The Alias Men

The Descendants

2011-12-05T22:17:00.000-08:00

Directed by Alexander Payne

Starring George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, and Amara Miller

Albert's take:
PAYNE'S SYMPHONY NO. 5, CLOONEY VARIATION

Some directors dazzle you with their versatility; others endear you with their familiarity. Alexander Payne is the second kind.

Like Yasujiro Ozu, who revealed the inner lives of the Japanese in countless iterations, Payne has always essentially played variations on a theme: wry comedies about misfits -- specifically, misfits who get shaken out of the complacency of their semi-functional lives.

In case I'm not making myself clear: You've seen "The Descendants" already, albeit with permuted characters and plot and setting. Back then, it was called "Citizen Ruth," "Election," "About Schmidt" or "Sideways."

Mind you, that's no insult coming from me; I enjoyed all of those movies and even love a couple of them. This one, I like a lot.

"The Descendants" may not be Payne's best, and it's even something of a disappointment after "Sideways" and George Clooney's latest Oscar contender, "Up in the Air," but I won't split hairs. That'd be like trying to decide whether I like Ozu's "The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice" more than his "Late Spring."

Clooney plays Matt King, a workaholic lawyer and self-described "understudy" parent of two girls -- one a rebellious tween, one a teen in rehab-- in Hawaii.
He's forced to take the lead role, as it were, when his wife becomes a vegetable in a boat racing accident.

And, oh yeah, one other detail -- he's also heir to and trustee of a huge undeveloped land tract dating back to Hawaiian royalty, a land tract that not unpredictably comes to symbolize his neglectful ways.

The plot points are an afterthought to this review, as they were to my enjoyment of the movie. Hell, I even looked the other way when the movie stumbled through its too-frequent confrontations and when it arrived, train whistle blaring, at its obvious resolution.

What I took away from the movie, instead, were the same delights as with any Alexander Payne movie: the front-row seat to American neuroses. The colorful supporting cast, especially Robert Forster as King's father-in-law, a man unable -- whether because of senility or exhaustion with life -- to speak anything other than what's on his mind. The dialogue, pointed and realistic and ironic.

Along with those, the movie provides the added bonus of Clooney's "Up in the Air" follow-up performance (Ryan Bingham reimagined as a family man) and a Hawaiian setting, which, when it's used well as it is in this movie, is good for a petri-dish view of American life -- because, after all, if you're not into water sports in Hawaii, what else is there to do besides get to know your family and neighbors?

4 out of 5

Don's take:
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

A chain of islands -- how perfect a setting for a film about a man so disconnected from his family that it takes a tragic accident to his wife to shake him from his stupor mend his relationships with his estranged daughters. In a lot of ways, Alexander Payne's latest film "The Descendants" is a continuation of themes explored in "Sideways" which nearly cracked my personal top 10. And like "Sideways," "Descendents" was a well executed meditation on relationships that leaves the audience wanting to better their own.

Payne adds to an already impressive body of work characterized by films that are as funny and quirky as they are deeply heartfelt. Descendants without a doubt tends to the more somber side of his films, it is certainly not without its laugh out loud moments and is rife with colorful characters. Clooney has shown a good aptitude for comedy along with heavy drama, so he fits in easily into Payne's film. Clooney is as reliable an actor in Hollywood today and gives an expectedly strong performance in this film. But he is unexpectedly upstaged by his young co-star, Shailene Woodley who gives a sassy and smart performance as his teenage daughter and shows that she is a young actress to watch.

I've liked all of his films that I've seen, but with "Sideways" and now "The Descendents", Alexander Payne has really begun to hit his stride.

4 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

DON: Alexander Payne's films aren't visual smorgasbords like Avatar, but in his own way, he offers everything I want in a movie. Visually, his shots are lovely and well composed. He is thoughtful and intelligent about how he tells the story. He gives his actors room to play. Each time I watch one of his flms, my first thought is how well rounded his movies are.

ALBERT: Yeah, they're all solid and fulfilling, some more than others. Like Ozu, again. I felt the same way settling down to watch "The Descendants" as I feel when watching any Ozu: despite the surface differences of plot and characters, I got a pleasant sense of deja vu, that I had seen this movie before and I wouldn't mind watching it again. Payne seems to always have the same theme in mind -- he just goes at it in a different way every time.

Payne on the set of "The Descendants"

DON: I agree. I suppose one of the things that keeps his films fresh is that he is regularly changing the actors he uses. He never seems to use the same actor twice like a Scorcese or Kevin Smith would.. And each time he selects a new lead actor, he chooses an actor who bring a lot of their own personality to the role. Paul Giamatti, Jack Nicholson, George Clooney... All actors with very distinct voices and who add a lot of color to their respective Payne movies...

ALBERT: Yup, and let's not forget Laura Dern and Matthew Broderick! Each performance could be seen as a cornerstone of that actor's career, for the reason you name: It builds on the personality of the actor, almost as if to give the actor a chance to tell his/her life story. "Sideways" could be Paul Giamatti's lament on not being a leading man. And "The Descendants" will satisfy the curiosity of those people who wonder whether Clooney's really happy being Hollywood's forever-young bachelor, and how his life might be different with kids around.

DON: That is a very interesting way to look at it... Payne is clearly very detail oriented -- he's thoughtful about every detail of his movies from how it relates to the lives of his actors, like you just aptly pointed out, right down to the setting and how it relates to the story. At first, I just passed off the Hawaii setting as a stylistic choice -- an excuse to give the audience a temporary reprieve from the dark winter. But there's clearly a lot more going on. It's a metaphor for the character himself. He's isolated form his family. He has the unenviable role of being the sole trustee for a multi-million dollar estate... It's little touches like these that make Payne's movies truly special.

ALBERT: I liked your observation about how the island chain reflected King's fragmented family. I was a little wary of the setting at first. As I spent a lot of my "Just Go With It" review explaining, I think a Hawaiian setting is a copout for a lot of movies and TV shows. But sometimes it's used well, as in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and this movie. It can let us see American people work out their problems in a microcosm that lacks the usual pop-culture distractions but that is still undeniably American.

DON: It was shown in a way that haven't often seen, too, which I appreciated, having just seen it this year for the first time with my own eyes. Hawaii is a place that has it's own troubles, just like any other place, and I think Payne's representation of Hawaii is about as honest as I've seen. He was even careful to shoot the movie during typical Hawaii weather, which isn't always picturesque. Hawaii in movies and TV is usually a cliche, but I agree with you that every now and then, it is done right like in this movie.

ALBERT: So what do you think of Clooney's Oscar chances with this one? I don't think his performance was as good as the one in "Up in the Air," but he came close enough that year and the Academy may just wave him in this time.

DON: It wasn't the performance of his career, but I am also hard pressed to think of any better performances from any other actors from this year. Not to say there haven't been any, but I can't think of any right now. Either way, I wouldn't complain if he got it, even if it was awarded as more of a "Lifetime Achievement Award". The man deserves more recognition for giving us some of the most heartfelt performances of the 2000's than raves from critics. Give the man a medal for goodness sakes!

Immortals

2011-11-29T15:46:00.000-08:00

Directed by Tarsem Singh

Starring Henry Cavill, Frieda Pinto and Mickey Rourke

Shawn's take:
LORD WHAT FOOLS THESE IMMORTALS BE

I have always loved Tarsem’s work. He is an artist who has created some of the most unforgettable images I have seen on film, from his video work in the early 90’s to his two feature films The Cell and The Fall. His latest, Immortals, had me leaving the theater somewhat excited, but after the gold dust settled in my mind, I’ve had some second thoughts.

The producers of this film also produced 300. So they have marketed this film promising another 300. (301 anyone?) I hated 300. That film thoroughly choked on it’s own machismo. When I caught the first images of the trailer for Immortals, I was immediately feeling my gag reflex. But then the credits showed that Tarsem was directing! So I had to rethink it. I became hopeful, thought the producers of 300 might castrate him, and thunk down another of their overly engorged shlong-fests. What resulted, though, was not quite the flaccid actioner I expected. Neither was it a raging success. It is an impossibly beautiful film to look at, set to a rather dull screenplay, directed with obstructive ideas.

The hero of this film is Theseus (the smolderingly hot Henry Cavill) who is born to a poor family within his village. When the village is invaded by the murdering army of the evil Hyperion (Mickey Rourke), Theseus’ course is set on preventing Hyperion from gaining possession of the Epirius Bow, and in saving Greece from Hyperion’s clutches. Along the way, he joins forces with a small group of warriors and has sex with a beautiful oracle, Phaedra (Freida Pinto). Watching over all of these proceedings is Zeus (John Hurt as his mortal incarnation, and Luke Evans as the hot sexy God incarnation) who has Theseus’s back. Zeus and Co cannot get involved with mortal business unless the Titans are unleashed. With these simple voiceover explanations in the beginning of the film, we know we are not going to get any surprises.

The beauty of Immortals is only screen deep. This is both a strength of the film, and it’s greatest weakness. While the visual display was stunning beyond my expectations, my jaw, dropped for much of the film’s near 2 hours, I couldn’t help but feel like there was some force constantly keeping these images from fully leaping off the screen.

One of the main problems is that nearly every scene takes place near a cliff. Theseus’ village is built into the cliff wall, with a narrow strip for the villagers to strectch out and walk. Though his family have a low status, their front door is the most convenient to accessing the common area. It’s placement looks conspicuously like stage right. And to think of it, some of the villagers look like they walked out of your local nativity drama. The pathway to the village is an even narrower cliff-side walk that winds around the cliff face. The technicalities over why a civilization would go to such an extreme would be opening up a can of worms. Ultimately, the answer to every question of this type is, because when Tarsem said he wanted it, he meant it.

What this ends up producing is a one-dimensional flatness. Tarsem should be using cinema tricks to open up a world for us to walk into. But by flattening his canvass, he imposes the limitations of the stage upon the medium of film. It’s completely unnecessary. Where a village should spread out, it stacks up. And that could have been fine, but we never went up into the stack. There were no shots from inside the village. Just exterior shots of the common area.

Tarsem’s quest for great imagery also hampers another scene. After Theseus and his group narrowly survive a god activated tidal wave, the camera pans over the aftermath. Everything is covered in black sludge. The look is powerful, the beautiful muscled bodies shine and capture the light in a very sexy way. But this is something that is more suited to a music video. It takes the film out of the narrative and achieves the wrong impact. He also again displays his actors laying on a shelf, which feels stagey.

I was thankful that there was very little slo-mo cam for this film. The sword fighting was done in real time and was more exciting for it. That 300 slo-mo effect was well reserved for when the gods became involved. It did enhance their grandeur. Maybe it’s me, but while their costumes were beautiful, they looked a bit too hokey or stagey to be taken seriously. It was like a costume designer for a childrens’ film and a constume designer for a porno came together and made them. But I definitely was enjoying the roster of hot gods in those outfits, played by the likes of Joseph Morgan, Daniel Sharman, Kellan Lutz, and Steve Byers.

The Titans were a major missed opportunity. The entire film culminated in their release and even the Gods deemed them so dangerous, that they would break custom and intervene. Yet, when the Titans got out of their cage, they were like rabid zombies running around frantically, growling. The fighting was staged okay, but it wasn’t grand enough. The fight between Theseus and Hyperion taking place at the same time was much better, if not all that original.

So this is Tarsem’s third film. His last, The Fall, was conceived of and made during over 20 years of work. The majority of that film’s cost was on his dime. It boasted no computer graphics though the visuals were stunning enough to fool the eye. It was a great, fantastic fantasy. Now he comes forward armed with a large financial backing but has to deliver according to his producers requirements. I would love it if he went back to doing his own films. I don’t mind waiting longer. But I have a feeling Tarsem is past the point of full independence. His next film is a new version of Snow White, starring Julia Roberts as the evil queen called Mirror Mirror. I worry.

3 out of 5

Don's take:
IT TAKES A GENIUS TO MAKE A MOVIE THIS UNIQUELY BAD

Hollywood needs Tarsem Singh. He directs his films with a painter's eye, able to compose shots of such breathtaking drama that good acting or scriptwriting are almost not necessary to evoke feeling in the viewer. He is a visionary with an astoundingly unique voice. I preface this review with this statement because Immortals is not a good example of what Tarsem brings to Hollywood -- it is not a good movie -- and I don't want audiences to write him off as a hack. He is certainly not a hack.

I think I understand what Tarsem was going for here. While I watched the movie, I thought of opera. With opera, the acting and story are secondary to the music. The on-stage performers are first an foremost instruments within the orchestra, and the acting and story are secondary to this role. Tarsem's approach is similar I think: he uses his actors almost as props to stage his moving paintings -- the story and acting are secondary to the visual experience. This works great in dream sequences like we saw in his 2000 film, The Cell. We were treated to some truly mind-trippingly visionary sequences in a context that was easy to swallow.

But here, in Immortals, Singh tries to give his treatment to what should be a fairly straightforward period drama and something is amiss. Here, his meticulous set design makes the setting seem overly sterile and feels more like a set borrowed from an old Franco Zeffirelli movie. And I think Singh over committed to making an accessible Hollywood movie and didn't go far enough with his signature etherealness that we saw in his earlier films -- this drew a lot of attention to the actors' campy performances which did not serve the movie.

The story was a bit of a mess too. Really, this story is about a guy who is avenging his mother's death. But there is a B-Plot as well about gods who were banished from heaven and sent to a prison on earth by Zeus and his kin after discovering they could kill one another. The movie is actually NAMED after these banished gods called Immortals. But the storyline about the Gods and the Immortals seemed tacked on. Singh did a poor job of tying the two story lines together.

I'm not ready to give up on Singh yet. This guy has a lot to contribute to Hollywood. But then again, I said the same thing about M. Night Shyamalan after seeing the Village.

2 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

DON: The film opened with a lot of promise. That opening sequence with the caged titans actually had me literally gasping to catch my breath. I forgot to breathe... I don't think there is any disagreement that Tarsem can frame a hell of a shot. Frame by frame, the guy is clearly a gifted artist. I didn't like this movie, but I also walked away with my respect for his artistry relatively undiminished... I just think it was used wrong here.

SHAWN: I actually liked this film. Yet I recognize how bad it is. There was enough visual dazzle and beefcake to keep me interested. And the opening images of the Titans with their teeth clamped on metal bars was unforgettable. I loved how Theseus was chopping wood in the beginning of the movie and wasn't really getting anywhere with it, though we are supposed to believe he is a great warrior. But I was checking him out more than I cared about that error.

DON: That's a funny and legitimate point. As great of a visual artist as Tarsem is, judging from this film, he has a lot he can learn about thinking critically about story and plot. I thought he did a good job handling the plot of "The Cell." I've never seen "The Fall". But this movie was a mess. After witnessing the degradation of M. Night Shyamalan's films, I'm worried.

SHAWN: I would have never thought to compare the two directors. And I'm not really worried about Tarsem's career. I feel that there's great work coming from him, we just might have to wait a whille. His next film scares me in that it stars Julia Roberts. So yeah, that's worrisome. But at least he's not working with the producers of 300 next.

DON: I'm actually a bit more interested in his upcoming project. His style may lend itself better to something like Snow White than it did to this story. That it's a fairy tale may be a bit more forgiving of the clunky storytelling that he displayed in "Immortals". And his uber-sterile sets might be a bit more at home in this story.

SHAWN: I read a gossip collumn that was making a point about how much of a whore Mickey Rourke is, and it quoted him talking about his disappointment that the blonde actress who played Athena wouldn't sleep with him. Can't say I blame the guy in his disappointment. She is pretty hot. But he mentioned something about Tarsem spending three years developing the look of the film. It was three years he should have paid attention to how he was going to tell the story.

DON: Haha, I agree completely. Even if he would have spent half that time, it would have been a better movie. That said, this is just his third film. I think a lot about Shyamalan when I think of Tarsem's career. Not because they're both Indian directors in Hollywood, but because they're both relatively young auteurs with very distinct cinematic voices. Despite tremendous criticism from fans and crtics after the Village, Shyamalan stuck stubbornly to his guns and his career suffered for it. Here's to hoping Tarsem takes heed of the criticism that's out there and grows from it.

SHAWN: Shyamalan's problem was that he let it get to his head. Casting himself in The Lady in the Water was one of many indicators. I would compare Tarsem's Immortals more to David Lynch's Dune. It is an example of a great visionary artist signing to work with a large Hollywood blockbuster, and failing. I like Dune, because you can see the seeds of greatness that Lynch was going for, and the same can be said of this film. And I will probably buy Immortals when it comes out on BluRay because it will look amazing on my system. Yeah, I know...

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Xmas

2011-11-24T18:12:00.000-08:00

Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson

Starring John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris, Danny Trejo

Albert’s take:

HAROLD AND KUMAR RIDE AGAIN

"Saturday Night Live's" Andy Samberg says he takes it as the highest compliment if someone calls one of his sketches stupid. In that case, he’ll be jealous that he didn’t write "A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Xmas."

The pothead pair’s third outing is so stupid -- or, if you prefer, random, crass and unrestrained -- that it plays like an accident in its best moments and a waste of film in its worst. But that’s not to say I didn’t like it.

The movie picks up six years after the events of “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.” That’s just as well, because the screenwriters seem to have expunged that movie from the series’ chronology and I’ve blocked most of it from my memory.

Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) are estranged, living separate and markedly different lives: Harold works on Wall Street and shares a big home in the suburbs with his now-wife Maria, while Kumar is -- well, still a weed-smoking bachelor.

Strange circumstances bring the two back together, though, and even stranger circumstances cause Kumar to burn down the prized Christmas tree gifted to Harold by his father-in-law, who happens to be a mean SOB played by Danny Trejo. And thus the two are forced to put their differences aside and set out on a high-spirited New York City caper, with a new MacGuffin as their object.

I’ve made “3D Xmas” sound like a road movie, and so it is. It’s also what a fanboy might call a return to form: It’s a stripped-down delight, bringing back the ramshackle, anything-goes suburban feel of “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” -- one misadventure after another -- rather than spiraling off in pursuit of the misfire that was the second movie.

Even better, it calls back the series’ mythology in Kevin Smith style, throws in plenty of knowing references to the real world, and skewers pop culture with a shamelessness that’s almost admirable. For all of its zaniness, “3D Xmas” has done its homework.

By now the series has become a standard-bearer of bad taste -- particularly for its full-frontal nudity (male and female, but mostly male) and comical abuse of children -- and this movie will only cement its reputation. I have a hunch that, for generations yet to come, the DVD of this movie will serve as many a young boy’s hallowed entry into adulthood, if adulthood means realizing that the dirty thoughts of grown-ups and under-18-year-olds aren't much different.

Stealing the show once again is Neil Patrick Harris as an oversexed, hetero version of himself. NPH functions more or less as the movie’s soul, graciously poking fun at himself to keep the whole enterprise suspended between reality and fantasy.

My rating comes down to a judgment call. Yes, I enjoyed myself, but most of my laughs were the knee-jerk incredulous kind rather than mirthful or admiring, and the movie is so lacking in substance that I doubt I’ll ever watch it again for entertainment.

But sure enough, you can count on me to be in line for Part 4.

3 out of 5

Judy's take:
A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR REDEMPTION

I'm pleased to report that I laughed throughout "A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Xmas." The story was decent, with several subplots -- maybe a few too many -- but overall very watchable. The film made good use of 3D, with more than 400 special effects used. (In fact, there was enough 3D pot smoke and coke blown toward the audience to make the viewer high.) While the movie isn't a gut buster, it's still worth the time to watch if you're a fan of the series.

With some nods to "A Christmas Story" and "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," "3D Xmas" is better than a lot of other holiday comedies out there. It's pretty amazing how much stuff the makers packed into this movie, poking more fun than I thought a movie could do in 90 minutes. Loved those inside jokes (the "Sulu" and "He works for the White House" references, for example), and I also liked how the movie shows the two guys progressing in life in a way that seems true to character. And of course, there's a nice nod to White Castle in the middle of the film.

As in the first movie of the series, there's plenty of raunchy humor. Some of the visuals were more extreme than one would expect -- the movie should probably have been rated NC-17 rather than R for some of its content. Racial and religious stereotypes were totally irreverent and offensive -- the type that make an audience laugh and cringe at the same time -- which is the point for a Harold and Kumar movie. Neil Patrick Harris was very funny as usual, especially in that Jesus scene.

Overall, be prepared for a slightly more extreme Harold and Kumar. It may not be the laugh riot like the first installment, but still wacky fun to watch in an H&K way. Just make sure your tongue is planted firmly in your cheek.

3 out of 5

And now, Judy and Albert roll up and pass around another edition of ...

THE 180 DEGREE RULE

JUDY: Like you, I think it is funny that I will definitely be in line to see Part 4, even though Part 3 wasn't the funniest thing I've seen recently. I think a lot of other people will be joining us for another round of H&K.

ALBERT: For me, a big part of that is the familiarity. Who'd have thought that a little road/stoner comedy about a Korean American dude and an Indian American dude would spawn such a mythology and following? I remember hearing that the makers wanted H&K to be the new Cheech and Chong, and it looks like they've succeeded. My laughs might be reduced to knowing chuckles and those cheap incredulous laughs, but who cares? Harold and Kumar are here to stay.

JUDY: My thoughts exactly. People go see Harold and Kumar for those un-PC jokes and just plain brainless enjoyment. Shakespeare it ain't, and that's okay with me for 90 minutes of escapism. I heard that in the second movie, after the credits, NPH actually gets up after being shot like it was nothing? If that is the case, doesn't it mean the explanation in this film doesn't quite match?

ALBERT: I didn't stick around for the Easter eggs in that movie, and I'm guessing the filmmakers don't care. The continuity in the series is very loose, and the filmmakers poked fun at that in this movie. That took balls -- a more tentative movie would have played safe and come off as contrived. And I'll be damned, but the writers, amid all the stupidity, were a little more clever than they had to be. I liked those references to the actors' careers and to reality. I gotta say, that NPH is a good sport.

JUDY: Playing it safe was definitely not in the filmmakers' intention, for sure. I like that it was so extreme and in-your-face that you have to laugh at it and admire its daring to do so for a mainstream audience. NPH's scenes were few, but all very funny, even the one with his real-life partner. I thought casting Danny Trejo in this movie was hilarious, and the fun that the filmmakers poked at him by showing a childhood version of him with tats and a ponytail was even funnier. I read somewhere that the director cast him after he made a Photoshop image of Trejo in a Christmas sweater.

ALBERT: Most movies are considered edgy if they refer to private parts or bodily fluids. This one refers to them, and then provides visual aids for those who miss the joke. I liked Danny Trejo in this movie too -- he also showed himself to be a good sport, poking fun at his screen persona. The bit about the Korean gangsters -- priceless.

JUDY: Yes, let's see ... Ukrainian gangsters, spiked eggnog, a Claymation hallucination, and a blood-spurting hole in Santa's head -- all priceless, all right, or should I say the price is right for this latest, 3D installment. After all, where else can you see this much frontal nudity and profanity for 15 bucks?

In Time

2011-11-07T21:52:00.000-08:00

Directed by Andrew Niccol

Starring Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried and Cillian Murphy

Albert's take:
I WANT MY TWO HOURS BACK

"In Time" is like "Limitless," another sci-fi clunker released this year: all premise and no payoff.

Time Is Money, or Time Is More Precious than Money. "In Time" takes these maxims literally, putting us in a world where humans physically age till 25 and then die a year later -- their remaining lifespan ticking away on a green digital readout on the back of their arm -- unless they earn or steal themselves more time.

Now here's the quirky part: Not only can you add time to your clock, you can deplete it (every last good or service costs time), give it away, or just plain waste it.

This setup provides plenty of opportunities for time-is-money gags: 99-second stores. Time zones. "Can you give me a minute?" "A cup of coffee costs four minutes? It was three minutes yesterday!"

It would also, one would hope, serve as a launching point for a deeper exploration of mortality and the concept of time itself. But no such luck.

First off, I don't blame the movie's star, Justin Timberlake, despite his leaden line delivery and rheumy eyes that the big screen doesn't flatter. The real problem is, the movie never develops its premise beyond the initial reel's cheeky wordplay, which starts out cute but gets tedious fast.

Instead, the film morphs into a parable about big banking and the wealth gap -- the One Percent control all the world's time, yadda, yadda, yadda -- which, although certainly relevant to our era, is a disappointingly obvious and unambitious treatment of the movie's themes.

What, then, of the movie's thriller elements? Well, expect endless chase scenes involving tricked-out late-model cars in barren lots (A statement about timeliness? Or an art director's whim? You decide!), and awkward foot chases in which Timberlake never seems to let go of co-star Amanda Seyfried's hand and she never ditches her stilettos. When you start thinking up ways to make the heroes run faster, you know that the thriller you're watching is in its death throes.

To the movie's credit, I will say that it did get me mentally converting time into money and vice versa for a while afterward. For example, the movie was worth 30 seconds.

2 out of 5

Don's take:
115 MINUTES? TOO RICH FOR FOR MY BLOOD

2010 gave us "Daybreakers." 2011 gives us "In Time," another concept-driven sci-fi flick that is so slavishly at the mercy of its plot that it forgets to care about its characters and their relationships. And it's just as well. With Justin Timberlake starring, it might have been an even bigger dud if the movie had left even a little room for the Timberlake to act.

I suppose, thankfully, it didn't. Virtually every line uttered in this movie was written in a way as to remind us of the fantasy world we're in and the rules that govern it. I find that the best sci-fi movies aren't really all that interested in their invented mythologies so much as they're interested in how that mythology affects the realistic human relationships that are explored within the film. Such is not the case here. "In Time" doubles down on its plot -- I'm guessing a reaction to the realization that they didn't have much acting talent to hang their hat on (I'll give them Cillian Murphy, who is earnest in an otherwise dreadful movie).

But despite this, "In Time" doesn't do a very good job of explaining itself. What it does tell us about it's universe, it does a serviceable job of. But it never really goes any deeper than the surface. This is a world where people's lives are currency. The amount of time left that they have to live is earned and spent like cash. When they run out, they're dead. But we're never told how this works. What keeps these people alive? Is it a finite resource that, once the earth is depleted of it, the human race ceases to exist?

But at the end of the day, further explanation wouldn't have saved this movie -- I just didn't care to know anything more about it. The best science fiction movies I've seen share a few traits: imagination, intelligence, depth… But "In Time" was shallow and stupid.

1 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

DON: I think you're being a bit generous with your appraisal of this movie. 30 seconds? I'd say they'd have to pay me about 115 minutes to watch this movie again... This was beyond B-grade material. This was amateurish, Choose Your Own Adventure-grade stuff.

ALBERT: Ah, I mean that I'd allot this movie no more than 30 seconds of my life, which is the running time of the trailer. I had high hopes for it, really I did. The premise could have gone in all sorts of interesting ways. But seems as if the screenwriter was more content to congratulate himself with those gags than develop a more meaningful plot.

DON: Yeah, that really got on my nerves, just like it did with "Daybreakers." The irony is that those periodic reminders are meant to bring us back into the world, but they actually had the effect of reminding me that I was watching a poorly made movie.

ALBERT: Right, as if the movie wanted to wink at us every few minutes. ("'Can you give me a minute?' See, in YOUR world that means blah-blah-blah, but in THIS world it means such-and-such!") Ray Bradbury had some wisdom about creating alternate realities, wisdom that the makers of this movie could have used: Appeal to the senses, not the intellect. Make us feel something. I never got a sense of what motivated these people. Couldn't identify with a one of 'em -- not Timberlake, not Seyfried, not Murphy.

DON: Is it just me, or did the math not add up at all? So we're told the guy who bestowed all this time on Will was a pretty wealthy guy with something like 120 years, pretty much one of the immortals right? But in a world where a hotel room costs something like 10 years, it just didn't add up to me that this man was really all that wealthy. It's a small quibble, I know, but it showed me how little the film's makers thought the movie through.

ALBERT: I give the movie some leeway because of that short voiceover that explained its mechanics (if not its mythology) in the beginning ("The Invention of Lying" started the same way, and I bought it). But yeah, it strained credibility pretty far. Our acceptance of the movie's premise was key to enjoying the movie, but the movie would goad us with stuff like the time gambling and hand-to-hand time transfers, which raised all sorts of other questions about its plausibility. If people can transfer time to each other in those ways, then there's some kind of telepathy involved. But what's the use? I'm probably giving the movie more thought than it deserves.

DON: Well, I think the big story of this movie is it's Justin Timberlake's big debut as a leading man. I think it's telling that neither of us really touched on that. He didn't make much of an impression here, I'd say... I think he is an okay actor from what I saw of "Alpha Dog," but he lacks the weight on screen to carry a movie.

ALBERT: I cringed every time he spoke, and sometimes even when he didn't. First off, I know his character's name is Will Salas because he insisted on stating it fully every 10 minutes, a la James Bond. He was self-conscious and tentative about every line of dialogue. And even his action scenes were awkward -- he ran not like a man running for his life, but a man taking in his morning jog. And that disarm-and-shoot scene looked stiff-limbed and rehearsed. Again, I don't blame him -- he's a singer-turned-actor, he didn't grow up doing this stuff. I think he's fine in stuff like "The Social Network" -- better a small role in a good movie than a big role in a crappy one. For me, the movie pretty much committed suicide when it went down the big-banking route. Timely? Yes. Edgy? Hardly. We're in a liberal time when most sympathy is with the Occupy Wall Street protestors. The movie is taking no risks by making the fat cats look evil. Sci-fi should be addressing topics that we're afraid to touch, not pandering to popular tastes.

Paranormal Activity 3

2011-10-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween, Alias Friends! -the Alias Men

Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman

Starring Christopher Nicholas Smith, Lauren Bittner, Chloe Csengery, and Jessica Tyler Brown

Judy's take:
PARANORMAL INACTIVITY

"Paranormal Activity 3" is a movie I've been waiting to see, being a fan of the first two installments. Several weeks ago, I watched all the trailers and teasers and they got me even more excited to see it, since there was some pretty scary stuff in the trailers.

Set in 1988, the movie starts out prior to the events of “Paranormal Activity 2” and 18 years before the events of the original film. The movie follows Katie and Kristi, the starring women in “PA” and “PA2,” respectively, during their childhood. They live with their mother and her live-in boyfriend in California. Katie brings up her "imaginary" friend Toby to the adults, and after that, strange things start to happen in the way that makes “Paranormal Activity” infamous; little, hardly noticeable things at first, but the events quickly spiral out of control, as the family inevitably finds out.

The story was overall decent. It's an origin story that filled some of the plot holes that were found in the first two installments. As fulfilling as this is, it also creates new plot holes that make you wonder if the writers were being rushed at the end. Nearly all of the scenes in the trailers were left out, and I spent most of the movie wondering where the scenes were. This movie does play with your senses, but not so much so that you begin to get used to them. One of the best scare tactics is the fact that one camera is mounted to a rotating fan. You hold your breath just waiting for the camera to pan over from the living room to the kitchen and back again. I noticed there was a lack of daytime footage in this installment. All you see are night scenes. A lot of stale footage is included where nothing happens, as in the previous films, but this time they failed in these moments by not capturing interest or building suspense. I found it took too long for action to build, and then I didn't feel I got enough bang for my buck once it did kick in. There were two or three scenes that definitely made the audience jump, but other than that, the movie just didn't deliver.

I was impressed with the acting. Character development was much more obvious in this installment than the previous two, and it seemed easier to relate to the characters in this movie. Props definitely go to Chloe Csengery as the young Katie -- the way she talks to "Toby" is eerie and disturbing, especially at the end.

Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (who co-directed the documentary “Catfish”) did a decent job with the directing in this installment. The characters were realistic and made believable. Unfortunately, there isn't very much in this movie that stands out from the first two installments. It almost seemed like a recycled version of “PA” and “PA2.”

The special effects in this movie were well done, and seem to get better after each movie. The first “PA” lacked in special effects, even if it did get the job done. The second “PA” did a better job. The third PA took the special effects to a whole new level, though there weren't many scenes that utilized the full potential of these effects.

Due to the previews, and what you EXPECT to happen, the ending is incredibly abrupt and unexpected. I believe that the filmmakers wanted you to be waiting for things to happen so that when the end came, you were genuinely surprised. This was effective, but it leaves you with a strong feeling of dissatisfaction and wanting at the end of the film. I'm sure that very open ending is leaving room for a fourth film.

Overall, the movie was much too short. The movie clocks out at less than 90 minutes. Those extra scenes in the trailers would have filled those plot holes that were rather obvious in “PA3.” You leave feeling that the filmmakers left something out … and they did, about 20 min worth of scares and story. I'm not sure why, but they took out some really amazing scenes that were shown in the trailer. The movie would have been so much better with them in it. I have to say it is too bad the trailer was way scarier than the movie. The paranormal activities in the film were few and far between. A more fitting title for this installment would be "Paranormal Inactivity 3."

3 out of 5

Albert's take:
PACK UP THE SHEETS

The scariest movie I've ever seen is George Sluizer's "The Vanishing," a French-Dutch thriller-drama about a kidnapping and its aftermath. It has no supernatural elements, no monsters, no special effects -- hell, it even reveals the identity of the very human killer midway through the movie.

It's scary, you understand, because it doesn't deal in the artificial tension-building setups and startling punchlines of your standard horror fare and instead dares to uncover the evil that ordinary people -- the viewer included, maybe -- are capable of.

Any other horror movie I've seen is essentially a variation on the old setup-punch format, and the "Paranormal Activity" series is no exception. The first one was novel, with its cast of convincingly unglamorous unknowns and its unblinking, remorseless fixed-camera format (horror by Ozu?).

But the third, although it has its pulse-pounding moments, ultimately shows a lack of ideas and pretty much signals the series' end.

In it, you'll see all the standby horror-movie tropes, albeit presented in the series' raison d'etre found-footage format: a (paranormal) believer vs. a nonbeliever, phony scares, people sneaking up on each other when they shouldn't be, all-seeing children who are treated dismissively, et al.

The effect isn't unlike listening to the Scala & Kolacny Brothers cover of Radiohead's "Creep": It grabs your attention, it seems fresh and significant -- and then you realize, Hey, that's just a choir singing Radiohead!

3 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

ALBERT: I agree, the rotating-fan camera mount probably provided the movie's best scares. But the whole enterprise wore a little thin -- it was as if the filmmakers, and even the ghost, were racking their brains trying to come up with ways to surprise us. I don't think found-footage films have quite had their day (especially in light of the great "The Last Exorcism"), but this franchise has.

JUDY: I totally agree, at the end of the movie, I was thinking that the “Paranormal Activity” movie franchise has been very fortunate and endearing to horror movie lovers. But I've noticed that the quality of every movie after the first one seems to be gradually worse than the one that came before it. You'll notice my ratings show that decrease.

ALBERT: SPOILER ALERT! The biggest sign of the movie's lack of imagination, to me, was how it cribbed its ending from "The Last Exorcism," whose ending I thought was a little hokey and over-the-top anyway. Before "The Last Exorcism," people had always complained that found-footage horror movies didn't show enough. Now, they show too much.

JUDY: That was exactly what I thought as well. I couldn't believe it when I saw the similarities to "The Last Exorcism." It felt like they couldn't come up with an ending so just decided to use one from another movie that had found footage. I think the biggest disappointment for me, though, was not seeing those scary scenes that were shown in the trailers. That "Bloody Mary" scene was in the movie, but definitely not as good as the one in the trailer.

ALBERT: I didn't see much of the "PA3" trailer, but yeah, I've heard it featured a lot of stuff that wasn't in the movie -- so much stuff, in fact, that I saw an article titled something like "Top 5 Scary Moments of the 'Paranormal Activity 3' Trailer that Weren't in the Movie." This is exactly why I don't mind missing trailers and showing up to a movie right as it starts -- trailers are sort of like the Pepsi Challenge, a cheap way to hook you. When people called out Robert Rodriguez for a misleading "Predators" trailer, he owned up to it and was even proud of it. I guess the trailers did their job, getting people to watch the movies.

JUDY: I know every trailer has "trailer trash" (the stuff in movie trailers that doesn't make it into the films -- most movies have at least some), and I know how difficult it is to remain original while trying to do a prequel/sequel. But it seems a bit much that majority of the shots that were in the previews were not used in the film. I guess the producers just think people will go anyway (which they will) and they will be saving this stuff for the "never-before-seen footage" on the DVD.

ALBERT: You seem more versed in found-footage horror than I am. What do you think the genre will have to do to stay alive?

JUDY: I think it might have to ditch most of the found footage and just tell a straight story with only a few found-footage scenes to add to the plot. I personally think the franchise is played out and that another one shouldn't be made because it's getting old watching the same stuff we've seen three times before. All I can say is, if there is going to be a “Paranormal Activity 4,” let's hope there will be more "paranormal" and less normal.

MEET THE ALIAS MEN: The Alias Men Turn 2

2011-10-24T23:10:00.000-07:00

This month, we celebrated our 2nd anniversary. A lot has happened in the last two years, but arguably, the most important change to our blog has been the addition of our loyal Alias Friends, but the one-timers and the regulars. So we thought we'd take our attention away from the screen for just a minute and turn it on ourselves. So Albert and I threw together a little questionnaire that we answered ourselves and asked our most regular contributors to answer. But before we get to it, I'd just like to thank all of you readers out there for continuing to check in with us from time to time, and thank our writers. We've really got something special here and it's because of you guys... Here's to another 2 years.

-- Alias Don

What is your earliest moviegoing memory?

ALBERT: Probably "Annie" at Seattle's Lewis and Clark Theatre when I was 4 years old. There was a big mural of the namesake pair in the theater lobby, along with posters of Jerry Lewis' "The Bellboy" and "Funny Girl" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" -- those always got me giddy for the movie ahead. Annie was a hero to me. She was something between child and adult, girl and boy, the orphan of uncertain origin (read: immaculately conceived) chosen to free them all. I didn't stop singing "Tomorrow" till my dad ridiculed me for it.

JUDY: I think it was a black and white Cantonese movie from the 50's at a Chinatown theater on Jackson Street in San Francisco. I remember the vending machine the most in the lobby, even then, I had to have my candy before going into the theater.

SHAWN: My earliest moviegoing memory was seeing Bambi Meets Godzilla at a cartoon festival. My dad took me shortly after the divorce. If you haven't seen it, google it. It's very short. I remember saying out loud to my father "look at the deer." Then when Godzilla came in, I was taken aback by all of the howling laughter. I guess I was too young to get it. I hadn't even seen Bambi yet and I remember asking my dad later why everyone was laughing so much. He did take me to see Bambi soon after.

Lewis & Clark Theater, Seatac, WA

DON: I think the first movie I ever went to was "Revenge Of The Nerds II: Nerds In Paradise". I wasn't so much enchanted by the movie as I was the whole experience of going to the theater. It was my 9th birthday and my first experience hanging out with a gaggle of friends away from our homes. I was at Lewis and Clark Theater in Sea-Tac, Washington (may she rest in peace). Even in its hey-day, it was probably one of the smaller, and more ghetto theaters in the Seattle area, but at that time, it might as well have been Times Square… I felt so grown up…

ANGELA: Watching the "Empire Strikes Back" with my brother on the hood of our parents car at the drive-in.

MIKE: My first movie memory, like my first concert, was epic. My first concert... Metallica (Master of Puppets tour). My first movie memory... Star Wars: A New Hope. It pretty much set the course for the rest of my life as far as sci-fi and fantasy.

Describe the moment when you realized you loved movies.

SHAWN: I don't think I ever had a single moment. But I guess I figured it out after my 12th time seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark in the theater.

ALBERT: Watching "The Shawshank Redemption" at, of all places, a dollar theater (the Admiral Twin in Seattle). It was a shaky time for me, 17 going on 18, but "Shawshank," the first mature movie that I liked, assured me that no matter what happened to me, movies would be around as a voice of conscience.

DON: Easy… Pulp Fiction. I'd always loved music and the dialogue in Pulp Fiction was so lyrical that I fell in love with it immediately… I watched it probably 100 times in the year after I saw it for the first time, memorizing and reciting the lyrics like I would an album of songs. After I'd finally gotten that out of my system though, I was on to looking for the next movie obsession and never really stopped.

ANGELA: The first time I watched "Rear Window" with my dad on VHS after a trip to Blockbuster (a big deal back then). I was absolutely mesmerized by the sets, the wardrobe, the dialogue, everything. It's been my favorite movie ever since.

MIKE: There was never a defining moment. It was just always there.

JUDY: I was in second grade I think, I remember exchanging movie-themed insults and trying to top each other with movie knowledge with some kids in the school yard.

A movie about your life is being made. Give us a full cast and crew rundown, plus genre category and synopsis.

Manibag (M) and Fan (R) in Better Luck Tomorrow

DON: Ah… Well, a movie about my whole life might not be very interesting. My movie would be about an event in my life -- losing my job and jetting to South America for a month of travel… The movie would be part drama, part comedy, part travelogue. Playing me would be Ben Manibag. Playing my best friend and travel partner, Albert, would be Roger Fan. Both are actors from a great, and overlooked movie Better Luck Tomorrow…. Celeste, our gracious host in Cuzco, Peru, and founder of Manos Unidas Peru, a school for autistic children, would be played by Hilary Swank or Julia Roberts. Armelle, a fellow traveller I hitched up with for about a week would be played by Ludivine Sagnier from Swimming Pool. And last but not least, I met a couple and their kids in Chile with whom I shared the most memorable days of my trip with, Catherina and Alexis… Catherina would be played by Salma Hayek and Alexis would be played by Javier Bardem.

Shigeta in "Crimson Kimono"

ALBERT: If the guy playing me could be from any era, I'd pick James Shigeta, circa 1959 (when he made "The Crimson Kimono"). He was ahead of his time, dashing and well spoken, a model for all Asian men -- or men, period. If from the modern era, I'd go with Jack Yang, because he's as tall and as handsome as I'd like to be.

The love interest would be Kristin Kreuk. Bobby Lee would play my sidekick, Jerry Lewis to my Dean Martin. Fernando Meirelles would direct, because I'd want my life story to play like "City of God" -- a genre mixer in an interesting chopped-up sequence. Mark Lee Ping-bing would shoot it, and Rachel Portman or Randy Edelman would score.

The movie's a coming-of-age dramedy about a handsome young man's quest to become the first American-born Asian person to win a Grammy and a Best Actor Academy Award. Of course he succeeds at both counts, but then he becomes restless and turns his attention to greater causes -- social justice, cultural commentary, politics. In the course of his long life, he effects sweeping change and becomes an icon the world over. Did I mention he's handsome?

MIKE: It would be a one man play...off Broadway. Starring: Pruitt Taylor Vince....the resemblance is uncanny.

JUDY: It will be "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" meets "Aliens" meets "MST3K" with cast and crew from those movies. I will be played by Jessica Rabbit doing a Sigourney Weaver, searching for aliens to blow away on a space outpost called "Red Lantern" where aliens force humans to watch one or zero star movies 24/7 in hopes of melting their brains. Luckily for them, my XML (Xcellent Movie Lovers) team was sent in as their last line of defense.

Barrymore lookin' like Angela

SHAWN: The movie about me is called The Human Centipede 3 (Full On Sequence) Starring Russell Crowe, The Rock, Gerard Butler, and me as the Mad Doctor. This time out, no one needs to be drugged or abducted. Everyone is a consenting adult and no surgical procedures are necessary...

ANGELA: It would so be a drama about a thirty-something gal on the cusp of pursuing her dream of getting paid to watch movies.

Me- Drew Barrymore (duh!)
Chris- Hugh Laurie
Kyra - as herself
Mac- Mia Talerico (Charlie from Disney's "Good Luck Charlie")

Director - Chris Nolan
Screenplay- Aaron Sorkin
Costume Design- Katherine Jane Bryant
Executive Producer - William Fay
Original Music - David Foster

Let's say the world goes to hell in an apocalyptic catastrophe, and all cinema is destroyed. which three movies would you put away for safekeeping for future generations, and why?

ANGELA: **Rear Window - Best example of Hitchcockian Cinema at it's best, Grace Kelly, Edith Head costumes, Jimmy Stewart, cinematography to die for and oh that humor courtesy of Thelma Ritter
**Schindler's List- Better than any history book at depicting the horror of the holocaust
**Finding Nemo- The Pixar masterpiece of the revolutionized animated process and genre

ALBERT: I would try to pick titles that I think best capture the magic of moviemaking and storytelling, giving special consideration to movies that reflect the era in which they were made. My picks, for now, would be Murnau's "Sunrise" (the pinnacle of black-and-white and silent filmmaking, in my opinion), "The Wizard of Oz" (because I can't think of a more magical movie) and "Seven Samurai" (which, for my money, created the concept of global cinema).

MIKE: They would all be instructionals. lol

SHAWN: American Fabulous-- This is a film that documents a person who possesses that rare gift of oral storytelling. Jeffrey Strouth is a flaming gay guy telling his depraved life stories in the back of an old Cadillac. This is the most quotable film I know. It's fucking offensive and fuckin unforgettable.

The Wizard of Oz -- One of the only musicals i like. The perfect marriage of storytelling, casting, costumes and art direction. This film sparks thought in kids and adults alike.

Do the Right Thing -- The greatest film about racism and one of the greatest films. People can learn from Spike Lee's finest achievement.

DON: This is kind of a criticky pick, but I think it'd be important to preserve Citizen Kane for future generations. To me, this was the film that really defined the medium of movies -- that showed the world why film was an important art form unto itself. It provided a template for all films moving forward on how use the camera not just to capture a story being told by actors, but to actually help in telling the story. It was the moment the that film grew up. My second pick would be The Godfather, part 1 and 2. In a way, I feel like these movies pick up where Citizen Kane left off. It was one of the best examples in film history of how to tell a story through actions and the nuances of the characters. Francis Ford Coppola does it beautifully with both of these films and for my money, it hasn't been done as well ever since. My third pick would be Star Wars. While it's not one of my personal favorites, it's the most widely enjoyed movie and is just pure entertainment. It's the best example of a popcorn movie -- a movie you can just shut your brain off and enjoy.

JUDY: The three movies would be "Back to the Future", "Time Machine" and "Time Traveler's Wife". I will use these movies as research and reference so I can build my own time machine and go back to before the catastrophe and get whatever movies I want for future generations. In fact, I can sell time travel trips to people so they can go back and experience the movies themselves first hand at the theaters.

The Ides Of March

2011-10-18T21:25:00.000-07:00

Directed by George Clooney

Starring Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, and Evan Rachel Wood

Don's take:
IDES LIKED IT

"Ides of March" sadly alienates about half of the movie going public by centering its plot around a Democratic ticket during a fictional presidential campaign year. So just to get this out of the way, I want to make this clear, this movie is not ideological in any way. Yes, there is plenty of Democratic rhetoric to be heard in this movie and lefties like me may swell in pride in parts, but the movie's aim is not to win hearts and minds. Quite the contrary, the goal of the film seem more-so an attempt to shed light on the problems of politics that are shared by both parties; its grievances lie not with ideology, but the system. The rhetoric that is present is mainly for atmosphere and scene setting purposes. It could have been Republican ideals and it more or less would have been the same movie…

George Clooney does double duty both directing the film and playing the Democratic presidential hopeful, Governor Mike Morris. While Morris is clearly not meant to be a representation of Obama, there are parallels between this candidate and the candidate Obama that suggest this film is in ways a commentary on the current administration. His campaign's signature image is reminiscent of Shepard Fairey's iconic "Hope" poster. Morris enters the race in a campaign year following an administration that has left an American population yearning for change. He is perceived as a Washington outsider. And, he represents an underrepresented minority in this nation -- he is an Atheist. Morris's campaign manager -- his David Axelrod -- is the young and talented Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), full of hubris and vigor and coveted even by Morris's rival, Senator Ted Pullman's (Paul Giamatti) campaign.

When a mostly innocent meeting between Meyers his rival's campaign manager is discovered, unable to trust Meyers any longer, Morris campaign releases him. But unbeknownst to them, Meyers is privy to knowledge that is not just damaging to the Morris's campaign, but could potentially destroy his life.

Clooney is an outspoken Democrat, but pulls no punches in this film in expressing his disappointment with the state of politics today. Perhaps a commentary on the the sitting president, Morris is portrayed initially as ideologically pure and unwilling to play the game, but we see his principles slowly erode as the campaign drags on. Despite his resolve, the culture of politics is simply too powerful a force for him to overcome and he slowly transforms into a cookie cutter politician -- a popular criticism of Obama. The power players in the film do not include the candidate who seems to be for the most part at the mercy of his powerful henchmen. It's the campaign managers, the ones who know how to deftly maneuver the world of campaign politics who pull all the strings here…

Clooney mines the world of presidential politics for all the drama and suspense it can offer with surprising results. Despite a lack of a body count, "Ides" is a pretty riveting affair. Sure, no lives are a risk, but the soul of our nation, the integrity of a man, the future of the people, are all in jeopardy. And Clooney and company do a good job of selling us on the characters. For my money, "Ides" boasts a cast of some of the most likable and watchable actors in Hollywood.

But oddly, despite an amazing cast, solid performances, and skillful direction, and a taut script, "Ides" never achieved the the movie nirvana as a whole as its parts would suggest. Still, "Ides" is far from a wasted time at the movies.

4 out of 5

Angela's take:
CLOONEY SERVES UP THRILLING POLITICS

I was ready to hate the new politically charged thriller from writer/director George Clooney. It had a been there, done that quality to it and I've never been a big Clooney fan. This movie is more taut intellectual thriller than political, and it is really Goslings movie from beginning to end. Ryan plays Stepehn Meyers, a press secretary for policital hopeful Mike Morris (Clooney). Morris bears a striking resemblance to Obama circa 2009, complete with the Hope posters with Clooney's profile in the background.

This movie is more than that though, it is a behind the scenes inner working of a political campaign. It proves to be a bumpy ride, with deals, meetings and hidden secrets. It's also star packed with Paul Giamatti and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as opposing campaign mangers. They are the veterans who have seen and done it all and have seen many a Morris come and go. Gosling's Meyer in contrast is in awe of his candidate- he has as they say "drank the kool-aid" and fully believes his candidates campaign promises. This is the vantage point we follow, we get to see first hand what happens when your idol isn't all he's cracked up to be. The pedestal begins to shake courtesy of a hungry reporter courtesy of Marisa Tomei who will stop at nothing to get the sought after scoop. Also putting a bump in the road of political greatness is an intern played flawlessly by Evan Rachel Wood.

I enjoyed the ups and downs of the script co-written by Clooney. Yes, parts of the story are predictable, but the majority is fresh and suspenseful and the ending was surprising and poignant all at the same time. The last scene of Gosling as the camera pulls in close, shows the loss of innocence and blind allegiance all without saying a word.

4 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

ANGELA: I was surprised by how much I liked this movie. Political thrillers are usually not my cup of tea but with Clooney at the helm and Gosling in the lead, the pace is quick and the backstabbing quicker in this play by play of the workings of a presidential campaign. I especially liked the behind the scenes feel and obvious parallels between Morris and 2009 Obama. The wink wink use of the hope campaign poster with Clooney's profile in place of Obama was inspired. I agree that it is a commentary on the current state of the administration and how we got here to begin with.

DON: I'm actually a fan of movies with a political message. I'm a big Michael Moore guy. But what surprised me here was how little this movie had to say ideologically. This was a thriller in the tradition of like a John Grisham novel. Totally not what I was expecting and it was a pleasant surprise.

ANGELA: I couldn't agree more. It is because of that that I enjoyed this movie so much. I am not a Michael Moore fan and if it had gotten to political or preachy it would have lost me early on. I was also captivated by Goslings sometimes "actions speak louder than words" performance

DON: That's exactly the point I was trying to make. I have a feeling the popular perception of this movie is that this is a soapbox for Clooney to spout his Democratic principles, which I think will scare a lot of people away. Which is a shame. It's a quality movie that deserves to be seen. If for no other reason, to see Gosling and Clooney in a movie together! I've been a fan of Gosling for a long time now for a lot of the same reasons I'm a Clooney fan. Both guys are very charming but with a lot of depth and acting chops. I kind of felt like this movie was a passing of a torch of sorts. I see Gosling following a similar path to Clooney.

ANGELA: Interesting, I hadn't thought about similarities between the two, but I can see what you're saying. I too am a huge fan of Gosling and loved him in the recent "Drive". He acts with such subtlety that in some scenes where we know what he knows, he still could fool me with his non-reactions, he is one of the best out there in my opinion. Did you like the obvious homage to Obamaism or did you think it took away from the story?

DON: I don't think it took away from the story, but I thought the movie didn't have enough to say about Obama to warrant all the references. But overall, it didn't detract much from the movie for me. I was too caught up in the intrigue to really let it bother me. Let me ask you a question. If you weren't asked to see this movie for the blog, do you think you would have stayed away from it because of the film's perceived liberal bent?

ANGELA: Oh, absolutely! Based on the previews and the fact that Clooney was in it, I normally would have steered clear of it based on what I would have assumed the angle was. It's not often that a movie surprises me but "The Ides of March" did just that. Instead of the political commentary with a democratic slant that I was expecting, I got a taut thriller with an all-star cast. There were a few predictable plot points, but overall it kept me guessing to the end and is worth the ticket price for the last five minutes alone where we see Gosling's characters wool fall from his eyes and a new awareness take it's place. Don't let assumption steer you from this well made commentary on the state of our political process.

Real Steel

2011-10-15T01:14:00.000-07:00

Directed by Shawn Levy

Starring Hugh Jackman, Dakota Goyo, Evangeline Lilly, Kevin Durand, Anthony Mackie, and Karl Yune

Judy's take:
REAL STEEL IS REAL GOOD

"Real Steel" was not high on my list of must-see movies this summer. I saw the trailer several months ago and thought it looked kinda corny and I wasn't all that interested in seeing Hugh Jackman, especially when I thought of some of his recent movies such as Wolverine and the X-men series. I wasn't expecting much going into this movie, I thought I will at least find it mildly enjoyable just to see the robot fights. I was definitely surprised at how much better this movie was than I expected.

The movie is set in the "not-too-distant" future where people have stopped going to human boxing and now go to Robot fights because these robots can dish out and take more punishment. Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a washed up boxer who's down on his luck, who now spends all his time chasing the quick buck in the low end "battle bot" arena, entering robots into matches that usually end in failure and the scrap heap. Soon Charlie is joined by his 11year-old-son who's mother (an ex girlfriend of Charlie's) dies unexpectedly, leaving Charlie with an unwelcome traveling companion. His son finds an old-time sparring bot and asks his father to teach him how to box, and through this, the relationship between father and son became closer, and Charlie starts to redeem himself for being absent in his son's life.

People will be tempted to make comparisons between this movie and the very first "Rocky," starring Sylvester Stallone. The comparison is a fair one. Like Rocky, this film offers a compelling storyline and unforgettable characters as a back drop to the main event. Like Rocky, you'll find yourself rooting for an underdog (Atom) who gets a shot at the title with the big bad champion (and his arrogant owners).

In the last two Transformers movies, very few people actually felt compassionate for Sam and his buddy autobots who were fighting to save the earth, but in this movie, it touches the heart of every one, both adults and kids alike, just because it shows the mystique connection between man and machine in such a human way that was missing in the Transformers movies. It reminded me of Terminator 2, of the connection between the kid and the machine.

I have to say I was surprised that Shawn Levy who directed "Date Night" and "Night at the Museum" actually directed this film. He did a great job keeping the movie moving at a predictable, but steady pace with no real gaps, adding opportunities here and there to show the developing father-son relationship that gives the movie more heart. I would say it is probably the best Shawn Levy film so far.The CGI visual effects were outstanding and the near future timeline added to the film's plausibility.

Hugh Jackman was a little over the top with the "I'm a jerk" deal at the beginning, but overall, doesn't overplay the role. Evangeline Lilly doesn't disappoint either, but I think the romantic plot line could have been better developed had she and Jackman garnered more screen time together. I was surprised by Dakota Goyo's solid performance as Jackman's son, very believable with a comfortable amount of emotional pull on Jackman. I especially like those hip hop dance scenes he has with Atom. Atom, too, turns in quite a performance. While the robot never says a word throughout the movie, he becomes the pivotal character through which Jackson and his son bond.

If you like any of the Rocky movies, you won't be disappointed with this one. If you haven't had anything to cheer about lately, go see this movie. You may not be able to beat the crap out of anyone, but it sure is nice watching the bots go at it and you can say to yourself at the end of the movie, "Damn, that was real good!"

4 out of 5

Albert's take:
ROCK 'EM SOCK 'EM

"Real Steel" has got to be one of the unlikeliest genre mash-ups ever made -- part underground fight movie, part giant robot movie, part road movie, part father-son reconciliation movie, part washed-up champ redemption movie, part boy and his robot/alien/mammal movie, and even part horse racing movie (you'll see what I mean). For that reason it's something of a self-contained curiosity, but at the same time it's so predictable -- by virtue of its aping so many genre conventions -- that I can't imagine myself wanting to watch it again. Still and all, I enjoyed myself, thanks to great performances that support its solid special effects (and vice versa).

3 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

ALBERT: So yeah, definitely better than I expected, and better made than it had to be, with good performances balancing out the special effects and action. But I just felt I had seen the movie's individual scenes many times before. Watching this movie made me realize how tricky it is to blend genres -- I'd rather a screenwriter blend two or three genres at most and appeal to me through storytelling, rather than constantly remind me that the movie is switching gears.

JUDY: I have to say the blending of genres didn't bother me so much, I thought the blending seem rather seamless actually. It's true we have all seen many of the movie's individual scenes many times before, but those are the kind of scenes one can watch over and over again. I mean don't you have favorite scenes in movies that you just fast forward to watch over and over again and it still gives you the same pleasure to watch as it did the first time?

ALBERT: Yes, but it's usually because the scenes are good on their own merits (because of the acting or directing, for example), not because they successfully fulfill the function of similar scenes from movies past. Of course the kid wants to rescue The Little Robot that Could, while his dad writes off the robot. Of course the father gets a chance to redeem himself in the ring. Of course the kid and his father reconcile. These were all well done, but part of me was always counting down the seconds till the movie fulfilled genre conventions and moved on to the next scene.

JUDY: I guess I wasn't counting down like you, I was too caught up in wanting to see the robots slug it out, see some metal flying. I'm a big fan of Rocky, so seeing this is like seeing Rocky in metal, a futuristic version of it. I thought the last 20 minutes was great and from where I was sitting, majority of people left the theater at the end of the movie feeling good, so in the end, isn't that the point? To just enjoy the experience?

ALBERT: Haha -- to each his or her own, of course. There were plenty of cheers at the screening I went to, and I saw a guy punching at the air during that final fight. So it does its job. I think a big part of "Real Steel's" effectiveness as an action movie is its use of special effects, which were limited but solid. There wasn't much CGI beyond the robots themselves, but the motion-capture, texture mapping and lighting were some of the best I've seen -- better than in "Transformers," no doubt. Some of the robots' movements were so lifelike, I kept thinking the characters around them would duck, so they wouldn't get hit!

JUDY: That was exactly what I thought too about the special effects, the CGI was definitely first class. The robots were so realistic in the way they box. I guess we have to thank Sugar Ray Leonard who trained Hugh Jackman to box for the movie, and was the technical advisor for the robot boxing in the ring. I like that the fight scenes were edited in such a way that motion was slowed enough so that audiences can see all the moves, all the punches and see where all the moves were landing. Unlike some action scenes in some movies where everything is quick cuts, quick edits, so audiences can't see where the action moves are landing...(cough, cough)..."Expendables" comes to mind...

50/50

2011-10-10T20:11:00.000-07:00

Directed by Jonathan Levine

Starring Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, Seth Rogan, Anna Kendrick, Anjelica Huston and Bryce Dallas Howard

Don's take:
50% HIS STORY, 50% THEIRS

Can cancer be funny? This is not a new question and was previously answered in films like "Wit" and the more recent "Funny People" (which coincidentally also featured Seth Rogen), and the answer to the question is a resounding "yes." After all, how else but through laughter is one supposed to deal with a devastating diagnosis. But like with any good cancer comedy, 50/50 doesn't shy away from the heavy questions either and deals with them with in a contemplative, empathetic, but ultimately amusing and fun way.

50/50 is largely based on the experiences of its screenwriter, Will Reiser, whose brush with cancer was witnessed firsthand by Rogen when they were both writers on "Da Ali G Show." It follows average-joe Adam's experience after learning that he has a rare form of cancer in his spine.

Beyond just how Adam is hit by the diagnosis, we see how it impacts all of his relationships. His party-girl girlfriend, Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) has simply no idea how to deal with such grave news. She does her best be 'be there' for him, but deep inside, she just not ready for such a burden in her young life. His best friend Kyle (Rogen), tries to maintain an air of normalcy in Adam's life, continuing to take him out to clubs, and josh around as if Adam had not just received a virtual death sentence. His mother reacts like any loving mother would be expected to react. She smothers him, even barking out "I'm moving in" upon hearing about his diagnosis. Then there's the very sweet friendship that he forms with his young cancer counselor played by Anna Kendrick. She is around his age, but through her medical training, the only person in Adam's life who truly understands his experience.

But 50/50 steers clear of drawing any lines between bad guys and good guys. Even Rachael, despite doing the ultimate wrong to her cancer-victim boyfriend, is treated with a degree of empathy. And all of the characters are portrayed as flawed -- Kyle as opportunistic and self-absorbed, Adam's mother as smothering, Adam's counselor as detached and clinical -- but 50/50 has a patient and satisfying way of revealing true loving nature behind each of its characters.

Joseph Gordon-Leavitt has come such a long way from his "Third Rock From The Sun" roots and has really shown himself to special talent in Hollywood with really great work in films like "The Lookout", "500 Days Of Summer" and now "50/50". And Rogen is a perfect fit here as the guy we all wish were our in our friend circles. Really, he needs to do little more than to be himself and it works. Anna Kendrick is as adorable in 50/50 as I thought she was in "Up In The Air".

As strange as it is, the cancer comedies I've seen, despite my expectations, have had a special way of uplifting me. They are sad. They are frightening in how they make you worry about the possibility that you may someday receive that awful news. And sometimes, our main character dies (although, with Hollywood cancer, the odds of surviving are closer to about 70/30). But while being usually pretty funny and entertaining, they also serve as a template on how to deal with devastating news, almost like a grief counselor would do. 50/50 is thoughtful, well acted, and well written -- a welcome addition to this family of film.

4 out of 5

Shawn's take:
GUESS WHAT YOUR CHANCES ARE OF LOVING THIS FILM

50/50 is nothing new to me. Going into the theater, I already knew what I was in for, and I was surprised by very little. It’s beginnings rely heavily on your typical Indie Screenwriting 101 setup. The story develops exactly as one would expect, and it ends on the note that pleases the largest demographic.

But 50/50 is not without its charms. Gordon-Leavitt’s lead is good enough to fill the film. He is not an actor with much range, but can convey sickness well. His biggest achievement is the buildup of rage that he sustains and releases. This undercurrent carries the film.

Then there is Seth Rogen. I’m not a fan. At all. In this film, he reverts back to his early 40 Year Old Virgin performance, staying on the sidelines, saying whatever comes into his head. Okay, I smirked at a few of his jokes. If he keeps this up, he could become the new Joan Cusack, sans the Oscar noms, always playing the reliable friend to the lead. I’ll take him that way, as long as I don’t have to see him take front and center as in The Pineapple Express. This is all despite the fact that I think he’s cute.

It seems like these types of indie productions always have a mother role for someone like Anjelica Houston. She gives the role her all, and is great. But again, this is typical casting for an actress of her age. Of the other women in the film, Anna Kendrick stands out in a quirky role. She is actually allowed to have a character with personality as the female love interest. So for that, I felt the film was just a little more colorful, a little more interesting.

What I would have loved to have seen was a different format of relationships. There are so many films where you have your basic white guy, his friend to the side, his parents below, and the love interest above. That configuration is so over, so dead in the water, that this film barely rises above mediocre. There are millions of relationship types out there. Exploring different ones would be fresh.

What if Angelica Houston was the therapist and not Anna Kendrick? What if Seth Rogen was the toxic one, not the girlfriend who leaves Adam? Just these very small tweaks I thought up right now could have added a little more nuance to this okay film. As it is though, 50/50 lives up to its name.

3 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

SHAWN: So, I have come to expect by now that you are going to like any film more than I. And you lived up to that again with this film. I understand why you like Seth Rogen. He works in this film. But seriously, don't you think this film lacking in imagination? I've heard many times that this comes from a true experience. But I feel like what came out was very product-y, with a pinch of personalization. Not the other way around.

DON: What are you saying? I am too easy? Maybe so. But hey, I wouldn't be reviewing movies every week if I didn't love them. But I totally understand what you are saying about lacking originality. But for me, originality isn't the be all and end all of a movie. It can be the thing that makes a movie great, but I'll give credit to a clean, well crafted and thoughtfully made movie, which 50/50 was. You're right though, that 50/50 didn't break any new ground here, which is why I didn't give it a perfect score. But are you saying that 50/50 was an unenjoyable experience? Or did you just think its aspirations were too low?

Levine and Rogen during the filming of 50/50

SHAWN: It was completely predictable is what I'm saying. It was cast predictably, the moments when Seth Rogen would pop in with a funny line was predictable. The ending was predictable. I just thought it was very mediocre. I didn't hate it. I giggled here and there. I thought Joseph Gordon Leavitt did well. But it just seemed like it should have been a TV movie. And yes, I'm saying you are too easy. I don't think being easy is bad, it's just amusing to me. Can I sound any more arrogant? And okay, I would have rather had him die at the end. There I said it.

DON: I don't disagree. It was a bit predictable. But lots of movies I like are a little predictable. But I thought Levine did a lot of things right in 50/50 that a lot of directors aren't able to achieve. He was clear in his motives and the film was well realized. Most of the cancer movies I've seen have focused pretty myopically on the patient, which this movie didn't (and ironically neither did Funny People). I enjoyed that. It was well crafted. Well acted. I know that Hollywood is not in the business of being avant-garde each time out of the gate. But there's plenty more to enjoy about movies than just uniqueness or unpredictability. You remarked that you thought the movie felt like product-y and not personal. The film's screenwriter drew from his own experiences when writing the script. Did you get any sense of that watching the movie?

Reiser (L) and Rogen on the set of 50/50

SHAWN: If I had survived cancer and wrote my experience into a screenplay, I would be very saddened to see my story whittled down to convention. To think that a life threatening experience can be made into a very unmemorable film is a lost opportunity. I'm still not saying I didn't like 50/50. I'm just saying that most likely, it severly pales in comparison to what the writer really went through. And so it goes, I have absolutely no urge to see this film ever again. And speaking of cancer films, Mike Nichol's Wit is the best one. It is deeply personal, and profoundly sad. Emma Thompson's performance is one of a kind. And the humor in that film is multiple times funnier than the humor in 50/50. If you haven't seen it, you need to.

DON: Wit is a fantastic film and I thought about it a lot while watching 50/50 -- not that I was comparing the two... They're very different movies. I think Will Reiser's whole point was to make light of Cancer, so I'm sure he was not disappointed with the outcome. It was his chosen way to deal with the news when he received his diagnosis, and his goal here is to show that on the silver screen without diminishing the seriousness of the disease. To that extent, I'd say 50/50 is a success. But having said that, I agree completely, Emma Thompson was unforgettable in Wit. It was a much more thoughtful movie and one I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anybody, for it's thoughtfulness AND its comedy.

SHAWN: I think that if you picked out most of the jokes, you'd find they would fit neatly into any Apatow flick. Most of them are not unique to a cancer experience. Rogen talks about blowing Levitt enough to make me speculate. But of course I do that anyway. Wit's humor lies in the actual absurdity of being at death's door. It's much more confrontational. But I bet the paycheck on this film is much sweeter than the Wit paycheck.

DON: Wit was much more frank and honest in how it dealt with the subject, but the the movie also played very much like a stageplay (which it was adapted from). Being a Hollywood film, 50/50 didn't have the same luxury. Leavitt couldn't talk in long monologues into the camera. For what it was, I thought it was good. I think there's a place in movieland for both 50/50 AND Wit. And if I had things my way, our readers would see both.

Moneyball

2011-10-02T00:07:00.000-07:00

Directed by Bennett Miller

Starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Chris Pratt and Robin Wright

Shawn's take:
BALLS OF FUN

Holy shit! I loved Moneyball. If you are going to the movies in the next few weekends, see Moneyball. I honestly thought I was going to hate it based on what the trailer had to show. But instead of a rah rah Brad Pitt vanity show a la Jerry Maguire, I was treated to one hell of an intelligently told story. Moneyball was not only clearly made by people who love the game, it was made (trailer excepting) without a care for pandering to the sports marketing mentality.

For once Brad Pitt didn’t suck. This is, in fact, his first great role. Forget about the mind numbingly boring Benjamin Button, (another character with B B initials). Pitt takes this film and gives us someone we care about. He’s a divorcee who is the GM for the Oakland A’s. He’s both thoughtful and a little volatile. He knows he’s good at what he does, and he is haunted by past failures. He is the kind of boss who tends to make decisions at his gut level, and Pitt as an actor seems to be also performing at gut level. Many actors can run circles him, but here, he fits Billy Beane like a hand in a well-oiled mitt. I think this could be his Erin Brockovich. He’s should have no trouble being nominated at Oscar time.

When we first meet Beane, he is sulking over a world series loss. He is going to lose his three key players and the A’s have barely a cent to bargain with. And then Beane meets Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill. Brand has an untried theory and formula for putting a team together. Beane sniffs it out of him, buys Brand, and decides to go all the way with his ideas. The tenured good old boys on the payroll who assist with picking team lineup don’t see it coming, but Brand’s formula quickly renders them all obsolete. I have a hunch that the foulness of what’s said around those old boy roundtables is only hinted at, but that’s my guess.

Brand’s data reveal under-appreciated affordable players. Soon, Beane has bought himself a completely new lineup. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the A’s coach Art Howe. Howe must have had some major patience, is all I’ll say. Trusting a man who trashes all known wisdom and brings you a bunch of cheap players would have to be difficult for anyone, and Howe shows up at Beane’s door early on. Hoffman disappears into this role and gives another of his great nuanced performances. It’s no wonder, he and director Bennett Miller worked together before in the film Capote, where PSH won the best actor Oscar.

One of the great achievements of this film is its dialogue. Scene after scene we witness men hemming and hawing over the details with a wit and wisdom that feels authentic. We get to sit in on the verbal struggles, the clashes of opinion. These guys don’t mince words and the film editors don’t mince the scenes. Exchanges of dialogue play out with cuts to a dozen different men all giving their full effort. The game means everything to them all. The film in turn makes us feel the importance of this sea change that is about to occur in baseball.

Noam Chomsky once said that if as much honesty and analysis was put into political discussion in our media as was put in American sports, our country would be a better, more functioning democracy. Moneyball feels like it utilizes every single aspect of sports discourse, and if this film is a real indicator of that culture, I would say Chomsky is right. Someone needs to study Brand’s model and take it to Washington. And while we’re waiting for that to happen, GO SEE MONEYBALL!!!

5 out of 5

Don's take:
MONEYBALL'S APPROACH IS FROM LEFT FIELD BUT IT KNOCKS IT OUT OF THE PARK

I've always been something of a sucker for sports movies… At least the ones that are inspirational (which account for about 98% of them). Even Varsity Blues had me at "I don't wahnt yer life". But I'll be the first to admit, inspirational sports movies can sometimes be a little cookie-cutter in their approaches… But here we have Moneyball -- a sports movie with no bad guys, no team of destiny, no Patton-like coaches and no big inspirational speeches. Moneyball is a movie about the business of sports, about numbers, about gaming the system. And yet, despite its unconventional approach to the genre, it is every bit as inspirational as any sports movie I've seen replete with tear-jerking moments as well as moments of satisfaction and exhilaration.

Whilst other sports flicks tell stories about underdog teams or players, Moneyball's inspiration comes from the story about a real-life General Manager for the hopelessly underfunded Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane. Beane's story in and of itself is pretty amazing. Here is a guy who basically reinvented baseball's method of team construction; one that was until then virtually unchanged since the league's inception. It's no stretch to say that history may someday view Beane as the baseball equivalent of Van Gogh or Miles Davis. With such inherently inspiring material to work with, director Bennett Miller is careful not to cheapen the story by making it overly melodramatic. What he gives us instead is a lucid and clear depiction of an incredibly complex event in baseball history -- clear enough for a non-fan like me to have a nuanced understanding of what happened. But this is not to say that his direction was clinical. Steven Zaillan and Aaron Sorkin's script as well as Brad Pitt's charming and heartfelt depiction of Beane made sure that Moneyball was no stodgy docudrama.

As if in tribute to Beane's paradigm shifting influence on the world of baseball, Miller, Pitt, Zaillan and Sorkin deliver us a wholly new take on the sports flick. And if my enjoyment of the film was any indication, it was a home run.

5 out of 5

And now... THE 180 DEGREE RULE

DON: I am not a baseball fan. I'm pretty sure you would rather pull your toenails out than sit through a whole baseball game... And yet, our reviews read like a couple of educated sports fans. We're able to talk about baseball traditions, and the technical ins and outs of Beane's contribution to the sport. That, to me, is such a testament to the quality of Zaillan's and Sorkin's script. Sorkin, particularly, never fails to impress me with how well he can weave technical details seamlessly into a script without making it sound like exposition....

SHAWN: Actually, I like playing baseball, it just never happens to me. I don't mind going to see a game. But turn the TV station to any sports and you will make me crabby. I spent many times in my childhood calmly playing, minding my own business, only to be scared shitless out of my socks by my father or uncles' sudden scream at the TV screen. Those terrifying sudden screams had a Pavlovian effect in me, and to this day, I utterly hate the sound of sports on a television set. So yes, I would rather tear my toenails out in that sense.

DON: But certainly, we aren't the kinds of guys who watch Sportscenter or read books on baseball history. Yet somehow, watching this movie, I didn't feel like a baseball ignoramus. I didn't feel like I was being told about the how player recruitment was traditionally done... I felt like I already knew (I assure you, I didn't). One of my biggest fears going into this movie was that my lack of baseball knowledge would make the movie too elusive to enjoy. It's impressive how well they were able to elucidate the inner workings of the business of baseball in a way that was satisfying and clear to both the fan and the non-fan....

SHAWN: You may be right about that, but you are assuming that this film is the layman's version of something far more intellectual. I don't know sports either, but somehow, I cant believe that it's much more that what they showed. And by the way. I was actually prepared to hate this film. I heard that Brad Pitt was making a film about Billy Bean and I was ecstatic. But I was thinking of Billy Bean, the gay player who faced major discrimination that ultimately cost him his career. When I found out that it was Billy Beane, yeah, I was not happy. But this film reeled me in from the very first scout meeting. I tell you, I was enthralled from beginning to end, and got teary too. I still think they need to make the other Billy Bean film, but I'm very happy with this one.

DON: Whoa! I will definitely be reading more about your Bean when we're done here! I did have one sticking point with the movie that worried me: the decision to create the Peter Brand character. As I understand it, there was no Peter Brand and that the character was fabricated for storytelling purposes. But I think they were able to preserve the important aspects of the real Beane's story despite this fabricated element... But I'm still on the fence as to whether or not it was necessary to make this large of a sacrifice where historical accuracy is concerned to tell this story... It did add a friendship that was fun to watch, but it is also a glaring inaccuracy that may distract for those who are more familiar with Beane's story.

SHAWN: That's one detail that doesn't matter to me. This film exists in its own context. Plenty of films simplify historical facts for the sake of film. The worst violator of that of recent is Eastwood's Changeling. The twisting that was done to that true story reveals nothing less than the Hollywood Oscar mechanism at work for Angelina Jolie. I certainly hope there was nothing more egregious than the Jonah Hill character being fabricated. For all I know Pitt should have access to that same Oscar mechanism. But with this film, everything felt right. Everything worked. There are hardly any areas I can pick at. I did notice that there was one obvious CGI shot. When they showed the A's stadium from a night sky shot, it was packed to the rafters. This was during the height of the winning streak. I couldn't imagine that they actually packed the stadium for this film, and not even Lady Gaga could fill Oakland stadium to that degree. Also the crowed was wiggling funny.

DON: Haha, well, considering the quality of the movie by in large, I'm willing to forgive it this technical mis-step in the poorly rendered CGI crowd. As for the Brand character, it was clearly not much of a sticking point for me, but I suspect it may be for disciples of the sport, a group known to be sticklers for facts and details. But the end, I suspect Moneyball will be satisfying to most on the strength of its storytelling and acting. Certainly, for me, Moneyball is the best sports film I've seen since 2004's Miracle.

Drive

2011-09-21T21:14:00.000-07:00

Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn

Starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks, Christina Hendricks and Ron Perlman

Judy's take:
DRIVE AWAY!  

I saw the trailer to "Drive" a couple of weeks ago and was hyped to see it because it looked slick and action-packed. I also heard that it was well-received at film festivals and by critics in general.

"Drive" is based on the 2005 book by James Sallis of the same name. It is supposed to be a true to the book adaptation. "Drive" is about an unnamed stunt driver (Ryan Gosling) who moonlights as a getaway driver on the side. Seemingly a loner, the driver becomes involved in the life of his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her young son Benicio (Kaden Leos). After agreeing to drive for Irene's newly paroled husband Standard (Oscar Isaac), and finding himself on the wrong side of an assassination contract, the driver embarks on a mission to protect Irene from the vicious gangsters who would seek to harm her to get at him.  

The first ten minutes of the film was awesome. The music, the shots of LA and the neon pink titles reminded me of the eighties and made me think of Miami Vice. The opening action scene was everything it should be. However, it went downhill after that. The long, long pauses during the film that made you think someone fell asleep during editing was excruciating. I felt like I was watching Miami Vice of old, with a darker tone. Who in their right mind has  that much awkward silence when they are with another person? Sure, I like the mystery of the character, but almost every scene had these long silences between the characters when Driver was in the scene. The actors took forever  to say a line or do anything. What a waste of talented actors.The music was absolutely horrible and never fit the scene I was watching. In my opinion, music should never be so noticeable that you feel like you've been slapped in  the face, and that is exactly what the music did in this movie. I had a hard time staying awake with the slow-moving pace of the plot and with the definite shortage of dialogue. So many times throughout the movie the camera  kept focusing on just one of the characters during a scene; as I watched the two main characters, I kept thinking to myself, "Please, say something already! All this endless staring at each other is so boring!" Apparently, periods of silence are for dramatic effect, but it's too overdone in this case.  

The revenge killing spree at the end was way over the top. I like a bit of gore in movies I watch, but in this movie, it just doesn't fit, looks rather ridiculous actually. The movie definitely lacked the action the trailer hinted at. Even the driving scenes were boring. When anything exciting happened, it was violent and taken too far. A few moments of pretty photography is all I can say about the directing and visuals.

  In short, don't waste your time or money. This is a snooze-fest passing itself off as highbrow entertainment. The only ones fooled are the critics who want to show that they know art; that any film that breaks convention gets  rewarded with lots of misguided praise. Just because a film goes against convention does not give it license to bore the viewer senseless. I'm all for films that allow you to think a bit afterwards, but the experience should be  mind expanding, not mind numbing. If the title of the movie is "Drive" and all the marketing and trailers indicate that the main character is the greatest driver anyone has ever heard of, then one would think that the people going to see the movie are expecting to see some great car chases and scenes. The trailer unfortunately IS the movie, not much else happens in the film. When you next see this film displayed up on the marquee of a nearby theater as you drive by, I advise you to avoid this car wreck of a movie by driving away as fast as you can!

  2 out of 5

Shawn's take:
GOSLING CAN DRIVE ME ANYTIME

In Drive, Ryan Gosling treads with an enigmatic seriousness, yet there’s always something that makes you think he’s got a kitten in his pocket. Maybe the pink cursive titles put that in my head. Or the glow-brite female retro 80’s pop music that cloaks this film. Those feminine elements felt out of place in this film to me, yet, if felt like Gosling was trying to embody a softer inner core at odds with a streak of violence.

This film’s opening is my favorite part. We watch Gosling pick up a couple of guys in ski masks. They pile into the backseat without a word. His job is to get them to and from the scene of their crime. He is their getaway man. His cool resolve speeding evading cop cars and helicopters is demonstrated very effectively. The tension builds as we watch him try to figure out where he needs to go, like a maze. There doesn’t appear to be a moment where he is not in control.
The rest of the film represents a series of events that chip away at Gosling’s control. He runs into some established thugs through his mechanic boss. He meets Carey Mulligan and her son, develops feelings for her, and then her husband comes home from jail. His allegiance to Mulligan’s character leads him to make some poor choices.

Winding through this film is a dense moody spin on 70’s fetishistic muscle car style. The visuals are derivative of Kenneth Anger and Andy Warhol, sans the homoeroticism, though Gosling looks very good. But maybe that’s the issue here. The filmmakers want this to be a man’s movie, and the feminine lacings were added because they knew women would want to see him looking his best.

For whatever reason, I think the thug story feels a little unfulfilling. Albert Brooks is awesome as the bad guy. Ron Perlman is also memorable. Carey Mulligan seems to be stuck in the same role she played in Wall Street 2. And at the climax of the film, the director decided that shadows on old asphalt were more interesting. It was a cool shot. But just at the wrong moment.

3 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

SHAWN: I liked this film enough to recommend it. Yes it did have a lot of silences but I didn't get bored like you did. I can certainly see what you are saying though. I liked the slower pace. I did think that it could have built up more though. I was thinking of The American with George Clooney. That film was stuffed with much more for the mind to ponder though it was also slow and had a lot of silence. This film could have benefited from more action like the beginning promised.

JUDY: I think the problem is that it was false advertising with it being marketed as an action film. People like me thought we were going to see a film in the vein of "Transporter" or "Fast and Furious", not 'Driving Miss Daisy". Not that anything is wrong with "Driving Miss Daisy" since I enjoyed that film and that film is slow. I just have an issue with it not being action -packed like I had hoped. It should have marketed itself along the lines of "Driving Miss Daisy" and less people would be disappointed. It is sad when "Driving Miss Daisy" had more driving in it. "Drive had like only 5 minutes of driving, exactly two driving scenes total.

SHAWN: Haha, that was funny about Driving Miss Daisy, though inaccurate. Btw, I wasn't crazy about that film. But you know I didn't see the trailer to Drive, so I went in without any expectations. That there were only two major driving scenes was a definite missed opportunity. Especially since the first one was so well executed. And really, nothing happened in that first scene, except some great editing, and great cinematography. What did you think of Albert Brooks? Didn't you think his part was great?

JUDY: I did think Albert Brooks' part was the best. His character was the only one that felt alive and believable. Like you, I thought Carey Mulligan seem to playing the same role over and over again. I too have noticed the feminine lacings throughout the film, I kept thinking that Gosling wasn't playing the character manly enough. I have heard that the director and Gosling wanted to play the film in the vein of Steve McQueen and "Bullitt", I don't see it though, I think comparing "Drive" to "Bullitt" is almost ludicrous, almost an insult to the great McQueen, I have to say.

SHAWN: When Brooks sliced the guy's arm with the razor, the way he delivered his line was absolutely brilliantly evil. "That's it! It's over..." It was the most pragmatic killing line I've ever heard and it rang true to him. Also, one thing about the film I had heard that it was gratuitously gory. Hearing that I was expecting to see some horror elements. But I wasn't all that impressed with the gore. I was glad it was there because it was done good enough. But none of the gore had the impact of, say, Tarantino slicing off an ear in one of his films. Refn does have promise as a director, but he's got some lessons to learn about gore. I do think your complaints about the lack of action, feel to me, like it may be more an issue of you just wanting to see something else. This film had a definite original stamp. It wasn't perfect. It could have been better, but it was original. I like seeing that, especially in the state that movies are in now.

JUDY: I agree with you about the gore, it's there but nothing special and doesn't really add to the plot. I think the false advertising hurt this film because it was drawing the wrong target audience. It should market itself more as a contemplative film rather than an action flick. Though I think even if I didn't see the trailer and didn't have high action expectations, I probably still wouldn't rate this film highly. It still has the pacing and editing issues after all. Didn't you think Gosling's acting in this film was lacking his usual charm and charisma? His acting here was so wooden, no personality whatsoever.

SHAWN: Totally disagree. I thought he was very effective, very compelling to watch. Yeah, he's cute, but I feel like he really filled out his role. He was mysterious, and powerful, and pushed to the limit. Oh and what about the ending? It was sort of a puzzler. I don't really know what to think of that.

JUDY: Looks like we agree about his cuteness at least, if nothing else. I have heard that the original book read almost like a poem with lots of flashbacks, so maybe that would explain why the film is the way it is since it was trying to stay true to the book as much as possible. I thought the ending was disappointing, it felt rushed to me and left even more questions unanswered. All I can say is that when I left the theater, I thought, "Wow, some film that is, can we say "crash and burn" again?"

Contagion

2011-09-15T22:30:00.000-07:00

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Starring Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburn, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet

Shawn's take:
CONTASIAN

If there’s one thing that will bring a smile to my face, it’s watching Gwyneth Paltrow get killed off in the first few minutes of a film. That means I don’t have to watch her for long. This is not a spoiler by the way. The studios want you to know that this happens, it’s in the trailer. Are they banking on my type of reaction? Not sure. But I felt the same way when Steve Coogan blew up in "Tropic Thunder", very relieved.

Putting Paltrow’s demise up front, "Contagion" takes off at day two of the disease. It understands that audiences have seen these types of films before, and that we’ve all run these scenarios through in our heads after being onslaughted with news of H1N1 and SARS. So it cuts to the chase and offers us almost a coming of age story of a virus. We watch it just after its inception, and we witness it’s growth into a mature threat to the human species.

This film doesn’t have any action scenes. It doesn’t even have any overly dramatic scenes where people are crying over loved ones. Tons of people die, and the tone of the film is one of apoplectic fear. As it shows people coughing, in obvious discomfort, we know they have the virus. We see them stumbling around in public, as the camera captures everything they touch, who they breathe on, and how quickly and easily transmission can occur. It creates its own sense of hidden microscopic action and immediacy.

Amongst this tension, we get to watch a host of Hollywood stars make their way through the maze of infections. Laurence Fishburn is the lead CDC doctor who has to negotiate his way through some bad press. Matt Damon is Paltrow’s husband who survives an infection in his home. There are many others, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslett, Elliott Gould and Jude Law.

I’m not sure I fully buy this film’s explanation of how the virus came about, especially since it’s an airborne virus. I also feel like it’s a bit shady in how it shows the virus’s country of origin. Did the screenwriter have something against Chinese food? But what do I know? What do I care? This film captured my attention from the beginning to the end. It’s a very satisfying experience, and it’s also the most authentic portrayal of what happens when a killer virus breaks out that I’ve ever seen. And I’m including all those zombie flicks I love too.

4 out of 5

Angela's take:
SUPER BUG IS THE ONLY THING SUPER IN "CONTAGION"

Contagion has a frightening premise. What if there was a virus that acts so quickly that before you realize it's more than the flu, you're writhing on the floor with seizures and foaming at the mouth. Gwyneth Paltrow plays a working mom on a business trip who unknowingly brings the virus home with her after a trip abroad to China. It's not often that a major player and star in a movie is dead within the first 20 minutes, but such is the fate of Contagion. With so many stories intertwined and so many actors to follow, the story loses something for it. I would have preferred to have had more focus on just a few key story-lines than a little focus on several stories.

Once Gwyneth's character dies, we follow her shell shocked husband played well by Matt Damon. As he fumbles through the shock and confusion of what has just happened, we walk along with him trying to make sense of what has killed his wife and forced him into quarantine. Terrified of losing his daughter, he spends the movie trying to isolate her from the world he can no longer trust.

Kate Winslet is excellent but wasted in a to brief part as a CDC infectious disease specialist brought in to track down the origin of the bug and contain it. There is a scene of her in a hotel room that encapsulates how frightening an unknown assailant can be, especially when you've witnessed it first hand. I wish her character had stayed longer as a grounding force and guide through the terror timeline.

There are conspiracies and pandemonium and rumors of a possible naturalistic cure turn the local pharmacy into a mob scene. All the while, the CDC is running in circles trying to find a cure for the super bug.

This is the worst kind of horror film, the type that could actually happen and Soderbergh's take on it's lighting fast effect on the population and it's morality is sobering. I think that this good movie could have been great given a sharper focus and tighter script. We know where the movie is ultimately going but it feels like it takes too long to get there.

3 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

ANGELA: I think we had a similar take on Soderbergh's latest- well done, suspenseful but not groundbreaking. I enjoyed the backstory of the virus much like you did, but felt overall the film needed a sharper focus--it felt scattered (and not in a good way like in "Traffic"). I also felt that in this circumstance, the overabundance of stars was distracting. What did you think?

SHAWN: I didn't think there was an overabundance of stars. The tension with the virus was so palpable that I wasn't distracted by it. The virus had a way of equalizing all of the actors and making them each equally susceptibly mortal. Aside from my obvious bias with Paltrow, I thought it was smart of Soderbergh to kill her off early as well as her son. It brought home the true consequences of the situation. You said that the fate of Contagion, as a film, was dead, like it's dead star. I felt that this was a major asset to this film which is very alive.

ANGELA: I can see your point on the virus being so tension filled in its transmission that you as the viewer are riveted, but with the characters having such a short shelf life it seemed more showy to me to have them all be a-list. Especially Kate Winslet who I adore but was in the movie much too briefly.

SHAWN: But her brief turn demonstrated part of the impact. We are fully aware that she should not be in harms way because she is one of the people who handle the virus. We also know that she should not be in harms way because she is a star. Soderbergh is saying that, like that honeybadger, the virus doesn't give a shit. It will take the life of whomever it can to survive. Her death was the most startling for me. One thing that this movie made me realize, is that a deadly virus is also deadly to itself. Imagine killing whatever it is that you depend on to live. So you have to keep spreading so you don't die off yourself. It seems to me that a really adapted virus wouldn't kill off its hosts so quickly. But what do I know? Not much more than what a Hollywood film tells me.

ANGELA: I like that interpretation of her casting... described that way it's downright inspired!! So basically it could be viewed as an uplifting survival story of the virus that just wouldn't give up. All kidding aside, as far as infectious disease movies are concerned, this was a very riveting, realistic portrayal of something I hope to god I never see in real life.

SHAWN: Me too. I loved how realistic it was compared to, say, "Outbreak" with Dustin Hoffman. Remember that one? While exciting, it was ridiculous how once they gave Renee Russo her shot, the entire planet was at ease, and the threat was over. This movie doesn't have that same swept under the carpet ending. It is fully believable, except for how the virus originated. Targeting Chinese food as the originator, just makes me feel a little uneasy. I know it wasn't just that, but the images of Chinese food connected with the virus transmission feels a little stereotypical. I don't know. What do you think? And yes it is a survival story. In nature, all life forms try to outlive each other.

ANGELA: It did give me pause, but I only ever eat chicken so i figured I'm safe :)

Warrior

2011-09-07T23:41:00.001-07:00

Directed by Gavin O'Connor

Starring Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy and Nick Nolte

Don's take:
'WARRIOR' HAS GOT KNOCKOUT POWER

Mixed Martial Arts is one of just a handful of things that I love more than movies. This is saying a lot, because obviously, I really love movies. But I love MMA in a way that only the most die-hard of sports fans can understand. If there is a fight card scheduled on any given weekend, you can be sure I know about it. And if it's a UFC card, there is one of two places you can be sure to find me: the local MMA bar, The Iron Bull, or my place watching the fight on TV with a few friends. My internet surfing consists of about 80% MMA news and 20% everything else. So logic would dictate that a movie about MMA should be my hog heaven. Only, thus far, it hasn't been.

And I have long pined for a good MMA movie for a couple of reasons… First, obviously there's the entertainment factor -- an MMA movie would be a multi-pronged attack on the pleasure centers of my brain. But also, for years now, I've been longing for a movie to effectively portray to non-fans what it was that I held so dear about this little sport that I've followed so loyally for the last six years.

As the popularity of the sport has grown in recent years, a few attempts have been made at an MMA movie, none of which have completely satisfied me. There was Channing Tatum in Fighting, which I'm sure I've seen but couldn't tell you a thing about it. There was Never Back Down, which wasn't all that bad, but not exactly the movie I would want to represent the sport that I so deeply love. There was David Mamet's Redbelt, a good movie, but not one that I felt was a truthful representation of MMA.

But just as I was feeling ready to hang up my hopes for an MMA movie that I could be proud of, just two weeks removed from the UFC's entry into the mainstream with a historic announcement of a $100 million network TV deal with Fox, I saw "Warrior". Finally, an MMA movie that doesn't make me blush for being an MMA fan.

On the surface, "Warrior" appears to suffer a lot of the problems faced by its predecessors: a cliched plot, an overdose of machismo, and then there is the problem of how to film MMA fights in an exciting way while staying true to the sport. "Warrior" tells the story of two estranged brothers, damaged beyond forgiveness by abuse at the hands of their alcoholic father, now in recovery. Both brothers are former pro-fighters, and for their own reasons are each lured from retirement to participate a two day, 16 man single elimination tournament, or Gran Prix, and eventually meet in the finals to settle their differences. I'm not giving anything away here that wasn't in the trailer.

But what the trailer did not -- could not -- convey was the raw power of this movie fueled by heartfelt direction by Gavin O'Connor, best known for helming another beloved sports movie, Miracle, and very impressive performances by its three leads, Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and, most of all, a reinvigorated Nick Nolte. O'Connor, smartly, spends a good deal of time early on meditating on the relationships between its three lead characters before switching gears to the higher octane stuff that audiences will flock to the movie to see. The film's got plenty of action in its final act to satisfy even the most rabid MMA junkie. Allowing for character development it its first two acts really heightened the impact of the final act… It also gave the actors plenty of opportunity to display their talents. The opening scene alone, a verbal sparring match between father (Nolte) and son (Hardy) where nothing said is what's meant -- a conversation that would be seemingly innocent on paper, but whose implications reveal heartbreaking details about their lives up to that point -- is worth the price of admission.

Hardy and Edgerton are good enough on their own, but Nolte's performance is the real show stopper here. I don't think it's a stretch to call Nolte's supporting performance in "Warrior" as an early contender come awards season. He delivers the most heartbreaking, nuanced, simply unforgettable performance I've seen since Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart.

But one of the many perils that an MMA film must contend with is how, exactly, to film an MMA fight sequence whilst staying true to the sport. This, I'm happy to say, is a riddle that has been defiantly solved. The fight sequences were choreographed by famed MMA trainer, Greg Jackson, and the results could not be more satisfying. Jackson and O'Connor work together to bring to the movie screen the raw excitement of a live event with the drama and lucidity of a fine sports movie. But most importantly, they are able to accomplish this without having to resort to unrealistic theatrics (for the most part). About 90% of what you see during the fight sequences is true and faithful to what you can expect to see in a real MMA contest. If "Warrior" contributes nothing else to the world of MMA, it will be remembered as the film that gave all MMA films the blueprint on how to portray an MMA match on-screen.

A good film has the power to move me. A good fight card has the power to excite me. "Warrior" is such an effective representation of both of these things that I was literally shaking by the end of the film. This film deserves to share its power with movie lovers of all kinds, MMA fan or not. As an MMA fan and a movie myself, though, I've never been more proud to make a recommendation.

5 out of 5

Mike's take:
A GRAPPLER'S CHANCE

Let me preface this by stating I am an avid MMA fan. I never miss a UFC pay-per-view or any other MMA promotion if I can help it, so I like to think I know a little bit more about this burgeoning sport than the average person. And i can say that 97% of what happens in this film MMA-wise has absolutely happened in real life. So, I won't bore you with instances or comparisons to this film and and real events or people in the MMA world. Because, really, it is just the perfect backdrop for one of the most heartfelt and gut-wrenching family dramas in recent history.

In the film we have two estranged brothers, coincidentally entering the same MMA tournament but, for very different reasons. Tommy Riordon/Conlon (Tom Hardy) seeks out their equally estranged father Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte) to train him for the tournament as he once did for high school wrestling. Whereas, Brendon Conlon (Joel Edgerton), goes back to his old gym to have his friend and former trainer Frank (Frank Grillo) ,initially, get him in shape to fight in unsanctioned MMA bouts to make ends meet. But, when he learns of the tournament and its massive 5 million dollar purse, he quickly shifts focus and with a stroke of bad luck for Frank's protege and great luck for him, he gets to fight. Thus, setting the stage for an amazing, edge-of-your-seat and heart=wrenching finale that left me fighting back tears ( yea, I said it).

If this movie doesn't garner at least 4 or 5 oscar nods, it will be a travesty. The performances of all three leads are breathtaking and pitch perfect. But, the standout for me is Mr. Nolte. His portrayal of a father searching for redemption at all costs also had me tearing up ( yea, I said it a again). Gavin O'Conner did a masterful job with the direction and screenplay (co-written by Anthony Tambakis).

I wish I had more stars to give it...

5 out of 5

And now, Don and Mike go toe-to-toe in another round of…
THE 180 DEGREE RULE

MIKE: How nervous were you when the lights went down and the movie started?

DON: Haha, funny you should say that. Being a hardcore MMA fan, I have a lot invested in it every time there is an attempt to bring our sport to the masses. As far as I'm concerned, I'm being represented here. So much of my identity is wrapped up in my love of MMA that, yeah, I was nervous. But as nervous as I was at the beginning, I was equally elated by the end of the movie... What about you?

MIKE: I was VERY nervous, Its like I needed this film to show the uninitiated a true glimpse of what MMA is about. I was floored with what I saw.

DON: Yeah, it was pretty surreal. But even more surreal than seeing our sport being given the "prestige pic" treatment was seeing our favorite MMA stars cast in the film. From the fighters themselves, like Nate "The Great" Marquardt right down the referee played by an actual MMA referee, Josh Rosenthal.

MIKE: The one thing I did have a problem with is that they cast a WWE wrestler Kurt Angle as the tough opponent. I want there to be a clear division between WWE and MMA. Did you notice I didn't call Angle's Koba the villain? Thats because there wasn't one... except maybe regret. But thats one of the many masterstrokes of this film, it flies in the face of contrivance and convention. I dare say that this movie is the "Dark Knight" of sports movies. For me at least.

DON: Yeah, You make a really good point. I really appreciated that about this movie too. They were all deeply troubled characters, but they're all treated with tremendous sympathy with none of the characters really being treated as a villain. That shows me how much respect Gavin O'Connor has for both MMA fans and the general movie-going public. MMA fans in the sense that he doesn't assume we're all Neanderthals and the movie-going public in that he trusts they'll be open minded enough to go see a movie about a sport they know little about if it's a good movie. And you know what? I think he's right... On both accounts.

MIKE: The closest this movie comes to a "villain" is maybe Tommy. Only because of how horrible he treats Paddy. I understand things went bad earlier in their lives because of Paddy, but it was really hard to watch. And the fact that Paddy took every insult Tommy spat at him like some kind of penance made it worse.

DON: Oddly, as destructive as that relationship was between Paddy and Tommy, it was easily the most compelling to watch on screen. Watching Tommy's cruelty to his dad was tough to watch like you say. Yet, somehow, you don't get angry at him, so much as sympathize with him. Instead of wanting to see his comeuppance, you wish he could work through his pain and hope that his relationship with his father can heal. It's just one of many examples of the maturity O'Connor shows here as the film's director... But let me ask you a question. Do you think we would have been similarly moved by "Warrior" were we not already fans of the sport?

MIKE: Absolutely! A great film is a great film. I definitely didn't want to see Tommy get his comeuppance, on the contrary, I was rooting for him 98% of the time. Was it me, or did you kind of question Brendon's reason for entering the octagon? i mean Tess{Jennifer Morrison} his wife stated she had no problem downsizing their lifestyle just as long as he didn't fight again. Ultimately, I understand wanting to provide for your family, but it seemed selfish. Jennifer Morrison was great in what little she had, by the way.

DON: Well, I've heard enough stories about MMA 'rounders' like Travis Fulton or Jeremy Horn that it was believable to me that Brendon would look at MMA as a viable and steady source of income. And the payday of the Sparta tournament was big enough that I thought it was believable as a lure for him to get back into real pro fighting. But I agree with you about Jennifer Morrison -- she was rock solid in this movie and showed that she is a real pro. But unfortunately, it's hard to stand out in a movie like this -- a film so overcrowded with great performances. But that's a first class problem to have, if you ask me -- being outshone in a really great movie. I'm sure Jennifer Morrison's agent's job is safe...

Colombiana

2011-09-06T20:53:00.000-07:00

Directed by Olivier Megaton

Starring Zoe Saldana, Michael Vartan and Cliff Curtis

Judy's take:
NEVER FORGET WHERE YOU COPIED IT FROM
I saw the trailer to "Colombiana" a couple of months ago and thought it looked like a pretty good action movie. It's written by Luc Besson, so I thought if nothing else, I would at least be guaranteed to see some stylized action.

The story starts off with Cataleya, a 9-year-old Colombian girl, witnessing her parents' murder at the hands of a cartel leader's thugs. After escaping to the United States, She ends up finding her way to Chicago to look for her uncle, who is also a hit man. She tells him that she wants to be a killer and get revenge on everyone who was involved in the murder of her parents. We fast-forward 15 years and we see her doing exactly that, having become an adept assassin so she can get her revenge.

Luc Besson, as we all know, is a well-known writer of several cult classics and action films, including "Taken," "Transporter," "Unleashed," "La Femme Nikita," "The Fifth Element" and "Leon: The Professional," or as it's become known, "The Professional." Clearly, Besson has recycled some of the best scenes from both "La Femme Nikita" and "The Professional" to make "Colombiana."

If you've seen either "La Femme Nikita" and/or "The Professional," you can spot the inspiration. An early scene in "La Femme Nikita" depicts the heroine plunging a pencil into a policeman's hand. Similarly, an early scene in "Colombiana" shows our childish heroine stabbing a villain and pinning his hand to a table while she makes good her escape.

"Colombiana" is also in many ways similar to "The Professional." Colombiana has a young Cataleya (Amandla Stenberg) witness her parents' deaths. "The Professional" has a young girl named Mathilda (Natalie Portman in her first feature film) come home from grocery shopping to find everyone in her family dead. Mathilda walks right by her apartment to the apartment of Leon, who happens to be a hitman. Cataleya makes her way to Chicago (from South America) to her uncle Emilio's home; he happens to set up hits for a living. Both men are eventually persuaded to teach the young girls the ways of an assassin. This is pretty much where the similarities end, however, which is unfortunate for "Colombiana."

The movie started off very promisingly, with the shy young Cataleya showing off some nice action moves in a parkour chase in the chaotic ghettos of the Colombian city. However, after that great sequence, things went downhill. The main character Cataleya doesn't have much of a personality. She doesn't have any friends and doesn't really do anything but kill. There's barely any development of her character -- or that of any of the characters, for that matter. Also, it seemed as though many questions went unanswered. The story starts in the middle of a conflict, but doesn't explain anything that happened prior to it.

And therein lies my problem with the movie. It would have been engaging for the viewer to witness the young Cataleya being put through the training ringer by her uncle and his people (it is clear later that she has deep affection for at least one other of them), or to see her meeting and sizing up her lover Danny, as it is obvious that she just wouldn't jump into a relationship with just anyone in her very guarded state. Those moments needn't have taken a lot of time; perhaps a short montage, minimal dialogue, would have taken care of it and given the movie a little more heart.
I've noticed that I respond better to action films that put the hero or heroes in danger. In their vulnerability, they seem more human, and therefore more relatable. The problem with films like "Colombiana" is that their heroes are so expert that the element of danger is virtually gone. The more I watched Saldana's character effortlessly carry out her mission, the more I realized how it would turn out. In other words, she was so predictable that I became bored.

The only time Cataleya finds herself in danger is near the end of the film, when she gets into a fight with one of Don Luis' henchmen. Even then, the scene is ruined by the kind of fast, choppy editing you would typically expect from a music video. Almost every shot blurs together to form an indistinct stunt montage. In this visual confusion, the scene still turned out exactly the way I thought it would turn out. So much for surprises. Apart from the fact that it treats the dark subject matter so casually, the film is also profoundly implausible. I mean just look at the ease with which Cataleya can infiltrate a building or the fact that in one scene, she has mere seconds to escape a garage, turns to the air vent, and the bolts just happen to be loose enough to unscrew with her fingertips. These were just a couple of spots that had me saying, "Really?"

The film stumbles in some ways that actually surprised me. For an action film, "Colombiana" is inexcusably lumbering. Its rhythm is all over the place -- sometimes it's beautiful, sometimes it's broody, but most of the time it's just kinda boring. The music also is standard, employing no sense of rhythm or depth in any scene that needs it, and that's a lot of scenes. Zoe Saldana is fairly believable doing most of the physical and acrobatic stuff, but because of the weak material, her performance is forgettable and unfortunately on the weak side.

The young actress (Amandla Stenberg) who plays the younger version of Zoe's character, Cataleya, actually did a decent job with the little screen time she was given, and she is involved in the only real decent action sequence in the film, which is a gritty and visceral foot chase, but even IT is forgettable right after you're done watching it.
I like a good revenge film, but this wasn't one of them. The plot was filled with holes. This film doesn't bother to show most of the hero's exploits -- we just see legions of dead men who die quietly so that none of the 50 other guards notice. The action scenes rely on her ability to turn anything from toothbrushes to dry bath towels into weapons, then edits the scenes so frenetically that we don't notice how silly it all is. Hell, she spends most of her time in the movie in air ducts. It appears that part of her training was to memorize the layout of every set of air ducts in every building in Chicago. The climatic fight scene lasts about five minutes -- well, it didn't come across as true combat anyway. As good as an actress Zoe is, there is no way she would win a fight with someone who was not only much bigger but also apparently just as adept in fighting, especially with those skinny arms of hers that look like they would snap off with a single touch.

In short, know what to expect from "Colombiana," and you'll enjoy it fine. It's a straight-up B action movie, no more, no less, very low on plot, high on action, that falls straight into the heap with the scores of other similar summer action films. This movie is as predictable as the next cookie from the cookie cutter. It's just a mishmash of many action revenge films we've seen many times before. It's like a second-rate copy of "La Femme Nikita" and "The Professional" combined.

We keep hearing the tagline in the trailer, "Never forget where you came from." I say someone should have told the filmmakers, "Never forget where you copied it from." The character Doug said it best in Michael Keaton's 1996 film "Multiplicity": "You know how when you make a copy of a copy, it's not as sharp as ... well ... the original."

3 out of 5

Albert's take:
HIT ME AND I'LL HIT YOU BACK
"Vengeance is beautiful" is a perfect tagline for "Colombiana" -- immoral and inelegant.

The movie takes place in a world where parents exist only to be slaughtered, so that their orphaned children can emerge from the event with a full-blown bloodlust and skills to match.

Cataleya (Saldana), the orphan of this story, could have made a good playmate for the young O-Ren Ishii of "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" or Hit-Girl of "Kick-Ass": No sooner does a Colombian drug cartel murder her parents than Cataleya, all of 9 years old, is off knifing the perpetrators and escaping over shantytown rooftops, parkour style.

After a too-long prologue that does nothing more to explain her motivations, we see the 20-something Cataleya, lithe and lethal, working as an assassin in Chicago and still singlemindedly pursuing her parents' killers.

The self-destructive nature of vengeance, and the triumph of compassion over same, are not new concepts. There's Jesus' "Love thy enemy" credo, and Confucius' "Dig two graves" 500 years before that.

Thinking artists caught on a long time ago, giving us cautionary revenge tales like "The Count of Monte Cristo," "Moby Dick" and "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance." Then there have been the revenge fantasies, like "Death Wish," "Thriller: A Cruel Picture" and "Rolling Thunder," which pander to that reptilian vengeance impulse in all of us and ignore the implications.

"Colombiana" tries to be both of these but winds up being neither: It feigns the dignity of the former but has the juvenile, tit-for-tat worldview of the latter.

But that's just my philosophical beef with the movie. Other than that, "Colombiana" suffers a murky plot, one-dimensional characters and cut-rate acting, with its one potentially good action sequence minced finer than a K-pop video. It's also got the most helicopter flyover establishing shots I've ever seen in a movie, even inserting them when there's no change of venue. In short, skip it.

2 out of 5

And now, Judy and Albert break out their assassin's toolkits for another vengeful edition of ...
THE 180 DEGREE RULE

ALBERT: You had a lot to say about the movie's execution, but I couldn't really get past the spirit -- it seemed misguided from the start. I'm not saying that every movie has to teach compassion, but if you're going to indulge in revenge, you've got to have the right tone for it. And for God's sake, don't cast an actress as good as Zoe Saldana to play the lead.

JUDY: I agree, she doesn't seem right for the role. She did her best with the half baked material given to her but I don't think any actress could have been able to save this movie from just being mediocre. When the material is mediocre, doesn't matter how good the actress is, the movie will most likely come off as mediocre. I think Megaton just can't direct action also. Don't you think his name is appropriate for this movie? There is a megaton of action (with little flare) and a megaton of scantily clad Zoe Saldana (with little reason). Saldana deserves better than this film. She had a strong performance as Uhura in "Star Trek" and backed it up with a terrific performance as Princess Neytiri in "Avatar." She is more than capable of being the action star this film needed her to be, unfortunately, this film squandered her abilities.

ALBERT: Luc Besson's name is enough to get people to watch this one, I think. His slick signature is all over that opening credit sequence, which paints Colombia as a lawless hellhole. But even though he's the standard-bearer for European action, I don't think he's that smart of a filmmaker. His movies rely an awful lot on coincidences and other plot shortcuts, and his characters are made of cardboard.
JUDY: It's true that his characters are most often made of cardboard, but they are fun to watch especially with the expected humorous moments. Luc Besson is what I would call a "fun" movie maker. His films like "B13," the "Transporter" movies and "From Paris With Love" were all mindless "fun." Great action, some impressive hand-to-hand combat and smart but cheesy stories. "Colombiana" was NOT one of these films, unfortunately. You said in your review that "Vengeance is beautiful" is a perfect tagline for "Colombiana". I'm not so sure it is.

ALBERT: Ah -- by that, I meant that the movie was as clunky and as flawed as the tagline. You're right, Besson's films are brainless, escapist fun. They're what I call "DVD movies" -- movies you want to watch on DVD because you know they're good for a few choice scenes that you can skip ahead to. This one dragged its feet, though. Supposedly there was a parallel plot about Cataleya's wetworks career alongside her revenge plot, but it wasn't there. As with "The Mechanic," which I also didn't care for, the movie had to jerk itself awake every once in a while to remind us (and itself) that Cataleya was a working assassin. It would plunge us into a random hit job, then pile on the evil character traits (as in the case of the Bernie Madoff/Hugh Hefner character) so we'd have an easier time swallowing the hit.

JUDY: That's true, I call them that too. I wait to watch most of his movies on DVD, with the exception of "La Femme Nikita" and "The Professional" and one or two others that I count among favorites. Was it just me that was missing seeing blood in this action film? Seems like they took that PG-13 rating to heart with no blood or any extreme violence at all in the film. I think they should have pushed it to an "R" rating and made the action bloodier and dirtier, I think it would have given the film that extra "oomph" that it obviously needed.

ALBERT: Yeah, it was pretty tame. Saldana got treated pretty gently, no bruising. We both saw potential in the bathroom fight scene, didn't we? I thought that was a case of an overzealous editor ruining clever choreography.

JUDY: I know, it was a total waste, I thought in that final scene, at last, we will see her get bruised up and bloody, the toothbrush was a nice touch by the way, since I have never seen that used in an action film before, but nope, no bruising, no torn clothes, even her hair doesn't really get messed up. I was hoping to see her look like how Daniel Craig looked after a fight in "Casino Royale". He looked convincingly like he was in a fight with bruises, dry blood and torn clothes. I'm thinking maybe the editing was done that way because Saldana doesn't look convincing in hand to hand combat with her wimpy muscle-less arms. It could be a case of what I said about the editing in "The Expendables."

ALBERT: Haha -- I can imagine the director and editor sitting together in the green room like Steven Spielberg and his editor going over "Jaws": "And cut -- there! One more millisecond, and everyone's gonna know it's fake." A more ambitious film could have had Saldana training in real life for the fight sequences, but this is just a B-grade actioner, a low-investment vehicle for Saldana. We both had our laughs about this film -- you about the air ducts, and me about the helicopter flyover establishing shots. Every time she went into the vents, I just thought, Those filmmakers really want to grab what they can before the next "Mission Impossible" comes out, don't they?

JUDY: I can see it now...the sequel (and you know there is probably going to be one) will be called "Colombiana: Vent Specialist."

Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark

2011-09-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

Directed by Troy Nixey

Starring Bailee Madison, Katie Holmes and Guy Pierce

Angela's take:
MORE LIKE "WON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK"

There is one thing I expect to be in a horror movie and that's scared. Although the opening scenes of the movie showed promise; a large, creepy house, ornate decor, spooky kid, the feeling didn't last long.

This movie was based on a 1973 TV movie, and I think that is a better medium for the storyline and ultimately the "evil" creatures. I like horror movies to keep the creature at bay for as long as possible.. my imagination is usually much better than anything Hollywood can come up with so when it is revealed to early and is disappointing, the rest of the movie goes south.

The movie finds an architect single dad Alex (Guy Pearce) who is remodeling the house which once belonged to a famous nature artist but was left vacant since his death. Alex and his interior designer/girlfriend Kim (Kate Holmes), take in his daughter Sally (Bailee Madison). Sally is a sullen, disturbed girl who doesn't want to be there and Kim is the overcompensating girlfriend trying to win her affections. In the midst of this they are consumed with trying to get on the cover of Architectural Digest for the renovation of the home.

Since they don't have the time to spend with Sally, she ventures on her own around the vast property and finds a "hidden" basement. Excited by the prospect of more original house to renovate/fix, they uncover the door to the downstairs and the workspace of the deceased former owner. They also uncover an old furnace, where strange voices start to talk to Sally through the vents. Convincing Sally she is unwanted as she feared and without any friends, they entice her with their friendship. By the time she realizes what they really are; monsters who want to feed on her childhood teeth.

This is where the problem begins for me. The voices of the creatures are chilling but their words and actions are not and once we are allowed to see them, they are more gremlin then demon like. It's hard to be frightened by something that looks like you could squish with your foot. Once Sally frees them though, they are determined to get their way and make their way throughout the house. You know it's a bad sign when you are noticing the carousel lamp in the little girls room more than the dialogue or action.

For Sally, the problem is that no one believes her. Riddled with prior mental issues and drugged up by her mother before arriving, her father continues to pooh-pooh her until the last possible moment. Kim on the other hand, becomes increasingly concerned with the drawings and sightings Sally is having.

Nothing is truly scary in this outing, except how utterly clueless everyone around Sally appears to be even with an attack on the groundskeeper that includes multiple stab wounds. By the time anyone is paying attention, the creatures are practically on top of them.

Overall, I liked the cinematography which is clearly exceptional and setting of the mood which is creepy throughout. Nothing groundbreaking for the genre, but it's a stylized outing if still disappointing.

3 out of 5

Don's take:
"DARK" MAKES IT EASY NOT TO BE AFRAID

Right from the film's opening scene, it was obvious to me why Guillermo Del Toro chose first time director Troy Nixey to helm this big screen adaptation of the T.V. movie that Del Toro credits as an early influence on his directorial style and the scariest film he's ever seen. His sense of atmosphere and mood is perfectly suited for the material. His set choice was perfectly creepy. But most importantly, he chose a solid lead in Bailee Madison, a young actress with a preternatural ability to convey both a childlike innocence and vulnerability and a precociousness and wisdom beyond her years reminiscent of Haley Joel Osment in the Sixth Sense. So now the million dollar question… Was I scared like I'd hoped to be? Not even a little. But I was entertained.

I don't really see Del Toro as a horror writer or director, but I do definitely get the sense that Nixey intended for this film be the next in the new breed of horror films and to be truly scary. In that respect, Dark is not a success. I am of the opinion that less is more. Paranormal Activity's minimalist, let the audiences imagination do the work, approach to horror is what makes the franchise so terrifying to me. But at about the mid point of Dark, Nixey shows us everything… The film was much more affective as a horror movie before the big reveal. But once the mystery is gone, so is the suspense. And frankly, the gremlins are decidedly un-menacing -- the character design was more suited for action figures for a toy line than horror movie baddies.

But despite this, I actually enjoyed a lot of what Nixey did here and am interested to see what he's got in store for us. Although the movie may not have worked as a horror film, there is no denying the quality of the direction -- the movie was beautifully shot with an impressive set, artistic cinematography, and some very good acting. Although the "Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark" may not be a movie to watch, Nixey is without a doubt a director to watch.

3 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

DON: So it seems like we pretty much had the same reaction to the movie: it just wasn't scary at all... But I felt compelled to defend the director. This guy is clearly a talented director and has better movies in his future. Despite my disappointment with this particular movie, I'm interested to see what he can do with non-horror material.

ANGELA: I couldn't agree more... even with this lackluster material, his skilled direction was still captivating. I loved the atmosphere and foreboding shadows and light of it all. I also concur about how the disclosure of the creatures so early in the film was a real let down. They seemed so cheesy in comparison to what had proceeded it that it cheapened the movie overall for me. That aspect was the obvious "Made for TV" tell.

DON: Oh, it was like he pulled the rug out from underneath us. This happened to me with another horror movie I watched recently: Insidious. Insidious had me captivated right up until its big reveal at which point I nearly lost all interest in the movie. Clearly, the key to horror is showing the viewer almost nothing... Truly, nothing can be scarier than the tricks that your own mind plays on you... It's such a shame when a talented group comes together but the product just doesn't work. It's always tough for me to criticize a movie when the individual contributions were as good as they were here...

ANGELA: Exactly... I found "Blair Witch Project" terrifying because they NEVER showed us anything... it was all suggestions and I scared myself to death. I would have preferred never seeing the creatures and just seeing the drawings from the artist/previous owner and Sally.. that would have been enough. Or, maybe just the eyes.

DON: It's funny that we both commented on how silly the demons looked and that we both called them gremlins because that's exactly what they were... There is one shot in the entire movie where the gremlin is actually scary and it's the one used in the trailer. But you're absolutely right -- you can't be scared of something you can just step on... This family didn't need an exorcist or a ghost buster. What they needed was a good exterminator!

Fright Night

2011-08-28T22:11:00.000-07:00

Directed by Craig Gillespie

Starring Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, Toni Collette, David Tennant and Imogen Poots

Albert's take:
A 'B' FOR EFFORT

The original "Fright Night" is a weird, awful movie that has no earthly business being reattempted. But that may be what makes the remake worth watching.

For those of you just joining us: The first is a camp metaspoof that more often than not winds up the butt of its own joke. It's also a corny time capsule for its scenes of big hair and synth pop -- note to those seeking to make a timeless movie: avoid nightclub sequences -- and anyway, Joel Schumacher's similarly plotted but much better "The Lost Boys" rendered it obsolete two years later.

So writer Marti Noxon (former writer-producer for TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" -- a good choice) and director Christopher Gillespie had little to start with. But turns out they've given the remake a good deal of thought -- maybe more than it deserved, but whatever.

Theirs is a sincerely earnest update, not only tightening the bolts on the story -- a better setting with better characters and better scares -- but also accounting for real-world changes in technology, fashions, social mores and, yes, filmmaking.

I particularly liked their treatment of Evil Ed, whom the original wrote off as a weirdo and as comic relief. Played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who continues his ride as Hollywood's nerd du jour, Evil Ed is sensitive and misunderstood, his rocky friendship with protagonist Charley adding depth to the movie where there was none. Colin Farrell is game as Dandrige the vampire, overhauling Chris Sarandon's tall-dark-and-handsome charm but keeping the halting, tongue-in-cheek delivery.

The movie isn't great by any means, but it is a remake and I therefore give the cast and crew credit where their efforts are obvious. After all, the difference between a bad movie and a decent remake (this one) is more noticeable than the difference between a great movie and an almost-great remake ("The Karate Kid").

3 out of 5

Don's take:
THE ONLY THING REMARKABLE HERE IS THE IRONY OF ITS TITLE

Fright Night is a departure from the dominant trend in Horror that began with Paranormal Activity -- horror driven by atmosphere, mood and the viewer's imagination over slasher scares. A remake of the 80's cult classic, Fright Night is a loyal throwback to 80's monster movies, and a fairly well-done one at that. I'm sure this will thrill fans of the original film, but for movie goers like me whose interest in horror has been reignited by this latest strain within the genre, Fright Night was a bit of a bore.

I don't want to take away from the accomplishments of the film. It was fairly well acted, most notably by Colin Farrell who was charismatic as the film's villain. It boasts a snappy and sometimes very funny script. And despite it's retro feel, the film takes full advantage of technology now available to film makers -- the special effects are polished and top notch. As an homage to the original film, Fright Night is a success.

But ultimately, I think today's horror fans are too sophisticated to be entertained by a horror film like like this. We go to horror movies to be scared; to feel the hairs on our arms stand on end. To make us question every creak and groan we hear in our homes. To give us nightmares. Fright Night is so utterly ineffective on this level that, despite the presence of a Vampire, it's hard to call Fright Night "horror" at all. It only served to remind me of why I became disillusioned with horror movies in the first place. Fright Night will serve mainly to satisfy the nostalgia of fans of the original film. But for those of you out there like me who are on a ravenous quest for chills, Fright Night is not the film for you.

2 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

DON: I should probably clarify, I have never seen the original movie, but based on my experience with movies from around that time, Lost Boys especially, I get the sense that this movie was a pretty faithful adaptation of the original. Despite the technological differences, this movie felt like an 80's horror movie to me, which was not a good thing.

ALBERT: Well, the movie is a curiosity. Anyone who hasn't seen the original will probably yawn through it, dismissing it as a "Lost Boys" ripoff. But the truth is, the original was a proto-"Lost Boys" -- it came out two years before the latter. But then "Lost Boys" came along and closed the book on Suburban Kids vs. Vampire movies. The original deserves its due, and the remake is true to it (and better than it). But yeah, I can't say that it felt like a necessary movie.

DON: You know, I'd be more interested in seeing the original movie than this remake. It at least has historical value being a cult classic. And from the sound of it, it sounds like it would have some kitsch value as well. This remake wasn't even entertaining on that level. I saw no reason for this movie to be made except as a vehicle for Anton Yelchin.

ALBERT: The original is campy midnight-movie material -- and not all intentionally. Roddy McDowall and Chris Sarandon were in on the joke; William Ragsdale and Amanda Bearse weren't. And the screenplay was just godawful. This one was cynical and self-aware, but still kept a sort of reverence about the original -- God knows why. The cast were all good sports, but they really should conserve their talent for better movies.

DON: I agree that the talent here was bigger than the movie. I'm actually not usually a fan of Colin Farrell's work, but I liked him here. I liked Anton Yelchin too and I think he definitely shows that he can carry a film with his work in this movie.

The Tree of Life

2011-08-25T15:24:00.000-07:00

Directed by Terrence Malick

Starring Sean Penn, Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain

Shawn's take:
IT TAKES MORE THAN A LIFETIME

When I sit and ponder my experience watching "The Tree of Life," two thoughts come to my mind: one, "The Tree of Life" is kinda boring; two, I was kinda bored. The filmgoer who sees Brad Pitt’s or Sean Penn’s name and thinks that this film may have conventional entertainment potential is going to be sorely disappointed. There were, in fact, a few who got up and left the theater within the first 20 minutes. One hears of this happening at Cannes, but I’ve never seen four or five people get up and leave a regular screening at an independent theater in the USA.

The problem is that today is not the same as when "2001: A Space Odyssey" premiered. Back in the '60s and '70s, there was a brave future for film, and "cutting edge" meant testing your mind. People went to the movies to be blown away. "2001" appealed to both the brainy and the stoned. I can’t really tell who "TTOL" will appeal to, but these days the movies don’t hold that same promise of fulfillment. Mostly, they are hewn from sophisticated marketing strategies. They come at viewers chock full of addictive elements meant to lure you in, take your money, and then scoot you on your way. "TTOL" has little relation to the type of movies that are out now. So if you are going to see this film, be ready for a sobering challenge to your brain’s programming.

From the beginning, "TTOL’s" theme is purity. A completely black screen is broken by colorful flame-like rays of light. This beautiful image invites the eye. Then comes a slideshow cascade of seemingly random images. The beauty of earthly scenes intimate and grandiose. The rotation of shots begins to favor a new loving couple getting married and having their first child, until it is clear this is the narrative setup for our main characters. It’s as though the director were surfing on the Internet, and then found something that interested him. At this point, I began to get interested as well.

"TTOL" then takes us on a tour through the life of this 1950s family. They buy the home that they will live in for the whole film. The mother and father assume their typical gender roles for the time. And the kids play all day and submit to their parents' rules when they have to. But never are there any true establishing scenes with much dialogue. Most are narrated, the scenes shuffling as if on an iPod.

This is the story of a boy (Hunter McCracken) growing up in the '50s. He lives with his mother (Jessica Chastain), father (Pitt) and little brother. We are shown images and scenes from his birth to his teens. Much of the rhythm of the beginning suggests a poignant poem. And then we come to a screetching halt. Terrence Malick wants us to behold nothing less than the beginning of the universe.

This is the moment when people started walking out. And it was at this moment I felt that my time in the theater was going to be much more of a commitment than I had anticipated. Also, the film’s bombastic title started creeping back into my mind. My wiring was being put to the test. At first, the majestic beauty of the Big Bang sustains the slow pacing. And then I realized I was going to have to sit through the entire beginning of life, from the creation of Earth on through the dawn of man. No convenient bone-to-spacecraft jump cuts here.

Getting through this sequence yields some great visual and sound effects, and the first dinosaur mini-melodrama I’ve ever seen. I’ve not seen that movie with the talking dinosaurs, so maybe others will be more acclimated than I. I sort of understood the point of this reptilian insertion, but I felt it was an odd choice because ultimately, this film is about paralleling the arc of Creation with the arc of the life of the individual. There’s no need for a study of any other species for Malick's message to be clear.

After this long digression, Malick gets back to the rhythm of the family’s life. And again, we get the rest of the film in mostly quick, quirky and beautiful cuts celebrating the sensations that children take in as they grow. There is no end to this fanciful view of the world growing up in a small town of the '50s, except when the relationship between the father and the rest of the family begins to strain. Daddy becomes associated with bad, and Mommy becomes associated with good. Daddy tied to industry and man’s development, and Mommy tied to the earth and all things natural. It’s a dichotomy that doesn't really work in my own mind, but it works within the film.

It is man’s search for technical mastery over the elements, and his search to be the king of all he knows and sees that corrupts the education of boys, and their development to men. The end product of this is Sean Penn, playing the older son, sitting in sterile offices, looking angry, sad and confused. Later we see him walking lost in barren locations. Nothing grows in his world. There are no plants, no growth.

I do like the statement that Malick makes with his film, but seriously, he could have done it with much more brevity, and power. This film almost feels like it is dead on arrival, with the style in which delivers its sermon. Is film really the best way for one to put his efforts into messages that make a change? The existence of this film to me proves that film is not the medium. Perhaps Malick would do better working to make his impact on us in another way? I don’t know.

I also did not like the casting. Brad Pitt is a shallow actor, even in a performance that is clipped to pieces by the editing style. Remember Nicole Kidman’s julienned performance in "Moulin Rouge"? (How she got an Oscar nom from that, I couldn’t get.) This film presents performances chopped up in the same way, except the average shot segment is about a few seconds longer than the blink-and-miss-it pacing of the Baz Lurhmann film. This movie is considered slow, but paradoxically comes off as having attention deficit disorder. Then Sean Penn is completely miscast. His scenes are just Sean Penn walking around in a stupor, looking like Sean Penn, being filmed in a separate film. I’m certain Malick had to cast these two to get this film greenlighted. It was a bad compromise.

So I can see why so many people gave this film higher ratings than I do. It provides a lot of food for thought. But that is only when compared to the average film that makes it to the screen today. I say it merely gives a lot of time for thought. It also has some great images of beauty. But much of that is lost in the repetition. The film’s chiaroscuro effect enhances its main division into two narrative elements -- one about the family and mankind, the other about the beginning of the universe and of earth. Dare I say it, but man, I just wanted to be entertained.

3 out of 5

Albert's take:
NO ONE'S GONNA CHANGE MY WORLD

No telling if it'll become one of my favorites, but Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" was without a doubt one of the great moviegoing experiences I've had -- grand in its concept, almost perfect in its execution, and engaging and challenging for every minute of its running time.

Yes, you could write it off as an artsy snoozefest or a case of The Emperor Has No Clothes, and you'd have plenty of grounds for doing so: Its hallmarks are minimal dialogue (most of which is obscured by music and ambient noise anyway), seeming visual non sequiturs, a cast of unnamed characters, and disjointed voiceovers galore.

But consider that Malick doesn't confine himself to standard film language and instead aims to speak, if I could very loosely paraphrase Joseph Campbell, The Language of the Universe: symbols.

I think that most reviews of the film will consist of a critic's take on these symbols, which are many and which are anything but transparent. There's not much plot to speak of, and dissecting Malick's techniques seems crass. (I'll leave that to the film scholars.)

That said, I submit my interpretation for your approval.

The film features three major repeating images: reptilian creatures, human figures behind fabric, and rushing water. The reptiles are stand-ins for sin; the figures behind fabric embody redemption. And water represents nature amid it all -- surging through our affairs endlessly, remorselessly.

The film, to me, is a meditation on the burden of consciousness -- a statement about how our struggles with free will and sin and redemption are ultimately nothing more than desperate attempts to attach meaning to our existence.

In the mix are a couple of the best child actors I've seen in my life, and Brad Pitt in one of his best roles. That's all I'll say. No go watch it.

5 out of 5

And now, Shawn and Albert bend space-time in another edition of ...
THE 180 DEGREE RULE

ALBERT: So even though our ratings are at odds, I'll do nothing to refute what you say! This a movie of great ambition and excess and self-indulgence -- challenging, as we both said. I don't know what'll make some people love it as I did or yawn as you did, but anyone who sits through and thoughtfully considers the movie earns the right to have an opinion about it. And by the way, at the second screening I watched, about two or three of the 10 audience members walked out.

SHAWN: I don't remember ever walking out of a film. But I completely understood why those who did, did. The structure of the film almost requires that the viewer check in with their intentions after the first segment. It allows the viewer plenty of time to fully realize those intentions and then make a decision. I chose to stay and was both rewarded and punished. It certainly wasn't a waste of my time. But it was diiiificult.

ALBERT: Yeah, neither did I question why people in my screening left. It wasn't for any transparent reason, like when someone walks out after aN overly bloody murder scene or after one too many attempted jokes goes ker-plunk. I think the "Tree" walkouts were exasperated and decided to call BS. And I'm sure the box office didn't hesitate to refund their money. The movie plays almost like a parody of an avant-garde film -- a visual narrative that's a disjointed mess by most people's standards, and snatches of voiceover that seem apropos of nothing.

SHAWN: I chuckled to myself when I saw the sillhouettes walking in front of me. Then I stopped chuckling and bit my lip. You mentioned the symbology and sin and redemption. Since I'm not religious, I tend to ignore those things. So yes, I notice the water images. I noticed the wood images. I found that the wood images to be associated with the father, and the living tree images to be associated with the mother. So that's how I deduced that man's manipulation of wood, hence the elements, to be Malick's key as to why we are so effed up. His connection of the mother with the tree was saying that women were more connected with the earth. I don't really buy that though. It's a convenience for him to fit into his formula for the meaning of life.

ALBERT: I'm not religious either -- and you know, I don't think Malick is! He seemed to aim further than religion. In this movie, religion is just a way of codifying our struggle to find our place in the universe. Malick seems to say that the impulse to sin and to redeem ourselves is primal, a cycle that began as soon as creatures became sentient. Can't say I made the wood-tree connection, but I probably should have, given that the movie's title contains "tree"! But your reading just confirms the movie's beauty to me -- it's multivalent. A hundred people could watch the movie at the same screening and, provided they last through it, come out with a hundred interpretations. Malick is brilliant for being able to weave so many messages into so literal of a medium.

SHAWN: The church organ had raw wood keys. So the manipulation of elements extends to religion. So you are right that Malick is probably a-religious. I didn't feel like the movie was religious at all. Yet you are right that someone who is religious, could probalby come away thinking the film is all about it. It would be a tough jobthough trying to fit it all into Christianity, but thos Christians corner the market on cramming the world into their own viewpoint. Now I'm thinking sausage links.

ALBERT: You mentioned "2001" in your review, and a lot of people will likely make the comparison, given the outer-space visuals and the bombastic score. I'll venture to say that "Tree" was more daring than "2001" -- with all due respect to Kubrick -- because it used just about the most prosaic frame story/subplot possible. How can we see all of mankind's struggles in a run-of-the-mill 1950s American family? Somehow, Malick shows us.

SHAWN: That's because this family is Malick's representation of his own family. By reaching into his own life, he is making the jump to all of mankind. But with brand name actors, i really felt like Pitt and Penn were a great mistake. This film needed unfamiliar faces. Penn and Pitt are distracting. And Pitt is no good.

ALBERT: Yes, I agree that lesser-known actors may have helped Malick make his point better, but I thought Pitt and Penn were game, playing second fiddle to Malick's photography and editing. They were pawns on his chessboard -- especially Penn, who features only near the beginning and the end, has hardly any dialogue, and comes to an ambiguous resolution. I loved the casting otherwise. Hunter McCracken and Laramie Eppler, who played the young brothers, were as good as real to me. And the casting of the townspeople was seamless.

SHAWN: I agree that all the rest of the casting worked. Sean Penn did a great job with what he had. But being miscast trumps all of that talent. Malick did a good job of connecting the corporate to the older brother. The treatment of the other son's death was restrained and haunting. There was a third son, but he bearly made it into the story. When you have to discuss things like the universe and the meaning of life, three brothers is just one too many I guess. I don't necessarily feel like this is the film that Malick set out to make. I felt like he did the best he could, and the juxtaposition of narratives reminds me of the way I used to think when I was a kid. But I don't see myself watching this one again, or recommending it to anyone I like.

ALBERT: Malick has made a polarizing movie, no doubt. But that's one mark of a genius, to me. It says that a filmmaker has such intense vision and purpose that he no longer cares what the masses want. Lars von Trier has that reputation too. When I hear a filmmaker described as "divisive," I try to be first in line to watch his/her work. Malick's made only six movies in about 40 years, but each one has been an event. And after this one, I don't think he has to make another one.

Attack the Block

2011-08-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

Directed by Joel Cornish
Starring John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Nick Frost and Luke Treadaway

Albert's take:
'THE BLOCK' IS HOT
Go watch “Attack the Block” -- as soon as you can. You’ll get more hipster cred that way because, believe me, “Block” is going to be the sleeper hit of the summer and, soon enough, a cult classic.

For convenience’s sake, I’ll describe it as “City of God” meets “E.T.” meets “The Lost Boys” -- but it is an imitation of none of those.

Although the plot does indeed involve a group of kid criminals who encounter an alien and set out to battle the rest of its brood, “Attack the Block” stands alone -- not only as a transgressor of genres, but as a sheer knockout punch of filmmaking and acting.

The “Block” of the title is a South London council estate, which sounds pretty to our American ears but which is actually a high-rise housing project in the style of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green.

There, on one firework-filled night, a teen street gang in the act of mugging a woman is interrupted by the crash-landing of a meteorite.

The meteorite has a passenger, turns out: a creature that an associate of theirs later describes as looking like “a monkey f--ked a fish.”

The boys, devoid of empathy in the way that only adolescents and serial killers can be, are quick to slay it, hoist it as a trophy, and dream aloud about which media outlet will pay the most for an exclusive. But other meteorites follow, full of bigger, meaner, hungrier creatures, and the boys soon discover they're the only hope for the block -- and possibly beyond.

From this opening alone, it should be clear that “Attack the Block” is no ordinary alien-invasion movie. The kids are starkly depicted as criminals, most of them are black, and the woman whom they’re assaulting is white. Therefore they’re supposed to die in a dismissive and moralistic way, fodder for the aliens and a cheap gag for the audience -- right?

Wrong. Joel Cornish, who wrote and directed, sidesteps this and many other conventions of the genre as he dares to look deeper into the boys’ stories and redeem them as heroes, eventually even bringing the mugging victim -- a straight-talking nurse named Sam -- to their side.

Not since Nimrod Antal’s “Kontroll” have I seen a filmmaker do so much with so little. Just as Antal turned the Budapest subway system into an allegorical battleground that pitted man against his darker nature, Cornish combines a handful of shooting locations, a cast of talented unknowns, and some dicey special effects (mostly puppets and fur-suited actors) to craft a lean, commentary-laced thriller that, in light of the London riots, strikes with uncanny urgency.

The film has a running time of less than 90 minutes, but unfolds more or less in real time, and more or less at a blistering pace. Cornish wisely gives the low-fi creatures minimal screen time, opting to suggest their presence more than depict it. (The later aliens are pitch-black, presumably to disguise the limitations of the costume budget.)

The movie has its share of lighter moments, yes, but it’s no comedy despite its outlandish premise -- the laughs are natural and are mostly to relieve the audience from holding its breath. And the screenplay is rich and deft with its foreshadowing, none of which I’ll give away here.

Of all the movie’s ingredients, the casting is what makes it transcendent. I’m convinced that, as was the case with Fernando Meirelles’ “City of God,” the child actors in “Attack the Block” were handpicked from the neighborhoods portrayed in the film. Theirs is dialogue that can’t be fully scripted: a freewheeling South London patois that Ali G would kill to replicate, in which everyone is either “bruv,” “fam” or a “snitch,” and where “murk” is a verb and “bear” an adjective. A viewer couldn’t be blamed for seeing shades of “A Clockwork Orange” here.

Most memorable among a cast full of young talent is John Boyega as the gang leader, Moses, who looks as if he were born scowling. In an unexpected monologue in which he speculates on the creatures’ origins as a government project, Boyega distills the misery and anger of Moses' short life on the block and brings the movie to a standstill. Nick Frost, who has shown a knack for stealing scenes, expertly underplays his role as the proprietor of a marijuana hothouse -- the most secure location on the block, the boys point out with no small amount of irony.

As if the movie’s other elements weren’t impressive enough, I also want to commend the Basement Jaxx for their pulsing, bleeping soundtrack, a love child of hip-hop and 1980s video games that speaks volumes about the movie’s influences.

How ironic, or perhaps how fitting, that “Block” opened the same day as “Cowboys & Aliens.” Both are genre mash-ups based on alien invasions -- but the difference is, “Block” cares about its characters and convinces the audience that the characters have a life and a purpose beyond the aliens. The invasion may be what elevates these boys to heroes, but the truth is they’re capable of much more than just slaying aliens.

5 out of 5

Shawn's take:
ATTACK THE BLACK

After so many alien attack films, "Attack the Block" comes along with negligible ambition. But that’s not a complaint. Compared to "Battle: Los Angeles, it doesn’t purport to such bloated, end-of-humanity importance, nor does it under-deliver on a big concept. This film presents a simple idea, and delivers it with just enough wit and charm to get by. "Attack" is more akin to "Super 8" in its focus on a small group of kids in a small town.

Once it is clear that there are many aliens and that it is an attack, the rest of the film is your standard chase fare. The aliens look rave-inspired with their pointy tufts of pitch black fur and their glowing blue teeth. They aren’t all that convincing, and without the teeth, they would look like plush Muppets. They do look cool, though. And since this entire film takes place at night, they have a shadowy presence. Many shots linger long enough just to catch a glimpse of them. Their blackness probably saved the animators a lot of detailed work. Better then since the film’s focus is more on the characters.

They are what carries the film through all the chase and mayhem. There are druggies that could be pulled from "Pineapple Express," there’s local girls with their rolling eyes, old ladies in their cozy apartments, and there’s asshole cops getting in the way of everything. Plunging all of these types into an alien film is half the fun, because they are staples of so many English dramas.

I checked on iMDb, and the film’s main lead actor is John Boyega, who played Moses. He’s very young. This is his first film, and he commands the screen very impressively. He is quite a find. I look forward to seeing more of him. Moses is only 15. Boyega plays him like a child who has had to build a tough exterior. And the fighting gleam in his eye makes you root for him as he makes the transition from miscreant to hero of the block.

3 out of 5

And now, Shawn and Albert jack the bully van for another rousing edition of ...THE 180 DEGREE RULE

SHAWN: I'm sort of snooty about giving films five out of five stars. Something really has to reach out and blow my mind before I give that away. "City of God" blew my mind. "E.T." has a connection that reaches deep into my childhood. But "Attack the Block"? Not by a long shot. I found it to be a diverting B film. But I don't think i will be looking back at this film years down the road. And by the way, I don't see the connection to "City of God."

ALBERT: I thought "City of God" because it dared to humanize and dignify street kids, whom most of us usually write off. And even more so because it showed the kids in mortal peril, which Hollywood always shies away from. Low-income kids around the world are indeed living in danger, and I appreciate when a filmmaker is frank about that, aliens or no.

SHAWN: I guess that makes sense. I was definitely surprised with the more serious turns of events. But the film didn't dwell on them, nor did the kids. The shock of sudden, violent death is basically absent in these kids' lives, and maybe that's a slight commentary on the culture of violence these kids are living in. But I wouldn't go that far with the film. Maybe I'm jaded, but I was keenly aware of budget limitations through this film, unlike, say, "Jaws," a film that completely triumphs over its budget problems.

ALBERT: Well, triumph over budget is relative. At no point was I unaware that the aliens were puppets held up next to the camera, or people galloping around in modified gorilla suits -- in fact, that accounted for a lot of the movie's laughs early on. But Joel Cornish's direction, which emphasized the reaction rather than the spectacle, and the sheer conviction of the actors, won me over. By the second act, those cheesy glow-in-the-dark fangs were terrifying to me.

SHAWN: SPOILER ALERT! The two characters who died according to Hoyle were the drug lord and his sidekick. So there was a sort of moral code in the film. The chunkier guy got his throat ripped out. And the big cheese himself had his face ripped off. All of the other characters who died, didn't get such a display of gore. The cops met their end. Each of these deaths were moments of relief for the kids because these people were as much a threat to them as the aliens. END SPOILER ALERT! As for the aliens, I didn't realize they were live puppets either. I was sure they were digital. So that didn't draw attention to itself. When I was referring to the obvious constraints, I was referring to scenes such as the one where Moses looks through the peephole to see if there's an alien in the hall. The cutting was utterly predictable. That type of scare is typical of smaller-budget films and it wasn't scary. It did make me laugh, though.

ALBERT: Yes, strange that a movie that features cursing, thieving, pot-smoking kids would have a morality, but it does. It was clever in the way it wove its messages into the entertainment. As I said in my review, Moses' monologue stunned me. Pest's exchange with Sam about "the poor children of Britain" was a punch to the senses. And the character of Brewis meant a lot -- a white hip-hop head who drives his father's car, watches nature programs for kicks, and whose accent marks him as being from a higher class than the block. His character seems to be a statement about how people of his class and color contribute to the erosion of the neighborhood with their vices. What takes a sci-fi or horror movie from good to great is its social commentary, and "Attack the Block" had a lot to say.

SHAWN: I suppose it did, but I'm not sure that it was that powerful. In fact, I don't think it was that powerful. Maybe it aspired to be, but I don't think its messages were woven into the fabric of the film enough to come off that powerful. It's stil just a bunch of chasing around. One thing I should point out is I do have problems understanding thick British street accents. I may have missed some of the power there. So maybe I've undervalued the film somewhat. I did like it aside from not understanding some of the dialogue. Where are the subtitles when I need them?

ALBERT: Haha, this is one of those peculiar English-language movies where you sort of resign yourself after a while and try to interpret dialogue through context and body language, like "Trainspotting." One thing -- maybe the only thing -- we both liked was John Boyega's performance as Moses. He is absolutely arresting -- that million-dollar scowl, as I said, and in his most impassive moments he made me think of Denzel Washington. I would love to see his career take off, in stuff other than genre pictures.

SHAWN: Boyega is a total gem. Immediately watchable. Your eyes gravitate right to his face. Definitely got the It factor. But I cant tell if he's got range for other types of film. I just hope his next film isn't "Attack the Block II."

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011-08-10T22:56:00.000-07:00

Directed by Rupert Wyatt

Starring James Franco, Andy Serkis, John Lithgow and Freida Pinto

Don's take:
NO MORE MONKEYING AROUND FOR THE APES SERIES

Outside of the original film and the Tim Burton remake, I've always known The Planet off the Apes movies as those movies on the rental store shelves with all the 'straight-to-VHS' sequels. The original movie was a classic. The 2001 remake was done by Tim Burton, and I was a total Burton fan-boy, so I saw that one. But besides those films, I was loath to see any movie with 'Apes' in the title.

My reaction was much the same when I first saw the trailer for "Rise of the Planet of the Apes". Another movie seemed not just un-necessary, but downright unpalatable. But really, I was just reacting to my conditioning from seeing dusty Apes sequels sitting on the store shelves. Once I was past the 'idea' of another Apes film, I actually found myself quite intrigued by what that sneak peak had to offer -- it was creepier and scarier either of the Apes movies I had seen.

The premise hooked me too. We've seen a lot of series reboots look to origins for new material, but really none whose origins were so enshrouded in mystery as that of the Planet of the Apes. The original film intentionally left it vague -- up to the viewers to decide what circumstances eventually led to a Great-Ape-ruled Earth. To explain it in detail seemed almost sacrilegious. But explain the origins, Rise does, and in doing so, it breathes new life into the series.

James Franco stars in the latest installment as Will Rodman, a geneticist working on a cure for degenerative brain disorders, especially Alzheimer's Disease for very personal reasons -- to save his father (John Lithgow) who is suffering from the disease. His tests on chimpanzees go better than expected and his chimpanzees show signs not just of restored cognitive functions, but greatly enhanced. Of course, things go awry with the chimps and they're ordered destroyed and are slaughter, save for a newborn chimp which is saved by Rodman. Rodman raises the chimp, Caesar, as if it were his own child and it becomes apparent to him that Caesar's mother's genetically enhanced intelligence has been passed on to him. But one day, in Caesar's adolescence, he is overly aggressive with human in a misguided effort to protect his human family and Rodman is ordered to surrender custody of Caesar to a primate facility where Caesar is reinserted into a community of his Great-Ape brethren. But the facility is far from the special care facility it appears to be on the surface. The primates are severely mistreated. Caesar, true to his name, rallies together the primates, inoculates them with the brain medicine and stages a revolt -- the catalyst that will eventually lead to their conquest of the world.

While Franco is easily the most recognizable face of this film, I assure you, he is not the star of the movie. This distinction quite handily goes to Andy Serkis, the unsung (and unseen) hero of many a film. Serkis has provided the movements of many computer animated characters, most notably Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films, through motion capture, not just of his bodily movements, but his facial expressions. Despite many levels of stifling special effects, Serkis's personality manages to show through in the characters he plays. Between Serkis's eerie performance and the masterful digital rendering of Caesar by Weta Digital, the geniuses behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Caesar is easily one of the most striking and memorable movie characters of this year.

But what really makes Rise a success is that it never falls into the trap of trying to achieve the campiness that is associated with the original films of the 70's. Rise takes itself very seriously and maintains a sustained foreboding, never slipping into the weird or absurd. It helps that the apes are all digitally rendered and brought to life through motion capture as opposed to putting prosthetics on actors…

Suffice it to say, Rise of the Planet of the Apes exceeded my expectations. It redefines a series as one that is truly worthy of further exploration.

4 out of 5

Mike's take:
HAIL CAESAR!

I'm not going to debate if this movie should have been made or not, that is a whole different topic. And we forget about the Tim Burton travesty a couple years ago..seriously lets forget it...

That being said, this apes origins story works...really works. Caesar/Andy Serkis is a revelation. The motion capture (mo-cap) in this film breathtaking. Serkis's mo-cap performance and the CG work of WETA is what drives this movie. The script uses a lot of the plot points of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the name Caesar, his imprisonment, his organization of the apes and rise to power. And like Conquest, it paints humans in a very unfavorable light. Which brings me to where this movie doesn't work.The humans. Almost every human role is a caricature. From the bright scientist hell bent on a cure, Will Rodman (James Franco), to the voice of reason/sympathy, Caroline (Freida Pinto), to the mustache (if he had one) twirling villain, Dodge (Tom Felton). Hell, it even had the unscrupulous, money hungry boss (David Oyelowo). None of these characters hold a candle to Caesar, except for John Lithgow's role as Charles Rodman, Will's father.His portrayal of a man ravaged by Alzheimer's disease is brief, but heartbreaking.

What I really liked about this film was Caesar's Spartucus-like sequence of his education, organization, and ultimate liberation of the apes. For any of you well versed in the other Planet's movies, you will be happy to know there are a couple easter eggs thrown in there for ya. I also liked the ending and how they hint a little on how the apes are able to gain top dog status over the humans. So if you wanna join an ape uprising, go see this film.

4 out of 5

And now, Mike and Don go ape for an unexpectedly great movie in…
THE 180 DEGREE RULE

MIKE: I wasn't really sure I was on board with this "reimagining", but it surprised me.

DON: There have been so many great reboots in the last few years -- Batman, James Bond, Star Trek -- that the only thing that really surprised me was to see yet another successful reboot. The only thing that seems to have a higher success ratio than reboots these days seems to be Pixar cartoons...

MIKE: True, but I still hunger for an original idea, If there is such a thing nowadays.

DON: Agreed, but I'll settle for an original take on an old idea if it's this good. You make an interesting point about the human characters. You're right, they're all very two-dimensional. I actually didn't pay much attention to that, surprisingly. The movie got so much right with the atmosphere and the apes that I was captivated enough to forgive the movie for something I might hold another movie accountable for. But I think we both agree that there was one performance that was definitely not two dimensional...

MIKE: Oh yea, I could have watched a whole movie with just CG apes. Which if saying something because I usually get annoyed with CG animals easily. They never look real enough. I can safely say that has changed. As long as it is as good as WETA and Andy Serkis. I can't say enough about his performance. They are going to have to create an Oscar category for mo-cap performances, if one doesn't already exist.

DON: Better yet, maybe it's time for Serkis to emerge from the mo-cap suit and show the world his face. If he's as good in front of the camera as he is in a digital monkey suit, who knows, he may just see him recognized in an existing category.

Cowboys And Aliens

2011-08-08T23:05:00.000-07:00

Directed by Jon Favreau

Starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde

Albert’s take:
IF YOU’VE HEARD THE TITLE, YOU’VE SEEN THE MOVIE

“Cowboys & Aliens” is amusing, well acted, pretty to look at … and unnecessary.

It delivers what the title promises -- a Western and an alien-invasion flick in one! -- and does both genres fairly well. Problem is, it combines them with approximately the grace and motivation of Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias’ “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.”

Daniel Craig stars as Jake Lonergan, an Old West drifter who awakes in the desert with no memory of who he is but with a mysterious space-age bracelet that he can’t take off.

Turns out he’s a badass in the vein of Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, he demonstrates as he dispatches a gang of toughs singlehandedly and moseys on to the nearest one-horse burg to do more of the same. The bracelet’s purpose as a superpowered laser weapon makes itself known when the town is set upon by -- UFOs!

Jon Favreau, once The Stocky Guy in “Swingers,” proves in these opening sequences that his second career as a director of blockbusters is secure.

We’ve seen these tableaus in many a Western past -- the one-lane town living in fear (of the No. 1 cattle rancher’s reckless son, in this case), the saloon showdown, the cast-iron cookout -- but Favreau, rather than trying to reinvent them, dives into them with a lurid gusto, wringing them of their genre delights in an almost Tarantino fashion.

What stands out most is his photography of Daniel Craig, whose hulking, hatted, arms-akimbo silhouette is likely to be as memorable to you after this movie as Jerry West’s from the NBA logo.

Also great are Clancy Brown, who manages to bring his signature creepiness to even the role of a preacher, Olivia Wilde, who’s fast becoming the sci-fi damsel of choice, Paul Dano, who continues to impress as the abovementioned reckless son, and Harrison Ford, who plays the cattle man as a curmudgeonly Han Solo -- cynical as ever, but too old to be cocky.

All the makings of a great Western are in place here. Where the movie goes wrong, you see, is the first time -- and every time -- it veers into the alien-invasion business.

Odds are, you laughed when you first saw the movie’s title pop up in the trailer. “How on Earth are the filmmakers going to combine those genres?” you may have imagined.

The answer is, none too imaginatively.

The way the movie works is this: Scenes of the Old West, atmospheric and absorbing, with little to no reference to the alien menace. The aliens attack suddenly and arbitrarily. They retreat or are vanquished. Repeat.

I’ve heard of genre benders, but this is a mash-up -- and I don’t mean that in the cool hipster sense; I mean that it’s two movies that never come together.

“Cowboys & Aliens” lacks an awareness of and a sense of humor about its premise -- think of “The Wizard of Oz” set to Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon." Its characters are surprisingly uninquisitive about the danger in their midst, seeming to regard the aliens as just another hostile tribe -- albeit a tribe that practices air raids and ensnares hapless bystanders for God-knows-what-purpose.

Ask yourself, if you lived in a time before the Wright Brothers and suddenly saw winged machines flying overhead and firing death rays, wouldn’t you be the slightest bit curious about their technology? Or about where the makers came from? The characters in this movie aren’t.

And what about the aliens themselves? Sigh. In the spirit of “Independence Day,” they’re an advanced race of creatures who have little reason to visit Earth (and no reason for kidnapping Earthlings, as far as I can tell), who turn into boneheads whenever it’s clobberin’ time, and whose technology happens to interface seamlessly with humans (the bracelet, for example). They’re bipedal, which is expected, but when they’re confronted they run on all fours and bite and claw, which strikes me as an inefficient -- not to mention uncouth -- way for aliens to behave.

“Cowboys & Aliens” wasn’t necessarily doomed from the start -- it had the budget and the talent to make a go of things. But as Roger Ebert said about “Reservoir Dogs,” the part that needs work didn’t cost money. It’s the screenplay.

I’ve learned that the movie was based on a graphic novel, which was in turned based on a single-panel “Far Side” cartoon by Gary Larson. Someone should have told the screenwriters, movies are meant to run for a lot more than just one frame.

3 out of 5

Don's take:
MORE THAN JUST COWBOYS AND ALIENS

I think the line that sums the movie up for me is one that is uttered early on, where the gun-slingin', wound-mendin' preacher is assuring our hero, Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig), that despite his notorious reputation, it was up to him to choose his destiny. "I've seen good men do bad things and bad men do good things… It's not the man you were, but the man you are that matters to heaven," he says. Emphasis on the "bad men do good" part of the quote. We don't see too many good people turning evil here.

Yes, this is a movie that crosses the western and alien invasion genres, but to me, this is more a story about a man's capacity for redemption. We have Lonergan who gets a second chance to be a good man when his memory is erased. We have Woodrow Dolarhyde, Lonergan's nemesis and ruthless bad-man who goes all gooey when he inadvertently becomes a surrogate father to an orphan kid. The aliens are more of a set piece here than co-star, which I thought was a smart choice on Jon Favreau's part. They serve less as a 'monster' than as a catalyst to bring together people who would otherwise be enemies -- a threat that gives common purpose for otherwise warring factions.

But don't get me wrong. There is plenty of flash here to satisfy even the most rabid popcorn-flick connoisseur. The aliens are not the most memorable I've ever seen, but they're well rendered. And "Cowboys" offers some of the more rousing action sequences I've seen in a modern western. The introduction if Sci-fi elements adds a welcome twist to the genre without diluting the things we love about westerns: machismo, suspense, attitude, bravado…

Cowboys and Aliens was undoubtedly given its title with a smirk on its creator's face. It's meant to suggest status as a B-movie, not unlike the Sam Jackson helmed "Snakes On A Plane." But thankfully, Favreau treated this material with the same love he imbues into all of his films, and like he has several times before -- Zathura, Iron Man, Elf -- Favreau takes material from the 'straight to DVD' bin and delivers something truly memorable.

4 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

DON: I think the key difference in our movie experiences was that, for me, this movie wasn't really about the aliens... The aliens were more like a Macguffin in what was a more or less traditional western. So I forgave it for it's lack of explanation and for the aliens kind of coming from out of the blue. I was more interested in the characters and their relationships. I thought as a western, Cowboys was pretty entertaining.

ALBERT: You know, I do agree with you there, believe it or not -- alien-invasion flicks are not actually about aliens. They're meant to shine a light on mankind's petty differences, and to show that we can come together despite those differences. That was never clearer to me than when I watched "Attack the Block," a low-budget British alien-invasion movie that happens to have been released the same day as "Cowboys & Aliens," and which I think is a far superior movie (more on that in another edition of Alias Men). But "Cowboys & Aliens" didn't work for me because it didn't have a handle on its tone -- the overlap between the genres was always jarring, as if a prankster of an editor simply spliced together the two. Each genre of this movie stood too much on its own. I do see your reasoning about the alien invasion teaching the cowboys life lessons, but I figure, as uninterested as the filmmakers were in the aliens, why didn't they just rewrite the aliens to be hostile Indians?

DON: You know, I get what you're saying about how the aliens/cowboys crossover idea was unnecessary for THIS movie and agree on some level. But I must admit that I enjoyed the idea of it. I like seeing new territory explored and extra terrestrials in a western is something I haven't seen before. But even I, despite having enjoyed the movie overall, was a little disappointed that the implications of an encounter of the 3rd kind during the wild west era was not more critically thought through... But I think Favreau's forte is in making "likeable" movies more than making "thought-provoking" movies, so I give him a pass. It was what I should have expected and on that level, it worked for me.

ALBERT: I think of what could have been, though. Jon Favreau is a talented director with a long career ahead of him in Hollywood. Here he's able to create a Western with the right look and feel to be a revisionist, thinking-man's cowboy picture. He deserves better material to work with -- Daniel Craig's performance was wasted.

DON: I actually really liked Daniel Craig in this movie! His 'strong silent type' persona really felt at home in this movie. I thought it was an inspired decision to put him in a western. I'd never made that connection before... If any actor was wasted in this movie, I'd have to say it was Paul Dano. I actually really liked how antagonistic his character was. His was one of the more colorful performances in the movie and I enjoyed it. It was a shame that he only appeared in about 20 minutes of the movie.

ALBERT: Yeah, I liked Daniel Craig too! That's why I think he, too, deserves a better movie. True, Paul Dano had too little screen time -- he basically becomes comic relief after Craig's character arrives on the scene. Dano can make a big impression in just a few scenes. Remember, in "Little Miss Sunshine" he didn't even talk till about halfway through the running time.

DON: And let's not forget his unforgettable performance in "There Will Be Blood." Well, with Cowboys and Aliens, we got a big budget popcorn-flick of an Alien Invasion movie. This week, we got a low-budget, art house flick about an Alien Invasion. Both of these movies were on my summer "must see list." So maybe the answer to your question of "why aliens and not just hostile Indians" is... To make us buy tickets to see it.

Captain America: The First Avenger

2011-07-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

Directed by Joe Johnston

Starring Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones, and Hugo Weaving

Don's take:
AMERICA!! JUST MEH...

The first 20 or so minutes of Captain America are just about as close to comic book movie Nirvana as I've been. Chris Evans as a pint-sized Steve Rogers is about as impressive of a CG rendering of a person as I've ever seen -- seamless and totally convincing. And Evans personality is far from lost underneath the layers and layers of special effects -- he's virtuous, earnest, almost to the point of naivete, but not exasperatingly so. And Evans is surrounded by a supporting cast whose talents really uplift the movie, most notably Stan Tucci as Dr. Abraham Erskine, the scientist who developed the Super Soldier Serum that gave Captain America his powers, and Tommy Lee Jones as Rogers's commanding officer, Chester Phillips.

But somewhere around the half-hour mark, after Steve Rogers becomes Captain America, the movie revealed itself to be exactly what I was afraid it was going to be: a schlocky camp-fest about a 'roided up Eagle Scout.

Okay, so here is where I confess something -- I have always hated Captain America. A lot of my complaints about the movie may stem from my distaste for the hero himself. But there's just something about virtuous superheroes that makes me root against them -- Captain America and Superman being my numbers one and two. I like my heroes flawed with a little bit of edge. It keeps me from wanting to punch them in the face. Also, Captain America is just begging us to love him going so far as to enrobe himself in the American Flag for chrissakes… He reminded me of another muscle-bound brawler who once waved a flag to win over the hearts of fans.

But take away all the patriotic symbols and what have you got? A muscly jock with a mean right hook and a bulletproof shield. Hardly the makings of a superhero, wouldn't you say? A Mystery Man, maybe.

Anyway, around the 30 minute mark, the movie gets pretty silly. Erskine is dead so no more Stanley Tucci (boo). Really, the only really interesting relationship in the movie was Rogers's relationship with Erskine, so without that, we just have Captain America beating up baddies and making googly eyes with a pretty girl. I hate to reduce a movie like this, but Captain America offers absolutely no depth in its plot or characters and it leaves me no other choice.

Having an effective archenemy for Cap might have done some to save the movie, but Hugo Weaving's Red Skull was decidedly un-menacing. Never did I feel that Captain America was threatened. And Weaving's Red Skull make up looked silly. Weaving was actually scarier sans the make-up.

Captain America might be worth a gander for having one of the best origin story sequences of any comic book movie I've seen. But if you feel nature calling and Steve has already donned the Captain America suit, I think you're safe to step out. Acts 2 and beyond are hardly worth the urinary tract infection.

3 out of 5

Albert’s take:
THE SERUM THAT MADE A MAN OUT OF MAC

Captain America is, in every sense, a relic of a bygone age. And so it is in a bygone age that the filmmakers have wisely chosen to present him.

Aside from a mercifully short frame story that sees Cap waking from an Arctic sleep in time for the Avengers movie, “Captain America” stays firmly grounded in the earnest, idealism-over-irony universe that spawned the character -- a place where young men fought tooth and nail to get INTO the Army, where waving (or wearing) the American flag wasn’t scorned, where personally decking Adolf Hitler was high on the list of boys’ playtime fantasies.

As an adaptation it’s well done, paying homage to and occasionally having a sense of humor about the times without ever stooping to self-parody. As an action movie, it’s as tongue-in-cheek as you’d expect from a film about a hero who eschews guns in favor of fists and a boomerang-like shield (the physics of which should win some fertile-minded fanboy the world’s most coveted No-Prize).

Although “Captain America” doesn’t qualify as much more than a good-looking popcorn flick, it’s better than it has to be as a lead-up to the Avengers movie -- especially in light of the underwhelming “Thor.” Kudos to Cap for still having the power to entertain us. Here’s hoping he can hold his own with the Avengers.

3 out of 5

And now... THE 180 DEGREE RULE

ALBERT: Haha -- I see that you're a little less restrained than I am! I held my tongue -- bashing Cap just seems un-American -- but I'll admit, I agree with you on some level. Captain America has always come off to me as a pandering character -- a brazen, hamfistedly American hero, Marvel's not-so-subtle answer to Superman. But I like that the filmmakers worked within the character's boundaries (or lack thereof), capturing the spirit of Cap and the era without too much self-aware mockery.

DON: That's exactly what they want! A character who is beyond reproach. But I'm not falling for it. It's a cruddy character bedazzled in red white and blue. I was hoping they'd find more depth in this material, but they went another way. I respect their decision, but I surely didn't enjoy it.

ALBERT: I think the filmmakers would have had to set Cap's story in today's age to find a deeper angle on the character. Remember, he came from a time when the Germans and Japanese were just caricatures on posters and in cartoons. Sure, placing Cap among us might make for a complex and thoughtful story, but then we would have been stuck with "The Dark Captain." The movie fits the bill as an escapist yarn, and I do think the filmmakers did what they could to take the edge off of Cap's flag-waving, what with the distressed uniform and the shedding of the wings from his cowl.

DON: Yeah, I get why Joe Johnston stuck to the "gee whiz" vibe of the comics. I think audiences have gotten too smart for overly simple movies like this, but I suppose rottentomatoes.com and the box office receipts for this movie would disagree. I wouldn't have needed a total overhaul of the source material to have been entertained. Just a bit more critical thinking is all. And as far as setting up Captain America for the eventual Avengers movie... I have no idea how that's going to work. How is Captain America going to stand alongside the Norse God of Thunder and a walking tank? This movie didn't help with that at all.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part II

2011-07-25T22:10:00.000-07:00

Directed by David Yates

Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint

Hi, everybody. Today we welcome our newest Alias Friend, Sher. Sher is a veritable encyclopedia of all things Harry Potter, so we just had to have her on... So without further ado...

Sher’s take:
HARRY POTTER AND THE FANTASTIC FAREWELL

Broomsticks and butterbeer, goblins and Gringotts, wands and wandlore. What can I say? I adore Harry Potter. Having read the complete J.K. Rowling seven-book series and watched all of the movies, I must admit that I was, frankly, nervous about going to see “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II,” the grand finale that would close out the awesome Hogwarts empire. Be reassured, Potter fans, I wasn’t disappointed!

Darker than all of its predecessors, the film begins precisely where Part I left off, with the gruesome Lord Voldemort picking up the powerful Elder Wand, looking as immensely satisfied as his pancake face can manage, reminding me mildly of Dr. Seuss’ “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.” From there the film really opens, with our brave and resigned heroes, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson), wearing their usual pensive expressions and continuing their harrowing quest to find and destroy the remaining Horcruxes (parts of Tom Riddle’s soul), which will weaken the Dark Lord (Ralph Fiennes). They strike a bad deal with Griphook, the two-faced goblin who will lead them into Gringotts, and that’s where the movie dives right into explosive action -- and the thrilling pace never stops.

From the moment I sat down, I was enthralled (granted, I may be a bit biased), but that’s the stark difference between Parts I and II of “The Hallows.” While segments of the prior film tended to be long and tedious, the current release immediately sucks you back into the Wizarding world, and keeps you right in the midst of the mystery, magic, and mayhem that is signature J.K. Rowling. I hadn’t enjoyed myself so much since viewing the earliest films, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” You’ll be impressed with the high chase sequences among Harry and his friends, embroiled in the daring escapades of the Hogwarts students, and entangled in heated confrontation between Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall. Naturally, this only escalates the tension to the final showdown between He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and The-Boy-Who-Lived, which is certainly worth the anticipation. I particularly relished watching our daring trio outrun a giant, snakelike fire that was like a roaring beast, and felt like I was right there racing along with them, soaring through the air, wildly, madly, on their broomsticks. (Sorry, there’s no Quidditch this time, but that’s obvious, right?)

Going into the film, I already knew that I was seeing the finale but I came out with the impression that I had watched an epic. During the “Great Battle” between Voldemort’s ruthless army and Harry’s determined band, I felt like I was witnessing the vast Hogwarts universe gradually crumbling before my eyes -- which is precisely, I’m sure, what the filmmakers were aiming for. The unhurried skirmishes between good and evil forces, the lush musical score, the magnificent Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry methodically being reduced to a pile of rocks and rumble as if it were nothing more than a feeble sand castle to begin with. It was all very sad and wondrous and beautifully done. But it also got the point across. As I sat there, I thought to myself, “This is it, Harry. Save the day.” Yet, considering how dark and ominous the overall tone of the film, there were quirky bits of humor, interspersed here and there, that I thought flowed well -- “Harry Potter” is still a children’s fantasy story, nonetheless, and levity is a good reminder. I laughed at the longing on Harry’s face when he first glimpses his sweetheart, Ginny, after a long separation, at Professor McGonagall’s childlike enthusiasm over casting a new spell, and, well, at Ron Weasley simply behaving as Ron Weasley, bulldozing and rambling about in his blustering ways.

Perhaps what I loved best is that this film is a reunion of sorts. Many of our old favorites are back, from the awkward Neville Longbottom who rises brilliantly to the occasion, the spacey Luna Lovegood (whom we discover isn’t really quite so spacey, after all), and even the great Albus Dumbledore get footage. Hard to recall, but once upon a time Harry Potter was an 11-year-old orphan with puppy-dog eyes who yearned for nothing more than the love and return of his parents. Now Harry is a young, determined man who valiantly fights Voldemort with the same grim resolution he has had since he was a child. I thought Daniel Radcliffe did a fabulous job reprising his role as Harry (I would hope so -- he’s had practice for the last decade!), as did Rupert Grint as Ron and Emma Watson as Hermione. Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, excellent! We even get a glimpse of the Dark Lord doing a little “happy dance” near the end of the film that I found rather amusing. Above all, I am truly glad that the same actors have remained as the leads, which has absolutely added to the consistency of the series. It’s been fun watching them grow up, and in some ways, I feel like I’ve grown up with them too -- despite that I was an adult long before they became one.

Though I’ll always be partial to the books, “The Dealthly Hallows” finale is definitely worth seeing. It’s straightforward, exciting and poignant, and reaffirms the belief that good can overcome evil. If you’re a fan, I know you’ll go anyhow. If you’re not -- at least, you’ll be a part of one of the greatest cultural phenomena of our time. But do be prepared, if you’re like me, and you’re the type who likes to shed a few tears, bring a handful of tissues. I wasn’t the only one coming out of the theatre a bit misty-eyed. The final farewell to Harry Potter was worthy but not easy.

5 out of 5

Shawn's take:
THE DEADLY SHALLOWS

Well, as the poster promised, it all ended. Is it me? Or did that message set a bizarre tone on the posters? What’s with the pissed off looks on the faces of the cast? They look seriously disturbed, in a bitter way. If the tone they were going for was to make them seem tough, like “It’s on!,” then they failed. Harry Potter has never affected a rough action hero mug before, so why now? This movie’s audience was set to go. And as they walk through the halls of their respective theaters, they are greeted with some majorly angry Hogwarts students.

First impressions often can mean everything. Fortunately for this series, those first impressions were a decade ago. And I can’t believe it’s been a decade of Harry Potter. Even though I only read up to book four, do I call myself a Pott-Head for watching all of these films? After all it’s basically the same film made over and over again. To be honest, I have looked forward to each and every release. Only two of them have disappointed me. The fourth in the series, The Goblet of Fire, and now this final chapter.

Both films suffer from stuffing in too much, and ending up with too little. I enjoyed the quietness of HP and the Deathly Hallows Pt 1 because I felt I was being led toward something momentous. The implications of the mostly unseen Voldemort in that film allowed me to work with it and get really pumped for the finale. But ultimately, I felt cheated.

The problem for me was in both the concept and the execution. Harry Potter has been going to Hogwarts, a university with his friends and should by the end of the series possess a major mountain of knowledge and experience as a wizard. Voldemort for that matter has cultivated himself as the brilliant face of evil, leading droves of terrified, yet submissive and power hungry followers. Why then, when these two do meet, does their faceoff consist merely of flying together clawing at each other, and then shooting streams of colored light at each other?

If anyone remembers Disney’s The Sword in the Stone, you would surely remember the hilarious and sly battle between Merlin and Madame Mim. That duel exhibited more wit and dexterity than anything in the entire HP series. So in terms of wizardry, from what I now have seen of HP and Voldemort’s wizard prowess, I’m very underwhelmed.

Add to this some extreme cliché elements, take for instance, Mrs. Weasly calling Bellatrix Lestrange a bitch as she blows her to a million pieces. That’s something we’ve seen in many buddy cop films. But in a Harry Potter movie? Are they serious? I was shocked and honestly didn’t know what had hit me. Also, the final battle was yet another copy of the famous Lord of the Ringsy battle scenes with motley crowds coming at eachother. Why could all of Voldemort’s wizards flit, fly and appear out of nowhere, and none of the good guys could?

This film’s first half was good, and continued with some of the fine tension building of the first Deathly Hallows. The opening action sequence at Gringotts, the bank, is playful, fanciful, bizarre and exciting. The effects were put to great use especially when the goblets and jewels started multiplying. How a wizard gets to their vault within the bank is extremely convoluted given the convenience of magic, but the ride is wild and exciting.

What I am left with after the film is over, are some puzzling images. I have the image of HP and his friends, made up to be 19 years older. None of them looked particularly happy as they see their children onto the Hogwarts express. It’s a final sequence that is composed of a lot of face shots, and it reads as a collective poker face. Are they happy about their kids going off to learn about wizardry? I couldn’t tell you. The movie ends. I leave.

And now I sort of understand the expression on the face of the woman who was leaving the showing before mine. The credits had stopped. The ushers were pushing in their trash bin and scoopers. And out comes a short woman in full Harry Potter regalia. She sported a crazy striped hoop skirt, a dark blazer with the Hogwarts emblem, and crazy witchy bangs. She looked at me. I looked at her. She averted her eyes quickly and shuffled off to my left. If she had said to me that she was fully satisfied with the film, I can assure you she would lying. How else to justify such an investment that hadn’t fully paid off?

3 out of 5

Horrible Bosses

2011-07-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

Directed by Seth Gordon

Starring Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey and Colin Farrell

Albert's take:
YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!

A white-collar worker, a small-business manager and a dental assistant walk into a bar. No, it's not a joke -- they're friends, played by Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day, respectively. 

They've gathered to bemoan their bosses, who are -- again respectively -- a narcissistic mind-game player (Kevin Spacey), a power-mad cokehead (Colin Farrell) and a predatory sex fiend (Jennifer Aniston). The Jason Sudeikis character, in a flash of beer-soaked inspiration, comes up with a plan: Let's kill our bosses! 

You already know from the trailer that "Horrible Bosses" is "Office Space" meets "Strangers on a Train." But the movie doesn't figure that out till two-thirds of the way through its running time. 

How does it busy itself until then? By creating unbelievable characters -- namely the bosses -- and wasting the talents of its leads on unmotivated poor-man's-Judd Apatow riffing.

OK, I know that the movie's supposed to be a satire, and that I should therefore loosen my standards of plausibility. But I ask, what kind of satire is this? It can’t be an office-politics satire -- that would require the movie to give me a legitimate reason for disliking the bosses, and to demonstrate that murdering those bosses would be the best or only way to improve the protagonists' lives. 

Instead, the movie paints its villains as broadly as Dr. Evil, all slapstick antics and surreal dialogue, and builds its protagonists’ situations out of contrivances upon contrivances. I get that the bosses are the villains and that I’m supposed to root against them, but how fair is it for the movie to manipulate me into doing so?

Bateman is good as the put-upon Straight Man, as are Sudeikis as the squeaky-clean sleazeball and Day as a neutered Joe Pesci. (You’ll see what I mean.) Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx turn in a couple inspired supporting performances. But the movie spends too little effort on building comic momentum out of the plot -- probably because it bungles the characters' motivations at the starting gate -- and too much on stand-alone minutes of noodling, with the leads announcing they’re in a would-be bromance with scene after scene of mumbled pop-culture references and ironic whiteboy-speak. Hell, given how often it navel-gazed and turned in on itself, the movie sometimes gave me the impression that it was a stoner comedy.

Another quality that bothers me about the movie is that it refuses to see its protagonists for what they are: murder conspirators. I don’t mean that it should have cast them as villains, but it should have had the conviction to state that the leads were indeed as rotten as their bosses, that they knew what they were getting into, and that it would take them more to escape their situation than a couple dei ex machina. That wouldn’t have just been more fitting, it would have been funnier.

2 out of 5

Don's take:
OFFICE SPACE'S DUMBER, LESS TALENTED SIBLING

I think on some level, Horrible Bosses aspires to be a spiritual successor to another office themed comedy classic, Office Space. And with a talented cast of actors including Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston who even appeared in the aforementioned movie, Bosses seemed poised to become just that. But despite the overflow of talent within the cast, Horrible Bosses lacked the wit and insight that made Office Space one of the most memorable comedies of the 90's.

Office Space wins a place in my heart with its subtlety: its wry depiction of common office-place characters, its spot on portrayal of the passive aggression that can sometimes make the office environment such an excruciating place to be… On the other hand, despite all the obvious similarities, Horrible Bosses takes a much different and less satisfying approach to the subject matter--its humor more straightforward and slap-sticky, its spirit more malevolent. Horrible Bosses is less interested in laughing with us about the frustrations of our daily lives as it is interested in appealing to our cynicism about our unsatisfying lives. To put it another way, if Office Space were the class clown poking clever light-hearted fun at the establishment, Horrible Bosses is the bully who laughs as he gives you a wedgie.

Not that Horrible Bosses is a despicable movie or anything like that. Certainly, it has its moments. And despite the material, the cast does some good work here. But lacking true wit or insight into our work lives, Horrible Bosses by its end left next to no impression on me--an utterly forgettable experience. Watching Office Space, on the other hand is cathartic--every single time. Surely, it makes me laugh, but when the laughs have dissipated, I'm also aglow with the knowledge that my quibbles and frustrations with the corporate work-place aren't just experienced by me but are shared by white-collar brethren. What-a-minute… What movie am I reviewing again?

2 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

DON: I get the sense that we both felt that Horrible Bosses was a little mean spirited, didn't we… I'm not a prude or anything, and am all for a little dark humor. My beef with this movie is that it was dark, but totally brainless about it.

ALBERT: I was curious to see how the movie would justify the murder plotting -- that's the crux of the film, after all, and who among us hasn't thought of doing the same? (Except me, your honor.) But you're right, the movie didn't go about it smartly. It made cartoons out of its villains and didn't make its protagonists' situations dire enough to warrant murder, The murder plot never came off as more than a juvenile impulse to me.

DON: I agree completely. They try to get us on the side of the murder plotters by appealing to our work-life woes, but because the bosses are so cartoonishly evil, it's absolutely impossible to identify with the characters. What makes Office Space so great is not how cartoonish it was, but how perceptive it was. Horrible Bosses had zero insight into the lives of the office worker.

ALBERT: Yeah, office-politics comedy takes subtlety, because that's what our workaday lives are like -- subtle. We suffer subtly, our bosses demean us subtly. I also thought of "Office Space" a lot as I watched "Horrible Bosses." "Office Space" was disciplined enough to examine the workplace, while "Horrible Bosses" only feigned interest in the workplace and instead just cavorted through set pieces that had nothing to do with the characters' livelihoods.

DON: Agreed. It could have been Horrible 'Anything'. Horrible Neighbors. Horrible Personal Trainers... And it would have been the same movie. Individually, I did enjoy some of the players though. Jason Bateman does Ben Stiller maybe better than Stiller does. He's is a solid straight man here as always. I actually really liked Jason Sudeikis a lot here too. He's really starting to grow on me.

ALBERT: Maybe we could have saved ourselves some time by noting the stampede of celebrity cameos -- Donald Sutherland, Jamie Foxx, Ron White and Bob Newhart, for example. There are few surer signs that the comedy you're watching is a dud.

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

2011-07-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

Directed by Michael Bay

Starring Shia Lebeouf, Peter Cullen, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and John Turturro

We're joined for the today by our good friend, Mike Martinez. Mike is a aficionado of comics and cartoons and a true fan of all things pop culture. Welcome to the Alias Men, Mike! Now without further ado...

Don's take:
MEDIOCRE MOVIE IN DISGUISE

Well it took me a while, but I'm finally able to put my finger on what it is exactly that drives me nuts whilst simultaneously tickling my fancy about Michael Bay's Transformers movies. Where these films are concerned (and maybe with Bay's other movies too, but I can't say for sure having spent the better part of my life avoiding them like the plague), Bay's approach is like that of a 10 year-old kid playing with toys on a playground but has the technical abilities of a film industry veteran. I don't necessarily mean this as a slight to his Transformer's films. Allow me to explain.

So when a kid is playing with toys and building his narrative, he thinks first about what would be cool and interesting to do with his toys. His narrative is then built around those cool things in such a way as to facilitate those events with little mind paid to details like character motivation and such. Sure, his imaginary characters have stories and lines, but in the end, the kid really just wants to crash cars and shoot rockets.

I'm starting to get the feeling Bay approaches his films in much the same way. Before he even sits down to write his story, I'm guessing he decides first on what kind of cool stuff he wants to show in his movie. With Dark Of The Moon, he brings to the silver screen in 3 dimensions a cybernetic planet at war, alien wreckage on the surface of the lonesome moon's surface, shiny muscle cars cruising down highways and through military bases, and of course the requisite hot girl and giant robot battles. Where this kind of stuff is concerned, Bay is second to none. He is truly a master at using the filmmaking tools at his disposal to craft awe inspiring, visionary feasts for the eyes. The shots of Cybertron early on in the film were reminiscent of the Star Wars films and they filled me with glee. The scenes on the moon tapped a part of my imagination that I've rarely used since childhood. And Bay's use of 3-D is the best I've seen since Avatar; Dark Of The Moon is without a doubt a movie that is best enjoyed in 3-D. And the Transformer battles, albeit at times quite confusing, were by and large very well rendered. My favorite robot battle of the series remains as Optimus Prime's battle in the woods in Revenge Of The Fallen for its clarity, but the battles in these films are more consistently good in this movie than in Bay's previous installments.

But then there's the story to contend with. Bay has an adolescent's understanding of movie storytelling and of directing actors. Despite having a cast of extremely talented actors including Shia Lebeouf, John Turturro -- for God's sakes, Frances McDormand and John Malkovich -- Bay is seemingly incapable of getting inside the minds of his characters or explore his story on anything more than the most superficial levels. What we get here is not a cast of characters, but a cast of caricatures. And less thought could not have been given to the plot delivery. It was about as herky-jerky and disjointed as I've seen in a movie that wasn't made for television.

Maybe this was intended. After all, the film was adapted not from a Miyazaki cartoon, but from a cartoon from Hasbro that was made first and foremost to be a 30 minute commercial for toys. Maybe Bay was trying to capture the absurdity and superficialness of the original cartoon series. But somehow I doubt this. My gut tells me this was not so much an artistic decision as it was a reflection of Bay's deficiency as a filmmaker. Whatever the reason, the outcome is a movie that is visually, very stimulating, but intellectually, impossible to take seriously.

But hey, it's summer break -- the time when kids close their history books and open their comic books. If there is any time of year where it's appropriate to just shut off your brain, this is it. If that's that's what you're looking for on the menu, then Transformers is the cinematic junk food for you.

3 out of 5

Mike's take:
THIRD TIME'S A CHARM? NOT SO MUCH…

Now, going into the third installment of the Transformers series, I was excited. Reading all of the insider info, hearing that it was shot on true 3D equipment, hell, I even read James Cameron coached Michael Bay on how to use it properly. I also read that this one was gonna "redeem" the franchise.

I'm pretty sure I am in the minority when I say I actually liked the second one, so, to say this outing is mediocre at best is saying something. From the overuse of the actual transforming, to the missed dramatic beats, to the inexplicable reverse psychology Rose Whateverherlastnameis uses on Megatron -- it all just missed the mark.

No battle or major set piece in this film had me awestruck, save one... the squirrel suit sequence. Holy Hell! I had read something a while ago about the said suits and thought, "uh oh, Tomb Raider rip off". I couldn't have been more wrong. That one sequence damn near made the movie for me... damn near. It had me squealing like a school girl (to be fair, a Dairy Queen Banana Split elicits the same response).

Nonetheless, I was blown away by 3D aspect of it. I am tempted to watch the whole movie again on a true IMAX screen and not the faux IMAX that AMC is trying to pass off as the real deal. Ironically, I found myself way more entertained by the human set pieces than the robot drama. So, of you have to watch this misfire in the theaters, go for the transformers, but stay for the humans. Two and a half gobots out of five...heh heh jk.

2 out of 5

And now Don and Mike battle like bots in another round of....
THE 180 DEGREE RULE

MIKE: Ok, I really wanted to like the movie, but I, in good concience, couldn't recommend it

DON: Yeah, I'm actually sort of surprised. This seemed like it would be right up your alley. Lots of action, humor, babes -- your quintessential popcorn pic. For what it was, I actually thought it worked. Especially that opening sequence on Cybertron! I was surprised to hear you were unpleased by that! I thought it was cool!

MIKE: That part was great. I would have been happy if they would have stayed on Cybertron. As far as the babe thing. Is it just me, or did it seem like Bay was confused on how to shoot Rose Whatsherface. Almost every shot of her looked like a commercial. She gets out of a car, it looks like a car commercial. The first shot of her, i swear to God, looked like b roll footage of one of her victoria's secret shoots. So, on that end, I was kinda missing Megan Fox

DON: Umm, I think Michael Bay struggled with directing anything that didn't involve cars or explosions. His plot developing scenes were painfully bad. The characters were cartoonish and the story... I couldn't have written a more childish screenplay if I were a 2nd grader entering a young writer's competition. That scene you mention with the hot girl playing mind games with Megatron was a perfect example of this. At first, I was appalled at Bay's audacity to insult our intelligence like he did. Then it occurred to me that maybe he wasn't being audacious at all. Maybe he actually thought it was a believable scene. Like I said, Michael Bay has the mentality of a kid and devoid of any kind of sophistication... Perfect choice for Transformers...

MIKE: Although, could you imagine someone like Ridley Scott or Neill Blomkamp in the director's chair?

DON: Funny you should mention that. I actually thought about what a Christopher Nolan Transformers would have looked like. And the conclusion I came was I probably would have liked it better, but taking this material too seriously could also have the unintended consequence of making it less crowd pleasing... More pleasing to hardcore fans, no doubt, but less pleasing to the general population and let's not forget the rugrats... Speaking of rugrats, did you cringe at all hearing those young kids behind us squealing with glee at some of the film's darker moments?

MIKE: Not really, In the age of internet poliferation, I'll bet those kids have actively searched for dark stuff. One thing I was shocked at was they actually showed decepticons pretty much slaughtering humans. I think its a first in the Transformer films.

DON: Yeah, that was the kind of stuff I was referring to. I was a little troubled by how much the young kids behind us relished that stuff, but now that I think of it, I wasn't much different at that age and I turned out okay... well, that's debatable... But mainly, I wanted to mention that this movie is considerably darker than the first two movies which were definitely more kid-friendly.

MIKE: As with any "kid-friendly" series. They seem to get darker as they go on. Look at both Star Wars trilogies, or the Twilight movies {so I'm told, heh heh}.

X-Men: First Class

2011-06-23T23:13:00.000-07:00

Directed by Matthew Vaughn

Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, and Jennifer Lawrence

Don's take:
SO WRONG YET SO RIGHT

Massive liberties were taken. Not just with the source material, but with the very mythology that was built by the first four films of the film franchise. Characters were present that shouldn't have been. There are loving relationships between characters who seem to have no emotional connection in the previous films (whose events happen chronologically following the events of this film). Friendships that ran the course of years in the books go from inception to demise in mere weeks in the film. For me, a fan not just of the first two installments of the movie franchise, but also of the comic book series, these liberties were borderline maddening. Yet despite it all, with X-Men: First Class, we have yet another thoroughly enjoyable re-imagining of an established franchise. Its strengths thankfully far outweighed its flaws.

First Class is the franchise's de facto next installment in their X-Men: Origins series which began with the Wolverine film, but here we see the origin of the formation of Professor Xavier's team of virtuous mutant teens, the X-Men along with the genesis of their much more cynical foes, Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants. But most importantly, the film takes a closer look at the friendship between Xavier and Magneto that existed before their divergent philosophies forced them to become enemies.

It was here that the film won me over. One of my favorite things about the rivalry between Xavier and Magneto was that their conflict was fought not just through combat, but through debate. Their conflict was never really about who was stronger, but who was more correct. I was happy to see that brought to the fore with First Class and hope that the continue to expound upon the debate in the forthcoming sequels.

The story of Xavier's and Magneto's burgeoning friendship dominated the movie which was to its benefit. It was interesting and believable. There is one particularly good scene where Xavier helps his new friend to tap into the true depth of his power that even made me well up unexpectedly. It was scenes like this that really helped the film to rise above being simply an action film like its predecessors.

There were far less interesting side stories involving Xavier's teenage recruits and Xavier and Magneto's common enemy, the Hellfire Club, but thankfully, the did not dominate enough of the film to detract from my experience. And really, it was these scenes that brought to the film the action and special effects that fans of the franchise have come to expect, so to that extent, they were successful and an integral component to the movie. For me, though, I'd have been satisfied had the film been only about Xavier and Magneto.

It's been four films and over half a billion dollars of production now. How ironic it is that it took a franchise reboot that liberally rewrote the X-Men chronology and doesn't quite fall in line with the storyline of the franchise to finally recapture the spirit of the original comic series.

4 out of 5

Albert’s take:
SIX DEGREES OF MUTATION

“X-Men: First Class” is a poor adaptation, which is one thing, but it’s a poor movie to boot.

Imagine an X-Men adaptation that arbitrarily reshuffles timelines, lineups, powers and even sexes. Then imagine those aberrations appearing in a mock ‘60s setting culled directly from “Dr. No” without a hint of irony or believability -- “Austin Powers” without the camp.

Also imagine the X-Men’s adventures being reduced to a bad spy thriller where the heroes hunker down behind grassy knolls to survey the enemy through binoculars (with the old "figure-8-shaped eyeline match" fallacy that I wish would die already), and where most of the showdowns consist of characters raising and/or wiggling their fingers in histrionic psychic struggle, a la Uri Geller. Finally, imagine the presence of the talented James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender being neutralized by a miscast and needless Kevin Bacon.

Well, imagine no more, faithful readers! That movie is here today.

In my review of “Kick Ass,” I predicted that Matthew Vaughn would one day direct a hell of an action movie. This isn’t it. 

2 out of 5

And now... THE 180 DEGREE RULE

ALBERT: OK, we were both huge fans of the comic as kids -- "X-Men" was the book of choice among our friends -- so I knew we'd both have strong feelings about this movie, the origin story. But I just thought it tanked. The rewriting of the X-Men mythology was liberal and arbitrary to the point of sacrilege -- the changes weren't exploited in any novel way. The setting screamed fake, as if the art director learned everything he/she knew about the '60s from bad spy movies. And Kevin Bacon did not need to be as central to the movie as he was. This is a reboot, a prequel, supposedly a new take, so fresher faces like McAvoy and Fassbender shouldn't have been forced to play in Bacon's shadow.

DON: I don't disagree with any of the things you say, and I'll be honest, I almost went down the same path as you. But I thought they did such a fantastic job with Magneto's storyline and thought McAvoy and Fassbender were outstanding as Xavier and Magneto. I particularly liked what McAvoy brought to the character of Xavier playing him as a bright, charismatic playboy. I admit, at times, I had to suppress my logical mind because of the inconsistencies with the plot and timelines, but I enjoyed the two leads so much that I was happy to do so. It wasn't a resounding success, but it was a very satisfying movie for me. And you're right, there should have been less Bacon, but luckily, Fassbender and McAvoy had enough flavor to come through.

ALBERT: I think McAvoy and Fassbender are two of the best young actors in the movies. And yes, I did like their interplay as the allegorical Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. -- Magneto the nonapologist and Professor Xavier the peacemaker. But every time they displayed their powers, which was always in a literal, effusive fashion, I cringed and fell out of the movie just that much more.

DON: Hah, yes like how Xavier would touch his temple each time he would use his psychic power like he was a character in Bewitched. I admit, there was much to giggle or fret about in this movie and I could have written a much longer and more detailed review about all the things that I didn't like about this movie. But the fact of it is that Fassbender and McAvoy were so effective in the roles that those quibbles fell by the wayside for me. Clearly, they didn't have the same effect on you. But how do you think this movie compared to the earlier films?

ALBERT: The first one is the only one I've seen. I thought that was well done, because although it did rewrite the X-Men mythology a good deal, it did so with a purpose (especially where Rogue, Magneto and Wolverine were concerned) and was essentially true to the spirit of the comic. The first one also acknowledged that faithful readers might be watching, and so included plenty of winks for us. With this one, my jaw dropped when "Angel" gives Magneto his supervillain name and he accepts it without a second thought. Um, hello? The "Mag-NEAT-o/Mag-NET-o" debate is as old as the comic! To pass up this point is inexcusable, I think. I classify this movie along with "Superman Returns" -- a reboot that's so bad, it itself has to be rebooted.

Mr. Popper's Penguins

2011-06-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

Directed By Mark Waters

Starring Jim Carrey, Carla Gugino, Angela Lansbury and Clark Gregg

Don's take:
JIM CARRIES ANOTHER FILM

A shallow man loves his family but has allowed his career ambitions drive a wedge between himself and his loved ones. The long-suffering mother of his children has divorced him and is seeing another man, but they remain on friendly terms with shared custody of the children and all. Things continue about in this way until one day, fate deals him a wacky hand and the ensuing hi-jinx helps him to rediscover his soul and reconcile with his estranged ex and children… What movie did I just synopsize? If you guessed Mr. Popper's Penguins… You'd be correct! Only no prize because that's the obvious answer… this being a review of Popper's Penguins and all. If you guessed Liar Liar -- ding-ding-ding! Change "children" to "child" and you'd be more or less right too.

Like Liar Liar, there were many things to detest about Penguins. It contained many elements that I hate seeing in movies. There was the sitcom-ish plot, the gimmicks (a spell in Liar Liar; Penguins in this film), the caricature-ish villains, its many eye-roll inducing moments… This should have been a formula for disaster -- only it's not. Despite being a cliche-riddled sitcom, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit it but… well, I liked it. I liked Liar Liar too.

After a bit a soul searching, I think I got it figured out. There were many things that worked decades back Old Hollywood-age that don't work now, most notably sitcoms and musicals… It hasn't stopped Hollywood from trying, but modern efforts to recapture the magic of the films of Hollywood's Golden Age have largely been misses (don't get me started on Baz Luhrmann).

If you ask me, it's partly due to the increasing cynicism of audiences. It's hard to suspend disbelief in the age of information where we have all seen and heard everything. The improvement of filming techniques is also partly responsible. Simplistic plots, gimmicky shorelines and characters breaking out in song just work better in a movie whose cinematographic style is more closely modeled after stage plays than the hyper realistic cinematography we see in movies today. But the biggest problem I think is the loss of innocence in our Hollywood stars today. Sure, the stars of the Golden Age of films were probably not nuns and priests, but pre-internet the public was spared the gory details of their personal lives. You could go watch a Doris Day movie and just lose yourself in her radiance. There was no Gawker.com or Perez Hiltons to deliver us daily reminders of her many marriages or her right-wing political bent.

Yes, we know all the gory details about Jim Carrey: his ugly split with with his Playmate girlfriend, his sad childhood, his devotion to self help books… There's just no getting away from it. But despite all that, Jim Carrey can more truly and deeply channel that innocence from Hollywood's Golden Age than just about any other actor or actress in Hollywood today. And he does it in a way that draws you in -- that you can believe. There's a real Jimmy Stewart vibe about Jim Carrey that you just can't find in any other actor or actress working today.

Mr. Popper's Penguins is a dumb movie. There will be many moviegoers who will feel dirty after watching the movie because of its stupidity. But for me, with Carrey as its heart, this dumb movie wasn't so dumb. Carrey has the ability to take dumb and turn it into charm; to take cliche and make it homage; to take simplicity and make it nostalgia. This movie could have -- should have -- been a total artistic failure. But Carrey screen presence saves a movie that quite simply wouldn't have worked with anybody else at its center.

4 out of 5

Angela's take:
POPPER'S PENGUINS DELIVERS LAUGHS BUT NO SURPRISES

I'll start with a confession, when it comes to rating a kids movie, I am slightly more lenient than normal. So often they are either dumbed down to much to appeal to the kids and so the adults are bored or it has to many adult references and jokes so it feels inappropriate for the kids. Mr. Popper's Penguins is neither of these things, it strikes a perfect balance, it won't be winning any awards anytime soon but it's cute.

Jim Carrey plays Popper, an expert at acquiring landmarks - a workaholic to the core. His father (shown in flashbacks) was also a workaholic and gone for most of his childhood, sending back various souvenirs from his travels. Now divorced, he is a part time dad with a posh bachelor pad that his kids don't relish spending time at.

All that changes when he receives one last souvenir from his late father, a live penguin from Antarctica. At first it is simply an inconvenience, one he can't wait to give back, but soon becomes a way back into his kids life when one turns into many and he can no longer hide them. What follows is the typical heart warming tale, but done with Carrey zaniness. There are some heartwarming scenes and the penguins are quasi CGI believable, but there are no surprises in this script.

In an attempt to get rid of the penguins, Popper contacts every animal organizations in the city, finally getting a hold of the local zoo and a over zealous zoo keeper hell bent on getting the rare penguins for himself. This allows for elaborate plots to hide them for the neighbors and the zoo keeper once he decides to keep them, in his "no pets allowed" apartment.

Angela Lansbury makes an unexpected appearance as the owner of a landmark restaurant he is trying to buy. Her appearance adds both charm and class (and a little bit of old school hollywood). There is a secondary storyline involving Popper and his ex-wife Amanda (played by Carla Gugino) and whether his recently added roommates will cause her to fall back in love with him. It's never explained however why they divorced, and they're so amicable you're not sure why they ever broke up in the first place. It's obvious from the beginning that they are going to end up back together, but it's still cute to see the two kids trying to get mom and dad back together.

No one does zany like Carrey, and that is what ultimately saves this movie from being completely inane. My daughter laughed several times and instantly said she wanted to buy it on DVD. So, if you don't expect to much, you will smile and have fun with your kiddo.

2 out of 5

And now... THE 180 DEGREE RULE

ANGELA: Well, we both ended up liking this movie even though we admit its essentially dumb but saved by Carrey agreed? It's like watching a less versatile Jimmy Stewart.

DON: Yeah, it wasn't just dumb. It was infuriatingly insipid. But Jim Carrey has a way of selling this kind of a movie. Like I said, had anyone else been cast as Popper, it would have been a sure contender for a Razzie. As for Carrey's versatility, I'd completely disagree. I think he has shown a tremendous amount of range in his career.

ANGELA: In what?? his expertise is zany faces and butt jokes, but I'm ok with that. There was part in "Doing time on Maple Drive", but that's the only thing i can think of. why doesn't Carl Gugino do better roles? I really like her but am sick of seeing her relegated to this kid friendly fare. Okay "Eternal Sunshine of through Spotless Mind" just came to mind but otherwise....

DON: "Man on the Moon", "The Truman Show", the sadly forgotten and underrated "The Majestic". I thought he was superb in the recent "I Love You Phillip Morris" as well. He has such a distinguished resume that it actually really gnaws at me that he has never even been nominated for an Academy Award. This perception that he only does dick and fart jokes has really over-shadowed what I consider to be a brilliant career. It's true that he didn't really get to show much in Penguins, but the fact that he could take a formulaic and frankly, stupid movie like Penguins and make it likable is an accomplishment unto itself.

ANGELA: I hear ya... I think I forget about those movies because i didn't like them. So, this cliched but cute hot mess. I think it was saved by casting pure and simple; Carrey, Gugino, Lansbury and Clark Gregg. The penguins themselves don't really do much and he seemed more upset about one of the eggs not hatching then they did. I did like the apartment wonderland aspect, albeit unbelievable.

DON: Yeah, I was a little dismayed to see Carrey co-starring in a movie with computer animated penguins, but I actually didn't end up minding them. I thought the subplot with the egg was actually sort of sweet and was meant to show that Popper had come to care for something more than himself. I think kids movies have a tradition of touching on grown-up themes too, don't they? Like Bambi's mother being killed. Although children might be disturbed by stuff like this in movies, I think the hope is that they'll walk away with a slightly better understanding on important things like life and death. But it sounds like Kyra wasn't all too disturbed since she was asking for the movie on DVD, right?

ANGELA: I would agree that its par for the course with this type of movie & no, my kiddo was no worse for the wear. So, harmless and affecting but no need to put it on the Oscar short list. No read surprise there, but like i said I've sent much mote painful times at the movies with my kid so all in all not bad.

Midnight in Paris

2011-06-21T22:42:00.001-07:00

Directed by Woody Allen
Starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates, Marion Cotillard and Adrien Brody

Albert's take:
OWEN'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE
"Midnight in Paris" isn't great Woody, but it's good Woody, which means it's cute, charming, and a harmless way to pass an hour and a half -- preferably with a date and some popcorn.

I'll admit, the first 15 minutes or so did fill me with a rush of nostalgia, and hope. There were the old, familiar white-on-black titles in Windsor font. The wistful, melancholy jazz score. The literate, encyclopedically dense bickering. This was vintage Woody!

Owen Wilson plays Gil Pender, a self-described Hollywood hack on a pre-wedding trip with his fiancee, Inez (Rachel McAdams), and Inez' parents. Gil is the Woody Allen character, the guy who's just a little bit smarter and more principled than his peers but too insecure to leave their company.

While his in-laws-to-be fuss over furniture prices and hotel service, Gil gets taken by romantic notions of Paris, wishing he could have written novels as part of the Lost Generation. And one night when the clock strikes midnight, Gil is indeed whisked off into the company of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Josephine Baker, Dali, Gertrude Stein, Picasso and others. And thus the movie lands squarely in the realm of the absurd and inconsequential.

Allen treats the Lost Generation with approximately the depth and nuance of "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." The actors play less like believable versions of the artists they depict than like animated cardboard cutouts of the same, never once appearing or acting "out of character." (There's Scott Fitzgerald with his pomaded hair! There's Hemingway, talking exactly the way he writes!)

The characters have the peculiar habit of referring to each other by their full names and seem unbothered that Gil seems to know everything about them on first meeting. And without fail, Gil's outfits during these encounters are timeless enough to pass muster in the 1920s.

So alas, "Midnight in Paris" is not the wicked satire on classism or America-centrism that it shapes up to be. It feels more like a dream sequence from an '80s sitcom, with a resolution that's about as obvious.

But there are a few performers worth noting, all of them deserving far better than this movie's script. Wilson, with his aw-shucks demeanor, finds the thoughtfulness in Woody's dialogue while leaving behind the neurosis. Kathy Bates steals scenes as Gertrude Stein, a woman who's as vulgar as she is learned. Adrien Brody channels Salvador Dali (albeit a manic Dali) eerily well. And Marion Cotillard is good in just about anything.

If this Woody doesn't sound to your liking, I advise you to wait -- another one'll be along shortly.

3 out of 5

Shawn's take:
ABSOLUTELY 'INCEPTION'-AL

It’s been a long time since I was moved by a Woody Allen movie. I mean, a long time. I liked "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" and "Match Point." Both films were slightly cold depictions of WASP-y upper crusters. Prior to that, I think I have to go all the way back to 1993’s "Manhattan Murder Mystery," which was made right after his scandalous affair. And I believe it was then that I began to check out as a fan. The affair had less to do with it than the quality of his films. My feeling about this period of Woody’s career from 1994 to now? Feh.

"Midnight in Paris" comes as quite a surprise to me. Allen has made a sweet romantic comedy. I loved its fanciful, simple twist on the genre. It’s not just a rom-com. This film is not cinematic cock-teasing about whether or not two people come to be together. It doesn’t present its lovers standing against a whole universe conspiring to keep them apart, just long enough to make a dramatic reunion. The actual main love in this film is between the protagonist Gil (Owen Wilson) and a past era in Parisian history. It’s a journey and Paris gives Gil a doorway into the past. He steps through it and finds himself consorting with an array of amazing people. Floating from party to café and back, he runs into the expatriates of the 1920s: Picasso, Dali, T. S. Eliot, and many other famous names. Along the way, he learns about himself and his relationship with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams).

Adding to this, Allen puts Gil through a mini-"Inception" dream within a dream. The inner dream is the climax of the film. I found myself in tears during this moment. The way Gil comes to his realization is not overly dramatic. It is gentle and meaningful. This stands as a stark contrast to the near hollow center of "Inception." I think Christopher Nolan needs to see this film -- not only for that lesson, but to see how he missed a major opportunity with Marion Cotillard. In "Midnight in Paris," Woody gives her vibrant dialogue and she cuts through all Woody-isms. Many actors in Woody Allen films fall prey to the Woody Allen style of speech. Owen Wilson, while charming enough in this film, can’t break out of that mold. Cotillard plays her role wholly uniquely. If you saw her play Edith Piaf, she is every bit as mesmerizing here.

I was surprised to find myself antsy in the film’s first shots, a montage of postcard Parisian scenes set to an old song. It goes on for the entire song, and I started to ask, “Okay, when is this thing going to start?” Once that ended, I was treated to a fun, witty, magical tale. And I was also grateful that Woody was not in this one.

4 out of 5

And now, Shawn and Albert hit the banks of the Seine for ...
THE 180 DEGREE RULE

SHAWN: So first off, I have seen most of Woody's films. I am an avid fan of his films up to, as I said in the review, "Manhattan Murder Mystery." What's your experience level with Woody?

ALBERT: Extremely spotty! Love his earliest works, then "Annie Hall," but about the only film of the Woody Renaissance that I've caught is "Match Point." So yeah, I don't think I'm the authority on putting this film in its proper context.

SHAWN: I liked this film a little more than you did. But I suspect it's because I was a huge fan and want to continue that. So whether or not I'm overexcited about it or not, I don't know. I loved the film. I will admit, it's not perfect by any means. It takes a while for its setup to pay off. I loved where this film took me.

ALBERT: I'm definitely a fan, don't get me wrong. And I think if the movie had kept with the trajectory of its first 15 minutes or so, I would have loved it. I hung onto every word of that petty squabbling between Gil and the others. I even liked the homage to "Annie Hall's" Marshall McLuhan scene -- Gil one-ups Michael Sheen's snob character by dropping firsthand knowledge on him. But Woody decided to go light with this one, I think. It was clear to me from Gil's first meeting with the Lost Generation that the movie was going to be lighthearted, maybe even trifling. And that's fine, but I did get the creeping feeling I was watching a grown-up "Bill and Ted's."

SHAWN: I can see that. But if the '20s people seem slightly drawn, I would say that it's because they are figments of Gil's psyche. His knowledge of them is cursory. He even admits he's not well read for a writer. But this head trip does lead him to the realization that his longing for another time is futile. It's also slightly heartbreaking. Allen is clearly expressing his longing for love and the past. Were this film not coated in sweetness, it could actually be kind of depressing. And maybe there's something that should be explored there. Maybe that something could make a much better movie. While I mentioned in my review the lesson for Christopher Nolan, I also should have mentioned that Allen is not really one to be teaching lessons, what with his track record of late.

ALBERT: You know, your reading of the movie makes the movie make more sense to me. I guess I was guilty of taking the movie literally. (That's what movies do!) I'm with you on the movie's sweetness -- it dared to be romantic (in the "dreamer" sense), it dared to say there are some idealists left in the world. Which is why I thought it made a good piece of date opium.

SHAWN: Date opium for people who aren't preoccupied with instant gratification. I just have to say it. People's tastes, mine included, are evolving towards addiction. The more films stick to convention, the better Hollywood is at perfecting a type of entertainment that is easy for them to make. Woody Allen is sort of his own Hollywood. He rolls films out every year, and has his own conventions. This one certainly makes good use of them.

Super 8

2011-06-15T23:04:00.000-07:00

Directed by J.J. Abrams

Starring Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Riley Griffiths and Ron Eldard

Don's take:
LIKE RIP VAN WINKLE, SUMMER MOVIES AWAKE FROM A VERY LONG SLUMBER

It's strange to see a style of film that was popular when I was a kid being brought back as retro, but that's essentially what we have with Super 8, a throwback to those great adventure films of the 80's featuring kids, like the Goonies, Stand By Me or E.T. But despite being decades older, I was no less affected by the magic and wonder Super 8 had to offer. By the end of the first act, I was 12 years old again.

It was not at all what I was expecting based on the elusive advertising blitz for the movie. I was half expecting this to be a spiritual successor to The J.J. Abrams produced Cloverfield, but it was nothing of the sort. Super 8 tells the story of a group of friends who are making a movie when they become entangled into a mess involving an alien being held hostage by the U.S. military.

And I couldn't have been more thrilled that Abrams's latest monster movie really had very few similarities to Cloverfield at all. Cloverfield, while innovative in its own way, lacked the heart and soul that is seemingly becoming Abrams signature. With Star Trek and Super 8, Abrams has shown that one of his greatest strengths is to deliver characters that shine and that you fall in love with even against a backdrop of spectacular special effects. As cool as the movie's effects were, it was the loving and nostalgic portrayal of the world of the children that captured my imagination. I haven't felt this kind of wistful nostalgia since I rediscovered The Wonder Years as an adult half a decade ago.

And Abrams has assembled a talented cast of of mostly unknowns to tell his story, but most notably, Joel Courtney as Joe Lamb, the Kevin Arnold of the movie, Elle Fanning in a star-making role as the angsty popular girl and Joe's love interest, and Riley Griffiths as the funny fat kid.

I know he is a few years deep in his career, but I think Abrams is a fresh and welcome new voice in Hollywood. He's a director who can make $300 million dollar on a $50 million budget, and can make it with the passion of a hardcore fan, and the creativity, sincerity and skill of a young Spielberg. I am truly excited to see what Abrams has in store for us next.

The past few summer movie seasons have been chocked full of uninspired big budget sequels or otherwise unmemorable films and they have been a disappointment to say the last. Super 8 heralds the return of the Summer Movie Season. Not just for 2011, but for movies in general. It's good to have you back.

5 out of 5

Angela's take:
MYSTERY WRAPPED IN NOSTALGIA

From the first scenes in Super 8, I could tell I was going to love this movie... a lot. Wrapped in early 80's nostalgia, it was like getting a 2hr cinematic gift. A trip back to my childhood and my favorite Speilberg movies of the era; Goonies, ET, Poltergeist and a little of JJ Abrams "Cloverfield". The story is centered around a group of young teens spending a summer making a zombie movie together after the death of main character Joe's (Joel Courtney) mom in an accident at the plant where she and Alice's (Elle Fanning) dad (the always good Ron Eldard) work. Joe's dad wants him to go to a 6 week summer camp, as he's having trouble dealing with being a full time dad, but he is determined to stay home and hang with his group of six friends and help finish the movie.

Right away you feel a sense of deja vu watching their suburban neighborhood unfold... the way all the kids hang out at each others houses, enter through bedroom windows and staying out until dark only to sneak out again later to meet up. Trying to guess the year this all takes place in is half the fun (hey! theres a Rubik's cube.. but no ATARI). It is on such a night that the movie sets up the real plot line. while filming a scene for their movie at a railroad station, where Charles, wanting to get "production value" wants to shoot a scene while the actual train is coming in. While doing so, Joe observes a car drive onto the tracks and the train derail and explode. Scared and confused, they are told by the driver of the truck (a teacher at their school), to never speak of what happened. No one can forget or believe what happened though, and afterwards, very strange things start to happen in their small town. Cars become mangled for no reason, dogs disappear and then finally people. I loved the stories within the story, especially the touching interaction between Alice and Joe who develop a sweet friendship/first love during the making of their movie. Fanning has the ability to speak volumes with just her eyes and has the same wise beyond her years persona as her older sister Dakota. There is a scene with Joe and Alice watching old home movies of his mom that literally brought me to tears.

There is plenty of humor throughout as well, courtesy mostly of bossy Charles who is the director and writer of the movie their shooting. His constant stress about getting just the right shot as well as his interaction with a hapless stoner who works at the local film store is priceless.

After the strange happenings begin, the remainder of the movie is the search for it's origin and why things just aren't adding up. Yes, this is a definite homage to Speilberg films of the 80's Abrams is making, but I didn't mind for a minute, and neither will you. It's a great time to revisit and a reminder of when films were better at showing the angst of preteens in a funny yet still respectful way, with no nudity or cliches.

Make sure to stay until after the credits roll, (SPOILER ALERT)you'll be rewarded with a viewing of their finished Super 8 zombie movie and it is well worth the wait. (END SPOILER)

5 out of 5

And now… THE 180 DEGREE RULE

ANGELA: Well, reading your review I can see we are on the same page on this... great movie, like a hug from our childhood welcoming us back into the fold. I agree that the movie is a welcome repreive from the unecessary sequels and mindless summer blockbusters. How did you feel about comments I read that stated that JJ Abrams "homage" might have been over the top??

DON: To that I say -- an Ice Cream Sundae goes over top with sugar... but it's still frickin' delicious. But all seriousness, I assuming by saying Super 8 is taking the homage to far, they're implying that it is a copycat film. But I didn't get that impression at all. While there are definitely winks to the audience, Super 8 is definitely its own thing. And it's pretty sweet.

ANGELA: I agree... especially the interaction between Joe and Alice. I swear those Fanning kids come out of the womb being able to act. I also was pleasantly surprised to see Ron Eldard as her dad, I thought he did a great job and is often overlooked as an actor. My only gripe was (SPOILER ALERT) at the end when the necklace his move gave him when to the water tower too... would have liked that to bounce back to him as if the alien knew it's importance. (END SPOILER) Minor thing, just saying. I loved trying to figure out exactly what year it was while watching it by the surrounding clues.... I was guessing like 1983, but I guess it's supposed to be 1979.

DON: I agree about Elle Fanning. I actually think she may have huge things in her future, maybe even surpassing the heights of her sister's illustrious career. I think Dakota, while talented, might have a little trouble acting like "average" girl. There's just too much wisdom behind her eyes. Elle has a much more natural, relatable way about her that I think will make her much easier to cast. And yes, that scene definitely tugged at my heart strings as well. In fact, there were many scenes that did that, and it was welcome. Confession: since I started doing the Alias Men, I've had trouble crying at movies and I love me a sad movie. But Super 8 managed to melt the ice off of my heart. So I'm becoming a bigger and bigger fan of J.J. Abrams which each new movie he puts out. What are your thoughts on Abrams as a director?

ANGELA: I really like his style, I think he has found his niche and this movie showcased that. There were aspects of Cloverfield that I liked, but overall it had a very amateurish quality to the direction and storytelling. Some of this was of course intended as it was supposed to be filmed real time. This time around, I felt he found a great balance between the effects and the heart. There were almost 3 movies going on at the same time; first crush/love, alien movie and then the movie they were making themselves. The "fat" kid friend they cast was inspired, he had be laughing out loud several times. I was happy to hear he is a local boy made good from Issaquah. I also liked the stoner film store employee for some laughs a la "Dazed and Confused".

DON: Oh, no kidding. Good on the kid from Issaquah. Just want to clarify to our readers, Abrams actually didn't direct Cloverfield, but he was the producer of the film and I could definitely see his influence. You know, I feel like I might have been a little over-critical of the recent summer movie seasons. There have been some good summer movies that I liked. Iron Man comes to mind. And let's not forget The Dark Knight. But Super 8 really brought back that magical quality that's been missing from summer movies for a long time. I truly felt swept away by the movie like I haven't felt in a very long time.

ANGELA: Me too! Like I was 10 years old again and watching Back to the Future or Goonies or something. That's the good thing about getting older, if you wait long enough stuff starts to be made with your generation in mind. Finally, an upside to aging!. Even the way the kids talked to each other felt retro, in a great way. I liked not seeing any texting or cell phones, ipads/ipods etc... The walkman comment by the cop in the conveience store was priceless!!

DON: Yeah, I'm sure glad Abrams had the idea to bring back this era of movies. Until Super 8 was made, I didn't even really realize this era of movies was there to be brought back! It was great to see it with a new, grown up set of eyes and it was a wonderful and fun way to spend a couple of hours at the movies.

Kung Fu Panda 2

2011-06-09T22:57:00.000-07:00

Directed by Jennifer Yuh

Starring Jack Black, Angelina Jolie and Jackie Chan

Angela's take:
NOT QUITE SEQUEL WORTHY

Maybe they should be called extensions, not sequels because this movie seemed more to expand on the first Kung Fu Panda movie (albeit not as well) rather than cover any new ground. You know these days that if a movie does even slightly well there will likely be a sequel, some feel forced and unnecessary, some feel warranted even needed to continue a story and characters we have grown to love. For me, Kung Fu Panda 2 falls somewhere in the middle. It was charming and funny and the characters are still loveable, but I didn't love this movie.

The central theme this time is family and Po somehow just now realizing that his true father is not a goose (don't ask how just go with it). Po battles with this revelation throughout while the action for the furious five takes place this time in China, where they face new villain Lord Shen (Gary Oldman). Po is trying to figure out where he really came from and it turns out that Lord Shen played a key part. There are some good fight sequences and we see Po as a full kung fu warrior, even though one of the funnier bits still involves food as he tries to put as many wontons in his mouth as possible. My daughters favorite parts involved Lord Shen and his cannons as we see Po go up against him while finding his much sought after "inner peace". There are funny moments, even touching ones as we see a softer side of Anglelina Jolie's Tigress.

It was the message of appreciating where your life takes you not just how it starts off though, that was worth it for me. Po learns that had his specific journey and been born under the circumstances he was, he would not have been adopted, had to strive to overcome and ultimately become part of the furious five.

Po's father (Mr. Goose) should be the one to have the sequel as his scenes in both movies are the best parts. To see him be so overprotective and worried about his grown panda son at three times his size and bearing no genetic similarities is hilarious. I also enjoyed the depiction of what it truly means to be a father, that they are not born but are made and that Po's father became his father the moment he saw him.

In the end though, there was nothing memorable enough about the sequel to recommend it, but that's not to say you will leave disappointed either. I just think it would be easier and cheaper to rent the original and stay home.

2 out of 5

Albert's take:
THE GONGMEN TOWN MUSICIANS

The difference between “Kung Fu Panda 2” and its predecessor is the difference between “Sanjuro” and Yojimbo”: The sequel is bigger, with more action, grander settings, higher stakes and more high jinks, and yet is somehow -- less.

In hindsight, the original was a triumph: a spoof of and homage to chopsocky Hong Kong cinema, lovingly told, and simultaneously something all its own. It didn’t rely on gags, but derived its wit from the interplay between the hopeless Fish out of Water -- er, Panda out of Forest? -- Po (Jack Black) and those dour, anthropomorphic kung fu masters the Furious Five.

However, now that the sequel sees the Furious Five on board with the fully realized Po, there’s not a whole lot for them to do except play second (and third, and fourth, and fifth, and sixth) fiddle and keep mum. (Jackie Chan as Monkey, for example, has only one distinct line that I can remember.)

With Po carrying most of the gags on his own, Jack Black seems a lot more forced and predictable, as if he knows he’s supposed to be in a comedy. My smirks probably equaled my laughs, truth be told.

The quest that they’re on isn’t new territory. It involves another effetely sinister villain with a British accent: the razor-feathered peacock Lord Shen (a hammy Gary Oldman, who I could have sworn was Derek Jacobi), out to conquer China with a new WMD, the cannon.

It’s this movie’s journey rather than its destination, so to speak, that’s worth the ticket price. Whereas the first used sharp camera angles to give viewers a sense of high-flying movement, the sequel explodes the borders of the original to great sweeping effect.

This isn’t the sound-stage China of the original, but a mystique-filled land of limestone peaks, mist, upward-sloping eaves, pagodas and endless waterways -- truly a land of “rivers and lakes,” as “jianghu” (the Chinese term for the world of martial arts) denotes.

And I was happy to see James Hong steal the show again as Po’s “father,” Mr. Ping the goose -- the alternately doting and domineering Chinese parent with the singsong voice.

Judging by how “Kung Fu Panda 2” doesn’t quite manage to stand on its own, I don’t see there being much more adventuring ahead for the Furious Five Plus One. But the movie does make a passably entertaining addendum, sort of like a 90-minute deleted scene. Take that as you will.

3 out of 5

And now... NO 180 DEGREE RULE!!

Yep, no 180 this week. Unfortunately, schedules didn't permit us to complete a 180 for Kung Fu Panda. But we'll be back to form next week, so stick around!

The Hangover 2

2011-06-01T21:58:00.000-07:00

Directed by Todd Phillips

Starring Bradley Cooper, Zack Galifianakis, Ed Helms, and Ken Jeong

Shawn's take:
IT AIN'T OVER YET

It seems that the popular notion about Hangover 2 is that it’s an inferior retread of the first Hangover. Well, I would have to generally agree. If it’s inferior, though, it is by a very slim margin, and mainly because it is the second of the two. Since all the elements that made the first film a success return fully intact, I had a hard time finding any fault. Four dudes get together to have a wild time, in a vacation city, and awake to a very sobering morning after. The ensuing plot is their search to piece together what happened the night before. The humor again is dispensed in small cryptic doses, slowly revealing the enormity of what went down. The only real noticeable difference here, besides the fact that it is set in Thailand, is that the raunch factor has been dialed up a few numbers.

The film begins with the same set up, Phil’s (Bradley Cooper)phone call. Things got out of hand and it’s bad. This time it is Stu who is the Groom. Like the first film, his wife to be is another beautiful, blank trophy. It’s not something that many people notice, but lack of characterization in females is a staple of male driven screenwriting. If you’ve seen Bridesmaids, notice the difference. The two women who wrote that film actually wrote parts for the men. The contrast is an excellent example of the problems with how men objectify women in film, and how that can translate to the overall limitations of acting roles for women.

Jamie Chung is the actress in the role of Lauren, the bride to be. She is Korean American. Here, she is required to play a Thai woman, nothing wrong with that. But that’s just it, in Hollywood, you have limitation upon limitation for women. Looking over Jamie’s film roles, without knowing what types of characters they are, here’s some of the names: Hooters Girl, Misty, Chi Chi, Takara Sato, Lady Silk. Granted, for every one of those names, there’s another that doesn’t sound like a stereotype. But in The Hangover 2, we don’t ever get her maiden name. Clearly, being cast in The Hangover as a female is a thankless paycheck. Meanwhile the actor who landed the role of Kristen Wiig’s boyfriend in Bridesmaids has easily been elevated.

But I’ve gotten a little off track. The three leads invest every scene with all their effort. Zack Galifianakis is in top form evoking some interesting nuances in his Alan. There’s a universal truth at work in his idolizing of Bradley Cooper’s character. Alan’s need to identify with and be close to Phil is something most people go through before high school ends. That Alan still thinks like a high-schooler is the essence of Zack’s approach to him.

And speaking of Phil, Bradley Cooper is seen as a sex symbol. He doesn’t do much for me in that level, yet he has the kind of presence in a film that is fully convincing. This is not a huge stretch, but he plays frustrated very well. The weaker actor is Ed Helms as Stu. Thankfully the plot twists keep him pretty much just reacting in horror all the time, and he can do that good enough. Then there’s the supporting Ken Jeong. He was hysterical in the first one. He’s just as funny in this one. Some of the jokes are made at his expense, and he is fearless in that respect. Ken Jeong’s Mr Chow is a unique character in a film where Galifianakis would seem the stand out. But Jeong is the star of every scene he is in.

So that leaves me with one final discussion point about the film. Like the first Hangover, the end credits are flanked by phone pics of what happened the night before. The succession of revelations is hilarious. And then about the second to last pic, I was sort of taken aback. The picture restaged the famous Saigon execution with Bradley Cooper holding the gun and Ken Jeong acting like he’s taking a bullit in the head. I don’t think many people in the audience got the significance of the staging because I didn’t hear a reaction. As I laughed, I quickly stopped myself and realized what I was laughing at. Then the film ended and I exited with some thinking to do.

At the very least, it was out of place in this film. They weren’t even in Vietnam. Both the shooter and the victim of the original picture were Vietnamese. This was probably one of those in the moment cute jokes that came up on the set. But sometimes, what happens on the set should stay on the set because it comes off as originating from the all-Asians-are-the-same mentality. And there are plenty of better ways to make fun of that mindset, least of all by evoking an image of American shame. Am I being too sensitive? No. It’s not that I was offended. It’s just that the pic took me completely out of the film and stifled a perfectly steady laugh buzz. The Hangover 2 could use that small trim, but that’s about all.

Don's take:
MARRIED TO ITS GIMMICK

Stu can't believe this is happening again. With the breakout success of the first film, the sequel is absolutely no surprise to me. But I was dismayed to see it unfold nearly in lock step with the way events unfolded in the original film.

The original Hangover was a hit because of its unique premise and winning cast. While the cast is as likable as ever, and despite the mega budget and creative freedom the success of the first film earned the film's makers, I felt like there was so little growth from the first film that it was almost like I was watching the first movie again, only without the surprise or, frankly, the laughs.

I wasn't a huge fan of the original Hangover and this movie was without a doubt a step in the wrong direction. The Hangover 2 had its moments, but not nearly enough to justify a recommendation.

2 out of 5

And now... THE 180 DEGREE RULE

DON: You know, in a lot of ways, I agree with your assessment of the movie. I didn't think this movie was much worse that the original movie, but I didn't much care for the first movie either. I did hate Hangover 2, per se. It didn't offend me and I wasn't clamoring for the exit while watching it. Frankly, my first instinct was to rate it a 3. But by the end of my review, I just realized there was absolutely nothing about the movie that I though merited a recommendation. It was just too too much like the original movie to me... Virtually a remake. And it wasn't particularly amusing... I barely laughed throughout the movie, and when I did, it was never more than a chuckle.

SHAWN: I might be actually in the minority for liking this movie. I laughed through most of it. But some of the jokes that I laughed at didn't get much of a laugh from the rest of the audience. Mr Chow's entrance had me laughing out loud. And yeah, and my laughter sort of rang out. Maybe that kind of joke is more palatable to a gay man. I don't know. Then of course the strip joint revelation didn't shock me. I knew early on what was up, and then the flopping and bobbing had me rolling. But most of the audience didn't seem to know what hit them. These are people who the majority of laughed hard at the Jason Bateman movie trailer where his wife has the shits. I never laughed at that. But I've seen the preview at the last five films I've seen and audiences annoyingly just eat it up. So I'm not your average moviegoer.

DON: Yeah, Hangover 2 definitely had its moments, but for me they were too few and far between. Ken Jeong's pecker is always good for a laugh, although I cringe at the thought of fueling the fire of the small asian penis narrative. I assure all those reading this column, Ken Jeong's penis is freakishly small and should not be used to make any kind of generalizations. The photos in the credits were funny like before; arguably the best part of the movie. But I must admit, I did not catch the reference you mentioned. I've never seen these photos and fully intend to Google these after we're done chatting here...

SHAWN: I suppose I can say I've seen his penis, but I have no memory of seeing it. It was more like a hairy chest nipple. When he wakes up all innocent stretching, I had to give it to him. Most movies would have had the character freak out that their penis was seen. He just got up from sleeping. It was priceless. And don't worry about the Asian penis stereotype with me. I know otherwise. As far as the photo goes, look the photo up. It's famous and I know you've seen it. You maybe didn't see the film's recreation since it was, like, the second to last pic. It was a total albatross. They shouldn't have included it. On the movie overall, I didn't love it or hate it. I had a fun time laughing from time to time while trying to unspool the mystery. The Hangover films are mysteries, and I engage them in that manner. Seeing the way oddities develop into logical explanations is part of the charm of the two films.

DON: Lol, it's not so much you I worry about. It's more the crowds of Neanderthal frat boys that come to see this movie. They don't need any more ammo... A couple notes about the movie. I enjoyed seeing "Annie's Boobs" in the movie. In case you're not a "Community" fan, "Annie's Boobs" is the monkey who is also a series regular on "Community." Also, Ken Jeong is one of my favorite cast members from "Community", so I particularly enjoyed his scenes in Hangover. But frankly, other than these few things, Hangover had little to offer me.

SHAWN: Well, I hate to think how that monkey got that name. Give my sympathies to Annie.

Priest

2011-05-25T22:32:00.001-07:00

Directed by Scott Stewart

Starring Paul Bettany, Maggie Q, Karl Urban, Cam Gigandet and Lily Collins

Don's take:
HIGH CONCEPT, LOW AMBITION

Still smarting from the disappointment of Legion, the last film to star Paul Bettany, I came in to Priest with lowered expectations. There are obviously many parallels with religion and war being themes in both films, so I fully expected more of the same. But Priest thankfully had slightly more to offer.

I thought the concept was particularly intriguing. Adapted from a Korean graphic novel of the same name, Priest capitalizes on the growing popularity of vampire stories, but takes the most unique look at the relationship between humans and vampires that I've seen since last year's Daybreakers. Priest tells story of a world plagued by war between humans and Vampires. With religion being the humans' ultimate weapon against their foe, the Catholic Church has become not just the government, but the military as well, its holy men serving as politicians and soldiers.

By no means does Priest put humans and vampires on equal footing, but it does bring to light some interesting parallels between the two factions. The humans are not much more virtuous or holy than the Vampires and Priest does not look at their conflict as a war of good versus evil so much as survival of the fittest. And both factions beliefs and lifestyles revolve around the consumption of blood -- vampires consume human blood while Catholic Churchgoers consume wine symbolizing the blood of Christ for redemption.

But its most interesting contribution to vampire lore has got to be its use of the Priests. While other Vampire-themed films have no doubt included the use of religion as a weapon against the vampire enemy, this is the first example I can think of where the Priests are more akin to soldiers than holy men. And if you think about it, it's really a no-brainer.

But as much as I enjoyed its concepts, the film doesn't quite live up to its promise. It's lead characters are dispassionate and boring when they are not engaged in some kind of a fight. Sure, they're soldiers, but so was Jeremy Renner's character in the Hurt Locker, and his character was nuanced, intense, playful… far from wooden like we see here. Bettany is as fine an actor as Renner, so it pains me to see him take lessons from the Keanu Reeves school of drama.

And for an action movie, nothing is more boring to me than when our heroes are highly skilled warriors and their enemies are brainless zombies. I have little interest in seeing a man or woman with the skills of a Special Forces agent mowing down scores of animated flesh. Not to say that I wasn't somewhat entertained by the movements on the screen, but my entertainment was considerably diminished when I saw that the vampires were not intelligent vampires, but monsters.

If you liked Legion, you're more than likely to love Priest. Priest is better than Legion. But that's not saying much if you ask me.

3 out of 5

Albert’s take:
THE MAN WHOSE NAME IS AGENT SMITH

“Priest” uses the same formula as “The Matrix” and “Neon Genesis: Evangelion” series, with lesser but passable results.

That formula: A) Plunder the design elements of various iconic movies -- in “Priest’s” case, “Blade Runner,” “Blade,” Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, “Aliens” and even “The Matrix.”

B) Underlay those design elements with a hokey mishmash of too-deep themes that allow the movie to feign importance -- in “Priest’s” case, religious fundamentalism, separation of church and state, and genocide -- but never explore those themes deeper than on a comic book backstory level.

With most movies, I ask myself, “What’s the movie trying to accomplish, and how well does it accomplish that?” With “Priest,” a movie that lacks any artistic ambition as far as I can tell, I asked myself instead “Why am I watching this?”

My answer is, for the sheer entertainment value of watching filmmakers desperately, and sometimes cleverly, tread that fine line between plagiarism and homage.

Paul W.S. Anderson’s “Resident Evil: Apocalypse,” which I hated, stole its villain wholesale from “The Matrix:” He’s a slick-haired, shade-wearing guy with a halting, sinister delivery. “Priest” also apes Agent Smith -- but arbitrarily dresses him as Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name character from Leone’s Dollars Trilogy.

That, to me, is funny and worth a few sympathy points. If you’re in agreement, you might just enjoy watching this movie.

3 out of 5

And now... THE 180 DEGREE RULE

ALBERT: I had low expectations going into this one, too, and for the same reason -- "Legion." I think what made this one more watchable was that its mythology was more cohesive. It actually had internal logic and a backstory. But yeah, like you, I didn't think the movie did much with its concepts.

DON: Which is a shame, to me at least. I'd like to see a B-Movie that follows through with its concepts for once. Daybreakers, Legion, and now Priest... Each with high concepts, but very little real exploration of the concepts. It's almost like a bait and switch. They win you with the concept in the preview, but fail to develop it in the film.

ALBERT: The first act of "Priest" did give me high hopes -- it announced, albeit heavy-handedly, that the movie would deal with some mature themes. There was that talk of "reservations" for the vampires. The totalitarianism of the church-state ("To go against the church is to go against God!"). And the way the city folk would all turn to the clock tower to make the sign of the cross whenever the bells tolled -- that was a nod to, I think, Islamic fundamentalism. But none of the movie's action sequences excited me, and none of the "scares" scared me. I had seen them all before. I found myself more interested in the ways the filmmakers would cross-pollinate the design elements to make their plagiarism less noticeable (something that the makers of "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" were too lazy to do). It actually got me thinking about questions of originality and the agony of influence, unintentionally. That was worth something.

DON: Yeah, maybe it's not so much a bait and switch as it is incompetence. Now that you mention it, I get the sense that the film's makers had lofty goals for the movie, but just weren't skillful enough to pull it off. That opening sequence should have been my first clue. All that backstory told through brief animation? That felt really out of place to me in context to the rest of the movie and it reeked of a cheap and lazy shortcut to me.

ALBERT: So it doesn't reach the heights of "The Matrix," but neither does it sink to the lows of "Legion." The sad part is, I hear that it deviates wildly from the comic. What, then, was the point? I wonder. Capitalizing on the name value of a Korean comic to launch a would-be franchise?

DON: The notoriety of the comic wouldn't get them far in the U.S. market as it is virtually unknown to the general public here. I'm assuming the concept was borrowed from the comic book which was arguably the best thing about the movie. Why do I assume this? I don't think the film's makers had the creativity to come up with it on their own. If they do, they didn't show any of it here...

Bridesmaids

2011-05-18T21:57:00.000-07:00

Directed by Paul Feig

Starring Kristin Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Wendi McLendon-Covey, and Ellie Kemper

Judy's take:
I SAY "YES" TO BRIDESMAIDS

I'm going to tell you now that the trailer really does not do the film justice. It comes across as a chick-flick with a few chuckles, which is why I thought I was going to see a typical romantic comedy when I went into the theater. I wasn't expecting much from it, the movie is called "Bridesmaids" after all, I just expected a few laughs here and there and a bit of a love story to tie it up all neatly at the end. Ten minutes into the movie, the audience was roaring with laughter, both males and females, and I knew I was in for much more fun in this movie.

The movie is about a thirty-something year old women named Annie whose life is headed on a downward spiral. Her roommates are impossible to live with, her job sucks and her love life is nonexistent except for meaningless sexual escapades with a man named Ted (Jon Hamm). Annie's best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) announces that she is engaged and wants Annie to be her Maid of Honor. Though lovelorn and broke, Annie bluffs her way through the expensive and bizarre rituals and at the same time dealing with Lillian's other close friend, Helen (Rose Byrne) who is trying to steal the pedestal of friendship. Add to the mix a very diverse group of bridesmaids, and Annie has her work cut out for her. With one chance to get it perfect, she'll show Lillian and her bridesmaids just how far she'll go for someone she love.

Bridesmaids differentiates itself from the rom-com stereotype with the clever cliché-free scriptwriting of Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. No matter how outrageous the jokes become, they are smart, fun and unbelievably believable. Consequently, the film controls the outrage allowing the humor to improve the story and support the cast. Director Paul Feig and Producer Judd Apatow have successfully created a romantic comedy that breaks through the usual limitations and rules of the genre. Bridesmaids proves that women can be as raunchy as men releasing the ridiculous upon audiences in original fashion backed by heart.

The characters were well developed and each brought a unique personality to the film. It was also heartfelt, these characters are ones you can relate to what they are going through, how they feel, and how they act. This is true if you are male or female. The acting and comedic timing was too perfect and has some of the funniest lines I've ever heard. It's a chick flick, but not one you've ever seen before. It has REAL women in it, personalities that are realistic and characters everyone can relate to. The movie also handles the realities of getting older and the difficulty of keeping old friends. It is a very honest depiction of how an impending wedding changes relationships.

Second, the casting was outstanding. Whoever thought up this all-star team is brilliant. Kristen Wiig is hilarious and this should be her star making film. She carries this with great talent and is at her most hilarious here, while still playing the emotional parts very well. There wasn't a single moment that brought me out of the film, and that is the sign of a film well done. Her surrounding cast does a great job as well, with Melissa McCarthy being the standout. Nearly all the scenes featuring her are laugh out loud funny. Maya Rudolph and Rose Byrne also plays their parts to perfection. It was nice to see some actors that are NOT in mainstream Hollywood do such a good job at making a comedy. The comedy was spot on for how girls talk and compare relationships, how they deal with upcoming wedding nuptials, and life in general. No fancy frills or special effects, just good ol' acting and humor.

I also love the pacing of most of the film. Several scenes had just the right amount of awkwardness or pause that really added an extra element of hilarity. In this movie, you really get a sense of the heart and charm, it's not afraid to pull any punches just because the characters are female (the scene in the bridal shop comes to mind).

Ultimately, Bridesmaids was one enjoyable ride to watch. It's certainly not perfect: it could probably do with some editing, there might be a few too many subplots (some of which are left unexplored), but everything else about the film works so well that these complaints are little more than nitpicks. While I applaud everyone involved in the production, it is Kristen Wiig who deserves the most accolades. As co-writer and lead actress, she plays a huge part in the film's success, and I sincerely hope this film puts her on the Hollywood map, as I would love to see more from her in the future.

If you aren't into raunchy comedies, and are easily offended, this is probably not the movie for you. I would say it is to women what the movie "The Hangover" is to men. For those who like raunchy fun, you will laugh. And although it's a "chick flick", there's enough raunch and humor to keep guys entertained. So if you are wondering if you should go see "Bridesmaids"....the answer is a resounding "Yes"!

4 out of 5

Shawn's take:
BROAD-MANCE IS HANGOVER 1.5

Bridesmaids is a good time at the theater. I laughed through most of the film. It opens like many comedies wih the obligatory sex scene that reels you in. These types of scene hooks are typical, like the opening murder in a horror film. Kristin Wiig and Jon Hamm go at it pretty hysterically though. Their sex is rote, and worked out so that the right thing happens at the right time. You’d think they were married, but that question is quickly put to rest.

Wiig’s character is single and down in the dumps through most of the film. Her predicament is purely her own doing spurred on by a failed bakery business. But I like the way the film takes the audience through different comedy set pieces, situates itself in them for longer than average amounts of time, and still provides plenty of story arc from beginning to end. An engagement party rivalry goes on longer than you’d expect, and gets funnier as it goes. A trip to Vegas is hilariously more about the ride over. Wedding shower builds and devolves into a mess. Each of these scenes provide Wiig with plenty of room to explore different ideas. Most of them hit their mark. The surprise standout comedy performance is Melissa McCarthy. Her last name should really be Galifianakis.

3 out of 5

And now... THE 180 DEGREE RULE

SHAWN: I went into Bridesmaids not really knowing much about it other than that it was a comedy with SNL origins. That alone made me wary. I have liked Kristin Wiig in a few skits, but I've not seen anything that was worth more than a giggle. Except her portrayal of that ignorant republican woman who said Obama was an Arab. So for me, she nearly comes out of the woodwork, out of nowhere. She has come out putting out a great product.

JUDY: I'm with you on that, I didn't know much about her either except for the SNL connection. I was impressed with her writing as a first time screen writer and her comedic range in the film. I noticed we both thought Melissa McCarthy was the standout in the film. She really did steal every scene she was in. I love that her character has such high self esteem and was so comfortable in her own skin despite what others may think of her appearance. She should be the role model for everyone who has low self esteem.

SHAWN: Her performance was on par with Galifianakis's work, bold and unique. Let's hope she doesn't end up in a road movie with a French Bulldog. Hollywood has so little room for female driven vehicles that I really hope these actresses are able to continue their careers. How many times do we have to see dimwitted straight white guys take the lead roles in everything. These women are creative and eager to please a hungry audience. They deserve more.

JUDY: I agree, I think this movie does a good job of showing everyone that an all female cast can still carry a movie successfully. Hopefully Hollywood is watching and we get to see more movies with female leads like this.

SHAWN: And the frustrating part is that, duh, of course an all female cast can carry a film. You just have to have talent and some studio execs who stand behind it. The rest is a matter of marketing. I mean, look at Thor. He looks like a goddamn roadie for Metallica for Pete's sake. On another note, I thought the love story was simple and serviceable. The love interest was cute. The whole audience was rooting for him. A lot of the women in the audience cooed at him when he said he had breakfast worked out in the kitchen. Also, it seems like most comedies nowadays are required to feature bathroom humor. I liked that this film's was set in a snooty wedding gown shop. But I think the film sort of missed an opportunity to make it more uncomfortable. The atmosphere of those places is usually super uptight and controlled by the staff. I didn't feel like that was very pervasive. It was treated more like a set they just happened to walk into. I think it could have been funnier had there been less slapstick, and more faux pas.

JUDY: Exactly! Too bad Hollywood seem to think an all female cast is too risky a venture. Funny you should mention Thor, because I too thought he looked like he belonged to a heavy metal band with that longish hair before watching the movie and being charmed over by him. I think it is good that the love story in "Bridesmaids" is simple because ultimately the movie is more about the friendship aspect, rather than the romantic aspect. I like that the men the main character Annie dates looks like the normal everyday type of guy one would see on the street. The guys she dates aren't the bland, square jawed hunks nor are they the shlubby only-in-the-movies underdog romantic heroes. The men are normal, believable. Jon Hamm is one of them and he's hilarious in a relatively small role. Chris O'Dowd, a newcomer, also shines as an against-type Perfect Guy. I think the wedding shop scene did a pretty good job of making one uncomfortable, I mean, everything in there is so white, so obviously high-class and expensive, it's just hilarious that the gals make a huge mess out of all of it, and they do it wearing the spanking new expensive gowns from the shop. The scene of Lillian in the swan-like dress out in the street is priceless, as is the comment about that scene after between Lillian and Annie. Did you notice that the swan dress street scene is different in the trailer? In the trailer, Lillian seem to be crashing into the street, rather than sinking down.

SHAWN: I hadn't seen the trailer. And judging from your review, I'm glad. You make a great point about the guys in the film. They are window dressing for the women, but they are not just eye candy. Each of them are given their due as characters. In a guy driven film, the females are usually pure eye candy, or freakish. And they often embody one aspect that defines them. I hope that Kristen Wiig doesn't just start making comedy after comedy like Mike Meyers or Dana Carvey. I hope she sits back, enjoys her success, and starts fresh on another project from the ground up. Though made with a formula in mind, this film was a sincere attempt at that formula. While I wasn't bowled over by it, I found it entertaining throughout, and provides some promise for its makers.