Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 21st, 2008
In recent years, there has been only one group of parody movies that were considered really good. The Scary Movies. Started off by the Wayans Brothers, the first two movies were very mature but also very funny. The third & fourth films were taken over by David Zucker who did a fine job of making it more family friendly while keeping the zany humor. In September of 07, production started on a spoof movie that went after Superhero movies. David Zucker took on the producer role while Craig Mazin stepped into the writer/director chair. Craig had also worked in the third & fourth installments of Scary Movie and was obviously talented. The question remained. Was this act tired or did it still have some life to produce a quality spoof film?
Rick Riker (played by Drake Bell) is just your average high school student. He has a best friend, Trey (played by Kevin Hart). He has a crush on the most popular girl in school, Jill Johnson (played by Sara Paxton). But things go wrong for Rick Riker when he is suddenly bitten on the neck by a genetically-altered dragonfly during a scientific field trip (darn that H2O9). He gains super human reflexes and armored skin (akin to Spiderman). He shows his powers to his best friend, Trey and his Uncle Albert (played by Leslie Nielsen). He then decides to use his powers for good and dawns the mask of “The Dragonfly”.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on August 8th, 2008
For as much as I might viscerally disagree with the creation of a film or its sequel, I lay much of the blame at you, the viewer and movie-going public. You created the furor around the Step Up series of films. You all went in droves to the first film when it was released in August 2006, when movies were winding down in the blockbuster season and thus helped it make $65 million domestically and more than $110 worldwide. It’s your fault that another film was inevitable, so in the down-turn of this past February, we got a second one. That one made about the same domestically, but made $30 million or so more and almost brought in $150 million worldwide. Count on the fact that another 90-minute film about teens dancing will be made and that the Step Up trilogy (I threw up in my mouth a little when writing that) will be complete.
Step Up 2 was written by Toni Ann Johnson (Mean Father) and Karen Barna, which begs the overall question of why TWO people needed to write a movie about dancing, but I digress. John Chu (When The Kids Are Away) directed. Andie is played by Briana Evigan, and if the name is familiar to you, she’s the daughter of Greg Evigan of BJ and the Bear fame. Briana does not look like a chimp, for the record. She decides to become friends with Chase (Robert Hoffman, She’s the Man) at a school the two go to in Maryland. They try to join an exclusive dance crew named the 410 and are rejected, so they start their own dance crew to go against the 410 in a dance competition. That’s the story, but the main focus is on the film and the dancing. The dancing carries the film from beginning to end and is peppered excessively throughout, and that’s what people cared for and what people saw.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 21st, 2008
According to Wikipedia, Bruges is the capital of Belgium and home to the college of Europe. Much of the architecture from the 12th and 13th centuries is in good shape and preserved fairly well. The Church of Our Lady is one of the tallest brick buildings in the world. The Basilica of the Holy Blood purports to be a church that houses some blood from Christ. It also serves as the backdrop for a couple of hitmen who have to find comfort in the town for awhile in the film set in Bruges, called In Bruges.
The film was written and directed by Martin McDonagh, whose previous work was in the Oscar-winning short film Shooter. Ray (Colin Farrell, The Recruit) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson, Kingdom of Heaven) are forced to stay in the town for two weeks, after an assassination assignment given to Ray turns particularly brutal. The two look at this presumed exile in two different ways; Ray thinks of it as purgatory; he loves the lifestyle of London and access to anything he wishes. Ken rather enjoys it. He views it as an opportunity to enjoy a place he’s never been before. The nuances of Bruges are also memorable; aside from a little person in a movie and a drug dealing local named Chloe (Clemence Poesy, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), the film is chock full of hilarity and hijinks. When Ken and Ray’s boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes, Schindler’s List) comes to meet with the boys, things take a bit of a dramatic turn.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 10th, 2008
Tang Wei plays a student who is a member of a radical theatre troupe during the Sino-Japanese War. She and her cohorts determine to assassinate a prominent collaborator (Tony Leung). In order to get create the opportunity for the killing, our heroine must infiltrate Leung's household. She is on the threshold of becoming his mistress when he leaves Hong Kong for Shanghai. Three years later, now backed by the Resistance, she makes a new attempt. But she hasn't counted on the entanglements of passion in the affair she has embarked on.
Ang Lee's film was widely seen as both sumptuously beautiful but too leisurely for its own good, and there is something to that position. The story takes its sweet time, and the affair itself, along with its transgressive (by mainstream standards) sex scenes, doesn’t properly begin until over 90 minutes into the film. On the other hand, so much of the film is unspoken, left for the viewer to read between the lines (and Tony Leung is a master of conveying deeply repressed pain) that there is a lot going on, even when the images are still. And when the paroxysms of violence and sex do come, they are explosive.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 9th, 2008
Honestly, I don’t know what the bigger tragedy is, the fact that John C. Reilly has been a funny performer for years, or the fact that it’s taken guys like Judd Apatow and Adam McKay a chance to show off his comedic talent. For those who don’t know, Reilly was in a hilarious ten-minute blooper reel in Boogie Nights which showed that he could improvise with the best of them. The guy also played Bigfoot in an episode of the Tenacious D show that aired on HBO in the mid ‘90s. But sure, put him in Chicago where he was nominated for an Oscar or in ensemble films directed by some of film’s greatest voices. His true love, that which gives him much joy and pleasure, appears to be when he’s goofing around, like he does in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.
Walk Hard was co-written by Judd Apatow, whom you might have heard of. Any R-rated comedy that has been released in the last 18 months to any sort of popular appeal has had some sort of involvement by the writer-producer-director. Jake Kasdan (Orange County) was the other writer and directed the film, where Reilly plays Dewey. He grew up in the shadow of his brother, who died after a tragic machete incident. Dewey grew up and had a hit early in his life, but then went through the usual period of drugs and substance abuse before his career went through a rebirth of sorts. If it sounds like the usual biopic treatment of a musical icon, that’s what it is, and what Apatow and Kasdan manage to do is stick a thumb in the collective eye of films like Ray and Walk the Line, as those films possess a slight precociousness that deserves lampooning of some sort. Reilly plays Dewey as a fifteen-year-old. The guy is over 40, OK? So yeah, that’s funny. When Dewey’s drummer Sam (Tim Meadows, Semi-Pro) shows him what drugs are like, it’s done with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Dewey’s various relationship issues are shown, starting from his first wife Edith (Kristen Wiig, Saturday Night Live) who seems to be pregnant in every scene as she puts down Dewey, to his second wife Edith (Jenna Fischer, The Office), who is a born-again Christian and hopes to get Dewey the same way. Every girl, boy, rock and stick in between is shown too.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 2nd, 2008
You probably remember where you were when you saw the trailer for Twister. Hot off the heels of Forrest Gump, which was a nice story with some pretty cool computer effects at the time, Twister simply took the effects to a whole other level. Barns were torn apart, cars were tossed into the air, and that one shot, where the car is driving as a tractor is thrown and slammed into the ground, and the tire from the tractor hurdles through the car window. You wanted to go see that film, whatever the cost might be.
But holy crap, once that movie came out, the film landscape was redefined. But it was less about actual storytelling per se, and more about the computer effects that carried the film along, with not a lot of significant or even interesting story or characters that were appealing enough to care about. No real original ideas, just 113 minutes where director Jan de Bont (Speed) tries to dazzle you and say, “Hey look! Really cool twisters!” And you know why that is disappointing? Because one of the writers was Michael Crichton, who’s written some pretty cool stuff: Jurassic Park and Westworld, and yet nothing much is to be had here. Bill (Bill Paxton, Aliens) has returned to Oklahoma and “Tornado Alley” with his fiancée (played by Jami Gertz of Still Standing lore), to find out if Bill’s estranged wife Jo (Helen Hunt, As Good As It Gets) has signed the couple’s divorce papers. Jo hasn’t yet, so Bill’s got to stay on her to get them done. In the meantime, the chase to find a twister has begun, and Bill, compelled by an urge to see a technology that he and Jo had envisioned come to fruition, helps Jo and her crew out for one day.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 21st, 2008
ABC has made a killing from the bored housewife situation. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that films would attempt to put those kinds of situations into their plots. The film is billed as an erotic thriller; however it’s really two separate films. The first half works the erotic side of things. There’s plenty of nudity and sexual situations, starting with three chicks all over each other for a photo shoot. Here we meet Claire Dennison (Ford). She’s a successful businesswoman, perhaps selling porn to the Japanese. She’s married to Jonathan (MacFadyen), a psychiatrist that she appears to love. The problem is she wants to have a baby and she’s bored with their sex life. She attempts to spice things up through role playing but gets little response from her work-obsessed husband. One night while out of town in a hotel she spots her husband in a bar playing the part of “Roberto” a role she earlier encouraged him to take on. She plays along, and things get pretty hot and steamy for the couple. The rendezvous is repeated on another trip, and she seems ecstatic with the newfound passion her husband has discovered. That is until one morning she gets a call from her husband while he’s still in her bed. It turns out she’s been having an affair with his perfect double. When she discovers her huge mistake, she hustles poor “Roberto” out of bed and out of the door. Unfortunately for her “Roberto”, really Simon, isn’t planning on going away that easily.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 19th, 2008
Romantic comedies make most men put their body in the fetal position and pray that the bad people will make it stop until they are shown the newest incantation of a Vin Diesel action flic. This just in, Vin Diesel doesn't really make action films anymore. Crap, how about Mel Gibson, no? Hey, Sly Stallone still does action movies. Yeah, but we are also pretending he's still relevant. Anyhow, most people have negative connotations about romantic comedies. That way too much syrupy dialog mixed in with corny humor about two people on the opposite side of the tracks establishing that common ground and coming together. Dedication, at the core is a story of a children's writer finding love with his new illustrator. However, getting there is one strange animal indeed.
Henry Roth (played by Billy Crudup) is a budding children's storybook author. His newest idea involves Marty the Beaver and receives great press and promise of future books in publication. His illustrator is Rudy Holt (played by Tom Wilkinson). Rudy is the "father" of the group as he often pitches the ideas and serves as a mentor over Henry. However, one day Rudy dies (we guess as a result of too much good deli lunch meat), and the publishing house is left with trying to find a suitable replacement. The problem is that Henry is very much the definition of an obsessive compulsive and any other mental disorder you can think of. He can't keep a relationship, he refuses to travel in a car, and he sleeps with a pile of heavy books on his chest.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 15th, 2008
I’m going to admit right from the start, I hate cell phones. They’re evil, and I didn’t need a horror film to tell me about it. The world would be a safer and certainly a more courteous place without them. Just last week I was run of the highway by a Werner semi because the idiot driver was on his cell phone. So it didn’t come as any surprise that someone was bound to include them as part of a horror film. One Missed Call is simply the latest Asian Invasion film to be retooled for American audiences. What started with The Ring, which was a truly original and suspenseful film, has also given us losers like The Grudge. Unfortunately this film falls into the latter category. Believe me, I wanted so much to love this film. I was the annoying guy cheering the trailer at the local cineplex.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 2nd, 2008
A couple of years ago, I was out a trip to New Jersey on business with my boss. When we got there, he wasn’t feeling well, so I had him sit down while I went to the clinic down the hall to see if some medical attention could be given to him. As I turned the corner with an attendant, that’s when I saw him hit the floor. After a few moments of stabilization he was taken to the hospital, where it was determined that he had a stroke. A co-worker and I stayed with him for the duration of the next couple of days until his family could get there, and over that time, he suffered several smaller strokes in the process. One minute he could talk rather lucidly, and like flipping a switch his facial muscles would sag and be nonresponsive. Once his family came, we managed to get the chance to come home, and he spent several more days in the hospital, remarkably without any repercussions from this incident, and came back to work, where we still talk (I’ve moved to another company) and share the occasional gallow humor about what happened.
He was lucky, though there are others that have experienced far worse situations. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a look at the life of Jean-Dominique Dauby. The editor of the French version of Elle magazine led a somewhat glamorous life,and one day had a severe cerebrovascular incident, whereby he was left paralyzed, but responsive in his left eye, which allowed him to communicate solely by blinking. With the help of speech therapists, he was able to state his thoughts in his book by the same title, as a metaphor of his useless body, labeled as the “diving bell,” ironically clashing with his free spirit, your “butterfly,” if you will.
