Movie Review: Bubble

Bubble (2006) 

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Written by Coleman Hough

Starring Debbie Doebereiner, Dustin James Ashley, Misty Dawn Wilkins

Release Date January 27th, 2006 

Published January 26th, 2025

In 2006 Steven Soderbergh, the multiple-times Oscar nominee and preeminent auteur launched a new career as a film entrepreneur. With the help of billionaire Mark Cuban, Soderbergh attempted to change the way movies are distributed to the masses. The idea? Day and date releasing. Soderbergh's then new film, the low budget indie flick, Bubble, was released to theaters, TV and DVD all in less than a week.

Does this mean that Soderbergh invented day and date releasing? No, or maybe, it's debatable if he was the pioneer in that idea. What is not debatable is that Bubble is an intriguing little experiment in its own right. The small-town murder mystery starring non-professional actors and shot on location by Soderbergh with a single camera, is a hypnotic, disturbing little flick about small town artifice.

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review: Daddy's Girl

Daddy's Girl (2018) 

Directed by Julian Richards 

Written by Timmy Hill 

Starring Jemma Dallender, Costas Mandylor, Jesse Moss, Britt McKillip

Release Date September 29th, 2020

Published August 23rd, 2022 

Daddy’s Girl opens on an ambiguously ominous sight. A very sad young woman sits at a kitchen table with a gun in front of her. It appears that she is going to kill herself before we cut away and begin the story. The kitchen table scene is in the future, the next act of the movie will be about how we arrive at that kitchen table and what has made this sad young woman so desperate as to be considering ending her life. 

The young woman at the kitchen table is Zoe (Jemma Dallender). Zoe’s life is as tragic and horrifying as the opening scene indicates. Zoe lives in a backwoods town with her father, John Stone (Costas Mandylor). John is a serial murderer who uses his daughter as bait to lure in his victims. The two go to bars and seek out young women on their own, preferably drifters who might not be missed all that much. 

These young women are seduced by the idea that if this older man has this beautiful younger woman on his arm that he must be harmless. That’s when he slips something into their drink. Zoe becomes part of the seduction and the idea of kinky sex drives these young women to go home with the couple. There is no sex waiting in that backwoods home however. Instead, John takes these women into his dungeon and tortures for having thought they would go home with a man and a woman for sex. 

John is not interested in sex with his victims, he only has eyes for his daughter. Yeah, the movie appears to go there. I can’t say for sure that John is actually Zoe’s biological father but she does call him daddy and your skin crawls when she does. Zoe is not fully complicit in John’s crimes. The film indicates strongly that she’s been groomed and abused into this position and that perhaps John had murdered Zoe’s mother in order to frighten her into compliance. 

John’s double life as serial killer and loving father/owner of a small town mechanic shop becomes threatened by the arrival of a new young deputy. Deputy Scott Walker has recently returned to his hometown from several tours in Iraq as a military police officer and has been tasked with investigating the disappearance of a local girl. Scott is not the only newcomer in town as he meets a drifter named Jennifer (Britt McKillip) just as she is arriving in town. He warns her about missing girls in town and she indicates that she’s not staying long. 

That last part is deliberately vague as Jennifer has a part to play in how Daddy’s Girl plays out. Daddy’s Girl is a nasty little slasher movie that never finds a second gear after general cruelty toward women. It’s not that the movie is nasty and misogynistic enough to be memorably awful. Rather, it’s a more mundane sort of misogyny rather typical to the horror genre and thus nothing special. I can’t bring myself to completely condemn Daddy’s Girl, it’s neither poorly made enough or hateful enough for harsh condemnation. 

No, in fact, in the performances of Jemma Dallender and Britt Mckillip we have two charismatic women who give the story more credibility than the movie can bear. Both actresses are quite compelling with Dallender having a lot of trauma to play with and McKillip a mysteriousness that is intriguing. Their coinciding stories are remarkable for how these two actresses play their roles. It's a shame that their performances are undermined by how trashy the movie around them is. 

Daddy's Girl wallows in the muck of the genre and it never feels organic or well displayed. Instead, the trashiness takes away from what little good there is about Daddy's Girl. 

Movie Review: Eros

Eros (2004) 

Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Wong Kar Wai

Written by Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh, Torino Guerra

Starring Gong Li, Chang Chen, Alan Arkin, Robert Downey Jr, Regina Nemni 

Release Date April 8th, 2005 

Published August 18th, 2005 

Three brilliant directors come together for a series of short films under the title Eros. Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michaelangelo Antonioni contribute short films to a trilogy that via the title Eros are about sex... or are they.

The Hand, Mr. Wong's contribution, is sexual in subtext but seems more about an unusual and somewhat disfunctional connection between two strangers. Chang Chen plays a tailor, a mere apprentice when we first meet him, who is assigned to make a dress for a high class prostitute, Ms. Hua played by Gong Li. In their first meeting Li's prostitute sexually humiliates the tailor. She claims it will make him a better tailor and she's right.

Soon he is inspired and continues for a number of years crafting beautiful outfits for the prostitute. The nature of the relationship is mostly business but as time passes and the prostitute falls on hard times she finds that the tailor, though he has never touched her, is the only man who has ever really known her body. The two have an erotic connection through the clothing that is more powerful than other relationship either has ever had.

I love the way Wong Kar Wai uses slow motion. By simply slowing the frames by a fraction and showing his actors moving at just slightly slower rate of speed he gives the impression of a montage without edits. The slow motion marks the slow passage of time. The film covers this relationship over a number of years and they pass in dreamlike fashion.

The Hand is unquestionably the best of the three films in Eros.

Steven Soderbergh's contribution to Eros is called Equilibrium and it stars Robert Downey Jr. as an ad executive and Alan Arkin as his shrink. Shot mostly in black and white the film has the look of a noir detective story with rascotro lighting, Downey wearing the traditional private dick garb, the fedora and trenchcoat and there is a mystery albeit one from a dream.

In the dream there is a beautiful naked stranger, a nondescript hotel room and a ringing phone. Dream analysts I'm sure could have a field day with this scenario however neither we nor Mr. Soderbergh is as interested in the dream as we are in the bizarre behavior of Arkin as the shrink. While Downey lays on the couch with his back turned and his eyes closed, Arkin is frantically trying to get the attention of someone outside his office window. What was the point of this film? I have no idea. I know it's exceptionally well shot. The look is beautiful and every angle Soderbergh chooses is very eye catching, often distracting from the somewhat meandering plot.

Equilibrium is an interesting exercise in filmmaking technique and maybe if you are more observant than me you can glean some hidden meaning from it. On that basis I recommend checking it out.

You however might as well skip Michaelangelo Antonioni's contribution to Eros, an Italian exercise in softcore porn called  The Dangerous Thread. The film is a pointless and painfully protracted exercise in female exploitation. As a couple argues about the end of their relationship, they pass a beautiful woman in a restaurant. The man asks if his soon to be ex knows the woman and she does. The woman lives in a castle just a few miles away. The man visits this beautiful stranger and with a few words they are in bed. Then the beautiful woman and the ex girlfriend each go for a walk on the beach in the nude. They meet somewhere in the middle and simply regard each other for a moment and the film ends.

I must say that Mr. Antonioni is a legend. I have seen his L'Avventurra and was blown away by its beauty. But now at more than 90 years old the master has become nothing more than an ogling old man. That is fine in private but on film it's rather tedious.

Documentary Review: Earth

Earth (2007) 

Directed by Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Planet Earth 

Release Date April 22nd, 2009 

Published April 22nd, 2009 

We are definitely spoiled when it comes to the modern nature documentary. With what the BBC and the Discovery Channel did with the documentary Planet Earth and what Imax filmmakers have contributed in just the last decade, the allegedly new documentary Earth from Disney looks a little like a modern Mutual Of Omaha production. Then again, the whole thing is basically lifts and leftovers from Planet Earth, what does it matter.

Disney's Earth arrives on Earth Day 2009 and feels like a cynical capitalization on the burgeoning holiday. More and more schools and businesses have come to embrace Earth Day and that makes a venture like Earth potentially viable in the marketplace, if not such an artistic endeavour.

That is not a shot at the filmmakers, directors Allistair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, did some astonishing work. It's a shot at Disney for recycling the work of the BBC and the Discovery Channel and pretending it's something new. The fact is, some of the footage cut together for Earth was actually used in Discovery's 12 hour doc that transfixed documentary lovers in 2008.

When not recycling, Earth fills out 90 minutes with the stuff that didn't make Planet Earth. This amounts to some comic relief, monkeys and penguins, and some striking shots of Great White Sharks and baby ducks learning to fly for the first time. Don't get me wrong, even the stuff cut from Planet Earth is pretty impressive looking, it just feels icky that Disney refused to come up with something of their own instead of feasting on scraps.

At the very least, the Mouse House could have released Earth in Disney Digital projection, if not using their dazzling 3D. But no, the release is on average, everyday film stock and thus even loses a generation of quality from the awesome HD presentation of Planet Earth.

For school field trips and those desperate for a way to celebrate Earth Day indoors, Earth may be worth the ticket price but if you have seen the Discovery documentary Planet Earth or can get over to the IMAX for any one of their current offerings, you can skip Earth.

Movie Review: Uglydolls

Uglydolls (2019) 

Directed by Kelly Asbury

Written by Allison Peck 

Starring Kelly Clarkson, Nick Jonas, Janelle Monae, Blake Shelton, Pitbull, Wanda Sykes 

Release Date May 3rd, 2019

Published May 3rd, 2019 

The mindless simplicity of Uglydolls is almost charming. The guilelessness, the complete, earnest, lack of edge, approaches something genuinely appealing. I can’t sit here and tell you that I, a 43 year old, single, male, film critic, enjoyed anything about Uglydolls but there is a limit to the amount of disdain I can set aside for something so legitimately harmless. There is nothing remotely offensive about Uglydolls, even as there is nothing particularly interesting about it either. 

Uglydolls features the voice of pop-reality star Kelly Clarkson as Moxy, an uglydoll who is not aware that ‘ugly’ is meant as an insult. She, along with the rest of the denizens of Uglyville, have no notion that they are not simply, acceptably, who they are. The people of Uglyville have no pretension, they have no capacity to judge the others who have judged them as lesser. That many of them are not aware that a world beyond the walls of the city exist probably helps matters. 

Moxy however, is obsessed with the notion of an outside world where she can fulfill her destiny as a beloved stuffed animal to a child in need. In order to get to the outside where, she recruits her dog, Uglydog (Rapper Pitbull), Luckybat (Leehom Wong), Wage (Wanda Sykes) and Babo (Gabriel Iglesias) to climb to a giant hole in Ugly mountain that she believes must lead to the outside world and to kids and homes and love. 

For the most part, Moxy is right. The real world exists but to get there, the Uglydolls will have to cross through, Perfection. Perfection is where perfect dolls are built and judged on whether or not they are perfect enough to go through the portal to the real world. Even among the perfect there are those who aren’t quite perfect enough, a fact we learn in song from the dreamiest man in Perfection, Lou (Nick Jonas). 

Lou acts as a gatekeeper who only allows perfect dolls to go through and become a cherished friend to a child in need. Lou uses his handsome looks and big, beautiful singing voice as a cudgel against anything deemed imperfect. Though he welcomes the Uglydolls initially, it only takes singing a few bars for Lou to unleash his evil toward the newcomers. Lou’s desire to appear benevolent toward Moxy and friends kicks the story into a perfunctory third act teaming with simplistic metaphors. 

Getting annoyed at the predictability or over-familiarity of Uglydolls is a fool's errand. This is barely a movie and what is there is of an actual movie isn’t all that much. Uglydolls features a cast of well known and charming singers and actors who bring a good deal of energy and good cheer to their otherwise unmemorable performances. Strangely, the villain, voiced by Nick Jonas does most of the singing during the movie. Lou has multiple songs and a reprise of one of the songs during what is only an 87 minute movie. 

Uglydolls is a musical though none of the songs in the movie are particularly memorable. Each of the songs are either mindless child self-esteem boosters or plot heavy exposition by Jonas’s villain. None of the songs are likely to have a life outside of the movie on pop radio, spotify or YouTube. Kelly Clarkson, Jonas and Blake Shelton have name recognition and huge fanbases but even devotees of their work are unlikely to even be aware of Uglydolls and its bland soundtrack. 

There aren’t many laughs in Uglydolls. For the most part, the film is mildly amusing at best. The kindest thing I can say, from my admittedly not all that valuable perspective of this genre, is that the film is not offensive. Uglydolls is harmless, brainless, minor entertainment that kids 8 years old and under can safely consume and forget about, aside from maybe wanting to buy their own Moxy doll or one of Moxy’s fellow Uglydolls.

There is perhaps more money in merchandising Uglydolls than there is in making this movie. The sales of stuffed Uglydolls will likely go well beyond the box office of Uglydolls and there’s nothing wrong with that. Uglydolls is one of those rare, utterly inconsequential movies that doesn’t need to exist but doesn’t change anything by existing. The world will not remember Uglydolls in a fews after release and I can feel it already leaving my mind even faster. 

I do recommend Uglydolls however, for parents in desperate need of a TV nanny, something for little, little kids to enjoy for bright colors, a forgettably safe empowerment message and something so ridiculously safe for their developing minds, it might as well be a nap in the form of a movie. 

Movie Review: Curse of the Golden Flower

Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) 

Directed by Zhang Yimou 

Written by Zhang Yimou 

Starring Chow Yun Fat, Li Gong, Jay Chou 

Release Date December 21st, 2006 

Published January 3rd, 2007 

Director Yimou Zhang is an extraordinary talent whose work in the movies House of Flying Daggers and Hero is a wondrous combination of poetry, romance and awesome visual splendor. Zhang's attention to period detail and fluid, langorous camerawork create a visual tapestry unmatched by any of the greatest directors working today.

His talent for visual splendor is certainly on display in his latest film Curse of the Golden Flower. Unfortunately, in recreating China's Tang Dynasty circa 928 A.D, Zhang neglected his storytelling in favor of the most lustrous visuals he has yet brought to the screen. Curse of the Golden Flower is a feast for the eyes but in story terms, your average soap opera has less drippy, high falutin' melodrama.

Emporer Ping (Chow Yun Fat) has been plotting to eliminate his unfaithful wife, Empress Phoenix (Li Gong), for months; since he found out that she was having an affair with his oldest son Prince Cheng (Qin Jungjie). Prince Cheng who happens to be carrying on an affair with the daughter of the Emporer's medicine man who happens to be in charge of the Empress's daily medicine which is being spiked by the emporer with a poison that will slowly drive the empress insane.

Meanwhile the middle son of the clan Prince Jai has returned to the kingdom. He is to replace his weak willed older brother as the next in line for the throne but before he learns of the honor, he discovers his father is trying to kill his mother and decides to join the coup she has been planning for months. Oh, I mentioned Prince Jai's older brother, actually Prince Cheng is only his half brother, hence the affair Prince Cheng had with the empress wasn't really incest, though that incest ship hasn't sailed just yet, but I will leave that one for you to discover on your own.

Indeed, the plot of Curse of the Golden Flower does read like your average New York gossip column or bad episode of Melrose Place. And unfortunately the actors play the material to that same pitched melodramatic level. Gong Li, beautiful as ever as the empress, vamps like she graduated from the Joan Collins school of drama. The usually reliable Chow Yun Fat delivers a couple of badass moments but for the most part is stiffer than John Forsythe's corpse. (Is John Forsythe dead? Just checking)

Director Zhang Yimou adapted the screenplay from a popular Chinese stage play Yu Cao and retains some of the same broad theatrical beats in the direction of his actors who tend to belt each emotion to the back of the room as if in a large playhouse as opposed to a movie set with mics and sound techs. Still, Yimou's visual signatures are in place and that goes along way to making Curse of the Golden Flower passably entertaining.

All of the appeal of Curse of the Golden Flower comes from the visual wonders created by Zhang Yimou and his team including cinematographer Xiaoding Zhao and production designer Tingxiao Huo both of whom worked on Yimou's ostentatiously beautiful House of Flying Daggers. Because of the extraordinary work of these artists, Curse of the Golden Flower could be presented as a work of art, were it brought forth as a silent film without subtitles.

The eye popping production with it's massive ornate sets, and costumes that would put any Milan fashion show to shame, became the most expensive film in the history of China's movie industry, well over 100 million dollars American. The film is already profitable in the country and around the rest of the globe though it's American release has been something of a non-starter.

Curse of the Golden Flower is without a doubt a visual masterpiece, something that Hollywood studios likely feel won't appeal to American audiences. They might want to try selling the outlandish melodrama of the story. Why, I could see a marketing campaign that could turn ancient China into an old school wisteria lane, that sure seems to be what director Zhang Yimou was going for.

With it's opulant sets and breathtaking costumes,Curse of the Golden Flower is truly a feast for the eyes. The great visuals make the film that much more disappointing. Where his Hero and House of Flying Daggers were poetic, romantic and mostly silent, but also visually stunning, it is shocking to watch director Zhang Yimou deliver a film so tone deaf in its drama.

As a visual work of art, Curse of the Golden Flower is awesome eye candy. As a movie it's an irritating caricature of haughty night time soap opera melodrama.

Movie Review: Attack the Block

Attack the Block (2011) 

Directed by Joe Cornish

Written by Joe Coronish

Starring Jon Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Alex Esmail, Nick Frost, Luke Treadaway

Release Date May 11th, 2011 

Published August 14th, 2011

"Attack the Block" director Joe Cornish recalls, in the making of documentary that accompanies the DVD release of "Attack the Block," one of the most talked about independent films of 2011, that he was watching the M. Night Shyamalan film "Signs" when the idea for "Attack the Block" came to him.

"Signs," for those that don't recall, was about an alien invasion and how a family living on a farm in Middle America dealt with this bizarre occurrence. Cornish imagined a slightly different scenario for aliens that landed on the block where he grew up, in a dodgy part of London.

The essential idea behind "Attack the Block" is simply what might happen if aliens attempted to invade a gang and drug infested block of a bad London neighborhood. The story unfolds with Moses (John Boyega) confronting and eventually killing the first alien invader.

Unfortunately, the first alien is merely the bait for an invasion of much larger and much more dangerous aliens that resemble a monkey crossed with a large dog. As more aliens arrive on the block, Moses and his crew including Pest (Alex Esmail), Jerome (Leeon Jones), Dennis (Franz Drameh) and Biggz (Simon Howard) end up in a fight for their lives.

Along for the ride is Sam (Jodie Whittaker) who goes from being mugged by the gang to joining them on the run from the alien beasts. Ron (Nick Frost) and Brewis (Luke Treadway) are drug dealers and customers who get dragged into things when the gang brings the first alien corpse to Ron's apartment for safe-keeping while Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter) is a drug dealer who targets the gang for revenge.

Writer-director Joe Cornish takes his very simple premise and infuses it with the energy and creativity of a cast of first time actors; of the gang only John Boyega had any previous screen credit. The energy of "Attack the Block" as well as the authentic sounding slang, delivered through thick, almost indistinguishable accents, give "Attack the Block" a ballsy, nervy essence that is infectious.

"Attack the Block" is an exciting and energetic feature that clangs by at an incredible pace toward an unexpected and ingenious ending that evokes elements of "Independence Day" and "Die Hard" on a much smaller, no-budget scale.

"Attack the Block" emerged at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas back in March and looked as if it might become a major release phenomenon. Soon after that however, after critics raved about the film, talk turned to an American adaptation and the film lost momentum in a modest platform release.

Now, "Attack the Block" is on DVD and Blu-Ray. Don't wait for the American adaptation; see "Attack the Block" today, even if you do need the subtitles to understand it.

Movie Review: Bad News Bears

Bad News Bears (2005) 

Directed by Richard Linklater

Written by Glenn Ficarra, John Requa 

Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Greg Kinnear, Marcia Gay Harden

Release Date July 22nd, 2005 

Published July 22nd, 2005 

Director Richard Linklater has cultivated the persona of a Director who can bounce between brilliant, artful indie films (Before Sunrise, Dazed and Confused) and mainstream stuff without compromising his vision. 2003's School Of Rock was a big studio comedy with a rising star, Jack Black, that studio execs were eager to exploit. Linklater delivered a film that was mainstream funny with just enough of a nod to his roots to keep it grounded in his vision as a Director.

School Of Rock allowed Linklater to make the far smaller film, Before Sunset, the sequel to his wonderful romance Before Sunrise , and the template for his career seemed set. In the indie parlance, Linklater was going to make one for them and one for himself. That seems to be the case with his latest studio film Bad News Bears which will be followed quickly by the experimental animated film A Scanner Darkly.

Unfortunately something got lost along the way and Linklater's nod to studio execs turned out messy and compromised. Bad News Bears is simply bad news for it's rising star Director.

Billy Bob Thornton, coming off his tour de force comic turn in Bad Santa, stars in the lead role essayed by Walter Matthau in the 1976 original, Morris Buttermaker. A former major leaguer, Morris is now a pathetic drunk working for beer money as an exterminator. His only connection to the sport he once loved is picking up a paycheck coaching a group of little league misfits.

The Bears, as they are eventually called, are only allowed into the league after the mother of one of the players, Liz (Marcia Gay Harden), sued to get them in. Other little league coach's like hotshot sports dad Roy Bullock (Greg Kinnear) had wanted the kids out of the league, mostly because none of the kids are any good. But, it's little league and everyone gets to play and it's up to Buttermaker to field a team that includes a kid in a wheelchair and two kids who can't speak English.

Not much has been changed from the original film which operates from nearly the same screenplay by Bill Lancaster as the one Lancaster wrote himself in 1976. Just like the original their is little Tanner (Timmy Deters) all blonde mop and anger, their is Ahmad the meek black kid, and Lupus the one who would rather pick grass than play ball. Each player virtually untouched from the original. The minor updates include an Indian kid, Prem (Aman Johal) who takes over for the original films Ogilvie as the teams stat geek and the aforementioned wheel chair bound kid Hooper (Troy Gentile).

Also in place from the original are the girl pitcher, Amanda (Sammi Kraft) and the wrong side of the tracks bad boy with the big bat, Kelly Leak (Jeff Davies). Gone from their relationship is the subversive sexual undertones, replaced with a more PG-13 puppy love. In fact, of the few changes to the original film are touches to make the film PG-13 where the original was a PG film that today may have been R-rated today.

The lack of anything new in the script reflects an overall laziness that permeates the entire film. Remakes are lazy enough by nature but Richard Linklater brings little to nothing new to Bad News Bears. Linklater seems quite content to translate the script to the screen with only a minimal amount of work on his part. That is not to say the material is not funny, the original film was plenty funny and remains so. This remake resembles the original so much you can't help but find something funny in it.

Also recycled in Bad News Bears is Billy Bob Thornton's Bad Santa bad boy. Thornton's Buttermaker is not exactly as bad as his Santa, but in his hard drinking, thoughtless, careless way he is certainly a close cousin to that far funnier character. Thornton still manages a few laughs from this retread character, a sign of his strong talent and charisma.

The less said about the child actors in Bad News Bears the better. Where in School Of Rock Linklater coaxed wonderful performances from his young cast to counterpoint Jack Black's comic tour de force, in Bad News Bears Linklater makes his child actors more functionary place holders for Thornton's comic lead. Needless to say, there is no Tatum O'Neal in this Bad News cast.

Bad News Bears is a shockingly lazy and sloppy film for someone of Richard Linklater's talent. No director of his caliber can get away with such a slipshod effort. The direction is not merely lackluster, it's lazy. Richard Linklater should be ashamed that he wasted his time slapping together such a waste of talent and celluloid. Remakes are a big enough waste on their own, when combined with a complete lack of effort on the part of those doing the remaking, they are an all out disaster.

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."