The Reel World

Some movies have a way of simply sneaking up on you and leave you exiting the theater with a multitude of thoughts and emotions.  When a film comes along where you are able to forget your troubles or the stresses of the real world, and long after the final credit has rolled you still can’t shake certain images or lines of dialog from your mind, this is usually the best sign of a good film.  The Call I must confess snuck up on me and managed to suck me into “the hive” of the Los Angeles 911 dispatch center and has kept me in its clutches as I write up this review.  The Call is a film that reminds me why we go to the theater with a large audience and experience this projected story on screen, where despite all the nifty home theater toys you may have, it just cannot compare to seeing a film with an audience.

The Call wastes no time pulling us into the story.  Jordan Turner (Halle Berry) is one of many 911 dispatchers handling calls as they come in.  Some calls maybe as trivial as a man with a habit of calling the operators from behind bars, to men confessing to recently killing their wives.  Call after call we see how the operators are forced to stay calm and remain in control of the situation until “help” arrives for the caller.  But that all changes as Jordan receives as call from a frightened young girl who has an intruder coming into her home.  Jordan does all she can to navigate Leah to safety from the intruder, but one mistake results in the capture of the young girl.

"Welcome to the wonderful world of magic."

They say that the hand is quicker than the eye. Through the art of misdirection and skillful manipulation we have been awed by magicians ever since Glog made Ooof's club disappear somewhere in Mesopotamia circa 20,000 BC. It's not all skill, really. The truth is we've always wanted to be fooled. We're begging for "magicians" to tamper with our sense of reality. I don't know how fast the hand happens to be, but today we're fooled at the speed of 24 frames per second (unless you happen to be Peter Jackson). The magic happens every time we walk into a movie theater or put a shiny disc into our magic machines. And what do we enjoy even more than being "tricked"? We love to laugh. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone has just the right amount of sleight of hand to pull it off.

"You're capable of more than you know."

Perhaps it's been a long time coming. The MGM version of The Wizard Of Oz has been captivating audiences for over 80 years, introduced to new generations of admirers, first through frequent re-releases in movie houses. Then it was annual showings on television, where I first encountered the classic film. Finally, the many phases of home video have made it a popular choice and a staple of any truly complete film library. The film is memorable for so many reasons. The technological achievements for 1939 were nothing short of magical. The cast took to their parts and gave soul to the lovable, and not so lovable, characters. Judy Garland's short and tragic life will forever be identified for most of us as Dorothy. Now, in 2013 it takes a lot more to wow an audience, and who better to make the attempt than the collaboration of Walt Disney Studios and Sam Raimi?  Together, with the legal hawks from Warner Brothers watching every move, they have set out to take us on a magical journey to Oz, and a breathtaking journey it is. It might become a classic in its own right....if it only had a heart.

Revenge has rarely looked as tedious or absurd as it does in Dead Man Down. (Unless you count the current, underwhelming second season of, well, Revenge.) Despite the fact that it boasts a title straight out of Steven Seagal’s IMDb page, Dead Man Down features a talented cast and is the American theatrical debut of Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, best known for making the Swedish adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It’s a shame everyone came out to play for a project that doesn’t even achieve “Enjoyably Preposterous Thriller” status.

Colin Farrell stars as Victor, a low-level thug working for ruthless mobster Alphonse Hoyt (Terrence Howard). Someone has been sending Alphonse cryptic notes and vaguely threatening letters. We learn relatively early on the perpetrator is actually “Victor”, who assumed a new identity after Alphonse and some Albanian goons destroyed his family and left him for dead. Now Victor has concocted an elaborate (yet surprisingly careless) plan and is willing to pay the ultimate price to make sure Alphonse and the others pay for their sins.

The most interesting thing about Emperor — the stately, bloodless post-World War II drama from director Peter Webber — is that it begins where most war movies end. The messy, complicated business of picking up the pieces of a shattered country after a hellacious conflict tends to happen off-screen. Granted, war crime tribunals are inherently less cinematic than epic military battles, but Emperor still managed to leave a lot of dramatic possibilities on the table.

The film — based on the book “His Majesty’s Salvation” by Shiro Okamoto — opens with archival footage of the Aug. 6, 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima. After the subsequent surrender of Japanese forces, we meet the conflicted Gen. Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox). Through soppy voice-over narration (which makes the character sound like a stiff sad-sack) we learn that Gen. Fellers loves Japan, but hates what the country has become.

“Fee Fi Fo Fum, ask not whence the thunder come. For between heaven and earth it’s a perilous place, home to a fearsome giant race. Who hunger to conquer the mortals below, waiting for the seeds of revenge to grow…”

Jack the Giant Slayer is the mash-up adaptation of two classic fairytales; Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack the Giant Killer. Now adaptations are big business in today’s industry, but is combining two different source materials wise, or a recipe for disaster? To answer that question let’s examine the recipe of this film: two popular children’s stories, Bryan Singer at the helm, top-shelf actors Nicolas Hoult, Ewan McGregor, and Stanley Tucci. Well, considering that the resulting brew is an entertaining, family friendly fantasy film, my answer is going to be coming up on the positive side.

When I see the claim “inspired by true events” I tend to always take this with a grain of salt, because really just about anything can be inspired by a true event.  It’s a misleading caption that frustrates me when I see it used to promote a film.  Why does it bother me so much?  Its simple; people read those words and begin to think everything is just about entirely true.  In this case the film Snitch was inspired by true events.  It took some time but I did manage to find a video on You Tube about a PBS television show that inspired the film.  This again is an example of what Hollywood does to spin the truth in order to fill seats at the theater.  But this review isn’t about fact checking but about what we see on the big screen.

After reluctantly agreeing to receive a package for a friend filled with MDMA, Jason Collins (Rafi Gavron) finds himself set up in a DEA sting and is about to take the fall with several drug charges for simply receiving a package.  The filmmakers wastes no time pulling us into the situation; unfortunately, they felt the need to shoot everything handheld, and what is delivered instead of a suspenseful take down, is a minor case of motion sickness.  I’m all for handheld footage, but in this case it’s just several minutes of footage that never seems to be framed and borders on what at one time would have been considered unusable footage.  As for what happens to Jason, well, unfortunately his best friend set him up, and because of a new law the only way to shorten your sentence is to offer up another fish in the drug pool.  Too bad for Jason, his only drug connection is his friend who tossed him under the bus.

"Guess who?"

In case you haven't been paying attention, 2013 is turning out to be the year of the returning action stars. The Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger teamed up with Korean action director Jee-woon Kim to deliver a very entertaining ride in The Last Stand. Sly Stallone teamed up with action icon Walter Hill to bring us the not-so-entertaining Bullet To The Head. Of course, perhaps the most eagerly awaited return was Bruce Willis back in the role that made him an action star in the first place. This is less Willis's return and more a potential swansong for cowboy cop John McLane. It's the fifth entry in the Die Hard franchise and the first sequel written originally as a Die Hard film and not something adapted to the character. With the disappointing Live Free Or Die Hard still fresh in my memory, all bets were off when I entered the cinema for a sneak peak of A Good Day To Die Hard.

Even among the crowded field idyllic meadow of big-screen romances, the “Nicholas Sparks movie” has become its own lucrative sub-genre. The only other contemporary authors I can remember achieving that sort of name brand recognition are Stephen King and John Grisham. (When people went to watch a Harry Potter film, they didn’t usually say, “Let’s go see the new J.K. Rowling movie.) It’s easy to spot a Nicholas Sparks movie: the lily white leads usually live in or around one of the Carolinas, where they inevitably get drenched by a romantic, cleansing rain before coming across a pivotal letter.

The fact that Safe Haven hits every single one of these checkpoints should, in theory, make it the ultimate Nicholas Sparks movie experience. Instead, the new film — the eighth big-screen adaptation of the author’s work — comes off as a pale imitator. 

The conclusion of the wildly popular Twilight saga last fall left a nation of haters high-fiving each other, but it also created a giant, heart-shaped vacuum in Hollywood. Where is the industry’s next big young adult-oriented, human-on-supernatural romance franchise going to come from? Valentine’s Day seems as good a time as any to find out if Beautiful Creatures — based on Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s “Caster Chronicles” series — is up to the task.

Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) can’t wait to get out of Gatlin, South Carolina. Thanks to some nimble narration, Ethan explains why he feels trapped in his fictional dead-end town, where virtually every important piece of literature is on the banned list and people enthusiastically re-enact the Civil War as if they’re expecting a different result. Ethan’s spirits brighten when he meets moody outsider Lena Duchaness (Alice Englert), who is literally the girl of his dreams. You see, Ethan has been having the same dream every night about a mysterious dark-haired beauty; unfortunately, he always dies at the end. After a rocky start (is there any other kind?), the two grow closer and Ethan discovers that Lena is a witch.