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.