Mr. Deeds
Mr. Deeds Adam Sandler is a reasonably funny guy. Sure, his
movies aren't all that good, but I bet if you were at a party with him,
he could make you laugh. For a while, it looked as if Mr. Deeds
was going to capitalize on this and just be a movie where Sandler got a
chance to take some amusing material and go with it. I will admit that
the opening part of the movie has its funny moments.
But there comes a very obvious point where the writers
came to the realization that a movie needs a plot. This plot concerns Deeds
inheriting forty billion dollars from a distant relative, coming to New
York City from his small town home, and falling in love.
The plot sucks
It doesn't just suck, it was obviously so hard for
the writers to do that they spent all of their time working on it, forgetting
to write any more jokes. I'm not exaggerating. With the exception of a
movie stealing performance from John Turturro, the laughs dry up as soon
as the plot begins, and what few there are were all in the trailer. The
sin is compounded when the plot, which as I previously mentioned, sucked,
has all of its threads wrapped up in about thirty seconds, in ways that
are not at all realistic or for that matter possible.
Grade: D+
Sunshine
State John Sayles' latest should offer no surprises to
his fans. It is filled with realistic, well conceived and written down
to Earth characters struggling with their everyday lives. Sayles, who in
his films seems to swoop in, get inside an area and its people, and then
bring all he has learned to his script, focuses this time on a small Florida
island. The island has two distinct sections.
Delrona Beach is where the small, run down shops
cater to the retirees, where everyone "comes from somewhere else". Here,
Marly (Edie Falco) runs the hotel and restaurant her father built, and
is pretty miserable doing so.
Lincoln Beach is the place where the island's black
population lives. Here, Desiree (Angela Bassett) is returning home and
seeing her mother Eunice (Mary Stokes) for the first time since being sent
away as a pregnant fifteen year old in order to avoid a scandal in the
family.
But this isn't a monolithic story of racism, the
two groups have a common enemy in a land developer who wants to buy everyone
out and build luxury retirement homes.
It's a story that feels so very non-Hollywood. In
the large, ensemble cast here are no outright villains (except maybe for
one of the developer's henchmen played by Miguel Ferrer - but he's only
there briefly) and no one who walks around with a halo on their head. Take
Marly for example, she talks tough when offers are made for the property,
but in reality, she feels like she's wasting her life and would like nothing
more than to sell her daddy's labor of love to the highest bidder.
Taking a page from his previous (in my opinion masterwork)
Limbo,
he takes the time to set up numerous triggers that could be pulled at the
end of the story and doesn't use a single one of them, instead turning
to an ending which shows how planning, no matter how extensive, can all
be short circuited by an unseen event.
Grade: B+
The
Powerpuff Girls Movie Instead of telling the next chapter of the story,
the film version of this popular Cartoon Network show tells us how it all
began. It takes the brief few seconds covered in the opening credits and
expands on them. It tells how the city of Townsville was a lawless and
dangerous place. Professor Utonium sets out to create his own children
so that he can teach them to be good and make the world a better place.
Some Chemical X accidentally gets in the mixture, and the Powerpuff Girls
are born.
All of the backstory drags the first part of the
movie down. It takes too long to set up the idea that the girls are feared
and hated because, in their youthful innocence, they wreak havoc on the
city playing a game of tag. We're all there to see them kick some ass,
not this.
The ass kicking does come, and it is indeed worth
the price of admission (well, at least matinee price of admission) as the
girls foil the first ever evil scheme of ally turned enemy Mojo Jojo.
Grade: B-
Note: Due to the short run time, a rather lackluster new installment
of Dexter's Laboratory is also included.
The
Dangerous Lives Of Altar Boys Summer, 1970s. A bunch of Catholic school boys manifest
their rebellion through the usual methods: drinking, smoking, swearing,
pranks, and in one unusual way, the creation of a Marvel-esque comic book
featuring the Atomic Trinity. The villain is Nunzilla, based none to loosely
on Sister Assumpta (Jodie Foster), the boy's strict teacher. The high points
of the movie are animated sequences by Todd McFarlane detailing the Atomic
Trinity's exploits.
The live action sequences sometimes are a little
too much. Francis (Emile Hirsch) starts dating Margie (Jena Malone) who
has a Big Secret, which is a little too big for this story. The pranks
escalate into a Big Prank which is lot too big for this story. The culmination
is a moment of Big Drama which is way too big for this story. The saving
graces of the whole affair are the well written and acted kids.
Grade: B-
Home
Movie Chris Smith follows up his documentary American
Movie about a guy who wants nothing more than to make a successful
horror film with Home Movie, a documentary about the strange places
people choose to live. He focuses on five homes, a house on pontoons in
Louisiana, a tree house in a remote Hawaiian valley, a couple who have
turned their house into a haven for their cats, a guy who has turned everything
in his house into some sort of gadget, and a couple who bought and converted
an abandoned missile silo.
If the film has one flaw, it is in its propensity
to poke a little too much fun at his subjects. The cat people say some
head shakingly obsessive things. The ex hippie aspect of the guy in the
missile silo is shown a little too much (did we really need to see a drum
circle?). Perhaps worst of all, the segments with the gadget guy focus
heavily on his dumber than dirt female "friend" who, among other
things, wants to learn how to be a psychic from her psychic mother and
help find missing kids and believes being hypnotized will keep her looking
young, as she is an "actress". This is, however, a minor quibble.
But the real treat here is the pairing up of the
feature with the legendary short Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Directors
John Heyn and Jeff Krulik showed up with a camera and without a ticket
interviewing drunken, strung out teenagers in the parking lot before a
1986 Judas Priest / Dokken concert. For years, this has lived as one of
those classics that I had no chance of ever seeing. It more than lived
up to expectations.
Grade: B
Men
In Black II Men In Black II is all about economy.
The original made countless millions of dollars
at the box office. Economy dictates that there be another. But that's not
the only economy I'm talking about.
There's the economy that says the sequel will make
umpteen millions of dollars also unless it really, really sucks. The only
thing required is to make a movie that is kind of okay.
This means you can economize on special effects,
and present some nice set pieces, none of which are things you haven't
seen before.
You can economize on story, just coming up with
something that gets from beginning to end in one piece.
You can economize on the comedy, relying on the
chemistry between the two leads, sprinkled lightly with the occasional
humorous situation.
You can economize on action and give us scenes that,
if there weren't a franchise name behind them, would need to be much more
exciting.
You can economize and make the bland, strangely
familiar, yet not completely sucky Men In Black II and still make
a nice deposit at the bank.
Grade: C-
Note (you knew this was coming):
Postal errors in Tommy Lee Jones' first scene:
1. Yes, brown paper is fine to wrap packages in, but twine, whether
triple wound or not, is unacceptable.
2. Tommy Lee Jones is working the retail window (a clerk craft position)
yet is wearing a carrier uniform.
3. He claims to be the postmaster, yet is in uniform, working the window.
4. In July 2002 (the date the movie claims to be set in) no window,
anywhere would have Berlin Air Lift or Famous Opera Stars stamps (two series
I don't think ever have been released, although stamps have been printed
for hundreds of years, I could be wrong) and it is highly unlikely that
any office, other than a philatelic station (which this clearly was not)
would have
any Amish Quilt stamps left, as those came out in August of last year.
Even if, by some fluke, they did have some left, they are 34 cent stamps
and would need the three cent make up stamp to be of any use.
5. He leaves the office and tries to drive away in a postal mail truck.
Clerks and/or postmasters do not go through the clearance procedure to
drive them, and being the straight arrow he is, I know he wouldn't drive
government property that he was not eligible to.
Halloween:
Resurrection Here's what I don't get: Halloween: Resurrection
already has a built in audience, it is not going to lure those casual Saturday
night movie goers. No one is going to say "Should we go see Road To
Perdition, Men In Black II, or Halloween: Resurrection"
it's just not going to happen. Your crowd for this movie is either
going to consist of long time fans of the series or genre or insane, see-all-they-can
crazies like me. It's not like you're going to alienate anyone. What this
means to me is that you have free reign to do pretty much anything you
can imagine, so long as its not so violent, you land yourself an NC-17
or worse rating.
Nobody connected with this film seems to realize
this. It is a safe, tired, unexciting lump. There are two stories. In the
first, Michael Myers (Brad Loree) shows up at the psychiatric hospital
where his sister Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a patient to finish her off.
The second story is about a group of college students who stay the night
in the old Myers homestead for a live webcast. This, obviously, goes poorly
as the participants are picked off one by one.
Both of the stories limp along, never scary, never
tense, just an exercise. Maybe, after years of being exposed to the horror
genre, I've just become desensitized, but nothing here did anything for
me. I'm sorry, but I'd like to see some imagination every once in a while,
and not just the same old, tired kid-gets-seperated-from-the-rest-of-the-group-and-meets-horrible-end
crap.
Grade: D-
The
Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course If this movie is remembered for anything, it will
be for the amazing way it walked the very thin line between idiotic, laughable
camp and a genuine good time. Somebody either worked very, very hard on
this script, or got incredibly lucky.
Every time the plot (some piffle about US intelligence
operatives trying to recover the black box of a spy satellite which a crocodile
accidentally swallowed) is about to go off the deep end and completely
lose us, out comes this crazy Australian guy (Steve Irwin) who picks up
a snake whose venom is so poisonous it could kill "a hundred blokes my
size". The man is a movie star. No, really. He shows up, and by mere force
of personality, keeps us watching. There's just enough of him, and just
little enough of the plot that you can't rip your eyes from the screen.
Grade: B (really, I'm not kidding)
Les
Destinees With only this movie as evidence, I would have to
concede that Olivier Assayas is a pretty fine director. I'm not yet quite
the snob who can sit here and compare it to his previous works, but I am
snob enough to recognize a man with an eye for shooting a scene, whether
it be in a crowded ballroom or a cabin set against the Swiss Alps. Artistically,
the film is triumphant. The sets, the costumes, the music, everything.
But unfortunately, the story and the film's length
work against it. It follows Jean Barnery (Charles Berning) through the
last thirty years of his life, from small town Protestant minister, through
his years in Switzerland, through his service in WWI, and his final years
running the family porcelain factory in Limoges.
It is a small, observant story that could have been
told in a hundred or so minutes, stretched out to three hours. It's not
so much the length of the film, it is how Assayas (also a co-writer) uses
that time. Scenes will consist of conversations played out in excruciating
detail, and then end just when something is going to happen. Minor characters
or events will be lovingly developed and then dropped, never to be seen
again.
Les Destinees is yet another entry in the
"almost" category.
Grade: B-
Reign
Of Fire I don't know. Maybe I was on to something in my review
of Halloween: Resurrection when I talked about the possibility of
becoming jaded in my viewing of action or horror movies. Here is another
one where big, flashy, bright, expensive, effects laden action sequences
whiz by on the screen and I sit supremely unimpressed, bored even.
Mind you, part of the problem with Reign Of Fire
could lie in the fact that the movie is a lot of talk and not very much
action. Quinn (Christian Bale) walks around talking about how everybody
needs to stick together and outlast the dragon threat. Van Zant (Matthew
McConaughey) walks around talking about how the dragons are flesh and blood
and can be killed. The two walk around and argue. The sets are dirty and
the blue filters are put on the cameras to lend the film Atmosphere. For
a movie about killing dragons, we only see two go down.
And in the tradition of post apocalyptic movies,
there's some nagging unanswered questions, like where do they get fuel
for the helicopter, where does the electricity come from, and what is all
this business about there being only one male and destroying him will suddenly
solve the problem. It's nagging stuff like that that always distracts me.
Grade: C+
Eight
Legged Freaks Jadedness be damned! Eight Legged Freaks restores
my faith.
The plot is simplistic - toxic waste causes spiders
to grow to immense size and rampage through small town Arizona. But who
goes to these movies for plot anyway?
What the film lacks in plot, it makes up for in
all the areas that we do go to see this kind of movie for: believable,
well done monsters, the stomach (or parts farther south) to give some quality
kills, and a light, humorous touch. Fans of the genre will not be disappointed.
Grade: B+
K-19:
The Widowmaker K-19 is the epitome of a B grade level movie.
Fine actors are given the opportunity to tuck into a good enough script.
It passes its time solidly, yet never does anything to leap out and distinguish
itself.
Set during the cold war when nuclear war was measured
as a probability rather than a possibility, the Soviets rush their new
nuclear sun into service much sooner than they should in an effort to keep
up with the Americans. Polenin (Liam Neeson), the boat's captain has doubts
that it will be ready. He is replaced by Vostrikov (Harrison Ford), a man
smart enough to keep his doubts to himself.
The boat sails and, surprise, the coolant pipes
on the reactor rupture, threatening to blow everyone sky high in a megaton
sized blast. The story becomes the familiar stubborn captain ("We will
fix this"), the determined crew ("How will we fix this?"), and human drama
("I sure hope we can fix this so I can go home")
The film's minor failings which knock down from
a B are Ford's too serious, too full of duty captain, and an ending which
goes on about five minutes too long.
Grade: B-
What
To Do In Case Of Fire It's a German comedy. Now there's something you don't
hear every day.
In the late '80s, a group of anarchists plant a
bomb in an abandoned building. The wiring is messed up, and it sits for
fifteen years before exploding when a real estate agent comes to show the
building. It is a much different world now and almost all of the anarchists
have moved on to normal, capitalist lives. Realizing that all that is in
danger they reunite with the two still living the anarchist life to break
into a police compound to destroy the evidence.
As a comedy, it has its moments. The real fun is
a nice ensemble cast, people who haven't seen each other in years and who
are now completely different people getting back together and interacting.
Grade: B-
Never
Again I freely admit that fifty-somethings in the middle
of a midlife crisis probably don't get such teen staples as Say Anything
or Better Off Dead. I keep that in mind as I write about how bad
this movie was.
Christopher (Jeffrey Tambor) and Grace (Jill Clayburgh)
are two fifty-somethings in the middle of a midlife crisis. Christopher
is an exteriminator by day, a jazz pianist by night, a purveyor of one
night stands with twenty-five year olds, and a man who apparently doesn't
need to sleep. Grace is in one of those groups that infest this sort of
movie - the group of three females, two who aresex crazed nymphos (Sandy
Duncan and Caroline Aaron) and Grace who hasn't had sex in seven years.
They are supposed to show us that all fifty year old women think about
is sex. Our couple meets in a gay bar (it seems that Christopher takes
his inability to perform and a dream he had as a sign that he might be
gay, Grace is ducking a bad blind date), and fall madly in love in spite
of the protestations of both that they will "never again" fall in love.
There are two funny scenes, the rest of the "comedy"
is labored. It tries to be touching and observant while at the same time
being raunchy. Every easy target of the demographic is mined. The
ending resorts to not just one, but two surprise illnesses.
Grade: D+
A
Song For Martin A Song For Martin is a devastating movie.
Martin (Sven Wollter), guest conductor and Barbara (Viveka Seldahl), lead
violin player start an affair, divorce their spouses, and get married.
Things are great, a romantic honeymoon in Morocco, a nice house on a big
lake where Barbara helps Martin with his composing. Then he starts being
forgetful, eventually being diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease.
The centers of this movie are two of the gutsiest
performances you are likely to see. Wollter must have done some serious
research for his part. His acting brought back a lot of memories for me,
having seen first hand what this disease does. Seldahl is the wife, absolutely
in love but with a different man than the one that she is caring for. She
whips between emotions in the span of a single scene. These two performances
won the leads best actor and actress awards at the Guldbagge Awards, the
main Swedish national film awards.
Grade: A-
The
Fast Runner (Atanarjuat) One paragraph, sentence fragment, all you need to
know review:
Inuit movie. Based on legend. Woman promised to
man touched by evil spirit goes, instead, with the good guy. Evil guy tries
to get his revenge. Three hours long. Beautifully filmed with such loving
realism and attention to detail, you'll need a parka by hour two. Chance
to feel snooty that you'd watch such a thing by choice.
Grade: A-
My
Big Fat Greek Wedding The first time we see Toula (Nia Vardalos who also
wrote the screenplay) on screen she is the epitome of frump. She wears
an ugly coat, her hair looks like it hasn't seen a comb in weeks, she wears
glasses that only serve to accentuate her nose, and she is frowning. The
first several scenes consist of people glancing sideways at her across
the room, worrying about her. If you have seen a single movie in
your life, you know that at some point she will gain some self confidence,
pull out the make-up kit, and *gasp* she's beautiful!
Beautiful Toula catches the eye of Ian Miller (John
Corbett) whose only problem is that he's not Greek. They fall in love,
he proposes. I'd go into it more, but the love story was about as limp
as they come. It is a problem that happens time and again in movies, the
leads show little chemistry, little reason to keep seeing one another,
and fall in love only because the script said so.
This is a comedy. The jokes, in their entirety,
center around the characters being Greek. Some little foible, cliché,
or stereotype will be brought up and the ensemble riffs for awhile. Are
they accurate? I don't know. All I know is that it was about a 50/50 split
between very funny material and not so funny material.
Grade: C+
Austin Powers In Goldmember Austin Powers is becoming an old familiar friend
of a franchise. This is a compliment. There are those franchises (Men In
Black, anyone?) that are still around to make a buck, the new installment
being an obligation rather than something to look forward to. If Mike Myers
and company can keep things going like they do in Austin Powers In Goldmember,
everything will be just fine.
Hint #1: Pass up that long concession stand line.
You could stand to lose a few pounds, you don't need that artery clogging
popcorn even if you do opt for the Diet Coke. Your heart will thank you
and you'll get the added bonus of not missing an A-list cameo laden, funny
because of the cameos sequence. When I saw the film, a few poor bastards
wandered in after the opening credits. Now they'll look like idiots when
their friends and coworkers discuss it.
Things start off slowly. Jokes are recycled. The
requisite party at Austin's pad featuring two rather unfortunately named
twins had me prepared for the worst, but things picked up.
They pickup because they took it off autopilot and
explored some other avenues. Mike Myers is given two new second bananas
to play off of. Foxy Cleopatra (Beyonce Knowles) is an attitude laden
secret agent Austin meets up with in 1975 (oh yeah, there's some time travel
blah blah...just go with it). Even better is Michael Caine as Austin's
father Nigel, more lascivious with his cockney accent and permanent smirk.
It is the kind of role Caine has earned, a fun, scene stealing affair that
he could play in his sleep.
Here's a case where expectations come into play.
If this were the first Austin Powers movie, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed
it nearly as much. But this is the third time around, where you would expect
that the ideas would have un out. Austin Powers In Goldmember is
fresh enough that I actually welcome the prospect of an Austin Powers
4.
Grade: B
Sex
And Lucia I'll come right out and say it - God love European
cinema and the art houses willing to show its output. The Europeans have
their own set of standards as far as what they will (just about everything)
and won't (almost nothing) show. The art houses don't care about anything
the MPAA ratings board may have to say. Hell, a large percentage of what
they show doesn't even pass its way before their virgin eyes.
This is my long winded way of saying that
there is a lot of nudity in this movie. And its not that leering, puerile,
three second flash that is the standard in American teen comedies. These
people are naked for a reason and for a good long time. To be fair, I have
seen movies in the art houses with a lot more flesh than Sex And Lucia,
but the thought struck me while watching it.
The plot is one of those dense, labyrinth affairs.
Lorenzo (Tristan Ulloa) manages, at one point or another, to be involved
with all the lead female characters. The film starts in the present. He
is with Lucia (Paz Vega) and is an emotionally messed up writer, writing
a story, parts of which are taken from his real life. Part of the mystery
of the plot comes from figuring out which are real and which are poetic
license. We flash back six years to his one night stand with Elena (Najwa
Nimri) and also the start of his relationship with Lucia. The action goes
back and forth between the two times, and we're left to catch the narrative
threads (between all the sex, of course) and watch the characters put two
and two together.
It may sound like I'm just blowing smoke because
of all the, ahem, you know, that the movie provided, but it has much more
(something else the Europeans seem to have over the Americans - sex and
quality rather than sex or quality). The plot gives us just enough at just
the right speed to keep us interested. It's not one of those affairs where
we have our hands held as everything is explained. Director Julio Medem
give us a visually beautiful film, full of sweeping camera movement and
lighting varying from dim apartments, to the bright washed colors of sun
baked islands. No, I don't mean that, this is something I noticed
long before the clothes came off.
Grade: B
Who
Is Cletis Tout? Critical Jim (Tim Allen) is a hit man sent to kill
Cletis Tout. The only problem is that Cletis Tout is already dead and Finch
(Christian Slater) has stolen his identity. Critical Jim has Finch tied
to a chair in his hotel room, waiting ninety minutes to see if his fee
has been paid. This gives Critical Jim a chance to demonstrate that he
is a rabid movie fan. He has Finch tell his story in flashback as if he's
pitching a movie. As a gimmick, it is risky, and much of the reason the
movie didn't grab me is because it failed to live up to its gimmick.
The plot itself is excusable enough. It concerns
a diamond heist, a jail break, and a they hate each other so much, you
know they'll fall in love subplot. That movie, in a linear point A to point
B style would have been pretty good. I would have still had some quibbles
about the lack of professionalism that the hit man shows and how his decisions
will adversely affect his future employment opportunities. But when Critical
Jim says something about how movies don't have good third acts anymore
and that endings are shortchanged, you pay extra attention to the ending
and realize that it is kind of weak. When he says that this is the point
where you need some action, you notice that the action isn't too exciting.
Time after time, he makes a point and the movie doesn't quite live up to
the point he makes.
Grade: C+
Tadpole Double standards can be so much fun. This movie is
about Oscar (Aaron Stanford) a wise beyond his years fifteen year old who
is in love with his step mother Eve (Sigourney Weaver) and ends up, in
a drunken haze, sleeping with his mother's friend Diane (Bebe Neuwirth).
Change the sexes around, and there'd be a scandal. As it is, it's a PG-13
comedy.
Oscar is one of those great characters. Fifteen
years old, speaks French, knows about wine, reads Voltaire, can charm the
socks off of any forty year old woman without even trying. He's drunk because
he just walks into a bar and sits himself down as if he belongs there (picking
up a woman: "Bob, the lady's dry.") I could sit and watch a movie about
this kid all day.
Grade: B