Max Payne

*1/2 – This 2008 critically panned adaptation of a 2001 critically acclaimed video game would have been better served by altering the title from “Max Payne” to “Max Pain” because that is what it inflicts on its poor unsuspecting audience. Due largely to the fact that it is extremely choppy and uneven, makes little to no sense in the plot department, and lead performers Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis seem to have great difficulty mustering any emotion whatsoever, this falls right into line with the majority of video game movies that have been produced (i.e. it’s nearly unwatchable). Tasked with spouting lines like “Yeah” and “He went that way”, Wahlberg and Kunis do very little to differentiate themselves from large, lumpy, somewhat animate planks of wood. If that’s not bad enough, the filmmakers decided to make every scene ludicrously dark with the exception of the ones in which there are blazing un battles, and solidified the movie’s crappiness by casting rapper Ludacris in a supporting role. There is one scene in which Wahlberg’s character has a massive gun battle against a fully armed SWAT team with only a pistol (with standard 13-round clip) in his possession. Flying in the face of the laws of the universe, this magical pistol fires at least 60 shots without ever being reloaded. That’s typical of the type of silliness to be found here. I would recommend avoiding this whether you are or are not a fan of the fairly solid video game franchise upon which this non-sensical flash-o-rama is based. Beau Bridges is in this. He should really try to emulate his brother Jeff a little more and try to get some work in movies that aren’t rubbish, and also lose a little weight.

Biutiful

*** - Geez oh man… talk about one depressing-assed movie. I mean, I’ve seen some gloomy movies before (“Schindler’s List” comes to mind) but this 2010 Spanish language character drama has got to be up there as one of the sadder ones I’ve seen in some time. Javier Bardem stars as a guy with two youngish kids and an estranged wife who works as a low level criminal living in the slums of Barcelona dealing mainly in black market goods and illegal immigrant transportation and storage. His main partners are his brother (who is also bopping his wife), a couple of gay Chinese guys who run a black market goods warehouse, and a bunch of Africans who he employs as his street vendors. Bardem’s character is diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and given a few months to live, which results in him to try to make amends with everyone around him. Unfortunately, it all backfires. His African street vendors are arrested and deported after a sting operation conducted by a cop who he was paying off but double-crossed him, about 25 illegal Chinese workers in his employ die in some sort of gas leak while sleeping in a basement, one of the queer Chinese guys kills the other one, and his wife goes on a bender and beats up one of his kids. And he also dies. It’s a pretty effective character study, but is so dark and depressing that it can be pretty hard to get through at times. Plus, it’s like two and half hours long, a length that I am not sure was entirely necessary, especially since the first and last 10 minutes of the movie were the exact same scene.

Tenure

**1/2 - This lightweight 2009 comedy starring Luke Wilson goes for a sort of Wes Anderson vibe but isn’t entirely successful. It has quirky characters, low-key comedic elements, an unusual score and a soundtrack full of indie-folk songs and slight keyboard/guitar noodling. However, it lacks the punch of an Anderson-made film (even his less than stellar recent effort “The Darjeeling Limited”) in that it doesn’t have the detail, artfulness or eccentricities that tend to make his movies so charming and sometimes hilarious. “Tenure” follows the story of Wilson as a professor at a small-time college in Pennsylvania who, despite being loved by all of his students, can’t get any of his work published and is having a difficult time achieving the desired status of tenured. Meanwhile, a new professor from Yale is hired as direct competition and Wilson and his overweight, bald, Oakley-wearing colleague played by David Koechner try to sabotage her career. There are subplots about his sister and his father and lots of jokes about horny old people and erectile dysfunction, but there’s really not much going on, and it ends up being pretty rigidly formulaic in the end. First-time writer/director Michael Million does a decent enough job in his dual role as his writing has some humor to it and his direction gets the job done. There is just nothing that really makes this stand out as anything better than average in its looks and the plot is about as mechanical as one is liable to find without it being extremely irritating. It’s not without its charm, and seems to have a decent message to it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it.

Archer: Season One

**1/2 - Is there anything more annoying than having to listen to a bunch of screeching yahoos play the irritating children’s pool game ‘Marco Polo’? Yes, there is and that would be listening to a bunch of screeching yahoos play the irritating children’s pool game ‘Marco Polo’ from the comfort of one’s apartment while trying to watch some god damn television. That was my experience while I attempted to view the first season of the animated comedy show “Archer” on this balmy 2011 Memorial Day weekend, as there was some kind of Boy Scout jamboree or something staying at the pool-equipped Comfort Inn that is within throwing distance of my back window. I only hope that my enjoyment of the show wasn’t affected negatively by the viewing environment. The 12-episode inaugural season from the creators of “Sealab 2021” and “Frisky Dingo” follows the adventures of spy Sterling Archer and the espionage agency that he works for which is run by his mother and staffed by a slew of eccentric characters. I have never seen “Sealab 2021” but I would rate this as on par with season one of “Frisky Dingo” and probably a notch below the second season. Part of what hurts “Archer” may be the full length (22-minute) format that was used as opposed to the 11-minute format used on their previous project, as parts of these episodes tend to drag a bit and belabor marginal ideas. Plus there is a pretty high frequency of crude and extreme attempts at humor which I don’t find all that appealing. It’s not bad for the first season of a program, but I don’t have any particular desire to watch it again, although I’ll likely give the 2nd and 3rd seasons a try.

Black Dynamite

***1/2 – Some of the most identifiable features in the blaxploitation genre are things like poorly choreographed kung fu action, bizarre 70s clothes choices, forgettable soul-funk music, goofy vernaculars, whitey-funded anti-black conspiracies, rampant misogyny and gratuitous sex and gunplay. In 2009’s spoof/homage “Black Dynamite” all these factors and many more are not only present but are nitro-boosted into the stratosphere. Unlike a lot of spoof films that go for the big laughs by creating jokes that aren’t necessarily interwoven well into a genre’s story style, this movie makes just enough tweaks to an already highly laughable type of film that it accentuates the previously present ludicrousness without having to add broad gags or drastically altering the format. The acting and dialogue so precisely nail the style that if one watches this without playing much attention and ignores the notable names involved it could easily be mistaken for an actual “Shaft” or “Sweet Sweetback” type of flick straight out of 1973. Closer attention, however, will reveal the detail and nuance added to the script and action that work together to make the first hour borderline hilarious. Towards the end of the movie the silliness quotient ramped up to a point – probably around the time that Black Dynamite took on Richard Nixon in a knockdown drag-out kung fu nunchuk battle in the Oval Office – that it became a little too over-the-top for my tastes. Up until then, though, I would have to say that “Black Dynamite” was a humor-filled and entertaining romp that is an effective send-up of the type of picture that was prevalent in the early 70s heyday of blaxploitation.

Green Street Hooligans

**1/2 – I’d like to say that “Green Street Hooligans” was a thought-provoking, insightful and detailed dramatization of the seedy underworld of English football ‘firms’ – the groups of diehard fans, often referred to as hooligans, who fight and kill each other over a silly and unbelievably dull sport. I’d like to say that, but unfortunately I can’t because it was actually just a randomly strung together sequence of brawls between West Ham and Millwall supporters interrupted by the occasional whinge from Elijah Wood or the girl who played T.S.’s girlfriend in “Mallrats”. This is one of those movies in which actors might partake if they are trying to distance themselves from a role that has defined their career. That’s exactly what Frodo seems to be trying to do here by being in a movie full of tough Cockney rhyming slang spewing roughnecks and not wearing goofy-looking prosthetic feet or smoking pipe-weed with a queer wizard and a bunch of nancyboy hobbits and elves. It kind of backfired, though, seeing as throughout the first half of the movie he played his character pretty much as I imagine Frodo would if he was a real person, and then spends most of the rest of the film getting the crap kicked out of him. I kept expecting to hear Samwise Gamgee yell out “Mister Frodo!” from the background, so the likely attempt at distance from his famous portrayal wasn’t particularly successful. Still – and maybe this is the vodka talking – it was a fairly entertaining movie. It was kind of trite and formulaic, but I can accept more of that from an English movie than an American one because the accents are cooler and they didn’t elect Bush.

The Golden Compass

*** – While it is has less depth than the “Lord of the Rings” series “The Golden Compass” – based on the first of three books in Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy - is also less frivolous and superficial than “Harry Potter” and serves nicely as a sort of anti-“Narnia”. The works of C.S. Lewis - upon which the “Narnia” films are based - sing the praises of religion and seem to have a main purpose of showing how Jesus is totally awesome and stuff (and possibly also a lion). However, this movie (and one could extrapolate, the books it is based on) is all about the struggle of an enlightened freethinking intelligentsia against the perverse and autocratic dogma of the church. For that aspect of it alone I gave this movie a nice little boost in the ratings. Unfortunately, looking at ”The Golden Compass” in just the sense of a cinematic experience leaves one wanting a bit more. It seemed to me as though the characters and storylines were not very fleshed out here. I have not read the novels on which this was based, but I get the distinct sense that a great deal was left out for the sake of having one hour forty-five minute kid-friendly film. Characters and plot points sort of jumped all over the place and practically none of what could probably be an intricate and engrossing world was explored in any way other than to give basic ideas about what was happening on screen. Despite these flaws and the fact that it ends rather abruptly this was still a solid adventure yarn, and I’d watch this over any of the “Narnia” or “Potter” films any day of the week. Including Sunday… take that, Jesus!

Burn After Reading

**1/2 – Having written, directed and produced roughly one movie per year since their glory days in the mid-90s, I get the feeling that the Coen Brothers’ prolific movie-making pace is starting to catch up with them, as most of their recent releases have been little more than mediocre. Nowadays they seem to rely almost entirely on quirky characters with goofy names played by big name stars in order to fuel their films instead of combining those facets with interesting stories and hilarious dialogue like they used to with films like “Fargo” and “The Big Lebowski”. While 2009’s “A Serious Man” would be an exception to that trend (not that it was good, but that it starred Judaism instead of big name actors), their preceding film “Burn After Reading” falls squarely into the above category. It stars Clooney, Pitt, Malkovich, Tilda Swinton and Frances McDormand all playing characters with dopey names like Linda Litzke, Chad Feldheimer, Osbourne Cox and Harry Pfarrer who have differing arrays of interaction with each other ranging from blackmail to adultery to getting shot in the face while hiding in a closet. The story has a fairly intriguing plot that kind of weaves in and out of each of the main characters’ lives and their varying levels of interplay with one another, but I never found myself able to fully commit to the idea. I chalk that up mainly to the flat dialogue and lack of humor that have been indicative of all the Coen Brothers’ movies from recent years. I can’t really say too much bad about the movie itself, but the fact that it helps to show the Coen Brothers’ continual downward slide is a bit disheartening.

Frisky Dingo: Season Two

***1/2 - In my review for season one of “Frisky Dingo” I indicated that one of my main reasons for disappointment was the fact that the show rather quickly strayed from its apparent original concept of delving comically into the minutiae of superhero and supervillain management and administration. Having now watched the second and final season of the Cartoon Network series, and realizing that it goes much farther afield than the first, I may have to rethink my reasons for my preference of season two over season one. And in looking back, I suppose the concept dropping may not have been such a big reason that I like season two much more than season one. It is probably more accurate to say that it is a combination of the improved consistency of the writing, better peripheral characters, and a bit less concentration on the Awesome X/Xander Crews character. After botching his attempt to propel the Earth into the sun – a maneuver that actually ended up moving the Earth slightly away from the sun thereby stopping global warming – Killface wins the Democratic Party’s nomination for President. Meanwhile, Awesome X finds himself living in a cardboard box until he decides to use the $20 billion check made out to ‘cash’ that he found in order to buy the Republican nomination and run against Killface. By the end of the season (which also turned out to be the end of the show) all the president stuff had fallen by the wayside and things like mutant ant-babies take over. What made this season better than the first was a combination of better, more focused writing and funnier characters, such as screechy-voiced security guard Wendell, who is one of the better animated characters I’ve come across in some time.

Carriers

**1/2 – Seeing as this 2009 independent film isn’t really a horror film or a thriller and doesn’t have any action in it, I suppose it is best categorized as a sci-fi drama. It is very much like how I’d imagine “28 Days Later” would be with all the horror elements completely stripped from it. In fact, I think the parallels to “28 Days Later” are very apt, as both films deal with a small group of people who are trying to get to a destination while avoiding the infection that is spreading throughout the population. Where these movies are fundamentally different, though, is in the nature of the infection. “28 Days Later” had a highly contagious virus that almost immediately turned its victim into a slobbering beast that then tried to infect as many people as possible by attacking and chewing on them. On the other hand, “Carriers” portrays a similarly highly virulent disease. However, it is one that doesn’t turn its prey into zombie-like creatures but instead just slowly weakens and kills them over a period of days or weeks. While that certainly seems more realistic than the former option, it also means that there is not a whole heck of a lot going on in this movie. About the most exciting part of it was one of the lead characters getting attacked by a dog and fending it off with a shotgun. So, while I can certainly commend the movie for its realism and its avoidance of the theme of zombie-like creatures that is so common in these kind of movies nowadays, it achieves this by forfeiting a great deal of entertainment value.

The Lazarus Project

**1/2 - There is certainly no dearth of mysterious psychological thriller films out there, each trying their darnedest to one-up each other by having the most shocking twist ending. Most of these films are satisfied to have one twist at the end that may throw the less savvy viewers for a bit of a loop, but more recently these kinds of films have striven for even more twistiness by adding at least one further plot turn at the tail end. Enter 2008’s independently made direct-to-DVD “The Lazaraus Project”, which adds even another bend in the story, making a total of at least four by my count, and possibly more depending on one’s interpretation. The gist of it is that Paul Walker – best known as one of the lead lunkheads in the irredeemably horrid car-porn “Fast and the Furious” series – gets the ole lethal injection in Texas for being in the vicinity of a death (cuz that’s really all you need do down there to be executed) only to wake up some indeterminate amount of time later as a maintenance man at a psychiatric hospital in Oregon. He wanders around the manor that houses the ward and does various things like adopt a stray dog and get randomly attacked by inmates, but then maybe it turns out that he’s actually a patient, or maybe not, then he kisses some lady, but maybe actually he burned his family to death or something, but then maybe he didn’t. Anyway, it has a lot of stuff going on, but to its credit it never really feels confusing, the ambient score is quite nicely done, and Walker shows that he can do more than just drive cars and grunt like an ape. I can sit through it once.

Black Death

*** - Taking place in a 14th century Europe that is beset by the titular epidemic, this 2010 adventure/thriller/horror flick captures the time period pretty well while also presenting a relatively watchable narrative for most of its length. The story follows Boromir from the LOTR films as he and a band of about a half dozen outlaws/crusaders are on the trail of a necromancer who they – for no reason in particular – blame for the plague that has beset the land. They stop off at a monastery where they – again, for no particular reason – ask for a monk to come along with them. The smallest, skinniest, nerdiest of the monks volunteers and joins the party as they journey toward a town on the other side of a marsh. And that pretty much covers the first hour of the movie. It plays out kind of like watching somebody else complete a few quests in any given RPG set in medieval times. That may not sound all that compelling, but it was actually pretty enjoyable. However, once they reach the village and finally figure out what is going on, the horror part of the movie starts and it just shows a series of somewhat graphic torture scenes for the next little while. I can’t say that that particular aspect of the film won itself a fan in me. In the end, there is no real conclusion and the story just kind of peters out, as the surviving main characters return to the monastery, look at each other awkwardly, and the leave. It is followed by a vague and tacked-on epilogue that was kind of silly and left me wondering what point exactly the movie was trying to make. I’ve seen worse, though.

Echelon Conspiracy

**1/2 - Over the past couple of decades the power and speed of computers have increased at such an extraordinary rate that it has had the dual results of alarming the security-crazed right-wing jagoffs of the world and giving Hollywood screenwriters an absolute goldmine of movie ideas. The 2009 film “Echelon Conspiracy” starring Marcellus Wallace, the jerky guy from “Saving Private Ryan”, and some other guy takes advantage of the situation by making a movie about security-crazed right-wing jagoffs. Much like “Enemy of the State” and “Eagle Eye” this movie posits that there is an intricate and all-knowing set of computer programs housed somewhere in Washington that are hooked into wired and wireless networks all over the globe via satellite and are able to take control of anything plugged into any sort of network grid. And guess what? Yes, it has evolved to the point of being sentient and is now out of control and killing people and becoming a threat to national security and the people of the world. As it turns out, the omniscient computer system that has become so self-aware and powerful that it is on the verge of taking over the world can be easily taken care of and shut down by a wormy incompetent guy who uses the old logical paradox angle to cause the system to shut itself down. I’m going to go on record here and saying that any artificial intelligence that is advanced enough to commandeer a government is also going to be advanced enough to not fall for the logical paradox gag. Anyway, this movie was relatively boring and the plot was derivative, but I’ll give it some extra points for not relying too much on action and gunfights like a lot of these films end up doing.