The Crazies

*** - Sheriff Bullock of “Deadwood” stars as, well, the sheriff of Crazyville in this competently helmed remake of an old Romero film. There is a decent balance between horror and thriller aspects, and it doesn’t get overly gory or violent, which certainly works in its favor. I’m sure that when the original came out in the 70s, the many clichés of the genre were not present, or at least not as entrenched and commonplace as they are today. However, viewing this after having seen so many of these types of films that have cropped up in the ensuing years causes this to feel pretty uninspired. It does provide a fairly tense and mysterious alternative to slasher-type flicks, though. One thing that puzzled me was the utter lack of exposition regarding the mechanism of causation of the toxin that drove the citizenry bananas. Some of the infected were lucid and relatively rational, some were transformed into unstoppable monsters, and some were practically motionless zombies. It never really got into why there were different effects on different people, though. Oh well, I guess one shouldn’t really expect too much explanation from this type of movie.

Cypher

*1/2 - Ok, here’s the deal: some guy brainwashes himself into thinking he is a corporate spy sent to infiltrate another corporation, is then captured and brainwashed into thinking he is a corporate spy infiltrating the first company, captured by them and brainwashed once again into thinking he is a spy for the other company. Meanwhile, Lucy Liu sporting a strange Moe Howard-like haircut (who is later revealed to be his girlfriend) is helping him reverse the various brainwashings, which is actually contributing to him being brainwashed even more (huh?). All this convoluted brainwashing, infiltrating and spying somehow results in the acquisition of a data disc of some sort, which is implied was the whole reason that the main character went through all this in the first place. This disc contains (drumroll, please…) an order to kill his girlfriend which he promptly ignores by throwing the disc over the side of the yacht that they are on, presumably because Lucy Liu is hotter and spicier than an order of General Tso’s chicken. The complex storyline seems like it should be interesting, but actually was pretty dull. The apparently near-future setting was only futuristic in that Lucy Liu flew around in some weird-looking helicopter. Add to that the lame special effects, the unsatisfying conclusion, and an extremely high “huh?” per minute count, and you get yourself a one and a half star movie.

The Book Of Eli

***1/2 - The basic message of this movie seems to be that ‘the Bible will save humanity’. Now, that right there puts this film at odds with my extreme anti-religion viewpoint, and digs itself a hole that it has to try to claw its way out of in 118 minutes. So the fact that I rated “The Book of Eli” as a three and a half star movie indicates that film itself – overtly religious connotations notwithstanding – was excellent and highly enjoyable. It was surprisingly well directed by the Hughes Brothers, and used an interesting lighting/coloring technique that made the post-apocalyptic landscape very believable. Denzel Washington was his always reliable stoic and somewhat watchable self and main antagonist Gary Oldman portrays the guy he portrays in every movie he’s in: an evil super villain who looks like he is always just about to snap and club one of his henchmen to death with a paperweight. Other than the whole religion issue, there are really only two problems I had with this movie: 1) the surprise reveal at the end – I’m trying to keep spoilers to a minimum here - is only surprising because of the complete impossibility of the characteristics portrayed, and 2) the passing of the ‘post-apocalyptic badass wanderer’ torch to someone who received no combat training whatsoever and spent most of the movie getting beat up or cowering behind buildings was fairly unbelievable.

In The Loop

**** - The only things I despise more than politics are politicians. Well, that’s not strictly true, as I have a very long list of things that I despise, and the items on the list tend to move around in position every so often, usually based on my ever-changing whims. However, having just watched “In the Loop” I can say that my first sentence is true currently. This film – which is sort of an expansion of a TV show called “The Thick of It” – is a satire of the political maneuvering that resulted in British support of the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The dialogue is largely hilarious, and a number of the performances were stellar, especially two extremely foul-mouthed Scottish political enforcers who used the word ‘cunt’ more times in a 106-minute span than I thought possible. The only aspects of this that I didn’t really enjoy were the odd, shaky camerawork that was probably intended to convey realism but was more fitting for a TV show than a theatrical release, and choppy editing that was a little distracting. In addition, there were some questionable casting decisions made in James Gandolfini as some kind of armchair general and Anna Chlumsky – who I don’t think has had an acting role since that movie from the early 90s in which, if memory serves, she killed Macaulay Culkin by making him get stung by thousands of bees - as a very annoying staffer. Still, it was an enjoyable movie.

The Broken

**1/2 – A premise that would make for a good 30 minute episode of “The Twilight Zone” is stretched out to an hour and a half long feature in this somewhat intriguing but extremely slow moving horror/thriller. The chick who was bopping Gerard Butler in “300” stars in this as a radiologist who thinks all of her relatives are being methodically replaced by evil doppelgangers after she is injured in a car accident. Both the horror and thriller aspects of this film are very subdued but relatively effective as a tense, mysterious atmosphere is created with the nice visuals and mostly solid performances. The twist ending is fairly easy to guess beforehand, but is still neat enough that its lack of surprise doesn’t detract from the overall experience. My main beef is with the very slow pace and plethora of unnecessary added and extended shots and scenes that seem to have the sole purpose of padding the length. Had the reasons for the doppelgangers’ appearances - or possibly some back story (of which there is none whatsoever) - been inserted in place of long pointless shots of skylines and whatnot, it would have been much more satisfying.

Knowing

**1/2 – An intriguing premise and a performance by Nicholas Cage that astonishingly didn’t make me want to clobber him are buried beneath a pretty crummy script and an ending that doesn’t seem particularly well thought out. This film looks pretty nice, and is well directed by Alex “Dark City” Proyas, but there are enough deficiencies present in this disaster/mystery/sci-fi/thriller to make watching it a bit of a chore.

Riverworld

** - This three-hour long Sci-Fi Channel (excuse me… “SyFy”) production set in acclaimed science fiction writer Philip Jose Farmer’s “Riverworld” universe seems very much like an attempt to start up a new series. Not having a TV anymore, I don’t know if it was successful in spawning said series, but I would highly doubt it. The events of the film very clearly occur on the ‘Riverworld’ from Farmer’s novels, but it doesn’t seem to be based on any actual events from the books (a few of which I read some years ago), although many of the characters are used in varying degrees of accuracy. Being a relatively low budget made-for-TV production it doesn’t appear that a whole lot of artistry went into making this, as the direction was nothing out of the ordinary, the special effects and design work were middling, and the cast was a bunch of nobodies (with the exception of gay Scotsman Alan Cumming). And while I won’t go into any minute detail in order to maintain some brevity, there was a lot of stuff going on without explanation that anybody not familiar with the Riverworld concept would be very confused by. Add to that the fact that there was a great deal of maudlin schlockiness and failed attempts at humor and the result is a pretty poor movie.

Southland Tales

** - I am fairly certain that there is a pretty neat idea to be uncovered by a diligent viewer who watches this enough times while taking notes, making flowcharts, and analyzing the minute details of this film. However, I am not willing to put that much time or effort into watching this or any movie. Therefore, what I ended up seeing when sitting through this 2 and ½ hour film was a bunch of randomly strung together scenes with very little connection between parts and an ending that unsuccessfully flails at wrapping the plotlines into a neat little package. That makes this second effort from “Donnie Darko” writer/director Richard Kelly more than a little disappointing. Other drawbacks that this film features are as follows: a prominent role for “The Rock” who delivers all of his lines as if he’s trash-talking another wrestler, Justin Timberlake as not only an actor but also the narrator, dual roles for Sean William Scott, a small part for Kevin Smith in which he wears a Santa Claus-like beard, a scene that shows two automobiles having intercourse, almost no exposition as to what is going on other than the dull narration, and a number of SNL alumni playing parts that feel a lot like their unfunny one-trick characters from that show. While certain aspects of the main premise and a few of the plot strands are pretty neat – in theory - the failure to deliver on any of them makes this hard to watch.

Black Books: Series 2

**1/2 - I first heard about this show in an interview of Mike Nelson that I read, and as he highly recommended it (and each season is only one DVD, and would not screw up my NetFlix procedures) I decided to give it a try. This 2nd series is entertaining enough, I suppose, but after the excellent last couple of episodes of the first series, I found this one to be a little bit underwhelming. “Black Books” is a rather dark comedy about a drunken Irishman named Bernard who runs a book store in London, his exploited employee Manny, and their friend Fran from the shop next door. The interplay amongst the three leads was a little bit more balanced in the first series, while in series 2 it seems like every plot revolves in some way around how horribly Bernard and Fran treat Manny, who is usually incompetent, and sometimes oddly effeminate. As the show progresses, I must admit that I find the Bernard character less and less appealing, as his loud, obnoxious behavior and flimsy attempts at physical comedy are increasingly annoying. There is one more series left, so I’m going to be generous and leave it on my queue… but I certainly hope it improves on series 2.

The Fountain

***1/2 - If you like to be confused out of your gourd, this is the film for you. Seriously, though, this has some pretty neat parts and a mostly intriguing story, but it is almost a little too hard to find these things within the constant jump cuts and flashbacks and flash-forwards. While I don’t think I could recommend this film to those that don’t love the sci-fi genre, I get the feeling that it might be one of those films that will be revered in the future, like “2001” is now.

Gangs Of New York

***1/2 – Starring Leo DiCaprio as a greasy-haired Irishman and Cameron Diaz as a thieving whore, “Gangs of New York” tells the tale of a the battles between various rival groups in the Five Points area of Manhattan in the 1800’s. I am by no means a scholar of 19th century New York history, and while Five Points (before it’s demolition around 1900) was known as a horrible slum, I somewhat doubt that the extreme violence depicted in this semi-factual book-based film actually occurred on quite this scale. Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of Bill the Butcher, leader of the native New Yorker gang, was pretty interesting, and the film was beautifully photographed and well directed by Martin Scorsese. Be that as it may, the nearly 3-hour length meant that there were some dull spots, and the disjointed story didn’t have a very good flow to it. One thing I learned while watching this is that I could probably view a non-stop loop of people rioting and looting and still be entertained, as the last quarter or so of “Gangs of New York” was pretty much exactly that.

Best In Show

***1/2 – Dog show people are a rare breed. Yes, that was a pun. It was a risky move, but I stand by it. Anyway, what I mean when I say “rare breed” is actually “bunch of morons.” This 2nd Christopher Guest helmed mockumentary in a series of three does with dog show what “Waiting for Guffman” did with amateur theatre people. While it is not quite as funny as the prior film it used a very similar formula and had a lot of funny lines. Guest’s stable of actors including himself, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Parker Posey and the rest of the crew are back for this one after doing an outstanding all around job in “Waiting for Guffman”. Once again, Fred Willard - portraying a clueless announcer at the dog show who keeps asking his clearly annoyed partner stupid questions and making ridiculous sports analogies – steals the show with his outstanding deadpan delivery. Not all of the characters work, but enough of them do to make this very enjoyable. Guest’s redneck bait shop salesman and a guy who is the most overly campy gay that I have ever seen (he acted how I imagine Paul Lynde would if he was born a generation later than he was) are lowlights.

The Wolfman

** - I would like to start by describing one particular scene from this movie that pretty much sums up my opinion. A bunch of villagers set a trap to catch the Wolfman that consists of a deer tied to a stake and some trap doors surrounding it. The Wolfman falls for the rather obvious trick and goes tumbling down one of the trap doors that are connected by a series of underground tunnels. One of the stupider villagers immediately flails wildly and runs toward the scene, subsequently falling through another trap door, and is murdered by the Wolfman. The Wolfman then proceeds to (unbelievably) leap out of the hole and slaughter the rest of the hunting party (apparently just for fun, as there is no eating going on here). It was so obvious beforehand that this was going to happen that it was infuriating. This whole movie is pretty much like that. You could guess what is about to happen two or three steps ahead. Now, I realize that this is a remake of the 1940’s version but that is, to me, no excuse. If everyone in the ensuing 70 years has seen all this ad nauseum, then some new stuff should have been added. The big werewolf battle at the end was pretty anticlimactic, too. I’m still not sure why Anthony Hopkins burst into flames so easily. Do werewolves secrete gasoline instead of sweat? Maybe they’ll answer that question in the next “Twilight” movie.

12:01

***1/2 - This surprisingly good low-budget sci-fi mystery/thriller stars Jonathan Silverman (best known for being out-acted by both Andrew McCarthy and a corpse in the 1989 necrophilia-based comedy “Weekend at Bernie’s”) as a guy who is caught in a time loop in which he repeats the same day over and over, a la “Groundhog Day” but with less of a comedic aspect (although there are some funny parts tossed in). Director Jack Sholder (who?) actually does a decent job keeping this interesting, despite the fact that just about every other film he has directed (according to Wikipedia) has been a crummy sequel to a marginally successful horror movie. There aren’t any flamboyant effects to keep little kiddies’ attention, and the story takes some intelligence to follow, but it is certainly worth giving a try, although the presence of comic relief character Howard - played by Jeremy “Spawn of Beelzebub” Piven - is fairly hard to take. On the bright side, he is shot in the back and killed in one the repeated days (unfortunately, I don’t think it was the one that ended the time loop phenomenon). Anyway, I would recommend watching this over pretty much any other Jonathan Silverman or Jeremy Piven film.

A Serious Man

** – It seems to me that ever since “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” the Coen Brothers have decided to completely drop any attempt to create films that have a narrative that is easily followed from start to finish. In fact, every movie (which seem to come out pretty much yearly now) that they have been responsible for has had a number of great moments but next to no actual plot. This latest effort from them epitomizes this trend. There are a few really enjoyable bits in it, but overall “A Serious Man” is rather dull and occasionally incomprehensible. This is definitely their Jew-iest outing, and not being a Jew myself (a belief system that I find reprehensible, by the way), and also not having grown up in the 60’s, I find most of this pretty hard to watch. Do real-life followers of Judaism really act like the people in this movie? My goodness, I hope not. All the characters are horrible people in essence, who follow superstitious traditions above all else. I find that really annoying, and one of the predominant reasons (along with “Dancing with the Stars”) for the destruction of society. Anyway, this movie isn’t too good.

Punisher: War Zone

* - What happens when someone takes 2004’s “Punisher” and amplifies all that was vile and horrid about it while simultaneously removing any fleeting glimmer of hope or enjoyment? The answer: 2008’s putrid “Punisher: War Zone”. I consider myself a Marvel Comics fan. Well, okay, I’m not so much a fan of Marvel Comics as I am a fan Marvel Comics characters. More accurately, I like the action figures that are based on Marvel Comics characters. When I think about it, though, they have a lot of quality problems, and some issues with improper size scaling, but they are marginally acceptable, I guess. In any event, I try to support the company that makes these fairly reprehensible figures that I buy in ungodly quantities - despite their numerous faults - by watching the occasionally horrifying and largely mediocre string of ridiculously expensive films based on the same characters. So, by now I have seen a pretty large amount of Marvel Comics-based movies, and this one was by far the worst. I’m not sure what else to say about it other than that it is really bad and opens with a scene in which an elderly wheelchair-bound Italian man with a colostomy bag gets beheaded by the quote-unquote hero. Well done, Marvel.

Conquistadors

*** - A 4-hour long four-part BBC/PBS documentary, “Conquistadors” is decent enough as far as this sort of thing goes, but a few things hold it back from being any more than average. Presented by famed British historian Michael Wood – who is the spitting image of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, by the way – in his trademark excitable manner, it has lots of location shooting and contains some decent insights on the Spanish conquest of Central and South America. However, the video (yes, video… not film) and audio were low quality which was somewhat distracting, and Wood concentrated on the more sensationalistic aspect of the characters and events in the story - to the point of occasionally giving out bald-faced misinformation. It is okay as a sort of beginners guide, but anyone looking for more depth and substance should go elsewhere. The creators of this seemed to heed these words said by someone famous once, “When the choice is between truth and legend, always print the legend.”

The Punisher

*1/2 – This movie has a serious case of what I like to call ‘double D syndrome’; Darkness and Depression. While it was one of the most violent, grim and sadistic non-horror movies I have ever seen, it is probably still a little better than the 1989 Dolph Lundgren version. The sequence of events went something like this: death, death, slaughter, death, death, death, stabbing, death, explosion, death, death, boiling water in the face, death, death, arrow through the neck, death, big explosion, fatal burning. With all that violence and mayhem, it surprisingly really had little of what I would consider true ‘action.’ It was more just a series of killings than anything else; kind of like watching home movies made by a serial killer. Interspersed between the scenes of shootings were a number of dull portions that featured Todd Parker sitting forlornly in a chair drinking Wild Turkey. Add to that a performance by John Travolta that was slightly (just slightly) better than his in “Battlefield: Earth” and you’ve got yourself one heck of a crappy movie.

Timeline

** - The recently deceased Michael Crichton should have been spinning in his not yet dug grave after seeing what was done with his above average novel in this film adaptation. The story this was based on had loads of technical details dealing with quantum mechanics and so forth, and also had an intriguing plot. This movie, however, removed all of the intelligence and mystery from the novel and went for pure action, while altering many of the characteristics of the main players, considerably more so than was done in “Jurassic Park”. It has its entertaining bits, but doesn’t hold up well for its entire length. It’s rather disappointing.

Alice In Wonderland

**1/2 – While this thoroughly Burton-ized spiritual successor to Lewis Carroll’s classic “Alice” stories is visually superb, it also leaves the viewer a little overdosed with whimsy and oddness. I certainly tend to enjoy weirdness in films… but only as much as can be supported with coherent aims and forward progress. This film is somewhat over laden with weirdness for the sake of weirdness that has no real purpose in the end. Despite the fact that the writing didn’t convey any sort of attachment being formed between characters, in the final section of the film, Alice seems to find the decision to go back home very difficult to make. I think I found that to be one of the strangest aspects of the movie. If I had the choice to go home to London, or stick around a creepy world inhabited by a gay floating cat, an orange-haired loony who dances like David Brent, a ditzy albino woman, a rabbit that throws dishes at people, and a mouse that has an alarming tendency to jab people’s eyes with pins, I’m pretty sure I know which I’d choose immediately.

Watchmen

*** - This almost painfully long adaptation of the (debatably) “greatest graphic novel of all time” was largely true to the source material, and had its bright spots, but was overall less than stellar. The effects were well done and the acting pretty decent (with the exception of the broad who played the Silk Spectre) but there were a number of scenes where I had to stop myself from pressing the fast forward button. I can only imagine how tedious the even longer Director’s Cut is.

Ghost Rider

** - Nicholas Cage improves his appearance considerably by tearing off his flesh and setting his head on fire in this silly adaptation of one of Marvel Comics’ goofier characters. For the first hour or so of the film (and for a few brief periods after that), Cage ineffectively plays pre-demonized human Johnny Blaze for laughs by acting dopey and eating jelly beans out of a martini glass. Once he becomes Ghost Rider, though, he displays a voice that sounds like the Cookie Monster and a rather skewed moral compass when he immediately burns a purse-snatcher to a crisp after declaring him guilty with no trial, defense attorney or even Miranda rights. But as goofy as this movie is, it had enough neat effects and unintentional humor to somewhat hold my interest despite its rather unnecessary over 2-hour length. Eva Mendes, in her portrayal of Mr. Rider’s love interest, adds to the gathering evidence that she is not only highly overrated in the looks department, but is also one of the worst actresses on the planet.

Big Fish

**1/2 – Tim Burton is one of those filmmakers who seems to go out of his way to make things feel unusual even if they aren’t necessarily unusual in essence. This works well sometimes, and not so well other times. Most of his recent work leans toward ‘not working’, but “Big Fish” works more often than not, and that is probably due at least in part to solid casting. Like most of his movies, Helena Bonham Carter has multiple roles in this, which usually detracts from the final product, but is at least bearable here, thanks to her interaction with Ewan McGregor. Albert Finney also helps to keep this out of the realm of overt silliness, despite the overtly silly premise. This is, at its core, a series of vignettes that are only as good as the sum of its parts. The overall ark is mundane but comprised of solidly built pieces, despite Billy Crudup’s dull presence. In total, it’s pretty bland.

Crazy Heart

*** - Anybody worth their salt knows that I have an extreme dislike of country music in all of its forms. From Johnny Cash to Willie Nelson to Garth Brooks to that guy in a cowboy hat who ‘sings’ about killing terrorists (pretty much covered the rest of them with that, yeah?), I find country music – along with gangsta rap, emoticons, and the inflatable beach pillow - to be the absolute nadir of human culture on nearly every level, as well as a sign of the end times. So the fact that “Crazy Heart” centers on the life of a washed-up country music star – and includes a very large amount of country music being played – makes it a very hard movie for me to sit through. And I think the fact that I still found enough enjoyable about it to give it a 3-star rating says loads about the performances (especially that of Jeff Bridges), scenery and direction. The story is nothing new – in fact, it has the distinct feel of a really long country music song in story and depth – but I still found it worth watching.