Movie Review The Longshots

The Longshots (2008) 

Directed by Fred Durst 

Written by Nick Santora, Doug Atchison 

Starring Ice Cube, Keke Palmer, Dash Mihok, Tasha Smith, Matt Craven 

Release Date August 22nd, 2008 

Published August 21st, 2008 

"Zzzz" Zzzz" Huh, what. Oh. Right. I am reviewing The Longshots starring (Yawn) Ice Cube and Keke Palmer. "Zzzz" "Zzzz". Oh. Sorry. Even thinking about this sports movie snoozefest makes me nod off. It's not that The Longshots isn't appealing or well crafted, it's just not all that interesting. A girl quarterback is novel and the true story thing makes it more novel. Beyond that however, the film, directed by (I kid you not) former Limp Bizkit rocker Fred Durst, is a by the numbers sports movie filled with all of the uplift, pomp and circumstance typical to the genre.

Ice Cube stars as Curtis, a layabout former high school football stud whose life just didn't pan out. Now a neighborhood cautionary tale, Curtis is pushed by his sister to take an interest in his niece Jasmine. They have little in common. When one day Curtis tempts Jasmine into throwing the football with him he finds her surprisingly adept.

Curtis decides to nurture her talent and before long she is throwing with more power and accuracy than most boys her age. Curtis decides to get her a shot with a local pop warner team. Coach Warner (Matt Craven) is, not surprisingly, dubious of the girl's talent but is soon won over. The team stinks anyway, why not a girl quarterback. Jasmine gets a shot and whaddaya know, the team starts winning.

You can plot the rest of the movie in your head. There is a subplot with Jasmine's no good, deadbeat father. That plot, like the main sports story, plays out in just the same by the numbers fashion. Clearly, Fred Durst and writer Nick Santora have read their McKee books. They plot everything on a flow chart and never deviate. Predictability quickly gives way to boredom in The Longshots and boredom is a sin no film can survive.

Keke Palmer is a young actress with a very bright future. She however, needs to choose the right roles. Akeelah and the Bee, definitely the right role. The Longshots? Not so much. It's not that she doesn't perform well. It is rather that she is forgotten amidst the supremely dull presaged plot. No actress, no matter how engaging, can overcome a plot as rote and uneventful as that of The Longshots.

(Yawn) The Longshots is a devastatingly dull sports movie. Despite the very talented Keke Palmer and the likable Ice Cube, this movie was DOA. Director Fred Durst and writer Nick Santora doomed this project when they failed to find something more to do with this plot beyond adhering to every melodramatic, sports movie cliche in the book.

Movie Review: The Lookout

The Lookout (2007) 

Directed by Scott Frank

Written by Scott Frank

Starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Matthew Goode, Isla Fisher

Release Date March 30th, 2007 

Published March 29th, 2007 

Scott Frank made his name adapting the work of Elmore Leonard for the big screen. In fact, no other writer in the business has been able to so well capture Leonard's unique rhythm and humor as well as Scott Frank has. His scripts for Get Shorty and Out of Sight were smart and sophisticated Hollywood concoctions with perfectly executed mousetrap plots. Now working on his first outing as a writer-director,The Lookout, Frank brings the same smart sophisticated approach; minus the Elmore Leonard-isms but just as entertaining.

Chris Pratt had life by the tail. As a teenage hockey star he had a college scholarship all lined up. He had a beautiful girlfriend and a rich family to make certain that a life of ease awaited him. That life was shattered in one fateful moment. Driving drunk with his girlfriend and two friends on a desolate country road, Chris gets into a horrendous car accident. His friends were killed, his girlfriend lost a leg. As for Chris he lost his mind.

Not in the colloquial sense, but rather literally. Chris lost some of his brain and the ability to remember even his most recent activities. No more hockey. No more girlfriend and even his rich family has receded. Chris is left with his pain and a scar on his forehead. Now working nights cleaning a bank branch and living in a tiny apartment with a blind man (Jeff Daniels) for a roommate, Chris lives day to day off the little notes he must write himself in order to remember anything.

On one particularly frustrating night Chris doesn't go home. Instead he goes to a small town bar where he meets a sweet young girl named Luvlee (Isla Fisher) who thankfully doesn't seem to know who he is. Her friend Gary however, immediately recognizes Chris, they went to High School together. Gary shows Chris a little kindness and friendship and soon Chris has a whole new circle of friends. Unfortunately, Chris's new friends have ulterior motives. Gary and his gang are looking to rob a bank and with Chris's access to a local bank he's the perfect patsy.

That is the surface plot of The Lookout but the substance comes in the performance of rising star Joseph Gordon Levitt. An underappreciated young talent from his days on TV's bizarro alien comedy Third Rock From The Sun, Levitt has made an astonishing transition to indie films with three mind blowing performances. In Mysterious Skin he went into the heart of a teenage gay hustler with heartbreaking results.

In 2006 he starred in the popular indie noir Brick, a film that took a classic forties mystery plot into the halls of a modern high school. Now comes his most full bodied adult performance in The Lookout. Here Levitt plays wounded with such precision and heart rending truth that you can't help but be drawn into his world. As his new friends begin to take advantage of him your rooting interest is so invested that you move to the edge of your seat for the rest of the film.

Director Scott Frank amps up the tension by crafting a tight narrative with no fat, no extranneous elements. What is on the screen in The Lookout is only what is necessary to create this tense, clockwork plot. This no frills approach works to never let the air out of the room. Every scene has a near perfect level of tense pressure

The obvious comparison for The lookout is another tense, exciting short term memory based thriller, 2000's Memento. Both films examine unique characters through the prism of their limitations and finds the truth of their natures. Memento is the more artistically accomplished film but The Lookout is definitely the equal of Memento in terms of entertainment value.

A taut, pulse pounding thriller,The Lookout is smarter than most films of this abused genre. The thriller, much like the romantic comedy and the horror movie, has in recent years, given in to very simple, recognizable formula. Thrillers play out typical, easy to digest plots where one overwhelmed character takes on bad guys and uses standard thriller practices to overcome rote, prototypical villains.

Some filmmakers augment the typicality of the thriller with sleeze. Scott Frank in The Lookout overcomes the expectations of the genre by being smarter and more cunning than most. Combining a talented cast with a subversive plot and just the right amount of violence, The Lookout is set apart from other thrillers by moxie and brains.

The Lookout is one of the best films of 2007. A smart, savvy thriller that benefits greatly from the rising talent of star Joseph Gordon Levitt, a young actor with Oscar gold, no doubt in his future. Were there justice in the world of Hollywood, Levitt would be considered for his work in The Lookout. Sadly, there is no justice and thus the film is almost already forgotten by the Hollywood machine.

Still, there is me and you and everyone we know and we can and should pass this movie on to everyone. Great films like The Lookout are never appreciated in their time, don't let this one wait too long before you come to appreciate it.

The Lion King (2019)

The Lion King (2019) 

Directed by Jon Favreau 

Written by Jeff Nathanson 

Starring Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alfre Woodard, Billy Eichner 

Release Date July 19th, 2019 

Published July 18th, 2019 

The Lion King 2019 is an incredibly emotional and moving film. Putting aside the comparisons to the animated original, this version of the story is exceptionally well told. Director Jon Favreau has brilliantly captured this Shakespearean tale for the whole family with epic music and resonant themes and given it a modern flavor via a remarkable voice cast who elevate the material with their inventive riffing and gorgeous singing. 

You likely already know this story, Mufasa (James Earl Jones) is the King of The Pridelands. He and his beloved Sarabi (Alfre Woodard) have just had a son who will one day himself become the King. Simba, voiced as a cub by J.D McCrary, is a curious young lion who easily finds trouble but with the wisdom of his father, he will one day make a fine King. Unfortunately, Simba’s uncle,  Scar (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has other plans. 

Scar seeks the throne and will use any nefarious means necessary to get there. Scar’s first attempt to get rid of young Simba sends the young lion and his friend, Nala (Shahadi Wright Joseph), into an elephant graveyard where hyenas reign. Simba and Nala are rescued by Mufasa but Scar seizes the opportunity to convince the hyenas to become his very own army. It will be the hyenas who lead to the death of Mufasa while he tries to protect Simba. 

Mufasa dies and Scar runs off Simba by accusing him of causing his father’s death. Scar also sends hyenas to kill Simba but the young lion manages to escape into the desert. Here, Simba begins a new life. With the help of Timon (Billy Eicher) and Pumba (Seth Rogen), Simba is able to leave his grief and shame behind and grow into a mature lion without the strictures of royalty and duty while nursing the scars of his past. 

Nala voiced by Beyonce as a mature lioness, eventually finds Simba is still alive and you know where the story is headed from there. The key to this telling of the story of The Lion King is how we get to the ending and in getting there we have a remarkably rich and fulfilling journey. The story of The Lion King 2019 is told with music and the music of this version of The Lion King is superb. I won’t be hyperbolic and declare that the music here is superior to the original, I will only say that I preferred the ways in which Hans Zimmer and Beyonce, among others, have updated this score and the original songs. 

The changes are seemingly minimal but they make a huge difference in how you accept The Lion King 2019. For instance, the Can You Feel the Love Tonight segment. In the 1994 version of The Lion King the scene is suitably romantic and filled with heartfelt emotion though it is slightly shorter than the new version. The slightly longer version here takes full advantage of this new style of The Lion King with Caleb Deschanel's rich and glorious cinematography underlining the romance and deepening the impact of the moment. 

It also helps to have Beyonce and Donald Glover not just as the singing voices of Nala and Simba, but their speaking voices as well. The jarring shift from one vocal style to the other isn’t damning in the original, just notable. Here however, the seamless shift singing to speaking adds a little more verisimilitude. That and, of course, we are talking about Beyonce whose voice is transcendent. That’s not a dig at Sally Dworsky who is a Broadway veteran of immense talent, it’s merely that Beyonce is a global superstar whose voice connects to audiences in an epic fashion that fits the grandiosity of this CGI approximation of live action. 

Donald Glover is also incredible but in a unique and different way. Glover’s voice acting in the song is superior to the original because he is singing in character and accounting for the fear and angst of Simba in a way that perhaps Joseph Williams cannot because the character is not fully his. He’s more focused on singing the song,Glover is singing the character and I found the difference to be notable. 

Another notable improvement for me over the original was the performance of the song Hakuna Matata which benefits from the unique and recognizable voices and personas of Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen. Neither is well known for their singing but the way they perform this song feels as fresh and even more alive than the original. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella but they are notably stage-bound in their energy, limited by the animation style. 

Eichner and Rogen meanwhile had the advantage of working in the CG realm and director Jon Favreau’s ability to allow them to explore a little and riff within the music. Eichner and Rogen have talked in interviews about how they were allowed to improvise their dialogue and even improvise in their songs and that playfulness is part of what makes this take on The Lion King so lively as opposed to the original. 

The best change however, from the original movie is the song Be Prepared. Performed here by Chiwetel Ejiofor, the song is transformed from a pop ditty talk sung through a thick English accent by Jeremy Irons, to an operatic dirge that is shortened to more specifically state Scar’s nefariousness. Where the original overstayed its welcome and tried to fit the pop nature of the rest of the soundtrack, this version of Be Prepared better serves the character of Scar while also cutting to the chase on Scar’s story. 

Is there a calculated cynicism driving Disney to remake their animated catalog in live action and CGI? Yes, it's unquestionably a mercenary effort. That said, the artists who have contributed to this version of The Lion King have transcended how The Lion King 2019 came to exist by delivering a resonant and lovely take on this grand material. They have brought the music into a modern context and stayed true to the remarkable themes of the original story and delivered a compelling, humorous romantic and touching film. 

The Cave (2005) – A Soggy, Sinking Creature Feature

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