Movie Review The Two Faces of January
Movie Review Just Married
Just Married (2003)
Directed by Shawn Levy
Written by Sam Harper
Starring Ashton Kutcher, Brittany Murphy, Christian Kane, Monet Mazur, Taran Killam
Release Date January 10th, 2003
Published January 9th, 2003
Another January, another slate of less than stellar movies from the Hollywood swill factory. Okay, Just Married isn't quite that bad, but it's not very good either.
Just Married stars Ashton Kutcher and Brittany Murphy as a pair of twenty-somethings who fall in love and get married. He's a sports nut who works part time at a radio station doing midnight traffic reports. She is a waspy princess from Bel Air whose father (David Rasche, king of the asshole wasps) owns a pair of sports teams. Opposites attract as they say and soon after meeting they are married and off for a European honeymoon.
The film begins with the pair returning from Europe ready to kill one another. In flashback, Tom (Kutcher) explains how they met when he popped her in the face with a football on a beach. They then bonded over a game of pool and sex on their first date. Things proceed quickly as, still in flashback, we find that they moved in together after only a month of dating.
Tom then regales the mistakes each made that would come back to haunt them. First, we find that Tom accidentally killed Sarah's (Murphy) dog, then lied about it. We then learn on their wedding day that Sarah had slept with an ex-boyfriend whom she had told Tom was just a platonic friend. Of course, the ex-boyfriend is a rich guy named Peter (Christian Kane) whom Sarah's family adores.
From there, the flashback jumps ahead to the Honeymoon where things go bad from the start. After arriving in France and getting the wrong rental car, they arrive at their luxury hotel. Once there, Tom manages to nearly destroy the place with a sextoy. Well gee, it's a romantic comedy. Do you think Tom and Sarah will overcome their problems and help love prevail? I will leave the mystery.
Director Shawn Levy brings nothing new to this tired genre comedy. The only thing the film has going for it is the likability of the actors involved. Without them, Just Married would easily be one of the worst films I have seen. Brittany Murphy's huge brown eyes and bubbly energetic personality make her so amazingly likable you forgive the ridiculousness of the plot she is trapped in.
As for Kutcher, he has his moments, especially towards the end when he lets his manic comic energy overcome him. His rage at trying to get through the fence surrounding Sarah's parent's mansion is the only really funny moment of the film.
Just Married is an unoriginal wrongheaded, poorly directed cliche. A film that has been done to death and should not be made at all. If not for its appealing stars, Just Married would be interminable. With them, the film is almost tolerable.
Movie Review American Wedding
American Wedding (2003)
Directed by Jesse Dylan
Written by Adam Herz
Starring Jason Biggs, Allyson Hannigan, Seann William Scott, January Jones, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Fred Willard, Eugene Levy
Release Date August 1st, 2003
Published July 31st, 2003
The first American Pie movie flew in under the radar in the summer of 1999 and with it's combination of sweetness and sickening humor charmed teenage audiences to the tune of well over 100 million dollars. The second film was not at all a surprise when it became a hit at the box office, but was surprising because it also managed to balance the sweet and sick as well as the original. Now comes American Wedding and you might think there is no way writer Adam Herz can do it for a third time but he does, a sweet sick, funny movie that while not as consistently funny as it's predecessors is still a disgusting, funny movie with a good heart.
Wedding finds our hero Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs) just out of college and preparing to ask his girlfriend Michele to marry him. However in typical American Pie fashion things go horribly awry in Jim's restaurant proposal. Jim's penchant for very public humiliation finds him with his pants down, Michele under the table and his Dad (Eugene Levy) accidentally popping the question for him. Despite it all Michele agrees to marry him and were off.
Back for the sequel are Jim's friends Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas). There job in the wedding will be to make sure their nemesis Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott) is kept as far away as possible. They fail that mission miserably and it's not long before the Stifmeister has worked his way into the wedding party and into the good graces of Michele's virginal sister Cadence (January Jones).
The amazing thing about this film series is this endlessly appealing cast. It's one of the great quirks of filmmaking that the producers of the American Pie films have lucked into one of the best casts ever. Each cast member is so likable that no matter how outrageous or stupid their exploits become we in the audience will forgive them anything. Jason Biggs is especially appealing as Jim. From the beginning Jim's haplessness has earned our sympathy, his every humiliation bringing him closer to the audience. Our embarrassment for Jim makes us cheer for him ever more to succeed in the end and Biggs is perfectly cast.
Thomas and Nicholas are somewhat shortshrifted in American Wedding, the plot doesn't leave them much to do other than observe, especially Nicholas who disappears numerous times throughout the film. Alyson Hannigan's role also seems slightly underwritten but in her scenes she like the rest of the cast is endlessly sympathetic and lovable.
Where the first two American Pie films could be considered ensemble works American Wedding is clearly lead by Biggs and Sean William Scott's iconic Stifler. The raging ID Stifler is in full on personality overload. Scott mugs and preens like Jim Carrey on crack. Stifler hasn't aged one day past junior high school and his hijinks are the films high and low points. If you thought Stifler beer and semen cocktail from the first film was bad, or his urine bath in number two, just wait til you see his homage to John Waters in American Wedding.
Missing from this sequel are Mena Suvari, Chris Klein, Natasha Lyonne, Shannon Elizabeth and Tara Reid and that their MIA status isn't even eluded to is one of the films few major problems for those of us who have invested in this franchise. That said the remaining cast is strong enough to carry on without them and they are helped out greatly by newcomer January Jones who helps to fill in the babe gap left by Reid and the rest.
The films staging and logic isn't as strong as the first two films. There are times when the film feels like less than a narrative or more like a series of sit comic sketches. That said, the key to American Wedding are these beloved characters and whatever the film lacks in cohesiveness is easily forgiven for the chance to hang out with these funny and memorable characters that some of us have grown up alongside during the American Pie franchise.
Sometimes, a little goodwill goes A LONG WAY.
Movie Review: Escape Room
Escape Room (2019)
Directed by Adam Robitel
Written by Bragi F. Schut, Maria Melnik
Starring Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Tyler Labine,
Release Date January 4th, 2019
Published January 4th, 2019
The first new release film of any year is often not very good in my experience. I have been writing about movies on the internet for nearly 20 years, dating back to having that Microsoft’s now rather ludicrous Web TV. Eventually, I came to dread the start of the year at the movies. Sure, there were Oscar movies that arrived late but the new-new movies of the year, especially the first new release of any year tended to be awful year after year.
That trend was only recently bucked just last year when director Adam Robitel delivered the terrific final chapter of the Insidious franchise, Insidious The Last Key. I really enjoyed Insidious The Last Key and while the rest of January lived up to the reputation that month has earned as a dumping ground for studios looking to bury their trash while we were dazzled by the Award winner, at least the first new release of the year was entertaining.
What luck then to find that director Adam Robitel was leading off the year again, this time with a new horror effort called Escape Room. Sure, I was worried when the film appeared to have not been shown to critics but then, at the last minute, reviews started showing up and they weren’t all bad. And, indeed, much like Insidious The Last Key was pretty good this time last year, Escape Room is pretty good kicking off this year.
Escape Room stars Taylor Russell as Zoey, a shy and mousey college student who receives a strange package. Inside is a puzzle box and inside that puzzle box is an invitation to a fully immersive gaming experience called an Escape Room. For the unaware, Escape Rooms are a real deal experience. The concept has you locked inside a room with a time limit to discover all of the clues and free yourself from the room.
We also meet two other characters in the run-up to arriving at the Escape Room of the title. Jason (Jay Ellis) is a high powered stock broker who receives a gift from one of his clients. Inside is the same kind of puzzle box sent to Zoey. He and Zoey do not know each other but they will meet at the Escape Room along with Ben (Logan Miller), a supermarket employee who gets a puzzle box from his employer.
Once at the Escape Room we meet three more characters, Amanda (Debra Ann Woll, from Netflix’s Daredevil) an Iraq war veteran, Mike (Tyler Labine) a truck driver, and Danny (Nk Dodani) who is an Escape Room obsessive. It’s Danny who figures out that the waiting room where they first meet is actually the first of several Escape Rooms they will experience. He’s also the last to accept that these are more than Escape Rooms, they are genuine death traps that they must solve in order to survive.
What Escape Room does so much better than most recent horror films is give us characters that we genuinely care about. Each of these six characters are genuinely good people with character flaws and a deep and abiding compassion. Jason is set up as the sort of villain of the group, the one who appears to put his own survival ahead of everyone else’s but even he appears to be a good person who gets pushed to an extreme and reacts somewhat poorly.
There is not one of these characters that I hated so much I hoped they wouldn’t survive. The worst trend in horror of this young century was the move to make villains the center of horror movies and make their victims so hateful, obnoxious and self-involved that we didn’t mind so much when they were hacked up. Escape Room goes the complete opposite direction and creates six characters that we invest in and care about.
Yes, they are character types, recognizable for some stock characteristics, but they had a genuine quality and compassion for one another that is incredibly refreshing from a genre that revels in the survival of the fittest archetype and views compassion as weakness. I came to adore each of these characters to the point that when one of them sacrifices themselves to save the others I was honestly moved and sad that the character was gone.
Escape Room does have its issues. The film does feel like assembled pieces from other horror movies such as Hostel and Saw but minus that nastiness. Don’t get me wrong, I truly enjoy the Saw franchise, but even that series tended to fall back on nasty characters rather than good ones. Hostel meanwhile, was wall to wall vile people to the point that I wanted to nuke the entire movie and the sick minded writer-director who assembled it.
If the character from Escape Room were in a Saw movie, they’d all survive because these characters immediately embrace the ethos of working together and trusting each other's strengths and making up for each other's weaknesses. This is especially true of Taylor Russell’s Zoey who is a tremendously resourceful and compelling protagonist. She is so sweet that you assume she’s weak but Russell invests her with a rigorous intelligence.
I am really happy to say that I kind of loved Escape Room. I did wish it had only ended once, the two sequel teases did push the wrong buttons for the potential franchise of Escape Room movies but as long as Adam Robitel is at the helm along with the witty and smart writing team of Bragi F Schut and Maria Melnik, nailing their first Hollywood script, I am on board for even more Escape Room fun.
Movie Review Stomp the Yard
Stomp the Yard (2007)
Directed by Sylvain White
Written by Gregory Anderson
Starring Columbus Short, Meagan Good, Ne-Yo, Darrin Henson, Brian White, Laz Alonzo, Harry Lennix
Release Date January 12th, 2007
Published January 16th, 2007
MTV Films has pioneered a new kind of filmmaking. It's a low budget, high teen appeal style that involves formula stories about young protagonists and killer soundtracks that drive the film's marketing. It began with the dance drama Save The Last Dance and continued through the surprise 2004 dance hit You Got Served. The new movie Stomp The Yard is not an MTV film but it follows the MTV Films business plan. Made on the cheap, with a killer hip hop soundtrack and cameos by hip hop stars, Stomp The Yard made its budget back over the opening weekend.
That is great for business but the formula filmmaking is tired and the cheapness shows in the low quality of the filmmaking. Stomp The Yard may have youth appeal but it lacks greatly in story and filmmaking appeal.
In Stomp The Yard Columbus Short plays D.J, a wrong side of the tracks kid from the L.A streets who finds himself in college in Atlanta after the violent death of his brother Duron. At Truth University his hard ass uncle Nate works on the campus landscaping and had to pull every string imaginable to get D.J in. Once there, D.J's culture shock includes a crash course in stepping, a dance competition among historic African American fraternities.
D.J knows how to step, he and his late brother and a team of friends were battle dancers back in L.A before Duron was killed after a competition. Now in Atlanta, D.J is shy about getting into stepping but after showing off for a girl in a bar, D.J becomes a hot commodity among the top two frats on campus, who also happen to be the top two stepping frats in the country.
The girl D.J danced for is April (Meagan Goode) and she happens to be the girlfriend of a top stepper, Grant (Darrin Henson) and the daughter of the school provost. If you think both of these attributes will be laid out as romantic obstacles and then easily overcome, then you have likely seen a few of these formula films in the past. Indeed, those on the wrong side of the tracks always seem to get the girl, especially when the upper crust of society forbids it.
There are few clichés that Stomp The Yard doesn't stomp all over on the way to its rote conclusion. Director Sylvain White, like most directors of January filler material, isn't so much a director as he is a vessel for transporting this cliché ridden script to the screen with little innovation. His style choices are sloppy and he seems to have no interest in the story beyond the opportunities it offers to film elaborate dance scenes.
Throughout Stomp The Yard White opts for a shaky handheld camera work that is sloppy and distracting, especially during the dance scenes where the camerawork makes you doubt just how spectacular the dancing really is. Throughout the film there are confusing scenes where one person or a team dances and one is alleged to be better than the other but we have no idea why. Each side is precise and athletic, even charismatic, but why one is better than the other is left completely subjective to individual taste. The way these scenes are put together however, it seems like we are supposed to understand that one side has been shown up, but for the life of me I had no idea why.
There is an interesting idea buried beneath the retread plot of Stomp The Yard. A movie that focuses its energy on why stepping is so venerated and why it is such a marvelous tradition. Stomp The Yard simply wishes for us to assume stepping is an important part of the culture, it never bothers to explain why. An education in the styles and grading of stepping might make an interesting movie or a better documentary.
For an education in battle dancing, more specifically a battle between krumping and clowning, check out David LaChappelle's documentary Rize. That film is gorgeously shot with no cuts during the dance scenes to prove that indeed no tricks were used, these dancers really did those amazing things. The crew of Stomp The Yard could have learned a lot watching Rize.
As it is, it seems that the Stomp The Yard crew watched how successful the clichés of 2005's You Got Served worked as a business model and simply copied them with slightly less skill. Yes, Stomp The Yard makes You Got Served look better by comparison. That is really saying something.
Movie Review: Chasing Liberty
Chasing Liberty (2004)
Directed by Andy Cadiff
Written by Derek Guiley
Starring Mandy Moore, Matthew Goode, Jeremy Piven, Annabella Sciorra, Mark Harmon
Release Date January January 9th, 2004
Published January 8th, 2004
In my review of Mandy Moore's film debut A Walk To Remember, I employed the hack-y cliché “don't quit your day job” in reference to Ms. Moore's excruciatingly-bland performance. At that time, it was a justifiable, if horribly cynical, criticism of her performance. But that is no excuse for using such a cliché. Since then, Moore has made me eat those words (sort of.) Her pleasant turn in the pop-sensible teen drama How To Deal showed marked improvement over A Walk To Remember. Now, in her latest starring effort as the President's daughter in Chasing Liberty, Moore shows even more improvement as a charming, sweet leading lady.
Liberty is the secret service code name of Anna Foster who has spent her formative years in the largest possible spotlight. Anna is the 18-year-old daughter of a two-term President (Mark Harmon). When we meet Anna, she is about to head out on her first date ever. The date is a miserable failure that ends with Secret Service guns drawn on the boyfriend who mistakenly attempted a surprise gift. That's it for the boyfriend. Luckily, Anna has a trip with dad coming up that could provide an opportunity for fun, if she can shake the Secret Service.
On a state visit to Prague, Anna plans to meet up with a friend and head for Berlin for something called Love Fest. Dad doesn't want her to go but relents when she agrees to having a pair of top agents, Jeremy Piven and Annabella Sciorra, follow her. That plan falls apart though when dad breaks his promise and Anna is swarmed by agents while at a concert. To lose them, Anna gets the help of Ben (Matthew Good) who whisks her away on his scooter. What Anna doesn't know is that Ben is a Secret Service agent.
Thus begins a whirlwind romantic trip across Europe as Anna thinks she is evading the Secret Service while Ben fends off her advances while trying to keep up with her. Moore and Good have little chemistry and with all the next-big-thing talk about Good, I was surprised how wooden and dull he is. Moore, on the other hand, is effervescent. Comparisons to a young Doris Day are not unwarranted. She is sunny and sweet and has lost that cloying innocence that sacked her performance in A Walk To Remember.
Chasing Liberty is not a great film. It's full of typical romantic comedy clichés and those romantic dialogue bits that always pay off at the end. The typical eye-rolling moments of realization and forgiveness that you've seen a million times are not improved upon here. What makes the film nearly passable is Moore, who has found that kind of star quality that many actresses never find. Whenever she is onscreen, I couldn't help but smile. She is aided by a funny subplot involving Piven and Sciorra's Secret Service agents who fall in love while watching the first daughter fall in love.
Maybe it's my romantic idealism, but I have always wanted to backpack across Europe with a beautiful stranger and fall in love while scamming for places to sleep for a night or thumbing a ride on the back of a farm truck on it way to some tiny village that hasn't aged since the 1800s. Chasing Liberty captures some of that romantic idealism, especially in Moore's wonderfully likable performance.
Movie Review Back to the Wharf
Back to the Wharf (2023)
Directed by Xialfeng Li
Written by Xin Yu
Starring Yu Zhang, Jia Song, Yanhui Wang
Release Date January 17th, 2023
Published January 10th, 2023
Back to the Wharf is a noir crime thriller about the impact that one moment in life can have. It's about how a crime can reverberate through time with unimaginable impact. Directed by Xiaofeng Li, from a script by Xin Yu, Back to the Wharf is haunting, sad, and incredibly absorbing. It features performances by Yu Zhang, Jia Song, and Yanhui Wang that are absolutely superb. A first rate cast, tremendous writing and direction and an excellent story make Back to the Wharf a January release gem, a great way to start 2023.
A teenage boys life is changed forever when he finds out that the college scholarship he thought he had secured is given to another student. Looking to confront that other student, who happens to be a close friend, our protagonist finds himself entering the wrong home. There, he is confronted by the homeowner who assumes he is there to commit a robbery. This leads to a fight wherein the homeowner ends up dead. Well, not right away, there is another part to this story that our protagonist isn't aware of, one that compounds the tragedy.
In the immediate aftermath of the death, our protagonist, played as an adult by Yu Zhang, has fled his hometown, blown off college, and taken on the job of a laborer, far from home. When his mother dies, he must return home and confront the past, including his deeply distant father, now a powerful public official with deep ties to the criminal empire run by our protagonists former High School friend. The father has already moved on from his wife's death and has plans to retire and leave the country to escape the corruption he's become a party to.
At his mother's funeral, the depth of differences between father and son are made plain. After our protagonist meets his father's new family, including not only a new wife but also a son, the father tells his eldest son "Your upbringing was a failure; I needed another son." That gut punch would be enough to level any man. Thus our protagonist looks to leave town as soon as possible. His plans hit a bump in the road when he meets a former High School classmate, played by Jia Song, who makes it her mission to keep him from leaving.
The love story between our troubled protagonist and the girl who has loved him secretly since they were kids provides a big beating heart for this otherwise grim story. Jia Song is wonderful in Back to the Wharf. Her performance steals the entire movie for a time. Her performance is filled with surprises and her character's actions are rarely predictable. She is determined to turn our protagonists life around with the sheer force of her love and care and Song is brilliant at making that seem like a reasonable thing to do.
Find my full length review at Geeks.Media linked here.
Movie Review Teen Wolf The Movie
Movie Review Fandango
Fandango (1985)
Directed by Kevin Reynolds
Written by Kevin Reynolds
Starring Kevin Costner, Sam Robards, Judd Nelson
Release Date January 25th, 1985
Published January 25th, 2015
This weekend, January 24th to 26th, in 1985 Kevin Costner took his first leading man role in the mostly forgotten road comedy “Fandango.” Co-starring Sam Robards, Chuck Bush and Judd Nelson, “Fandango” follows four friends from the University of Texas on one, final, epic road trip before each heads off to Vietnam or maybe Mexico.
The year is 1971 and the day before Kenneth’s (Sam Robards) wedding, his graduation day from the University of Texas, he finds out he’s been drafted. So has his best friend Gardner (Costner) while their roommate Hicks (Nelson) has already volunteered to go. With their future’s uncertain the friends pile into a generic movie road trip car and head for the border with plans to dig up a relic of their earlier college years.
That’s the set up of “Fandango” but the film is more than just a road movie. Directed by Kevin Reynolds, Costner’s go-to director before their “Waterworld” falling out, “Fandango” is yet another 80’s movie still attempting to process the feelings inspired by the war in Vietnam. Set in 1971, in the midst of the worst of the war, we watch characters who’ve skirted the war effort as privileged college students now facing down the real possibility of death.
For all of the shiny, neon, plastic, phoniness of the 1980’s there were moments of true depth and sadness and much of it had to do with the lingering specter of Vietnam. In the 80’s Hollywood was finally ready to examine the tragedy of Vietnam and perform the post-mortem examination with some of the great war movies of all time in “Platoon” and “”Full Metal Jacket.” And then there were smaller reckonings like “Fandango” which masked the angsty, life and death fears of Vietnam with a humor that barely concealed terror.
This comic angst is never more present in “Fandango” than in a brief scene set in a cemetery on one of the road trip’s many detours. Having run out of gas in a small town our heroes happen upon a pair of teenage girls who buy them dinner and take them around town. They wind up in a cemetery playing with fireworks which come to resemble the bombs dropping over Vietnam once Kenneth stumbles over a grave marked for an Army Corporal who died just that year in Vietnam.
The scene is a tad heavy-handed but Robards and Costner sell the moment with the fear on their faces while director Reynolds gives the moment time to breath. The fireworks lighting up the graves and the grave faces of Robards and Costner give the scene a strong visual quality even, as I mentioned early, as the scene is more than a little over-wrought with subtext.
For some reason I tried to be put off by “Fandango.” I fought the film’s charm early on because I was expecting a cheesy teen appeal road comedy. By the end of the film I was deeply charmed by the characters and the humor and camaraderie they use to fend off the feeling of impending doom engendered by their future trip to Vietnam. Costner is especially effective near the end of the movie when his memories of a lost love collide with his duty to his best friend and their terrifyingly uncertain future.
The movie ends with an only in the movies style impromptu wedding. Having convinced the residents of a small Texas border-town to help them honor Kenneth’s wish for a last second wedding to ‘The Girl,’ played by Suzy Amis, we watch a truly charming scene of homemade food and craft burst to life in the middle of the dusty town. The scene should not work but it does because everyone involved is so committed to it.
In the end, the combination of a charming cast and serious Vietnam related angst combine to make a surprisingly satisfying dramatic comedy. Is it surprising that “Fandango” isn’t well remembered 30 years later? No, it is by nature a road comedy, a sub-genre that has never been known for having a shelf life. However, I am quite pleasantly surprised to find myself a fan of “Fandango.”
Movie Review: Darkness Falls
Darkness Falls (2003)
Directed by Jonathan Liebesman
Written by Joe Harris, James Vanderbilt, John Fasano
Starring Cheney Kley, Emma Caulfield, Sullivan Stapleton, Emily Browning
Release Date January 24th, 2003
Published January 23rd 2003
Horror films are allowed to set there own rules. Oftentimes a horror film will make up those rules as they go. However once those rules are in place violating those rules becomes one of the most disappointing aspects of that film. The latest addition to the horror genre, Darkenss Falls, sets it's own rules in the first five minutes of the film. It then sets about breaking those rules over and over again making for a maddening film-going experience.
The film begins with a prologue about an old woman named Matilda Dixon who lived in the seaside town of Darkness Falls, Maine. Matilda is beloved by the town's children because when they lost their teeth they could take them to Matilda and exchange then for a gold coin. After a fire severely burned Matilda's face she was unable to leave her home during daylight hours and when she did leave she wore a frightening porcelain mask. When two of the town's children go missing one night, Matilda is blamed and hanged but not before placing a curse on the town. The two kids were found the next day having ran away on their own.
We jump forward in time to a 12-year-old boy who has just lost his last baby tooth. The boy's name is Kyle Walsh. One night Kyle makes the mistake of looking into the eyes of the legend known as the Tooth Fairy. Now, one of the rules established early in the film is that if you looked in the eyes of Matilda's ghost she would hunt you until she killed you. Kyle's only savior is the a flashlight at his bedside. The tooth fairy is sensitive to light and when exposed is badly injured. Kyle's mother, not believing the legend, goes to his room to show Kyle there is nothing to be afraid of , and the tooth fairy slits her throat. Kyle is blamed for the murder and spends the next 12 years in a mental institute.
Cut to the present, Kyle is out of the institute but still afraid of the dark. Now living in Vegas, Kyle is on every medication known to man to deal with what he witnessed. Back in Darkness Falls, a young boy is experiencing the same behavior as Kyle. The young boy is Michael Greene and he is the brother of Kaitlin, who happens to have been Kyle's girlfriend, before his supposed psychotic episode. Kaitlin tracks down Kyle and asks for his help in treating Michael which brings Kyle back to Darkness Falls to face his fear.
Darkness Falls is a slowly paced, light-and-shadow thriller that has a few very effective moments. One that stands out is the opening ten minutes with a very well shot sequence of Kyle's mother being killed. However, after that the film comes apart, setting it's rules and then setting about breaking them, creating many a logical flaw that takes away from the film and really irks any intelligent filmgoer who is paying attention.
First, does the Tooth Fairy only kill you if you live in Darkness Falls or can you just leave and she stays there? If the Tooth Fairy can't go into the light then how is she with moonlight? If the Tooth Fairy is after Kyle, why does she kill a random drunk who was fighting with Kyle instead of going after Kyle?
Not that logic has it's place in most horror films but when rules are established in a horror film, violating those rules can be a film's biggest crime.
The film's premise is a hodgepodge of horror cliches lifted from such varied sources as Nightmare On Elm Street to the recently released They. The films biggest influence, the one it truly aspires to meet but fails to, is the moody atmospherics of a Stephen King novel. But what King is able to do with words, Darkness Falls is unable to do with images.
First time actor Chaney Kley plays Kyle and makes it look like Clonaid succeeded in cloning Mark Wahlberg. Though it's kind of like Michael Keaton in Multiplicity, Kley only got some of Wahlberg's talent and not the best of it. Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Emma Caulfield is a sexy, smart choice for a lead actress but saddled with a frightened victim role. In service of Kley she isn't given much to work with.
First-time director Jonathan Liebesman gives a good account of himself technically with an occasional scary setup but unfortunately his special effects and story are subpar. The Tooth Fairy character as created by Stan Winston's effects company is a dull recreation of horror characters past and the more screentime the monster logs, the more unscary it becomes. In interviews, the director said that the monster wasn't onscreen until the closing act but that the studio was so impressed they rolled out some cash for reshoots that bumped the films release date from mid-September to January and made the monster more prominent, which exposed it's flaws.
Whether the film was the victim of studio overkill or an inexperienced director, Darkness Falls is yet another unsuccessful horror film that strives for scares but can illicit only indifference.
Movie Review The Hitcher
The Hitcher (2007)
Directed by Dave Meyers
Written by Eric Bernt, Eric Red, Jake Wade Wall
Starring Sean Bean, Sophia Bush, Zachary Knighton, Neal McDonough,
Release Date January 19th, 2007
Published January 19th, 2007
Just referring to a film as a remake causes the eyes to roll up. Especially horror remakes. The remake of 1986's The Hitcher I'm sure made many an eye roll as mine did. Seeing the name of Michael Bay as producer gives little reassurance. Bay was responsible for both of the awful Texas Chainsaw Massacre reimaginings as well as the forgettable Amityville Horror remake in 2005. By some miracle however, this remake of The Hitcher works. Director Dave Meyers delivers a tightly focused edge of your seat, horror thriller that features a star making performance from Sophia Bush.
On a trip to spring break Grace (Sophia Bush) and her boyfriend Jim (Jim Knighton) pass a man on a rainy stretch of New Mexico highway. He was standing almost in the middle of the road and was nearly hit but did not move. They chose to leave him there but unfortunately, the hitcher, John Ryder (Sean Bean) caught up with them at a gas station down the road.
Feeling guilty, Jim offers John Ryder a ride to a hotel just down the road. Thus begins a tale of terror that the young couple could never have imagined. Ryder is a psychopath who has killed up and down the highways of America. Grace and Jim are lucky to escape him the first time. However, like a classic horror movie villain, John Ryder is not easy to get rid of.
The Hitcher is a remake of a 1986 horror flick that starred then teen sensation C. Thomas Howell as a good samaritan and Rutger Hauer as his menacing passenger. Hauer's hitcher seemed untouchable as one of the genre's great villains. In the remake, the role falls to character actor and Lord of the Rings star Sean Bean. As John Ryder Bean definitely embodies menacing determination but he's no match for Hauer's Walken-esque killer.
Sophia Bush and John Knighton; on the other hand; more than surpass Howell's whiny teenager. Whily and brave, their Grace and Jim are surprisingly smart, self aware, characters who make rash but correct decisions. One of the reasons this remake works so well is because Bush and Knighton are allowed intelligence. The decisions they make are decisions anyone would make given such outlandish conditions.
What director Dave Meyers, a music video veteran making his feature debut, does so very well in The Hitcher is establish his own logic and stick to it. The situations in The Hitcher are not unlike most horror movies, the difference is that The Hitcher establishes its own level of reality and remains existing within the rules of that reality. That allows us in the audience to suspend disbelief and get into the nervy, exciting tension of this story.
If I have an issue with The Hitcher it is with the slim, almost non-existent motivation of the title character. John Ryder is simply a killer who would have killed Grace and Jim whether they stopped the first time they saw him or after they finally did decide to help him. His motivation is simple bloodlust which I found unsatisfying. The Hitcher seems like it could make this killer more complicated and interesting. As it is, he is menacing but thin.
Sophia Bush is best known for the teen drama One Tree Hill on the CW network; but she is soon to be a very big star. The sexy star of The Hitcher is said to be the lead candidate to take over the coveted role of Wonder Woman when that film series starts up. Based on her tough minded work in The Hitcher, they could not make a better choice. Bush is sexy and vulnerable with a strong backbone and determination. Her work near the end of The Hitcher evokes a touch of Jamie Lee Curtis and a dash of Sigourney Weaver.
The Hitcher gets extra points for featuring actor Neal McDonough in a supporting role. McDonough is one of the more underappreciated character actors in the business. He broke out in the short lived series Boomtown on NBC and from there has been stellar in small roles in Flags of Our Fathers and Minority Report. As a tough as nails sheriff in The Hitcher, McDonough is the perfect measure of small town hard ass and pragmatism. He doesn't believe the horror being unleashed but he is one of the few with the toughness to deal with it.
Director Dave Meyers got his start in music videos but unlike most video directors who make the move to features, Meyers is not tied to that video style of quick edits, bright colors and shaky cameras. Meyers' direction of The Hitcher is smart and stylish in the classic thriller fashion. Using tight close ups, Meyers closes the frame around his actors and creates tension with his camera.
Best of all, he makes sparing use of the typical horror movie jump scene, that scene where things pop up out of nowhere as the music spikes. It's the cheapest kind of scare and Meyers is smart to avoid it, for the most part.
Director Dave Meyers shows terrific chops in turning a horror retread into a surprisingly suspenseful horror experience. The Hitcher should have been just another January programmer; but because of Meyers and the tough sexy performance of rising star Sophia Bush, The Hitcher is a stunner of edge of your seat excitement. Not a perfect horror film; but damn sure an entertaining one.
Movie Review: Codename The Cleaner
Codename The Cleaner (2006)
Directed by Les Mayfield
Written by George Gallo
Starring Cedric the Entertainer, Lucy Liu
Release Date January 5th, 2006
Published January 5th, 2006
I like Cedric The Entertainer, as a stand up comic. As part of the Original Kings of Comedy and on his own HBO comedy special, Cedric has shown a real talent for ribald racial humor and sly family comedy, along with indulging his love of music and humorous dance productions. His film work however, has never been able to capture the same affable personality.
As a matter of fact, Cedric’s film career has simply sucked. From Johnson Family Vacation to Man of the House to his latest starring effort Codename: The Cleaner, Cedric The Entertainer has flailed and flopped about in search of a good joke and most often comes up empty.
Codename: The Cleaner actually has what could be a clever premise in more skilled hands. Combining a dash of Chris Nolan's Memento with a touch of The Bourne Identity inside a comedy plot, the idea is there, but the execution is pitiful.
Jake Rogers (Cedric The Entertainer) woke up on the wrong side of the wrong bed this morning. Unable to remember his own name, Jake has even bigger problems than amnesia. There is a dead FBI agent in the bed with him and a suitcase full of hundred dollar bills at the foot of the bed. Did Jake kill this guy? If so why? If not, who did?
In the lobby Jake meets Diane (Nicolette Sheridan) who claims to be his wife. She knows all about his desperate situation and spirits him away to a mansion that he has no memory of living in. Jake has some kind of computer chip hidden somewhere that might help him clear his memory and figure out what all is happening and Diane desperately wants it. When her seduction skills fail to jog Jake's memory she plans to torture him, but before she can Jake escapes.
Following what little clues he has about himself, a video game company ID card and a taste for pancakes, Jake finds himself at a diner across from the videogame company where he is greeted by yet another beautiful woman, Gina (Lucy Liu), who also claims to be his significant other. She informs Jake that he is no more than a simple janitor, but Jake can't shake the idea that he is somehow a high powered secret agent.
Directed by Les Mayfield (Blue Streak,American Outlaws), Codename: The Cleaner plays like a script Martin Lawrence passed on several years ago. Cedric The Entertainer mugs and moons all he can to try inject some life into this film, one made for a big comic personality like his, but unfortunately, the goofy plot and Mayfield's inept direction keep interrupting Cedric's flow.
The comedy of Codename: The Cleaner works in small doses of Cedric being Cedric. In investigating his mysterious situation, Jake finds himself dressed in Dutch boy blues and clog dancing for a wildly entertained crowd. This is Cedric The Entertainer in his comfort zone, acting goofy; independent of the ridiculous plot. The scene is entirely unnecessary and superfluous but it's also one of the rare funny moments in otherwise laughless exercise.
I've liked Lucy Liu since her weird/sexy role on TV's Ally McBeal. It's a shame that her film career has been so wildly hit and miss. Her starring roles here and in the action flick Ballistic: Ecks Vs Sever show that she should definitely avoid titles with colons in the middle, but also that maybe being a lead actress is not her strong suit. Supporting roles in Kill Bill Vol. 1 and this year's terrific but sadly underseen, Lucky Number Slevin, have been a far better showcase for her skill, her range and her beauty.
There is no denying that Cedric The Entertainer is a funny guy and that even in something as idiotic as Codename: The Cleaner he can find laughs. But no matter how funny Cedric is; Codename: The Cleaner was doomed the moment director Les Mayfield took the helm. Mayfield's resume reads like something only a mother, or Shawn Levy, could love. Blue Streak, American Outlaws, The Man, Ugh! Les Mayfield is to bad comedy what Uwe Boll is to the poorly made video game based horror film.
Now I always seem to get emails when I inject large issues into innocuous movies, especially when I talk about the treatment of women in films. However, Codename: The Cleaner is yet another film that treats its female cast members with contempt. There is no doubt that both Lucy Liu and Nicolette Sheridan are beautiful women who turn heads whether in business attire or bikinis, but was it necessary for them to wrestle nearly nude in bubbles? Not that I didn't enjoy the visual, but the gratuity of this dream sequence is beyond anything any right thinking director could justify.
As attractive as the visual is, I felt ashamed for Lucy Liu for taking part in such a degrading and unnecessary scene. As for Sheridan, her towel drop with Terrell Owens on Monday Night Football and her regular gig in the nighttime soap Desperate Housewives makes such a scene rather par for the course for her career which also includes a number of softcore straight to video flicks. That fact doesn’t change how sexist and pointless this scene was.
Codename: The Cleaner is not offensively bad but it's far from anything I could recommend even to the most ardent fan of Cedric The Entertainer. Director Les Mayfield continues an embarrassing string of unfunny films that is likely to continue regardless of this film's box office failure. Like an old school studio hack, Mayfield makes the kind of cheap, high concept garbage that studios seem to like dumping into January, February and other non-blockbuster months.
As long as there are stand up comics in need of a quick paycheck and studios in need of dim-witted filler material; the Les Mayfield's of the world will always find work.
Movie Review Narc
Movie Review: Tooth Fairy
Tooth Fairy (2010)
Directed by Michael Lembeck
Written by Babaloo Mandel, Lowell Ganz, Joshua Sternin, Jennifer Ventimilia, Randy Mayhem Singer
Starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Ashley Judd, Julie Andrews
Release Date January 22nd, 2010
Published January 21st, 2010
Dwayne Johnson's unique, to say the least, career path from professional wrestling to honest to goodness movie star is relatively improbable on the surface. On closer inspection however there is a good deal of calculation to how the man once known as The Rock; OK he's still more or less known as The Rock, has crafted his movie stardom.
A balance of high concept comedy and low weight action pics that always play to the strengths of the handsome, hard bodied Johnson make for the perfect mix to make a guy a star in relatively quick succession. “Tooth Fairy” fits perfectly in The Rock's canon. This high concept comedy plays to his strong ability to poke fun at himself while leaving just enough room to display his physicality.
The Rock stars in “Tooth Fairy” as Derek 'The Tooth Fairy' Thompson a hockey thug known for knocking opponent’s teeth out. Derek is beginning to near the end of his career as a new young superstar is quick to point out early in the film. In Derek's personal life he has even more trouble on his hands. Things are good with his girlfriend Carly (Ashley Judd) but when he almost tells Carly's daughter that there is no tooth fairy, of the mythic kind, Carly is ticked.
Someone else is even more cheesed off and that is the head of the real tooth fairy operation. Yes, the tooth fairy is real and it turns out it is run like a tooth collecting corporation by Lily (Julie Andrews). When she hears of Derek's attempted myth killing she summons him to tooth fairy headquarters for punishment and while Derek thinks he is having a psychotic break, the reality is he is being made a tooth fairy until he learns the value of childish myths.
”Tooth Fairy” is a dopey, high concept, family comedy that aspires to be nothing more. As directed by mainstream film carpenter Michael Lembeck the film is assembled from recycled materials, hammered into place with thudding, groaning laughs and smoothed over with soporific clichés about families, acceptance and growing up.
If there is any reason to see “Tooth Fairy” it is the appeal of Dwayne Johnson. While this is not The Rock at his best, the guy has enough star power and charisma to carry off even the cheesiest of cheeseball gags. Dressed in a tutu or in hockey gear, Johnson has the exceptional ability to make himself the subject of the joke without losing his cool. It's a deftness that only those with real star power can pull off.
I can't give “Tooth Fairy” a forceful recommendation; the film is far too mindless for an audience with discerning standards. But, for those in the mood for mindless or for kids who don't yet know any better, you could do worse than the dippy simulacrum that is “Tooth Fairy.”
Movie Review: Annapolis
Annapolis (2006)
Directed by Justin Lin
Written by Dave Collard
Starring James Franco, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese
Release Date January 27th, 2006
Published January 27th, 2006
Annapolis is a real anomaly as a film. On the surface it's the story of a lower class kid fighting his way into the toughest military academy in the country. However, on the way to being a coming of age story the film lapsed into a boxing movie? Huh? James Franco stars in Annapolis as Jake Huard a wrong side of the tracks kid working hard not to end up like his miserable father working forever in the Baltimore shipyards. Jake's dream is to get into the the Annapolis naval academy, literally across the tracks from where Jake is now.
After pestering a United States Senator for months on end Jake gets his shot at Annapolis but finds that his dream is not so easily achieved. On the one hand Jake meets Ali (Jordana Brewster) a superior officer who takes an immediate shine to him. On the other hand he runs smack dab into the toughest drill instructor since Louis Gossett Jr. in Lt. Cole (Tyrese Gibson) who hates Jake on sight. Cole picks on Jake from day one and when Jake shows an interest in the Academy boxing program Cole throws down the gauntlet, go one on one with the Lt. and maybe, just maybe, Jake will have a shot to survive Annapolis.
What! Where does boxing have anything to do with military service. What does boxing have to do with anything in Annapolis. Director Justin Lin and writer David Collard shift gears from coming of age story to rote sports movie for seemingly no reason. Well there may have been a reason, as indecipherable as it may seem. I think that Lin and Collard quickly realized that the coming of age stuff wasn't working. The romance between James Franco and Jordana Brewster was lifeless and limp leaving only the boxing scenes with any real juice, all provided by the fiery presence of Tyrese Gibson who deserves a far better film.
Yes, the film does get some steam from the boxing scenes thanks Franco's training sessions with the surprisingly effective Donny Wahlberg playing his mentor and trainer. Franco and Gibson have good chemistry in and out of the ring as well. What makes Annapolis too ridiculous for words are the faux drama of the coming of age portions of the film, Franco versus his downtrodden daddy plays like bad after school special stuff as Franco whines and moans and daddy says he's never gonna amount to anything, yada yada yada. These scenes are even more tedious than they sound.
Director Justin Lin has been in a tailspin since his exceptional debut feature Better Luck Tomorrow. While I must admit that he did more than competent work on Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, there is no arguing that films artistic merits or lack thereof. Annapolis is inexorable. A shiftless, rhythm less tone free snoozer of sports clichés and coming of age hokum. One of the worst films of 2006.
Movie Review On Sacred Ground
On Sacred Ground (2023)
Directed by Josh Trickell, Rebecca Harrell Trickell
Written by Josh Trickell, Rebecca Harrell Trickell, William Mapother
Starring William Mapother, Amy Smart, Frances Fisher
Release Date January 13th, 2023
Published January 6th, 2023
On Sacred Ground tells a very unique story. Long time character actor William Mapother stars in On Sacred Ground as a reporter with a very specific right wing perspective. He's long been suspicious of environmental terrorists and his reporting on that subject catches the eye of a right wing news outlet. This right wing news outlet, working in league with oil company lobbyists, seeks to hire Mapother's Daniel McKinney to cover the story of an oil pipeline that is the subject of Native American protests.
The story that news organization and the oil company are pushing is that the Native American activists are violent, eco-terrorists who are disrupting a safe and legal oil pipeline and causing the kind of environmental crisis that they claim to be protesting against. The propaganda has Daniel on the side of the oil company, a perspective furthered when he arrives at the site of the pipeline protest where he witnesses a particularly emotional and physical protest in progress.
Access to the site is controlled by an oil company representative named Elliott (David Arquette). Elliott claims that the violence of the protests is not coming from the army of mercenaries hired as security by the oil company or the lines of Police Officers also on the side of the oil company. No, according to Elliott the supposedly non-violent, mostly Native American protesters are the ones throwing rocks, threatening Police and Security and doing damage to oil company property.
What Elliott and Daniel's new newspaper boss, Ricky (Frances Fisher), did not expect was for Daniel to embed himself with the protesters. Thinking he can uncover the violence among the protesters, Daniel goes to their camp and finds himself drafted in as a volunteer in a very well organized and trained group of protesters. The protesters bring Daniel in, show him their training in non-violent protest and place him on the front line of that non-violent protest where he witnesses what has really been happening.
The story of On Sacred Ground is based on the story of a group of military veterans who joined the ranks of Native American protesters Standing Rock in North Dakota. This group of veterans were brought together by a fellow veteran, Wesley Clark Jr., son of General Wesley Clark, a former Democrat Presidential candidate. He went to Standing Rock at the behest of a friend and found Native American protesters being brutalized by what he called a private army employed by the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Find my full length review at Swamp.Media
Movie Review Candy land
Candy Land (2023)
Directed by John Swab
Written by John Swab
Starring Olivia Luccardi, William Baldwin, Sam Quartin, Owen Campbell, Eden Brolin
Release date January 6th, 2023
Published January 2nd, 2023
Candy Land is a nasty, gritty, sexy horror movie about sex workers at a southern truck stop who meet a young woman named Remy (Olivia Luccardi), after she has either escaped from or been turned away from the religious cult she was with. Taking her in, they become her friends and, eventually, they initiate her into sex work. Little do they know that Remy is more dangerous than she looks. The mousy former cult member carries with her a cross with a deep dark secret related to her past and the cult from which she's supposedly escaped.
Among our characters is Sadie (Sam Quartin), Sadies' girlfriend, Liv (Virginia Rand), Riley (Eden Brolin) and Levi (Owen Campbell), a gay for pay sex worker. Helping the younger women with a place to stay and frequent customers is Nora (Guinivere Turner), a relatively kindhearted version of a pimp. Rounding out the cast is Sheriff Rex (William Baldwin) who looks the other way as the sex workers ply their trade. In exchange, he spends time with Levi whom he has become deeply enamored.
Once Remy becomes part of their crew people start dying. First is a random John who is found in the men's room with an eye cut out and his arms posed over his chest. Soon after, another customer, a trucker is killed. And then we get to the main cast, one of whom finds Remy cleaning her knife in the ladies room. Remy kills them to keep her murders quiet and then kills another random woman who comes in and that murder provides her with a cover story, this rando killed our friend, by Remy's estimation
Read my full length review at Horror.Media
Movie Review New in Town
Release Date January 30th, 2009
Movie Review Infinity Pool
Movie Review: A Dog's Way Home
A Dog's Way Home (2019)
Directed by Charles Martin Smith
Written by W. Bruce Cameron, Cathryn Michon
Starring Ashley Judd, Edward James Olmos, Alexandra Shipp, Bryce Dallas Howard
Release Date January 11th, 2019
Published January 12th, 2019
A Dog’s Way Home is a movie for kids. I had to keep telling myself that so that I would go easy on this otherwise tacky and manipulative melodrama. This is not a movie intended for an audience capable of seeing through its mawkishness and pushy sentimentality. A Dog’s Way Home is meant for yet to be fully formed intellects that won’t recognize the cheap dramatic tricks on display.
A Dog’s Way Home features the voice of Bryce Dallas Howard as Bella, a dog born living underneath a fallen house. Bella grows up alongside the sweetest group of feral cats in history until animal control grabs most of them and Bella’s mother and brothers. For the next part of her life, Bella is raised by a cat that she calls Mother Cat. Seeing a dog feed on a cat is a new experience and one I am not quite sure I am comfortable with.
Bella’s life is changed forever when she meets Lucas (Jonah Hauer King), a young man who has been working to rescue the cats living in this otherwise destroyed neighborhood. When he finds Bella, Bella falls immediately in love. Lucas takes Bella home even though his landlord doesn’t allow for him to have a pet. Lucas lives with his mother, played by Ashley Judd, an Iraq war vet with the lightest touch of PTSD, she gets a little sad sometimes.
This is the status quo for some time until Lucas crosses the developer trying to raze the building where the cats have been living. The developer sics animal control on Bella and because she is part Pitbull, and Pitbull's are apparently outlawed in Denver, where the film is set, Bella is taken away. Lucas decides to take Bella out of town until he and his mother find a new apartment outside of Denver.
Unfortunately, Bella doesn’t understand that she’s only temporarily going to be away from her owner and when she gets the chance, Bella flees the home in New Mexico and goes on a run through the woods and towns and some 400 miles to get herself back to Denver and back to her beloved owner. Along the way, Bella makes pals with a sweet hearted gay couple and a cougar that she calls Big Kitten.
You know how I said this is a kids movie? Well, there is at least one part that probably doesn’t belong in a movie for kids. In a subplot that left me utterly bewildered, Bella befriends a homeless man on her journey, played by Edward James Olmos, literally slumming for this role. The homeless man, like all of the supporting characters in this film, is a veteran dealing with PTSD. He keeps Bella tied to him until he is close to death when he decides to chain Bella to himself and then he dies.
Yes, this kiddie flick about a heartwarming dog’s journey home, features our hero dog chained to the corpse of a homeless veteran. It’s a scene as bewildering as it is bleak. I get that Bella needs life threatening crises for dramatic purposes but this one goes way too far, and we’re talking about a movie where a dog befriends a cougar and fights wolves. Bella nearly dies until two kids find her and the body because the trauma needed more witnesses I guess.
A Dog’s Way Home will, despite how tacky and cheap it is, still appeal to animal lovers. Much like the classic cheap child in danger plot, audiences can’t get enough of cute animals in danger plots. Add in a cutesy voiceover, as if the dog has a narrator trapped in its skull and audiences go crazy for it. Our love for animals runs so deep that we often give a pass to even the most trashy of cute animal movies and no doubt many audiences will give a pass to A Dog’s Way Home. I won’t but that’s just me.
Horror in the 90s Body Parts
Body Parts (1991) Directed by Eric Red Written by Eric Red, Norman Snider Starring Jeff Fahey, Brad Dourif, Kim Delaney, Lindsay Duncan ...
-
Men in Black 2 (2002) Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld Written by Robert Gordon, Barry Fanaro Starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Rosario D...
-
Crank (2006) Directed by Neveldine and Taylor Written by Neveldine and Taylor Starring Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Dwight Yoakam, Erfren Rami...
-
Insidious (2011) Directed by James Wan Written by Leigh Whannell Starring Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey, Lin Shaye Release ...