Beneath - Review

Not until I watched 2007’s Beneath have I ever felt quite so perplexed by a movie’s production credits. On one hand, we see that Paramount Classics backed the flick. Seems to me that a line called “Classics” implies something serious and dramatic, ala the Merchant-Ivory pictures. But then the credits follow this with a listing for MTV Films, a name that inspires thoughts of light pop culture.

How do the two combine for Beneath? Not well. College student Christy Wescot (Nora Zehetner) has gone through a lot of pain at a young age. Her parents died when she was 11, and her older sister Vanessa (Carly Pope) eventually dies from injuries suffered in a car crash when three years later. To make things worse, 14-year-old Christy (Brenna O’Brien) was driving and caused the wreck.

All of this leaves Christy as something of an emotional basket case, and she finds it tough to maintain a stable life. She encounters remnants of her past when family acquaintance Joseph (Don S. Davis) dies of a heart attack. At the funeral, she reunites with Vanessa’s widower John Locke (Matthew Settle), John’s controlling mother (Gabrielle Rose) and an old friend named Debbie (Nicola Anderson).

Christy also runs into some weirdness when she meets her niece Amy (Jessica Amlee). The youngster confides that a “dark thing” took away Joseph, not an ordinary heart attack. This spooks Christy since she’d suffered from so many haunting visions herself. She’s tormented by thoughts that her sister was buried alive. The movie follows these supernatural threads and other mysterious elements.

I can’t say that I expected much from Beneath, so it would be a mistake to label it as a disappointment. That said, however little stimulation I anticipated was too much. The end result was goofy at best and absurd and amateurish at worst.

If forced to choose one word to label Beneath, “clumsy” would first come to mind. “Stupid” would follow pretty closely, but “clumsy” races to the forefront in this jerky, awkward flick.

We sense this from literally minute one of Beneath as we follow Christy’s past in flashback. The scene in which Vanessa allows 14-year-old Christy to drive may well be the dumbest movie event I’ve seen in years. Not only does it seem completely idiotic for Vanessa to grant Christy’s wish, but also it comes across as what it is: a moronic plot event with no reason to exist other than to create a contrived event. There are many more logical and less obvious ways to injure someone in a car crash. I know that the filmmakers wanted Christy to be the cause - even though that’s really irrelevant to the story – but there are lots of less ridiculous methods they could have used.

To be honest, Beneath feels like nothing more than a student film. It has the stink of youthful pretension and unfocused ambition all over it. This story could have worked in a much more successful manner, but director Dagen Merrill lacks the skill to make it fly.

This means that at no point does Beneath display any subtlety. It makes sure we see every little element that will become important and never allows any room for interpretation or dimensionality. Instead, we find lots of usual cheap scares and obvious use of music for emphasis. There’s not a single unexpected moment to be found in this stinker.

Add to that stiff, awkward acting and you’ll find nothing satisfying in Beneath. The story meanders and never coalesces into anything worthwhile. The lack of competence behind it robs it of any potential and leaves us with a wholly forgettable piece of cinema.

Fracture - Review

Can a movie where Anthony Hopkins plays a clever murderer go wrong? The answer is no, no it can’t - thank goodness! Though he trades “Clarice” for “Willy Boy,” and cannibalism for a more calculated sort of murder, Hopkins evokes his Silence of the Lambs heyday in what is definitely one of the best thrillers of 2007.

You’d think after countless movies where jealous husbands kill their wives women might take a few extra steps to ensure that their spouses aren’t complete psychos before embarking on scandalous affairs. And if you’re married to Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), a super-intellectual obsessed with building strange marble structures, you probably should have seen the warning signs. Still Jennifer Crawford (Embeth Davidtz) obliviously continues her dangerous liaison with a man whose true identity she refuses to learn, while Ted patiently waits for the perfect moment to strike.

When Jennifer returns home after a hard day’s cheating, Ted innocently requests a hug before shooting her in the face. When the police arrive, Ted only permits hostage negotiator Rob Nunally (Billy Burke) into the house, knowing full well that Rob is the man his wife has been cavorting with. Ted confesses his crime as Rob frantically searches for signs of life from his lover and then desperately attacks her shooter. Doctors manage to stabilize Jennifer in a coma while Ted is sent to court where, he elects to represent himself. Hot shot Assistant District Attorney Will Beachum (Ryan Gosling), agrees to take on the open and shut case to add one more to win to his seamless record before beginning a new lucrative position in corporate law. With Willy distracted by his overblown confidence and his sexy new boss Nikki (Rosamund Pike), Ted begins to manipulate the system so that Willy’s slam-dunk case quickly turns into an air ball.

Thanks to the endless slew of recent disappointing thrillers, I was on the edge of my seat waiting for Fracture to well, fracture. During a rather haunting interrogation scene, Ted tells Willy “Look closely enough and you’ll find everything has a weak spot…” I found Fracture’s in the unnecessary romance between Nikki and Willy. Not that anyone would mind a job where you get to screw your sexy boss before you even unpack your stapler, but an invite to Thanksgiving dinner is where I draw the line. Director Gregory Hoblit could have at least left us the steamy sex scene for good measure, but half of a shoulder doesn’t justify the untimely affair. However, unlike what happens with Willy’s case against Ted, one little crack doesn’t lead to a break. As the film progressed, I continued to anticipate melodrama, cliché, and unintentional comedy, but when the credits rolled, I realized that Fracture is actually a GREAT movie.

It’s a testament to just how bad the film industry can be that anyone would even doubt a movie pitting Anthony Hopkins against Ryan Gosling …but then again, Harrison Ford versus Paul Bettany led to the disaster known as Firewall. Fortunately, Hoblit lays fresh and compelling visuals over a script rife with witty banter, creating a film that entertains while it intrigues. As expected, the title actors give incredible performances, with Gosling shining as a haughty go-getter who has to be put in his place before he can put Ted in his. The real standout though is the plot itself, which doesn’t try to reinvent the genre with some ridiculously shocking ending (ahem, M. Night Shyamalan) but instead oozes cleverness, while allowing its actors to subtly carry the triumphant conclusion.

Even if you manage to guess its surprising ending, the movie will shock you with how well it’s put together, from the seamless acting to constricting camera angles. If you’re a fan of psychological thrillers, or if you are just eager to hear Anthony Hopkins call someone “Old Sport” in his chillingly playful voice, you surely won’t be disappointed by Fracture.

No Reservations - Review

The Hollywood marketing machine has done it again. Once more the studios, having no faith in the American audience to be interested in an intelligent and witty film (and unfortunately I can’t say as I blame them), have taken a movie and advertised it as something it really isn’t. Whether you’re looking at the poster or the trailer, No Reservations comes across as the next awful, syrupy romantic comedy to be cranked out of the machine and slapped with a catchy, smarmy title. In reality there’s quite a bit more to the film than your average Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks heartstring-tugger, but the injustice doesn’t stop there.

The movie is a remake of a much better foreign film. Bella Martha, a German movie made in 2002 which was incredibly well received by critics around the world. Hollywood, ever desperate for a good idea (heaven knows they’re few and far between these days) decided it wanted in on a piece of the pie. Fearing that too many Americans are too lazy to be troubled with subtitles (and again, I’m sorry to say they’re probably right), Hollywood opted to completely redo the film. The result is a good movie, though probably only so good because the movie it copied was excellent.

Caught up in the hectic, self-absorbed life of a renowned New York chef, Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones) lives for her job running the kitchen at 22 Bleeker restaurant and revels in executing it with almost painful precision. Unfortunately, a car accident claims the life of her free-spirited sister and leaves Kate to look after her orphaned niece, Zoe (Abigail Breslin). In a pinch for a head chef while Kate takes some time to figure things out, the owner of 22 Bleeker hires up and coming sous-chef Nick (Aaron Eckhart), whose laid back style clashes with Kate’s uptight nature.

Despite the opportunity for painful “cooking as a metaphor for life” clichés and stereotypical romantic entanglements, the movie artfully avoids those pitfalls, replacing them with bits of clever comedy and fleeting moments of tender human emotion. What sinks the soufflé is the movie's predictable ending. It’s hard not to know exactly where the story is headed and what’s going to happen next. At least one little surprise would have been a nice treat, but instead No Reservations plays it by the book from start to finish.

Aaron Eckhart and Catherine Zeta-Jones share a tender chemistry on screen, but I think Aaron Eckhart could probably have great chemistry with just about anyone. The guy is a genius, period. After all, Zeta-Jones hasn’t had any chemistry since burning things up with Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zorro. Whether or not it’s purely Eckhart’s influence, there’s some spark of new life from the actress and she manages the rare feat of breaking through the crust that seems to burden most of her roles. And then there’s Abigail Breslin. While her character is generally reduced to being the summer sun that defrosts Kate’s emotional iceberg, Breslin turns up the charm and tears and never misses a step.

Roll in a top notch score, a near perfect supporting cast, and the kind of thoughtful cinematography one would never expect from a traditional American date flick, and you end up with much more than the cheesy rom-com being touted in the previews. Director Scott Hicks brings the same dexterity that he showed in Hearts in Atlantis and Shine, but its still not quite enough to make the movie a world-class effort. That honor remains with the original German offering Bella Marta, and anyone willing to admit literacy and bear with the subtitles would no doubt agree.

Interview - Review

A Muslim extremist murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh before he had a chance to realize his ambition to remake some of his features in English. But now Steve Buscemi pays homage to the fallen artist while simultaneously picking up where the late director left off with this smart, stylish remake of Van Gogh's 2003 drama Interview. After the disappointment of Buscemi's feature Lonesome Jim two years ago, this drama marks a welcome return to form for the auteur behind Trees Lounge and the underrated Animal Factory.

Buscemi, who adapted the screenplay with David Schechter, plays a journalist with the unlikely name of Pierre Peters who is sent to interview Katya (Sienna Miller), a rising starlet in a string of horror movies and a nighttime soap. A former war correspondent who has lately turned to politics, Pierre is a serious journalist who regards this puff-piece assignment as a punishment. Katya does not help matters when she forgets about their appointment and leaves him to cool his heels in an upscale Manhattan restaurant for an hour. But she has a point when she calls him on his unprofessional attitude as he uses their time together to make it abundantly clear to the actress that she is so far beneath his contempt that he did not even bother to prep for the interview.

Frankly, the film could end right there and emerge as a satisfying short satirizing the contentious relationship between the media and celebrity, with the contempt so heavy on both sides of the divide that it is practically a living entity. But the story continues after the interview ends when an accident lands Pierre in Katya's care in her expansive (and expensive) loft. What at first glance seems like an act of kindness and a simple acknowledgement of shared humanity when she sees blood pouring from a gash in his head evolves into something quite different. As the night wears on and they drink, do drugs, argue, flirt, and try to pry out each other's secrets, a battle of wits emerges, and Pierre's assumptions about the woman he regards as an empty-headed blonde bimbo prove illusory. Well, maybe not all of them—she is far smarter than he gives her credit for, and a way better actress—but her self-regard and self-absorption are breathtaking to behold.

The screenplay is witty, and Buscemi and Miller are both excellent—she goes a long way toward atoning for her shrill performance in Factory Girl. But with only the two characters on screen most of the time—and in mostly one location—this could be one dull drama. Only it never is. Buscemi borrows a trick from Van Gogh, using three cameras to capture the action, and that lends the proceedings a kinetic vigor that might otherwise be lacking in a more conventionally shot film. Simply put, Interview never feels claustrophobic or staged, but instead unfolds with the chaotic energy of life. It is a smart film in its humor, its subject, and its execution. Van Gogh could not have done better himself, and that is perhaps the best possible homage to this fallen artist.

Sunshine - Review

Stunning set pieces do not a movie make. Case in point: Danny Boyle's Sunshine, a heady, often spellbinding science fiction thriller that jettisons dramatic credibility in its sketchily conceived and executed third act. Overly solemn and weighted down with portentousness, Boyle's disappointing follow-up to the ebullient charmer Millions (2005) has neither the jazzy energy nor the full-throttle narrative drive that distinguishes his best films, like Trainspotting (1996) and 28 Days Later (2003). That Boyle and his co-screenwriter Alex Garland ultimately take such an ill-advised narrative detour into contrivance is mystifying, for Sunshine clearly had the potential to be a classic of the science fiction film genre, as gripping as it is provocative.

The basic concept of Sunshine glimmers with promise. Fifty years from now, our sun is dying. Unless the eight-member crew of the aptly named Icarus II can reignite the sun by detonating a massive, nuclear device in its interior, all life on Earth will perish. Led by the stalwart Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada), the Icarus II crew members embark on what may be a suicide mission; seven years earlier, the Icarus I vanished before reaching its target. Although Capa (Cillian Murphy), the Icarus II physicist, attempts to safeguard against disaster by calculating the ever-shifting risk-assessment of the mission, neither he nor anyone else could have anticipated that they'd pick up a faint distress signal from the Icarus I.

Overriding the objections of Mace (Chris Evans), the crew's volatile engineer, Kaneda orders Cassie (Rose Byrne), the mission pilot, to rendezvous with the long-lost ship in search of survivors. Almost immediately, however, calamity strikes the Icarus II, due to an oversight by Trey (Benedict Wong), the sleep-deprived navigator. Despite this near-fatal setback, the crippled Icarus II continues on course for its predecessor, where the increasingly embattled crew encounters an unexpected threat-not just to the mission, but their very survival.

In a recent New York Times article, Boyle and Garland expressed their desire to make Sunshine "a head trip," closer in tone to metaphysical-themed science fiction films like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Solaris (1972) than escapist, special effects extravaganzas in the Star Wars (1977) mold. To a degree, Boyle and Garland succeed, for there's a crypto-religious undercurrent to Sunshine that becomes more pronounced in the film's second half, when a character's religious-fueled mania provides the dramatic catalyst for the film's descent into bloody violence. It's a potent conceit that might have worked if the filmmakers hadn't introduced it so clumsily into their narrative, which effectively degenerates into an outer space version of a "slasher" flick, albeit one that flirts with profundity.

Sunshine is also an atypically humorless entry from Boyle, who's never made a film this oddly devoid of personality. The crew of the Icarus II—Cliff Curtis, Troy Garity, and Michelle Yeoh round out the underutilized cast—are little more than ciphers, adding to the body count. As a result, you don't form much of an emotional attachment to any of them, even as some of them meet their demise in spectacular, nerve-fraying scenes that confirms Boyle's flair for viscerally-charged imagery that's both disturbing and mesmerizing. Indeed, there are so many arresting scenes in Sunshine that it's all the more disappointing that Boyle's latest film sadly turns out to be less than the sum of its dazzling parts.

I Know Who Killed Me - Review

“She has a trick. She knew how to turn her life into a movie and watch things happen.” That’s the metaphor Aubrey Fleming uses to describe her character to her writing class; a tortured girl who has had to deal with a lot of suffering in her life. It’s also the perfect metaphor for the movie I Know Who Killed Me as a whole. The movie keeps the audience at arm's length, never engaging them with the story or characters. The result is a wholly unsatisfying experience.

The movie immediately introduces us to three versions of Aubrey Fleming (Lindsay Lohan). The picture opens with her at a strip club, pole dancing. Then we see Aubrey presenting her writing to a class. Finally we see Aubrey playing the piano, something she is giving up to make more time for her writing. Aubrey, it would appear, is a multi-faceted girl. She has a boyfriend she refuses to concede physically to, friends she hangs out with, the works. Overall, she has a pretty good life. Then one day, she disappears. The disappearance comes right on the heels of another girl, one of Aubrey’s classmates, having been abducted and murdered. Weeks later, Aubrey reappears, claiming instead to be Dakota Moss, a poor girl raised by a crack-addicted mother who had to turn to stripping to pay the bills.

At this point you’re supposed to be all sorts of curious. Is this girl really Aubrey or is she a different girl, as she claims. The problem is, the movie never gives you any reason to believe Lohan’s character isn’t the abducted girl. Aubrey wrote about Dakota, right down to an image we see happen on screen with a truck passing her by as she hitchhikes. She also has injuries identical to the previous girl who was murdered – her right arm and leg have been severed. The primary way Dakota differentiates herself drastically from Aubrey is that she says “fuck” a lot. Catch me on a grumpy day and you’ll probably see the same thing, but I’m not my own twin. No, there’s no reason to believe Dakota is anything but Aubrey escaping into an invented character, regardless of how the story suddenly takes an odd turn and starts making the audience think about identical twins, switched babies, and twin stigmata.

The movie is permeated with the color blue. The only thing missing is an appearance by Blue Man Group and the addition of some rendition of “Blue Moon” on the overbearing soundtrack (or perhaps a song by Blue Oyster Cult). The overuse of blue (down to everyone having blue eyes) is yet another reason to believe Dakota isn’t real. She prefers to dress in red. That’s right, she’s a red girl in a world of blue. It has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. While the story wants the audience to start to think Dakota is telling the truth, the visuals are immediately driving the audience to realize she doesn’t fit.

Along with the audience, the characters are also unwilling to give Dakota the benefit of the doubt. Mind you, these are characters like the boyfriend who cries tears in an exaggerated expression of guilt and relief at Aubrey’s safe return (that had most of the audience laughing at him) one minute, and then is fucking her brains out the next. I guess he gets over her lost limbs and the fact he was supposed to be protecting her really quickly. And the mother who is trying to help her little girl recover, but stays in the kitchen tormented as she listens to Dakota screwing the hell out of her boyfriend - something Aubrey wouldn't do. Real realistic characters here, I tell you.

Since the story keeps the audience at a distance, never really putting together the reality that Dakota could be telling the truth, the movie has to make some gesture to captivate the audience. That gesture is gore – lots of it, as we get a few torture-porn sequences of what happened to Aubrey while she was abducted, from freezing off her fingers and hand to cutting her with (what else) crystalline blue instruments. But if this is a psychological thriller, why do we need the gore? The sequences reminded me how much more effective Michael Madson’s torture of the officer was in Reservoir Dogs. We knew what was happening, so we didn’t need to see it. Here they have to toss the visuals in, because the story has nothing else to offer.

I Know Who Killed Me isn’t captivating enough or deep enough to be considered a psychological thriller. It doesn’t make a case well enough to be much of a mystery. Instead it’s two hours of Lindsay Lohan trying to convince the audience and the other characters she’s someone that everything says she isn’t. Even the stripper sequences are painful to watch, with more eroticism coming from the archaic crack-whore at my corner 7-Eleven. This is the girl who did so well in Mean Girls but hasn’t done much since to live up to that promise. Fortunately, it looks like her real life may eclipse this sad chapter of her career. Maybe she can get out of that by claiming to be her own twin sister too. After all, after her Parent Trap remake and now this picture, she’s working on a career trend. Why not let life imitate art... if you can call this art.

The Simpsons Movie - Review

As Babe and Charlotte's Web demonstrated before it, The Simpsons Movie proves once again that a movie cannot go wrong if it throws in a pig. True, Homer's (Dan Castellaneta) new pet porker is the inadvertent, would-be agent of Springfield's doom, but it is awfully cute and comes with its own irresistible theme song, "Spider-Pig," that, naturally, Homer warbles to the theme of Spider-Man. There is not a lot that is new in this big-screen iteration of the long-running cartoon series—unless one wants to count the quick glimpse of Bart's (Nancy Cartwright) genitalia, but it delivers plenty of laughs.

After an excellent "Itchy & Scratchy" cartoon that serves as a prologue, the movie plunges into its main plot as the band Green Day finds themselves performing on a barge amidst Springfield's polluted lake. The body of water is a toxic cesspool where Krusty the Clown (Castellaneta) dumps his flop sweat and Moe the barkeep (Hank Azaria) throws his empty bottles. And that is some of the cleaner garbage that finds its way into the drink. When Homer disposes of the pig's waste there, Springfield becomes the most toxic place on the planet. Environmental Protection Agency head Russ Cargill (Albert Brooks) orders the entire town sealed under a giant dome.

As in the TV series, Homer is an inattentive father and husband whose first impulse is to do exactly the wrong thing, while wife Marge (Julie Kavner) does her best to look past his faults and stand by her man. Lisa (Yeardley Smith) is as earnest, politically correct, and as ignored as always, although at least the movie gives her a cute boyfriend in Irish musician Colin (Tress MacNeille), who swears he's not Bono's son, despite the evident similarities. Bart does rebel in an offbeat way when he answers Homer's indifference by bonding with nerdy neighbor Ned Flanders (Harry Shearer).

What is perhaps most surprising after Fox went all out partnering with 7-11 to convert several stores into temporary Kwik-E-Marts, stocked with Krusty'Os cereal, Buzz Cola, and Squishies is that the store does not even figure into the story and store owner Apu (Azaria) is little more than an extra. That is true of many of the regular characters including Mr. Burns (Shearer) and Smithers (Shearer), who both figure prominently only in one short scene. Instead, the movie concentrates on the Simpson family and the conflict with the increasingly crazed Cargill.

The Simpsons Movie does not lose anything in the transformation to multiplex screens, but it does not gain anything either. Instead, it plays like an extended episode of the series or maybe a sweeps month three-parter, something the movie more or less acknowledges when at one point two intertitles appear in succession, "To be continued …" and "Immediately." That is not a bad thing; it is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food, satisfying in its very familiarity. The long list of writers involved, including series creator Matt Groening and producer/developer James L. Brooks, can be justifiably proud of their work. The movie is never dull and like the best episodes of the series, it is frequently hilarious, rich in visual humor and verbal wit. After the last few indifferent seasons on TV, it proves there is a lot of life (and a lot of laughs) left in Springfield.

Transformers - Review

Transformers began life as a body-morphing toy before shape-shifting into a TV cartoon series. Now it has evolved once again, this time into a big, dumb, loud action movie, occasionally tasteless, far too long, yet wildly diverting most of the time. There is no denying that director Michael Bay—the man who also brought us Bad Boys, The Rock, Armaggedon, Pearl Harbor, and Bad Boys II—has a talent for brainless, over-the-top, CGI-enhanced theatrics. After misfiring with the comparatively staid The Island, Bay gets back to basics with Transformers, a high-octane symphony of machine battling machine and stuff blowing to pieces.

Transformers is at its very worst in its opening minutes when U.S. soldiers on a base in Qatar find themselves under a sudden and merciless assault. The foe is eventually revealed to be extraterrestrial, part of the murderous Decepticon robot race and the scene is effective, yet it gets the movie off on the wrong foot. At this particular time in American history, does anyone really want to see American soldiers getting blown to smithereens in the Middle East even by CGI robots?

Those early scenes threaten to sink the entire enterprise, yet it only takes the introduction of a single teenager, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) to make things right. Visiting a used car lot with his dad (Kevin Dunn), the high school nerd falls in love with a rusting Camaro. The hunk of junk has a strange quirk: its radio has a habit of turning on spontaneously to tacky old pop songs that oddly befit whatever situation Sam finds himself in. But when Sam thinks that some has stolen the heap and he tracks it to a rail yard, he discovers it has an even more bizarre kink when it transforms into a robot.

Though those soldiers in Qatar and Sam back in the 'burbs don't realize it yet, they are early unwitting recruits into the robot wars between the evil Decepticons and the benevolent Autobots. The Decepticons prefer to transform into helicopters and cop cars and things that are just as ugly, except for a small, hyperactive one that jabbers non-stop and can morph into things like CD players and cell phones. The Autobots, led by Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen), have a much more refined aesthetic, preferring to transmute into items like Sam's bitchin' Camaro. They also have far more expressive personalities.

Motivation also divides the robot races. The Decepticons want to lay waste to the planet in their quest to take over the universe. Optimus Prime, on the other hand, makes pronouncements about how the Autobots, hope to "bring peace to this planet," which just goes to show how little research went into this alien invasion if he thinks merely stopping the Decepticons will bring about that. Of course, the Autobots' idea of promoting peace is to throw down with the Decepticons in the middle of downtown Los Angeles, destroying buildings, cars, and anything else that gets caught in the middle.

It is all amusing in an explosive sort of way, as it follows a formula at least as old as Godzilla and as up-to-date as the Terminator series, even if the eventual climax goes on far too long (like a rambunctious little boy with toy Transformers, Bay is not going to stop playing until he has broken every last one). It is also a little more than that, thanks mainly to LaBeouf's grounded performance. There are a lot of human characters in Transformers, but most of them are one-dimensional stereotypes, grist for the action mill. Only LaBeouf transcends that, suggesting that something really is at stake in this movie, if it is only this one kid's life.

"I bought a car and it turned out to be an alien robot," Sam complains, but that turns out to be not such a bad thing. At least, his car turns out to be entertaining and so is this movie. Just be sure to check your brain at the door; for close to two-and-half-hours, you will not need it.

Your Mommy Kills Animals - Review

Quick trivia question: in 2005, who did the FBI deem to be the number one domestic terrorist threat in the United States? If you answered al-Qaeda, you're wrong. According to the FBI, our biggest danger in 2005 came not from Islamic fundamentalists, but from homegrown animal rights activists. That astonishing (especially if you consider that the KKK, anti-abortion movement, and other violent groups have never even made the list) fact is the starting point for Curt Johnson's riveting film Your Mommy Kills Animals, an incendiary but balanced account of the battle over animal rights. It's the best kind of documentary, in that if you're a thinking person it is nearly impossible to watch the movie without having your point of view challenged and questioned—no matter what side of the issue you're on, this film will give you evidence that both supports and contradicts your beliefs. It will also scare the hell out of you if you have any kind of passion for the first amendment, as it shows how the boogeyman of "terrorism" can be used to suppress any speech that the government doesn't like.

The documentary begins with two equally shocking scenes designed to put the audience on edge: in one, an animal rights activist grabs a fur-wearing woman and beats her in the street, and in the other a series of pets are brutalized in a "shelter." It's unclear whether the first incident is staged (the second clearly isn't), but the point is obvious: whichever side of the animal rights movement you're on, Johnson is going to rub your face in the cruel extremes of your point of view. Yet the movie as a whole is less binary than this introduction implies; as the film unfolds, Johnson showcases a wide variety of perspectives on the issue, showing how even within the animal rights movement there is great disagreement and how there's plenty of hypocrisy to go around on all sides.

The most extreme and outspoken activists—and the ones who most justify the FBI's designation as terrorists—are the members of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a group so devoted to their cause that some of them publicly endorse the murders of researchers engaged in animal testing. Johnson interviews several spokespeople for the group and provides footage from their speeches and attacks (including bombings and assaults on doctors), and he juxtaposes this material with contrary points of view regarding the importance of animal testing in curing human diseases and the parallels between ALF and the wackiest fringes of the pro-life movement. Yet before the viewer can get too comfortable, Johnson challenges these arguments with footage that indicates nothing short of extremism will stop the undeniable savagery that corporations practice, and he demonstrates that militant tactics work—a number of financial institutions stop doing business with Huntingdon Life Sciences, a company engaged in massive animal abuse, after being harassed by activists.

Johnson also implies that extremism on the activist side is a natural response to governmental abuse; why wouldn't activists move to more outrageous behavior when conventional free speech is prosecuted, as it is in the case of six animal rights proponents who are imprisoned simply for campaigning to shut down Huntingdon's animal testing facilities? What ultimately emerges from the documentary is the terror inflicted by absolutists on both sides—people who, as journalist Christopher Hitchens notes, are terrorists because of their absolute conviction that they are right, a conviction that leaves no room for tolerance or debate. This means that the villains of the piece range from the most aggressive members of the ALF on one side to the President of the United States on the other. Indeed, one of the most chilling aspects of the film is its depiction of how George W. Bush and the Department of Homeland Security deflect attention from their own failures in the "war on terror" by redefining what terror is—only an administration this out of touch with reality could make a convincing case that college kids protesting animal cruelty are a threat on a par with Osama bin Laden. In the end, this is the greatness of Your Mommy Kills Animals: that it moves beyond animal rights to consider the larger issue of how political speech of a certain persuasion is persecuted more vigorously than murder, rape, or other violent crimes. Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that Johnson himself has claimed to be harassed by federal agents just for making this film, something that proves the movie's point. If a director of a relatively even-handed documentary who is far from a radical leftist (his last film as a producer, in fact, was entitled Michael Moore Hates America) is considered a threat, who's next?

Captivity - Review

As everyone who follows either horror message boards or the Hollywood trade press knows by now, Roland Joffe's Captivity set off a wave of controversy when a series of graphic billboards promoting the film appeared all over L.A. a few months back. An uproar from both expected (parents, the MPAA) and surprising (genre filmmakers Joss Whedon and Eli Roth, whose moral indignation seemed hilariously hypocritical) sources led to the swift removal of the billboards, which marketed torture as mass appeal entertainment. Executive producer Courtney Solomon managed to whip what should have been a minor blip on the pop culture radar into a full-fledged PR frenzy, and after seeing the movie it's easy to see why—neither particularly shocking nor provocative, Captivity needs all the help it can get.

The film's first hour is a brutally stripped down version of the formula similar from other torture horror films like the Saw and Hostel series. With an absolute minimum of dialogue and backstory, director Joffe sends young model Jennifer (Elisha Cuthbert) into a hellish scenario in which she is kidnapped and held in an undisclosed location. In the dungeon-like atmosphere she is tormented by her captor, an anonymous man who tortures her both psychologically and physically. Joffe and screenwriters Larry Cohen and Joseph Tura are relentless in their adherence to one goal and one goal only—to traumatize Jennifer and disturb the audience. They're intermittently successful (a couple of the gory set pieces are genuinely nauseating, which in a movie like this is a compliment), but after a while the monotony of the tone works against the movie's intentions. The violence in Hostel: Part II was effective because it had context; when the infamous penis-snipping scene arrived it was both horrifying and darkly funny because the audience knew the characters well. Here the lack of characterization and the one-note tone just leads to boredom, because there's nothing to measure the bleakness against.

Captivity does get a little more interesting when Jennifer discovers a male captive and the two fall in love, though this romance is so perfunctory it makes the slapdash attraction between Harry and Cho in the new Harry Potter movie look like Brief Encounter. The relationship is welcome in spite of its contrivances, simply because it adds a much needed alternate emotion to the film's unceasing grimness. That Captivity should be so humorless and drab is truly odd given Cohen's presence as a screenwriter; one of the more eccentric and underrated filmmakers of the 1970s, he was responsible for the most energetic blaxploitation movies (Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem) as well as the nasty and funny It's Alive trilogy. There's no trace of Cohen's maverick sensibility in this tired Saw retread, and one gets the sense he was heavily rewritten by Tura and others.

Even more depressing than Cohen's name on the credit block is Joffe's, given that he began his career with ambitious and thoughtful movies like The Killing Fields and The Mission and has, with Captivity, morphed into a distressingly anonymous hack. All of the scares in the movie are of the most gimmicky variety, with Joffe turning the sound down low and then blasting the audience with an explosion of Dolby Stereo to make them jump. This isn't filmmaking it's shock treatment. Joffe hints at some kind of social commentary in brief images relating to Jennifer's superficial life as a model, but these clues go nowhere—but then again, neither do most of the other decent ideas in the film. As the story progresses it gets less one-note but more illogical, with one character after another acting stupidly for no reason other than to keep the plot creaking forward. That Captivity isn't a total disaster is probably thanks to the unusually high degree of talent both behind and in front of the camera. In addition to Joffe and Cohen, there's expert cinematographer Daniel Pearl (who lensed the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well as its remake), and Cuthbert does well with an underwritten part. The haphazard nature of the storytelling and the poor modulation of tone, however, indicate that there was no strong hand (aside from maybe a market research flack) guiding this particular ship. The movie is technically solid and has occasional bursts of shocking action, but it adds up to almost nothing in the end.

You Kill Me - Review

A lot of talented actors come together in the gangster comedy You Kill Me, but they're so underused it's, well, criminal. Even the incomparable Ben Kingsley, who stars as Frank Falenczyk, an alcoholic hit man for Buffalo's Polish mob sent by his angry boss (Philip Baker Hall) to dry out in San Francisco, never seems quite sure how to play his quirky role. On the other hand, maybe it's just the part itself, as written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, which feels inconsistent and unsatisfying. It's another case of plopping an audience into someone's very screwed up life without much explanation as to how he got there. In a post-Tony Soprano world, we're used to our gangsters having more specific psychological underpinnings than the what-you-see-is-what-you-get Frank. Though, in many ways, Frank is more down to earth than most parts Kingsley usually plays, the 60-ish actor may just be too mature--and too innately wise--to be fully convincing; it's a sympathetic performance, but he's ultimately miscast.

Better cast, but even less dimensional, is co-star Tea Leoni as Laurel, an attractive woman Frank meets at the funeral home where he works as part of his rehab. Aside from implications that her just-departed stepfather was a prick and that she suffers from "boundary issues" (whatever they are) we have no idea what makes this mouthy chick tick. For an actress of Leoni's stature and ability, it's a real nothing part. In addition, the romance that develops between Laurel and Frank might be logical (i.e., two adrift people brought together by happenstance), but it's not particularly believable. The considerable age difference between the two doesn't help either.

Then there's the ubiquitous Luke Wilson, who plays Frank's laid-back AA sponsor Tom, a smallish role that's more of a placeholder than a fully realized character. Like Laurel, Tom is all present and no past. He's gay, but for no apparent reason (other than maybe because we're in San Francisco where it's still perceived every guy is gay), and a Golden Gate Bridge toll collector--and that's it. Given how often Frank falls off the wagon, Tom doesn't seem like a very effective sponsor either.

Other fine acting folks zip in and out of the picture, like Bill Pullman (what happened to his career?), in a thankless part as a sleazy Realtor hired to keep an eye on Frank while he's holed up in the Bay Area. Dennis Farina does the slick hoodlum bit as the head of Buffalo's competing Irish mob, while the appealing Marcus Thomas (who's been seen in indies like Edmond and Bigger Than the Sky) has a hangdog sweetness as Frank's cousin and co-gangster Stef. You can't fault the cast here, just the thin material they're given to inhabit.

At the helm of this tepid stew is John Dahl, a talented, versatile director, who's never quite repeated the promise of his first two films, the acclaimed thrillers Red Rock West and The Last Seduction. He's closer here to the dark, offbeat territory mined in those movies than in subsequent studio duds like Unforgettable, Joy Ride, and The Great Raid (Rounders, arguably his most enjoyable film, fell somewhere in the middle). Dahl, greatly assisted by the eye-catching work of vet cinematographer Jeffrey Jur, has crafted a stylish-looking piece but, unfortunately, can't keep up the movie's initial spirited pace. Halfway through, it turns poky and dull (and forget about the comedy, that's long gone), re-energized only by a final, perfunctory shootout. Dahl also spends way too much time on the AA elements of the story, which, while emotionally resonant, give the film a more pedestrian feel than could've possibly been anyone's goal.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Review

Ten days before anxious Harry Potter-philes worldwide learn the ultimate fate of the boy wizard in J.K. Rowling's seventh and final book in her mega-selling series, the big screen adaptation of her fifth novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, lands in theaters with a bit of a dull thud. Stodgy rather than sweeping, with precious little of the wondrous excitement conjured by Alfonso Cuaron in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), David Yates' only intermittently compelling film version of Rowling's doorstop of a novel (896 pages) proceeds in fits and starts towards its thankfully rousing finale. There are many pleasures to be had watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—not the least of which is the film's sterling supporting cast of British acting royalty—but the filmmakers dole them out too sparingly, as if they were under the spell of the film's officious Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), a petty tyrant in pink.

In fairness to Yates (The Girl in the Café), the unenviable task of condensing Rowling's densely-plotted epic into a 138-minute film that satisfies Potter-philes would test any filmmaker, let alone a British television director who's never made a feature film on this massive a scale. He and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg (Peter Pan) therefore deserve credit (and perhaps our sympathies) for tackling this unwieldy narrative, which finds Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) gloomily awaiting the start of his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. During a miserably hot summer's day, two Dementors suddenly attack Harry and his repulsive Muggle cousin, Dudley Dursley (Harry Melling). Breaking the rule against practicing magic outside Hogwarts, Harry banishes the Dementors with the Patronus Charm—and immediately receives an owl-delivered letter, expelling him from Hogwarts.

Fortunately, several members of the ancient Order of the Phoenix, led by Harry's godfather Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), whisk him away to the Order's London headquarters, where Harry learns that he'll get the chance to plead his case in a Ministry of Magic hearing. Sirius and the others also inform Harry that his arch-nemesis, Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is assembling an army. Yet for some inexplicable reason, Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge (Robert Hardy) refuses to believe that Voldemort has returned. And while the Ministry of Magic overturns Harry's expulsion, thanks to the timely intercession of Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), Potter receives a chilly welcome from his fellow Hogwarts students, many of whom blame him for the death of popular student, Cedric Diggory (Robert Pattinson), slain by Voldemort at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005).

As if that's not bad enough, Hogwarts' new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Dolores Umbridge, has taken over the school, driving away beloved faculty and instituting strict rules, enforced by her army of "Inquisitors." Although Harry and his longtime school chums Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) defy Umbridge by forming "Dumbledore's Army," a group of students determined to fight Voldemort, Harry is troubled by recurrent nightmares involving the Dark Lord and the Ministry of Magic's Department of Mysteries, the setting for the film's climactic showdown.

There's arguably enough material for two movies, or a miniseries, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the longest novel in the series, so it was perhaps inevitable that the resulting film suffers from narrative fatigue, as well as a glut of exposition guaranteed to confuse Potter newcomers. It's also more character-driven than prior films, with Harry's teen identity crisis vis-à-vis his psychic link with Voldemort taking dull precedence over bona-fide action. Except for the spectacular denouement, which nearly atones for the talky patches that threaten to bring the film to a halt, there is an acute lack of thrills in Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix. Certainly there's nothing as imaginatively conceived and excitingly staged as the Triwizard Tournament's series of challenges that Harry Potter faced in the last film. It may be that Yates' directorial sensibility has been too shaped by his television work (he's helmed several BBC miniseries) to give Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the cinematic sweep it needs to captivate us fully.

But if Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix rarely soars, it doesn't sputter out completely. It teems with clever wit, visual ingenuity, and moments of genuine warmth. And the cast! Although Radcliffe, Watson and Grint acquit themselves nicely, they must fight to gain a toehold onscreen opposite the staggering line-up of British acting talent who compromise the film's supporting cast. Staunton (Vera Drake) makes a pertly sinister villain, while Fiennes oozes serpentine menace as Voldemort. Gambon, Oldman, and Alan Rickman register strongly, as does Helena Bonham Carter, in her brief but deliciously evil turn as Death Eater Belletrix Lestrange, sprung from Azkaban. They provide the real magic in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry - Review

Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor won an Oscar for their screenplay for Sideways. For their part in dropping the big stink bomb I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry—their co-conspirator Barry Fanaro won two Emmys for his work on The Golden Girls, but that somehow seems appropriate—the Academy should force them to give it back. As scripts go, this one reeks. It never rises above the level of a really wretched sitcom. And in presenting a ludicrous scenario in which two straight guys pretend to be gay, it tries to have it both ways. The humor is often deliberately offensive—racist, sexist, and homophobic as it reaches for the hat trick—but then it wraps it all up in a politically correct bow in the end.

In other words, it is a typical Adam Sandler movie, since again he plays the mean-spirited jerk who is revealed to be a nice guy in the end. Once more, it is a transition that defies belief, as does his role as New York firefighter Chuck Levine, catnip to the ladies—apparently Chuck & Larry takes place in some bizarro world where petulant truculence is considered charming. He reluctantly agrees to become domestic partner to his best friend, fellow fireman and widower Larry Valentine (Kevin James) to protect Larry's pension for his two kids in the event of Larry's death (it's a long, incredible story). When fraud investigator Clinton Fitzer (Steve Buscemi) starts sniffing around, the pals travel to Canada to marry on the advice of attorney Alex McDonough (Jessica Biel).

The results are predictable. Their fellow firefighters ostracize them when the news gets out, even though they should be among the first to realize that it is all a scam. The pair become a cause celebre in the gay community. Chuck falls in love with Alex, who just adores her new gay best friend so much that she invites him to feel her up just to prove her breasts are real. Not a stereotype, gay or straight, goes unturned, finding expression even in the guise of Larry's musical-loving young son (Cole Morgen). And for good measure, Sandler's fellow SNL alum Rob Schneider adds some ugly Asian stereotypes for good measure in his role as a wedding chapel proprietor. Even in a comedy as tasteless as this one strives to be, some of the humor is really beyond the pale, such as when Chuck—who is constantly telling Larry that he needs to get past his wife's death already, it's been three years—tries to get under Larry's skin by joking about his dead spouse. Yep, the guy's a keeper all right.

But I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry's biggest sin is not in the many ways it seeks to offend or in the way it veers into PC self-righteous sanctimony at the climax or even in its insistence that a bright lawyer like Alex would fall for a smarmy jackass like Chuck. No, what makes this celluloid trash one of the worst movies that you may suffer through this year is that it is not funny. It does not aim high, yet it cannot even hit the low targets it sets for itself. It is simply painful.

Hairspray - Review

Hairspray is a lively and enjoyable adaptation (or as director Adam Shankman calls it, a "re-invention") of the Tony-winning Broadway musical, itself a singing-dancing remake of the 1988 John Waters film. While the source material has always seemed like a bit of a curio, its themes of inclusion, equality, and embracing the new and different provide a strong jumping-off point here. The mega-success of the stage production made a big-screen version inevitable and, despite a plot that still teeters from marginal to meaningful, this latest incarnation has much to recommend.

Set in 1962 Baltimore, Hairspray tells the fable-icious story of Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky), a chubby, ebullient, exceedingly confident teen who's got the music in her—as well as the dance moves. When she finally lands the chance to shake it up on the local American Bandstand-like "Corny Collins Show," big-little Tracy becomes a hometown sensation. She also gives the show's main dancer Amber Von Tussle (Brittany Snow) some stiff competition, especially when Amber's dreamy boyfriend Linc Larkin (High School Musical's Zac Efron) begins to have eyes for the plucky, dance crazy Ms. Turnblad.

Tracy's laundress mother, the bashful and obese Edna (John Travolta, in a role always played by men) and her dad Wilbur (Christopher Walken), a sweet, joke-shop proprietor, quickly adjust to their daughter's newfound fame, as does Tracy's best pal, Penny Pingleton (Amanda Bynes). Only Velma Von Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer), the gloriously evil manager of the station that airs the show, is irked by the Tracy factor, and tries her best to get Tracy out of the picture—and insure daughter Amber's coveted place as Miss Teenage Hairspray.

But when the bigoted Velma decides to cancel the dance show's monthly "Negro Day" (segregation's still going on), which is hosted by record shop owner Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah) and features Maybelle's smooth, hot-hoofing son Seaweed (Elijah Kelly), Tracy helps lead a protest march against the station, gets arrested, and becomes something of a fugitive. It's here the movie (as did the original) loses steam, till the infectious final number "You Can't Stop the Beat" reunites the whole cast for a wonderfully rollicking, smile-inducing finale.

Shankman (Bringing Down the House, The Pacifier), who directed from a script adapted by Leslie Dixon, keeps the energy bubbling throughout, filling the screen with vibrant colors, constant movement, and a great deal of joy. He choreographed as well, and, despite moments when it feels like there's simply not enough room on the screen to contain it all, the dance numbers are uniformly terrific. All the leads get their moment in the singing spotlight, with Blonsky's upbeat opener "Good Morning Baltimore" and love paean "I Can Hear the Bells," Kelley and Taylor Parks' (who plays his kid sister Inez) "Run and Tell That," and Queen Latifah's moving "I Know Where I've Been" among the other standouts penned by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.

Kudos also go to costume designer Rita Ryack for her diverse, eye-popping array of '60s clothes and to production designer David Gropman for recreating the look of the era with more smarts and less kitsch than one might expect. Hair designer Judi Cooper-Sealy also had her work cut out for her, and she delivers tenfold.

The large cast, also including James Marsden as glib TV host Corny Collins, Allison Janney as Penny's bible-toting mother, and Jerry Stiller (who played Wilbur Turnblad in the first film) as big-gal dress shop owner Mr. Pinky, gives their all, with a special shout out to Pfeiffer, a hilarious Bynes, and vivacious newcomer Blonsky. John Waters and the original Tracy, Ricki Lake, also pop up in amusing cameos.

As for Travolta, he's game and quite funny in the wacky part, but aside from looking pretty odd (even for a middle-aged man in fat lady drag); he doesn't always cut loose enough to make the character his own. And why is he the only one to attempt a Baltimore accent? Let's just say, his Edna Turnblad is a far cry from the career-making studs he played in Saturday Night Fever and Grease. But that's show biz.