Movie Review Human Resources

Human Resources (2022) 

Directed by Braden Swope 

Written by Braden Swope, Evan Swope 

Starring Hugh McCrae Jr, Anthony Candell, Sara Jose, Tim Masuradze 

Release Date January 10th, 2023 

Published January 3rd, 2023 

Human Resources opens on a terrific piece of visual filmmaking. With a very low budget, director Evan Swope knows that he needs to set the tone for his movie without the bells and whistles of a big production. So, he relies on the most basic components of good filmmaking: sound design and camera work. We open inside Brooke's Hardware Store. An eerie breeze blows through the store creating an innate sense of dread. A worried yet determined employee walks into a room that is marked with signs telling him not to enter. 

Keith, the employee, goes ahead and enters. Inside, he begins to call out for someone or something. He's here to confront whatever entity has created this sense of dread at his place of work. Through a terrific sequence of camera movements, strong and fast editing choices, and tremendous sound design, we watch Keith search for, and, unfortunately, find something that ends up getting him killed. Barely a word of dialogue is spoken and yet, in less than four minutes, the premise of Human Resources is established. This business harbors a dark secret that will be uncovered as the movie plays out. 

Cut to daytime, a new employee is needed at Brooke's Hardware. The General Manager, Brian (Tim Masurdze, tells his store manager, Gene (Anthony Candell), to hire Sam Coleman (Hugh McCrae Jr). Though Sam has little work experience, and a less than impressive resume, Gene agrees, and Sam is brought on board. Once at his new place of work, Sam is trained by Sarah (Sarah Jose), a cynical, long-time employee of Brooke's Hardware who advises Sam not to let working this dead end job become his whole life. 

Together, Sam and Sarah stumble over the mystery of Keith, our opening kill victim. Keith had begun to document the creepy, odd and frightening goings on at Brooke's Hardware. Employees prior to Keith had been going missing. The store was always strangely empty, except on Black Friday when the story would be overrun with customers. Brian and Gene are very serious about Black Friday and how it keeps the entire store afloat for the whole year. If that sounds suspicious, it's intended to be. In the clever script by director Braden Swope and his brother, Ethan Swope, the suspicious elements are all cleverly employed. 

Bubbling under the surface of Human Resources is how our modern economy calls on low wage employees to dedicate themselves to work. Gene talks about culture and teamwork and builds up working a Brooke's Hardware as a calling as much as it is a job. Meanwhile, employees are paid a pittance for their time while being expected to work hard and over-deliver on their effort. Work hard for nothing in return because work itself is somehow a reward. Ugh! Human Resources takes this idea and rightly turns it into a premise for a horror movie. 

I really adored the direction of Human Resources. The smart choices, the limited exposition, it's a welcome breath of fresh air. Little dialogue is wasted in telling us the plot. Instead, the basics of filmmaking deliver important details visually. The characters interact as human beings who know and work together would, not as movie characters who must also explain to the audience what the plot is and what we should be aware of. The direction tells us far more than the script and that's the mark of good filmmaking and smart writing. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Girl With a Pearl Earring

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2004) 

Directed by Peter Webber 

Written by Olivia Hetreed 

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, Essie Davis 

Release Date January 16th, 2004 

Published January 15th, 2004 

A surprising amount of information is known about master painter Johannes Vermeer. He was born, raised, and lived his entire life in Delft in the Netherlands. He married in 1653, had 12 children and created 35 works of art that have managed to survive to this day. His most well-known and well-regarded painting is The Girl With A Pearl Earring. The film inspired by that painting is a fictionalized account of the life of the girl who inspired the masterwork.

Scarlett Johannsen stars as Griet, a handmaiden sent to work in the home of the artist Vermeer played by Colin Firth. The master painter has gained a good reputation and the unending regard of a wealthy patron Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson). It is Van Ruijven that makes Vermeer and his family's lifestyle possible by buying each of his paintings. It's not a perfect relationship; Van Ruijven is troubled by the length of time it takes the artist to complete his work, and Vermeer is uncomfortable with his patron’s demanding commissions.

Griet comes to work for the Vermeer family and immediately catches the eye of Van Rutjien. Charged with cleaning the artist’s studio, she also catches the eye of the artist but not entirely the way you might think. The relationship between Griet and Vermeer has tension but it remains chaste for the most part. Nevertheless Vermeer's wife Catharina (Essie Davis) is endlessly suspicious of the relationship.

That relationship is stressed further when Van Ruijven commissions Vermeer to paint Griet for his private collection. Van Ruijven has a history of sleeping with Vermeer's models, a scandalous series of affairs that the painter and his family are forced to cover up from Van Ruijven's wife. Handling most of the cover up is Catharina's mother, Maria Thins (Judy Parfitt), who acted as Vermeer's agent. Griet is able to avoid the advances of Van Ruijven but her problems don't end there as her modeling must be kept from Vermeer's wife.

The drama of Girl With A Pearl Earring is somewhat thin by modern standards. In the day and age of Monica Lewinsky and the tabloid exploits of the British Royal family, social standing is a rather quaint concern. The tension between Griet and Catharina is undermined a great deal by the fragile and passionless performance by Essie Davis. Her whining about the handmaiden wearing her pearl earring doesn't register the impact that I'm sure screenwriter Olivia Hetreed intended. That may be about the writer not establishing the symbolism of the earrings, but mostly it's Davis's performance that fails the material. The performance needs a little more life and energy. 

Colin Firth also fails, but that is because he is badly miscast as Vermeer. Wearing one of the least convincing wigs of all time, Firth's very British stiff upper lip betrays the bohemian artist type he is supposed to be playing. His face is a cold mask that communicates little inner life. Firth's Vermeer takes no joy in his work, seems to live in a constant funk, and never shows the potency that was obvious in the life of the real Vermeer who turned out 35 impressive works and 12 children.

The film's bright spot is Scarlett Johannsen whose gorgeous saucer eyes communicate a rich inner life that is fascinating with no need for words. Indeed it is a mostly wordless performance; Johannsen's Griet is a silent servant who always follows orders. Things happen around her and she merely tries to do her duty without making waves. That may not sound exciting, but with Johannsen's wonderfully expressive face it is truly fascinating. Like the characters surrounding her, you desperately want to know what is going on inside her and yet she hardly says a word.

First time feature director Peter Webber, who's wife Olivia Hetreed adapted the script, makes the bold choice not to use voiceover. A bold choice because Griet, the main character, barely speaks a word. Most writers and directors would use voiceover to fill in dramatic plot points but Webber and Hetreed trust their star to communicate what is needed with her eyes and they got exactly what they needed from Johannsen.

This is Johannsen's second star-making performance in less than 12 months--the first was an even better performance in Lost In Translation. This is both a career blessing and a curse. A blessing because few actresses get the opportunity to give two terrific performances in one year, a curse because she will have to compete against herself for Oscar nominations. Either performance is deserving of recognition but her performance in Girl With A Pearl Earring is certainly more complicated because the film surrounding it isn't as good as she is.

Movie Review: Country Strong

Country Strong (2011) 

Directed by Shana Feste

Written by Shana Feste

Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Garrett Hedlund, Leighton Meester, Tim McGraw

Release Date January 7th, 2011 

Published January 8th, 2011 

Country Strong is a stunningly bad movie. An overwrought tale of addiction, failed romance and country music, Country Strong was written and directed by Shana Feste as two different movies. One version of Country Strong is a straight drama about a falling star and the other is a gritty indie drama about an alcoholic struggling to get clean in the harsh light of fame. Director Feste crashes these two movies into one another and the result is a massive wreck at the corner of Lifetime Movie Network and the Independent Film Channel.

Gwyneth Paltrow stars in Country Strong as Kelly Cantor a country diva who evokes what Taylor Swift might look and sound like in 20 years. As we join the story Kelly is in rehab for some yet to be revealed reason. In treatment she is being romanced by an orderly named Beau (Garrett Hedlund, Tron Legacy) who happens to be a small time country singer. We know there is romance here because of their moony exchanges while Beau tries out a song for the diva in her room.

The rehab idyll is broken up by the arrival of Kelly's husband James (Tim McGraw) who announces that Kelly is leaving rehab early to get back out on the road and reclaim her career. In a fit of bad judgement James is sending his wife back out on the road just 6 months after her breakdown on stage during a concert in Dallas. Moreover, genius James is sending her back to Dallas for her big comeback show at the end of the tour.

Joining Kelly as her opening act is 19 year old Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester) a mousy wannabe Carrie Underwood with the brains of Kellie Pickler. James chose Chiles personally and the sexual tension between the married man and the rising teen diva is yet another of James's brilliant moves that seem orchestrated to drive his already fragile wife over the edge. Thankfully, Kelly has brought Beau along as both a lover and protector.

The creepy love quadrangle is one of the stranger touches of Country Strong as bot James and Beau lust after the teenager while sleeping with Paltrow's troubled 40 year old alcoholic. This is part of the wannabe indie vibe that writer-director Shana Feste wants to make even as most of the movie is a big, glossy, classically showbiz drama.

The dissonant tone of Country Strong clangs and bangs along and Shana Feste matches it with a shooting and editing style as clunky and discordant as the two movies she is banging into one. Scenes begin and end in strange places at odd angles and at times all we in the audience can do is laugh at the oddity of what we are witnessing.

How strange and out of tune is Country Strong? The one actual country music star in the cast doesn't sing until the closing credits. While actors Gwyneth Paltrow, Garrett Hedlund and Leighton Meester play singers and get on stage, the one person to actually sell a few country records, country superstar Tim McGraw is the one person on the screen called upon just to act.

That's not to say that the music of Country Strong suffers for having actors playing singers; each of the stars actually come off surprisingly well. Gwyneth Paltrow gave fans an earful of her warble in the long forgotten karaoke drama Duets singing alongside Huey Lewis. In Country Strong Gwyneth's voice is stronger and more confident bringing to mind a slightly less engaging Shania Twain.

Garrett Hedlund as Beau is the films one true revelation. Hedlund has a terrific deep drawling voice that fits perfectly the old school, twangy laden country songs that are Beau's forte. Leighton Meester's meek voice is well cast. The Gossip Girl star fits perfectly the role of the pretty pop country star whose best work is created in the studio with the aid of a great producer who can hide her faults.

When Country Strong takes to the stage things get lively and fun. Off of the stage Country Strong is a disaster of high camp melodrama and wannabe indie movie grit. If writer-director Shana Feste had embraced this trainwreck with a bit of irony and humor she might have turned Country Strong into a honky tonk Black Swan with Gwyneth as the cracked diva, Leighton Meester as a ditzy version Mila Kunis's scheming wannabe and McGraw taking on Vincent Cassell's taskmaster with a Tennesse twang replacing the haughty Frenchness.

It would cost the film Hedlund's voice, his character is far too earnest to survive this version of Country Strong, but it would be a better and far more interesting movie and it would free Hedlund to go make a real country record of his own. I know, I have to review the movie that was made and not dream of the movie I wish were made but I had little else to do while I waited out Country Strong's final odd yet somehow conventional twist.

Movie Review Last Holiday

Last Holiday (2006) 

Direted by Wayne Wang 

Written by Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman 

Starring Queen Latifah, LL Cool J Jane Adams, Timothy Hutton, Giancarlo Esposito 

Release Date January 13th, 2006

Published January 12th, 2006 

Sitting down to watch the Queen Latifah comedy Last Holiday I had low expectations. My expectations were exceeded mightily by a good natured sweet comedy about life, love and the ever looming specter of death. Okay, I added the specter of death thing. This is, after all, a comedy.

Last Holiday is a comedy about a woman who is told she is going to die soon and chucks it all -job, friends, bills- and runs off to wile away her last days in a resort in the alps. The specter of impending death never really enters the film because Queen Latifah is such a joy to watch and director Wayne Wang such a carefree auteur that he eschews making a real movie and focuses his attention on making his star look good.

Queen Latifah stars in Last Holiday as Georgia Byrd, a small demonstration cook with dreams of running her own restaurant. For now she spends her evenings watching Emeril Live and cooking great meals she doesn't eat. She cooks for practice and occasionally for a teenage neighbor but mostly she cooks for the joy of cooking.

At work Georgia fends off an ever menacing middle manager (Matt Ross) whose ambition threatens everyone's job, and finds time to gossip with her pal Rochelle (Jane Adams). The gossip most often turns to talk of the handsome new grill salesman Sean (L.L Cool J) who has his eyes on Georgia though she refuses to believe it.

The plot kicks in when a head injury at work sends Georgia to the hospital where her doctor gives her a prognosis of imminent death due to a brain tumor. Georgia has about two weeks to live. What would you do if you only had two weeks to live? For Georgia Byrd, the answer is to quit her job and run to a fabulous European resort with every cent of her savings and spend her last days indulging the finest food in the world from one of the world's greatest chef, Chef Didier (Gerard Depardieu).

Flashing what little cash she has for the best room in the place, the best table in the restaurant and the finest clothes in Europe naturally draws the attention of her fellow guests that coincidentally include a Senator (Giancarlo Esposito) from Georgia's own district and the owner of the store Georgia worked at (Timothy Hutton). The less said about this convenient plot, the better.

Based loosely on a British comedy from 1950, of the same title, Last Holiday is an ebullient film full of vibrant life and surprisingly big laughs. Director Wayne Wang is not working with much of a script which forces him to rely mostly on the charms of his lead actress. The effervescent Queen Latifah rescues what would have likely been a very dull picture with a terrifically self-effacing and brave performance that earns big laughs and loads of pathos.

If you can't sympathize and laugh riotously with Queen Latifah clearly you are far too cynical.

As the one true draw of Last Holiday Queen Latifah had a lot riding on her and you never once see her sweat. Whether she is sassily rebuffing the advances of the lecherous Senator or wrapped head to toe in a mud wrap and needing a bathroom break, Latifah's every move is pure charm, she is just that lovable.

Sure, Last Holiday is mindless and often forgettable. The plot is a joke of coincidence and predictability. Who cares! When you get to spend 90 minutes with a movie friend like Queen Latifah that makes up for a lot of problems. Queen Latifah is simply that much of a pleasure to watch in Last Holiday, so much you forget how bad the picture as a whole truly is.

There are few actors or actresses who can make you forget you are watching a bad movie and simply focus on them. Queen Latifah failed to pull off that trick in awful films Taxi, The Cookout and Bringing Down The House but she really pulls it off in Last Holiday, a bad movie made pleasant even entertaining by a star truly coming into her own.

Last Holiday is like candy, it may not be good for you, it may rot your teeth or your brain, but while you're enjoying it nothing else matters. This is a movie for candy lovers.

Movie Review The Mothman Prophecies

The Mothman Prophecies (2002) 

Directed by Mark Pellington 

Written by Richard Hatem 

Starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Will Patton, Debra Messing 

Release Date January 25th, 2002 

Published January 25th, 2002 

The words "based on a true story" have a way of stirring up controversy in Hollywood. Case in point A Beautiful Mind, where a few seemingly minor factual omissions have fueled all sorts of critical rants. Now comes The Mothman Prophecies based on the 1975 book of the same title by John Keel who investigated paranormal activity in the small town of Point Place, West Virginia in 1966.

The paranormal activities were said to be the multiple unrelated sightings of moth-like creatures including one by the author himself. Thus the "based on a true story" credit at the beginning of the film has elicited skepticism and even laughter from some reviewers, myself not included. Not that I believe in these supposed moth-like creatures, I just found the film itself to be so entertaining I don't care if it's true or not.

Richard Gere stars as Washington Times reporter John Klein who, with his wife Mary (Debra Messing), is involved in a car crash which both survive but leads to the discovery of Mary's brain tumor. The tumor is terminal and soon enough Mary passes away, but not before she draws pictures of the moth-like creatures which she claims caused the accident. Months later while driving to an assignment, Klein gets lost and winds up in Point Place, West Virginia where under very strange circumstances he is accused of stalking a local man named Gordon (Will Patton). Klein is released after meeting with the sheriff Connie Parker (Laura Linney) who explains that Gordon has been acting strange since experiencing strange visions that Klein finds are quite similar to those described by his wife. Gordon isn't the only person in town to have these visions and Klein decides to stick around to investigate.

The story is somewhat superfluous, but the first rate cast improves it greatly. Gere is especially good using his trademark stoicism to great effect as his character begins to meltdown. Laura Linney shows herself to be the heir apparent to Meryl Streep in the versatility department, and Will Patton continues to show himself to be the "go-to" character guy who can play anything and make it believable.

Let us not forget director Mark Pellington, whose supreme pacing and great eye for exciting visuals keeps the film moving at an entertaining clip that keeps the audience off balance all the way through. True story or not,The Mothman Prophecies is an entertaining story and that is what counts.

Movie Review Glass

Glass (2019) 

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan 

Written by M. Night Shyamalan 

Starring Bruce Willis, James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor Joy, Sarah Paulson 

Release Date January 18th, 2019 

Published January 17th, 2019 

As the biggest fan on the planet of M Night Shyamalan’s Split, I had a bias in favor of Glass. I was deeply excited for this sequel to two movies that I absolutely adored in Unbreakable and Split. So, for me to say that Glass is a bizarre, cheap, sloppy mess of a movie is really saying something. I tried to like this movie, I attempted to will Glass into being a good movie. I tried to rationalize it into working as a narrative. Nothing I tried worked as my logical brain overwhelmed my fanboy instinct, forcing this admission: Glass is terrible.

Glass picks up the story of Unbreakable and Split in the wake of the revelation that the two are in the same universe. David Dunn (Bruce Willis) has been fighting evil since the day he sent Elijah Price, aka Mr. Glass (Samuel L Jackson) to prison for his terrorist acts. Using his super strength and extra-sensory perception, David has turned his attention to The Horde, the name given to the multiple personalities of Kevin (James McAvoy).

The Beast, Kevin’s most violent and dangerous alter-ego, has been feeding on those who he believes have never felt real pain. He’s murdered several more teenagers in the time since we met him in Split but finally, David Dunn, known in the media as ‘The Overseer,’ for reasons never determined, has a lead on The Horde. David has tracked Kevin's location with the help of his son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), to an empty factory in Philadelphia.

The confrontation between David and The Beast is cut short by the arrival of police and a doctor, Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson). How did the police find them? Your guess is as good as the movie’s guess, as the movie offers no notion of how the police got there. How they got there with the one doctor in the world who has created a machine that can stop the superhuman qualities of Kevin and David, even though they had no idea where or who they were, is one of many contrivances of the idiot plot of Glass.

David and Kevin are taken to a psychiatric hospital where, waiting for them, unwittingly, is Mr. Glass. It seems that Dr. Staple has a very particular specialty: people who believe they are superheroes. She believes that the three men are delusional and sets out to prove to them their seemingly superhuman abilities can be explained through science. Naturally, Elijah Price, the ultimate ‘True Believer’ won’t be easily convinced.

The trailer for Glass spoils the fact that Mr. Glass and The Horde/Kevin become a team and that David and The Beast will go head to head in the yard of the hospital. One thing the trailer doesn’t tell you is how cheap and unfocused these scenes are. The final act of Glass is reminiscent of Shyamalan’s The Village, a film where the final act completely destroys what was not a bad movie until that point. Glass is bad throughout but the final fight does manage to make things worse. 

Glass isn’t that bad headed to the third act, it's relatively watchable, and then things go completely off the rails. In his attempt to recapture past glory as the king of the ‘Twist,’ director M. Night Shyamalan packs a ludicrous number of twists into the third act of Glass. There are so many twists at the end of Glass that it becomes downright exhausting. It’s as if Shyamalan was so desperate to fool us that he hedged his bets and put in as much craziness as he could think of in order to convince us that at least one of these twists would legitimately surprise us.

I mentioned that Glass was cheap and boy howdy, for a movie that is a sequel to a pair of blockbusters, this movie looks as if it were a Sweded version of a sequel to two blockbusters. Glass has one location for the most part and while it promises a big showdown at a high profile location, that location is revealed as CGI that somehow looks like a below average matte painting. The biggest twist in Glass is how M. Night Shyamalan turned a blockbuster movie into a cheap, forgettable failure. 

The number of corners cut in the making of Glass are rather shocking. The makeup used in many scenes is below average for even a modestly budgeted movie and the costumes are shockingly low rent. The production is stunningly mediocre and reflects the fact that Shyamalan no longer carries favor of a major studio, or studio budget. The former blockbuster director is now in the strictly low rent district, working with indie outlet Blumhouse, home of cheap, shlocky horror movies. 

No one was more excited for Glass than I was. I was endlessly excited for this movie. I ignored how the trailer appeared to reveal important plot points. I ignored the cheesy lines made just for the trailer. I was completely blind to these flaws out of fealty to my love for Split and Unbreakable. Glass was going to have to fail so remarkably for me to dislike it. The failure of Glass would have to be undeniable and complete and it truly is. Glass is undeniably terrible. 

Movie Review The Old Way

The Old Way (2023) 

Directed by Brett Donawho 

Written by Carl W. Lucas 

Starring Nicolas Cage, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Shiloh Fernandez, Noah Le Gros 

Release Date January 6th, 2023

Published January 10th, 2023 

The Old Way stars Nicolas Cage as former gunfighter Colton Briggs. A well known and much feared outlaw in his day, Colton is now domesticated. He has a wife, Ruth (Kerry Knuppe), and a daughter, Brooke (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), and a dry good store in town. He's become an upstanding citizen so naturally, his past is coming back to haunt him. Enter a group of bandits led by James McCallister (Noah Le Gros). McCallister and his gang are on the run from the law when they happen upon the Briggs' home while Colton is away at work. 

Through a fluke of fate, the home that the bad guys want to hole up in for a night is that of the man that killeed McCallister's father and uncle right in front of him more than a decade ago. Though he's well aware of Briggs' reputation as the coldest of cold blooded killers, McCallister and his goons, Boots (Shiloh Fernandez), Big Mike (Abraham Benrubi), and Eustice (Clint Howard), set about torturing and murdering Ruth with McCallister hoping that her murder will bring Briggs out of outlaw retirement. 

Indeed, this does provide motivation for Colton to dust off his long black coat and revolvers but there is a potential impediment to Colton's roaring rampage of revenge. Colton's daughter is still alive. She was with Colton at his story when her mother died. Thus Colton must decide what to do with his little girl while pursuing his outlaw revenge. Lucky for him, Brooke has a lot more of her father in her than he might imagine. Brooke doesn't cry over her mom's death, she picks up a shotgun. 

That's a good set up for a western story. Sadly, as that story plays out in The Old Way, it never gains much life. What's lacking in The Old Way is something to really set the story apart from other similar stories. You might reasonably assume that casting the wildly charismatic and unpredictable Nicolas Cage might provide that unique quality but you'd be mistaken. Unfortunately, Nicolas Cage delivers one of the most by the numbers performances of his career in The Old Way. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review: Coach Carter

Coach Carter (2005) 

Directed by Thomas Carter

Written by Mark Schwan, John Gatins

Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Channing Tatum, Rob Brown 

Release Date January 14th, 2005 

Published January 13th, 2005 

In 1999, Richmond High School's basketball coach, Ken Carter, made national headlines by doing something unheard of from an inner-city school. Locking up his gym and cancelling games, Coach Carter required his student athletes to actually be students. I can recall remarking at the time that there was no doubt this story would become a movie and, five years later, that movie has arrived.

Watered down to the mainstream, easy-listening pace of a Hollywood feature, Coach Carter gains resonance and drama thanks to its casting of the amazing Samuel L. Jackson.

When Ken Carter returned to his alma mater, Richmond High School, in the ghettos of Richmond, California, he found a run-down, raggedy basketball team with the discipline of a street gang. Coming out of a 4 and 20 season, the teams' prospects looked no brighter for the new season. That will change under Coach Carter's leadership. With his imposing presence, booming voice, and willingness to allow the teams' best players to quit if they won't follow orders, Coach Carter knows how to take control.

Carter's first act as head coach is to make the players sign an agreement that requires a grade point average higher than the high school standard. The players are also required to wear ties on game day and sit in the front of the classrom. That is not the least of his demands. On the court, Coach Carter runs his team through the floor, teaching them the fundamentals that most of the players had never learned.

With such a large cast, the players don't resonate much as characters. Most simply fit character types that seem diverse when taken as a whole. There is the clown (Antwon Tanner), the white kid (Channing Tatum), and the coach's own son (Robert Ri'chard), who earns his place on the team by promising to work twice as hard. There is also the troubled kid (Rick Gonzalez), whose involvement with drugs and gangs serves as the example of what the kids are striving to avoid.

The one player in Coach Carter who makes an impact is played by Rob Brown, the impressive young actor from 2000's Finding Forrester, whose natural talent is to seem as if he is not acting at all. Brown is truly awesome; his presence dominates even when his character is silent. Brown is involved in the films' most controversial subplot, a high school pregnancy with pop-star Ashanti, who makes an impressive film debut. The subplot is controversial for its results and its unique treatment, but I felt responsibly portrayed and especially well-acted by these two superior young actors.

Coach Carter was directed by television veteran Thomas Carter, no relation to the Coach, who distinguishes this cliched sports-movie premise, uplifting after-school-special kind of stuff, by casting the brilliant Samuel L. Jackson. The casting of someone with Jackson's star power and presence sells the uplifting and potentially sappy elements of the plot.

Jackson is aided greatly by a surprisingly good script by John Gatins and Mark Schwahn, though they were likely assisted by the on-set involvement of the real Coach Ken Carter, whose "No B.S." approach I'm sure was a guiding influence. What makes this story so much more interesting and intelligent than most movies of its genre is the serious way it treats its academic storyline. Yes, the basketball scenes are well shot, but the impressive part is the seriousness of its true subject, the importance of an education.\

Unlike the cowardly Friday Night Lights, a movie that shunned the frightening sociology behind its football story, Coach Carter takes its sociological underpinnings head on. The film tackles, at times indirectly, the psychological, economical and social pressures that cause young black men to lose hope and give in to the lures of easy money by selling drugs.

Coach Carter's one-man-against-the-world approach does at times appear comical. It takes a little while for us to understand why the community rises up against the coach, who's simply trying to make sure their children get educated. Eventually, you do understand, which deepens the sadness and drama that help the film earn its uplifting sports-movie ending.

Coach Carter is not perfect--it has the mainstream, feel-good tone that is the hallmark of both MTV Films and Producers Brian Robbins and Michael Tollin. But, the film also has Samuel L. Jackson, who after drifting through a series of dreadful roles in films like Twisted, Formula 51 and No Good Deed, is back in "badass" form. It is Jackson's performance that makes the feel-good approach not feel either false or sappy. His presence, his dramatic weight and, best of all, that booming 'basso profundo' sell this piece as more than just another sports movie.

Movie Review Weak Layers

Weak Layers (2024) 

Directed by Katie Burrell

Written by Katie Burrell, Andrew Ladd 

Starring Katie Burrell, Jadyn Wong, Chelsea Conwright, Evan Jonigkeit 

Release Day January 5th, 2024

Published January 5th, 2025 

Weak Layers is a throwback to a time in the 1980s and 90s when comedies set on ski slopes became a mildly popular sub-genre. These movies were all the same formula, a group of slobs battling a group of snobs. The slobs throw wild, over the top parties filled with drugs, booze, nudity, and associated debauchery, before having to learn a valuable lesson that leads to them to clean up their act just long enough to win, or come close to winning, a big skiing competition. The only notable differences in these comedies was whether or not they featured just skiing or skiing and snowboarding. 

It's been a few years since we've seen one of these skiing comedies like Ski School, Aspen Extreme, or Snowboard Academy. As terrible as these movies often were, there was a particular charm to them. Skiing comedies, like the similar sub-genre of Summer Camp movies, think Meatballs, have a breezy, silly, dopey quality that made them very easy to watch. Weak Layers does well in recapturing the silly, stupid, easy to watch qualities of the classic ski-comedy. 

Weak Layers was co-written and directed by Katie Burrell who also stars in the movie as Cleo, a wannabe film director, killing time drinking, partying and skiing. Cleo shares an apartment with her two closest friends, Lucy (Jadyn Wong), and former Olympic skier, Tina (Chelsea Conwright). When the trio parties just a little too hard and end up trashing their apartment, they're forced to live in a friends van while they seek a new place to live and party. 

The trios best bet for getting the money together for a place to live is a longshot. Cleo's video of her friends partying and skiing has recently gone viral and earned her the chance to submit a short documentary to a contest with a $10,000 grand prize. To win, she and her friends will have to clean up their acts and do some of the best skiing of their lives while Cleo captures it all on camera and turns it into an award winning skiing movie. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Mayhem

Mayhem (2024) 

Directed by Xavier Gens 

Written by Xavier Gens

Starring Nassim Lyes, Loryn Nounay, Oliver Gourmet 

Release Date January 5th, 2024 

Published January 3rd, 2024 

Mayhem is an ultraviolent revenge thriller out of France. Directed by Xavier Gens, Mayhem follows a Mixed Martial Artist who is just out of jail and hoping to stay out of trouble. Naturally, trouble finds him instead and he ends up going on the wrong after accidentally killing the brother of a drug dealer. He picks up his life in Thailand but as stories like this always go, the past is going to catch up with him leading to a final confrontation and a bloody, bloody end for most of the baddies. 

Mayhem stars champion kickboxer Nassim Lyes as Sam, a reformed bad boy eager to rebuild his life after time in prison. Things are looking up for Sam as he gets out of prison and immediately earns a well paying job on a construction site. It's long hours and hard work but it's also a chance to rebuild his life on the right side of the law. Naturally, if that were allowed to happen then this would not be a bloody revenge action film so don't get used to this status quo. 

In fact, it takes barely a day before Sam's past comes back to haunt him. A drug dealer who wanted Sam back in his employ has sent thugs to kill Sam. As Sam flees through the rugged streets of Paris, he ends up on a construction site where he ends up killing the man chasing and attacking him. This man happens to be the drug dealer's brother. This will force Sam to give up Paris in favor of going on the lam. Leaving behind all that he's known to go to Thailand and try to start over. 

The story then picks up five years down the road. Sam has a wife and has adopted her daughter as his own. They have a baby on the way. They also have plans to buy a home, with money raised by Sam returning to fighting where he throws fights on behalf shady gangster types. Sam's wife may as well have a bulls eye on her forehead, she is not long for this movie. I'm honestly not sure we learned her name. She's here to die and motivate Sam to become the ultimate killing machine. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Maybe I Do

Maybe I Do (2023) 

Directed by Michael Jacobs 

Written by Michael Jacobs 

Starring Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, William H. Macy, Susan Sarandon, Emma Roberts 

Release Date January 27th, 2023

Published January 28th, 2023

Somewhere there is a dusty shelf that someone cleaning that hadn't been cleaned since 1994. On that shelf was a script for a truly awful romantic comedy called Maybe I Do. To whomever failed to leave this script on that dusty, forgotten shelf is a truly cruel human being. The script for Maybe I Do belongs on an ash heap, not on a big screen. This insipid throwback to awful boomer politics of the time when their opinion of popular culture mattered, is a relic of a time when men made jokes about hating their wives and wives joked about their husband's inability to satisfy them sexually. Ugh! 

That this insipid film stars Diane Keaton is seemingly inevitable. The once great actress has an uncanny ability to find the absolute worst movies that play to her worst instincts as an actress. How a woman with this much talent manages to choose the worst movies is some kind of cosmic joke. Keaton's last 20 plus years include some of the worst movies of this young century and Maybe I Do belongs to that epic, awful canon of the worst of the worst. 

In Maybe I Do, Diane Keaton plays a married woman whose idea of lying to her husband, Richard Gere, is going to the movies by herself. Meanwhile, her terrible husband is off having sex with his sort of mistress played by Susan Sarandon. Gere hates Sarandon and lets her know that in no uncertain terms. She still wants to have sex with him. When he finally decides to end things with her, basically stating how much he hates her, Sarandon says she will kill him if she sees him again. Plot point! 

Meanwhile, while at her elicit movie, Keaton meets a sadsack played by an actor who embodies that term all too well, Wiilliam H. Macy. Seeing Macy crying his eyes out over whatever movie they were watching; Keaton takes pity to comfort him. This leads them to spend the evening together but not in the way you think. They do go and get a hotel but it's only so that they can watch TV, eat fried chicken, and talk about the misery of their loves with their miserable spouses. 

You get no points for guessing that Keaton's spouse is Gere and that Macy's spouse is Sarandon. Making this convoluted nonsense even more convoluted is the other plot of Maybe I Do. At a wedding between their closest friends, Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey appear to be a very happy couple. Then, Bracey sees Roberts about to catch the bouquet and he loses his ever-loving mind. Racing across the room, he leaps off of a table and catches the bouquet right out of his girlfriend's hands. 

Find my full length review linked here at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Underworld Evolution

Underworld Evolution (2006) 

Directed by Len Wiseman 

Written by Danny McBride 

Starring Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Bill Nighy, Michael Sheen

Release Date January 20th, 2006

Published January 19th, 2006 

2003's Underworld began with a cool comic book fantasy premise. The idea? A war between vampires and werewolves. It's an idea that had horror fanboys creaming their shorts in anticipation of the long dreamed battle between two of literature's iconic villains. Unfortunately, with a first time director Len Wiseman at the helm, Underworld flailed and ultimately faltered in a hail of bullets and blue light. The novice director never got a handle on how iconic his subject matter was and instead became enamored of finding new ways to exploit the, ahem, virtues of his star Kate Beckinsale. And what virtues they are.

That film may have failed its central idea but, as a masturbation fantasy on home video, the film became a hit and less than two years later we get Underworld: Evolution. Filled with more fabulous shots of the leather clad Ms. Beckinsale, including one near nude scene, Underworld: Evolution once again fails its premise but does manage to reaffirm how hot Beckinsale is in tight black leather.

The first Underworld introduced us to our heroine Selene (Kate Beckinsale), a leather clad badass vampire who calls herself a death dealer. Her job is to hunt and kill the vampire's ancient enemy, the Lycan (werewolf for the uninitiated). By the end of the film she and her new man Michael (Scott Speedman), a newly created vamp/Lycan hybrid, had uncovered a shattering conspiracy and became outlaws on the run from both vampire and werewolf alike.

Evolution picks up where the first film left off with Selene and Michael seeking shelter and much needed blood. Unbeknownst to our heroes, another even more powerful vampire elder, the legendary Marcus (Tony Curran), has awakened and is searching for Selene. She, or more to the point her blood, holds the key to the secret of Marcus' brother's whereabouts. Marcus' brother happens to be the very first and deadliest werewolf in history. Marcus intends on freeing his brother and taking over the world.

It's not a great plot, in fact it's barely a passable plot. Len Wiseman, who wrote and directed the first film and contributed the story for this film, seems to have only one real obvious talent, and that talent is filming Kate Beckinsale, who happens to be his wife. The two met on the set of the first film and were married soon after production wrapped.

It's not hard to make Kate Beckinsale look good, her natural assets outlined in tight black leather are more than enough. Wiseman's camera, however, finds ways to accentuate her natural beauty to a distracting degree. Underworld: Evolution features a really hot sex scene between Michael and Selene that no doubt made the ultimate difference in the film's R-rating.

So with all of the issues I have with the plotting and some of the important technical aspects on the filmmaking side, what is it about Underworld: Evolution that I loved?

Underworld: Evolution picks up where the original Underworld left off with an unrelenting pace. After a brief respite resetting the vampire/lycan history, the film starts running fast and never stops. Ok, so vampires shooting at each other seems as odd as it did in the first film but, at the very least, there are a lot of bullets and they invariably hit their mark spilling buckets of CGI blood.

The violence of Underworld: Evolution is cartoonish and over the top but it works because there is so much of it. The fight scenes between Selene and Marcus and Michael and a giant CGI werewolf are goofy but still manage to be a lot of fun. When a downed helicopter with still spinning blades is introduced into the fight you just know some awesome carnage is soon to come, and Evolution does not disappoint.

Despite improving on the original Underworld, Evolution fails its super cool premise the same way the first film did. That is disappointing, but the film makes up for some of that disappointment by providing the kind of classic, highly stylized, extremely bloody violence that made me love horror films as a kid. Forget that horror porn garbage, give me classic, balls-out, over the top gore and save the mysoginistic insights into man's inhumanity to man for some unpleasant college course.

Underworld: Evolution is not nearly a great film but, compared to recent offerings in the horror genre, it's a breath of fresh bloody gore.

Movie Review Impostor

Impostor (2002) 

Directed by Gary Fleder 

Written by Caroline Case, Ehren Kruger, David Twohy

Starring Gary Sinise, Madeline Stowe, Vincent D'onofrio, Mekhi Phifer, Tony Shalhoub

Release Date January 4th, 2002 

Published January 3rd, 2002 

Four years ago, Dimension films began work on a science fiction film called The Light Years Trilogy. The film was to be 3 short films based on three separate Philip K. Dick stories. The project never fully came together though two of the three short films were produced. One of those was Impostor starring Gary Sinise and Vincent D'onofrio. The suits at Dimension liked the 30-minute version so much they ponied up the dough to turn it into a full-length feature.

They were better off with the half hour version.

Impostor takes place 75 years in the future, with Gary Sinise as scientist Spencer Oldham. Oldham is working on a top-secret weapon in the war against aliens called the Centaurians. Arriving at work after a weekend vacation, Spencer is arrested by the military police headed by Vincent D'onofrio. D'onofrio claims that Oldham is not who he appears, that he is in fact an alien cyborg with a bomb in his chest.\

In a scene reminiscent of the Salem Witch trials, Oldham is to be tied to an operating table while a laser drills into his chest. The theory is to get the bomb out and diffuse it. Essentially, if Spencer is an alien bomb they kill him and if he's not, the test will have proven he wasn't alien. Spencer will be dead but at least he's not an alien. Well of course Spencer escapes, there wouldn't be a move if he didn't, and thus begins a series of dull chase scenes through your typically post-apocalyptic cityscapes.

Sinise is well cast as is D'onofrio but they were likely better served in the original 30 minute version.

There are some interesting scenes in Impostor. For example, the first interrogation scene with D'onofrio questioning Oldham while his friends and coworkers look on has the feeling of a futuristic version of the 1950's communist witch hunts, and as I previously mentioned the Salem Witch trials. The ending does build some palpable suspense with a fun little twist.

But in the end, Impostor is, to paraphrase the band Sum 41, all filler no killer.

Movie Review: Youth in Revolt

Youth in Revolt (2010) 

Directed by Miguel Arteta

Written by Gustin Nash

Starring Michael Cera, Portia Doubleday, Jean Smart, Ray Liotta, Steve Buscemi, Fred Willard

Release Date January 8th, 2010

Published January 8th, 2010 

Michael Cera is not everyone's cup of tea. His fey, nonchalant nebbish-ness is a put off for some but not for me. From “Arrested Development” to “Superbad” to now “Youth in Revolt” and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” Cera's persona has become a wonderful comic tool that he wields with precision. It's fair to say that “Youth in Revolt” takes the Michael Cera persona to an extreme but it worked for me and will work for anyone who counts them a Cera fan.

Michael Cera stars in Youth in Revolt as Nick Twisp a shy young man living with his slatternly mother (Jean Smart) and her loser boyfriend of the moment, Jerry (Zach Galifianakis). When Jerry gets in trouble with some local tough the 'family' has to go on the run. They take refuge in a trailer park where Nick spies the girl of his dreams, Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday).

Sheeni initially has no interest in Nick but his persistence is flattering and eventually she gives him a break but only after he becomes the bad boy of her dreams. Nick is no bad boy but when he manages to tick off Sheeni's parents it begins an unintended reputation that Nick must foster in order to keep Sheeni's attention.

After Jerry disappears Nick is forced to return home. Once there and torn from his beloved Sheeni, Nick must hatch a plan, a plan that will allow him to move back. This elaborate fiasco involves getting his dad (Steve Buscemi) a job and a place to live near the trailer park. Then, he has to convince his mom to kick him out and force him to live with dad. The ways in which Nick goes about this are part of a tricky, gloriously odd series of events that make up the plot of Youth in Revolt.

Director Miguel Arteta brings wonderfully subtle rhythm to some rather outlandish scenes and the conflict between the tone and the happenings in Youth in Revolt somehow emerges charming and very funny. The ways in which the direction is passive and the action is not clash so perfectly that if pushed in a more or less active direction the movie would tumble over.

Strangely, while the role of Nick Twisp seems custom built for the Michael Cera persona; “Youth in Revolt” is actually based on a series of novels from the early 1990's from writer C.D Payne. I have never read the novels but according to those who have it is as if Nick Twisp predicted Michael Cera and waited for his arrival before he could be brought to the big screen.

There is no other actor who could bring Nick Twisp to life other than Michael Cera. The changes of persona, the ways in which Nick imagines a more confident version of himself named Francois Dillinger, these are seemingly natural shifts for Michael Cera that would seem like comic extensions for other actors. Cera makes the move organic as if creating Francois came from his own mind.

People tend to see the Michael Cera persona as an example of limited range. I however, feel that what Michael Cera does on screen is quite challenging. He's like a modern day Chaplin carrying The Tramp persona from film to film, giving him different dimensions and playing him against different backgrounds and characters to a new and wonderful comic effect.  

Watch Michael Cera in interviews and then watch Michael Cera in movies and on TV and you get the full picture of the Michael Cera character. It is as if his entire career was a performance art piece that he keeps spinning out further in role after role with different names but always the same character in a new and fascinating comic context. It's rather genius if you like what Michael Cera does.

If you aren't a fan then you will call it limited range and dismiss Cera as some one note performer. I happen to be a huge fan and I love his work more and more each time out and I feel like I am in on a wonderful running gag that never stops and grows more and more fascinating with each role. One of these days the Michael Cera persona is going to hit upon a role that will cross over from just funny to poignant and even moving and more people will begin to get it. “Youth in Revolt” likely isn't that movie but for fans it's enough for now.

Movie Review Hostel

Hostel (2006) 

Directed by Eli Roth 

Written by Eli Roth 

Starring Jay Hernandez, Derek Richardson, Rick Hoffman

Release Date January 6th, 2006 

Published January 6th, 2006 

Filmmakers have a very interesting mental link between sex and violence. Because both are really the last societal taboos, certain forms of each are in violation of all social graces, they can be exploited in order to shock and titillate audiences. Movies as varied as the brilliant A History Violence and the abysmal Devil's Rejects have drawn sex and violence together as if the two things were inextricably linked.

Eli Roth, the director of the horror flick Hostel, is a true believer in the link between sex and violence. Hostel puts the two subjects in direct relation as college-aged protagonists seek cheap, meaningless sex on a trip through Europe and end up paying dearly for it in the typically mindless, blood-soaked fashion of modern exploitation flicks.

Paxton (Jay Hernandez) and Josh (Derek Richardson) are fresh out of college and ready to party. They have traveled to the modern day Sodom that is Amsterdam in search of the holy grail of twenty-something morons: loose woman and legal hash. Paxton is the more indulgent and headstrong of the two, partaking in both the willing bar girls and the pay-for-play gals lining the streets in lighted window displays. Josh, on the other hand, is slightly more reserved and even a little put off by the sex on sale.

Once Paxton and a fellow traveler, Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson), who the guys hook up with along the way, have exhausted the local talent, they come across a German teen who has the inside scoop on the best looking and loosest women in all of Europe. There is, the teen claims, a youth hostel that is on no map, and where the local women are dying to sleep with any foreigners. All the boys have to do is hop a train to scenic Bratislava.

A lengthy train trip later; the three friends have found the mythic hostel. The story is true: naked flesh is easy to come by and the naked women are easier than ever imagined. The fun, however, does not last long. After an epic night of debauchery, that even Josh partakes in, Oli disappears with a young Japanese girl. Soon Josh too has disappeared, and Paxton seeks out their new female companions to find out what happened to his pals.

He is told that both guys are at an art show, and, in standard Eastern European fashion, the supposed "art show" is housed in a slaughterhouse. Of course, by now we in the audience are well aware that the art show is actually a brutal torture chamber where hostel stayers are kidnapped and killed in the most horrifying ways imaginable.

Director Eli Roth showed an interesting level of originality in his first feature, 2003's Cabin Fever. That film was a skin-crawling genre exercise that twisted expectations by not focusing on a human killer but a timely viral killer. That film was not all that visually accomplished, partly because of its low budget, and neither is Hostel. The films share a low budget aesthetic, but Hostel, with a slightly higher budget and the imprimatur of Quentin Tarantino, makes it fair to wonder when Roth will finally show a talent for crafting visuals that don't rely on special effects splatter.

Of the many attempts at scary visuals, only a scene where a character has his kneecaps drilled and his Achilles heel sliced comes across as shocking. A later, gorier scene in which a woman's eyeball dangles precariously from its socket is truly underwhelming as both an effect and makeup. Poorly executed special effects aside, Roth lacks the necessary skill to negate his low budget with story tension.

Jay Hernandez, so impressive in the 2001 teen romance Crazy/Beautiful, fails to make a compelling lead in Hostel. His boorish American tourist bit is believable but not all that enjoyable or relatable. Co-star Derek Richardson's own wet blanket character is even less impressive, and thus no help to Hernandez. Only Icelandic actor Gudjonsson manages to be entertaining, but he is quickly dispatched. His charming comic presence is missed once he's gone.

Hostel has the hallmarks of the exploitation genre down cold. Buckets of blood are spilled, copious amounts of naked female flesh are displayed; all of the basic horror elements that had once held the genre in the movie ghetto of late night pay cable and direct to video land are featured in Hostel. Something about all that nudity in Hostel, combined with the lack of even one strong female character in Hostel, leads me to wonder whether Eli Roth has a problem with women. 

Hostel is not merely misogynist, the film demonstrates a direct loathing and objectification of women. The women of Hostel  exist to remove their clothing and die horribly. Whether this is a symptom of Roth's inability to write for women, a similar lack of compelling female characters plagued Cabin Fever, or he really does dislike women is up for debate.

Roth apparently enjoys the company of Quentin Tarantino and yet he seems to have never seen Kill Bill, which provided more than a few examples of how to write convincing, compelling female characters. Then again, writing is not Roth's strong suit anyway. On more than one occasion Roth comes within a few lines of something interesting and walks away to throw more blood and gore at the screen.

Hostel comes close to a clever parody of the current anti-American attitudes so pervasive in Europe where American travelers are encouraged to claim Canadian citizenship to avoid a hassle. Sadly Hostel comes to the precipice of joking about this timely subject but then travels the easier path to exploitation success, more naked flesh and piles of human remains.

There is also, I believe, an unintentional undercurrent of puritanical feelings bubbling beneath the surface of Hostel. The way in which sin and vice lead almost directly to death in Hostel is rather Old Testament. Hostel shares this sex-death link with classic horror movies like A Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday The 13th, but oddly no horror film director has had the nerve to explore this vengeful god scenario in an intellectually satisfying way.

Eli Roth may have earned the appreciation of a true genius in Quentin Tarantino, but there is no evidence in Hostel that Roth actually learned anything from his new mentor. Where Tarantino crafts artful visuals from the lowest of genres, Roth can barely craft a solid scare. That is not to say that Roth won't develop into a good director someday, but for now his work is merely terribly overrated.

For lovers of the exploitation genre, (what writer David Poland has cleverly dubbed the "horror porn" genre, including recent films like Devil's Rejects, High Tension and Wolf Creek) Hostel will be a huge hit. But for fans of well made movies, Hostel is yet another waste of screen space. 

Movie Review Hoodwinked

Hoodwinked (2006) 

Directed by Cory Edwards 

Written by Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, Tony Leech

Starring Glenn Close, Xzibit, David Ogden Stiers, Anne Hathaway, James Belushi 

Release Date January 13th, 2006 

Published January 14th, 2006

The idea is pretty clever. Take a well known fairy tale, in this case Little Red Riding Hood, cross it with references to The Usual Suspects, Rashomon and Law & Order and make it a CGI-animated cartoon. Well not all good concepts make good movies. Hoodwinked, the result of this ingenious premise, is a hackneyed sub-Nickelodeon channel animated film that fails to deliver on its attractive premise.

Four characters, four different versions of the same event. A wolf (voiced by Patrick Warburton), a woodsman (James Belushi), a delivery girl named Red (Anne Hathaway), and Red's grandmother (Glenn Close) all arrive at grandma's house at the same time through a series of misunderstandings, miscommunications, and a major crime in which each is somehow a suspect.

The film unfolds as four separate flashbacks under a police interrogation by detective Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Stiers) and the chief of the forest, police chief Grizzly (Xzibit). The two were investigating the continuing disappearances of recipe books throughout the forest by a criminal called the "Goody Bandit." Each of the four principle characters has made themself a suspect, and their stories somehow have led them all to grandma's house.

I cannot say enough how intriguing the setup of Hoodwinked is. It's so intriguing that it's not surprising that creators Cory and Todd Edwards screw it up. The execution of the film's premise plays out in a fashion that is simpleminded and predictable. Granted this is a kids movie and thus cannot be made too difficult to follow, for fear of losing the core audience, but the simplicity undermines the interesting premise. This could be forgiven if the jokes in the movie were funny enough to justify the predictable setups, but hackneyed gags about grandma playing extreme sports fall desperately flat.

Maybe more egregious than screwing up the rich premise of Hoodwinked are the awful pop songs included to fill out the film's 82-minute runtime. Even with an interesting idea for a plot, Cory and Todd Edwards have little idea what to do with it. So in between the unfunny and predictable flashbacks they sandwich in awful original pop tunes that serve as inner monologues for the characters. The songs are more simpleminded than the rest of the script and are a trial to listen to.

It's tough to screw up a computer animated movie. Because the technology is often so impressive, many audiences will tend to forgive a bad CGI cartoon. However, as the technology has aged that impression seems to be wearing off and like the equally insipid Shark Tale, Hoodwinked cannot skate on its technology, which is even less inspired than that wretched godfather underwater cartoon.

The animation of Hoodwinked is similar to Nickelodeon's Jimmy Neutron, only more lifeless. The characters are bulbous and oddly rendered and look more like a really dull videogame and not a big screen movie. The animation reminded me of a videogame circa 1997, something played on Super Nintendo. This may be a function of the film's budget which was admirably small and independently financed. Nevertheless, the movie is unimpressive to look at.

Hoodwinked is a brutal trial of a kids' movie with all of the worst traits of the genre. Hackneyed simpleminded jokes, unimpressive animation, even the voice acting is underwhelming save for Warburton as the wolf whose sarcasm drips from every word even when he is attempting sincerity. Warburton's occasional presence is not nearly enough to rescue this slapped together mess of cheap animation. It's an inspired idea that goes nowhere and fast.

Movie Review: You People

You People (2023) 

Directed by Kenya Barris 

Written by Jonah Hill, Kenya Barris

Starring Jonah Hill, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis Dreyfuss, Lauren London, Nia Long, David Duchovny 

Release Date January 27th, 2023 

Published January 28th, 2023 

You People is an insufferable bore featuring caricatures of white and black people who talk as if they were programmed by Boomer Facebook memes. Kenya Barris and Jonah Hill are supposed to be better than that but by the evidence of You People, they've taken the lowest hanging fruit of awkward racial humor and blended it all together and reheated it over and over and over again and then called it a movie. The characters may have a point to make about the ways white and black people fail to communicate effectively with each other but it's hard to find that point in the midst of noisy, insufferable characters intended only to inflict themselves on each other rather than talk like human beings.  

You People stars Jonah Hill as Ezra Cohen and Lauren London as Amira Mohammad. These two 30-something kids meet-cute when Ezra mistakes Amira for his Uber Driver. She happens to be lost on her way to a new job and he's able to navigate her there. Along the way, he gets her phone number and the two start a sweet romance. He works in finance but dreams of being a podcaster and she's costume designer working on various different movie and television projects. They have terrific chemistry. Only one thing stands in there way, a terrible script, no wait, I mean their parents. 

Julia Louis Dreyfuss and David Duchovny are Shelly and Arnold Cohen and Eddie Murphy and Nia Long are Akbar and Fatima Mohammad. If you haven't guessed, the Cohen's are Jewish and the Mohammad's are Muslim, how will they ever get along? Sarcasm. Sarcasm. Sarcasm. Surprise, they don't get along and when Ezra decides to ask Amira to marry him things only get worse as Shelly stumbles into ruining their relationship over her woke enthusiasm, and Akbar actively works to undermine the relationship by catching Ezra doing something wrong, whatever that might be. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media linked here 

Movie Review: Missing

Missing (2023) 

Directed by Nick Johnson, Will Merrick 

Written by Sev Ohanian, Aneesh Chaganty 

Starring Storm Reid, Nia Long, Ken Leung 

Release Date January 20th, 2023 

Published January 23rd, 2023 

Missing captures our modern true crime obsession in a way that few films ever had. Every true crime fan dreams of doing what the main character of Missing does, diving down a rabbit hole of information on your way to solving a mystery. Of course, the main character of Missing has more motivation than your average true crime fan, but that doesn't change the nature of our excitement, all true crime fans want to investigate leads and follow threads to answers in the way that June (Storm Reid) does in missing, whether it's our family member that is missing or some stranger. 

In Missing, June is a typically self-involved teenager who is constantly mortified by how uncool her mother, Grace (Nia Long), is. Mom is always asking her Siri to make calls for her, even while she's already on a call. Mom and June's relationship is strained as Grace is a working single mom juggling her daughter, work, and a new boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung), while planning a vacation to Columbia. June is of little help, she's only thinking of the partying she's going to do while Mom and Kevin are out of town. 

Over the course of five days, Mom checks in rarely, which is unusual, while June parties. Then, when it's time for June to meet Mom and Kevin at the airport, she's left standing there for hours. Mom doesn't come home. Returning to her house, June calls the authorities and falls down a rabbit hole while investigating her mother's whereabouts. In the course of investigating her mother's disappearance from afar, she connects with a man named Javi (Joachim De Almeida), who lives in Columbia and who agrees to investigate on her behalf for a mere $8.00 per request. 

Meanwhile, at home, Grace breaks into Kevin's email and begins to discover things about his past, his criminal record, and the many, many, women in Kevin's past who claim that he's stolen money from them. There's also a woman, referred to only as 'babycakes,' who has recently gone missing after trading messages with Kevin. This can't be a coincidence but the movie has a few more twists and turns in play when it comes to Kevin, some you won't be able to predict so easily. 

Missing doesn't quite have the skillful presentation of its predecessor, Searching. That film used the medium of internet based sleuthing in service of a much better story. The story of Missing isn't bad but it's far more deeply convoluted than that of Searching. Where that movie had a relative clarity to its logical storytelling, Missing falls short. If you start pulling threads on Missing the story frays with far too much ease. The main plot is rather silly with characters making choices that don't make a lot of sense. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review No Strings Attached

No Strings Attached (2011) 

Directed by Ivan Reitman 

Written by Elizabeth Meriweather 

Starring Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Cary Elwes, Kevin Kline 

Release Date January 21st, 2011 

Published January 20th, 2011 

It's becoming a modern movie affliction; movies that are more ideas than movies. "The Dilemma" is a good example: How do you tell your best friend that his wife is cheating on him? Good idea but that was all anyone seemed to come up with and the film flailed about hoping the cast would find something funny to do. More often than not, the cast never found anything.

"No Strings Attached" is another example of this affliction. The idea is simple: Can two people have a sexual relationship without feelings getting in the way? And, much like "The Dilemma," no one really thought of anything more beyond that idea and thus stranded a charming cast, lead by Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, in a plotless mess where only occasionally does someone find something funny to say.

Adam and Emma met briefly in Summer Camp as teenagers when an awkwardly distant Emma attempted to comfort a sad Adam and he offered a clumsy teenage come on. They met again in College at a frat party when Emma asked Adam to a family function that turned out to be a funeral. You know how you invite strangers on dates to funerals, so funny. And they met again one year later at a random farmer's market where Adam got Emma's phone number right in front of his girlfriend, because our main character is a total jerk. 

Much would seem to stand in the way of these two bad-timing having folks getting together but when Adam gets blitzed after his girlfriend leaves him for his TV star father (Kevin Kline, in a shocking cameo) he ends up naked on Emma's couch and eventually in her bed. Emma is now a medical resident working ungodly hours in order to become a doctor; she has little time for a relationship. What she does have time for however is hook ups and booty calls and lots of them. Yes, Adam is given what we are to believe is the dream relationship for all emotionally stunted men 'Sex Buddies.'

So why is Adam so miserable? It turns out, in what would be an interesting twist in a better and far more thoughtful and unique film, Adam is not the typical immature boy-man that he might seem. Too bad he has fallen for an emotionally walled off nut case that could only exist in the pages of an under-written romantic comedy.

The eminent critic Mick Lasalle of the San Francisco Chronicle made an interesting point about Ashton Kutcher and his movies. To paraphrase Lasalle: Ashton Kutcher's been in a number of bad movies but he's never been all that bad in those movies. Indeed, Kutcher is an appealing screen presence who delivers more than what is on the page to his characters. He just chooses some truly horrible movies.

"No Strings Attached" is a pretty horrible movie in which Ashton Kutcher is, as usual, not that bad in. Ashton gives the character charm and a soulful, puppy dog quality. The problem is that the rest of the film is such a shambles. Director Ivan Reitman and writers Elizabeth Meriwether and Michael Samonek seem to have an idea for a movie but fail to deliver characters whose motivations from scene to scene are consistent and instead they rely on hit and miss sitcom jokes that hang off of the film's premise.

Poor Natalie Portman is the biggest victim of the hit and miss style of "No Strings Attached." Portman's Emma is called upon to be an emotional disaster reeling from one motivation to the next at the whim of whatever comic notion struck director Ivan Reitman in the moment.

At one moment Reitman finds it funny for Emma to invite a strange man on a date to a family funeral. In the next she's giving her phone number to a guy in front of his girlfriend. In the next she seeks a purely sexual relationship. Then she gets drunk and jealous. Then she tells him to sleep with other women and then she's jealous again. Each time Emma is led to look like a fool because no one bothered to give her a back-story that might lend context to her oddball behavior.

Making matters worse in "No Strings Attached" is a sensational supporting cast that drowns in the wake of the creators’ lack of any clue what to do with them. Kevin Kline as Adam's father is a heedless hedonist whose love of drugs and sex is supposedly funny because he's old. That's the joke, he's old. I imagine that Reitman thought hiring Kevin Kline was all that he needed to make this character work and that's not an unreasonable notion, but even Kline's charm can't get around how misbegotten Reitman's direction of No Strings Attached is. 

Lake Bell plays Adam's co-worker who clearly has a crush on him. Here, the film adds a strange sort of cruelty as nice guy Adam is asked to flirt with Bell's Lucy while pining for crazy Emma. If Lucy were a bigger nutcase than Emma or maybe just mean in some way then his behavior toward her might be excusable. Instead, Lucy and Adam have an uncomfortable and brief courtship before she is shuffled off into another character's jockey send off. 

The brilliant Greta Gerwig from “Greenberg” is wasted in the role of Emma's best friend, sweetly paired off with Adam's best friend Eli (Jake M. Johnson) in one of the film's many thrown away plots. And The Office star Mindy Kaling is brought in to deliver a few tart one liners that sound as if she wrote them herself. Kaling's character exists only for one-liners and to her credit they are the funniest moments in the film. 

There are parts as well for rapper Ludacris, Cary Elwes, and Juno's best pal Olivia Thirlby but nothing really of note. It seems at times that everyone in the cast was hired to inhabit a type and then jokes were written to play off of that type and then everything was cut together with fingers crossed that something coherent would emerge. 

Sadly, nothing coherent does emerge from No Strings Attached aside from a continuing sense that Ashton Kutcher has talent and really poor taste in material. Like us, Kutcher saw the potential of the idea of No Strings Attached but like the rest of the cast he is left hanging by a creative team that failed to develop anything beyond a premise and a couple of good one liners.

One last note, some Oscar pundits have wondered aloud if No Strings Attached were bad enough to be Natalie Portman’s “Norbit,” i.e the film that some believe sunk Eddie Murphy’s chances of winning Best Supporting Actor for his excellent turn in “Dreamgirls.” The answer is a simple no: “No Strings Attached” is not as bad as “Norbit.” Indeed, few movies have ever been as bad as “Norbit.”

Movie Review Kangaroo Jack

Kangaroo Jack (2002) 

Directed by David McNally

Written by Steve Bing, Scott Rosenberg

Starring Jerry O'Connell, Anthony Anderson, Estella Warren, Michael Shannon, Christopher Walken 

Release Date January 17th, 2002 

Published January 19th, 2002 

Jerry Bruckheimer's attack on the American moviegoing public continues with the release of the talking kangaroo movie Kangaroo Jack. The number one movie in America on its opening weekend, Jack is yet another black eye from a Hollywood community that just doesn't care anymore. They have figured it out, we will go see anything and then see it again. There will likely be a sequel to this movie proving once and for all, this country is on crack.

One of the great things about being a film critic is going to the movies for free. Great because I save money and because I can walk out on any movie at any time and not worry about arguing with the ticket guy over a refund. The movie hasn't started and I'm already eyeing the exits.

We begin with Charlie (Jerry O' Connell) in a voiceover explaining how he met his best friend Louis Booker (Anthony Anderson). Charlie was swimming and began drowning; Louis jumped in and saved him. Twenty years later Charlie is a hairdresser with his own shop that was purchased for him by his stepfather, a mobster named Sal Maggio (Christopher Walken). Louis is a street hustler (does that stereotype bother anyone? Does it matter?) who is constantly getting them in trouble. Louis's latest scam involves a truck full of Televisions that may or may not be stolen. These two characters are brain-dead morons so it's not long till the cops are onto them. They accidentally lead the cops to one of Sal's warehouses where the "family" keeps their stolen goods.

Sal is a little upset but instead of killing Charlie and Louis, he sends them on an errand in Australia. Charlie and Louis simply have to deliver a package containing 50,000 dollars to a man named Mr. Smith. Oh but if it were that simple, there wouldn't be a movie. On the way to meet Mr. Smith, Charlie runs into a kangaroo and thinks he killed it. A clowning Louis thinks it would be funny to dress up the supposedly dead animal and take pictures of it (HAHAHAHA, actually that is funny). Louis puts his jacket and sunglasses on the Kangaroo and the animal suddenly comes back to life and hops off. Not a big deal, except that Louis left the fifty grand in the jacket.

From there, Charlie and Louis mug like morons and engage in supposedly wacky hijinks with a drunk Australian airplane pilot and a sexy wildlife expert played by model Estella Warren. I would say Warren deserves better than this but she chose to be in this movie so it's her own fault.

Where do I begin with the "what's wrong with this movie" portion of my review? What's wrong is that this movie was made at all, but that is a little too general. Do you think that Jerry Bruckheimer is, in reality, some brilliant sociologist and that his films are merely an experiment to test just how far down he can push American culture before we finally fight back? Maybe he is just searching to find the bottom of the barrel, just so he knows where it is. Forgive me, I know I'm reaching but conspiracy theories are the only way I can explain Jerry Bruckheimer without just simply calling him Satan's spawn. I was just trying to be nice.

What do you think the pitch meeting for this movie was? It was probably something like:

Idiot studio exec #1 "I think the Kangaroo should talk"

Idiot studio exec #2 "That's Brilliant, call Jerry Bruckheimer".

Christopher Walken, why are you in this movie! Walken plays a stereotypical mob boss. Meanwhile, Italians are protesting the Soprano's yet not one word in protest of the goomba stereotypes of this film.

As for Anthony Anderson's character, a black street hustler simply playing the buffoon opposite the white lead character, how does Jerry Bruckheimer get away with such a blatantly stereotypical character and the makers of Barbershop get protested?

You may wonder why I ever sat through this film if I knew it was going to suck? It's simple, this is a movie review website and at the time of this review Kangaroo Jack was the number one movie in America. If this were a straight-to-video movie, we could ignore it, but with $17 million in box office receipts, someone on this site had to see and write about and no one else was as brave or crazy as I was. (Ed. Note - emphasis on crazy)