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Based on the bestselling children's book by Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is one of those movies that leaves you wanting to break out the thesaurus, because the phrase "sheer, unadulterated pleasure" has been sullied by the likes of Joel Siegel's overuse. More after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Sometimes, when you're an actor, you get drafted for silly promotional stunts, as happened to Hot Tub Time Machine costars Clark Duke and Collette Wolfe at the Air Canada Center in Toronto last night, as part of a "Tub Crawl" promotion at the Maple Leafs hockey game. Photo after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Straight from Fox Searchlight, the reactions from Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham to their Oscar nominations today, after the jump...
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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A campy, sci-fi, gleefully gross-out adventure loosely in the vein of fellow budget-challenged romps like Feast or Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, Infestation is written and directed by Kyle Rankin, one of the co-directors behind The Battle of Shaker Heights — the final Project Greenlight flick, which whiffed commercially but helped put Shia LaBeouf on the path toward big screen domination on which he now seems to be. It's not a movie that reinvents the wheel (or in any way, shape or form really desires to), but it is fun, and well done, benefiting from the jocular presence of Christopher Marquette. More after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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It's a happy birthday to Christie Brinkley, who turns 56 today. She's no actress, although her appearance in National Lampoon's Vacation certainly made an impression. Chiefly, though, Brinkley was known to guys who came of age in the 1980s and early parts of the 1990s as a model for Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue (her romance with rock 'n' roll piano man Billy Joel didn't hurt in this regard either, upping her profile and keeping her in the public light). No crazy-busty chick, Brinkley and her sunny persona presented a confounding and seemingly at-odds image for plenty of teen and twentysomething guys — the knockout model as relatable girl next door.
And in photos like the one above, the leggy looker (she's 5'9") cemented the virtues of bared neck, shoulders and more for a generation of hormonally-charged dudes. Maybe the Internet, with its readily available explicit images, has changed that for the current generation. But movies (and magazines) used to not be above trading in sexiness without any preoccupation with actual sex. The bared female back is a big part of that — a subdued and at times almost startling inversion of what men, in all our visual orientation, most typically focus on. Of course, the ass pear doesn't hurt either.
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| As micro-brews continue to surge in popularity, and Americans start to become at least a bit more invested in their ale quaffing habits (if not quite to the same degree that they typically are with wine), entertaining and informative glimpses behind the sociocultural curtain like this new-to-DVD documentary will continue to find welcome reception. Clocking in at only an hour, The American Brew doesn't quite have the contemporary pop of Anat Baron's Beer Wars, which examined in fascinating fashion how the three (now two) major brewer-bottlers look to trick consumers and put the squeeze on upstart competitors. Still, in exploring the rich and surprising history of beer making from colonial settlers through the present day, this movie offers up sudsy intrigue. More after the jump...
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Remember being taught origami in school when you were a child? PBS brings audiences a truly compelling documentary about artists who have abandoned their ordinary, mundane jobs in favor of turning paper-folding into not only art, but also their new life's work. More after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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A small stable of recognizable faces in supporting roles cannot save
When in Rome, a vapid romantic comedy fable pitched at some fantasy
demographic of young professional women who value love seemingly only
as a commodity, another box to check off on a very long and modern
to-do list. That the movie's plot is malarkey through and through is
perhaps expected, but that it is delivered in such thunderously obvious
strokes pushes it from merely bad to nearly intolerable in certain
stretches.
Saddled with clunky expository dialogue, lame humor and baffling character motivations, When in Rome
has two settings: broad, and broader. Easy-on-the-eyes leads Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel mostly escape judgment on the
strength of their smiles. A litany of strange cameos, along with a fervently pitched dance-along by the entire cast over the end credits, all seems
desperately designed to create the impression that someone is having
fun. It's certainly not the audience, however. For the full review, from Screen International, click here. (Disney, PG-13, 91 minutes)
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Australian director Scott Hicks, who burst onto the scene with 1996's Oscar-winning Shine, returns to film his homeland for the first time since that movie, but can't achieve satisfying emotional liftoff. The stunning South Australian countryside, as captured by cinematographer Greig Fraser, gives The Boys Are Back an achingly convincing sense of place, and the acting is OK, certainly. But the film's small moments of acutely sketched heartbreak arrive with such infrequency as to leave one daydreaming of a Vegemite sandwich. More after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Michael Jackson's This Is It, the hagiographic concert documentary hastily cobbled together from behind-the-scenes footage of the late pop star's planned series of 50 London concerts that of course never came to fruition, arrives on DVD with no actual, concrete mention of his passing on the cover box. This is slightly strange but, in its own way, also makes perfect sense. After all, for his diehard fans, Jackson the entertainer was always someone who existed outside of and apart from the tabloid frenzy that engulfed his personal life. He was simply a showman, and therefore his corporeal death — while grievous in that it robs them of new material — is almost of little note in relation to the creative celebration that this glimpse behind the curtain provides. More after the jump...
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Based on the 1956 film noir of the same name directed by Fritz Lang, Peter Hyams' Beyond a Reasonable Doubt tells the story of an indefatigable, wildcard journalist's out-of-the-box plan to expose a corrupt district attorney, and how his scheme takes an unexpected turn. The problem is that the movie is defined by stock characters, and totally caught up in pedestrian notions of thrills rather than the sort of intellectual chess moves that would make this sort of story robust and satisfying. More after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Working from a screenplay by writer John Collee, director Jon Amiel delivers a waterlogged look at Charles Darwin with Creation, a muttenchop enthusiast's delight that's part historical drama, part hysterical drama. While the film doesn't span decades, but instead concentrates on a more tightly prescribed patch of time in Darwin's life, it still proves true an old maxim regarding cinematic postscripts: the more you feel it necessary to say in pre-end credit crawl text, the less you've probably said during the entire rest of your movie's running time. More after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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Ian Somerhalder has eyebrows that will always guarantee his employment in certain types of straight-to-DVD titles. I first noticed this in The Rules of Attraction, in which he seemed to play the surliest, most outrageous Abercrombie & Fitch model of all time. There's just something about his eyes, the depth of his stubble and, most certainly and strikingly, the definition and angle of those peeper-toppers that make Somerhalder, formerly of Lost, the perfect "get" for the producers of swashbuckling genre movies that can't quite get Matthew McConaughey to return their phone calls. Like Casper van Dien before him, Somerhalder has a dependable, soap opera-level skill set and matinee idol looks, meaning he can comfortably draw TV and movie-of-the-week paychecks for the next quarter-century easily, recession be damned. Ladies like that look, and he obviously puts in enough time in the gym to keep things working.
Wait... what were we talking about? Oh, right... the inherently employable features of Somerhalder's visage. Which brings us to Lost City Raiders, a paint-by-numbers genre exercise to be sold off to foreign TV networks looking to pad their weekend schedules. The plot? In the near future, global warming has caused water levels rise to unfathomable heights, destroying port cities and consuming more than half of all land. With matters only getting worse, two treasure-hunting brothers (Somerhalder and Jamie Thomas King) must team up with their daring father John (James Brolin) to retrieve a lost artifact that will restore Earth to what it once was. Also in pursuit of said artifact is callous, brutal real estate tycoon Nicholas Filminov (Ben Cross), who really should change his name if he wants his villainy to be less conspicuous. With Al Gore nowhere in sight but eye candy Giovanna Becker (Bettina Zimmerman) thankfully in tow, brothers Jack and Thomas find themselves in a race against time to save the world from its end days.
In promotional text on the DVD's cover, Marshall Fine is credited with tagging Lost City Raiders as "Waterworld meets Raiders of the Lost Ark," which is accurate only in the broadest sense of that mash-up — there is an archeological-based quest, and lots of water. Not surprisingly, the special effects work here isn't quite up to snuff with the sort of material with which master-of-disaster Roland Emmerich stuffs his frames, and consequently those predisposed to really get into and off on the material will likely find their fanboy enthusiasm dampened from the start. All in all, though, this is just a shrug — no better or worse than it sounds, or one might reasonably expect, given its players, production means and storyline. Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Lost City Raiders comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English and Spanish subtitles. A gallery of preview trailers is the only supplemental feature. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) D (Disc)
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Holding a copy of Inalienable in my hand, the first thing that crosses my mind is that whole argument over the word (i.e., inalienable versus unalienable) that, according to some long-forgotten secondary source from high school history, nearly caused a dust-up between Thomas Jefferson and another one of the Founding Fathers (John Adams?) during the penning of the Declaration of Independence. That amusing anecdotal remembrance and all its what-if off-shoots, unfortunately, is of more entertainment value than anything in Inalienable — a weird, pedantic, sci-fi courtroom/social drama which could also be called My Octopus Son. More after the jump...
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| I'm sort of torn when it comes to musician-turned-director Rob Zombie; in a landscape littered with genre fakers, filmmakers who seemingly embrace affect for no other reason than to simply further their careers, he's a not-untalented guy who comes across as the genuine article, and someone who obviously has a well-honed knowledge and appreciation of the exploitation and horror genres in which he likes to trade, as the unrelentingly brutal The Devil's Rejects amply demonstrates. Visually and tonally, he's made savvy use of his devil's minion image, finding a way to marry that tattooed, devil-may-care outsider sensibility to the film projects — derided limited release castoffs at first, but increasingly commercial fare — he's managed to mount. All of which brings us to Halloween II... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid headline Pandorum, an effectively moody but also fairly frustrating sci-fi mash-up of Supernova, Event Horizon and Cube, among other films. A more action-oriented cousin of spare, fellow paranoid space opera Moon, Pandorum could slot decently as part of a double-dip couch festival with that movie, depending on one's level of interest in either slipping into something spooky and meditative after a well intentioned but essentially romper-style genre flick that feels shruggingly compelled to include snarling beasties, or vice versa. More after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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Old-ish news by just a couple days, but the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, in a poll of its members, has tabbed David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. as the Film of the Decade. Carving out a Top 10 list in any given year is tough, but picking from a decade's worth of cinematic masterpieces is an especially brutal
exercise. It's always interesting to see how past favorites rise and
fall in favor, and the personal unit of measurement in undertaking such
an endeavor is invariably subjective: Are they the films whose craft
you most admire, or those you most revisit? Are they films with
powerfully moving closed-circuit narratives, or need they leave you
with much to ponder?
I think the breadth of LAFCA's polling reflects the catholic tastes and
intellectual engagement of our membership, but in so many ways Lynch's Mulholland Dr. is an especially appropriate choice as Film of
the Decade, and not only because it captures in elliptical fashion the polarizing extremes of life in Los Angeles. A beautiful, woozy mystery for the id, portions of its
meaning are readily apparent, while others dance along its edges,
deliciously up for substantive argument and debate — which is part of
what we as film critics love, after all. For some interesting reading/skimming, the full list of all 190 films receiving votes on 41 member ballots, as well as individual critic lists, is available by clicking here. Happy perusing!
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize winner Fish Tank, from British writer-director Andrea Arnold, is a gritty, naturalistic drama that will slowly envelop patient arthouse audiences on the strength of its powerhouse performances. A slice of social realism in the vein of Ken Loach, this slow-boil, Essex-set tale of teen alienation and acting out is an example of character study done right. More after the jump...
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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I skipped Jennifer's Body during its theatrical run, even with all the photos of Megan Fox in pasties and what not making their way around the internet. Perhaps appropriate, then, that as Jennifer's Body arrives on DVD, I'm sent a review check disc that haphazardly skips around entire chapters, rendering any viewing of it some sort of crazy Memento-type experience. More after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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Martial arts maestro Jackie Chan makes a play for adolescent embrace in The Spy Next Door, a mirthless, unimaginative piece of desultory entertainment that is neither well executed enough to elicit any substantive emotional response other than begrudging tolerance, nor hyper-realistic enough to work as a slice of silly, colorful fun, a la Robert Rodriguez's recent Shorts. The Spy Next Door will benefit from a general lack of family film competition in the latter frames of January, but its poor word-of-mouth among Chan's Stateside fans, familiar with the slightly more adult tones of his Rush Hour and Shanghai series, will quickly consign its best commercial prospects to home video.
The movie suffers from anemic follow-through on its most basic comedic set-ups, as well as an overall lack of imagination. While one blanches at passing too harsh a judgment on a film's adolescent performances, the unfocused and uneven nature of the child acting further evidences Brian Levant's poor direction. Chan, meanwhile, mugs mercilessly. The jokes all misfire, but there's still something mildly amusing about Chan's indefatigable effort and consistently sunny personality, which helps make the English-mangling outtakes which play over the end credits the film's undisputed high point. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (Lionsgate, PG, 94 minutes)
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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In everything from Arrested Development to big screen hits Superbad and Juno, Michael Cera has traded mainly in self-negating humor and muttered, sardonic asides. He shakes loose of that character template (well, partially, at least) in Youth in Revolt, a picaresque booster shot of wily irreverence that puts a fresh, outrageous spin on adolescent obsession and rebellion. More after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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The year 2009 has been something of a dream for Penelope Cruz. It began with her performance in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, already honored by several critics groups, winning her a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in February. It continued with the filming of Rob Marshall's musical Nine, based on Federico Fellini's 8 ½, and the Cannes Film Festival presentation and release of the noirish, Spanish dramedy Broken Embraces.
It's been a long trip for the little girl who began studying women at her mother's hair salon when she was only five years old, becoming quietly aware of their public faces. Cruz is now an internationally recognized knockout beauty, which her recent appearance at a Beverly Hills hotel — brunette locks cascading over her almond brown blouse, past her shoulders and down her back — only serves to confirm. Yet for all her stardom, Cruz retains a beguiling mix of enchantress wonderment and button-cute innocence. No doubt some of the latter is due to factors of verbal intrigue; in Cruz's mouth, the word monitor is pronounced "money-tar," with no sense of halting uncertainty or embarrassment.
If the accent rather charmingly remains, Cruz's grasp of English has aided her upward trajectory. "I remember when I was 20 and didn't speak the language at all," she recalls. "I did the casting [for a movie] on tape, got the part, and when I met [the filmmakers] they realized that all I knew were the lines for the character." Cruz pauses here, smiles, then continues: "I'm more comfortable with English now, so the roles have become more challenging and demanding." For the full feature piece/interview, from H Magazine, click here.
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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2009 is still fading, but one of the better titles of 2010 looms on the horizon. 44 Inch Chest, which is sure to lead to a rash of accidental rentals and VOD purchases in the years hence, is the debut feature from Malcolm Venville, and a collection of whiskey-soaked voices if ever there was one. Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, Tom Wilkinson, John Hurt and Stephen Dillane star in the film, whose tagline ("The measure of revenge") makes matters clear, even if its title doesn't.
A jazzy, profane exploration of the male ego's breaking point from the writers of Sexy Beast, the British movie centers on a collection of pals who kidnap the younger French lover of their friend's wife, who has been cheating on him. This craziness is ignited by Joanne Whalley, whose performance is described as exuding "Helen Mirren-like sensuality," which, I freely admit, did cause me to yelp out loud in amusement, if also go watch the fun-looking trailer. So... mission accomplished, publicity packet writer. 44 Inch Chest plays in Los Angeles at the Nuart Theatre from January 15 through January 28; for a list of other theatrical engagements, extending into February and March, click here.
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| It's hard to bear much ill will toward Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, given that it was thrown into a state of disarray when Heath Ledger passed away last year, with much but not all of the film complete. Nevertheless, the movie doesn't really work, apart from the gobsmacked reaction elicited by a small handful of vividly imagined set pieces. A fantastical morality tale set in a grubby present day of Gilliam's twisted devising, it sort of ambles along, like a scavenger hunt with an ill-defined search list, before collapsing in on itself in a finale of utter inconsequentiality. More after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Forget the videogame — it's a real-life version of Guitar Hero when Jimmy Page, the Edge and Jack White get together for the new-to-DVD music documentary It Might Get Loud, an exploration of the electric guitar that spans, roughly, three different musical generations, and encompasses all sorts of different modes of expression. Director Davis Guggenheim's follow-up to the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth, the film works as a sort of three-for-one biography, with just a handful of glancing, macro-analytical insights scattered and tossed in for good measure. More after the jump...
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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Alvin, Simon and Theodore deal with the pressures of high school and fluctuations in popularity in this modest, agreeably family-friendly upgrade over the singing-and-dancing chipmunks' muddled franchise debut. Featuring CGI critters who interact raucously with their live-action human custodians, this movie, akin to bouncy family adventures like the Stuart Little and Garfield franchises before it, heartily aims itself at and mostly successfully connects with a pre-teen demographic.
It's hard to swallow some of the narrative plot points here, like the fact that hugely popular entertainers — which the chipmunks are supposed to be — could be instantaneously humbled by a couple doofus teenagers. Small swatches of dialogue, too (most notably including pointlessly empty movie references by Alvin to Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver and The Silence of the Lambs), come across as awkward attempts at hipster posturing. Forgetting for a moment how he would know about them, would Alvin be saying these things because he thought they were funny? And would modern teens even find them at all amusing?
The chief difference between this movie and its predecessor is the former's unfussy confidence, though. Whereas the first film was full of pat set-ups and unimaginative staging, director Betty Thomas provides the brightly colored sequel with more zip and focus. Chase sequences or other action scenes are shorter, and more tightly choreographed. She's aided, too, by a story that takes aim at low-hanging fruit. Pared down and mostly stripped free of clumsy attempts at exposition and emotional string-pulling, this sequel presents a story with a simple end point: a $25,000 competition to save a high school's music program, and possibly restore the chipmunks' luster. For the full review, from Screen International, click here. (20th Century Fox, PG, 89 minutes)
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes arrives with the bristling, cocksure, indefatigable force of a film that's been preordained as a franchise-in-waiting. And why not, really? This film has certain attractive "elements" — a rejuvenated, box office-minted Robert Downey, Jr., the hook of a conceit that toys with modernity while also haphazardly exploiting its period piece roots — and style to boot, in the form of burnished, photo-snap action. And for distributor Warner Bros., a fan of tentpole releases to be sure, those factors were enough to get all the checks signed during production. They're just hoping audiences will feel the same way. More after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie offers up a sizably portioned helping of adolescent-friendly supernatural adventure as it tracks the Russos, the family of wizards-in-training at the center of the same-named Disney Channel small screen hit, on a quest full of heart-stopping action and magical mishaps. More after the jump...
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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It was a shock to hear about the sudden, sad passing of Brittany Murphy today, at only 32 years of age. It always is when one of the young ones goes, I guess, no matter how much or little one connected with their work.
As I'd noted several times previously in writing about both Murphy and her films — most recently in the new-to-DVD Deadline, not one of her better vehicles — she undeniably possessed a certain crazy-girl appeal, that sense that you were in the company of someone who could show you immense highs, but also perhaps leave you broken. On a certain level guys like women like that, even if only from afar, because they remind us of the unattainable girls from high school who moved with a deadly, unearned confidence, and seemed to exist on some other social stratum.
How quote-unquote damaged was Murphy, by life, illicit substances or some combination thereof? I'm not sure. There were rumors here and there, and obviously the coming days will provide a clearer picture of her medical history, for those interested in diving into the details. Without getting into specifics, though, it was clear from fairly early on that Murphy was someone who felt deeply, offscreen as much as on. If there are screen personalities who essentially play only slight variations of themselves (and that wasn't Murphy), there are also actors and actresses whose greatest gift is a direct line to the telepathic — their own private connection to a deep reservoir of swirling, intense emotion, which they are then free to tap into and pour into whatever roles they tackle. They paint in bold, insistent, impulsive strokes, not the mannered accoutrements of accents or other learned pieces of the craft of acting.
That was Murphy, to me. With her large, expressive eyes, she could do manic and fearful with ease (e.g., Don't Say a Word), but she was a pip with comedy (e.g., Clueless) and also had a gift at slipping into melancholic quiet (e.g., 8 Mile) in a manner that silently telegraphed a character's unspoken hopes, fears and regrets. I will say this definitively, too: it's a shame that Murphy's starring role in a Janis Joplin biopic never went off. That, I believe, would have been a very solid vehicle for her talents, so adept was she — heartbreakingly, it turns out — at channeling doomed and troubled women.
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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One wouldn't have necessarily been able to predict it based on his rakish, smirky turn in Barry Levinson's 1999 coming-of-age dramedy Liberty Heights, but courtesy of roles in films like 3:10 to Yuma, Hostage, Alpha Dog and 30 Days of Night, Ben Foster has evolved into his generation's go-to guy for brooding, disarmingly packaged menace. Meeting him in person, it's easy to see why; though he stands only 5'''9", he has the same piercing eyes, and not much of a need to please. Foster, who just recently moved to New York, has a well-chronicled affinity for meditation and a perhaps less well known appreciation of tattoos, which he characterizes as "body mapping."
He also has a moving new film, Oren Moverman's The Messenger, underscores the fact that the psychological tolls of war don't expire at our borders. On loan from filming a remake of Charles Bronson's The Mechanic, which he describes as "good, old-fashioned assassin entertainment," opposite Jason Statham, Foster is an uncommonly thoughtful and intelligent, if reserved, interview subject. We chatted at a Beverly Hills hotel suite recently; for an excerpt of the conversation, from H Magazine, click here. |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| It won't be for this pleasant bauble — and there's no way to tell exactly for what it will be, given his varied filmography — but Richard Linklater will eventually win an Academy Award. The Texas-born indie auteur brings to bear his characteristically spry touch to yet another very different sort of movie than he's done before in the lively Me and Orson Welles, a romantic coming-of-age story set in 1937. More after the jump... |
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| Posted by Brent Simon at | | | |
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| There's a bit of fussiness in some of the art direction, and by the time the third symbolic underwater sequence comes along, it feels a bit much. Still, Colin Firth is absolutely excellent, and deserving of a Best Actor Oscar nomination, which should be a mortal lock. In almost single-handed fashion, he makes A Single Man worth seeing. More after the jump... |
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