Movie Review: Destination Wedding

Destination Wedding (2018) 

Directed by Victor Levin 

Written by Victor Levin

Starring Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves 

Release Date August 31st, 2018 

Published August 31st, 2018 

Destination Wedding stars Keanu Reeves as Frank and Winona Ryder as Lindsey, a pair of mismatched wedding guests. Frank’s brother is getting married in San Luis Obispo, a piece of information the filmmakers feel is important for us to know for some reason. Frank hates his brother and based on the evidence of the movie, he hates pretty much everyone so Frank setting aside special hatred for someone is notable. 

Lindsey, meanwhile, is Frank’s brother’s ex-fiancee. She accepted an invitation to this wedding some six years after Frank’s brother dumped her on the eve of their wedding. She’s come to San Luis Obispo in search of closure and acceptance and the ability to move on with her emotional life. And, she might be insane. The movie doesn’t deal with this fact directly, but Winona Ryder plays the character with some sort of undefined mental deficiency that, perhaps, is meant to be comedy. 

Frank’s main trait beyond extreme misanthropy is his habit of hocking phlegm. Yeah, this is a fun trait to give a character. Our introduction to Frank is him repeatedly and loudly attempting to clear his sinuses. It’s apparent that the movie thinks this is either charming or funny as they keep having him do it, multiple times throughout the movie. Somehow though the funny part of the hocking didn’t translate to those of us in the audience, it remains solely in the imagination of Keaun Reeves and writer-director Victor Levin. 

Keanu gets off easier than poor Winona Ryder who is forced to play Lindsey as what I assume is the victim of an off-screen head injury. Our introduction to Lindsey is her breathing heavily onto a dying plant. She does this and chants ‘come on photosynthesis’ and we are supposed to laugh I suppose, rather than cringe which my body did in instinctive sympathy for an actress I have always very much liked being made to look silly in a very unfunny fashion. 

Once Frank and Lindsey meet and find themselves repeatedly thrust together as the only singletons at this destination wedding, they begin to talk and immediately hate one another. The first quarter of this blessedly short 80 minute feature is Ryder and Reeves insulting one another in the most hateful and obnoxiously unfunny fashion. Imagine being trapped in a small space with a pair of obnoxiously miserable people and you get a sense of what watching Reeves and Ryder interact in Destination Wedding is like. 

I’m trying hard to imagine what either of these talented people thought would come of this unfunny, genuinely mean way their characters interact in this movie. I assume they were aware they were making a romantic comedy and not the prequel to a violent revenge movie, but I can’t be sure. Dialogue that is meant to be savagely misanthropic comes off as merely faux miserable ranting from characters we can’t stand and are yet the only characters in this movie. There are no other characters, just Lindsey and Frank the whole time. It's like being trapped in an elevator with relatives you hate but are too polite to scream at. 

When the love story began to unfold in Destination Wedding, I was dumbfounded that anyone thought these characters were capable of such a turn. Ryder and Reeves have established both of these hateful, obnoxious, miscreants as people who are more likely to commit murder-suicide than fall in love and yet we have to suffer listening to them bond over how they hate other people more than they hate each other so they must be good together. 

As the 'romance' progresses the two have one of the worst, unfunny, funny love scenes I have ever seen. Some of the hilariously funny dialogue includes Ryder telling Reeves that he looks like he's about to vomit on her. This happens during the love scene. Eventually, the romance progresses to a genuine and earnest moment when our head injury victim, Lindsey says, without a hint of irony or sarcasm, "what if our real destination was each other?" Now, I'm the one who looks like he might vomit. 

When I saw that Destination Wedding starred Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder I was sure it couldn’t be that bad. Oh how wrong I was. This is truly one of the worst movies of 2018. Even at a barely feature length 80 minutes, Destination Wedding is an unbearable disaster of a movie. Bitter, spiteful, hateful, idiotic characters pretending toward being funny misanthropes, Frank and Lindsey aren’t romantic comedy characters, they are the half-hearted offspring of screenwriters who watch half of a Judd Apatow movie and think they get the gist.

Movie Review: Escape Plan 2 Hades

Escape Plan 2 Hades (2018) 

Directed by Steven C. Miller

Written by Miles Chapman 

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jesse Metcalf, Dave Bautista, Curtis Jackson

Release Date June 29th, 2018

Published June 29th, 2018 

I have seen amateur movies on YouTube, shot on an IPhone, that have better special effects than the cheeseball fluff featured in the new movie Escape Plan 2: Hades. This Sylvester Stallone starring sequel to the not-so-great to begin with, 2013 feature, Escape Plan starring Sly and Arnold Schwarzenegger, is among the worst movies of 2018. Bad special effects, inept direction, and abysmal editing make Escape Plan 2: Hades, nearly impossible to endure.

Once again Stallone is playing the character of security expert Ray Breslin. Here Ray and his team, including Jesse Metcalf, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and Jamie King, are hired to rescue hostages in a foreign country by developing an executing an ‘escape plan,’ get it? When the escape plan goes bad, Ray is forced to part ways with two members of his team, Jasper (Wes Chatham) and Shu (Xiaming Huong).

After firing Jasper, Ray let’s Shu take  a leave of absence and from there, Shu goes home to Thailand and reunites with his cousin, a tech millionaire. The cousin is wanted for his deus ex machina technology and when he’s kidnapped, Shu gets taken as well. The two end up in Hades, a state of the art prison, said to be inescapable. Naturally, when Ray finds out his buddy is missing he knows what he needs, as escape plan.

My plot description is intentionally snarky but the movie deserves it. Little care is taken by director Stephen C. Miller to make Escape Plan 2: Hades watchable so the film deserves my condescending descriptors. Miller’s direction is borderline haphazard, as if we’re lucky when he’s able to plant his camera in the direction of the actors. The editing is employed to try and hide the directorial and storytelling deficiencies, using quick cuts to try and distract from the bad production design and bored acting.

Sly Stallone looks as if he’s not getting enough sleep these days. His speech has always been a tad slow but here, words fall from his mouth as if pushed with great effort but little energy or life. He doesn’t appear to care much about what he’s saying and comes off as content to deliver the minimum effort needed for his check. Director Miller tries to cover for his star’s disinterest by giving newcomer Xiaming Huong most of the heavy lifting but his martial arts can’t overcome Miller’s inability to capture martial arts in a visually interesting fashion.

The fight scenes in Escape Plan 2: Hades are nearly as sloppy as the special effects are laughable. Huong appears to be a capable fighter but the slapdash camera work and quick cut editing do more to hide his abilities than to exploit them. There are times during major fight scenes where it was impossible to even locate the lead characters amid the chaos of the staging of these scenes.

The CGI of Escape Plan 2 is camp level bad. The effects rendering on something as routine as muzzle flair from a handgun are laughably inept with tiny fireballs that look like cotton candy popping out of a gun. A big explosion in the opening of the film looked like an effect from the legendary modern bad movie Birdemic: Shock and Terror. That film however, at the very least, was entertainingly terrible, Escape Plan 2: Hades is merely embarrassingly cringe inducing.

Just what the heck was Dave Bautista thinking when he accepted this role? Was he desperate to share the screen with Sly Stallone? Bautista is billed as the second star of Escape Plan, equal to Stallone and yet he’s barely in the movie. Bautista doesn’t even have a fight scene, content to just hold a gun in one scene and fire the gun while lightly jogging toward danger later in the movie. Bautista matches Stallone’s lack of energy with his own barely there performance.

Escape Plan 2: Hades was supposed to be released theatrically, nationwide this weekend but someone thought better of that idea. Instead, this abysmal effort will haunt the DVD and Blu Ray racks as of Friday, tempting Stallone completists and those who can be tricked into thinking Bautista is doing another Drax like character. Don’t be fooled, Bautista is barely there and Stallone, in a sense, is barely there as well in one of the worst movies of 2018.

Movie Review: Everything is Illuminated

Everything is Illuminated (2005) 

Directed by Liev Schreiber 

Written by Liev Schreiber

Starring Eugene Hutz, Elijah Wood, Boris Leskin. Laryssa Lauret

Release Date September 16th, 2005 

Published November 12th, 2005 

Everything is illuminated in the light of history. So says Alex the narrator of the delightful film Everything Is Illuminated, the directorial debut of actor Liev Schreiber. Undeniably, the sentence is over complicated. It is also, easily the cleanest, clearest English Alex speaks in the entire film.

Alex (Eugene Hutz) is a Ukrainian youth who works for his parents tour company as a translator. The company provides tours of the country to jewish visitors in search of their family history. The company's newest client is Jonathon (Elijah Wood), a goggle eyed American whose pasttime is collecting small artifacts of his family history in plastic bags and tacking the bags to the walls of his home.

Jonathon hopes the trip to Ukraine will lead him to the woman who helped his grandfather Safran escape the Nazis. Her name was Augustine and she was from a small village called Trachinbad. The little village has a great deal of meaning to Alex's grandfather, also named Alex, who is the tour company's driver despite the fact that he believes he is blind and will not travel without his crazed dog, or seeing eye bitch as he refers to her, Sammy Davis Jr Jr.

And the quirks they keep on coming in this often Fellini-esque configuration. Liev Schreiber is a little distinguished actor, he has a tendency to fade into the background as an actor. As a director however, Schreiber shows a vibrant imagination and attention to detail. His visuals, with the aid of cinematographer Matthew Libatique, are crisp and lovely in ways Eastern European locales are not often shown.

Schreiber adapted the screenplay himself from the especially quirky book by Jonathon Safron Foer and has managed to make a film of equal idiosyncrasy. And yet as odd as both the film and the book are there is an emotional undercurrent that rises at the end to really catch you off guard.

All along we are aware that the history being chased is part of the holocaust and World War 2 but we are distracted by the unending quirks of the characters until the end of the journey and the introduction of Lista (Laryssa Lauret). Lista is linked to both Jonathon's search and Alex's Sr's past but I will leave you to watch the film to see just how.

The film is not without problems. Most dire is the fact that it the story hinges on the rather large coincidence that Jonathon would hire Alex's family to be his guide and that Alex's grandfather's past would be so entwined with Jonathon's. That is a pretty big contrivance but one I was willing to forgive because so much of Everything Is Illuminated is delightful,

Liev Schreiber is a director to watch. His talent for eye catching visuals and his slightly askew take on normal character arcs are a refreshing change from the norm. No cookie cutter characters, no simple over coming the odds story, nothing you might see in a typical Hollywood creation. Schreiber's off kilter direction of Everything Is Illuminated is a breath of fresh air.

Movie Review: 500 Days of Summer

500 Days of Summer (2009) 

Directed by Marc Webb

Written by Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber

Starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, Zooey Deschanel 

Release Date August 7th, 2009 

Published August 6th, 2009 

500 Days of Summer is going to hit a little too close to home for some audience members. Myself included. Many of you, I'm sure, have experienced a break up. It hurts but in the best of break ups, you know why it happened. There is comfort in knowing. It allows you to correct mistakes and look forward to a time when you can use your newfound awareness of your flaws in a different relationship.

Some break ups however don't end in such a tidy fashion. That is where 500 Days of Summer begins. Tom doesn't know why Summer rejected him. Sure, she's flighty and odd and says that she doesn't believe in love but surely, after all that they do together, relationship stuff, intimate stuff, she must feel something for him.

We flash back to their first meeting. Shy Tommy notices his boss's new secretary, Summer. He says nothing to her. A week passes and he doesn't say anything, just glances at her from his cubicle where he is a successful greeting card writer. Then, one day in the elevator Tom is alone with Summer and she has noticed in his headphones is The Smiths, one of her favorites.

They bond briefly and then go to another level at an office gathering at a karaoke bar. They begin dating and Tom quickly begins to fall in love. Flash forward and miserable Tom vows to try to win her back. Flashback to the night, seemingly out of the blue, when Summer decides that whatever their relationship is, it's over.

Marc Webb is a successful music video director making his feature debut with 500 Days of Summer which begins with a non-dedication dedication to someone we can only assume is Webb's very own Summer. The subtitle is ended with the word bitch and the movie dives quickly into the world of Tom and Summer.

Webb uses music, color and mood to create for 500 Days of Summer a tone and universe that is unique but familiar. Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Tom with an innocence and wounded pride that will hit home with any deeply insecure man who has ever thought he met the girl of his dreams.

Zooey Deschanel plays Summer with the unknowing arrogance of real beauty. She knows she's attractive even if she plays it off and her awareness of it only makes her more strangely appealing. She is a trainwreck that Tom, and I'm sure many others, willingly stands in the midst of.

Whether Tom and Summer work out their issues I will leave you to discover. The nature of the film is not necessarily love but loss, heartbreak and the way even the worst of relationships can be romanticized into great tragedy in the eye of the beholder.

The sad truth about memories is that they are much more dramatic, romantic, tragic or humorous in memory than they were in reality. Moreover, we only remember the things we want to remember and remember them as we want to remember them. The scene where Summer dumps Tom is open ended for Tom because in his memory it has never ended.

The fact is, that the relationship we had that ended so painfully ambiguous in our memory was likely over in ways that were quite final. We just simply choose not to remember it the way it happened. 500 Days of Summer is Tom's painful memory of his most significant relationship. We experience it with him and are on his side the whole way as if the memories were our own.

The wondrous part of the movie however is that nagging feeling in the back of the mind that indeed it is all one sided. Tom knows that and in our own relationships we are aware of it too. It's easier to romanticise or demonize former lovers. It's a way of coping that requires less self examination.

500 Days of Summer is smart and sweet and in the performance of Joseph Gordon Levit it has a beautiful, battered, beating heart. Levitt and director Webb play out his memories as embellished facts. The highs are extremely high and the lows are a little more in tune because the sadness is new and easier to recall correctly.

500 Days of Summer is a remarkably intelligent examination of one man's most significant relationship. The exaggerated highs and lows and how one comes to terms with the pain and sadness of losing something that meant so much to them. What a fabulous, fabulous movie.

Movie Review: Aliens in the Attic

Aliens in the Attic (2009) 

Directed by John Schultz

Written by Mark Bunon, Adam F. Goldberg

Starring Ashley Tisdale, Carter Jenkins, Austin Butler, Kevin Nealon

Release Date July 31st, 2009 

Published August 2nd, 2009

Idiot movies like Aliens in the Attic are why I discourage parents from seeing live action kids flicks. The fact is that 99% of live action kid flicks rot out loud. Aliens in the Attic simply proves the point, only take your kids to animated movies. Even then, wait for it to be a Pixar animated movie.

Aliens in the Attic is the dopey story of ugly green midgets come to earth to take over. Why they begin with a summer house in the middle of nowhere is likely a joke I missed while attempting to retrieve my ever rolling eyes. Standing in the way of the invasion are a group of mean little brats and one not so horrible one.

The not so bad kid is merely boring. He is Tom (Carter Pearson) and from moment one he is picked on by all around him. He is joined by his brainless sister Bethany (Ashley Tisdale), her disturbingly older and creepily leering boyfriend Ricky (Robbie Hoffman) and a group of smaller cousins who, like us, also think Tom is boring.

They are on vacation with a group of the most annoyingly clueless parents ever put to screen. Kevin Nealon and Andy Richter lend unneeded and entirely untapped comic credentials to Aliens in the Attic as the befuddled dads.

Worst of the adults however is poor Doris Roberts. The Emmy nominated mother from Everybody Loves Raymond is called upon to perform karate in some of the most painfully unfunny comic fight scenes put to film. One can only assume that the awful effects used to place Ms. Roberts in these fight scenes are intentionally bad but it's hard to tell when everything in the film is so poorly crafted.

There is not a single laugh or note of originality in one minute of this slapdash mess. Aliens in the Attic was cynically crafted to remove money from people's wallets and nothing more. Call me elitist if you like but I believe movies, especially those made for kids, should enrich the culture.

I believe that when a movie is made for an audience of children that the filmmakers have a duty to make a film of high quality that does more than merely asphyxiate a child for 90 minutes while mom and dad play sudoku on their iPhones. A movie made for kids should have a point and purpose and short of that should at the very least intrigue and involve the imagination.

Kids will get nothing of the sort from Aliens in the Attic a mindless piece of dreck that shutters the imagination in favor of cheap and easy gags and bad special effects. Ugh.

Movie Review: Dark Crimes

Dark Crimes (2018)

Directed by Alexandros Avranas 

Written by Jeremy Brock

Starring Jim Carrey, Martin Csokas, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Release Date May 18th, 2018

Published May 18th, 2018

Dark Crimes is a whole lot of nonsense. While I appreciate that Jim Carrey is taking a risk and playing a role well outside our perception of him as a performer, Dark Crimes is a risk that should not have been taken. This Poland set mystery involving a murder among a violent sex cult is so poorly constructed and so nonsensically plotted that even if Jim Carrey had been brilliant in his offbeat, against the grain, performance, it wouldn’t have mattered against this awful piece of storytelling.

In Dark Crimes, Jim Carrey stars as Tadek, a veteran detective in a major city in Poland. At one point, we’re told that Tadek is the last good cop in Poland but the movie does little to demonstrate that. Tadek is investigating the murder of a man who was found bound in an S & M style and dropped in a river. Tadek’s top suspect is a writer named Kozlov (Martin Csokas) whose latest book, a thriller, describes a murder exactly like the one Tadek is investigating.

The details depicted in the book, which we hear as Tadek is listening to the audiobook of Kozlov’s bestseller, are uncannily like the murder and Tadek is certain that Kozlov is the killer. That is, until he continues down the rabbit hole of this sex cult which is made up of some of the most powerful men in Poland, including Tadek’s work rival, Greger (Robert Wieckiewicz). Thus, Tadek had better be right before he goes so far he can’t come back.

That’s an okay thumbnail of Dark Crimes but it contains a good deal of inference on my part. Dark Crimes is so nonsensically assembled that it is impossible to actually know what is happening. Nudity and an orgy and a murder give us a sense of what the plot is about, and it certainly makes for a jarring opening to the movie, but then the movie abandons the sex cult in favor of one on one staring contests between Carrey and Csokas that stagnate an already sluggish story.

The assemblage of Dark Crimes is almost painful to piece together. A number of scenes appear to have significant revelations but the movie is so clumsy that I am not sure what was being revealed in what appeared to be intended as revelatory scenes. One scene finds Carrey reacting to something for a good long while and when we finally see what he’s reacting to, it’s so tangential to the plot of Dark Crimes that his intense psychic pain barely registers.

Charlotte Gainsbourg, whose work with Lars Von Trier likely made her time on Dark Crimes feel like a cakewalk, co-stars here as a woman abused in the sex cult. She’s also the girlfriend of Kozlov though she tells Carrey that the relationship with Kozlov is over before the two sleep together in one of the least sexy sex scenes I’ve ever seen. Is Gainsbourg’s character a frightened victim seeking protection or a sexy scheming killer? I have no idea and the movie is too vague and poorly put together for me to even venture a guess as to the nature of Gainsbourg's character or any other character for that matter, including Carrey's Tadek. 

The ending is the most nonsensical of bit of all. I watched and then re-watched the end of Dark Crimes in the vain hope that I could figure out what happened and two viewings yielded no definitive answer. The final moment is captured so poorly, literally at a bizarre distance at a cantilevered angle, that the fate of Jim Carrey’s character is unknown as the credits began to roll.

I will say, aside from a desperately unneeded close-up of Carrey's twisted face during a love scene, ugh, Dark Crimes is great looking movie. The cinematography, especially on a high quality Blu-Ray, looks phenomenal. Poland looks beautiful and foreboding, a character in its own right that in a better movie would matter to the plot. But not here, not among the skill free nonsense on display in Dark Crimes.

Dark Crimes is undoubtedly among the worst movies of 2018. Jim Carrey’s bold decision to play a character wildly out of his comfort zone, all the way down to a silly sounding Polish accent, is almost laughably terrible. I admire the big swing Carrey takes here but perhaps he should reign in the ambition just a little. Maybe start with a clever little independent feature delivered by a promising young upstart director. Try going to film festivals and looking for young and hungry filmmakers who could use your star power to get a movie made. Most importantly Jim, stay the heck out of Poland.

Documentary Review: Corman's World

Corman's World (2012) 

Directed by Alex Stapleton

Written by Documentary

Starring Roger Corman, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese

Release Date March 27th, 2012

Published July 10th, 2012 

History is funny; what we choose to remember, what gets lost to time. Director-producer Roger Corman is part of film history and at times it seems like that part of history is lost. Every now and again however, Corman bounces back and with him a near forgotten history of the past forty odd years of film that he influenced for better or worse.

"Corman's world: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel," a new documentary from director Alex Stapleton, is a terrific time capsule of Corman's career and the history within that career is worth digging up and rediscovering, again for better and for worse.

"The Gunfighter"

Roger Corman got his start as a messenger at 20th Century Fox and worked his way up to reading screenplays. When one of the screenplays he approved and amended was made into a hit feature, "The Gunfighter" starring Gregory Peck, and Corman received no credit he quit and began making movies.

Corman made nine movies between 1955 and 1960 including such classics as "Swamp Women," "It Conquered the World" and "Attack of the Crab Monsters;" each more successful than the last. Regardless of the artistry, or lack thereof, of these pictures they tapped into the desire of a generation looking to escape from the bore of the 1950's into fantastical worlds where armies of men battled giant crabs.

Hippies, Exploitation and Civil Rights

In the 1960's Corman presaged the move toward exploitation pictures by making movies about motorcycle gangs. He then joined the hippie movement and was the rare filmmaker to work to understand and reflect the hippie movement as well as exploit it.

In arguably his boldest and bravest move Corman joined the civil rights crusade with a picture called "The Intruder," starring a very young William Shatner, and shined a light on southern racism that even the nightly news was afraid to expose.

Edgar Allen Poe and the College of Corman

Corman never made the move toward being taken seriously however and after "The Intruder" bombed he found a new money-making venture in low budget adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe stories. Today, Corman produces movies like "Dino-Shark" for the SyFy channel and is finding a whole new cult fandom.

Roger Corman's legacy however, is not his movies but his influence. It was Corman who found Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Robert DeNiro, Joe Dante, and Francis Ford Coppola among others. He changed the career of Peter Fonda with "Wild Angels" and "The Trip" leading Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Nicholson to start the American New Wave with "Easy Rider."

Corman, "Jaws," and "Star Wars"

Without Roger Corman there is no "Jaws" and maybe no "Star Wars." Then again, without Roger Corman there is no Eli Roth or "Piranhas 3D." It's a mixed legacy in the end; Corman's World puts a nice bow on things with Corman's 2010 Lifetime Achievement Oscar.

When Hollywood discovered Roger Corman, via the success of "Jaws," it was arguably the end of the very brief American New Wave. Not to take anything away from "Jaws" which is a classic but once executive caught on to that style of movie, the kind that Corman made on the cheap for 20 years prior to "Jaws," there was no turning back from the wave of B-Movie blockbusters that continue to dominate the box office today.

"Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel" opens in limited release on Friday, December 16th.

Movie Review: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) 

Directed by Terry Gilliam

Written by Terry Gilliam, Tony Grisoni, Alex Cox, Todd Davies 

Starring Johnny Depp, Guillermo Del Toro, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Cameron Diaz

Release Date May 22nd, 1998 

Published June 27th, 2018

With Sicario Day of the Soldado opening this past weekend starring Benicio Del Toro, I was called to think of my favorite Benicio Del Toro performance. And while I enjoyed his work in Traffic, his Academy Award nominated performance, for me, his performance as Dr. Gonzo is an all time classic in Del Toro’s canon. Del Toro is the wild, raging, drug fueled id of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a film itself that appears like a raging fire.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas stars Johnny Depp as Doctor of Journalism Raoul Duke, an alias of one Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson is famed for his gonzo journalism, a drug fueled style that earned him a loyal readership in Rolling Stone Magazine over three decades from the 60’s to the 80’s. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is taken from Thompson’s book of the same name about a drug fueled trip to Las Vegas that Thompson, as Duke, took to supposedly cover a motorcycle race for his magazine.

Of course, Duke has little interest in motorcycle racing. No, he’s in this for the road trip with his best friend and attorney, known here as Dr. Gonzo (Del Toro). Whether Dr. Gonzo was a real person or a Thompson creation cobbled together from several friends and fellow drug users is part of Thompson’s legend. The road trip debauchery is the focus of the movie and it starts right away with a red cadillac procured with Rolling Stone funds and a suitcase bursting with every kind of mind altering drug imaginable.

Eventually, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas shifts gears from motorcycles to district attorneys as Gonzo has procured them a suite to attend the national district attorneys convention. Unfortunately, that is not all that Gonzo has procured as he is now in the company of a potentially underage girl, Lucy (Christina Ricci). Having just met, Gonzo has given the young girl her first taste of acid and the trip is going bad.

There isn’t much of a story in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, it’s a film of feel rather than substance. Director Terry Gilliam wants you to feel like your with Hunter S. Thompson on one of his famed drug trips and see the world through Duke’s eyes. This means fisheye lens and a queasy making visuals to illustrate the mind on various different types of hallucinogens from ether to acid to marijuana.

The film is remarkable at making you feel like you’re tripping right along with the characters, even if, like me, you’ve never used an illegal drug. I recall seeing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on the big screen and walking out into a world that didn’t look real after words. It took a little while before my eyes could adjust to the real world again and I recall liking the feeling. The film’s trippy visual is less effective on the small screen but no less artful.

Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro have a terrifically weird chemistry. I am not going to speculate as to the on-set drug use behind the scenes of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but it’s hard not to imagine that both actors don’t have some personal experiences driving their performances. Del Toro especially seems familiar with the wild emotions of mind-altering drugs with his wild eyes and bizarrely perfect sloppy speech pattern. It has the practiced, polished feel of someone trying not to let on that they are on drugs.

For his part, Depp radiates endless charisma. Even playing a bald man in bizarre 70’s costume, he still comes off as handsome and engaging. It’s a star performance and yet one pitched perfectly for this strange and unique role. Depp and Hunter S. Thompson became friends in real life during the making of the movie. So close were the two that after Thompson took his own life, Depp was part of a celebration that shot the author’s ashes out of a cannon.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a true cult classic. A strange, trippy, bizarre comic creation with wit and star power. Great performances combine with inventive visuals to create arguably THE best drug trip movie of all time. It’s a film that remains a go to for revival theaters across the country that roll the film out on a yearly basis, with the blessing and backing of its parent studio, Universal Pictures which has benefited greatly from the continuing popularity of the movie which barely eked out a profit on its theatrical release.

Movie Review: A Scanner Darkly

A Scanner Darkly (2006) 

Directed by Richard Linklater

Written by Richard Linklater 

Starring Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr, Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder, Rory Cochrane

Release Date July 7th, 2006

Published July 7th, 2006

The work of Philip K. Dick, the much revered sci fi Author,  has been adapted many times. Some, like Minority Report, have been quite successful. Others, like Paycheck, have been Hollywoodized disasters. Surprisingly only two of Philip K. Dick's full length novels have ever been adapted. Blade Runner , published under the original title "Do Robots Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", in 1981 and in 2006 A Scanner Darkly, Dick's dystopian drug tale from 1974, adapted in the highly unique fashion of director Richard Linklater.

For Dick, A Scanner Darkly was an examination of how the drug use of the sixties had taken so many of his friends and idols. For Linklater; this tale of drugs, corruption and paranoia is a jumping off point for a smart satire of modern paranoia and police state tactics. Keanu Reeves leads an awesome cast in A Scanner Darkly as Bob Arctor and Agent Fred. Bob is a drugged out loser living communally with other druggies in his former family tract home. Agent Fred is Bob's undercover cop alter-ego who is watching these druggies for possible trafficking in a drug called Substance D.

Fred's main target is a woman named Donna (Winona Ryder) who promises a major Substance D score but never delivers. She is supposedly Bob's girlfriend but she doesn't like to be touched so intimacy is unattainable. Bob/Fred's situation is worsened by his own growing addiction to Substance D which he has used to get close to his druggie pals. Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson round out the main cast of A Scanner Darkly as a pair of hopped up druggies. Given the well known, drug related, pasts of both actors the inside joke is obvious but still amusing. Downey gives a standout performance as a fast talking paranoid, conspiracy theorist who goes to extreme lengths to protect himself from unseen forces.

Paranoia is one of the many subjects of the broad satire of A Scanner Darkly. Paranoia, drugs, law enforcement, drug treatment; all are subjects of this highly literate animated head trip from director Richard Linklater. The universe of the film, set 7 years from now, is one in which a drug has conquered much of the United States. Police have set up elaborate surveillance systems and suspended many civil liberties in their attempts to curb the drug; with little success.

The organization used to rehab former users is corrupt and untouchable by even the cops. The paranoia in the film is most often drug induced but extends beyond that to a cameo by nutball conspriracy theorist and paranoia expert Alex Jones. Jones, who was also seen in Linklater's animated masterpiece Waking Life, has been good friends with Linklater for years which explains his inclusion in this film despite his many discredited conspiracies about 9/11, JFK and other such popular conspiracies.

The plot unfolds slowly because the focus of much of the film is the drug inspired verbal diarrhea of these literate but slightly askew characters. Once the film begins to develop a more cinematic form of storytelling the plot emerges almost mundanely. There is an element of police procedural beneath the head tripping rotoscope animation. Reeves' cop character under a mind bending disguise cloak does many of the things a cop in any other movie would do. He is slowly building his case for arresting his supposed friends.

If it weren't for his own drug dependence Agent Fred would be a regular cop gathering evidence for warrants and preparing a case against the criminals around him. Unfortunately, like Jason Patric's undercover cop in Rush, he gets sucked in and subsumed in his subject. If not for the animation and the minor sci fi conceits this could be a very typical plot. There is a twist at the end that gives the film a bit more of a kick than an average undercover cop flick, but that mundane element is still there.

Rotoscope animation under the direction of Richard Linklater is mesmerizing to watch. It's use in A Scanner Darkly lifts what could be an average movie up to the realm of something artful but not exactly art. The film is, at it's core to simple and far too detached to be art. There is no passion outside of a passion for the technology used in painting real life actors with the watercolor tones of rotoscope animation. Beyond the animation there is this unique collection of actors to enjoy and that goes a long way. Each of the four leads are like old friends and watching them interact with one another is a treat. We have watched these four actors for so long that it's odd to think they have never worked together in a film before.

Downey, as I mentioned earlier, is the stand out of this ensemble but there is something to be said here for the maturation of Keanu Reeves. Joke all you want about his dunderhead reputation, that slacker cred plays to his advantage in this picture and I think I see him really beginning to mature into a real actor. He's using his persona more to his own advantage in recent films and that is a smart decision. This is not Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly. What director Richard Linklater makes of Dick's novel is not really a sci fi exercise in metaphoric storytelling but rather, an often straightforward, if somewhat funky, detective story that is only sci fi in terms of its future setting and flashes of futuristic technology.

This version of A Scanner Darkly is fascinated by its own meandering rambles and meditations and especially its trippy visuals. That is not exactly a bad thing; the rambling is often funny and the animation eye catching but a little more of Dick's literate symbolism might have made for a meaty and interesting movie. As it is, A Scanner Darkly is attention grabbing but lackadaisical.

Documentary Review: Enron The Smartest Guys in the Room

Enron The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)

Directed by Alex Gibney

Written by Documentary

Starring Jefffrey Skilling, Ken Lay, Andrew Fastow

Release Date April 22nd, 2005

Published May 25th, 2005

Ask yourself this question: Where is Jeffrey Skilling right now? The former CEO of Enron, Skilling guided what he called "the number one company in the world" directly into the biggest corporate scandal of all time as he and his boss, Ken Lay, and any number of subordinates ripped off the country for billions of dollars. Where is Jeffrey Skilling now? He is not in jail, not yet anyway.  He goes to trial in January of 2006.

No doubt Jeffrey Skilling is currently occupying space in some upscale gated community as his lawyers pull every trick in the book to save his ass from federal prison. Despite being indicted and obviously having screwed millions of people, employees and shareholders alike, Jeffrey Skillings has yet to see the inside of a prison and no one seems to care.

One guy who does care is Director Alex Gibney who's extraordinary documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room details every crime committed by Skilling and his associates. It's a documentary so thorough and so damning that if it were shown to jurors they would convict Skilling and Lay without a shadow of a doubt.

The crimes of Enron all revolve around one clever scheme.  And what a scheme it was. Essentially this mostly unethical maneuver took Enron from merely being an energy creator to being energy traders. They converted to a new form of economics, sanctioned by goverment agencies, that allowed them to project profits where none existed. They would complete a business deal or stock transaction, claim the amount that could theoretically be made from this deal as profit and even if the deal went bad and no money was made the fake profit was still considered profit and was plowed into future product.

Much of the fake profit, such as money from Enron's failed bid to get into Broadband internet sales, was converted to Enron stock which could then be cashed by Executives even though, and this is the most important thing, their was no real profit to convert. The Enron executive in charge of the failed Broadband biz cashed out of the company with some 350 million dollars despite never getting the business out of the planning stages.

Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, who some say is being scapegoated by Lay and Skilling, was the architect of a plan that converted Enron debt to stock through a complicated set of fake companies that took on Enron debt for stock. Since Fastow was technically the head of these fake companies he skimmed off the Enron dollars from both sides of the table. It's again difficult to explain, and Mr. Gibney's film is at times a little unclear, but despite witnesses who say Fastow is a patsy, it was clear to me at least that he's as much of a weasel as Skilling and Lay.

That is just a skim off the top of the damning evidence in this astonishing documentary, much of which is based on the book of the same name by Business Week writers Bethany McClean and Peter Elkind who both appear in the film. They, along with whistleblower Sherron Watkins provide the most damning evidence. Watkins is particularly brave because she will be testifying in both Lay and Skilling's trials.

Director Alex Gibney, whose previous work includes the superfluous AFI's 100 Years 100 Movies, shows a journalist's care for facts and story structure and combines that with a dark sense of humor that is expressed in title cards about the companies slogan "Ask Why" and in his soundtrack of pop tunes which pop up in perfectly pitched moments and provide a running commentary alongside actor Peter Coyote's  occasionally mocking narration.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is an absolute must see. Required viewing for business schools which could use a shot of the ethical cleansing this film delivers. Required viewing also for anyone thinking of getting into the stock market. After watching this film and seeing how easily and complicitly the major banks of the world and the stock market analysts that everyone looks to for guidance went along with Skilling, Lay and Fastow, some to the point where they too were sent to jail, one must wonder just how safe the stock market truly is.

nron: The Smartest Guys in the Room shines a very bright light on some very startling information about the flaws inherent in our Corporate based America and does some powerful, yet entertaining and informative finger-pointing.  See this film and you might not be able to sleep thinking about your future in the hands of the next Andrew Fastow.

Movie Review: 16 to Life

16 to Life (2009) 

Directed by Becky Smith

Written by Becky Smith

Starring Hailee Hirsch, Mandy Musgrave, Shiloh Fernandez

Release Date September 19th, 2009

Published September 18th, 2009

It is Kate's (Hallee Hirsch) 16th birthday or as her doofy dad puts it "Sweet 16 and never been kissed." The never been kissed part is something Kate is painfully aware of as she wiles away the hours at a tiny food stand in McGregor Iowa, just off the Mississippi River.

"16 to Life" is about a day in the life of Kate as she hopes and prays to get that first kiss while dealing with a series of nitwits, friends, family members and perverts who frequent the tiny food stand that will be familiar to anyone who's ever lived in a town with fewer than a thousand people.

Working alongside Kate is her pal Darby (Mandy Musgrave) who rattles Kate by announcing that she plans to go all the way with her boyfriend after work on this day, in complete violation of a long time pact she and Kate had made to wait till they were truly in love before they 'did it.'

In the tiny kitchen around the corner is the near mute oddball Rene (Shiloh Fernandez). With his slightly ambiguous sexuality you get a sense right away that Rene will not be in the running to help Kate get her first kiss. Among the possibilities however, is polo wearing college boy Harley (Ryan Gourley) and sensitive, god fearing Carson (Will Rothhaar). Harley is exactly who you think he is from my brief description while Carson reveals a few more layers. It should become clear rather quickly which boy is most likely.

What "16 to Life" lacks in originality or surprises it makes up for with endless charm. Star Hallee Hirsch, whose most high profile role to date was as Anthony Edwards' troubled daughter on "E.R," is a winning personality with charm to spare. Hirsch's best quality in "16 to Life," aside from being drop dead cute, is never allowing her charm to lapse into being too clever. Her Kate is a Midwest teenager and not some hyper-smart TV creature.

The supporting cast is a terrific blend of young unknowns and one terrific veteran. Theresa Russell is a name that made a splashy debut over two decades ago in "The Last Tycoon" and "Razor's Edge" and has since settled into a comfortable niche as character actress. In "16 to Life" Russell is a steady presence balancing being the authoritative adult and the kind of adult who wants to be friends with teenagers.

Russell has a lovely sub-plot romance involving a not so blind date set up by Kate. There is history between Russell's Louise and Jaime Gomez's Ronald but it's nothing that writer-director Becky Smith needs to dwell upon, these two subtle performances tell us what we need to know about these lovely characters.

The focus of the film remains with Hallee Hirsch and that is where it should be. Hirsch is pitch perfect in the role of Kate matching her easygoing energy with the breezy, light hearted pace of Becky Smith's direction. "16 to Life" blows by like a cool breeze that kicks up once in awhile but is mostly just refreshing.

Movie Review: Bereavement

Bereavement (2011) 

Directed by Steven Mana

Written by Steven Mana

Starring Alexandra Daddario, Michael Biehn, John Savage, Spencer List

Release Date March 4th, 2011 

Published March 12th, 2011

Nature or nurture? Are killers born or bred? Writer-director Stevan Mana is clearly on the side of nurture as demonstrated by his return to the story of serial killer Martin Bristol, the character he began in the 2005 horror film "Malevolence." "Bereavement" is Martin Bristol’s origin story and accordingly it tells the story of a boy who is twisted into a killer by a madman.

Six year old Martin Bristol suffers from a rare but real disorder that causes him to not feel pain. When he is abducted by a madman named Graham Sutter, the crazed scion of a former slaughterhouse owner, the madman mistakes Martin’s disorder for some type of divine serenity.

Years pass and Martin is made to witness Graham Sutter’s madness. Martin seems at times resistant to the brutality but slowly his grip on right and wrong is slipping away. Meanwhile, another story is unfolding up the road; one of Martin’s neighbors, Jonathan Miller (Michael Biehn), is welcoming a permanent houseguest.

Jonathan’s niece Allison (Alexandra Daddario) is moving in following the death of her parents, Jonathan’s brother and sister in law. Moving from Chicago to rural Pennsylvania is as jarring and unpleasant as you expect. Allison’s finds brief comfort from her grief and boredom in running, she’s former track athlete, and a boy who lives down the road, William (Nolan Gerard Funk).

What we know and Allison doesn’t is that within a few days she will be taken to that rundown old slaughterhouse. Whether she survives her encounter with the delusional Graham Sutter and his frightened young apprentice I won’t say; Bereavement does have a modicum of suspense in the fate of the people targeted by the killer.

Director Stevan Mana is not without wit and style in "Bereavement." The wit comes in Mana’s definitive stance on Nature or Nurture. In both Graham Sutter and Martin Bristol we get definitive arguments on the notion of how killers are not born to be killers they are raised into killers.

The conversation sadly only scratches the surface as the movie has too many other interests such as repeated chase scenes and scenes of family turmoil needed to give Allison her motivation to be in places she shouldn’t. The style of "Bereavement" reveals just the kind of creepy you want in a horror film; the visuals relate directly to the mind of the killer and reveal him.

"Bereavement" isn’t a bad movie but a rather clumsy one. There are these minor flaws in the construction of the film that cannot be reconciled. First, a quibble, and maybe this one is more about my bizarre attention to useless detail but, if Allison is a track athlete then why doesn’t she have a sports bra? Every time she goes for a run in "Bereavement" her breasts are bouncing up and down in a fashion that cannot be comfortable.

Of the bigger and more relevant problems with "Bereavement" is the sloppy manner in which the killer inhabits his community. Graham Sutter is so completely creepy and menacing with his black and rust slaughterhouse truck that when what must be the fiftieth or so young woman goes missing its impossible to believe that he isn't suspect number one.

The abduction occurs in front of the open and brightly lit windows of a diner. Graham pulls his very, very recognizable vehicle into the parking lot and blocks the car of his victim in her parking space. When she gets out complaining he punches her in the face, gets out of the truck and pulls her inside. Keep in mind, her car is left running as he pulls away. Yet, no one apparently witnessed this and no one bothered to notice the girl’s car, still running, in the parking lot or thought it was the least bit suspicious.

"Bereavement" has a few other moments like that one that when taken together combine to trip up the tension that the film needs to really be effective. Like I said before, "Bereavement" isn’t so much a bad film as a clumsy film. Consider it a must see only for fans of the sequel "Malevolent."

Movie Review: Flightplan

Flightplan (2005) 

Directed by Robert Schwentke

Written by Peter A. Dowling, Billy Ray

Starring Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgard, Erika Christensen, Kate Beahan, Greta Scacchi, Sean Bean, Matt Bomer

Release Date September 23rd, 2005

Published September 23rd, 2005

Jodie Foster is an actress of particular tastes. Since her Oscar win in 1991 for Silence of The Lambs, Foster has been very particular about what films she makes, what directors she works with and what actors she co-stars. Few stars are known to be as demanding as Jodie Foster when it comes to even the minor details of her work.

Knowing this makes her latest film Flightplan so surprising and yet not puzzling. It's a surprise that Flightplan is so astonishingly bad but not puzzling as to why it's so bad.

Kyle Pratt (Foster) has lost her husband in what she believes was a tragic accident. Now returning his body to their home in New York from their temporary home in Germany, Kyle and her daughter Julia (Brent Sexton) have a 12 hour flight ahead of them. This, however, will not be a typically uncomfortable flight. Instead, at 25,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, Julia Pratt is going to go missing.

After catching a few minutes sleep in some empty seats near the back of the plane, Kyle wakes up and cannot find her daughter. Enlisting the help of the crew she exhaustively searched the plane and finds nothing. Soon Kyle is demanding to speak to the captain (Sean Bean) and catching the attention of Air Marshall Carson (Peter Sarsgaard).

Some digging by the crew reveals that no one saw Kyle and Julia get on the plane. Once on board none of the crew members or passengers can remember seeing Julia either. Even a check of the flight manifest reveals that Julia was never processed for boarding and there was no boarding pass in her name. Can it be that Julia died along with her father in that tragic accident and Julia has only imagined her daughter alive and well on the plane?

That is an intriguing setup, but in execution Flightplan, pardon the pun, fails to take off. Director Robert Schwentke, working in his first American feature, has the beats and rhythm of the thriller genre down but the script from Billy Ray and Peter Dowling hinges on one of the single worst screenwriting tricks and hackneyed cliches in the genre.

In attempting to build tension Schwentke makes every other character aside from Foster shifty-eyed and suspicious. Everyone is a suspect, fellow passengers, crew members and such but no one other than Foster's character is portrayed as remotely sympathetic. If it weren't for the goofy thriller music and the shifty-eyed acting everyone on the film other than Foster might come off as rational compared to Foster's wacked mommy.

The super suspicious supporting cast is meant to create isolation which in turn creates more drama, especially considering the already confining location. However, to make such a method work the film needed Jodie Foster to deliver a character the audience feels for and wants to follow. As great an actress as Foster is, her Kyle Pratt is too much of a nut and a flake for anyone to really feel for her.

In her return to the American big screen (she appeared in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement a year or so ago) after a three year hiatus, exascerbated by production delays on her directorial effort Flora Plum, Jodie Foster struggles with a shrill portrayal of a mother on the edge. Foster's Kyle Pratt can be forgiven for becoming unhinged after the death of her husband and disapppearance of her daughter but the character reaches a level of unreasonable behavior that would have had any other passenger sedated and chained to their seat.

Flightplan reminded me in a weird way of the 2000 Harrison Ford-Michele Pfeiffer film What Lies Beneath. Both films were thrillers with big important twists at the end and both films failed in delivering climaxes that matched the intriguing set ups. In What Lies Beneath Michele Pfeiffer delivers half of a great performance before being undone by series of poorly executed twists. Jodie Foster is similarly undone in Flightplan by twists that defy both logic and taste. Unlike Ms. Pfeiffer, however, the problems with Flightplan have as much to do with the scripting as with Jodie Foster's performance.

The most damnable sin Foster commits is simply not being likable. She never connects with the child playing her daughter and without a sympathetic supporting character as backup the audience is always outside the character watching her as if we were one of her highly annoyed fellow passengers.

After some terrific buzz for his performances in Shattered Glass and Garden State  Peter Sarsgaard has failed in attempts at crossing over to more mainstream fare. His dreary performance in the Kate Hudson thriller Skeleton Key and yet another creepy performance in Flightplan have Sarsgaard on the road to some real bad typecasting. Sean Bean as the captain of the plane and Erika Christenson as one of the flight attendants come off a little better than Sarsgard but not by much. Everytime either one of them looks like they might break from the constrictions of the plot and become sympathetic they are shuffled off screen.

It's a classic Hitchcockian thriller setup-- missing person, confined space, suspicious characters all around-- but the plot of Flightplan never congeals into the kind of crowd pleasing tension-fest that Hitch excelled at. Rather, Flightplan is almost laughably inept in creating tension; that shifty-eyed supporting cast for one is a real hoot as they really do seem to all have the same pair of nervous, wandering eyes with evil intent in every glare regardless of whether they actually are evil.

The film is very well shot; watch out for some really terrific maneuvering through the limited cabin space of the plane that will leave you wondering how they managed to do that.  Schwentke makes great use of his setting and the camerawork at times is able to create the tension the script fails to provide. Great camerawork however is not the kind of rousing crowd pleaser that us movie lovers would like to believe and in the end there is very little in Flightplan that would draw anyone in.

There is now a protest in the works against Flightplan that raises an interesting and disturbing point. The protest gives away an important plot point so if you don't want to know about it, skip ahead.....

The union representing flight attendants is objecting to the portrayal of flight crew and air marshals being portrayed in the film as terrorists. This raises an interesting question; in the post 9/11 world is it appropriate to portray flight crew as terrorists or is it simply irresponsible. Certainly no one profession is immune to being portrayed negatively but there's something unseemly about it. I don't necessarily side with the flight attendant's protest, it is just a movie after all, but I certainly see their point.

All controversies aside Flightplan is a disappointment for fans of Jodie Foster, many of whom felt Panic Room suffered from a similarly overwrought performance. There is a pattern of isolation forming in Jodie Foster's work, and I'm not just talking about settings-- panic rooms, airplanes and such. I mean isolation in the sense that she has cut herself off more and more from her co-stars, specifically her male co-stars. The men of Panic Room and now Flightplan are all bad guys or highly suspsicious and only she can protect that which she loves from these evil men.

I'm not pleading sexism against  Jodie Foster but she has played a large role in shaping her characters with a specific rule about love interests, specifically that there are none in her films. This lack of strong support from male or even female characters, aside from children who are more victim than character, is isolating Jodie Foster from the audience. If no one in the film likes her why should we?

Movie Review: Yes God Yes

Yes God Yes (2020) 

Directed by Karen Maine

Written by Karen Maine

Starring Natalia Dyer, Timothy Simons, Susan Blackwater, Alisha Boe 

Release Date July 24th, 2020

Published July 24th, 2020

Yes God Yes is the sweetest little masturbation themed comedy I’ve ever seen. This debut starring feature for Stranger Things ensemble player Natalie Dyer pokes gentle fun at the hypocrisy of those who try to tell others what to do with their own bodies. The target is specifically religious but the prudish in general could learn valuable lessons about not trying to force your opinions or morality onto others from this odd, unambitious little comedy. 

Yes God Yes stars Natalie Dyer as Alice, a teenager who is only beginning to learn about her body. Recently rumors have started that she had performed a euphemistically named sex act on one of her classmates and while she’s vexed over how the rumor spread so quickly when nothing actually happened, she’s more curious about what this sex act actually is and just generally curious about sex in general. 

The film is set somewhere in the late 90’s or early 2000’s. We know this from the soundtrack featuring soundalike Christina Aguilera tunes, Alice’s old school Nokia cellphone and her dial up internet which she uses to scroll through chat rooms. One day while Alice is playing an innocent game of word association in a chatroom, she’s invited to a private chat by a fellow player. The man proceeds to invite her to what we used to call cyber-sex and she’s up for it, until she’s nearly caught by her mom with her hand somewhere it shouldn’t be if your mom is around. 

Alice’s obsession with masturbation is consuming her every thought lately and with everyone speculating about her wild sex life via rumors, she’s grown only more curious. In an effort to put these impure thoughts out of her mind, she decides to attend a weekend school trip with her Catholic School. Alice hopes a weekend away from the internet and her school and the various temptations therein, she can reconnect with God and stop obsessing over touching herself. 

This goes bad almost immediately as Alice becomes an accidental witness to some of her fellow students, supposed leaders of this ‘Christian’ retreat, committing many sins. The hypocrisy of her fellow students, and even one of her pastors, is the last straw for Alice who sets out to finally accomplish her goal of… well… self-pleasure would be a safe way to put it, she wants to touch herself or someone else as soon as possible. 

That last paragraph might lead you to believe that Yes God Yes is explicit and R-Rated. That’s not necessarily the case. Yes, the film has explicit themes but the movie is much more clever than explicit. Writer-Director Karen Maine aims for sweetness and a lovely sort of authenticity tinged with a broad sense of humor. 

Movie Review: Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans (2009) 

Directed by Werner Herzog 

Written by William M. Finkelstein

Starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Jennifer Coolidge, Val Kilmer

Release Date November 20th, 2009

Published November 20th, 2009 

As detective Terrence McDonagh surveys the bloody scene before him, three dead gangsters, a terror shoots through his drug addled mind: "Shoot him again" he shouts. "Why?" says one of his thug cohorts. "Because, his soul's still dancing." The camera pans the scene passing over the dead body of some fat Italian gangster and pausing on what only McDonagh can see, that same gangster's lithe, balletic soul spinning wildly in a break-dance before one final gunshot drops the soul to the floor.

This scene is indicative of what you will get in Werner Herzog's blazingly unconventional re-imagining of Abel Ferrara's darkly comic drama Bad Lieutenant. If this scene intrigues you wait till you see what else Herzog has up his sleeve. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a head trip, dark, an ultra-violent comedy that features yet another comeback performance by Nicolas Cage.

Terence McDonagh wasn't a great cop before he got hooked on drugs. As we meet him, Terence and his partner Stevie (Val Kilmer) are two of the last guys out of the precinct as the waters of Katrina are rising. Finding one last prisoner trapped in a cell, Terence and Stevie begin making wagers on how long it will take for the prisoner to drown. Eventually, Terence decides to rescue the guy but not without consequence.

The rescue injured Terence's back leaving him slumped on one side of his body and in constant pain. Terence deals with the pain through a steady stream of hardcore drugs. Cocaine keeps him going but also fuels his dark side. Post accident, Terence patrols the dark corners of a New Orleans that, post-Katrina, is a sort of Sodom before the rapture place. In a scene of ugly humor turning to near horror, Terence rousts a couple coming out of a nightclub and, well, I will leave you to discover what happens next.

In his private life Terence is in love with a high class prostitute named Frankie (Eva Mendes). She is also hooked on cocaine and the two fuel each others addiction by turning drugs into the fuel of their sex life.

The plot of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans kicks in with the murder of a drug dealing family from Africa in one of the most violent neighborhoods in New Orleans. The cops quickly figure out that the biggest dealer in town is the most likely killer but catching him will take Terence to even stranger and more drugged out places.

Director Werner Herzog is not so much concerned with the twists and turns of a murder plot as he is with giving Nicolas Cage a stage on which to exhibit the talent we all knew was there from his Oscar winning turn in Leaving Las Vegas. Detective McDonagh is the other side of the coin from Ben in Leaving Las Vegas, if the other side of the coin were dirtier and with an even more pronounced death wish.

Yes, the usual Cage histrionics are on display. His hyper-kinetic babbling, his wild haired, wild eyed look, but, this time, it works because the character and the context given by William Finkelstein's excellent script and Werner Herzog's director are the perfect fuel for Cage's antics.

Wildly violent, darkly humorous and directed with freewheeling relish and great skill, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans pays tribute to the disturbing original film while giving the material his own black comic spin. The film also returns Nicolas Cage to Oscar winning form and that is just part of what makes Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans brilliant.

Movie Review: 2012

2012 (2009) 

Directed by Roland Emmerich 

Written by Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser 

Starring John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson

Release Date November 13th, 2009

Published November 12th, 2009 

2012 hysteria has gotten so out of hand that NASA was compelled to put out a press release stating that the Mayan Calendar does not predict the end of the world. Indeed, the planets will align in 2012 but they will as they have numerous times before without massive worldwide destruction. Could there be a better endorsement for the new goofball disaster flick 2012? This latest project from world destruction expert Roland Emmerich goes off the rails of reality from jumpstreet but knows it, accepts it, and even has a little fun being all earnest and serious about stuff blowin' up real good.

John Cusack leads an ensemble cast in 2012 as Jackson Curtis. A failed writer, Jackson drives a limousine for a living and that is how he arrives to take his two kids camping for the weekend. Jackson is estranged from his wife Kate (Amanda Peet) who has remarried to a plastic surgeon, Gordon (Thomas McCarthy).

Jackson is taking the kids camping at a rather odd moment. All over California giant cracks are forming. There are a number of mini-earthquakes and other ominous signs of doom that Jackson and family choose to ignore. Meanwhile, across the country a government geologist, Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has discovered that the end of the world is nigh.

The sun is firing off flares that become neutrinos that are heating the earth's core and blah, blah, blah, let's just say science is merely a touchstone for 2012 and leave it at that. The necessary info is that the world will soon end. What luck that there is a solution in place. Giant ships called Arcs will whisk the wealthy, privileged and connected of the world to safety on the high seas while the average folks die horribly.

Thanks to a wacked out, Art Bell wannabe, well played by Woody Harrelson doing a fabulous Dennis Hopper impression, ....Jackson.... finds out about the Arcs and aims to get his kids, ex-wife and even his romantic rival to ..Asia.. where the Arcs are being loaded up.

Basic set up, establish the stakes, establish our everyman hero and then rain down the CGI destruction. You have to give this to Roland Emmerich, the idea is efficient. If only the actual film were so cut to the quick. 2012, despite many guilty pleasures, lingers for nearly three hours blowing up monuments and killing dignitaries.

If you enjoy carnage and human sacrafice then you may marvel at watching priests crushed by the Sistine Chapel. The Pope gets crushed by the ....Vatican.... and the President of the ....United States....? He gets an aircraft carrier named for John F. Kennedy dropped on him.

Roland Emmerich really enjoys these scenes to much. Really, it's rather unseemly, the pleasure that Emmerich seems to take in staging these CGI deaths. It's comparable to the joys that a director like Eli Roth takes in torturing his average Jane characters, minus the misogyny but with a healthy dose of blasphemy.

It is that unseemly quality, along with the film's exorbitant length, that makes me resist liking 2012. And I really kinda want to. The CGI destruction is well crafted and even kind of exciting, especially watching a commuter plane fly between falling buildings.

John Cusack and Chiwetel Ejiofor are shockingly effective in building human surrogates from the rubble of expository dialogue, running and screaming that are the main components of their characters. Amand Peet, Danny Glover and Thandie Newton round out a main cast right at home in a disaster movie ensemble. 

I kind of want to recommend 2012 because there is some real good camp and some terrific CGI. Unfortunately, the film overstays its welcome and becomes a little to blood lusty for my taste. The seemingly random fates of well known heads of state, and a few filler characters, leave a bad taste that I just cannot shake. 

2012 is a movie for the forgiving fan of big, dumb loud, world ending blockbusters only.

Movie Review: A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol (2009) 

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Written by Robert Zemeckis 

Starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright, Carey Elwes

Release Date November 6th, 2009 

Published November 5th, 2009

Words associated with Robert Zemeckis's endeavor into CGI, Motion Capture and Digital 3D: Groundbreaking, lifelike, extraordinary, creepy, scary, goofy, rubbery. Opinions have varied on the success of the now three films that Mr. Zemeckis has crafted with his unique technical skills and toys. The Polar Express was magical in story but creepy in rendering. Beowulf was masterful in many technical aspects and still skin-crawlingly awkward in others. Now comes A Christmas Carol and again opinions vary.

Charles Dickens' legendary tale of skinflint turned softy Ebenezer Scrooge is among the most famous holiday tales ever told. There are numerous adaptations featuring as varied a group of players as Kelsey Grammar, Bill Murray even the Muppets who have given life to Scrooge over the years since Dickens popularized the concept of karmic retribution for lack of being charitable. Disney turned him into a duck. Children, even today, can recite the basics of the story from memory.

On Christmas Day the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his late business partner Jakob Marley. He is told that he will be visited by three ghosts. Indeed, haunted he is by the ghosts Christmas past, present and future. Each offers a lesson to Scrooge that if he does not change his miserly ways he will not be mourned by anyone, he will die penniless and alone. Reformed by this experience, Scrooge buys a giant Christmas goose for his longtime, terribly put upon assistant, Bob Cratchit and pays the medical bills of Bob's son Tiny Tim. Scrooge also, finally, attends the Christmas of his loving, kind nephew Fred. 

Dickens' tale is brilliant in its simplicity. But, why bring A Christmas Carol back again? According to Director Zemeckis it was one of his favorite stories of all time. All well and good but does his love justify yet another take on this oft told tale? No, frankly. Especially since Zemeckis brings no new insights to the story. Jim Carrey's Scrooge is faithful to a fault and leaves one to wonder: who hires Jim Carrey and binds him to a character so thoroughly that no wacky schtick can escape?

There is hardly a whisper of whimsy or moment of mugging mirth. Why bother hooking Carrey's well known face up to all that mo-cap technology when you have restrained him so tightly to such a dark, draconian character. Even in Scrooge's happy turn in the end Carrey remains restrained, allowing only for a smile and a brief jig. No actor wants to be shackled to a persona but Jim Carrey is JIM CARREY, his persona overwhelms the notion that he can simply be plugged into a character and have audiences simply accept a straightforward, non Carrey-like performance. 

A Christmas Tale lacks life or any form of whimsy whatsoever and that is not something that works for an animated film the animated spirit is greatly lacking. The one thing it seems that Robert Zemeckis has brought to A Christmas Carol is a dark vision of Dickens' dark words. Dickens' imagery has always been of the nightmare variety, this version of A Christmas Carol captures that vision with frightful faith. I would warn against taking children younger than 13 to this film.

That makes this version of A Christmas Carol more of an adult feature and that would seem to defeat the purpose of the adaptation and animation. This should be a story for kids but parents who take young kids will only come away with frightened youngsters. Sure, their is the happy ending to salve the wounds but many parents and kids will not make it that far.

Far too scary for young children and too well worn for adults, this version of A Christmas Carol seems at a loss to justify its existence. Why another take on this story? Was it just an exercise of the technology? A chance to be faithful to the dark images of Dickens that many adaptations had softened? I cannot tell you and I wonder if Mr. Zemeckis could either.

Movie Review: Cirque Du Freak The Vampire's Assistant

Cirque Du Freak The Vampire's Assistant (2009) 

Directed by Paul Weitz

Written by Paul Weitz, Brian Helgeland 

Starring John C. Reilly Chris Massoglia, Josh Hutcherson, Ken Watanabe, Ray Stevenson

Release Date October 23rd, 2009 

Published October 22nd, 2009

Vampires are hot in Hollywood thanks to Twilight. That massive hit film will spawn a sequel later this year. directed by Chris Weitz, of American Pie fame. Twilight also likely played a part in the film adaptation of another lit based Vampire tale. Ironically this too has been directed by someone named Weitz. Paul Weitz brings Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant to the big screen ahead of his brother Chris's New Moon. It's fair to assume Chris will have a great deal more success than Paul has had with this abysmal mishmash of kid flick and vamp flick.

Chris Massoglia takes the lead in Cirque Du Freak as Darren. A spider obsessed power nerd, Darren is modestly popular at school but not exactly king of the school. His status is dragged down a bit by his hot headed best friend Steve (Josh Hutcherson) whose own obsession with vampires will soon land them both in hot water.

One afternoon as the boys are lamenting a lack of things to do in their small town they find a very intriguing flyer. It's an ad for something called Cirque Du Freak and it promises something well beyond either boy's previous experience. Taking in the show they witness a woman who can grow back her limbs, a man with two stomachs and finally a vampire magician named Crepsley (John C. Reilly).

When the Cirque is broken up early by an invading mob of angry townspeople Darren ends up stealing Crepsley's prized and dangerous spider. Steve meanwhile tries to become a vampire and is turned away by Crepsley. Soon, because of the spider and a deal with Crepsley it is Darren who ends up a vampire. Steve meanwhile turns to Crepsley's enemy for help.

There is a great deal more minutias in this plot but I just didn't care enough to detail it. Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant is an all out mess of plot strands, extranneous characters and a complete waste of time. The nature of the film is as the start of a franchise so going in you know their will be no resolution. What is surprising is how little you care whether the story resolves anything at all.

Paul Weitz is a talented writer and director with a strong wit and daring sensibility. His Amercan Idol parody American Dreamz was also a disaster but one you have to respect for taking big, daring risks. That film walked a tightrope and fell off but was brave in its failures.

There is nothing remotely brave or even daring about Cirque Du Freak. Piggybacking off the success of other vampire franchises and a successful book series, The Vampire's Assistant is just lame kiddie fare dressed up in halloween makeup and dumped onto the screen with a minimum of coherence.

It simply doesn't work. Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant knocks off a few boring vampire cliches, keeps the blood and death to a very bare minimum and fails in every way to find something interesting or vaguely entertaining to do with it's sprawling premise and characters.

Movie Review Cold Souls

Cold Souls (2009) 

Directed by Sophie Barthes

Written by Sophie Barthes

Starring Paul Giamatti, Emily Watson, David Straithairn

Release Date August 7th, 2009

Published January 10th, 2010 

As I watched the angsty existential flick Cold Souls, a movie about an actor for whom the weight of his soul is so heavy he agrees to have it removed and placed in storage, I could not keep my pop culture soaked brain from flashing to the brilliant episode of The Simpsons in which Bart sold his soul to Millhouse for 5 dollars and then suffered an existential crisis.

In a mere 22 minutes The Simpsons manages to do what Cold Souls fails in more than 100 minutes, be funny about something as complex and intellectual as the existence of the soul. Cold Souls knows how to refer to the complexity of other works on the weight of the soul but not so clever of its own accord.

Paul Giamatti plays an alternative universe version of actor Paul Giamatti in Cold Souls. This version of Paul lives in New York is married to Claire (Emily Watson) and is currently acting in a production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (note the namecheck of Chekhov). The role of Uncle Vanya has become a heavy burden for Paul, so heavy that it has soaked into his real life.

Weighed down by Vanya, Paul finds possible solace in an article in The New Yorker about a service that can remove your soul. Though some might assume this was a bit of literary whimsy, we quickly find that indeed this business does exist, on Roosevelt Island of all places, and that it's in the phonebook.

Paul investigates and after a brief, rather bizarre conversation with Dr. Flintstein (David Straithairn) Paul is being inserted into a machine and his surprisingly chickpea sized soul is extracted for storage. Returning to his life he finds he stinks as an actor with no soul likely would (hello Freddie Prinze Jr.) and is soon begging for his soul back.

What happens next I leave you to discover. Or not, I am not recommending Cold Souls. Where most critics have loved Cold Souls, 80% positive on Rottentomatoes.com, I was not blown away by the films Meta humor or simpleminded name checking of people and places associated with soul crushing pain.

Cold Souls is intellectualism for the poser intellect. If you are aware that Russia in winter is often associated with soul crushing oppression or that Chekhov is weighted with existential angst then you are just the right audience to find the posing of Cold Souls deep.

Not to critique my fellow critics but Cold Souls is just the kind of imitation of clever that we like to praise beyond it's worth. Cold Souls allows critics to show off that Philosophy Minor from college that we all wished was our major while keeping things on a level simple enough for those of a more average intelligence. It's the height of pretension without all of the hoity toity-ness of actually having to think.

The Simpsons episode was straightforward about being simple satire, the reference to Neruda being a brilliant shout out and not a statement of genius from the writers. Cold Souls wants to be considered brilliant by association. That feeling extends right down to the casting of Paul Giamatti who lends his preternaturally tortured mug along with his name to the proceedings. 

Giamatti brings credible angst and intellect to Cold Souls but he is trapped in writer-director Sophie Barthes attempt at high minded populism, a sort of pop philosophy, easy to follow for those who didn't spend there time with the works of Emmanuel Kant or Thomas Hillman. Anyone with a minor in pop culture can follow Cold Souls and while that accessibility isn't necessarily a bad thing it is highly pretentious and more than a little irritating. 

Cold Souls pretends toward existentialism while keeping things simple enough for the rabble to follow. Better works ask the audience to come up to their level. When The Simpsons referenced Pablo Neruda millions of Americans ran to their computers to check it out. Cold Souls sticks with the relatively well known marks of the weighted soul and fails to offer little more than the reference. 

Movie Review: Footloose

Footloose (2011) 

Directed by Craig Brewer

Written by Craig Brewer, Dean Pitchford

Starring Kenny Wormald, Julianne Hough, Miles Teller, Dennis Quaid

Release Date October 14th, 2011

Published October 14th, 2011

Critics can tend to overthink a movie. In the case of "Footloose," that is a deadly pursuit. "Footloose" does not invite inspection. This candy coated musical is all about putting on a show with pluck and good humor and not about the mechanics of great filmmaking. The only intention behind Footloose is to make a quick buck off of nostalgia and if it happens to not completely stink out loud, that's an unintended bit of good luck. 

Ren McCormick (Kenny Wormald) has moved to Bomont, Tennessee from Boston following the death of his mother. Moving in with his Aunt Lulu (Kim Dickens) and Uncle Wes (Ray McKinnon), Ren finds himself not merely in a new home but seemingly a new planet. Bomont, Tennessee could not be any different from Boston. Foremost among the differences is a ban on public dancing put in place by a local crusading Preacher, Shaw Moore (Dennis Quaid).

The preacher's daughter, Ariel (Julianne Hough) immediately catches Ren's eye, setting up a pair of showdown's for Ren and the preacher as he intends to fight the dance ban and date Shaw Moore's daughter. Credit Dennis Quaid for bringing a seriousness and even gravity to "Footloose" that the movie needs in order to keep from tipping completely into parody. Quaid is so good opposite Hough and Wormald that he makes the novice actors better.

Of course, "Footloose" is not about acting or drama, it's about nostalgia, dancing and a good soundtrack. The soundtrack of "Footloose" is a rather bizarre stew of country, hip hop, and covers of tunes from the original movie. Blake Shelton's cover of Kenny Loggins legendary title track is as rousing and cheesy as the original while Deniece Williams' original "Let's Hear for the Boy" makes a welcome comic appearance in the same context it did in the original "Footloose," as Ren teaches his new pal Willard (Miles Teller) how to dance.

Other call backs to the original movie include a reprise of Quiet Riot's "Metal Health" and a cover of Ann Wilson and Mike Reno's cheeseball ballad "Almost Paradise." These nostalgic touches make clear that director Craig Brewer has as much respect for the original "Footloose" as long time fans do. Brewer even manages to keep Ren's angry dance solo dance in the empty factory. No Kenny Loggins in this version, a rather forgettable hip hop song is in its place, but the heavy cheese dramatics are still there in great, unintentional comic effect.

That's another interesting thing about "Footloose;" the film can be enjoyed on an earnest level or an ironic one. If you are inclined to pick away at the movie you can, and you can have fun doing it, the movie has a certain awareness of its place in the movie world but not so much that it ruins a proper ironic appreciation of it. Bottom line, "Footloose" is just plain fun; a terrifically cheesy pop culture dessert all sugar and calories and nothing remotely good for you. But it tastes so good.