Tuesday 31 May 2011

Movie Review: Fun With Dick And Jane (1977)


A comedy about economic hardship prompting a benign crime spree, Fun With Dick And Jane is a commentary about the middle class obsession with keeping up appearances and materialism. It hits a few high notes, but generally ambles along, relying on star charisma to make up for a limited premise.

Aeronautical engineer Dick Harper (Georg Segal) is a victim of downsizing. His boss Charlie (Ed McMahon) fires him, blaming the recession and poor company performance due to the shrinking space exploration program. Dick and his stay-at-home wife Jane (Jane Fonda) have a large suburban home, a mountain of debt and no assets. Dick is unable to find work, so Jane takes on a variety of humiliating jobs to make ends meet. After trying to get by on unemployment insurance and food stamps, Dick and Jane grow desperate and start a crime spree, robbing everything from corner stores to church donations. For their final heist, Dick and Jane decide to break into Charlie's safe, where he keeps a large amount of cash as an illegal slush fund to grease business deals.

George Segal was the Dick Van Dyke of his era, never convincing as an actor but always watchable as a comedian looking for the next messy situation to get embroiled in. The Fun With Dick And Jane script (co-written by Mordecai Richler) lacks a cutting edge, leaving Segal to stroll through the film with minimal impact. He does get one good scene to spread his comic wings, attempting his first robbery at a pharmacy but getting his gun stuck in his pants.

Jane Fonda does better, adding effortless glamour and attractive bemusement to the role of the well-taken-care-of wife who now needs to take more control of her life and her man.

Director Ted Kotcheff finds few opportunities to add any flair to the proceedings, and settles for just following his two stars around.

Fun With Dick And Jane achieves what it sets out to do, but it does set the bar low before clearing it.






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Monday 30 May 2011

Movie Review: Wyatt Earp (1994)


Wyatt Earp is epic in length and scope, but it never stirs the soul. The detailed story of the legendary lawman is told in a mammoth 3 hours and 10 minutes, and by the end it certainly feels like every significant event in Earp's life has been chronicled, at least according to Hollywood's best imitation of life. But this is a humourless, almost robotic rendition, tipping into territory where the significance of the man appears to be insufficient to justify the attempted grandiose treatment.

Wyatt Earp (Kevin Costner) and his many brothers are raised in Missouri by a restless father (Gene Hackman), who is always looking for the next move and eternally stressing the importance of family and the law. The young Wyatt works as a wagon driver and fight referee, before courting and marrying Urilla (Annabeth Gish) and appearing to settle down. When the pregnant Urilla contracts typhoid and dies, Wyatt is devastated and he turns to drinking and crime. Bailed out of jail by his father, Wyatt cleans up and works as a buffalo hunter and eventually becomes deputy marshal in Wichita. His good reputation lands him a similar position in the wilder outpost of Dodge City, where he grows in power and wealth and is uncompromising in imposing law and order.

Replaced for being too tough, Wyatt travels to Fort Griffin, Texas, where he meets and befriends Doc Holliday (Dennis Quaid), a former dentist, frequent gambler, occasional outlaw, and suffering from severe tuberculosis. Two women also enter Wyatt's life, prostitute Mattie (Mare Winningham) and stage performer Josie (Joanna Going).

Another stint in Dodge City follows before the Earps relocate to Tombstone, Arizona. Wyatt and his brothers Virgil and Morgan antagonize the local cattle rustlers known as The Cowboys, including members of the Clanton, Claiborne, and McLaury clans. The escalating tension climaxes with the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, in which the Earp brothers helped by Holliday face off against the Cowboys. The Earps are subsequently targeted with retribution attacks, enraging Wyatt into a violent rampage against all remaining Cowboys.

While the relatively much lighter Gunfight At The OK Corral (1957) took great liberties with the legend of the man, Wyatt Earp conveys both the thoroughness and the dryness of reading an encyclopedia, with all the implied pleasures and frustrations. The performances are earnest, the episodes are recounted with respect, the emotions are packaged, the drama is predictable. Director Lawrence Kasdan plays along, with a serious orchestral score too eager to repeatedly flourish, and lush grand vista scenery. Its a film that never lets its hair down, evoking a history teacher who respects his subject too much to animate it.

Wyatt Earp is competent and reasonably engaging. But the attempt to faithfully capture the man unfortunately also manages to lose his spirit.






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Friday 27 May 2011

Movie Review: Bridesmaids (2011)


A clever chick flick that borrows heavily from raunchy bromedies then dramatically outdoes them, Bridesmaids is a most enjoyable comedy, unique for investing in character development without losing comic momentum. Kristen Wiig of Saturday Night Live co-wrote and stars, and in the process establishes herself as a potential superstar movie comedienne.

Thirty-something Annie (Wiig) lives in Milwaukee, and is finding out what life at rock bottom looks like. Her small bakery business went bankrupt; she is stuck in a dead-end sales job; her room-mates are insufferable; her car is falling apart; and the one man who pays any attention to her uses her purely for sex. Lilian (Maya Rudolph), Annie's best friend since childhood and now working in Chicago, announces that she is getting married, and of course wants Annie to be the Maid of Honour.

Annie gets to know the other bridesmaids, and quickly finds out that Chicago socialite and control-freak Helen (Rose Byrne) also considers herself Lilian's best friend. Helen's life is as perfect as Annie's is shambolic, and the two are immediate frenemies.

Also among the bridesmaids are the stocky and aggressive Megan (Melissa McCarthy), who will become Lilian's sister-in-law; the blonde Rita (Wendy McLendon-Covey), who is stuck in an unhappy marriage, and the naive Becca (Ellie Kemper).

In preparing for the wedding Annie tries to be a good Maid of Honour, but everything she touches turns into an unmitigated disaster, from gown fittings (diarrhea) to the bachelorette trip to Vegas (kicked off the plane), to the shower (destroyed). Annie also manages to sabotage a frail relationship that was developing with police officer Nathan (Chris O'Dowd), who genuinely cares about her.

With the catastrophes mounting and the wedding looming, the friendship between Lilian and Annie is ruptured, and Helen is installed as the new Maid of Honour. Annie needs to find the incentive to pick up the pieces and reassemble her life.

At just over two hours, Bridesmaids is long for a comedy, but director Paul Feig (a veteran of TV sitcoms) uses the time wisely to nourish the characters and the narrative, and the film takes advantage of the available elbow room to work on a variety of levels. Most importantly, it is extremely funny, with some laughs, such as the sequence in the bridal shop, of the side-splitting, rib-cracking variety. Yes the humour is sometimes (or almost always) vulgar and related to body parts and fluids, and the vulgarity works brilliantly.

But the film is successful because it ventures beyond the laughs to create a triangle of stressed friendship between Annie, Lilian and Helen, and the script by Wiig and Annie Mumolo takes the time to probe how people, and therefore what they value in a friend, change over time. And finally Bridesmaids finds a heart by colouring in a lot of distress in the life of Annie, and becoming a rare example of a comedy that provides eloquent context for hilariously anguished behaviour.

A thoughtfully unapologetic romp, Bridesmaids leaves a trail of delectable destruction in its wake.






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Thursday 26 May 2011

Movie Review: Mean Streets (1973)


A landmark film in the careers of director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, Mean Streets examines the gritty lives of assorted small-time criminals in New York's Little Italy. Filmed in unglamorous locations emphasizing desperate men pretending to be big-shots while scrounging for a better living, the film is all about characters dripping with unsatisfied bravado trying to create space for their pathetically over-inflated egos.

Mean Streets just drops in on Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and his friend Johnny Boy (De Niro). Charlie is a low level hood doing the dirty work of collecting protection money from struggling businesses and trying to make his way up the crime family ladder, using the influence of his uncle Giovani (Cesare Danova). Johnny Boy is reckless and owes money all over town, including a large amount to local shark Michael (Richard Romanus).

Charlie desperately tries to keep Johnny Boy out of trouble, but generally to no avail. Charlie is also in a relationship with Johnny Boy's cousin Teresa (Amy Robinson), who suffers from epilepsy. Tony (David Proval) is friends with Charlie and Johnny Boy, and runs the local bar where they all hang out. Michael is growing tired of Johnny Boy not making his debt payments, leading to an ugly, unavoidable confrontation.


Mean Streets was the beginning of successful career-long collaboration between Scorsese and De Niro, which would include classics like Taxi Driver, New York, New York, Raging Bull, and GoodFellas, with New York City frequently the third point in the creative triangle. In Mean Streets, Scorsese brings out of De Niro a performance of doomed impetuousness, more jovial but not any less intense than his trademark future starring roles.

Harvey Keitel actually has the leading role as Charlie, but he is eclipsed by De Niro's Johnny Boy and Richard Romanus as the slimy but steely Michael. Keitel would rarely play the lead again and instead found his niche as a powerful supporting actor.

When De Niro is not stealing the movie with his young magnetism, Mean Streets flounders somewhat and features numerous scenes of the men posturing like peacocks and challenging each other's masculinity, often erupting into physical violence. The theme of repetitive reassertion for the overflowing testosterone does get tiresome. More interesting are the relatively few moments that focus on Charlie's relationships with Giovani and Teresa, who are both given relatively truncated treatment in the script co-written by Scorsese and frequent early collaborator Mardik Martin.

Mean Streets is an unflinching drama set in the world of crude wannabe mobsters, a window to a world that is equally captivating and distasteful.





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Wednesday 25 May 2011

Movie Review: Source Code (2011)


A reasonably clever amalgamation of concepts from Avatar, Groundhog Day and Inception, Source Code deploys science fiction to counter a terrorism plot, and sneaks in an unlikely romance as a bonus. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan are attractive leads, and Vera Farmiga infuses unexpected emotion into a talking head role.

Decorated army helicopter pilot Colter Stevens (Gyllenhaal) is on a most unusual mission: locked into a claustrophobic chamber, he is transported via a program called Source Code to repeatedly re-live the final eight minutes of the life of Sean Fentress, a commuter on a Chicago train that was blown up earlier that morning. Source Code was developed by scientist Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright), who has almost perfected the neat trick of transporting one brain into another across time and space. From within his chamber Stevens communicates with the outside world via monitor, and his handler in the Source Code control centre is Colleen Goodwin (Farmiga), who must keep Stevens sane and functional as he re-lives the final moments on the train prior to the explosion.

Embodying the brain of Sean Fentress, Stevens gets to re-live the same pre-bombing events on the train over and over, and he gets to know the other passengers including fellow-commuter Christina (Monaghan). But the real purpose of the mission is to identify the bomber within the eight available minutes for each of his trips. Another, deadlier radioactive bomb is about to be detonated in Chicago, and the only hope of stopping the carnage is for Stevens to figure who planted the train bomb and how he can be stopped.

The journey of Colter Stevens also turns inwards as he begins to discover the reality of his condition, including how he came to be selected for this mission and how he may be able to communicate with his estranged father while helping to stop a mad bomber intent on spreading mayhem.

Source Code gets better as it progresses and reveals the depth of its complexities. Gyllenhaal effectively portrays a helicopter pilot dealing with a situation way outside the normal scope of his experience, and having to willingly endure the jarring trauma of a fatal explosion on a recurring basis, not just kicking him out of the Source Code but also killing all the people that he was attempting to interact with.

Director Duncan Jones makes excellent use of the limited number of sets, the film practically taking place in just three locations: the chamber, the Source Code control centre and the train. The script by Ben Ripley quickly develops the story into much more than a techno whodunnit, with the internal voyage undertaken by Stevens to discover who and where he is taking on ever increasing prominence.

For all its clever ideas and good performances, Source Code is badly let down in its final twist, with a Hollywood happy ending appended clumsily, where a brilliantly poignant earlier denouement was there to be embraced. It's an unfortunately poor, but not unexpected, choice.

Source Code is a compact thriller, carrying a hard-drive filled with good ideas. It's not perfect, but it is pleasingly thought-provoking.






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Movie Review: The Usual Suspects (1995)


A clever caper movie, The Usual Suspects is certainly engaging but ultimately a bit too clever for it's own good. A solid cast enjoys a combination of energetic verbal sparring and old-fashioned heist action infused with more modern blood and violence, but an excess of criminal characters all attempting to outsmart one another causes an imbalance that threatens to overwhelm the movie.

A lot of bad people are lying dead in and around a ship at the San Pedro Harbour in Los Angeles, victims of a full-blown shoot-out between rival gangs. One of only two survivors is Roger Kint (Kevin Spacey), known as Verbal, a small time hood with a pronounced limp, who has survived the carnage without a scratch. US Customs and FBI Agents, including Special Agent Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) round on Verbal, interrogating him to unravel why so many criminals met their bullet-perforated fate at the waterfront. Through flashbacks, Verbal recounts the story of his now-deceased criminal gang colleagues: mastermind and former corrupt cop Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), trigger guy McManus (Stephen Baldwin), the almost incomprehensible Fenster (Benicio del Toro), and Hockney (Kevin Pollack).

After the gang forms in a jail cell, Keaton leads them in holding up a corrupt police taxi service in New York, and then, at the request of a mysterious Mr. Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaithe), robbing a Los Angeles jeweler. Kobayashi then reveals that his employer is the legendary criminal Keyser Soze, and asks Keaton to lead an assault on a boat belonging to a Hungarian gang, who are rivals of Soze in the drug trade. The attack would be dangerous, but the pay-off for Keaton and his men is huge: 91 million dollars.

Keaton asks Verbal to sit-out and witness the assault, which goes a bit better than planned, with Keaton and McManus surviving the vicious shoot-out. But a mysterious figure appears from the shadows, eliminates them both and disappears. Kujan needs to decide how much of Verbal's story he can believe, and what to make of some really odd pieces in the convoluted puzzle.

The Usual Suspects climaxes with a double twist ending. but while initially the final revelation appears ingenious, it actually disintegrates under it's own weight: If Keyser Soze is as brilliant and resourceful as the film reveals him to be, he certainly chose a very rudimentary, brute-force method to achieve his ultimate objective. The film is essentially a character study, and while Kevin Spacey and Gabriel Byrne provide Verbal and  Keaton with some depth and interesting texture, the rest of the criminals and cops are vaguely sketched by Christopher McQuarrie's script, and quite forgettable.

Director Bryan Singer maintains a brisk pace and brings out the tension in the dialogue exchanges and narration that underpin the unfolding plot, and just about maintains control of the increasing layers of complexity. The Usual Suspects is enjoyable, mostly for being a quite unusually intelligent movie, but it does chase itself into a corner where the smarts overpower the logic.






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Monday 23 May 2011

Movie Review: 8mm (1999)


A journey to the darkest corners of human depravity, 8mm is unrelenting in portraying the depth of callous evil that men are capable of. It is also an absorbing movie, director Joel Schumacher succeeding in capturing the wretchedness of the extreme porn sub-industry, where soulless people engage in soul destruction.

Private investigator Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage) is married to Amy (Catherine Keener) and has a newborn child. Eager to take on higher profile, better-paying cases, Welles seems to get a big break when wealthy widow Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter) and her attorney Daniel Longdale (Anthony Heald) retain him to investigate what appears to be a snuff film found in the deceased Mr. Christian's safe.

Mrs. Christian wants Welles to find out if the girl who appears to be murdered in the film was actually killed, and will pay handsomely for the information.

By investigating missing persons cases, Welles identifies the victim as Mary Ann Mathews, a runaway who fled an abusive household to pursue a Hollywood dream. Welles is soon exploring the most sordid underbelly of the porn industry in LA with the help of local store clerk Max California (Joaquin Phoenix). They finally identify porn film producer Eddie Poole (James Gandolfini), director Dino Velvet (Peter Stormare) and brutal performer Machine (Chris Bauer) as responsible for Mary Ann's death-on-film.

The details of the case devour Welles' soul and threaten his family. Destroying the group of apathetic snuff film makers becomes a personal obsession and a journey into the blackest recesses of humanity.

8mm quickly de-glamorizes the excesses of the porn industry by shining a harsh light on the twisted minds that both manufacture and consume it. Schumacher infuses the film with the smell of moral and actual filth, while cautioning that walking with the devil is often a one-way trip.

With the movie never taking a break for a cheap laugh or a relaxing breath, Welles' journey into the sordid alleyways of debauchery only gets ever darker, threatening even his relationship with his wife. Nicolas Cage is the perfect protagonist, resourceful and persistent enough to penetrate the mystery but vulnerable enough to be shocked and forever changed by what he finds. 8mm is satisfyingly intense, challenging, and cautionary.






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Wednesday 18 May 2011

Movie Review: A League Of Their Own (1992)


A comedy-drama that taps into baseball's rich vein of nostalgia, A League Of Their Own touches all the right bases and scores a resounding victory. Weaving a fictional story based on the true events surrounding the formation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during the Second World War, director Penny Marshall expertly keeps the focus on the human drama and allows the baseball to simply provide a rich canvass to paint on.

It's 1943, and with star baseball players heading out to war, the idea of a women's league is hatched by baseball's governors and their industrial backers, and a recruiting program is launched. Sisters Dottie (Geena Davis) and Kit (Lori Petty) are competitive amateur players and dairy farmers in Oregon. Dottie, a catcher, is more attractive, more confident and a bit better at everything than the scrappier Kit, a pitcher.

Spotted by a continuously wisecracking scout (Jon Lovitz), the sisters travel to the league tryouts in Chicago. Dottie and Kit are selected to play on the Rockford Peaches, one of four founding teams, along with the unattractive but powerful switch hitter Marla (Megan Cavanagh), the flirtatious "All The Way" Mae (Madonna) and the competitive and opinionated Doris (Rosie O'Donnell). A former beauty queen and several housewives, many with their husbands fighting the war, make up the rest of the team.

The inaugural coach of the Peaches is Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) a former big leaguer, but now a confirmed drunk. Dugan initially takes little interest in coaching the team, allowing Dottie to fill the void and provide leadership as the league struggles to attract attention. But attendance and interest pick up when the league starts marketing the flamboyant yet elegant Dottie as the Queen of Diamonds, and Dugan finally accepts the responsibility of managing the team. The Peaches need to overcome various conflicts during their first season, not least of which is the simmering rivalry between Dottie and Kit.

To borrow a sports metaphor, A League Of Their Own benefits from actors who accept their role on the team, none more so than Madonna thriving in a supporting role and delivering one of her best screen performances. Geena Davis, one year on from her triumph in Thelma and Louise, carries the main role with an intriguing combination of steel and grace, allowing Lori Petty the showier and edgier role of the younger sister who needs to try harder just to get out of her sibling's shadow. Tom Hanks makes an impact in a relatively small role as Jimmy Dugan, but gets to deliver, with perfect exasperation, the classic "Are you crying? There's no crying! There's no crying in baseball!" line.

Jon Lovitz as the scout Ernie Capadino gets nothing but an endless stream of sharply sarcastic lines to spout ("Are you coming? See, how it works is, the train moves, not the station."), and the only shame is that his role is too small.

A League Of Their Own captures an idyllic American mid-west during the Second World War era, with the Rockford Peaches covering endless miles of landscape on the team bus between games, and war-time patriotic posters on every wall.

Bookending the movie with scenes of the elderly Dottie travelling to the opening of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League section of the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, an event which turned into a player reunion, the screenplay by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandell strikes the perfect balance between drama and comedy. None of the comic moments are crass, and equally, most of the serious scenes avoid the descent into melodrama.

This is a story of ordinary girls embarking on an amazing, life-changing adventure by simply playing the sport that they love under extraordinary circumstances, and A League Of Their Own creates an extraordinary film out of their experience.






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Tuesday 17 May 2011

Movie Review: Salt (2010)


A 100 minute chase movie, Salt is nothing but energy. A non-stop breathless pursuit, what little plot exists becomes too complicated too quickly given the minuscule amount of time allocated to story-telling. The flying bullets and flying bodies take precedence over everything else, including logic, characters, or any pause for thought.

CIA Agent Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) has spent time in a North Korean torture cell. Released in a prisoner exchange after her husband Michael (August Diehl) raises the profile of her case, she is heading towards a CIA desk job when Russian defector Vasilly Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) fingers her as a sleeper agent about to be activated to kill the visiting Russian President in New York. Before her guilt or innocence can be established, Salt quickly bolts and makes her escape from Washington DC to New York, with a large posse of agents in hot pursuit, including the CIA's Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber) and agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) of the Secret Service.

It turns out that the United States is crawling with Russian Nationalist sleeper agents under Orlov's command, waiting to be activated on this Day X, with an intricate plot to instigate a global nuclear war. Salt is the best of these highly trained traitors, and no one can stop her as she indeed makes it to New York and seemingly assassinates the Russian President. Next up it's back to DC and onto the White House, where Salt helps other Russian agents to rather easily take over the command and control bunker and start the process of launching nuclear missiles. The plan to destroy the world seems to be proceeding flawlessly, but there are more twists to this tale as Salt, Winter and Peabody play out a frantic finale.

A mix between The Manchurian Candidate, James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Mission Impossible, Salt brings little that is new to the all-out-action genre. If anything, the plot is more preposterous than anything offered up in the most far-fetched Bond movies this side of Moonraker. Director Phillip Noyce proved his inability to deliver an effective thriller in the botched Patriot Games, and in Salt he is true to form as he sacrifices all plot elements in favour of the next over-the-top stunt.

Angelina Jolie is by far the best thing going on in Salt, and she impresses with an astounding athleticism which included performing most of her stunts. The support cast have little to do except wave their guns around and take shots at her. Past Jolie's performance, Salt is an endless out of control roller coaster ride: yes it's fast and fun for a while, but energy that is lacking in grounded purpose ultimately results in a forgettable blur.






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Movie Review: Something Borrowed (2011)


An attempt at a romantic comedy in which all the characters are unlikable and imitative, Something Borrowed may as well be referring to the whole premise: construct a film by borrowing all the elements from other, better efforts. The movie is populated by the types of people who never seem to need to work for a living. They just party, drink, argue, drink some more, and bed-hop. The characters are only defined by their relationships, and these are certainly not pretty.

Maybe because of all that drinking there is no shortage of stupefyingly poor judgement as a game of bed carousel unfolds and a love triangle morphs first into a square and then a pentagon. The screenplay by Jennifer Snyder Urman is utterly lacking in wit or charm, leaving the characters just struggling against their own obnoxiousness, but thankfully at least they all deserve each other. Director Luke Greenfield, who has the more tolerable The Girl Next Door (2004) to his name, directs Something Borrowed in what appears to be a comatose state. Not even the generally reliable New York scenery is able to save the film from consummate boredom.

Something Borrowed is worse than many made-for-TV movies, and while Kate Hudson's career appears to have dead-ended, it would be tragic if Ginnifer Goodwin's potential is wasted on more brain dead tripe like this.

Rachel (Goodwin) is the cute brunette lawyer, best friends since childhood with the blond and wild Darcy (Hudson). Anything Darcy wants, Darcy gets, usually with Rachel's help, and this includes Dex (Colin Egglesfield, a creepy hybrid of a young Tom Cruise and a young Rob Lowe). Dex and Rachel were friends in law school, but when Darcy made her move on Dex, Rachel easily yielded. Now Darcy and Dex are getting married, but Dex and Rachel are rediscovering their feelings for each other.

Will Rachel risk her friendship for the sake of her love? Will Dex call off the wedding that he now realizes is a big mistake? Will anyone care?

Actually, Ethan (John Krasinki) seems to care: he is good friends with both Rachel and Darcy, and he would like Rachel to stand up for herself, but maybe that's because Ethan has a crush on Rachel. But Dex's friend Marcus (Steve Howey) only cares about being the most selfish version of himself that he can be, to satisfy his juvenile lust for women. Rachel betrays her friendship, Darcy betrays Dex, Dex betrays Darcy, Rachel breaks Ethan's heart, and Marcus gets himself a baby. By that point the best thing that can happen is for the end credits to roll to halt the agony and mercy-kill this miserable attempt at creating entertainment.






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Monday 16 May 2011

Movie Review: Water For Elephants (2011)


A classic love triangle set against the backdrop of a touring circus desperately trying to survive the Great Depression in the early 1930s, Water For Elephants succeeds thanks to the memorable setting and committed performance from the three lead performers. It may not be the most original story every filmed, but it is delivered with compellingly grimy panache.

In 1931, Jacob (Robert Pattinson) is a young student about to graduate from Cornell University's veterinary school when his world collapses around him: his parents die in a car crash, and all their belongings are seized by the bank due to a mountain of debt. Left with nothing, Jacob abandons his life and joins the Benzini Brothers Circus. August (Christoph Waltz) runs the circus with a cold heart and an iron fist, including throwing men from the moving train when he can't afford to pay or feed them. His attractive wife Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) is the star attraction of the circus, with an elegant animal tricks show.

August hires Jacob as the circus vet and because he enjoys the prestige of having a college educated staff member. It does not take long for Jacob and Marlena to develop a mutual attraction that does not go unnoticed by August. With the bad economic times getting worse, August acquires Rosie the elephant from a defunct circus in a final desperate attempt to revive the fortunes of Benzini Brothers. With Jacob's help in training Rosie, Marlena's new show atop the elephant is a huge hit. But August cannot control his mounting fury at potentially losing Marlena to Jacob, and his rage results in a classic circus tragedy involving wild cats on the loose, a crowd stampede, and one vengeful elephant.

Told from the perspective of an elderly Jacob (Hal Holbrook) recounting the story decades later, Water For Elephants thrives in the smelly environs of a travelling circus made up of desperate characters traversing a desperate United States in desperate times made less tolerable by prohibition. As brought to life by director Francis Lawrence, there is nothing attractive about the Benzini Brothers, despite August's efforts to place the occasional gloss of glamour on his life. Christoph Waltz gives August a single-minded survivalist clamp on his circus, justified by the agonizing alternative of starvation for him and his wife.

Reese Witherspoon is almost angelic in both look and behaviour as Marlena, likely an appropriate portrayal since we are seeing her through Jacob's adoring eyes. As for Robert Pattinson, taking a break from the Twilight and Harry Potter franchises to play Jacob, he is earnest to a fault, with a character that is unfortunately less interesting for being almost too honest and too straight.

Water For Elephants may lack the sparkle of originality, but it finds its strength in capturing the anxiety unleashed by misery to deliver a rich experience of romance and sorrow.






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Sunday 15 May 2011

Movie Review: Point Of No Return (1993)


A remake of Luc Besson's film Nikita, the Hollywood treatment not unexpectedly strips the soul out of the story and replaces it with abject superficiality. In Point Of No Return the action sequences are over-muscled on steroids, the character motivations are non-existent, the romance is phony, and the tits-and-ass are plentiful and utterly superfluous. Bridget Fonda tries hard to bring some depth and conviction to the central character of Maggie (nom de guerre Nina), but is undermined by a dull script and director John Badham insisting on filming her in her underwear at every opportunity.

In Washington DC, Maggie is a drugged-out criminal, running with a gang of lost and vicious youth. A robbery of a drug store goes wrong, and in the ensuing shoot-out Maggie blows out the brains of a police officer. She is convicted and sentenced to death.

Bob (Gabriel Byrne) rescues Maggie from the lethal injection by enrolling her, initially very much against her will, into a top secret agency that does the government's dirty work by eliminating high profile undesirables. In addition to combat and weapons training, Maggie's instructors include Amanda (Anne Bancroft), who teaches her social etiquette. As she is polished into an expert assassin, Bob naturally takes a much more than just professional interest in Maggie's progress.

Upon mastering all the required skills, Maggie is given the code name Nina and unleashed into society, where she quickly meets and falls in love with J.P. (Dermot Mulroney), although she cannot share much pillow talk with him since her job includes tasks such wiping out criminal cartels by blowing up entire hotel floors and targeted assassinations using high powered sniper rifles. Eventually Maggie grows tired of the killing, Bob grows tired of J.P., and a mission-gone-wrong activates The Cleaner (Harvey Keitel) to kill everyone in sight.

There are some slick moments in Point Of No Return, and with a healthy suspension of disbelief, the action sequences are entertaining in a Schwarzeneggeresque way, with plenty of high-tech weaponry, fiery explosions, an endless number of goons materializing from nowhere to get killed by Nina, and no shortage of impressive stunts. And the small portion of the film with The Cleaner starts to become funny in a good way, whether intentional or not. Fonda tackles her role fearlessly and manages to progress with the character, while everyone else around her spouts cliches with statuesque fluidity.

But there is no escaping the ham-handed approach of Point Of No Return, a point where apparently subtlety is a lost art, and where all the points need to be driven home with a sledgehammer.






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Tuesday 10 May 2011

Movie Review: Maverick (1994)


A comedy western injected with a high dose of star-powered charisma, Maverick is highly polished entertainment that gallops down familiar trails with wild abandon and broad smiles.

The stars line up in perfect alignment, with Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, James Garner, and James Coburn comfortably slipping into the ideal western world where all the cliches happily apply and every serious situation can be resolved with quick wit, quick guns or quick fists.

Gibson as Bret Maverick floods the screen with boyish charisma, and there is nothing he cannot do: charmer of the ladies, quick-draw with the guns, unbeatable with the fists, dapper in his clothes, ever-ready with the witty retort, friendly with the Indians and a winner with the poker hand. Foster as Annabelle Bransford is all fake coquettish southern charm, as she seduces her way into every bulging pocket. James Garner's Marshal Cooper is more (and less) than what he seems, trying to project some law and order on proceedings but mainly creating a nostalgic link back to the Maverick television series in which he starred back in the late 1950s.

The plot revolves around Maverick making his way to a major riverboat poker championship, and trying to scrounge together $3,000 to round out the $25,000 he needs as an entry fee. Maverick encounters Annabelle, also a gambler trying to get into the same tournament, and who makes most of her living by stealing from the men that she pretends to befriend. Maverick's winning ways leave a trail of enemies in his wake, but regardless of efforts to stop him he makes it to the tournament hosted by Commodore Duvall (Coburn) with security provided by Marshal Cooper. The poker tournament and its aftermath take many twists and turns, with Maverick naturally at the centre of any and all controversy.

Richard Donner tilts the balance firmly towards humour and allows the romance, action, gambling, and characters to feed the laughs. A few scenes do miss the mark, notably a tasteless shoot-the-Indian detour that is meant as satire but just falls flat. But most of Maverick is a riot, with highlights including a dead coach driver, a one-on-many fist-and-stick fight, deliciously spiky attraction between Maverick and Annabelle, an unexpected cameo from Danny Glover allowing a wink towards his partnership with Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series, and endless clever banter around the poker table.

With a crisp deck of stars, director and material, Maverick deals a winning hand.






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Monday 9 May 2011

Movie Review: Insomnia (2002)


A criminal drama set in the bleak snow-covered Alaskan climate, Insomnia delves deep into the disturbed psyche of its main characters, and in the harsh light of endless white nights, stares at the stark reality of two men grappling with their inevitable fate.

Two Los Angeles detectives, grizzled and legendary veteran Will Dormer (Al Pacino) and the younger and more idealistic Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) travel to the small and remote town of Nightmute, in far northern Alaska, to help investigate the murder of teenager Kay Connell. Local police officer Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank) tags along as Dormer and Eckhart explore the evidence. Dormer has more than one problem, though, as he struggles to get any sleep in a town where the bright sun never sets in summer.

His senses dulled by a lack of rest, Dormer accidentally shoots and kills Eckhart. But with no witnesses to the shooting, Dormer lies and claims that it was Connell's killer who shot Eckhart. Suffering from ever worsening insomnia, Dormer is contacted and taunted by Walter Finch (Robin Williams), a local author of cheesy books. The lonely Finch had befriended the much younger Connell and killed her in a fit of rage. Worse still, Finch knows the truth about Eckhart's death.

With no evidence tying Finch to the Connell murder, Dormer frantically seeks a way to bring Finch to justice, while Burr begins to find holes in Dormer's story about Eckhart's death. As they hurtle towards a final confrontation, neither Dormer nor Finch appear to have much of a future, and after six consecutive sleepless nights, Dormer is beyond desperate to close the case and get some sleep.

Al Pacino allows his eyelids to puff up to the size of pillows as he convincingly portrays a man engaged in a futile fight to sleep, and an equally ineffective effort to delay the end of a distinguished career. Williams has a smaller role, but delivers many long-winded passages that reveal the creepy self-delusion of a serial killer in the making, begging to be caught but conniving to survive all the same. It is difficult to understand what Academy Award winner Swank is doing in the trite role of a wide-eyed rookie officer, but her performance adds little to the movie.

Director Christopher Nolan, working from a Hilary Seitz script inspired by a 1997 Norwegian film, pulls out all the flashy tricks from his bag of brief flashbacks, quick edits, bloody details, and fake images generated by a brain lacking in sleep. He creates an appropriately desolate setting of a small northern town with all the grime and none of the charm of isolation.

Insomnia is about death in many guises, with all the major characters facing an ending of sorts: Eckhart is killed, Burr sees the end of her innocence, and both Finch and Dormer realize that they are at the end of their previous lives, and their futures are intertwined and dependant on each other. That all these endings are accelerated due to days that have no end is just delicious irony.


    



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Movie Review: The Mackintosh Man (1973)


A cold war spy story set in England, Ireland and Malta, The Mackintosh Man is one of the more curious examples of the genre.

With legendary American director John Huston at the helm, Paul Newman playing a pretend Australian criminal working for British intelligence, French actress Dominique Sanda as the strangely cold daughter of a senior British spook, and the action hopping to the islands of Ireland and Malta, The Mackintosh Man has a high weirdness quotient, but all the unexplained accents do contribute to the sense that the global espionage game is afoot.

In London, as member of parliament Sir George Wheeler (James Mason) rails against weak-kneed government officials who are not doing enough to protect national security, Joseph Rearden (Paul Newman) flawlessly carries out a diamond theft at the behest of spy master Mackintosh (Harry Andrews) and his daughter Mrs. Smith (Sanda). Rearden is nevertheless apprehended and thrown into a high security jail.

Due to Rearden's perceived diamond wealth, he is a prime candidate to be busted out of jail by a shady criminal organization in exchange for a fat fee, and his fellow escapee is Slade (Ian Bannen), a communist spy. The break-out lands Rearden and Slade in an isolated Irish mansion as a staging point for points beyond, and that is where Rearden's true identity as an agent is betrayed. Mackintosh's real mission is to expose the shady politicos providing support for spies like Slade, but they turn out to be more ruthless than he expected, leaving Rearden and Mrs. Smith having to fend for themselves and battle the traitors.

Co-written by Walter Hill, The Mackintosh Man succeeds in creating a grim le Carre cold war ambience, aided by a rather depressed London of the early 1970s. Huston and Newman ensure that the film is always engaging, and Sanda is interesting to watch if only to monitor how far her temperature dips below zero. Andrews, Bannen and Mason bring beefy British heft to the secondary roles.

The Irish landscape and the Maltese setting add an element of freshness, but ultimately The Mackintosh Man doesn't succeed in ever really taking off, and the final chapter regresses from an intelligent spy story to a routine action flick. It's a film that with plenty of thoughtful density but insufficient airflow to sparkle.






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Wednesday 4 May 2011

Movie Review: Swordfish (2001)


Choose a random clutch of movie stars lacking in any chemistry, cast most of them in the wrong roles, mix in a limp and incomprehensible technobabble-heavy script, garnish with superfluous action sequences and over-the-top violence, sit back and cringe as the mess unfolds.

It is difficult to imagine how a film featuring John Travolta, Halle Berry, Hugh Jackman and Don Cheadle (not to mention Vinnie Jones and Sam Shepard) could be botched so badly, but director Dominic Sena, in way over his head, embraces the incompetence with aplomb. Sena, whose normal pool depth is the shallow waters of music videos, disappeared from directing movies for eight years after Swordfish, presumably to allow memories to fade.

Gabriel Shear (Travolta) is some sort of mega-rich, ultra-shady and uber-cool manipulator, operating outside the law with wild abandon. Stanley Jobson (Jackman) is a down-and-out expert computer hacker just released from jail and desperate to regain custody of his daughter. Gabriel uses his mistress Ginger (Berry) to lure Stanley into accepting a $10 million assignment involving hacking into some government database to siphon off billions of somehow abandoned dollars. Agent Roberts (Cheadle), who threw Stanley in jail to begin with, is curious about what Gabriel is up to, while Ginger is revealed as a Drug Enforcement Agency agent. There is also a sinister Senator Reisman (Shepard) attempting to influence events using fake smiles and contrived dialogue.

After endless scenes of computer screens displaying nonsense, fingers tap-tap-tapping furiously at keyboards, manic car chases and midnight street shoot-outs, events climax in a ridiculous bank heist that is then topped-off by an even more farcical bus-dangling-from-a-helicopter fiasco.

Travolta tackles the role of Gabriel Shear with unbridled relish bordering on satanic intensity. Jackman sleepwalks through the movie in mock earnestness, while Berry's attempt at a sultry seductress falls flat, and never flatter than in her much touted topless scene.

The script by Skip Woods makes half-hearted attempts at explaining the hacking world, but quickly gives up and settles for images of what looks like a kid's plan for a simple Lego structure self-assembling on a black-and-green screen as a surrogate for Something Really Important going on. Swordfish equally makes an unconvincing attempt to provide Gabriel Shear with motivation for the carnage that he is causing by introducing yet another top-secret government anti-terrorism agency, and this just makes the story more ludicrous.

Compared to Swordfish, any James Bond movie would be elevated to a highly intellectual artistic masterpiece, and this falsely magnified appreciation of other films must remain as Swordfish's only achievement.






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Tuesday 3 May 2011

Movie Review: Lemon Tree (2008)


A few lemon trees becoming a point of international debate between Israel and the Palestinians is an apt metaphor for the hyper-exaggerated importance of every little gesture and action in the intractable conflict. Lemon Tree is a thoughtful movie about the people living with the reality of the endless aggravation emanating from the ongoing crisis. 

Salma Zidane (Hiam Abbass) is a middle-aged widow living in the West Bank, exactly at the border with Israel. Her grove of lemon trees is all that she has left in the world. The new Israeli Defence Minister, Israel Navon (Doron Tavory) and his wife Mira (Rona Lipaz-Michael) move into the house across the border fence from Salma's grove. Navon's security detail order the eradication of Salma's lemon trees to reduce the threat of terrorist infiltration through the grove.

Salma teams up with lawyer Ziad Daud (Ali Suliman) to fight the case through the Israeli court system. Ziad has a wife and child leftover from his student days in Russia, but he and Salma nevertheless develop a mutual attraction that sets tongues wagging in the conservative West Bank society. The widow and the lawyer steer their unlikely case to save the grove all the way to the supreme court as the lemon trees become an international cause celebre.

Director Eran Riklis captures the assymetrical essence of the ongoing Israeli - Palestinian conflict through the story of the lemon trees, with the underlying theme of humanity being sacrificed at the altar of fear. Lemon Tree's strongest moments involve the relationship between Mira and Salma, two women on either side of the same fence but unable to establish even the most basic communication. Riklis is able to speak volumes by muting the conversation between the two women, who are in each other's face but in utterly different worlds.

The emerging attraction between Salma and Ziad is handled with refreshing sensitivity, and although there is a greater message of love and dignity emerging together, the relationship remains primarily a simple story of two lonely souls finding solace in a common cause.

But the script by Riklis and Suha Arraf is also a bit sloppy, and leaves a few threads unattended. A young Israeli soldier assigned to an observation post on Navon's property is given humorous prominence but suddenly drops out of the plot. A journalist who publicizes Salma's plight is equally abandoned by the script. And an attempt at a sub-plot involving Navon potentially having an affair with an attractive staffer is never brought out of the shadows.

But despite the loose ends, Lemon Tree is a masterpiece of simple and controlled storytelling, successfully conveying a much greater drama without descending into melodramatics.





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