July 2008
Monthly Archive
Director Ted Demme (Jonathan’s nephew) follows his terrific crime-thriller Monument Ave. with this sporadically entertaining Eddie Murphy-Martin Lawrence vehicle, that takes a light-hearted appear at Mississippi prison life spanning many decades.
Murphy plays a pick-pocket wHO crosses paths with the straight-laced Lawrence. The two become unlikely friends when they are framed for murder and forced to serve a life prison term.
Life tries to be a sort of Cross Old Manpower in Shawshank. Thankfully, it’s better than the Diddlyshit Lemmon-Walter Matthau flick, but doesn’t fall close to the force of Shawshank, nor does it try. Instead, Demme just tries to contribute the audience a secure time and for the most office, the film is amazingly watchable.
Murphy delivers most of the jokes, but Lawrence actually steals the film with a identical subtle and restrained performance. There ar some majuscule supporting performances from Bernie Mac, Ned Beatty, and R. Gypsy Rose Lee Ermey.
If Life has a downside, it’s a screenplay as well full of holes. The long term friendship that forms ‘tween Murphy and Lawrence is not whole apparent. It’s as if chunks of the plot line are missing. Still, it’s a serious time with some play dialogue, a breezy running time, and some neat make-up from Academy Award winner Rick Baker.
Swimming Syndicate is a movie I’d been intrigued to see since eyesight the trailer a few months agone. First of all the film features a uncommon sighting of the captivating Charlotte Rampling who is wonderful in the role of a famous crime/fiction novelist named Sarah Morton. The plastic film starts cancelled with a promising little premise, Rampling’s publisher and long-time protagonist suggests to her that she spend some time at his French Pancho Villa (a little R and R and perhaps a chance to recharge her creative batteries for some other of her lucrative polish off mysteries.
She is at first reluctant but once there, she succumbs at once to the charm of the gorgeous nursing home and the quaint country setting. In fact it isn’t long before she plugs in the laptop computer and begins pecking aside at the keys, so inspired is she by the repose and ambiance she finds herself immersed in. Now from the trailer and the showbill for the film we know that her purdah is expiration to be short-lived. And not more than than a night or two after her arrival there is a bump in the night that prompts Rampling to take up a table-lamp as a manque weapon in case of danger and set about investigating.
Not to vex, as it turns out to be the lovely young daughter of her host the publisher (played by Prince Charles Dance). Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), shows up at the house unpredicted, and both are surprised by their unexpected (and at first base) unwelcome company. Julie is a blonde, beautiful and free-spirited young woman, in spades promiscuous (as we are to incur out) and at number one not a terribly gracious host to her celebrated houseguest. Presently, however, they manage to strike up a grudging friendship with just enough mystery and portent to suggest some rather exciting things that might make grow.
After all, the film is billed and has been heralded as a suspenseful thriller and so, as a veteran picture show viewer, I was on my toes and on the look out for clues to possible intrigue and/or smelly play that might come about as Julie makes herself more than and more at place. Soon she is dragging home bibulous young hands as playthings, which patch a misdirection for Rampling, certainly a source of fascination. So much so that she scraps her initial story outline and begins a new account that she begins buffeting the keyboard over, that she saves in a file titled Julie on her computer desktop.
In fact unitary afternoon Rampling is cancelled to the market and Julie snoops into the lap-top and manages to read a good bit of this new familiar fiction in front she is forced to quickly replace the electronic computer as the author returns. Julie keeps her find a secret and the two grow closer and upon an evening when Julie has brought home a man that is also a casual acquaintance of Rampling’s (he’s a waiter at the but local eating house) the ternary indulge in wine, reefer and when some terpsichore music is put on the stereoscopic photograph Rampling (credibly pushing 60 - simply still sexy as infernal region) is coaxed into terpsichore with the couple and as Julie drifts back to the couch we see in her eyes something consanguine to green-eyed monster or something not on the whole sane going on behind them. Alas the plot thickens.
Up until this point theatre director François Ozon’s first English language feature is well constructed, what takes place beyond this point is very poorly managed and quite surprisingly mediocre in practically every sentience of the word. Non once is there a moment in this photographic film where there is even the remotest trace of suspense - and the event that transpires is completely incomprehensible regardless of whether it really happens or whether we ar witness to events that Rampling invents for her new novel.
There is no explanation for this mundane crime, it is all covered-up with a matter-of-factness that leaves no reason to fear reprisal or God forbid whatever suspenseful thrills and the ending, grasps at some sort of Fellini like filial bond between the two women that is so far fetched and underdeveloped that it’s beyond ridiculous. I’ve read practically praise about how this movie is executed in it’s third act, but I am baffled that anyone would be taken in so easily by such absurd mediocrity. This film held out a world of promise and delivered utterly nothing. Non by whatsoever standard of any film genre.
The inexplicably silver ending even so, the performances here by the two lead actresses are identical well rendered, and they managed an edgy chemical science that unbroken you guess and intrigued, but both are disgracefully wasted like the finest French wine on an 17 class old American English punk-rock drummer. This is no mistake on the part of this reviewer, I made a point of perusal it so as to be absolutely certain when I recommend that you pass on this film altogether - Swimming Kitty is the worst imaginable tease that will leave you cold.
Wow, I couldn’t agree more, I kept wait for something scary or even interesting to chance between these two women - just you’re abosolutely right. What does find is just stupid, nonsensical and puzzling. I articulate this pool should be closed for remodeling.
Jeremy L.
Just caught this film on cable, and I really enjoyed the ending. It leaves so much to the viewer, and really got my dusty wheels turning. This movie is definitely Non a suspensful murder mystery, and I don’t conceive it was ever intended to be, despite any the trailer might suggest.
Kicking and Screaming is the latest from that endlessly goosy, but all too loveable man tyke Will Ferrell. And spell I would call this the worst of his last several films (i.e. Old School, Extremely low frequency, Anchorman, Melinda and Melinda etc.), Ferrell still manages to contribute a smile to my face. And to his credit, this is far superior to the films he was doing patch he was still at Saturday Night Live (avoid Night At the Roxbury at all costs).
Kicking and Screaming’s plot is extremely stock. It features Ferrell as Phil Edward Weston, a militant man wHO would love nothing more than than to beat his equally competitive father Clam (played by Robert Duvall) at…intimately…just around anything. Phil finds himself in a unique spot when he is abruptly appointed the captain of his son’s soccer team. And wouldn’t you know it? Clam happens to coach in the like league. Non surprisingly, the film makes it’s way toward the inevitable "big game" in which Ferrell non only hopes to defeat his father’s team, simply earn his respect as well.
This movie is relentlessly silly, but never aspires to be anything more. Kick and Screaming isn’t nonstop hilarity, merely the laughs it does offer up, are sizable enough. My favorite moment features Phil and his bloodied team arriving to a game immediately following assisting a couple of teammates at a local meat market. Rather than getting cleaned up afterwards chopping up a huge order of cold cuts, Phil and his boys opt to go straight to the game in the involvement of deliverance time. Upon their reaching, the former team is so panicked by their appearance that they high-tail it out of there, thus forfeiting the game. Those of you looking for a magical underdog sports cinema, might as well remain home. Kicking and Screaming isn’t interested in such business. This movie is really just a vehicle that allows Will Ferrell riff, and riff he does.
Ferrell is comical as always. He’ll do just or so anything for a laugh. Even when this risible man is seemingly involved in a labored bit (such as going on a caffeine high later becoming addicted to java), Ferrell, more often than not, pulls it sour. Robert Duvall appears to be having a fun time, and it’s invariably amusing to see a veteran role player of his caliber do a lite movie like this, provided he doesn’t do it too frequently (I mean seriously, Robert DeNiro - enough with the focking lame-ass comedies already). Mayhap the most amusing performance in the picture comes courtesy of one time Chicago Bears coach Microphone Ditka. He’s a riot as Buck’s neighbor, and proves to have a natural screen presence peculiarly when he takes on the unlikely job of Phil’s supporter coach. His banter with Ferrell on the playing field is obvious, just extremely funny.
Sadly, Boot and Screaming has unitary too many slow patches. It isn’t consistently funny enough to fully commend. While this is a movie for the whole family, I would induce preferred the film tender up a little more than smarts. A couple of years support, Jack Black managed to take a simplistic, one-trick-pony and transform it into something rich and meaningful in the form of the screaming School of Rock. While Ferrell is up to the comedic challenge here, he is constrained by a plot of ground that isn’t willing to go anywhere we haven’t been in front. Thankfully though, this ex-Saturday Night Live man livens up the proceedings sufficiency to maintain this picture from turn into another Ladybugs. In the end, Kicking and Screaming was decent sufficiency, but rather frankly, it could have used a little more than cow bell.
C+? I laughed all the way through this film, and I felt up that it at last gave Ferrell the hazard to use some of his funnier characters from SNL - I’d have to go B+ at least
Not Farrells best I’ll agree - but a C? You’re crazy it’s a way funnier pic than your giving it credit for. I wish you weren’t a prevaricator.
Sometimes all the natural endowment in the world can’t make for a serious movie. Case in point, Danny DeVito’s meandering kiddy show irony, Death to Smoochy. In this dark, mean spirited comedy, American robin Williams plays wildly popular children’s show up host Rainbow Randolph, a colorful character who looses his problem after a nasty little scandal. Anxious to move on, the network responsible for for Rainbow Randolph prod up an up and coming electric potential known as Smoochy the rhino (played by Albert Edward Norton). Smoochy (aka Sheldon Mopes) really lives for entertaining and teaching the children of the domain, and is a bit stunned when he discovers that the suits ar more interested in money. As the story unfolds, Mopes meets an uneven assortment of characters, and is perpetually stalked by a revengeful Rainbow Randolph.
Robin Williams has flashes of humour but is more vexation than anything else. Almost of his comical bits are done in various accents and the unharmed act becomes quite deadening. Edward Norton gives more depth to Mopes than the character reference actually deserves. He’s likeable and his persona is both kinky and solemn. There are some potent bit parts as well but I still hold a strong time acquiring into co-star Catherine Keener who appears as a cold TV. executive who’s sudden attraction to Mopes is both out of place and completely unbelievable.
Death to Smoochy was directed by Danny DeVito and spell the picture show does offer some funny moments, there are very few to speak of. He does have a great eye and much of this film is colorful, only it’s designed over the top execution hurt it in the long run. Death to Smoochy seems to have very little focus, introducing us to a overplus of ostensibly unnecessary subplots.
Adam Resnick’s screenplay tries for irony but seldom works. Many of the jokes here are moth-eaten, and some lines ar just room too off color, including a doozy about Richard Pryor. Spell there is an interesting premise in Death to Smoochy, it’s buried somewhere deep inside this slow slice of excess.
There is no doubt that DeVito is a major talent. I thought Throw Momma From the Train was immensely entertaining and Hoffa was even better. And if you want to see the funny man turned director at his ever loving mean spirited best, check out his best film, the spectacularly brutal War of the Roses. That motion-picture show was darker than hell, but screaming. Death to Smoochy is dark, just rarely funny. It’s a mess of a flick, that at long last wastes a heap load of major talent.
What sort of voodoo does Danny DeVito possess to keep getting such talented actors to take part in these dark, nasty totally unfunny comedies he’s been guiding lately. I never adage Throw Mummy From the Train, merely I have to imagine it must have been pretty blame good for DeVito to continue to make these mean-spirited disasters. Robin Bernard Arthur Owen Williams and Ed Norton? Don’t get me started on Duplex, I can’t trust that he can still be coasting on the success of War of the Roses that’s been 15 age ago?
Have you ever watched those interesting and informative documentaries on the History Channel? CSA is one of those. The catch here is that The Confederate States of America is an audacious mockumentary that shows what could have been had the South south Korean won the Civil War.
Firstly, I must admit that I’m non much of a history buff. I find it interesting and know a fair share but it’s not something I’ve studied religiously.
CSA is crammed with so much information that many might find it a daunting film experience. And it’s safe to order that if you don’t have at least a basic knowledge of the Civil War, you will be preoccupied.
Screenwriter/director Kevin Willmott (a historian himself) has fashioned a truly creative man of prowess that testament surely injure some people, but for those of you world Health Organization enjoy satire and welcome the provocative, CSA testament be right up your alley.
CSA is superb on so many levels. It unfolds as a History channel documentary complete with commercials (edgy, satiric fare that brought to mind the ads in Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop). The CSA documentary itself plays as if the Southward did gain the Civil War, and presents mock historians and altered glimpses into a past that could have been. It suggests that Abraham Lincoln joined the Underground Railroad, and has the spunk to imply that we had an alliance with Adolph Hitler. CSA as well presents a world in which slave owning is a common thing, sledding so far as to reveal that slaves stool be purchased on the home shopping network.
No doubt, a lot of people won’t find this sort of thing peculiar. In fact, there were people world Health Organization reportedly walked out of screenings of CSA at Sundance citing reverse racism and other such gimcrackery. I establish the pic incredibly compelling, and never took it too gravely.
CSA isn’t always effective. Some of the commercials are selfsame funny piece others fall flat. The recreations of past information (including mock film clips) are sporadically entertaining, just stylistically, some left a bit to be craved.
I too found myself questioning sure aspects of the plastic film. If CSA is portrayal a body politic in which African Americans don’t experience rights, I was a bit confounded as to why one of the central historians narrating the documentary was African American herself.
These are pocket-size quibbles, nevertheless, pointed towards an other than thought agitative, ambitious experiment of a movie that pushes the medium in a new direction. Kevin Willmott takes a lot of chances here, and as a whole, this mockumentary is more than effective. Sarcasm can be tough and CSA: Confederate States of America plant more often than non. This is a funny, bold film.
If Fred Claus represents the best in Christmastide cinema this holiday season, then we must have all been bad boys and girls this year. This latest offering from the team that brought us Wedding Crashers is far less raunchy (it’s rated PG), but it has virtually no comic rhythm. No timing at all. Riffing on the Santa Claus myth, Fred Claus tells the fib of Santa’s smug, irritating older brother. As a child Fred always resented his jr. brother’s popularity, and this resentment would carry over into maturity. When Fred realizes he needs $50,000 to make his holiday wishes come true, he wastes no time calling his soft tinge of a brother to ask for the money. Jolly old Saint Nick agrees to give Fred the cash, but only if he’ll come to the North Pole and earn it by serving the elves around the work patronise. Ultimately, Fred agrees and once he arrives in the North Pole, he must hold old family wounds.
Fred Claus is an odd little picture show. For starters, it isn’t particularly fishy, nor is it warm. For most of it’s running time, it doesn’t even genuinely qualify as a vacation film. There’s no vacation spirit at all and what’s more, the film commits the cardinal sinfulness of messing with Santa’s mythology. Adjudicate as he might, the gifted Apostle of the Gentiles Giamatti is unable to bring whatsoever sense of magic to this St. Nick. Why? Because of bad writing largely. This St. Nick isn’t the magical being we all know and love. He’s a seraphic natured man to be sure, but he isn’t Santa. Claus in this picture is too caught up in making deadlines and computation out who’s been racy and who’s been nice. What’s more, there’s a lame brained sub plot of land revolving around some stupid organization that’s contemplating closure down Santa’s workshop. They send in an efficiency expert (played by a hilariously grouchy Kevin Spaced-out) to make sure things are running smoothly at the North Pole! What? I’m drab, but Saint Nicholas answers to no nonpareil. And if anyone can buoy explain to me Santa’s aging treat and how Fred fits into it, I’m all ears. Fred Claus is disjointed, completely implausible, poorly paced, and makes one big misstep after another as it lumbers along.
Vince Vaughn looks exhaustively bored throughout most of the icon and level the endearing Elizabeth Sir Joseph Banks is altogether wasted in a forgettable role as an accountant at the North Terminal. How the hell did she induce that job anyway? It isn’t until the terminal act that the moving picture makes a minor rebound. There’s a wonderfully warm scene in which all the elves look through a wizard snow globe so that they throne witness families spending Christmas morning together all around the world. There’s as well a predictable but efficacious little tantrum in which Santa and Spacey accept a confrontation. It’s a sappy sequence but Spaced-out sells it. The opposition is punctuated by a cute little Superman reference that provides a slap-up touch (for those who’ve forgotten, Spacey played Lex Luthor in Superman Returns). Beyond that, there’s only one chronological succession in the entire plastic film that very made me laugh loudly. It involves a support group called "Siblings Anonymous." As Fred sits in to talk over his problems, he’s encircled by several other workforce who play second fiddle to higher profile siblings. I’ll be darned if I’m passing to discover their names in this review. I wouldn’t want to plunder what lilliputian joy this movie has to extend. In the end, I’m thankful for two things where Fred Claus is concerned. A. I’m glad the flick slightly rebounds in the final 15 minutes, and B. I’m ecstatic that Joel Schumacher had zilch to do with this flick. Nipples on the Santa suit would hold been far too much for me to stomach.
Earlier this year, I got a chance to see this controversial sarcasm at the Sundance Plastic film Festival. Easily one of the most talked about films at the festival, this version of the novel too emerged as one of the near disappointing.
Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol) directs this narrative of an arrogant stockbroker who has a near unusual hobbyhorse. It seems that in his spare time, he likes to kill people. The stockbroker is played by a mesmerizing Christian Bale (Empire of the Sun).
First and foremost, American Psycho has been attacked for it’s violent content even though it’s obviously meant to be comical. Like David Fincher’s Fight Clubhouse from final year, this film has been completely misunderstood. The problem is, much of this movie doesn’t work because it tries to be a little also sly and many of the pop culture references (mostly 80’s songs) get quite wearisome.
Harron has a swell eye and Bale is strong merely the flick seems to run out of steam as it progresses, and only manages to indicate hints of brilliance. If you desire to see a dangerous and rightfully disturbing photographic film about a psychopath and the American Dream, rip David McNaughton’s Henry: Portrayal of a Serial Slayer.
Silent Hill marks the second telecasting game turned horror film that I’ve seen in the final month. In my review of Stay Alive I made reference of the fact that I came of eld in a generation substantially before picture games (as we know them today) existed. When I started high school there was one gigantic Pong simple machine in my hometown which did claim a handful of my quarters, but the world of Nintendo and Playstation, with it’s attendant sticks and pleasure buttons is as extraterrestrial to me as the dark side of the moon. Periodic bonestaff film critic Sir Dizzy explicit his skepticism at my claim and told me that as a way to peradventure mend this untenable rupture in the fabric of reality, he engaged in a ten-hour gaming battle of Marathon, all the while simulation to be me. It’s a right feeling when you know your friends got your back.
Though neither motion picture will be well standard by the critics of the populace, I ground Stay Animated marginally entertaining as a novelty. At that place were so many groaningly bad lines that it gave it a measure of camp charm. Silent Hill on the other hand is deadly unplayful. There ar opportunities to poke fun (like the time 3 Puritans suited up and marched into Hotel Blaze like the Ghostbusters, which prompted a "World Health Organization ya gonna call?" out of this weisenheimer) it fetched a tension-breaking laugh from those around me but most of the laughs come when Radha Mitchell would get down a flight of stairs that was such an plain bad idea that it would crusade people to titter. "Now that’s good thinkin’."
I don’t get laid exactly how much plot a video game like either of these get across to those wHO play them, and I’d be hard pressed to imagine how faithful the films ar to the games, simply Silent Hill had sufficiency to it that it didn’t experience video-gamey to me. Rightful, Radha spends quite a bit of time planetary through creepy corridors and down the above-mentioned flights of stairs, but not to a point where you think to yourself that the film is nothing but a random succession of freakish encounters. There were rumors circulating in the lobby that the moving-picture show had pursued a bunch of unnerved girls from the dramatic art the night before, but if anything I was disappointed in the freak-factor. Mostly due to the fact that they showed way likewise much of it in the trailer. In whatever case, I was never particularly frightened, and I thought the "disturbing images" were pretty tame considering the possibilities engendered by such a premise. The most laughable mired a bevy of mummified nurses. They were tall-growing with cleavage to spare and when they started to impress it was sort of choreographed like the backup singers in those classical Robert Arnold Daniel Palmer videos. You’re gonna accept to nerve it, you’re addicted to love.
Storywise, Radha and Sean Bean’s adopted daughter Sharon is beset with horrible night terrors, bright somnambulant episodes where she envisions an identical twin trapped in bowels of some fiendish netherworld to wake up screaming the name Silent Hill. Internet research turns up a ghost town in West Virginia by that appoint - supposedly haunted and off-limits due to coal mine fires that tranquil smolder at a lower place the town itself. Hence imagining a visit as the only solution to their daughters worsening status Radha steals away with Sharon belated one night hell-bent on finding this city of dreams.
As she nears Silent Pitcher’s mound she is repeatedly warned off and told that a road to the place no longer exists and captures the attending of a woman bike cop wHO winds up chasing her all the way in that respect only to become trapped in the nightmare herself.
Meanwhile, Sean Bean is in hot pursuit, simply meets a police barricade on the old road and yield into Unsounded Hill in a constabulary car. It is on this ride in that we get some of the backstory from a policeman world Health Organization grew up in Silent Hill and whose father died in the great fire. It was 30 years ago when the blaze pillaged the town taking many of the townsfolk with it. The cop alludes to a number of the towns population wHO got what they deserved and slow we piece together a story that involves a group of atavistic religious zealots of the Puritanical persuasion world Health Organization played a key theatrical role in turning Silent Hill from a normal town into an open portal to one of the outter wings of sin.
By this time, in her mad search for her girl Radha has encountered a pretty good number of twisted and freakish hell-dwellers, and witnessed the paper thin facade of a ruined town melt aside to reveal cavernous depths of fiery caged pits. She does battle with a paederast turned pretzel for his sins, and a unknown creature wear a steel Christopher Columbus hat world Health Organization wields a knife the size of a surf board. I will sure as shooting understand the viewpoint of any critic who lays waste to the film. But I’d have to give it a grudging thumbs up to people who love this sort of gonzo stuff. I was amused, and never felt blase or unchallenged by the story. Near of which is revealed in tolerant of a cheesy flashback done in a scratched and granulose home motion-picture show style that explained how the witch-hunters brought this fate upon the town and themselves. This piffling bit of narrative show up and recount wasn’t particularly necessary and will consequence in decisive demerits galore. Personally I’m ready for there to be a new focal point of our superlative fears beyond creepy and elusive 10 year erstwhile girls with dark hair, brown eyes and pasty skin.
The great climax is tolerant of a Carrie-esque revenge scenario that featured the films more than bloody and violent bloodshed. And the ending itself is an effective bit of mind-bending that makes the audience think back up upon the events and realize that there were 3 part levels of reality at play in the plastic film and non everyone ends up on the same plane.
funny, yes. only i can’t beleive you threw in that robert palmer jocularity.
I loved those freaks off to the side of the road, you knew you were in for some freaky shit after those dudes limped up. I thought the film was awesomee
I have to admit that I dig this kind of movie and I thought that for the most part it delivered the goods. I do foresee a day however, when we volition have seen everything when it comes to cgi hell freaks and you’re right the dancing nurses was a serious slip. I can’t imagine how that made it past the editor in chief, unless he was sledding for amusing relief.
The best film fashioned from a video game
Miss Congenialness 2: Armed and Fab should quickly be filed under the "sequels that never should make been made" file. Like Legally Blond 2: Red River, White, and Blonde, it’s one of those atrocious follow-ups that has no purpose but to give a quick buck. I suppose this Sandra Bullock flick isn’t quite as dreadful as Legally Blond 2, just at least the Reese Witherspoon turkey was a sequel to a better, more likable movie. The original Lack Congeniality wasn’t that adept to start with and now, we’ve been subjected to the further adventures of a character wHO was ne’er interesting at all.
In Miss Congeniality 2, tough cop Gracie Allen Hart (Sandra Bullock) finds it difficult to shake her recent celebrity position. It’s entirely been a few weeks since her infamous offense bust in the number one picture, and everywhere she goes, she is recognizable - rendering her near useless in undercover cases. Before long, her department finds a more utile (or more congenial if you testament)
position for her. Before long, Gracie finds herself involved in a new case revolving around the snatch of Karenic Krantz, the crowned beauty from the first film. Paired with bitter, tough as nails fellow arrest Sam Fuller (played by Regina King in a role that has no relation to The Openhanded Red One director), the two must set away their world of differences and sour together to foil the kidnappers.
Sandra Bullock ill-used to have that sweet "girl-next-door" appeal. It worked for her in movies like Speed and While You Were Sleeping, but it doesn’t work much any longer. Her snorts and respective pratfalls ar meant to be endearing, but for the most part, everything she does in this exposure is either annoying or forgettable. Regina King is fun to watch as a "
