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What do you get when you pull together a bunch of MIT math students and secretly send them off on getaways to Las Vegas with a legal but frowned-upon systematic way of beating the house at Black Jack? You get college students with a lot of extra cash in their pockets running around Vegas in limousines and expensive clothes. What did you expect?
On weekdays they casually walk the campus as average college students, but on the weekends they take to the tables in disguise, bilking casinos out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s not the kind of company you’d expect a quiet genius like Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) to keep. He’s such a workaholic that his own mother tells him he needs to get a life. But when Ben finds himself faced with the prospect of needing $300,000 to pay for Harvard Medical school he welcomes an invitation from faculty member and team leader Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey) to join the club.
Based on the true life exploits of MIT students, 21 is an entertaining twist on the heist flick. Director Robert Luketic, whose previous efforts include Legally Blonde and Win A Date With Tad Hamilton, finally breaks loose from the romantic comedy chain gang and proves he’s more than just the next Garry Marshall. Not that there would be anything wrong with that, but the world doesn’t really need a second person cranking out Princess Diaries.
Luketic may be entering new territory in his own career, but his first foray into the drama/thriller genre feels a lot like other movies that have come before. At least a half-a-dozen films come to mind for me and the comparisons are unavoidable, but Luketic makes them work to his advantage. Playing on the strengths of those elements from other gambling and heist dramas, he stays true to the story he’s trying to tell, striving to avoid the clichés that could so easily creep in.
His second smart move shows up in the form of his top notch cast. Spacey is even sharper than usual, setting the perfect tone for his much younger fellow cast. Though the movie isn’t a major player in the drama department, Burgess plays his role as if it were. That extra effort makes the more emotional moments of the movie work, especially the romantic build up between nerdy Ben and foxy fellow team member Jill (Kate Bosworth). Luketic’s background in romance pays off, but his actors are the ones that sell the otherwise unlikely match up.
The movie’s major flaw, is in the timing. Luketic is right at home with the fast paced parts of the movie, showing off a new-found flair for stylized action shots and a gift for getting the most out of his actors in very short takes. He even sneaks in a brilliant cameo by a Bruce Campbell look-alike, complete with after shave joke and manly drunken brawling. When the action is on, Luketic knows just want to do. When the moments mellow, however, the blood pressure drops right out, and the movie flirts with becoming downright boring. It feels too long as well and at nearly two hours running time could stand to lose a few pounds of celluloid.
The old saying goes that the love of money is the root of all evil. It’s a principle that the movie seems to embrace, but in the end abandons in favor of several amusing if not slightly predicable plot shifts. The moral is still there, for those seeking something deeper from 21, but at its heart this is a movie meant to be enjoyed just for the fun of it.
Dr. Seuss’s stories are simple, and their length is not long. His stories are short, yet their message is strong. They’re also spectacularly unsuited for any Hollywood adaptation, as unsuited as I am for Dr. Seuss rhyming and alliteration. They’ve tried it before with live action, and with Horton at least they’ve finally learned that lesson and left the prosthetics abandoned. To make a Seuss story work as a film you’ve got to stuff it with filler, and there’s plenty of that to be found in this new animated attempt at filming his masterful work. It’s a success as a movie, but it still isn’t quite perfect as a Seuss adaptation.
The fact that the movie is freed from the bounds of human actors and props helps though, and Horton Hears a Who! is nearly as visually creative and fun as the Seuss drawings it’s based on. It’s the story that occasionally misses, since they’re building a 90 minute film out of a book that’s really only a few pages. The core of Seuss’s world is there though. This is still the story of an elephant named Horton who discovers a spec. On the spec is a town called Whoville, and its mayor can hear Horton when he talks. Horton vows to protect the tiny spec and its inhabitants, and finds himself harangued and ostracized by the other animals of his jungle who can’t hear the Whos’ voices and so insist he’s a dangerous kook.
Jim Carrey, who achieved dubious success doing a live action version of The Grinch a few years ago, voices Horton. It’s a strange choice really, I thought the reason we liked Jim was for his facial contortions, not his vocal veracity. But he’s capable as Horton, sort of sappy and silly, which plays into the film’s mostly cartoony vibe. Funny is the name of the game here, and Horton Hears a Who! sometimes pushes the moral center of Seuss’s story to the background in favor of being wacky. At least though, it really is funny. The visual gags are entertaining and Steve Carell, as the voice of The Mayor of Whoville is both touching and hilarious. That balances out a lot of the unnecessary pop culture references, MySpace jokes, and Jim Carrey riffing which in a lesser film, might have sent the whole thing straight to the bottom.
In the end, they hang on to enough of Seuss’s smart, sweet message about the importance of life, tolerance, and standing up for what you believe in to leave the movie something substantive to wrap all that silliness around. Horton Hears a Who is fun and enthusiastic, but also sweet and affecting in all the right moments. If you can forgive it for a momentary lapse in the last thirty seconds which turns the whole thing into a bizarre, rock opera musical number, you’ll find a lot to like in Horton Hears a Who!. Dr. Seuss will always be better in book form, but Hollywood has found a way to turn his work into a movie without falling flat.
Drillbit Taylor is the story if three high school kids abused and beaten up by bullies. You’ve seen that before. What you haven’t seen before is what they decide to do about it, and I’m not just talking about hiring Owen Wilson.
Hiring Owen Wilson though, is step one. Wade (Nate Hartley) is skinny beyond all reason, Ryan (Troy Gentile) is a fat, short kid with a big mouth, and Emmit bears an unfortunate resemblance to a hyper-active hobbit. They’re instant targets for asshole upper classmen, and they have absolutely no hope of defending themselves. Finally sick of being pushed, shoved, punched, humiliated, and stuffed into things (including but not limited to each others’ shirts) they attempt to hire a bodyguard by placing an ad on the internet. They hire the only one they can afford, a guy named Drillbit Taylor who talks a good game, but unknown to them a few hours before was digging around in a dumpster. Drillbit is homeless and he’s only in it to milk enough money out of them for a plane ticket to Canada, where he believes his life will be nothing but roses and lollipops. If nothing else, there’s a good chance the streets he sleeps on will be cleaner.
You may think you have mapped out in your head where Drillbit Taylor goes from there, but Kristofor Brown and Seth Rogen’s script is full of surprises. This is not an Owen Wilson star vehicle, crafted to stick him in situations to be funny with kids. He does that, but Drillbit is more of a secondary character with Wade and Ryan as the movie’s leads. If you’ve seen Superbad, imagine Seth and Evan five years younger and rated PG. Rogen’s influence is obvious in the script, and he uses that same Superbad dynamic to tell a completely different story of friendship, and simple survival.
Luckily Nate Hartley and Troy Gentile are just as good at playing these characters as Michael Cera and Jonah Hill were, and while the script uses that same sort of chemistry the injection of Owen Wilson into it makes everything different. If there’s any problem with the movie it’s that it takes a little too long to get the point, and is at times tempted to spend too much time with Owen instead of the kids, who are the real story here. The setup feels as if it takes an hour, and while I understand that making up a reasonable excuse for a dirty, homeless whino to end up in a high school playing guard may take more explanation than the usual comedy MacGuffin, Drillbit Taylor takes too long to get to the point.
Once things get rolling though, Drillbit gels. We’ve seen so many of these movies about nerds standing up to bullies by now that it’s hard to believe anyone could find anything new in the genre, but Rogen and Brown do, and director Steven Brill and his cast deliver a comedy ass kicking.
David Gordon Green may be on the verge of blowing up as a mainstream filmmaker. The indie stalwart behind All the Real Girls and George Washington directed The Pineapple Express, an upcoming comedy starring and written by Seth Rogen, who seems to spin comedy gold these days. But even if Green is about to become a household name, he’s throwing one last hurrah for his indie roots, with the melancholy and elegant Snow Angels.
Based on a novel by Stewart O’Nan, Snow Angels is a wintry collection of several interconnected stories, all taking place in the same small New England town. Arthur (Michael Angarano) is a typically gawky teen, busing tables at a local Chinese restaurant and flirting with co-worker Annie (Kate Beckinsale), who was his babysitter as a child. Annie is going through a divorce from Glenn (Sam Rockwell), her high school sweetheart who has since become more than a little unhinged. Living with his parents and devoting himself to Christianity, Glenn tries to maintain a relationship with his and Annie’s daughter Tara, but his self-loathing and drinking problem keep getting in the way.
Arthur is also witnessing a relationship fall apart in his own home, as his father (Griffin Dunne) moves out and Arthur’s mother Louise (Jeannetta Arnette) works to start her life over again. Meanwhile Arthur has started a flirtation with the local too-cool-for-school girl Lila (Olivia Thirlby), a romance that seems entirely innocent and hopeful compared to Annie and Glenn’s downward spiral.
Attempting to muddle through the new situations in which they’ve found themselves, each character makes some poor and selfish decisions. Arthur’s father is stranded, lonely, in an antiseptic condo, while Arthur himself no longer knows how to speak with his own dad. Annie embarks on an affair with coworker Barb’s (Amy Sedaris) husband, while Glenn continually shows up at Annie’s house uninvited.
All of these stories carry along on their own until one explosive, heartwrenching incident punches each character in the gut. It’s not the kind of crazy coincidence that makes an audience groan, but rather the kind of tragedy that unites every small town. Though Arthur and Annie and Louise and Lila are all coping with different emotions, they all must find a way to reckon with the same inner turmoil.
That’s a vague description, of course, but most of Snow Angels takes place in smaller moments rather than plot. The characters unfold and come alive slowly on the screen, with Green presenting them simply rather than asking you to judge or take part in their stories. The film veers occasionally into suspense or mystery, but mostly is content to study its characters, examining the small mishaps and revelations that make up most of our lives.
The character of Glenn is what sets much of the story in action, but he also feels the most out of place. As a man losing touch with his sanity he’s sympathetic, but sometimes skews a bit closer to film villainy that everyday melancholy. Rockwell commits himself to the performance but never quite succeeds in making Glenn’s actions fit in with the film’s overall realism. The rest of the cast all blend into their roles marvelously, looking as ordinary as movie stars can look these days. Thirlby is well on her way to be the Thora Birch cool-girl crush of the moment, and she brings a liveliness that is often totally absent in the token girlfriend role.
Snow Angels is an indie for people who love indies, meandering and wordy and, yes, sometimes slow. But its sadness and despair is suffused with great hope and humanity, making it far more than just two hours spent wallowing in other peoples’ sadness. It’s the same aesthetic that has made Green a modest success thus far, and possibly what will propel him to super-stardom with Pineapple Express. But with his innate understanding of how humans work at their lowest, we should hope that he doesn't stray too far from his roots. The quirk and snark-laden indie filmmakers of today need an earnest dreamer like him to keep them in line.
What do you get when you pull together a bunch of MIT math students and secretly send them off on getaways to Las Vegas with a legal but frowned-upon systematic way of beating the house at Black Jack? You get college students with a lot of extra cash in their pockets running around Vegas in limousines and expensive clothes. What did you expect?
