiseptic. I am not asking for there to be dirt or grit, but some will find the level of hero worship approaching hagiography.

On the Basis of Sex is the second movie of 2018 dedicated to the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The other is a more necessary and comprehensive documentary called RBG. That film does render On the Basis of Sex a tad redundant. While On the Basis of Sex is kept to a specific portion of Ginsburg’s life and that gives it at least a different focus, RBG’s comprehensiveness makes it the far more essential portrait.

On the Basis of Sex is a sturdy and involving drama, a little loose in the editing but certainly not a bad movie. The lead performance from Felicity Jones is energetic, intelligent and engaging and the supporting cast is solid, with Armie Hammer as the standout as Martin Ginsburg, an unsung hero who supported his wife every step of her journey, even as every other man in her life created new barriers to her success.

If you had to choose one movie on the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, RBG is far more essential but On the Basis of Sex is strong enough that I can recommend it.

Movie Review Official Secrets

Official Secrets (2019)

Directed by Gavin Hood

Written by Gavin Hood 

Starring Keira Knightley, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode, Rhys Ifans

Release Date October 18th, 2019

Published October 18th, 2019 

Official Secrets is the kind of sturdy, unassailable drama that director Gavin Hood is good at making. Dispassionate and a little dull, longing for colorful characters to liven up the presentation, but filled with factual interpretation that is true to the subject and dramatized well enough to hold your attention and earn most of the feelings intended by the story being told. Call it the church of being just good enough. 

Official Secrets, a title I struggle to remember even as it is a title that fits well in the context of the story, stars Keira Knightley in the true story of Katherine Gunn,  a worker bee at a British intelligence agency in the midst of the most recent Iraq conflict. The American government is pushing hard for war and Tony Blair has become George W Bush’s go-to ally for getting the pro-war message out. Everyday, the case for war is growing and it will take a revolutionary act of defiance to slow it down. 

That was the act of Katherine Gunn, an act of revolutionary defiance. Gunn stole a memo from her work interpreting and transcribing intelligence drama for the GSA. In the memo was proof that the Americans were spying on members of allied countries in hopes of pressuring those countries to vote in favor of going to war against Saddam Hussein. Releasing this explosive memo to the public would be an embarrassment to British leadership and turn the British public further against the war. 

With the help of a war protesting friend, the memo goes from Katherine, through to a reporter at the Observer newspaper, Martin Bright who, with the help of his editor, Peter Beaumont (Matthew Goode) and a fellow reporter working in America, Ed Vulliamy (Rhys Ifans), manages to confirm the information and print it in the newspaper. You assume from here that this is an inspiring story of a whistleblower but Official Secrets doesn’t seek to inspire as much as it strives to tell what really happened. 

The reality was that it took weeks before the memo was published and enough time passed that Katherine began to think it would never be printed and she was okay with that. Rather than being single mindedly obsessed with getting the truth out, Katherine is frightened and resigned to the fate of the world going to war even as she knows it should not be happening. When the memo is published, Katherine becomes exposed and rather than being inspired to the fight, she is dragged into defending herself before finally buying into her own cause. 

That’s pretty much as it happened in reality as well. Katherine Gunn became a revolutionary almost by accident. She wanted to stop the war but she was plagued by doubts and was even willing to forget about the whole thing and go on with her life while the war that she knew was illegal and unjust raged on. Katherine is a hero but a complex one and Keira Knightley does well to play that conflict and allow that to drive the narrative nearly as much as exposing the war as a fraud. 

Of course, this movie doesn’t do us much good now. Movies like Official Secrets feel obsolete in the wake of all that has happened, including the Iraq War, Afghanistan and the conflicts we appear to be readying for around the globe today courtesy of a President seemingly spoiling for a fight. It’s great to have a historic document like Official Secrets but the film doesn’t escape from the futility of the history that inspired it. 

You have a duty to stand against tyranny is a good message but not one that Official Secrets makes all that memorably or forcefully. 

Documentary Review Oceans

Oceans (2010) 

Directed by Jaques Perrin

Written by Documentary

Starring Oceans, Pierce Brosnan

Release Date April 21st, 2010 

Published April 21st, 2010 

Some of the most astonishing sights ever brought to the big screen have nothing to do with CGI, 3D or Megan Fox. These magnificent sights were captured by the patient, dedicated artists at Disney Nature who in their latest Earth Day documentary “Oceans” may make the folks at the Discovery Channel jealous.

French director Jaques Perrin helmed this awesome project that filmed in over 50 different places around the globe from the tip of South Africa to the farthest depths of the arctic to the beaches that inspired Charles Darwin and the warm waters of the Caribbean. Perrin and his crews spent more than 4 years filming with groundbreaking underwater cameras and capturing sights never before seen.

Pierce Brosnan is the voice of “Oceans” and his relaxed brogue holds together this relatively short episodic feature that doesn't so much tell a story as it strings together a series of astonishing images that holds the audience enthralled by all the beauty and wonder on display.

One will naturally assume that, despite the title, “Oceans” is a rather dry (get it?), scientific, educational and environmentally activist feature. That however, is a grand overstatement. The reality is that the images captured in “Oceans” are so strikingly, breathtakingly beautiful that the whole is as easily entertaining and engaging as it is activist or educational.

Yes, time is spent on just how much damage we have done to our oceans. Most impacting is the sight from beneath a trail of garbage floating in an oddly direct line from a river directly into the Atlantic. The filmmakers smartly avoid too much shock imagery as they take us inside fishing nets off the coast of Alaska where we see from below a cloud of blood flowing from a rising net as fishermen go in for the kill.

It’s not as impactful as the Oscar winning shock images from “The Cove” but images like the garbage and the blood are merely asides in “Oceans.”

Jaques Perrin and his crew keeps the focus of “Oceans” on the astonishing glories of the beneath the seas and in doing so keeps the audience in raw wonder as we attempt to discern just how certain images could possibly have been captured, especially the speed racer like Dolphins who cover acres of ocean at unbelievable speeds. The dolphins are filmed from above with a low flying helicopter and from below in ways that are never explained but will leave you breathless.

Disney's return to the world of nature documentaries, a field they left behind years ago after being pioneers of early nature films, is a glorious success. 2009's “Earth” was a strong effort but “Oceans” is the equivalent of Toy Story, the first Pixar feature to demonstrate the awesome, artistic possibilities of CG Animation. “Oceans” expands the limits of what we might expect from Disney Nature.

”Oceans' ' is a glorious, eye popping experience and it doesn't even need 3D. I cannot wait until next year when DisneyNature takes us into the world of Jungle Cats.

Movie Review Nowhere Boy

Nowhere Boy (2009) 

Directed by Sam Taylor Wood

Written by Matt Greenhalgh

Starring Aaron Johnson, Kristen Scott Thomas,Thomas Brodie-Sangster, David Morrisey

Release Date December 26th, 2009 

Published April 15th, 2010 

Few actors have had as good a year as quietly as 21 year old Aaron Johnson. First he blasted off into stardom with his role as nerdy kid turned superhero in the wonderfully subversive “Kick Ass.” Then, in late 2010, Johnson turned his nerd image from “Kick Ass” on its ear with a brilliant turn as a teenaged John Lennon in “Nowhere Boy,” now on DVD.

“Nowhere Boy,” directed by newcomer Sam Taylor Wood, takes us through the teen years of the iconic Beatles co-founder John Lennon. The story begins in sadness as, after a brief introduction, young John Lennon loses his beloved Uncle George to a heart attack.

It was George who had fostered John’s creativity and interest in music under the disapproving gaze of John’s Aunt Mimi (Kristen Scott Thomas) With George gone the unmoored John falls in with his older Cousin, Stan (James Johnson) who leads John to the discovery of his mother Julia (Ann Marie Duff) who had surrendered him to his Aunt following the disappearance of his father a merchant seaman.

While visiting his mother, without telling his Aunt, John discovered Rock n’ Roll, Fats Domino and Elvis Presley. Julia bought John his first guitar and watched him learn to play in her living room. As John’s grades slip at school Mimi becomes suspicious and a family showdown is inevitable. Director Sam Taylor Wood takes a good deal of creative license to bring a little extra drama to the real life events of John Lennon’s formative years but there is nothing so dramatic or untrue that it will leave fans crying foul.

The key to “Nowhere Boy” is not in the dramatized narrative of John Lennon’s teen years anyway. Rather, the key is the lively and fresh faced performance of Aaron Johnson who captures both the cocksure, comic musician side of Lennon and the vulnerable boy at his heart. Lennon was forever affected by the strange role that his mother played in his life and that comes out throughout his musical career.

“Nowhere Boy” gets its juice not only from lending a Freudian context to Lennon’s later work but by dramatizing the history of The Beatles like never before. Sam Taylor Wood gives us as close an approximation as we are likely to get of the events that created the greatest rock band of all time.

Through the performances of Aaron Johnson as Lennon, Thomas Brodie Sangster as a pubescent Paul McCartney and Sam Bell as George Harrison we get a glimpse at music history never before seen. Nowhere Boy succeeds in revealing John Lennon and the ways his childhood influenced the rest of his life and when you hear songs like “Mother” you will flash back to this film and be awash in new and more poignant meanings.

The same could be said of several other Lennon solo records as well as Beatles classics should one want to parse their psychology but my point is merely that Nowhere Boy works as both a companion piece to the legendary John Lennon canon and as a stand alone drama of one young man’s journey toward unlikely success. In Aaron Johnson’s ultra-cool performance we get the John Lennon we imagined as a young man, cocky, funny and ungodly talented with just a hint of a haunted soul.

Movie Review Nothing Like the Holidays

Nothing Like the Holidays (2008) 

Directed by Alfredo De Villa 

Written by Allison Swan, 2 other screenwriters

Starring Luis Guzman, John Leguizamo, Debra Messing, Alfred Molina 

Release Date December 12th, 2008

Published December 11th, 2008 

I have nothing really interesting to observe about Nothing Like The Holidays. I watched it with my friend and fellow critic Linda Cook and after it was over, instead of talking about it, we immediately started talking about Frost/Nixon, Doubt, Rachel Getting Married and other such movies that still have not come to our neck of the woods.

There is nothing horribly wrong with Nothing Like The Holidays. It's just that, I watched it and when it was over it fell almost completely out of my consciousness. Now, as I sit down to write about it, it's a struggle to remember salient plot details for a description. IMDB reminds me of the actors and the roles they played but I cannot remember who was who and why without checking the reviews from other critics. What more is there to say?

Nothing Like The Holidays is a Christmas movie about a Puerto Rican family in the Humboldt Park neighborhood in Chicago. I could write lovely little things about this melting pot of a neighborhood but that would involve little about the movie I am supposed to be writing about.

I could dwell on the racial aspects of Nothing Like The Holidays but I think equality calls on me to treat this movie as I would any other holiday movie and not single out the Latino aspect as something special, though historically, sadly, it is notable.

It is notable, though the film's content, characters, and humor is far from notable. Mostly because I have forgotten about it. If this review seems overly hateful, it's not intentional. Nothing Like The Holidays isn't a disaster. It's just wildly mediocre and entirely forgettable.

Movie Review Not Easily Broken

Not Easily Broken (2009) 

Directed by Bill Duke 

Written by Brian Bird

Starring Morris Chestnut, Taraji P. Henson, Kevin Hart, Wood Harris, Jennifer Lewis 

Release Date January 9th, 2009 

Published January 9th, 2009 

I think we can all be forgiven for mistaking Not Easily Broken for yet another Tyler Perry production. A serious minded drama about a middle class African American couple with marital problems who often turn to religion for answers. All you need is Madea head snapping her way through some life lessons and you have a typical Tyler Perry product.

If that sounds like a negative critique it's not meant as such. The fact is, Perry has grown as an artist over his relatively short feature film career and with his good heart and great intentions, any film would be lucky for the comparison. The makers of Not Easily Broken can be thankful for the comparison. Though the film is not as thoughtful and compelling as Perry's Why Did I Get Married? It has similar goals and ideals and comes close to the quality.

Not Easily Broken stars Morris Chestnut and Taraji P. Henson as Dave and Clarice, a married couple on the verge of divorce. After nearly 15 years of marriage the spark is gone and the couple spends most of their time arguing. Clarice can't stand that Dave spends so much of his time coaching a little league team in the inner city. He says he might be more inclined to stay home if he had a son of his own.

Clarice is making great money in real estate and feels that having a child would derail her career ambitions. The dispute is made worse when a car accident leaves Clarice with a shattered leg that will require a lot of time and therapy. The injury invites Clarise's overbearing mother, Mary (Jennifer Lewis) to move in to care for her daughter and further drive the wedge between husband and wife.

Mary has never liked Dave. Then again, as we learn throughout, she's never really liked any man since her husband ran out on her. To make matters more complicated, Dave develops an off work relationship with Clarice's physical therapist, a white woman named Julie (Maeve Quinlan) that could develop into something more than flirtation.

Julie has a son that Dave takes an interest in much to the chagrin of Clarice and the suspicion of even his closest friend, Brock (Eddie Cibrian), who has his eyes on the single mom.

Whether Dave and Clarise can save their marriage or if he might be better off with Julie is not so much the subject of Not Easily Broken as it is a plot point, albeit a dramatic plot point. What is of more interest to director Bill Duke is observing the little ways in which people who love each other can find ways to hurt each other.

Whether it's husband and wife, mother and son in  law, mother and daughter or just friend and friend, the people we care about are often the people who can hurt us the most. Duke observes this idea well even as it gives the movie a little bit of distance from a narrative drive that would make it more compelling.

In that way it's quite similar to Chris Rock's similarly themed I Think I Love My Wife. Both films are driven by the observation of behavior rather than in telling stories that are truly compelling in a classical movie fashion. There is nothing wrong with that approach except that it can leave many audiences expecting a plot that moves them along from one scene to the next wondering when something is actually going  to happen.

As this movie is based on a novel by the Reverend T.D Jakes, things do often come back to religion and director Bill Duke could not have chosen a more authoritative voice for the church than actor Albert Hall. In his brief scenes as the pastor who presided over Dave and Clarice's wedding and later as their counselor and confessor, Hall conveys wisdom and power with his words without being overbearing or relying on religious homily. It's a common sense approach that happens to be backed up by the moral force of religion.

Not Easily Broken is not a typical movie. The plot moves glacially and is more interested in the mini-moment than in moving audiences toward expected conclusions. The conclusions come eventually but they take a while. This will bore some audiences. However, if you're like me, you may be compelled by the little observations. You have to fill in a few of the blanks yourself to make the time pass and the film cheats a few times to score emotional points, but Not Easily Broken, for me, is a moving, well intentioned work of care and honesty.

Movie Review Nobody's Fool

Nobody's Fool (2018) 

Directed by Tyler Perry

Written by Tyler Perry 

Starring Tika Sumpter, Tiffany Haddish, Whoopi Goldberg

Release Date November 2nd, 2018

Published November 3rd, 2018

Nobody’s Fool is marketed as a platform for the brilliant Tiffany Haddish, one of the breakout stars of the last two years. The trailer for Nobody's Fool would have you believe that Haddish is being set loose in the kind of the leading role that plays to her strengths as a force of nature style performer who dominates the scene by being more alive than everyone around her. Finally, after the promise of Girls Trip and all of the buzz about how much Haddish is the next big thing we were supposed to see Tiffany Haddish step forward into the spotlight.

Nope! Tiffany Haddish is not actually the lead actress in Nobody’s Fool. Tika Sumpter, a nice actress in her own right, is actually in the traditional romantic lead of Nobody’s Fool. Haddish is, instead, a proxy for writer-director-executive producer Tyler Perry who employs Haddish as an avatar for his Madea character. Little of what Haddish does in Nobody’s Fool is anything Perry hasn’t done with Madea in other movies and as you can imagine, that’s a pretty big waste of Tiffany Haddish.

Nobody’s Fool is the story of Danica (Sumpter), a successful, sexy, young woman who we meet when she rolls out of bed and dances to Janet Jackson’s Miss You Much, a song appropriate for the fact that she misses her boyfriend Charlie (Mehcad Brooks), who she’s never actually met in person but is in love with. Danica may not see her boyfriend but thankfully she’s not short on male attention as Frank (Omari Hardwick) from the coffee shop next to her office romances her everyday with free coffee and a rose.

Danica’s happy, well-ordered life of privilege is thrown for a loop when her sister Tanya (Haddish) is released from prison and their mother, Lola, played by Whoopi Goldberg, forces Danica to take Tanya in. Tanya then immediately gets a job at Frank's coffee shop and sets about screwing up every aspect of her little sister’s life. First she figures out that Danica is getting Catfished by Charlie by literally getting the guys from MTV’s Catfish to investigate Charlie.

Then she manipulates Frank and Danica into bed together where they begin falling in love only to have a major monkey wrench thrown into the story that I won’t spoil if you still want to see this despite my not recommending that you skip it. It’s an unpredictable twist to be sure but it is also incomprehensibly stupid. I can’t fully go into how dimwitted this twist is without spoilers, all I can say is that an utterly embarrassing cameo by Chris Rock is the rotten cherry on top of all the bad decisions that culminate in this twist.

Where to begin with the misguided mistakes of Nobody’s Fool. The most egregious from my perspective comes in how Tyler Perry uses his supposed star, Tiffany Haddish. Haddish’s foul-mouthed, supernova charisma made her a star in Girls Trip but here, that same nasty charm is used to make Tanya an avatar for the awfulness of Tyler Perry’s usual Madea schtick. Every line out of Tanya’s mouth could be lifted from past Perry movies where his drag character Madea is little more than a series of unfunny, dirty, non-sequiturs that go on for seemingly hour after pointless hour.

Haddish still manages to shine through the box that Perry is shoving her into because she’s far more talented than the hacky character she’s being forced into. The charisma monster of her Girls Trip persona cannot be contained and occasionally in Nobody’s Fool we get a little of that character such as a scene where she is offered a job at the coffee shop and can’t resist offering the owner some sex as a thank you. It’s horribly inappropriate but it’s delivered with a devilish energy that is irresistible.

Sadly, that type of scene is limited in Nobody’s Fool. Surprisingly, Haddish is kept offscreen for a great deal of more time than you expect also. I mentioned before that we were suckered into thinking she was the lead character in Nobody’s Perfect, and we were. She’s unquestionably in a supporting role here despite being multiple times more interesting than the sweet but otherwise bland Tika Sumpter.

That’s not Sumpter’s fault really, Tiffany Haddish is simply not a performer who melts into the background of an ensemble. It would be like having Bugs Bunny in a scene and having him just stand there and listen while someone earnestly explains the plot of the story. That simply doesn’t work, not for Haddish whose character lacks the patience to be in the background and not for the movie which casts her and asks us to accept when she’s not out front. All we can think is, when is Tiffany going to do something wild?

That’s a perception problem created by us and by the movie. It’s our fault for expecting Tiffany Haddish to be a particular way as an actress but it is also the fault of the marketing team that put her front and center and made promises that the film does not keep. We were promised a Tiffany Haddish movie and we got a Madea movie minus Madea. Tiffany Haddish is way better than Madea boo. A Madea movie is still no prize, even without the sight of Tyler Perry in drag.

If you do decide to see Nobody’s Fool despite my warning just remember that I told you so. Tiffany Haddish is not the star of this movie. She tries, and occasionally, she overcomes Tyler Perry to find a joke that works, but mostly she’s stuck playing out tired Madea gags with an energy and life that are commendable on her part as a professional but misguided because this movie doesn’t deserve Tiffany Haddish.

Movie Review No Reservations

No Reservations (2007)

Directed by Scott Hicks 

Written by Carol Fuchs 

Starring Catherine Zeta Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin

Release Date July 27th, 2007

Published July 26th, 2007

Mostly Martha was a dull, by the numbers, German romance that is memorable only for the delectable foods on display. All of the cakes with gleaming frosting and the lovingly prepared German dishes leapt off the screen and tantalized the taste buds. The romantic plot, the family plot, failed to be more interesting than the food.

Now that American filmmakers have gotten their hands on it, Mostly Martha has become No Reservations. Missing is the loving attention to the food. Left in place, unfortunately, is the dull romance and and a somehow even more dull family drama.

Kate (Catherine Zeta Jones) lives a regimented existence, she lives for her work as a chef at a top notch New York eatery and nothing more. Her routine often includes a minor tantrum, such as when a customer complains about her food. Kate has no compunction about forcefully confronting customers, a habit that has her in therapy on a regular basis, at the urging of her boss Paula (Patricia Clarkson).

Kate's tightly controlled life is upended when a planned visit by her sister ends tragically before it begins. On her way to see Kate with her daughter Zoe (Abigail Breslin), Kate's sister is killed in a car accident. Zoe survives with minor cuts and bruises. Now it is left to Kate to try and care for this girl who is her biological relation but may as well be an alien to Kate.

Things are also difficult at work where Kate's sous chef has left and the boss hired a new guy without speaking to Kate first. His name is Nick (Aaron Eckhart) and he has a different way of doing things than Kate is used to. Nick quickly disrupts Kate's kitchen and could be after her job. The tension naturally leads to romance but with a number of major obstacles, not the least of which is Kate herself.

Scott Hicks (Shine) directs No Reservations with flair and professionalism. However, no scenarist, no matter his talent, could make this mundane story any more than it is. No Reservations is a simple romance in which obvious roadblocks are thrown in front of destined lovers. Without the will they/won't they suspense, what is left is to find one unique element that separates this movie from others of the same genre.

For No Reservations the unique element might be the food. However, the food barely registers in No Reservations. Unlike another 2007 food movie, the wonderful Ratatouille, No Reservations does not leave one hungering for the tasty delights. The restaurant in No Reservations is just an active background and the food is just a prop. That leaves the predictable story and dull romantic comedy conventions to carry the movie.

The one thing that No Reservations has going for it is the appealing cast. Catherine Zeta Jones is a vision even when hampered with such a derivative role. Aaron Eckhardt continues to carry that charismatic glint in his eye that has long promised stardom but has yet to pay off. And finally, Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin remains a sweetheart even in a role that seems a bit beneath her talents.

Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhardt do spark quite a bit in the romantic moments of No Reservations. Unfortunately, both are undone by their mediocre surroundings. No Reservations is simply too predictable, too rote and too familiar to be anything more than admirable. Likable actors, a pro director all unfortunately tied to an overly familiar plot.

Worst of all, No Reservations isn't funny enough.

Catherine Zeta Jones is a fine actress and a welcome film presence. No Reservations, unfortunately, is beneath her talent. This rote, formula romance pushes her and her co-stars from one scene to the next on an inexhaustible wave of clichés and scenes dictated by romantic comedy formulas. This is why so many critics say that the romantic comedy is dead, even the audiences that love them are tired of this formula.

Movie Review No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men (2007) 

Directed by The Coen Brothers

Written by The Coen Brothers, Cormac McCarthy

Starring Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson

Release Date November 9th, 2007

Published November 8th, 2007

The Big Lebowski is my favorite movie of all time. I have seen it dozens of times, traded lines with friends and strangers and marveled at the number of nuances I find in it everytime I watch it. Lebowski was the product of the fertile minds of the Coen Brothers who used the frame of classic noir detective stories to twist dialogue and convention into the highest form of comedy.

The Coen's new film, No Country For Old Men, could not be more different than The Big Lebowski. Faithfully adapting the dark, violent work of Cormac McCarthy, the Coen's depart with almost all of their past and work to bring McCarthy's vision to the screen. Everything down to the music, usually provided by Coen's guy Carter Burwell is jettisoned in order to bring McCarthy's earthy, Texas prose to the screen.

It sounds risky but it works. No Country For Old Men is arguably the best film of 2007.

A drug deal gone bad leads an average man, Llewellyn Wells (Josh Brolin)  to a stunning discovery, a dead man carrying a satchel holding over 2 and a half million dollars. While dollar signs flash in Lewellyn's mind, the man who's money has gone missing has already dispatched a man to recover it. That man is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) , a psychotic, unrelenting killer who will not stop until the job is finished, no matter how many people he has to kill.

Observing things from a few steps behind is county sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). The drug deal happened in his jurisdiction and Wells being one of his citizens makes this a case he is required to follow. As the bodies pile up and Chigurh comes closer to Wells, Bell becomes more and more disturbed by the decline of basic humanity in his corner of the world.

Directed and adapted by the Coen Brothers, from the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men is a meditative, hypnotic film experience. So sucked in by this unfolding drama and these extraordinary characters, this is the kind of film that haunts you on your way out of the theater. Try describing the feelings afterward and a tingle in your spine will no doubt accompany your recollection.

No Country For Old Men is a very unique adventure for the Coen Brothers. Known for dialogue that twists and turns and bobs and weaves like non-sequitur poetry, the Coen's surrender much of their own writing to adapting, almost word for word, the straight forward, manly dialogue of Cormac McCarthy. Readers of No Country For Old Men will recognize whole passages of dialogue from the book in the movie.

The Coen changes to McCarthy's work are minimal. They have removed Ed Tom's narration, dropping some of the old sheriff's rambling observations about the rotting of humanity into the dialogue of the film. They've added a few scenes to flesh out areas of Ed Tom's narration but otherwise whole scenes are translated directly from McCarthy's text.

The Coen Brothers' work has always been open to philosophical observation. No Country For Old Men may be their most open to interpretation work yet. McCarthy's book is open to much speculation about its meaning  but it breaks down to a rather elementary discussion of McCarthy's feelings on the breakdown of society.

The Coen's are more philosophical. Yes, that discussion about where the world is heading is there but there is something more in the visual subtext of No Country For Old Men that is open to a wide amount of explanation. Take an especially close look at Anton Chigurh. Where McCarthy never bothered giving a physical description of Chigurh, the Coen's were quite specific with what they wanted.

Casting Javier Bardem, a Spaniard with a swarthy almost Mediterranean look, they left open too much speculation just who Chigurh might work for. Then there is the hair, a ludicrous late 70's throwback that I feel looks somewhat reminiscent of the top of the grim reapers robe. Wielding a shotgun instead of a sickle, Chigurh kills indiscriminately yet pauses on more than one occasion to offer his query a game of chance a la Bergman's interpretation of the reaper in The Seventh Seal.

No chess game but a more disturbing and fateful coin flip, the Coen's version of the character of Death is an equally terrifying character. As played by Javier Bardem, Chigurh is an unceasingly calm and terrifying figure. The performance is so brilliantly haunting that Chigurh comes home with you after the film in ways only classic horror film villains have in the past.

No Country For Old Men is, arguably, the best film of 2007. One of the finest works in the long, illustrious career of the Coen Brothers and easily their most unique. It's strange to see the Coen's interpret someone else's work. What's more extraordinary is how well they adapt someone else's work. The Coen's transfer Cormac McCarthy directly to the screen in ways that few writers could ever imagine.

Slavishly faithful to McCarthy's words, the Coen's must have writers like Stephen King falling all over themselves to get interpreted. It's a rare and exceptional thing for filmmakers to show a writer so much respect. That is just one of many extraordinary things about No Country For Old Men.

Movie Review Ninja Assassin

Ninja Assassin (2009) 

Directed by James McTeigue

Written by J Michael Straczynski 

Starring Rain, Naomi Harris, Rick Yune

Release Date November 25th, 2009

Published November 25th, 2009

Rain is a Korean pop star with a massive worldwide following. His bio says that he has sold out Madison Square Garden and done sold out dates in Las Vegas. In 2007 Rain was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential people in the world. And through all of Rain's accolades I have remained completely oblivious to him.

Now, Rain has what I assume is his first starring role in an American feature film. In Ninja Assassin the back up dancer turned pop star turns action hero as an unstoppable ninja out for revenge against the clan that raised him.

As a very small child Raizo (Rain) was snatched from his birth parents and taken to a remote mountainside dojo. There, he was raised by Ozunu (Sho Kusugi) to become a Ninja Assassin. For the price of 100 pounds of gold the Ninja Assassin will kill anyone and anywhere. It's not long before Raizo shows himself to be Ozunu's top student.

Cut to Berlin where the death of an ex-KGB Agent has caught the eye of an Interpol Agent named Mika (Naomie Harris). Her investigation has lead to one conclusion, he was killed while investigating Ninjas. Naturally, her boss Maslow (Ben Miles) is more than a little skeptical of her findings.

Skepticism soons turns to belief after Mika is nearly killed by Ninjas. She was saved by Raizo who, having escaped from Ozunu's clan, has vowed to destroy his former brothers and his master.

That is a great deal more plot than anyone expected from Ninja Assassin. Don't worry, the blood soaked violence is not shoved aside for a lot of talky story stuff. Flesh is torn and blood and body parts are scattered all over the place. Trust me, if you're looking for gory sword slicing ultra-violence you will be quite satisfied with Ninja Assassin.

Director James McTeigue delivers a visceral, violent low brain, low budget gore fest that brims with hardcore violence and drips fake blood all over the place. All that is missing is digital 3D just so the audience could feel as if the blood splatter were coming right at them.

Is Ninja Assassin a great work of cinema? No, but for low budget blood and guts, Ninja Assassin offers a few thrills as a passable bit of grade Z movie making.

Movie Review Nine

Nine (2009) 

Directed by Rob Marshall

Written by Michael Tollin, Anthony Minghella 

Starring Daniel Day Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson

Release Date December 18th, 2009

Published December 17th, 2009 

The musical “Nine” starring Antonio Banderas is a middling attempt to bring Federico Fellini to the masses. Italy's legendary surrealist director has, since his turn to surrealism after successfully defining Italian cinema and culture in the 1950's, been a mystery to most. Creative types have always felt that they understood what the Italian master was after and Maury Yeston, who wrote the music for the Broadway production, was apparently one of those creative types; so much so that he felt the need to water down Fellini with tired song and dance and a three act structure.

Now, Yeston's watered down work becomes a slightly more sophisticated but still wrongheaded movie musical. Oscar winner Rob Marshall is the latest to see the need to explain Fellini's genius to the great unwashed and like Yeston, he is a fabulous failure.

The story of “Nine” surrounds Italian director Guido Contini (Daniel Day Lewis), our substitute Fellini,  who, pushed by his producer, is about to begin production of his latest film “Italia.” This is despite the fact that he hasn't written a word of the script. Guido has lost his inspiration and calls upon the many muses of his past to bring a story to mind.

These muses include his wife Luisa (Marion Cotillard), his mistress Carla (Penelope Cruz), his late mother (Sophia Loren), his long time star, Claudia (Nicole Kidman) and a sex worker (pop princess Fergie) who taught him and his friends a little of the birds and bees decades ago. Meanwhile, he seeks advice from his best friend and costume designer Lilli (Judi Dench) and a little ego stroke, among other things, from a journalist named Stephanie (Kate Hudson).

Each of these women offer Guido a song or two, belting out their inner monologues, mostly about what a genius he is, save Luisa who calls him out for the bastard philanderer he truly is. If you have always held the impression that directors are self involved egotists, these songs, this film, will do little to disabuse you of that notion.

“Nine” is a shambling disaster for most of its run time. We are informed from the first moment that Guido is a genius but he is never required to demonstrate any kind of genius. When Lewis gives him voice for the first time he might explain a little about Guido but it's hard to hear over the gales of laughter elicited when his Italian accented singing is compared, not so favorably, to Jason Segal's singing Dracula puppet in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”

The rest of the cast is far stronger in singing with Cotillard, naturally, the stand-out. The actress who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in “La Vien Rose” proves once again to be a natural and charismatic singer. Meanwhile, Kate Hudson is the surprise of the singers. Hudson has the film's one original song, “Cinema Italiano,” and it is the one really lively moment in the film, if not the most coherent or necessary.

Rob Marshall dismisses narrative coherence for a series of Guido's masturbatory fantasies, interrupted from time to time by his wife and a little Catholic guilt. Every woman in the film is asked to bow to his brilliance and their bowing is treated as evidence of his genius. Yet, never once does Guido have to prove his brilliance. This might not be a problem if Daniel Day Lewis gave Guido any dimension beyond a tortured libido.

Speaking of tortured, for a movie about Fellini, whose fanciful work included clowns, strolling musicians and endless parades, “Nine” tends toward a dirge. From Day Lewis's tortured “Guido's Song” opener to the feature tune “Be Italian,” sung by Fergie, the songs of “Nine” are a slog. “Be Italian” sounded rather brilliant in the film's exceptional trailer but in the film it becomes not a celebration of Italian culture but a command from a taskmistress.

“Be Italian” is a major misstep from Director Marshall who fumbles not just the song, staged a little too much like something from his far better musical “Chicago,” but the back story. Fergie's sex worker character is a turning point in the life of Guido Contini, a moment that shaped the way he treated women the rest of his life. Yet, do we see Fergie getting sexy and giving young Guido a truly formative memory? No, instead we cut from Marshall’s lame staged song to scenes of Fergie cavorting with child Guido and pals like a slightly creepy babysitter.

What could have possessed anyone to want to bring a Fellini type to the big screen in such a conventional and old fashioned manner? It's typical of the arrogant audience to talk down to the masses but how is this spoon-feeding of Fellini supposed to entice anyone to want to see 8 1/2 or Satirycon or even Fellini's more conventional films such as La Strada or Nights of Cabiria? Trust me dear reader when I tell you that Nine will not be able to prepare you for the wondrous surrealist brilliance of Federico Fellini. Nor will it prepare you for his brilliant use of subtlety and sadness. 

Nine is like Fellini for Dummies minus any actually helpful information. On top of failing as a tribute to Fellini, Nine simply fails as a movie. Take the inspiration away and all that is left is this boorish, tin-eared mess of a movie made by people who think dumbing down art to the lowest common denominator is the only way to promote great art to the masses. How dreadful is that? 

Movie Review Nim's Island

Nim's Island (2008) 

Directed by Jennifer Flackett

Written by Joseph Kwong, three other screenwriters

Starring Jodie Foster, Abigail Breslin, Gerard Butler 

Release Date April 4th, 2008

Published April 3rd, 2008

Jodie Foster hasn’t been known as a comedian since her mischievous youth as a Disney star. Her career changed forever with Taxi Driver and since that time, her comic roles have been few and far between. The surprise of her comic talents, lying dormant since her sassy performance in Maverick more than a decade ago, makes her slapstick heavy comic performance in the family flick Nim’s Island something of a delight. Though the film overall is a slight, messy mixture of Home Alone crossed with Fantasy Island, Foster makes it tolerable and occasionally delightful with her constantly surprising performance.

Alex Rider is an Indiana Jones like character and a hero to young Nim (Abigail Breslin) who lives for his adventures like some kids live for the next American Idol. Living on a deserted island in the south pacific with her dad Jack (Gerard Butler), Nim doesn’t have a TV or video games like most kids so her Alex Rider novels and her many animal friends are her entertainment. When her marine biologist father has to go away for a few days, Nim is left to care for an animal friend about to give birth. That is when an email arrives from her hero Alex Rider asking her about the wonders of her island, he’s researching his next big adventure.

Or should I say, her next big adventure. You see, Alex Rider is actually Alexandra Rider (Jodie Foster) an agoraphobic writer who, despite imagining some amazing adventures, has not left her home in years. When she hits on a bout of writer's block she turns to the writing of Jack, Nim’s dad, who wrote an article about volcanoes that Alex thinks could make an exciting adventure. Her email finds Nim and the two begin a friendly correspondence. However, when Nim reveals that her father has gone missing there is only one thing for Alexandra to do, she must find the courage to leave her home for the first time in years and find some way to get to Nim.

Directed by newcomers Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, Nim’s Island is a sweet, safe bit of disposable family entertainment. Abigail Breslin, the Little Miss Sunshine Oscar nominee, is her usual cute self but it is Jodie Foster who steals the movie with her wildly offbeat performance. Chatting often out loud to her fictional character Alex Rider (Gerard Butler again), she goes all out allowing herself to look completely nutzo and somehow it works. Her chemistry with Breslin is motherly and very sweet, this is a very different Jodie Foster from the hard bitten New Yorker of The Brave One.

If only Nim’s Island were more focused on Foster and Breslin’s chemistry. Unfortunately, the film diverts with a subplot about a ship called Buccaneer, a group of ugly tourists and Nim pulling a Macauley Culkin to keep bad guys from turning her home into a tourist trap. This subplot is distracting and meant only as very obvious filler material. More time with Foster and Breslin and less time with goofball subplots and Nim’s Island could be so much more than just merely distracting.

Good, not great, Nim’s Island is above par family entertainment that should be much better than it is.

Movie Review Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler (2014)

Directed by Dan Gilroy

Written by Dan Gilroy

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton, Riz Ahmed

Release Date October 31st, 2014

Published October 30th, 2014

This article contains spoilers for the movie Nightcrawler. If you haven't seen it, see it and come back for this article. If you have seen it, be sure to share your thoughts in the comments. 

“Nightcrawler” tells the story of Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), a professional criminal in search of a job that can combine his blind ambition with his lack of a moral compass. He finds such a job when he witnesses a professional cameraman, Joe Loder (Bill Paxton), crawling over policemen and firefighters to get as close as possible to a fiery car accident. Joe’s ethos is ‘If it bleeds, it leads.' Lou never knew such a job existed; one that could nurture his lack of empathy and his blind ambition. 

Nina Romina (Rene Russo) is the perfect enabler for Lou Bloom. His equal in blind ambition and desperation, Nina is the 3rd shift News Director for the last place network in Los Angeles. When Nina meets Lou, she’s not all that impressed but desperate for a top story with some blood on it, she buys Lou’s footage and he gets his foot in the door. When next they see each other Lou has gone to some obviously ethically challenged lengths to get footage inside of a home that was struck by bullets from a drive by shooting. While Nina’s colleagues recognize the trouble with the footage, Nina has dollar signs in her eyes and buys the footage to air as the lead on that night’s newscast.

In Joe Loder and Nina Romina, Lou Bloom finds a unique parentage. In meeting Joe Loder and finding out what he does for a living the true Lou Bloom is born. When Joe rejects Lou, refusing Lou's attempts at friendship and job-seeking, Lou goes into business for himself and finds a welcome mothering figure in Nina. We can see in their first interaction that Nina has a soft spot for the soft spoken and unassuming Lou. When Lou begins delivering one big exclusive video scoop after another her pride in her pseudo-progeny bursts forward like that of a proud mother.

Things become twisted as Lou competes with Joe for scoops and the rivalry turns violent when Lou literally attempts to kill Joe by sabotaging Joe's mobile news van. If you posit Joe as a father figure to Lou by his having inspired Lou's new profession then the symbolism here becomes very important. Lou has eliminated the competition for the attention of Nina, also his top business competition and rival for Nina's money.

Then Lou turns his full attention to Nina, first demanding a date and when his advance is rebuffed he goes further by demanding a sexual relationship. Having removed his main rival for Nina's attention and money, Lou has a grave advantage over Nina and presses that advantage to take what he wants; sleeping with his surrogate mother/benefactor, sealing his true identity as a psychopath.

In the end, "Nightcrawler" is the story of Lou Bloom's journey to realization of his true nature. Yes, he was a psychopath before the movie began but once he meets Joe and Nina, the evolution towards accepting his true nature begins. We see him explore his amoral world, find his footing in a place where his lack of empathy, concern for others and blind, frothing ambition are welcome traits and in finally taking Nina as his conquest and vanquishing his rival, we find a man fully realized in all his psychopathic glory

Horrifying as it most certainly is, this strange arc makes Nightcrawler an endlessly fascinating character study. In Jake Gyllenhaal we have an actor capable of giving Lou Bloom's growing mania and lack of empathy a wide range of expression. Gyllenhaal's ability to switch gears from sniveling conniver to over-confifdent badass is something impossible to look away from. The birth and quick evolution of Lou's new persona, the perfect expression of his unwell psyche, is utterly riveting. 

Dan Gilroy's crisp, clean direction, gives remarkable life to the story of Nightcrawler. The film's imagery is vital and viscreral, it couches Lou Bloom in a very recognizable reality that he can stand out from as he becomes more and more deluded and dangerous. Lou Bloom both fits in perfectly amid the outsized characters who chase the news and stands apart from them as his actions express the the often ugly extremes of our modern news culture.

And yet, there is so much more to Nightcrawler., Each relationship Nick carries out in Nightcrawler is rife with meanings that can be parsed for days. I mentioned the pseudo-parental figures of Paxton and Russo and just take a moment to consider those relationships in the context provided by Nightcrawler. Each is rife with taunting questions about the parent child dynamic, the boss and subordinate dynamic and the passive and aggressive dynamic, the one that arguably defines much of Nightcrawler as Lou quickly moves from passive bystander to the aggressor in every aspect of his life. 

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.