jantoniou Reviews

Complications (2015)

Almost like an actioneer - well-done, paced, and plotted...

[8/10 · 30 June 2015]

The context for "Complications" seems wild: A stressed-out ER doctor out for a drive comes upon a drive-by shooting. He ultimately saves the boy who is shot and kills members of a rival "Loco" (read: Mexican) gang who are coming back to finish the job.

Turns out the boy is not just a random ghetto statistic: He is the son of a prominent imprisoned gang leader. The E.R. doc - Dr. John Ellison, played very well by Irish actor Jason O'Mara - is unwittingly drawn in to their world and ultimately lives or dies at their behest.

Dr. Ellison bouncing from one admittedly absurd scenario to another forces you to either embrace the show as an edge-of-your-seat action-drama show or reject it as a ridiculous farce. Some will certainly choose the latter. Any drama - nor comedies or kids' shows, either - is nothing without conflict and "Complications" has plenty of it.

"Complications" was created by Matt Nix, the creator of "Burn Notice," one of my favorite USA shows - though admittedly the premise of "Burn Notice" wore quite thin after a few seasons. To Nix's credit he pushed the show into fairly dark territory as the stock show formula of Michael saving X person from bad guys and getting some form of revenge got pretty dull.

Now that Dr. Ellison in "Complications" is being setup as a kind of gangland doctor one wonders if Nix will follow something of a similar formula with various scenarios involving he and numerous somewhat or entirely outlandish setups where only the doctor can help.

It's great to see Beth Riesgraf - the very quirky Parker from the wonderful and frequently overlooked show "Leverage" - as Ellison's wife. Nix also seems to be drawing on some "Burn Notice" regulars as well, notably Lauren Stamile as another E.R. doctor (IIRC she played an FBI agent who was at first against Michael in "Burn Notice" but ultimately worked with him).

Whether you love or hate this show - I'm close to "really like" - there is no denying the direction, writing, and acting are all very good. Unlike a lot of pilots and new shows the actors seem incredibly comfortable and believable in their respective roles. The plots are at times pretty absurd - why doesn't the doctor, for example, simply go to the cops if a gang leader is threatening his life and that of his family? - but they're also designed quite well to keep you interested in the story. I have to wonder what direction they'll be taking next.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Over the top insanity, mayhem, and violence... and that's just OK

[7/10 · 24 May 2015]

There's always been something a bit... quirky... about George Miller's film making sensibilities. Call it "Australian" if you will or perhaps it's just a comic book feel but from my admittedly American perspective, all the "Mad Max" series felt a bit different than the traditional uber-violent, slick high-action popcorn flicks. The "Die Hards," "Terminators," and so on.

This has been its - and Miller's - big strengths. He's got a feel for a strange back story and somewhat absurdist characterization and a deranged aesthetic that drew me to the Mad Max series originally.

"The Road Warrior" was undoubtedly the high point of this series. Though always a lone-wolf anti-hero, Mel Gibson's Max was far more interesting and likable and the central action set pieces brilliantly and tightly executed. Miller was at the top of his game back then.

"Fury Road" has given Miller a much wider brush to execute the strange and quirky sensibility and that feels like its key fault to me. It's the "too much budget" syndrome and it's afflicted many a movie that was great precisely because it didn't have a massive budget. 30+ years and $150M+ to spend hasn't exactly been kind to this series.

Tom Hardy is scarcely registering a pulse as Max. Does he utter more than 12 barely intelligible words throughout the film? In a film with "Mad Max" in the title I can hardly tell that Mad Max was even there. He could have been replaced by almost any other character in the movie. Nicholas Hoult's Nux - a vastly more interesting character - for example. Or Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiousa, who may have more screen time than Tom Hardy.

Over-the-top violence and excess is a trademark of this series. To not go in expecting this is absurd. The problem is that the violence feels like an intentionally garish suit that Miller has put on. The absurd audio-visual assault of the first 5-10 minutes of the film, for example, feels precisely this way. What's Miller going for here? What part of the plot and story is he trying to lay out and advance, exactly? Nothing, really, I'd argue. It's there purely to prepare your mind for the ensuing craziness, sort of like a shock treatment.

I was very excited when I first saw the "Fury Road" trailers. YES! Another Mad Max movie, finally. But Miller over-sold his story and vision in the end. He had way, way too much money to spend. I would have bought it more if he and Hardy hadn't decided to make Max this very distant, almost mute character. Max is NOT a traditional hero, to be sure, but he has a moral center most of us can attach to. I won't say this center was entirely lost here but I felt little emotion toward Max at the end. That likability was there throughout the series - from the first Mad Max to the Road Warrior to Thunderdome.

It's sadly missing here.

Halt and Catch Fire (2014–2017)

Not quite sure where this is going but perhaps that's good (?)

[7/10 · 14 July 2014]

Several episodes into this first season I'm not 100% certain where "Halt and Catch Fire" is going and quite what it's about - but to a degree that feels all right. Most new TV shows take some time to get their full dose of oxygen and "HACF" is no different.

Is it a show about the building of one of the first IBM clones? Yes, but - to mix my metaphors - only peripherally.

Is it a show about the characters, their demons, desires, and inner motivations? Yes and I think this is its main thrust with the early PC revolution being merely its setting, a modern device that provides a backdrop for the drama.

Is it a show about business? To a degree, yes. We get a limited view into the world of business and how deals are struck (though with a bit of Hollywood writing glossed and slapped on). But, again, this serves principally as a backdrop for the drama.

Invariably any show worth its salt will live or die by its ability to convincingly portray drama - the writing, acting, and setting will compel the story forward by giving us interesting stories, characters, and plots.

Does "HACF" meet some or all of these criteria week after week? Mostly - but I'm not 100% convinced a large audience will find how they develop stories and characters interesting enough.

Lee Pace - a really superb actor who walks away with most of the episodes (though Toby Huss as Cardiff Electronics' CEO John Bosworth is a funny and shameless scene-stealer who makes it look rather effortless) - plays Joe McMillan and is arguably the best character on the show. Mysterious, charismatic, and vaguely poetic, we find in McMillan a born salesman who has turned his career into a high art form. On the flip side he appears erratic, a bit bizarre, and at times perhaps somewhat violent (to himself, at least).

The character that on the surface is supposed to be the diametric opposite of McMillan - Scoot McNairy's electronics genius Gordon Clark - turns out to have a very similar personality to McMillan in certain respects. Though he lacks the external eloquence and charisma of McMillan, Gordon is struggling at least as much with his inner demons. He feels in almost equal measures to be approaching running off the rails in his work and personal life.

The show develops McMillan's love interest and subordinate genius programmer Cameron Howe - the fairly game young actress MacKenzie Davis - but while an adequate foil for McMillan I'm not drawn into her character that deeply. I think there is great potential there but she's not hugely engaging yet.

Other tangential plots include Gordon's pretty wife who appears to be bent on straying into infidelity, eternal conflicts between Cameron+Joe and Gordon, a long-lost love interest of Joe's, and the perpetually precarious financial state of Cardiff Electronics whom they all work for and are trying to fund their own from-scratch PC clone. Yes, in a land far, far away there weren't thousands of PC electronics vendors yet.

As a product of the early PC revolution who was a teenager in the '80s and who got a "beige box" PC clone (10Mhz NEC V10 CPU chip, 640K of RAM, and 2x360K DSDD floppy drives) when I was 15, a big, nostalgic part of me wants "Halt and Catch Fire" to, well, catch fire. The backdrop of the PC revolution brings back a lot of memories for me. The confident "ka-thunk" of the old rock-solid power supply toggle switches and distinctive sound of a PC of that era booting up tickles long-buried memories hidden somewhere in my cerebral cortex. The floppy drives, monochrome screens, and decisive click of the old mechanical keyboards (now back in vogue, especially for gamers) that were built like tanks are all hallmarks of a bygone age of computing that us (relative) old-timers are deeply fond of.

Whether such an era plays with a wider audience is an open and answered question, even if such a setting is merely a means to an end. Writing compelling and interesting drama is a profound challenge and I have the deepest respect for those attempting it. "Halt and Catch Fire" has promise but my sense is it needs to find a way to keep its central story arc - the building of the PC clone - as engaging as the characters they've been developing. My feeling is everything interesting about the show will follow from that basic premise that they've already setup.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

For once, a great sequel

[9/10 · 16 June 2014]

If the first "How to Train Your Dragon" was an endearing introduction to the world of Vikings and dragons, the sequel is a full-throated immersion in the same.

At this point the Vikings of Berk have fully adopted the dragons into their lives and lifestyles. They race them, play with them, and they're all basically family members.

Hiccup is back, of course, as a hero for the Berkians who is settling into a minor existential crisis as the prospective Chief-in-waiting, a job he doesn't particularly seem to want. In fact he's happier exploring the outer reaches of his realm and mapping out as-yet unseen lands with his presumed lady-love, Astrid.

These adventures bring him into contact - and, ultimately, conflict - with dragon hunters lead by the evil (and somewhat ironically-named) Drago Bludvist who essentially holds dragons hostage, fearful to do his bidding.

As expected Drago - who seeks ultimately to control and/or eliminate all dragons - is on a mission to confront Hiccup - rumored to be, somewhat like Drago himself, a "dragon master" and ultimately control his dragons and head to Berk to finish them and him off. This leads of course to the biggest action sequences and conflicts between Hiccup - who only seeks peace - and Drago, who seeks anything but.

Most of the more important plot elements are spoilers so for the sake of this review I won't elaborate on them but suffice it to say the action is excellent, the story compelling, and the results of this second outing just about perfect.

Following up on what was really a fine, wonderful introduction to this universe of uber-macho Vikings and a wild variety of dragons with the first of this series, "HTTYD#2" proves to be a worthy successor, a fun, entertaining punch and joyous ride - on a dragon, no less.

Into the Wild (2007)

Lovely, pensive, thought-provoking...

[9/10 · 10 March 2014]

I have heard about "Into the Wild" for years and was pleasantly surprised to see it available on Netflix the other day.

When I started watching I knew I was getting into something special, made artful and powerful principally by the scenery, the limits of the words it chooses to use carefully (there's relatively little dialog throughout the movie) and the drama and depth of humanity that plays out in Emile Hirsch's fantastic portrayal of a young man who had the self-awareness and depth of character to take a very, very different path in life from where his parents and society expected him to go.

The romanticism of McCandless' adventure gets laid on pretty thick at times, but Penn, to his credit, pulls back at the right moments. I think we see that it wasn't all beautiful landscapes and luminous, contemplative starry- eyed obsessions with Thoreau and Russian writers. McCandless put himself in tremendously difficult and dangerous situations and had to do pretty mundane things to survive (like work actual jobs while he was tramping around).

The film has the peripatetic feeling of a Kerouac novel and is paced freely, bouncing between McCandless' final Alaskan adventure as the last set-piece for the movie, and his tramping all around the country, going from mid- Western wheat plains to the Southern California and Arizona deserts to coastal California and much of the forests in Oregon and Washington before heading to Alaska.

We get some insight into his family dynamic and the overdubs in the voice of his sister often serve as recollections of the truly painful history he had with his parents. If you learn more about the McCandless family and - hopefully not giving too much away - there is considerable controversy and debate over how and why McCandless starved to death in the Alaskan wilderness and also considerable debate about how his mother and father are depicted.

I think we can debate endlessly over whether McCandless was being arrogant and foolish for doing some of the things he did, but the movie does take some artistic license with the decisions he made. He may not have been quite as crazy as he is occasionally depicted but, regardless, his decision to head alone into the Alaskan wilderness as a largely green and an inexperienced outdoorsman could be thought of as an ultimately naive and ill-informed decision. But then if someone jumping out of a plane ends up dying we can think their decision daring and ill-informed, too.

Eddie Vedder's soundtrack is a perfect compliment to the movie and is much a part of it as the rivers, forests, and desert landscapes are.

"Into the Wild" is, regardless of its occasional artistic license and perhaps occasional swoon of romanticism over someone who appears to be a true rebel, is truly a wonderful and powerfully thought-provoking film well worth watching.

Flight (I) (2012)

Quite good adult-level drama... yet...

[7/10 · 8 March 2013]

...something is missing in this very finely-crafted but clearly imperfect film about a man struggling with his powerful, overwhelming addictions.

Denzel Washington hits all the marks perfectly as William "Whip" Whitaker, a seasoned commuter pilot captain for a small regional airline. We soon learn Whip has very serious personal problems.

In fact it isn't more than a few seconds into "Flight" that we know how bad Whip has it. The first shot of the movie is of his lover's - a flight attendant - fully-exposed breast, the next is of he snorting cocaine and drinking while she prances across the hotel room stark naked while he argues with his ex-wife over money. His lover, Katerina (a quite exquisite Nadine Valezquez who is there, apparently, to remind us husbands that women only have bodies like that in the movies), could make us think we're watching "Traffic" or "Blow" or "Scarface" save that Whip is an airline pilot.

After the hotel, Whip boards his jet and plops into the cockpit quite torqued on alcohol and drugs. He has a green co-pilot whom he has never met before and the weather is awful for take-off: Stormy, rainy, and windy, with rough cross-winds.

The take-off proves to be a challenge and the plane bucks like a bronco trying to get up in the air. A major "sphincter event" you might say but the seasoned Whip knows to drive the plane into a gap of the storm surrounding his jet. After a couple minutes of white-knuckling it Whip successfully finds clear skies on the short commuter flight from Orlando to Atlanta.

After things clear up Whip goes to the cabin to apologize for the rough take-off and as he does this manages to - out of view of the cabin, of course - drain two mini- bottles of vodka into a bottle of orange juice. He takes a few swigs and heads back to the cockpit. Bad enough he's flying while already drunk and high, but can you imagine an airline pilot drinking ON the flight? And that's just the beginning of how bad Whip's problems really are.

About 30 miles out from Atlanta the smooth sailing abruptly goes awry as the plane loses elevator control and hydraulics. The plane heads into a steep, almost straight-down nose dive with virtually no control for either pilot.

The extended action scene around the crash landing is easily reason enough to watch "Flight," no matter how much it sags in the middle. Whatever may be wrong with William "Whip" Whitaker, however drunk he may be, there is NO question he is in command as the plane hurtles toward the earth. He knows exactly what to do, driven by years of experience that have been honed into instinct. He calmly, confidently gives orders to his co-pilot and flight crew to try to pull it out of a dive. None work but then he hits on a notion to try to invert the plane to pull it out of the dive. Insane, yes, but the alternative is sure death. Engines flaming out, oil pressure dropping, parts of the plane flying off, everyone screaming, the young co-pilot clearly out of his depth, flight crew freaking out - Whip is unflappable. He even reminds the flight attendant helping him to tell her son she loves him so it will be recorded on the flight recorder.

After the inversion Whip is able to right the plane and, too far from an airstrip still - at this point with both engines flamed out he is literally gliding - sees a large field he can try to ditch the plane in to. The crash landing is rough, but, miraculously almost everyone on the flight survives including, naturally, Whip himself.

The remainder of the film is focused on Whip finally coming to grips with the many demons of severe alcoholism that have plagued him most of his life. Most pilots would be ordinary heroes after such a miraculous crash landing but Whip's menagerie of personal problems are brought to the fore as his union rep, a criminal attorney hired by the union to defend him (played brilliantly by Don Cheadle, one of my personal fave actors, too), and a happenstance love interest whom he meets in the hospital - she's in there because she ODed on heroin - after the crash all try to come to his rescue.

Pardon my aerodynamic puns, but there's quite a bit of drag in this second act. As excellent as Denzel is as a man who is in deep denial about how bad his problems really are, the struggles of the addict feel familiar to moviegoers. He never really pulls it together until the end, which feels much like a typical Hollywood movie ending of a lost soul redeemed.

As an aside I would argue the crash scenario used in "Flight" was taken from Alaska Airlines Flight 261 that crashed off Ventura, California back in 2000 that crashed for a very similar reason to the plane in "Flight": a worn jackscrew. I remember it well because I happened to be traveling that day in the same vicinity, heading back from Southern to Northern California for my employer at the time and the plane crashed just a couple hours before I was scheduled to head home that evening. Trust me that whole flight was a bunch of nervous nellies. Though the weather was clear and the skies smooth that day I think every even slight change in altitude felt like we were going to fall out of the sky.

Regardless of the relatively slack second act and prototypical Hollywood feel to the ending, "Flight"'s crash sequence makes it well worth a watch and the movie overall is well done and acted, even if the story falls short in several places.

21 Jump Street (2012)

Scatological cinema at its finest

[7/10 · 9 August 2012]

"21 Jump St," based - very loosely - on the original series that made the universe and girls the world over aware of Johnny Depp, is a movie that approximately balances genuine low-brow humor with genuine scatology.

Several times I caught myself doubling over in laughter; at least as equal were the number of times I was groaning and practically looking away from the screen in shame and embarrassment that I had just sat through something this crass, crude, and utterly shameless.

Unless you're in a group of bong-hitting, backwards-cap-wearing frat boys - more or less the intended demographic of movies like "21 Jump Street," "The Hangover," and "Old School" - be cautious about who you share this masterpiece with. You might both be permanently damaged. This is not for kids, for sure.

That said, are the good laughs worth the frequent trips to toilet humor? Probably.

Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum (is that a Southern thing? I cannot figure who would ever name their child Channing; that sounds like the name of a Southern gentleman who should be sipping mint juleps on their plantation house porch) are both good and up to the task. Tatum pulls off comedy very well. Hill is basically playing the kind of role you expect him to play - i.e., anything he's played in the Apatow movies is very similar.

The plot is somewhat insignificant: The "21 Jump St" undercover cop duo of Tatum and Hill (could be a singing a duo, couldn't it?) go undercover in a high school to take down a drug ring. In a twist, Hill, who was supposed to play an undercover geek and Tatum, who was supposed to be the "cool kid/jock" - just as it was originally in high school - get accidentally switched and Hill ends up as the popular guy and Tatum - well, not so much.

So... enjoy this for the occasional laugh and just skip it for about everything else.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012)

Just really, really bad...

[2/10 · 21 July 2012]

While the first "Journey..." movie with Hutcherson and Brandon Fraser had a very slight whiff of entertainment value and was even vaguely believable, this second installment, this time with Hutcherson and with "The Rock" subbing for Fraser, this time as a concerned step-father.

Hutcherson is continuing on his path as a young "Verneian" - i.e., someone who subscribes to Jules Verne's novels as though they were factual documents describing real places and experiences - and within 5 minutes manages to convince his step-father to fly him far away to the middle of the South Pacific to an island - sorry, a "mysterious island" - that is not known to actually exist.

Within the next 5 minutes they manage to convince a helicopter pilot (a pretty silly Luis Guzman) to do something that no pilot would ever do - i.e., fly into the middle of a thunderstorm - and then, of course, run across the "mysterious island."

The subsequent plot lines are basically superfluous. The story is a slap-dash bit of feeble CGI patchwork construction that almost never engages your attention. In fact, if you watch the credits you'll see no less than 10 different "visual effects" companies were contracted to make this movie. Lots of ridiculous and unbelievable monsters and insects and spiders. The pilot's young daughter - Vanessa Hudgens, who is there primarily to relieve the otherwise stupefying plot by wearing a sweat-soaked wife beater heaving with her cleavage - exists as the love interest for Hutcherson.

"Journey 2" basically feels like eating a bunch of Halloween candy - a quick rush here and there but at the end very little fulfillment. Skip it.

The Three Musketeers (2011)

Entertaining but utterly improbable

[5/10 · 31 May 2012]

This yet-another-version of The Three Musketeers at first felt like it had a lot going for it. The period quality was actually very nice and clearly tops, budget-wise. They were CGI-ing the Paris of the 18th century - to be expected - but otherwise it felt quite genuine. Make it grimy, muddy, and a bit dark and dank and you'll probably feel like it really was the actual century the original Dumas' novel was set in.

But, eventually, they blew it. Paul W.S. Anderson, who has a well-deserved reputation as a schlock director, let his desire to turn this into an action-adventure schlock-fest force the film into a series of bizarre turns. We end up seeing completely out-of-place floating warships that we're made to believe AREN'T actually out-of-place because they were built from Leonardo DaVinci's original drawings of these warships. We're supposed to believe that even though DaVinci conceived of and drew up the plans for a ship that the technology existed to actually build it? Riiiight.

They use these warships as foundation for much of the story and that's where the movie really sags. You're setting the central action of this movie around hardware that wouldn't and couldn't have existed in the original? And you don't even try to make the inherent improbability of this even fun or funny?

There's great humor and the actors chosen for Athos, Porthos and Aramis are good to great. Ultimately, however, I wanted them used for something more meaningful than the silliness of a bunch of fictional flying warships.

As Milady Dewinter, Milla Jovovich plays her as a true psychopath (though I'm sure she was written that way). She seems largely unfeeling and kills and schemes against others seemingly without compunction, forethought, or a moral compass of any kind. She does not garner any sympathy whatsoever. Also, she had a strange way of chewing on her dialogue. It looked as though Jovovich had some kind of plastic surgery and didn't look or sound quite right.

Orlando Bloom as Lord Buckingham is genuinely bad in his role. He does not do villain well. I mostly want to laugh at rather than hate him. He also seemed to have a fake accent and I wanted to slap him for his attempts to be mean or menacing.

SPOILER warning: There's some genuinely stupid liberties taken in the movie. Ones where you just scratch your head and go "huh?" For example, after Lord Buckingham improbably builds DaVinci's floating warship (after the Musketeers are double-crossed and DaVinci's plans are stolen from them by Diwinter and Buckingham), the head of the Cardinal's guard, Rochefort, somehow manages to very quickly build his own much larger and more powerful version. How they do this without plans is not explained. It just shows up and starts fighting, thus setting up the ridiculous warship-on-warship action sequences.

Also (another SPOILER), Milady Dewinter jumps off the flying warship after being captured by the Musketeers. By any reasonable estimation she falls at least a few thousand feet into the ocean. So - she's dead, right? Nope! Last scene of the movie she was impossibly "fished out of the water" by Buckingham who in turn - in another impossible sequence - is going after the Musketeers with dozens of floating and airborne warships. It's never explained or made clear why he needs that much hardware to defeat a small group of plucky Frenchmen. This also attempts to prepare us for what we're supposed to believe will be a sequel to this rather schlocky and lame version of the Musketeers.

One more thing that's ridiculous. Early in the movie the Musketeers, hoping to head off Buckingham and get to "DaVinci's vault" (no relationship to Capone's) and steal his plan for the floating warship before he gets to it escape from the vault by blowing up the ceiling above it, which in turn draws in the canal waters of Venice into the vault thereby by destroying everything in the vault. Yes, they destroy all of DaVinci's priceless, genius notebooks just to get away. Ugh. I know it's just a movie, but thank you, Director Anderson.

The film is in other ways redeeming. The sword-fight sequences were good. Freddie Fox as Louis XIII is quite a hilarious and absurd choice for the boy King. The sheer volume of ridiculous outfits he wears is a joy.

Speaking of outfits, the wardrobe at the very least for the movie must be HIGHLY commended. They did an absolute A-level job on making the costumes and must have had a fleet of seamstresses and costumers. Milady Dewinter - in addition to the King - goes through seemingly dozens of beautifully made dresses and outfits. They're all quite beautiful and stunning, even when, in the King's case, they're utterly silly.

The Musketeers and D'Artagnan are all good and the actress playing D'Artagnan's love interest (Gabriella Wilde) is spectacularly, supermodel- level beautiful. She shines on the screen. While she considers D'Artagnan a country rube she somehow ignores this after he saves the day a few times. I guess being a super-swashbuckler is all it takes these days to win over the uber-hot chick.

I think this is worth a rental. I wouldn't have seen this in the movie theater's, but rental, yes. It's entertaining to a degree and there's some funny moments for sure. But, for historical accuracy and general quality, there's much better versions out there.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

Great fun and adventure

[8/10 · 26 December 2011]

I went into "Tintin" knowing virtually nothing about the original Hergé novels other than they were very well-regarded.

Anyway, lacking any bias one way another as a Tintin purist coming into the movie I was primarily interested in entertainment value and it's more than fair to say "The Adventures of Tintin" packs a whole lot of entertainment into its lean frame. There's only an infinitesimal amount of room for non- action in this wall-to-wall action-adventure. You don't get much slack to breathe in this romp through a plot that carries you around Europe and North Africa.

Tintin is the perspicacious reporter always on the prowl for a great story. There's no waiting for him to find one. This one turns around a model of a clipper ship called The Unicorn that he finds randomly in an outdoor market. Immediately multiple people descend on him to either attempt to buy it from him or warn him about it. And so begins the bramble of a plot that brings in the sodden Captain Haddock - wonderfully voiced and acted by Andy Serkis - to companion and accelerate Tintin's adventure. In fact, Haddock becomes a crucial component of his story.

There's a lot of fun to be had in "Tintin," a good deal of humor - some great, some not-so-great - and a heap of mind-swerving visual play. It's a bit dizzying at times, but too irresistible to warrant real criticism. From raucous runs through North African towns to flashbacks to a pirate battle that easily rivals any from "Pirates of the Caribbean" series.

"Tintin" has more than its share of disbelief suspension but that has a natural tendency to happen in a film that is 100% CGI-driven where sometimes animators do things just because they can. Some visual tricks come completely out of nowhere. Not so much bizarre but just kind of out of place - like multiple buildings that move down the hill of that North African town. I didn't get where they fit into the pretty wild action and what the point was. Maybe when I watch it again I will.

That said - the animation is unique and first-rate. Being an homage to Hergé, the character model are quite different and fit what a Tintin purist probably expects; e.g., Captain Haddock's head is unusually large in proportion to his body.

I didn't find issues common with motion capture animation to be much in evidence; i.e., primarily the creepy "dead eye" (aka "Uncanny Valley") that had largely killed motion capture animation for me and pretty much everyone (e.g., "Polar Express" and virtually anything done by the Robert Zemeckis'/Disney's now-defunct Imagemovers Digital). Though some have taken umbrage with this and think the glassy-eyes and waxy skins are still there, I was actually struck by the realism of the animation, primarily of Tintin himself - though clearly Haddock and the "Thomson Twins" are intentionally cartoonish. Somehow it all works though.

Overall "Tintin" is tremendously entertaining, a great adventure and plot that keeps your pulse racing. Tintin, his trusty dog Snowy, and Haddock are fun and engaging characters you want to spend time with and lose yourself in their world. Easily worth seeing.

Super 8 (2011)

Spielbergian bliss as interpreted by J.J. Abrams

[9/10 · 3 December 2011]

Few films evoke a time and a place well. Fewer still hone that evocation with a style of film-making that gives shape and context to that time and place.

"Super 8" is such a film. Set in the late '70s in a small Ohio steel town, it focuses almost entirely on a small group of kids who are intent on making a zombie movie in and around the town.

The emotional core is formed from the very first scene by the accidental death of the protagonist's mother at the steel mill. Joe, played by a superb Joel Courtney, was a mama's boy and his father, a town deputy - another superb casting with the great Kyle Chandler - is out of his depth in the parenting department.

Summer vacation starts and Joe follows around and helps his best friend Charles, a budding director, make a zombie movie. They shoot around town then find themselves late at night shooting at a deserted train station. While shooting something unfolds behind them - a massive, unexplained train derailment. In the midst of the derailment, the Super 8 camera falls over and records the crash. It records something unknown escaping from a rail car . . .

. . . thus begins the movie's mystery that unfolds steadily throughout. To say much more is to give away the plot, which never wavers to hold your attention. It's pretty much edge of your seat suspense beginning to end.

The wonderful Elle Fanning as Alice has Joe deeply infatuated. Alice has her own family issues including a drunken father who wants her to stay away from Joe, which of course she doesn't. Her mother, having escaped her father, is not around.

All of the young cast is great and Riley Griffiths as Joe's best buddy Charles really stands out.

"Super 8" works so potently as a film of place and time and style for the following reasons: One, the dialogue is genuine - this is how kids talk, especially of that era (though the use of "douche" an an insult felt like an anachronism more suited to today); two, the group of friends are real and interact in a manner that's not contrived or forced; three, the friends are unique, if somewhat cookie-cutter in their differences - for example, one is the pyromaniac (yep I had one of those friends and I got into trouble a number of times with him!), one is the scaredy cat barfer, one the "fat kid" who overcompensates by being bossy, one the total nerd (yep, had one of those friends too), and one the sensitive artist type (that was probably me); and, lastly, it works because it feels exactly like a movie set in that era should feel.

It's unsurprising Stephen Spielberg was involved in the making of "Super 8" because it feels almost exactly like one of his movies from the '70-early '80s- the closest probably being "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" but you can probably throw "Jaws" and "E.T." in there as well. J.J. Abrams is effectively making a Spielberg movie with a little help from his idol but putting his sure hand on the wheel to give it his unique vision.

It's impossible for a child of the '70s such as myself to not love "Super 8." To avoid total hagiography on measure it has its formulaic moments but through my lens it appears almost pitch-perfect in characterization, casting, look, feel, and dialogue. The acting is incredibly good and the young actors who are at the core of the movie have to take most of the credit for that, especially Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning. Hearing them talk and watching their interplay it was nothing less than time travel back to my youth. On their faces I saw a lot of the same faces of the kids I grew up with.

People who were born in the '80s, '90s and beyond may not have quite the same appreciation for the era, but "Super 8" certainly works brilliantly as a gripping, suspenseful action/quasi-sci-fi movie and it has a level of innocence and charm and a tinge of nostalgia that is usually missing from the pure action popcorn movies of today.

"Super 8" is not to be missed.

Battle Los Angeles (2011)

An enjoyable, fun, entertaining romp ride

[7/10 · 26 June 2011]

Presenting an alien invasion in cinema verite style - on-the-ground, follow-the-character, documentary-esque camera action and very little in the way of sweeping shots, Battle: LA is a genuinely fun, very action-packed, even slightly realistic view that the world is really, actually getting attacked by pretty darn advanced aliens. Whereas Independence Day was more a self-conscious super-huge blockbuster-type alien invasion film, Battle: LA attempts to give it a slightly more realistic bent with real (movie-real, anyway) Marines getting to the dirty work of finding out what it really means to fight alien nasties.

Aaron Eckhart's Staff Sergeant Nantz is the center of this movie. Not so much brooding, more thoughtful, at the end of a long career as a rank-and-file staff sergeant. He wants to retire because of the doubt surrounding his last tour in Afghanistan where 2 of his men were killed. He's basically done with the bullets, the blood, the guts.

Just as he's getting ready to bounce out of the service he's called up to lead a platoon on a rescue mission of civilians trapped in a police station in West L.A.. The aliens are attacking the coastlines, starting in major cities, attempting to cut off communication with other major cities, forcing us poor earthlings to the interior.

Working their way toward the station, they quickly learn what they're up against - sophisticated cyborg-eseque aliens with guns physically attached to their bodies. Several troops are almost immediately taken out. And, just when they think the aliens have no air power, they discover they do indeed have drones that track humans by radio signal. It goes from bad to worse, quick. The forces all along the coast of not just L.A., but every major city they've attacked, seem almost powerless to stop the onslaught.

We learn that Nantz follows the Marine's code to the end: Retreat, Hell (short for "Retreat, hell, I just got here!"). Never give up, never give in, never leave a man behind. He persists, doggedly, and adapts to the alien's method of fighting. He learns how to kill them, on-the-fly battlefield techniques to take out the drones and the alien infantry. It's tough fighting. Some make the ultimate sacrifice to win. Eckhart's Nantz sets an example that his men follow, even those who doubt him.

Battle: LA is a movie you would have thought had a larger audience and might have been more of a "blockbuster" type film, but it seems these days that Hollywood is inundating us with blockbusters. Movies like this - ones without big budgets a la "The Green Lantern" or "Cars 2" - get lost in the shuffle. Doesn't mean they aren't entertaining or fun or enjoyable to watch. They are. Battle: LA is.

All in all very enjoyable, action-packed, and good alien fun.

Just Go with It (2011)

Likable Sandler-fare, as usual

[6/10 · 20 June 2011]

Adam Sandler is getting pretty solid at producing and acting in quasi-poignant tales that get him somewhat further away - and, ultimately, closer to (doesn't make sense, I know) - from his proto-Sandler-style of filmmaking that has his vaguely proto-typical cast of characters - hapless, hopeless geeks, improbable ladies' man, a "nice guy" that all the ladies want, but still seem to settle on the douches. Sandler brings his "crew" together - former/current SNLers, Allen Covert (who is pretty much in every Sandler movie that I can think of), and some heavy-hitters occasionally. "The Wedding Singer," "Grown-Ups," and, now, "Just Go With It" all pander to this amiable style of film-making that is at times borderline gross-out - but just pulls away before you realize this probably isn't an Apatow-slacker movie, nor is attempting to be.

Sandler is a plastic surgeon who long ago accidentally discovered he could play the "my wife is a terrible person who abuses me" card to score with hot chicks at the bar. Fact is he's not actually married - he and/or his wife left him at the altar many years before when he discovered she really didn't like him - but he's become so comfortable with lying to score with the chicks he just doesn't care - or seem to. Jennifer Aniston is his office assistant, a sweet, single gal with 2 kids. She doesn't much care for how he deals with the ladies, but she still likes him because she sees what a sweet guy he really is under the surface of his rather devious womanizing that all starts with a lie.

Sandler meets the bounteous and beautiful - and, very young - Brooklyn Decker at a party. They sleep together on the beach and in the morning Decker discovers he's "married." Sandler immediately throws a lie out there - he IS in fact, married (wait, no he's not, but it's all a lie anyway) but he's in the process of getting a divorce because his relationship with his wife - again, playing the same card - is very bad. Decker somehow believes him and off we go with the rest of the movie where Aniston agrees to be his fake wife and ultimately go off on a vacation with Decker, Sandler, Aniston's kids, and Nick Swanson as the court jester/boob (basically a version of Rob Schneider from Sandler's other "Happy Madison" movies) who pretends to be Aniston's boyfriend.

There are a lot of funny setups and jokes - enough to enjoy the movie, for sure, even if they do clearly seem to be Sandler-ish in their obviousness. Hey, he's a plastic surgeon, let's see where we might milk that. Decker is half his and Aniston's age - let's see where we might milk that. Swanson is an often over-the-top boob - let's see where we can grab some silly jokes there. Aniston's kids - the daughter, especially - are good for quite a few laughs as well.

I half expected Decker to be pretty bad, but she does just fine. She is playing against top comedic talent here - though honestly Sandler nearly seems on auto-pilot in most of his movies - and nowhere is Jessica Simpson-like delivery in evidence. It hardly needs to be said she is being used for her looks more than her supposed talent, but her ability to transcend the "Hey, I'm just here to be a C-cup blond bimbo in a bikini" obviousness of her role is commendable. Sandler is notorious - or very successful, depending on your perspective - in bringing in at least one or two pieces of eye candy to most of his films, but in a manner that is less blatant or purely perverse. Yes, Sandler likes hiring hot chicks, but he also likes the good/nice guy to have a shot with her, which makes most of us nerds feel at least a little bit more hopeful. Decker and Aniston both of course fill this role, quite well.

While clearly not an intentional Oscar-winner, Sandler proves he is again capable of making a funny, somewhat poignant, generally enjoyable PG-13-bordering-on-R-rated film.

Heat (1995)

What else can be said about this perfectly conceived and executed crime drama?

[10/10 · 9 May 2011]

I would like to think there is something to add to the accolades this ultra-violent, deeply character-driven crime drama has received over the 15+ years since its release, but it should be enough to say this is a movie that has to be seen, to be watched, to be studied and examined as an example of truly artful direction and powerfully delivered film-making. All the actors and the director are at the peak of the creative power and authority here, never missing a beat, never chewing on a scene too long, never overstaying their welcome.

Mann engages us intimately with the characters. We grow most sympathetic with DeNiro's Neil Cauley, an anti-heroic bad guy we can't help but hope will get away and get out of the game (even though we know they never do) but we are given an almost equal treatment of Cauley's nemesis, an over-achieving major crimes homicide detective, Pacino's Vincent Hanna, a cop who never sleeps, never stops thinking, never gives up. He's a gum-chewing New Yorker ADD case transplanted to the L.A. underworld he must deal with.

The violence and the heists is crucial - this is the criminal underworld we're looking at here after all, one full of treacherous, twisted, and thoroughly untrustworthy people - but Mann goes a step further and makes them knowable, sympathetic, three-dimensional people with real problems (not the least of which is the lifestyle they've chosen for themselves).

Much as I found "Reservoir Dogs" initially breathtaking in its depiction of hardcore violence, violence that was bloody and terrible and full of complications - not the Cowboys-and-Indians gunplay of the '50s and '60s where a gunshot to the gut didn't seem to really do much - I found the violence of "Heat" equally breathtaking. I'm not sure if it was the choice of guns or simply the way they were recorded, but the semi-/full-auto Colt rifles used in much of the movie are astonishingly loud. Even the sound of the guns makes them a part of the cast and gives a realistic scope to the violence, a nearness and a real impact that makes "Heat" unique among its counterparts.

"Heat" and its fully-rounded characters are an amazing achievement that is rarely seen in film: We care about the good AND the bad guys, we want to learn more about them and the director and cast delivers, again and again and again. The film MAKES us want to know more about them. I suppose there are some visual and film and plot clichés common to many crime dramas, but it doesn't feel clichéd, doesn't feel time- or tread-worn.

If for some crazy reason you haven't seen this movie - and I can't imagine you haven't - be sure you do. And, if you haven't seen it in a while, please watch it again. Really watch it and observe what a fine film "Heat" is.

Barbie: A Fairy Secret (2011 Video)

Worse than the worst

[1/10 · 7 May 2011]

Critical analysis of any Barbie movie is like attempting to extract blood from a turnip. There is nothing of merit to critically dissect. It's just pure, less than juvenile garbage. They are, to the letter, stilted, terribly scripted, amateurish CG animated, middling voice acting (though hardly the worst I've ever heard), with incredibly stupid, improbable stories and plots and manufactured dialog that would never come from a human's mouth. You feel certain you've dropped 2 or 3 IQ points after watching one of these monstrosities.

With these exceptionally low standards for context, the "Fairy Secret" may be the bottom 2 or 3 of these exceptionally terrible cookie-cutter, quasi-formulaic junk piles geared for little girls who think they want to be Barbie and that we parents are in the unfortunate position of occasionally having to watch with our little ones. The dialog and "plot" (for a story that's mind-numbingly idiotic) are both so awful that one will find oneself groaning constantly throughout the time you've wasted watching it.

Whereas some minor merit can occasionally be extracted out of some of the Barbie movies - as in maybe there's a slightly funny joke or at least the plot isn't entirely stupid, little can be said that is positive about this one. It's like the writer isn't even trying to create believable characters, dialog, or plot, even at the level of the fantastical. Perhaps the writer is so underpaid that they barely phone it in. Perhaps they are already angry that they have to have this trash on their resume. Maybe they will legally change their name after being associated with a movie like this. Whatever the case, it doesn't make for a good movie.

Save your little girls the trouble and rent something vastly better that nearly all kids enjoy - like pretty much any Pixar movie.

Armored (2009)

Highly entertaining - but not much else

[6/10 · 10 November 2010]

A terrifically clichéd heist film, "Armored" brings together a great ensemble cast playing clichéd / stereotyped roles, notably (along with an "Armored - Reservoir Dogs" decoder ring): 1. The psycho guy who will kill anyone, no matter what, without reservation - Laurence Fishburne (Michael Madsen in ResDogs).

2. The shot-in-the-gut cop who spends a good portion of the film bleeding - Milo Ventimiglia (Tim Roth in ResDogs).

3. The thoughtful guy who, while part of the heist, still doesn't want anyone to be hurt or killed - Columbus Short (possibly Harvey Keitel).

4. The skittish weirdo who doesn't really have the stomach for violence and can't stand to see things go south - Skeet Ulrich (Steve Buscemi).

5. The de facto leader who won't allow things to end, no matter how bad they get - Matt Dillon (again, maybe Harvey Keitel).

As much as Reservoir Dogs was primarily a dialogue-crazy character study with a healthy dose of breathtaking violence, "Armored," while still quite violent, is more of a cookie-cutter heist film. The central character, Ty, an Iraq war veteran on the verge of losing the family home and custody of his little brother, is backed into a corner by circumstances into joining an armored car heist concocted by Dillon, a fellow armored car guard, who is very very good in his role as a sympathetic brother-from-another-mother, who ends up turning quite bad as the heist turns south.

While not breaking any particular new ground here, "Armored" is an enjoyable heist flick that, while full of clichéd, telegraphed setups and plot line, can't help but be fun.

Inception (2010)

Is it heretical to call "Inception" not that great?

[7/10 · 20 August 2010]

Running longish at over 2 hours Christopher Nolan has his work cut out to engage his audience - indeed, keep them on the edge of their seats - for the bulk of that time. Largely he succeeds in this difficult task.

The premise, while completely improbable, is interesting, albeit in a mind-bending sort of way: a group of guys (and ultimately a girl) who are essentially con men are led by Leonardo DiCaprio to work their cons in the dreamscape of unwitting marks, convincing the dreamer to give up secret information to corporate competitors eager to pay for it. How exactly they manage to do this is never articulated, but a black box with various throbbing pumps and tubes running out of it that connects the dreamers together is the apparent answer. This is where your heavy duty suspension of disbelief has to begin with "Inception" or else on a mundane level the entire movie would appear to be rather silly.

With that for context, "Inception" works because this kind of subconscious manipulation is not only possible but apparently routine with heavily sedated individuals around the globe who spend much of their lives sleeping and dreaming. DiCaprio and his team of ne'er-do-well Morpheuses travel around this surreal world, cashing in by creating scenarios in the dreamscape that are carefully constructed to pull information from the participants they've scammed into the dream world partially of their making but primarily the making of the dreamer.

I won't lay out the intricacies of the plot - it's far more interesting to follow it yourself and not spoil it - but the movie builds to a point where an extremely involved web of events has to occur to create a scenario for "inception" - the very challenging endeavor to seed an original idea into the mind of a dreamer that was not generated by the dreamer themselves. If they succeed in this task a shadowy Japanese corporate titan - played by Ken Watanabe - who has employed them will provide a big payday and pull strings to give DiCaprio's character the ability to come back home where he is currently a fugitive from for reasons that reveal themselves in those plot intricacies.

This sets up the climax of the movie: A long series of dreams and dreams-within-a-dream (ultimately 4 levels of dreams within a dream) to create a wild series of events all setup to convince the dreamer/mark to think a particular original thought that was seeded by the "dream team" (literally). Make sense? Probably not, but see the movie and it will come together.

If there is a fault with this climax it is that while it exists as what is supposed to be a set piece for the suspenseful build-up of the entire movie, it falters in maintaining its high-wire act. Certainly not entirely, but at least partially it begins to drag and feels somewhat tedious. The earnestness of the climax creates a kind of self-consciousness about how awesome and mind-blowing it's all supposed to be. We end up with scenes in this climactic denouement that go longish to explicate the reasons why some things are the way they are and the explanations feel drawn-out. Not sure about others, but this failed to build the suspense of the final scenes for me. It felt like we were getting setup with information that should have been revealed earlier so they wouldn't have to insert longish digressions into the final climax.

"Inception" reminded me quite a lot of "The Matrix" in the sense that it introduces you to the concept of a parallel universe that is set for a whole series of wild adventures. Beyond that the similarities probably end as I think "The Matrix" succeeded far more in presenting this parallel world and also in maintaining the suspense and action throughout.

Still, "Inception" is by no means bad. With Nolan involved that's nearly impossible. It is in many ways masterfully built to establish credibility for the ideas it presents. I don't expect to have my specific expectations catered to - in fact, I hoped that Nolan would create a movie that would completely upset them - but the process to create an involving story built around those improbable ideas is incredibly challenging. He succeeds mostly, but stretches too long to make the idea credible and makes the action and suspense slog in the process.

Interestingly there was actually not nearly as much CGI as the trailers would lead you to believe. When it is used it is used to manipulate the "real world" in a way that makes you realize "hey this is a dream" but otherwise it isn't like a Salvador Dali painting come to life or anything that extreme. If anything Nolan did an exceptional job of not stretching the film into the realm of clichéd surrealism. "Inception" portrays the dream world as a concrete place that can be manipulated with some degree of precision, as a place that can be gamed and milked for advantage.

Enjoy this for its plot intricacies, which are extremely well composed, and you may ultimately find it more suspenseful than I did.

The Invention of Lying (2009)

Starts off good, thoughtful, yet strangely unfulfilling

[5/10 · 14 May 2010]

I had several gut-busting laugh-out loud moments during the first 30 minutes of "The Invention of Lying" - the basic premise being that our internal decorum governors have been turned off and we humans are incapable, inherently, of speaking anything but the truth.

Mined for comedic material, this premise could have been a vein Gervais worked for at least the first half of the film, but Gervais pulls the throttle back - way back - after it really gets rollicking.

Instead, Gervais creates a story around the premise, a somewhat philosophical tack, both quasi-spiritual and quasi-atheistic, if that is possible. His character, Mark, instead discovers he has the ability to lie and, based on that, Gervais spins a somewhat sad, somewhat enjoyable, but unfortunately not often genuinely funny tale about what that means in the context of a transparent world that is inherently incapable of lying but infinitely capable of being lied to.

Once Mark discovers he can lie to everyone, he uses this to his advantage in a few funny ways, but ultimately it becomes philosophical. He does things like create the idea there is a "Man in a sky," which, much as in real life, one can assign blame for both the good and the bad things that happen to you - thereby relieving everyone of the notion that they have free will, which, of course, frees them to basically do whatever they choose.

The implications here are fairly deep, especially for a movie that one goes into thinking is going to be light-hearted fun. For example: God is an invention, a lie, inherently; there is no free will, it's all predetermined; those incapable of lying are the easiest to lie to; those incapable of lying lie to themselves easiest of all. The list goes on.

If there is a thesis statement here it seems to be that in the freedom to lie and be lied there is contra posed the freedom to see the truth as it is (irony being what it is, after all). I suppose the metaphor is as old as when the serpent lied to Eve: When lied to, she ultimately saw the whole truth.

I don't think I found myself particularly happy with the way the movie played out, even if the beginning was quite funny. Ricky couldn't carry it on the serious side and it seemed the humor was vague and ill-conceived there. It gave the movie a double-minded philosophical weight coupled with the obvious puns and jokes that come with its premise. Overall, it felt pretty drab at the end.

How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

Dreamworks throws me for a loop again!

[9/10 · 26 April 2010]

Considering for a moment "How to Train Your Dragon" and "Kung-Fu Panda" as a kind of couplet for Dreamworks Animation, they seem to be acquiring great skill in hitting these stories well out of the park.

This is great, solid stuff: Neatly buttoned and compelling storytelling, fine characterization, brilliant voice acting, and very well-done, crisp animation.

"How to Train Your Dragon" is full of action - engaging you virtually from the beginning - but it pulls back by presenting you what you don't expect: A son - "Hiccup" - of a Viking leader who is more book- and mechanically-smart than brawn. An engineer, a tinkerer, a genius in his own right. And, clearly, he's not destined to be a Leif Ericson.

Whether through happenstance, skill, or fate - you decide - Hiccup captures an "uncatchable" dragon, the Night Fury, with a smart little contraption he cooked up. In the process of catching it he goofs the entire effort of the village to fight the swarms of dragons.

Running off later, he finds the Night Fury, who it turns out was injured by his contraption. Lacking a full rudder - so to speak - He can't take to the sky completely. Hiccup cooks up another contraption that helps him fix the rudder and allows him to ride the Night Fury - now affectionately named "Toothless." Simultaneously he is going through "Dragon Training" where he is learning how to kill dragons, but ironically what he is learning from Toothless allows him to best his classmates by learning all sorts of secret moves on the captured dragons they train with - all of which allow him to effectively disable them without hurting them. Hiccup ends up being the village celebrity who can seemingly dominate the dragons without really trying to.

Coming home from a quest to find the Dragons' nest, Hiccup's father, a well-voiced Gerard Butler as Stoick, is beside himself with joy at how well his son is doing.

The story moves on from there from one exciting scene to the next, to the climax, where they battle the biggest dragon of them all.

I won't give the ending away but it's only slightly bittersweet - mostly poignant and not-too-nicely wrapped-up for popular consumption. Suffice it to say even in a war with fictional beasties there is a price to be paid. In the end, Hiccup comes out shining.

This really is a great, fun, engaging story that will keep you on the edge of your seat. It is not fluffy or silly-for-silly's sake (as, say, the "Shrek" series has mostly become). And, even though the action is fairly intense, your kids will very likely love it. It really is a fun, fun story. Don't miss it.

The Blind Side (2009)

A fine story about a fine family doing a fine thing

[8/10 · 19 April 2010]

Having read and, by word of mouth, extracted so many positive reviews for "The Blind Side" it was nearly impossible not to head into watching it without any preconceived idea of how great - or, for that matter, how poor - it might turn out to be.

I see its central theme summarized in one sentence delivered by the woman portraying Michael's crack-addled mother who, upon learning Leigh Anne Tuohy (portrayed quite beautifully by Sandra Bullock) has taken in her son to her home: "Well, what a fine Christian woman you are." That is it, really, summed up: The Tuohys did the fine, if extremely improbable, Christian thing by taking a very large black teenage boy into their home. Not just from the wrong side of the tracks, Michael Oher is from the wrong side of life: His mother, not so much a terrible person as a conglomeration of terrible decisions (and, yes, it's often hard to separate the two, but I think it's a useful distinction to make in this case), is so deeply disabled by her addictions that she couldn't care to attend to more needs than her own basic physiological ones, have largely left her many children to whim and circumstance.

Michael is a product of this immense, criminal neglect, of an educational system that has discarded him and an environment that merely chews up those who are unfortunate enough to be born into it.

But something happened on the way to a dead-end life: Someone - a few people, actually - stood up for Michael, without knowing who he was, really, but rather they saw a faint glimmer of something special in him. Sure, they saw athletic skill - and that has pragmatic value to people these days, especially at the professional level - but they also saw someone of character, a kid who hadn't just given up and succumbed to the lifestyle being offered to him.

And the movie addresses, head-on, the controversy bound to be associated with the notion of a well-to-do white family stepping in and "saving" a black kid who seemed destined by circumstance to be neglected and forgotten. Not being black I can't say if the idea that white people - especially white Republicans from the South - "saving" black kids is a particularly repellent one, but I suspect from the generally militant ideology that tends to surround modern "blackness" being true to your being black - even if that ultimately means sliding by this mortal coil with few, if any, prospects - does indeed make it quite repellent.

Of course, if a well-to-do black family had taken Oher in there would be no issue and that, really, is the problem: The inherent - and not entirely ungrounded - general distrust of white folk by black folk. The NCAA in the movie merely sits in to speak for millions of blacks who are casting a jaundiced eye to the notions being presented by "The Blind Side." For the rest of us - blissfully ignorant white folk, I suppose - "The Blind Side" is a great story about a great family who merely decided to the right, Christian thing and step into and ultimately embrace what might be considered by most a very uncomfortable situation. Against considerable odds, Oher has succeeded where few have, even those born to considerably better circumstances. He has triumphed and, by extraction, so has the family who adopted him and made him a permanent part of their lives.

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)

Neither especially good or especially bad

[6/10 · 9 April 2010]

Full of promise, "The Men Who Stare at Goats" has a potentially engaging premise - the front (today) and back (back then) story of a gifted psychic (Clooney) engaged by a secret cadre of the U.S. Army hoping to utilize their supposed psychic capabilities to find military men who have been kidnapped, find out what the enemy is doing remotely ("remote viewing" as it is called in New Agey circles), and so on - yet it ultimately falls flat.

Told in two time frames - early in the Iraq War (2003-ish) and in the late 70s/early 80s - it centers most precisely around Clooney's character, Lyn Cassidy. The story finds its way initially when Ewan McGregor's reporter, who, while slumming as a writer for a small town newspaper, picks up a story with a few-bricks-short-of-a-brickhouse Stephen Root who claims to have been a member of said super-secret Army platoon. Rightfully thinking him completely bonkers, McGregor's "Bob" dismisses the story until he discovers his wife is having an affair with his one-arm editor (go figure - that's how these things work in these bizzaro-type movies) and, in the throes of an existential crisis, he dashes off to Iraq, fatefully meeting Clooney's Cassidy - one of the prodigies of said super-secret military cadre - at a Kuwaiti hotel while waiting for clearance to cross the border into Iraq.

The movie is then basically a series of flashing back and moving forward to the more contemporary setting of the story, whence we learn more about Lyn's history with the New Earth Army Unit, a kind of proto-military hippie faction run by an ultra New Agey tree hugging ex-now-current hippie colonel, Jeff Bridge's Bill Django. Replete with '70s-era pop-psychology pablum and neologisms, Django is the long-haired hippie freak all the generals feared, yet suddenly embraced when the circumstances - notably a fear that the Russians might be developing psychic "super soldiers" (because THEY (the Russians, that is) thought the Americans were, but in fact they weren't, but now the Americans must because the Russians are because they think the American military is) - force them to accept the side show on their military base.

The movie never quite finds a workable bead of a plot. At times it is quite funny and Clooney is good as a somewhat spacey, somewhat enigmatic, somewhat obtuse well-intentioned ex-but-current psychic super soldier (we're never really sure). Bridges is great as Django - he has just the right amount of self-confident mellow ebullience to be a believable hippie guru type, and McGregor relaxes his way along as a Midwestern reporter who is smart, but really doesn't have much of a clue about all that he is encountering. It's darn funny when Clooney starts talking about "YOU need to be a Jedi Warrior!" and McGregor says "I don't know what this is - what is a Jedi Warrior?" given his history with the Star Wars series.

But, as interesting as the back story is (and who knows what portion of it may or may not be true) the story set in Iraq kind of meanders its way along and seems vague and pointless, even if it's meant to in a way contribute to the back story and vice-versa. The modern-day events seem disconnected to their relationship with the New Earth Army and I found myself rapidly losing interest in the modern day story.

It's difficult to wholly recommend "Goats" to a sane viewer even as a passable movie; it does have a certain charm to it and I was kind of fascinated with the improbable nature of the back story of the New Earth Army and the characters that peopled it. There's a lot of heavy hitters on this one - Clooney, McGregor, Bridges, Spacey - but it might have been more entertaining as an independent film without so much weight that the big stars brought unnecessarily to it. Then again, it's not likely it would have found mainstream distribution had it been resigned to that category.

All in all, I don't think I'd bother to see this again. It's all a bit too weird to fully recommend even as entertainment.

The Informant! (2009)

Almost a Trojan horse of a movie

[7/10 · 10 March 2010]

An awesome tour-de-force portrayal of cultivated blandness, Matt Damon's brilliant depiction of scientist-turned-corporate exec-turned-FBI-informant-turned-uber-fraudster Mark Whitacre is what makes this movie so enjoyable.

Like starting a tractor on a cold Illinois morning, "The Informant!" takes a while to feel like it really gets started. Surprisingly the first act kind of meanders through Whitacre's decision to whistleblow against his employer and record price-fixing meetings with various competitors. This is kind of funny and Whitacre handles these situations fairly well.

Whitacre's internal ADD-esquire mental perambulations - constantly voiced-over throughout the movie - are sometimes distracting, sometimes funny, sometimes informative, sometimes strange. The enthusiasm that Damon brings to portraying Whitacre doesn't really necessitate the voice-overs - we have all the characterization and insight we need into his personality - but it does set a kind of tone that works.

What is most hilarious is how simultaneously clueless and brilliant Whitacre seems to be. On the one hand he seems incredibly stupid but on the other it seems like he's really just putting up a facade to fool everyone. This facade appears to be attributable - later - to Whitacre's undiagnosed bipolar disorder, but one could argue that Whitacre had really been leading everyone along anyway.

Whitacre - an Ivy League-educated PhD. in biochemistry (in real life, no kidding) - is not REALLY stupid, he just can't explain himself without over (over OVER) explaining everything to everyone. He just really can't shut up. He can't help himself. That's what's most hilarious: Whitacre is unable to control how he must tell everyone everything yet he was also somehow able to substantively keep 2+ years of undercover FBI work - work he was not in any way trained for - under wraps. All the other stuff - don't want to give too much away - explodes in his face. It's terrible and funny at the same time.

Damon gained a substantial amount of weight for the movie (the lean, athletic Jason Bourne is NOT in evidence here), modulates his voice to have more of a Midwestern feel, and puts a nub on the end of his nose - and transforms himself, really, into Whitacre. He's quite good and is showing himself to be an actor of the first order.

If you can be patient through the somewhat slow first act, The Informant! is fun to watch and I can guarantee you'll probably have your mouth agape at least 3 times just going through Whitacre's numerous antics.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Fun, a tad escapist yet ultimately an entertaining reward

[7/10 · 16 January 2010]

Wherever you may fault Guy Ritchie's take on "Sherlock Holmes," Robert Downey Jr.'s charismatic portrayal of the title character, and Jude Law's sharp and funny portrayal of Holmes' partner Watson, this is, to be sure, a fine bit of movie-making.

Capturing, rather well I thought, 19th Century England, with all its dark corners and muddy streets and saucy personas and the bland, monochromatic nature of its buildings and spaces, Ritchie has, at the very least, shown he has a sure hand as a director. The action, the slow-motion replays (before they play, if that makes sense) of Holmes' lightning-quick thought process, and what I thought was a subtle take on Holmes' genius, ultimately makes "Sherlock Holmes" a highly entertaining movie.

Those looking for the high-brow sophistication, the dry wit, the tweed coats, the deerstalker hats, the aquiline noses of the Basil Rathbones of yore best look elsewhere. Downey, out of necessity, is by no means an "English" Holmes, though he hacks an accent away as best he can and what he lacks for in pure Anglo splendor makes up for, as he often does, in raw charisma. Even Holmes' famous pipe is almost an afterthought here. Downey and Ritchie are clearly staking out new territory quite apart from the traditional portrayals of Sherlock Holmes, probably much to the chagrin of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's purists.

It's hard to talk much about the plot without giving too much away, but there is certainly some guessing up to the end. It's an involving story line, pretty fun, and Holmes and Watson (and Rachel McAdams' Irene Adler) get into their share of scraps, scrapes, and near-death experiences.

I am accustomed to seeing Jude Law as the leading man, but here he is at least a match to Downey as Dr. John Watson, a man quite unable to tear himself from his partner's adventures. He is funny, a little reckless, but trying to reign himself in for marriage's sake.

McAdams is substantially out of her depth - it would have been better had they chosen a spry English actress to take on the role of Irene Adler here - but perhaps she got the role because Adler is supposed to be an American (? - sorry I don't know the Holmes' canon that well) - or perhaps they didn't want Downey to get lonely on the set. In any case, her looks carry her certainly but her acting feels mostly one dimensional. She feels lost in the costume and setting and cannot come close to matching Downey's and Law's on-screen presence.

There are a host of great English actors taking to various roles, but Mark Strong's portrayal of the evil Lord Blackwood is probably the best. He has a highly tuned and carefully contrived persona, conditioned by his invention of himself as a character within a character. I found it almost entrancing at times.

"Sherlock Holmes" is true fun, an enjoyable movie treat, and more than likely to become yet another movie franchise for Downey to lead. Go see it.

Knowing (2009)

Where's the payoff?

[3/10 · 28 September 2009]

Though expertly filmed - great cinematography especially - directed and all around solid on the acting side (Cage seems to me to be playing to the middle in every movie he's in generally; "Matchstick Men" and "Adaptation" are notable recent departures for his rather flat acting style), and a storyline that holds tremendous promise, the third act is nothing short of a total rip-off.

Filmed and paced quite suspensefully in the first and second acts, this is the kind of movie that, like an M. Night movie when he was still a decent auteur, virtually demands a big payoff to all the expertly styled and paced build-up. Needless to say, it fails utterly to deliver.

Though I've announced there is a spoiler, I will try not to give too much away. Suffice it to say Cage's character is ringside at the end of the world. His purpose seems ultimately to be used to bring together certain people at a certain place at this set end-time of the world and then ride off into the sunset/destruction of the earth.

If it feels, tastes, and smells flimsy - well, it IS flimsy. The justification for all the brewing suspense seems comic and ultimately a total let-down. When the end credits rolled my wife and I looked at each other and we both went "OH COME ON!" If that's not exactly how you feel after watching this turkey, I'll be very surprised.

Meet Dave (2008)

Oh come on now...

[5/10 · 14 September 2009]

"Meet Dave" is really not that bad, given its slim intentions.

As the space-ship "Dave" Eddie Murphy is actually quite funny, though as the Captain of said ship he is quite unfunny, though that's pretty much intentional.

The premise is not really as stupid as a lot of reviewers make it sound. Has Murphy fallen from the great heights of "48 Hours" and "Beverly Hills Cop?" Sure, but most comedic actors would love to have such heights to fall from (Bill Murray, anyone? Chevy Chase? Jim Carrey? Dan Ackroyd? Where are they now, after all). But is "Meet Dave" all that horrible fare? Compared to "Norbit" or "Daddy Day Care" - no, not really. "Meet Dave" is several notches above.

So, put your knives down and stop cutting up what really isn't a great movie but not really as awful as everyone is thinking it is. Your kids will like it and I'll bet you'll laugh a few times too.

So there.