THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX - He's Fantastic Alright

I am deeply conflicted over Wes Anderson. RUSHMORE is my all-time favorite movie. I greatly enjoy BOTTLE ROCKET. THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS annoyed me to no end. I sort of liked THE LIFE AQUATIC. And could not stand THE DARJEELING LIMITED. In a way, I feel the same way about him that I do about M. Night Shymalan -- the guy peaked early with a great film, and he's basically been trying the same trick again and again with diminishing returns.

So I approached THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX with great trepidation. Like almost everyone, I love Roald Dahl. And I love stop-motion animation. But, it's Wes Anderson, so I expected self-conscious dialogue, a 70s color-palette, odd suits and sportcoats, awkward, introspective characters with father issues, and a British Invasion soundtrack.

FANTASTIC MR. SPOILERS BELOW

And it has almost all of those things. What it also has, is a real sense of heart. And the film is absolutely gorgeous. Eschewing CGI is a wise choice, and the look of the film is old school and handmade. The fur on the characters ruffles as they move from frame to frame, making it quirky and charming.

But back to the story. Mr. Fox promised his wife he'd give up thieving after they share a near-death experience. But he loves stealing, so he gets back into it in secret. His son Ash feels like his hero dad doesn't appreciate him, a feeling only exacerbated by the arrival of Ash's cousin, Kristofferson, whom Mr. Fox drafts into his robbery plans. When the three farmers Fox has been robbing team up to kill him, it places all the animals in the valley in jeopardy. And it's up to Fox to pull off one last daring scheme to save them all.

All of this works remarkably well, which is odd, considering this is a kid's movie dressed up in the quirks of an indie director that include corduroy suits and a 70s color pallete, a made-up sport called Whackbat, some lifted/homage dialogue from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, meditation, and folks constantly swearing by using the word "cuss" instead of actual cuss words.

We understand why Fox is driven to steal, his wife's frustration at that, his son's upset at feeling weird and like his father isn't proud of him, and Fox's realization that he's hurt everyone he loves. We cheer when Fox one-ups the farmers, react in horror when the animals might starve to death, and get choked up when Fox finally tells his son how proud he is of him.

There are nice moments of humor, especially with the "cussing" and a recurring joke with drugged blueberries taking out bloodhounds and a fat farmer.

This is a great example -- much like Pixar films -- of how a kids' movie can work for the whole family by having a simple story that's underlaid by sophisticated emotions and theme.

And it's cussing fantastic.

Blindsided by THE BLIND SIDE

The trailers for THE BLIND SIDE made it seem a little sappy. And by "a little," I mean "Hallmark Channel Christmas movie." But the girlfriend wanted to see it, and after some kicking and screaming on my part, I went.

I shouldn't have been so reluctant. Written and directed by John Lee Hancock -- a hell of a writer and a solid director -- TBS adapts Michael Lewis' book about the evolution of football in the wake of Lawrence Taylor, focusing wisely on the unlikely story of a rich white Texas couple adopting a poor black kid who grows up to become a pro left tackle.

I had absolutely no problems with the script or the film. All the moments that could be sappy weren't. The film takes its time getting to know the characters, so you feel the emotions they're feeling. This nicely sets up all the fear and uncertainty Big Mike has, and you root for the kid, enjoying the simple moments of fun with his new family and tearing up when he says things like he's never had his own bed before.

Hancock succeeds in making a film for the whole family, one that tells a nice, uplifting story.

And most surprising of all was Tim McGraw, playing Sean Tuohy. McGraw was so good, I didn't even realize it was him until I saw the end credits.

NINJA ASSASSIN - This Ninja's Just A'ight

Other than the folks at Silver Pictures, there probably wasn't anybody in the world as excited about the release of NINJA ASSASSIN as I was. I love ninjas. And assassins. So the two together? Forget about it.

SPOILERS SNEAKING UP ON YOU BELOW

NINJA ASSASSIN is the story of Rizo, a ninja exiled from his clan and seeking revenge. A Europol (I guess it's the budget version of Interpol) researcher named Mika thinks that ninjas are behind some of the recent political assassinations, but can't get anyone to believe her. Eventually, Rizo's former clan comes after Mika, and he must save her. The two team up to take down the clan.

The film, directed by James McTeigue, looks great. Ninjas come out of the shadows, there are several really cool shots, including a fight scene played out in shadows on a paper screen, and the action scenes are well-covered so you can actually tell what's going on.

What the story, from uber-writer J. Michael Straczynski and Matthew Sand is missing is good motivations for Rizo or Mika. Mika is a forensic researcher who thinks ninjas killed a former KBG agent, and she doggedly pursues it because... Well, we don't really know why. The script missed a great opportunity to personally stake her in the action. Perhaps ninjas killed her former partner or her boss. And nobody believes her ninja theory -- she's as seemingly crazy as Gary Busey in POINT BREAK. Similarly, the film stumbles over Rizo's motivation. He's in love with a female ninja trainee who tries to escape the clan; the clan kills her. Later on, after Rizo's first mission, he's asked to kill another female escapee. So he turns on his clan and flees. That's a very mediocre motivation.

What would have been better is if the film played up the rivalry between Rizo and his "brother" ninja. They both love the female ninja trainee. But she chooses Rizo. Rizo and his brother then fight over her; she's afraid Rizo will be killed. Brother is much stronger and faster; perhaps he's older. So she flees in order to spare him. Unfortunately, she's caught. And brother kills her out of spite. This would work better than the current version in the film, where brother kills her just to annoy Rizo. In the better version, after his love's death, Rizo flees the clan. Years later, when he and brother meet up again, they have real history between them -- they both loved the same woman.

There are also a number of smaller issues with the script, mostly logical ones. Ninjas are obviously highly secretive, managing to stay undercover for thousands of years. Yet there's a scene in the film where dozens of ninjas run down a major Berlin street, chasing both Mika's car and Rizo. In fact, Mika's car is studded with hundreds of throwing stars. That's not exactly low-profile.

The film also features a climactic showdown between Rizo and his adopted father, the ninja clan leader. Clan leader has a deadly ability -- he can basically teleport around, appearing and disappearing at will. An ability he uses to kick Rizo's ass. Until Rizo suddenly -- and out of nowhere -- learns how to do this and uses the trick to kill clan leader. An unearned and unsatisfying turn of events. Instead, the film should have gone back to something it set up earlier; clan leader forces Rizo to be without one of his senses for an entire year, starting with his sense of sight. Rizo learns to fight by sensing his opponent rather than seeing him. In the climactic battle, with his clan leader appearing and disappearing on him, Rizo should use that memory/lesson to wait and listen for the leader reapparing. If Rizo killed clan leader in that fashion, it would have been a great callback and a cool moment that paid off his years of training.

THE (Long and Winding) ROAD

I have a love-hate relationship with Cormac McCarthy. Well, films made from his books anyway. Seems like they'd be movies I love -- after all, most them are super-violent and depressing. ALL THE PRETTY HORSES was long and boring. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN was 2/3 of an awesome movie, and then a super-frustrating ending that went literally nowhere (I suspect this worked fantastically well in the novel, however; but in a movie, you really don't want to see your protagonist die off-screen to random characters, or wait all film for a showdown between the sheriff and the bad guy that never comes).

APOCALYPTIC SPOILERS BELOW

Ably directed by John Hillcoat (who also helmed the equally fine THE PROPOSITION), THE ROAD was adapted by Joe Penhall. It tells the story of an unnamed father and son eking out an existence after an unspecified apocalypse. All animals are gone, food is scarce, and most of the remaining people have turned to cannibalism. Pretty much all the good folks have committed suicide in these bleak circumstances. But the father takes his son down the road towards the coast, seeking out signs of hope. Like all road movies, THE ROAD is episodic and picaresque. And it has its moments of utter despair, like when dad -- who's saved his last two bullets -- teaches his son the proper way to stick a gun in your mouth and fire it. But these are lessened by small moments of joy -- aiding an elderly traveler, drinking the last can of Coke in the world, coming across a bunker filled with food, sharing a bath and a haircut -- that manage to move the film out of the realm of slit-your-wrists (unlike some other great films that are too depressing to ever watch again, including HAPPINESS and REQUIEM FOR A DREAM).

There are some nice moments of sheer terror, like when the father and son stumble across a home with a basement full of still-living cannibal fodder and they have to flee as the cannibals come back; or a chase across a field of collapsing trees.

Ultimately, the elegant script manages to evoke a nice message -- that we have to accept not everything is under our control; which comes across just as the father is dying.

For a film in which there's so much blackness, you leave the theater uplifted. A nice touch.

AN EDUCATION - It Sure Is

AN EDUCATION, adapted by Nick Hornby from Lynn Barber's memoir, proves that your film doesn't have to have high stakes or amped-up drama to be engaging. It tells the story of Jenny (Carey Mulligan), a bright young British student with dreams of going to Oxford. She finds her plans in turmoil when she meets rich, charming, David.

AN EDUCATION OF SPOILERS

Eventually, with the blessing of her won-over parents, Jenny turns her back on school and decides to marry David. Which is a bit of a problem, being that he's already married. Having screwed up her shot at university by alienating a favorite teacher and mouthing off to the headmistress, Jenny is at a total loss for what to do.

The script does a fantastic job of painting these characters, from bright, eager, bored Jenny to her stick-in-the-mud father who wants the best for her to sleazy/charming David to her teacher (Olivia Williams) to the headmistress. They feel like real people with real problems, which helps sell the romance and allow us to be taken in by David just like Jenny.

Conflicts are natural and arise from the characters and the situations, rather than anything tacked on from the outside.

The film does a great job of showing Jenny's "education" in living life -- going to the symphony, fancy restaurants, art auctions, and Paris. We're seduced along with her and we feel like with David, she has a shot at an interesting life, instead of winding up a drone in academia or the civil service.

If the film has one small flaw, it's that at the end, Jenny tries to get back into school after dropping out, only to find her plans screwed up because she insulted the headmistress. So Jenny enlists the help of her favorite teacher to get her back on track. It's not clear what the teacher did (did she write Oxford? Convince the headmistress to let Jenny back in? Get Jenny whatever the British equivalent of a GED?) to restore Jenny's shot at Oxford and it seems very clear that the headmistress (a great Emma Thompson) isn't going to allow her back in after insulting her.

However, because there's tremendous goodwill for Jenny and her plight, and it is the last few minutes of the film, I was willing to overlook it.

So if you can, go check out AN EDUCATION, as it's a great little film.

THE STEPFATHER - Another Useless Remake

I saw the original STEPFATHER when it came out, so perhaps my memory's a bit hazy; but I recall it being good. And I was looking forward to the remake, despite my general reservations towards remakes. A crazy new dad who kills when his family disappoints him? Sign me up.

The new version feels more like a Lifetime movie than something that should get a theatrical release. The characters are all completely generic, from trying-marriage-a-second-time Sela Ward to her eldest son who keeps getting in trouble.

The biggest flaw is a fatal one for thrillers -- despite David Harris (Dylan Walsh) killing a slew of folks to protect the secret that he's a serial killer who's murdered before -- the film's just not scary for most of its length. There's nothing wrong with having a deliberately paced film with a slow build. That is, as long as it's scary once it gets going. But STEPFATHER doesn't. Walsh kills a neighbor, Sela Ward's ex-husband, and Sela's lesbian sister, none of which are particularly terrifying. This is due to a combination of factors -- one, we don't care about the characters, so we're not concerned when they die; and two, the scenes aren't particularly gripping in their shot selection or editing.

The film also misses a big opportunity by having the main character Michael (Penn Badgeley) start off sympathetic to David. Instead, the filmmakers should've opted for troubled Michael coming home from boarding school and immediately being suspicious of his new dad-to-be.

Similarly, Michael's girlfriend Kelly (Amber Heard) is the obsessively minded voice of reason, pooh-poohing all of Michael's suspicions. This is fine for a bit, because initially, Michael does seem a little crazy in what he's saying. But eventually, it gets ridiculous when Kelly comes up with every excuse in the book to explain away David's increasinly erratic behavior.

If you're going to remake a film, it has to do something different than the original or there's no reason to produce it in the first place. Here, the only difference is that the new version isn't very good.

GENTLEMEN BRONCOS - This Horse Needs To Be Put Down

The team behind NAPOLEON DYNAMITE fucked me again. I should've known better, but the trailers for GENTLEMEN BRONCOS showed two things that gave me hope it'd be a fun movie -- Sam Rockwell in dual, ridiculous roles, and a baked-in conflict that could drive the story (in a young writer finding his novella stolen and publicized to much acclaim by his author idol).

Unfortunately, GB is pretty much the same film as NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, down to the lack of plot, goofball characters (including a schmuck with a weird haircut, an annoying girl, and an odd Mexican guy), and impoverished/70s setting.

It tells the story of Benjamin Purvis, a teen who lives with his mom in a geodesic dome house (for some uknown reason), and who aspires to be a professional author. He attends a literary festival/workshop, where he meets his favorite author, Dr. Ronald Chevalier. The festival has a contest where a winning book will be published. Chevalier steals Benjamin's work and publishes it as his own. Meanwhile, Benjamin's friends Tabatha and Lonnie make an indie film version of his work. Benjamin eventually finds out Chevalier stole his work. A snake shits on Mike White, there's some unrelated gunplay, and that's about it.

The only funny parts of the film are the various versions of Benjamin's book in which Sam Rockwell variously plays Benjamin's version of the hero and Chevalier's much, much gayer version.

The premise -- that of a young author finding his work stolen and published by his idol -- is an interesting one, and it's full of conflict and potential drama. Sadly, Jared & Jerusha Hess opt for oddness instead of milking this conflict. We get two scenes with Benjamin and Chevalier post-plagiarism. In the first, Benjamin punches him in the face. In the second, the situation is resolved by Benjamin's mom -- she registered all his work since he was seven. The main character doesn't even solve his own problem -- it's solved for him.

The film also fails to set up Benjamin as a person with a goal. Why does he want to be published? What does that represent? This lack means that once Benjamin's story is stolen, we're not sure why that matters so much to him (other than the obvious reasons). With one simple bit of dialogue, Benjamin could've explained to his friends what being a published author represents; then, when we saw his book getting that acclaim for someone else, it would resonate more.

There are some more oddball characters, including a truly grotesque version of Pedro from ND, as well as Mike White's odd Big Brother-type character, who serves no real purpose in the film.

The biggest moment of dramatic tension comes during a bit of gunplay that's tacked on for no apparent reason and doesn't even come from the main story. Benjamin's mom (played by a sadly wasted Jennifer Coolidge) goes to a rich man's house to show her horrible line of dresses; he hits on her and Benjaim sticks up for her; then the guy starts shooting for some reason.

The film also fails because we see Benjamin's story and it's horrible. So to see it stolen and published is weird -- it's just as crappy (if not more so) than when he wrote it. And I'm not sure what Hess & Hess were going for in having it adapted into a bad video as well; having his story stolen/ruined once would be sufficient if they bothered to play it out properly.

For some reason that still escapes me, NAPOLEON DYNAMITE made a ton of money, really resonating with pre-teens and teens despite its annoying characters and complete lack of a cohesive narrative. GENTLEMEN BRONCOS follows the same formula with even less returns than ND.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE - The Land of Emotionally Damaged Monsters

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE was my favorite book as a child. I like Dave Eggers' writing a lot, and Spike Jonze previous two films are highly imaginative and well-executed. So like most people, I was greatly looking forward to the film version.

LET THE WILD SPOILERS START

I cut Jonze and Eggers some slack in adapting a kids' picture book with minimal plot into a feature-length film. But they ripped that slack right out of my hands and then raped my childhood. Maurice Sendak's book is the sweet story of a wild kid who runs away in his imagination to a world where he can do anything he wants. But he comes to realize that he needs limits and that those limits are part of his parents' love. It's a simple story, very well told.

The movie version is another beast entirely. It does get some things right. Among them:

It looks beautiful

The callbacks/linkages/echoes between the stuff that happens in the real world -- Max's boat on bedsheet waves/the real boat and waves; the snowball fight and the dirt-clod fight; the similarities between Max's problems and Carol's

Little details, like Max's wolf suit, or the fact that the beasts pull the scepter and crown out of a pile of bones.

Max's performance -- the kid is great

But the film makes several unforgiveable missteps.

First, it's scary as hell, particularly for a kids' film. While there's nothing wrong with having SOME scary bits in a kids' movie (the tunnel/boat scene in the original WILLY WONKA come to mind), this film has way too much of that, including a highly disturbing bit in which Carol rips Douglas' arm off and dust comes out.

Second, there's almost no plot to speak of, and there's certainly nothing driving the story. Max gets to the land of the Wild Things, becomes king, then builds a fort, has a dirt-clod fight, and leaves. There's very little conflict, no goals, no tasks. No nothing.

Adapting a slight, thirty-page book is tough. But it would've been easy to do something like (this is off the top of my head, so it's rough)

Max lands on the island of Wild Things, the W.T.s take his boat, he's about to get eaten

He lies in order to become king and forestall death

He tries to get to his boat to leave, the WTs provide obstacles

He builds a fort, becomes leader

Has a good time doing whatever he wants

The WTs always do what they want, this gets tiresome

And he misses home

He wants to leave

They won't let him, particularly Carol, who becomes obsessed with him

With the help of KW and/or someone else, Max tries to escape

Carol and the rest of the WTs try to eat him

He escapes

Makes it home, has tender moment with his mom

That way, Max is always trying to do something, instead of just aimlessly walking around or building forts or screwing around.

Finally, perhaps the biggest problem is that Jonze and Eggers have created new material that isn't in the book and not even hinted at by it. Namely that the WTs are all moody, emotionally troubled monsters with problems ranging from rage issues to severe depression. I don't think that's what anyone envisioned when reading the books.

The monsters feel more like mopey suburban teens in a psychiatric facility than wild beasts running free in a strange land. They fight, anger each other, and tear down everything they've done before in a pathological, cyclical, depressing, co-dependent relationship. Not only is this not fun and not child-friendly, it's just plain weird.

Other weird touches include the addition of two freaky looking owls that squawk (everyone understands them except for Max and Carol) and a giant dog wandering the desert.

Someone said of the film that it's the first art film for kids. It feels a lot like that -- it's material intended for kids that instead forgoes plot and accessibility for an odd, forlorn tone and mood.

Kids movies don't have to be just for kids. Pixar is a particularly good example. Their "kids' movies" have masterfully tackled everything from parents learning to let their children go (FINDING NEMO) to learning to overcome loss/the greatest adventure is in your own backyard (UP) to how exceptional individuals learn to fit in in society (THE INCREDIBLES). They've all made a fortune and are all great films, largely because they take kids' material and elevate it with great characters and fantastic scripts.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE aims high, but collapses instead in its own weird hipster universe of mopey monsters. As the tagline says "There's one inside of all of us." Unfortunately, most people are going because they're hoping "one" refers to the fun wild things of the book and not the ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST beasts we get in this film.

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN - Perfectly Serviceable Thriller

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN is the tale of an ordinary man who was wronged taking his vengeance on the system that wronged him. Written by Kurt Wimmer and directed by F. Gary Gray, it stars Gerard Butler (a pretty nice guy and a great actor) and Jamie Foxx.

LAW ABIDING SPOILERS BELOW

Butler plays Clyde, a man who suffers a break-in at his home, getting stabbed, and being forced to watch his wife murdered in front of him and his daughter hauled off into the next room to be killed. When he awakes, she is indeed dead. Jamie Foxx is the ambitious prosecutor who, not willing to risk his high conviction rate, accepts a plea bargain that will execute the wrong man (the accomplice) and let the murderer serve a short term. Ten years later, Clyde sabotages the accomplice's execution equipment, killing him in excruciating fashion. He then goes on to abduct and brutally dismember the killer, before leading police to his house to arrest him.

From then on, he plays a cat and mouse game with Foxx and the police, blaming them for not bringing his killers to justice. He also starts killing off the sleazy defense attorney, the judge handling the case, and the prosecutors. Foxx eventually learns that Butler is a former CIA wetwork specialist, who figures out imaginative ways to kill people. And that everything he's doing is part of an elaborate scheme to bring down the justice system from the inside.

Here's what the film does right. It sets up Butler's character well, and spaces out the revelations of who he really is and what he's capable of. It has some imaginative and tense killing scenes, and some good heads-up dialogue driven scenes between Foxx and Butler. Much of the action is suspenseful as well. The reveal that Butler has been acting alone, having tunneled into the prison before being sent there is a genius touch.

Weaknesses include the fact that Foxx's character is a bit of a dick. Setting him up as someone who blows off justice for his conversion rate makes him not very likeable. And he never really comes around to realizing the error of his ways. The closest the film gets is when he confronts Butler and tells him he'd do it differently next time; but this is a bit muddled in the heated context of the scene.

The next weakness is that the legal aspects of the film seem a little far-fetched. Butler witnesses the killer stab his wife to death; even if he didn't see his daughter die, his testimony would be enough to convict the killer. This could've been avoided by a little better scene-turning and direction, such as Butler passing out before his wife actually died. The film also could've shown how Jamie Foxx's decision was more about not letting a murderer go free by including a short scene between Foxx and the scummy defense lawyer where the defense lawyer picks apart the prosecution's case and shows how his client probably will go free.

Butler's revenge plan seems a little off as well. First, the accomplice (who really seemed shocked with the murders) gets brutally killed, and this seems a bit excessive. He was going to die anyway, so why torture the guy for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Then, Foxx goes after some people who had nothing to do with the case at all. Like the judge. She didn't let the killer get away with murder -- she just presided over the case. And having Butler get pissed at her for almost granting him bail due to legal precedent is ridiculous -- that's her job. He's a smart guy and should realize that a first-time offender with no priors who isn't a flight risk SHOULD be granted bail. It also felt weird that Butler's ultimate goal is to destroy pretty much all of City Hall, since the mayor and other officials have literally nothing to do with his wife and daughter's case.

Similarly, Foxx doesn't have much of an arc, unless it's learning not to make deals with murderers. That's not a particularly large or important thing for a prosecutor to learn, so it can't really anchor the movie in terms of character growth. There's a smaller bit about Foxx learning to spend more time with his family, but again, that's not really a major thing and seems inevitable.

The ending, in which Foxx tricks Butler by bringing his napalm bomb into his cell and locking him in there, leaving Butler to call the bomb and blow himself up -- is patently ridiculous. While it makes for a snappy movie ending, in reality, a prosecutor just firebombed a prison and killed someone. Which would make him the most irresponsible prosecutor of all time.

Finally, since the film is largely about a man trying to get revenge for his wife and daughter, and since it spends a fair amount of time setting up Foxx's wife and daughter, it feels like a major oversight that Butler's plan didn't involve putting them in danger or at least making it seem like they were in danger. If he's trying to teach Foxx a lesson about protecting your family or the lengths you'll go to in order to do so, this is a major omission.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY - The Scariest Movie Ever?

In a word, no. That's hype, in the same way that BLAIR WITCH wasn't the scariest movie ever. But PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is very scary and very effective.

NORMAL SPOILERS BELOW

PA is very simple -- a young couple have been experiencing strange things in their condo. The woman's had them happen to her since she was a child. The fiancee doesn't really believe in ghosts and whatnot, but he buys a fancy video camera to document the happenings. Like BLAIR WITCH and CLOVERFIELD, 100% of the film is shot POV-style from the camera, often hand-held, sometimes locked-down in their bedroom.

PA really excels in scaring folks because almost all of the scares come from the unknown. Most of them are simple things -- unexplained noises, lights turning on by themselves, a door opening and shutting by itself. PA's greatest strength is it never shows its monster, leaving it up to the audiences imagination with mostly noise and the occasional powdery footprint to give it some dimension.

PA also sets up the rules of the haunting cleanly and elegantly -- it's a demon, not a ghost; there's a guy who can help, but apparently he's on vacation the whole time; and the demon follows the girl, so leaving the condo won't help.

You get enough of the couple's relationship to buy that they're a real couple. The fights that they have over their varying approaches -- she wants to leave the demon alone because she's scared shitless; he thinks it's cool to document it and wants to taunt the creature to get better footage -- is also entirely believable.

And setting up a recurring situation with the camera locked-off in the bedroom sets an appropriate air of dread each time we return to that setup. Even if it's just odd noises, we know we're in for something scary. And when the film breaks the pattern by having a haunting in the daytime, it works very well.

The movie's biggest flaw is that the fiancee comes across as a moron in not wanting to get some outside help for their obvious haunting. He has documented proof of the supernatural going after him and his woman and yet rather than call in the demon expert (or the police or scientists), we're supposed to believe that he'll just try to solve the problem himself.

And the CGI shot at the end is a bit unnecessary. Practically the entire film works through suggestion and subtlelty; and the last shot undoes a lot of that for a cheap shock and some gore.

But it's still pretty damn scary.

WHIP IT - Whip It Mediocre

WHIP IT is another odd beast of a film. Drew Barrymore's directorial debut is an underdog sports movie and the story of an outsider learning to fit in. A little bit of both and not enough of either.

SPOILERS SKATING AROUND BELOW

Bliss (Ellen Page) lives in a dinky town in Texas, where her mom, a former pageant queen, pushes her to enter beauty pageants. After stumbling across roller derby, Bliss lies about being old enough to play. She finds a new family in her team, the Hurl Scouts, and discovers she's really good at -- and enjoys -- roller derby. Eventually, her mother and father discover her lies and a rival discovers she's not old enough to be playing.

And you can figure out what happens from there.

There are two major problems with the film.

First, roller derby isn't that great of a sport. There's a reason why it hasn't really experienced much of a renaissance outside of hipster cities like Austin and LA. It's fun to go to and watch girls beat each other up while you drink some Pabst Blue Ribbon. But in the way of athletics, it's pretty much the same thing each time -- girls skating around a track trying to pass each other to score points. Even having coach Razor (a hilarious Andrew Wilson) obsess over doing "plays" doesn't really liven up the sports action; it's still just women skating in a circle. This removes almost any stakes from the sports scenes.

Second, the film's big dramatic highs aren't particularly high. Take for example Bliss's age being discovered by a rival. Okay, she's seventeen, and not old enough to play. Movie over. Except not, because she can play with one of her parents' permission. Not much of an obstacle. What about Bliss' friend Pash getting arrested for underage drinking? Will that screw up her chances of attending an Ivy League college? Apparently not. How about Bliss losing her virginity to a young musician who turns out to be a jerk? Well, she'll just burn his jacket and then slap him in the face.

Since nothing's particularly at stake, there's nothing rooting the viewer's interest in the film. What happens if Bliss can't play roller derby? We don't know. The film could have set a lot of this up better by making a bigger deal of the folks stuck in the town, particularly Bliss' mom. it would have been nice to see another girl, a little older than Bliss, who tried to go away and make something of her life. But she didn't and is now stuck there in town in a crummy job (like the one Bliss has at the BBQ joint). Some contrast would have highlighted the drudgery of small-town life and given Bliss something to aim for and some consequences if she failed.

It's a shame, because the movie is certainly fun, and has a great cast, from Page to Alia Shawkat, Kristen Wiig, Barrymore, Juliette Lewis, Daniel Stern, and Marcia Gay Harden. But not Jimmy Fallon, who's as mugging and annoying as he was on SNL.

ZOMBIELAND - Zombie-Killing Fun

I had almost no expectations entering ZOMBIELAND. Which was a good thing.

SPOILERS STUMBLING FROM THEIR GRAVES BELOW

ZOMBIELAND is a fun movie. It doesn't take itself too seriously, introduces a funny, scary world overrun with the undead, and gives us four characters we can care about populating it. It pulls smart moves almost every step of the way, from pairing up a guy afraid of everything with one who knows no fear to having them meet up with two wily women to giving us truly imaginative zombie kills (including dropping a piano on a zombie and lopping off zombie parts while riding a roller coaster). It even features an awesome and spot-on cameo by Bill Murray.

Most importantly, ZOMBIELAND shows that you can take a truly played-out genre like zombie movies and do something new with it. It also shows that imagination and solid characters can elevate even the most hardened genre material to something much more.

I don't really have any complaints or suggestions for the ZOMBIELAND script -- it does what it sets out to do, with a lot of humor and some heart.

THE INVENTION OF LYING - I Wish It Was the Invention of Humor

As is often the case with these blog posts, let me first state that I think Ricky Gervais is a brilliant writer and performer. I enjoyed the hell out of the original OFFICE and EXTRAS, and I even liked him in GHOST TOWN. So when I saw that he co-wrote and -directed a film, it was one of the tops on my list to see.

INVENTION OF SPOILERS BELOW

TIOL isn't a very good film. It has an interesting premise -- in a world where everyone tells the truth, one man is able to lie, with intersting consequences.

The main problem is the same one that plagues GHOST TOWN and BRUCE ALMIGHTY -- a lack of ambition. You have this great big idea -- one man in the entire world is able to lie and it's going to change the world in major ways. And the execution of that idea is about as small and unimaginative as you can get. Although Gervais does inadvertently create religion, which winds up having good and bad effects, mostly he uses his lying for small things -- getting his job back and attempting to woo a girl. The way in which he does both those things is also small and uninspired. For example, his jerky colleague Brad (Rob Lowe) tells him they'll never be a successful film about the Black Plague. After Mark invents a fictitious historical manuscript about an alien war during the Black Plague, he names the film "The Black Plague."

You could have had Mark tell Brad literally anything -- the President called and needs him to kill himself for national security; he has to move to a desert island for the rest of his life in order to save humanity; or he should strip off all his clothes and run screaming down the street. Because people believe anything Mark says, he has all the leeway in the world.

The film also doesn't bother to have Mark do anything that could make him unlikeable. The obvious character arc in this movie is that Mark goes from a complete loser to a guy who has everything going on, and in the process becomes a bit of an asshole. Then he learns that he should tell the truth instead of lying. This is the same basic arc that powers films as diverse as LIAR LIAR, GROUNDHOG DAY, and ALADDIN. But Gervais and co-writer Matthew Robinson are so afraid to make Mark unsympathetic that they bail on having him make any bad choices. He lies to a hot woman and tells her he needs to sleep with her or the world will end; she goes along with it, but he bails before actually bedding her. He steals money from a bank and a casino, then moments later steals more money to give to a homeless man. He wants to get with Anna (Jennifer Garner), but avoids lying to her when it counts (about his genetics changing with fame and fortune).

In order for Mark to learn any sort of lesson, he has to do the wrong things first -- lie and enjoy the consequences, until later on in the film when he realizes lying isn't making him happy.

The film also doesn't give Mark a clear goal. I assume it's wooing Jennifer Garner. But all we get in the way of servicing that goal is some bald exposition ("I had a date with a girl I've had a crush on for years") and Mark chasing after her all movie long. The film/script should have shown this instead of telling us. There's also nothing particularly special about Garner's Anna other than she's hot.

The film also seems to confuse brutal honesty with surface appearances. Garner can't be with Mark because his genetics would make their kids short and fat, and she thinks he's a loser because he's short and fat as well. In fact, so does everyone else in the world. Well, being short and fat certainly doesn't help anyone out in life; but it doesn't necessarily make you a loser, either. Even once Mark is rich and famous as the man "the man in the sky" (i.e. God) talks to, people still think he's a loser. This flies in the face of everything anyone knows about rich/famous/and or powerful people. I'm sure even in a world of no lies, there are plenty of rich, fat old men with trophy wives.

Finally, the film misses some opportunities. Particularly, it sets up how advertising is different in a world of brutal honesty, which creates the expectation that Mark will also inadvertently invent advertising (as he does with religion). At the very least, it could have made for a good running gag. The film similarly doesn't explain why Mark is the only person who can lie in the whole world. Since the movie makes so much of genetics, it would have been a simple explanation to have something on the order of -- Mark's short and fat, which are recessive genes; similarly the ability to lie is a recessive trait. This would not only explain Mark's lying, but how he passes it along to his son.

Off the top of my head, a better version of the film would be:

Mark wants to be rich and famous

Mark starts to lie

His lies are big ones, including that God talks to him; but he gets everything that he ever wanted and becomes President of the world with the wife and respect he wanted

He inadvertently invents everything concerned with lying -- advertising, psychics, religion, etc.

Other people start to lie as well

The world starts to go downhill

Mark feels bad -- he has everything he wanted, but it's not what he really wanted

Mark's put in some climax-driving situation that pits lying against telling the truth; preferably involving the love of his life; he opts for the truth

Mark has to give up a lot of his power and prestige, but gains the woman he loves; people learn lying is a bad thing

THE INFORMANT -- An Odd Bird of a Movie

THE INFORMANT is an odd mishmash of a movie. It tells the true story of Mark Whitacre, an employee of Archer Daniels Midland who turns into a whistleblower about price fixing in the corn business.

SPOILERS POPPING BELOW

Only that's not the whole story. Because Mark is a pathological liar. And a forger and embezzler, who stole millions from ADM while he was working to expose their wrongdoing. Matt Damon is great in the film, and there's a fine supporting cast including Scott Bakula and Joel McHale(!). The whole thing is ably directed by Steven Soderbergh. And the script by Scott Burns mostly achieves what it sets out to.

There are some intersting writerly choices, including having an almost omnipresent VO narration by Whitacre, chronicling a series of minutiae. This helps with the comic tone of the film, and sets the expectation that something's not entirely kosher with this guy. Unfortunately, because you're identifying with Whitacre, once it's clear that he's done something very wrong, there's no one to really carry the story forward. You're left coasting along to see how the whole thing pans out.

The FBI agents are really minor characters, so they don't carry the film. And you don't quite understand why Mark did the things he did since his explanations and reasoning constantly shift as he's caught in more and more lies.

The film also isn't quite clear about what exactly the whole price fixing situation is and why that's a crime per se. Why should it matter that we pay $.05 more for a box of cornflakes in six months? On a rational level, I understand that that's anti-competitive and could add up to millions in profit to ADM and its competitors. But does that make much of a difference in even the poorest person's life?

The film was co-produced by Participant, a label known for their socially conscious films. I guess that's to bring to light price fixing by big agribusiness concerns. Except that that's not really what this movie's about. The price fixing is really just an adjunct to the story of a man with some severe mental problems who ruins his life exposing some wrongdoing that in turn exposes all of the stuff he's done wrong.

In the end, although the film's enjoyable, it's really more of an exercise by Soderbergh in exploring a different kind of protagonist and a different kind of film. And in that way, it's more like BUBBLE or KAFKA or THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE than OCEAN'S 11 or OUT OF SIGHT.

CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS - Sony Delivers a Great Animated Film

Apparently I'm one of about two people never to have read CLOUDY in book form. So I didn't know what to expect from the film.

SPOILERS RAINING DOWN LIKE GIANT PANCAKES

CLOUDY tells the story of Flint Lockwood, a wannabe inventor who can't ever seem to invent anything useful. While trying to invent a device that turns water into food, he accidentally launches it into the sky. Where it works. This attracts the attention from a cute wannabe weather intern-turned reporter, as well as the greedy mayor of the dying town. Flint becomes a hero and a bit stuck up, and the mayor repositions the town as an international tourist destination for its raining food. What Flint really wants is the respect of his misunderstanding fisherman father. Eventually, the machine mutates food to the point of self-awareness, and the world is about to be drowned under a foodstorm of epic proportions. Flint and a motley crew have to launch a sky-assault on the machine.

So -- how's the film stack up? Pretty darn good. The script, by directors Lord & Miller, is tight. There's enough character stuff to motivate all the action. There are fantastic gags with Flint's bum inventions, including ratbirds, a crazed TV with legs, and spray-on shoes, and the team behind the movie milks every last bit of humor and inventiveness out of raining food (from snowball fights with ice cream to a spaghetti twister).

There are a few weak points that stem from poor script choices. The TV producer/cameraman turns out to be a conveniently handy doctor/pilot/whatever. While this is played for jokes, it comes out of nowhere and takes away from the story a bit. And there are two instances in which Flint should fall to his death but doesn't, simply because the writers can't seem to come up with a good reason for him not to. In the first, he falls during the spaghetti twister, coming to rest on a series of parachutes/slides/whatever -- his labcoat opens like a parachute, then he catches an umbrella Mary Poppins-style, then he falls on some stuff, before finally climbing down a conveniently placed ladder to safety. Lord & Miller try to play it off for laughs, but it's really an instance of the script needing to show him doing something clever to save himself rather than lucking into it. Unfortunately, they repeat the same trick during the finale, in which Flynn falls out of the exploding food machine to his imminent death. Only for some reason, he's saved by a flock of ratbirds -- birds that up until now were nothing but a terrible nuisance.

These are relatively small flaws and don't detract from the otherwise tight plotting and solid character work. And the film looks great, with some truly impressive CG animation.

PONYO - Miyazaki's "Masterpiece"

Growing up dorky in the 1970s and 1980s, I was of course a huge fan of anime. Hayao Miyazaki is perhaps the best known anime director to come out of Japan, being called the Japanese Walt Disney. He's put forth some dazzling, brilliant films, usually about man's relationship with nature. PRINCESS MONONOKE, SPIRITED AWAY, AND HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE are all great films. PONYO is Miyazaki's latest.

POORLY DUBBED SPOILERS BELOW

PONYO tells the story of Sosuke, a little Japanese boy who lives with his mom and dad on an island. Dad's a fisherman, and often gone, so Sosuke and his mom are often on their own. Sosuke finds a young fish, Ponyo, while at the shore one day. But this is no ordinary fish -- she's the daughter of a sea wizard who maintains the balance of the oceans. Ponyo tastes Sosuke's blood after he cuts himself, and she yearns to be a real human. Her dad goes after her, and the oceans storm up. And then some other stuff happens.

The main problem with PONYO is that there's no story engine -- nothing driving the action. While it's nice to get beautifully animated images of fish-shaped waves and thousands of near-identical Ponyos swimming about or the gigantic Goddess of Mercy, without something moving the plot forward, it's all just empty spectacle. Miyazaki attempts to give the story some pep by having a "test of love" between Ponyo and Sosuke that the fate of the world depends on, but it literally boils down to the wizard asking Sosuke if he'll love Ponyo forever. To which (of course) he answer yes.

The mythology behind Ponyo, the sea wizard, and the goddess of mercy is also really muddled. Perhaps these are common myths that are know to every Japanese person. But I had no clue what was going on half the time.

In SPIRITED AWAY, the protagonist's parents are changed into pigs by an evil witch, and she has to go work for the witch in an enchanted bath house to figure out how to turn them back. In PRINCESS MONONOKE, a man has to figure out how to un-curse a princess turned into a demon. These are big events that have stakes and outcomes and clear paths from start to finish. Ponyo lacks that. It has cute characters and great animation, but that's about it.

WHITEOUT - An Apt Name for a Mistake of a Film

WHITEOUT is a thriller based on the Greg Rucka graphic novel. It tells the tale of a Federal marshal investigating the first murder in Antarctica. Good stuff. Aside from perhaps the vaguest and most misconceived ad campaign in the history of film (honestly, you have no idea what the movie is about, what genre it's in, or the fact that it's based on a graphic novel, just that it stars Kate Beckinsale and snow), WHITEOUT also has a pretty mediocre story and script.

BLIZZARD FULL OF SPOILERS BELOW

One of the film's biggest weaknesses is its arc and theme, which are both about trust. Carrie Stetko (Beckinsale) winds up in the dead post of Antarctica after a mishap, when she killed her partner who betrayed her. Now she doesn't trust anyone and has retreated from the world. So you'd think the film -- and the action sequences -- would be about her learning how to trust again. And that the lesson she learns will be integral in helping her solve the case. Not so much. In fact, the person she trusts most turns out to be part of the whole scheme behind the murder (surprise, surprise). And she never really learns much of anything about trust at all. This is a tremendous opportunity wasted.

One way to have fixed this is to have Carrie turn on her new partner from the UN, Price. She thinks he's part of the scheme or otherwise untrustworthy. And at a critical moment, she wounds him (could be shooting him, could be with a knife or ice-axe), resulting in an injury that plagues him the rest of the film. She learns that he is to be trusted, only now, he can't really help her out because the injury she inflicted on him slows him down. This would help in some of the critical scenes like the chase during the whiteout. And this would be a direct consequence of her trust issues -- they literally endanger her life.

Another weakness is the general stupidity of the bad guys' plot. They throw one of their wounded members out of an airplane. So his mangled corpse is found in the middle of nowhere, prompting a murder investigation from both the US Marshal Service and the UN. And since there are relatively few people in Antarctica, it's pretty easy to trace the victim back to the group of geologists he was working with. Common sense would dictate that the best thing to do would be for the bad guys to either drop the body down an ice crevasse somewhere or leave it inside the plane under the ice. Either way, they could just report the guy missing and nobody would ever find him.

The script also fails to maximize some inherent dramatic situations. There are some potentially cool chases outside the various ice stations. These are unique because the participants are battling the elements as well as each other. And they have to stay clipped into guide ropes to avoid getting lost in the snow. The first one, where Stetko is chased by the unknown bad guy, is great. But the film later repeats the chase. Which in itself is old hat, but is also undone a bit by the fact that one bad guy (with an ice axe) is chasing two armed law enforcement agents. Obviously, this reduces the threat substantially.

Likewise, Carrie loses two fingers on her right hand to frostbite. This is played for emotion, and we see she has a hard time buttoning her sweater. But it's never played for conflict or as an obstacle. An obvious place for this would be in showing how the wound affects Stetko's coordination in her gun hand. When she gets in the field and faces a bad guy, she literally can't shoot straight and her life is in danger for it.

Finally, it's far too obvious who the bad guys are. In the beginning, the film shows us Stetko has a contentious relationship with one of the pilots. By the time the story rolls around to talking about how the murder victim must have been tossed out of a plane, it's obvious who the pilot will be. Side note -- it's also completely unnecessary that the pilot turns out to be Australian and faking an American accent the whole time. Why? Presumably when he signed on for a lengthy Antarctica mission berth, he didn't know that he'd stumble upon a five-decades long lost Russian cargo plane carrying diamonds. This is a bit of unnecessary silliness.

And the film's big "reveal," that Stetko's beloved Doc is part of the evil cabal, can be seen coming a mile away. The main reason this reveal is telegraphed is that every single person on the base evacuates except for Carrie, her pilot Delphi, who has been stabbed and left for dead by the Australian pilot (and thus is not a suspect), Price, whom we've seen get attacked by the Australian pilot (and thus is not a suspect), and Doc. So since the movie's not over and Carrie still can't find the cargo, odds are 100% it's gonna be Doc behind it.

The script doesn't even bother to have a confrontation between Carrie and Doc. Doc just apologizes sort of and then wanders out in the snow to die watching the Southern Lights. Which is rather anticlimactic. And then for some reason, Stetko emails her boss withdrawing her resignation and requesting transfer to a warmer clime. Why? She still doesn't trust people. She didn't figure out who the bad guys were. And her best friend turned out to betray her (like the incident that scarred her in the first place).

The whole movie left me cold. Pun intended.

9 - Dance Ten, Looks Three (well, more like Looks Nine, Script Three)Shanek

Shane Acker's 9 came out, the story of ragdolls negotiating a post-Apocalyptic land and trying to avoid machine creatures bent on their destruction. The previews were amazing, full of incredible visuals. Sadly, the movie was all style no substance. No large surprise, being that it was produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmembatov.

9 OUT OF 10 SPOILERS BELOW

There's almost nothing to 9's script. It tells the story of ragdoll 9, who awakens in a post-Apocalytpic world. He finds others like himself, led by the fearful 1. Through some mistakes, 9 causes the capture of multiple other ragdolls and the reawakening of a giant evil machine. Eventually, he leads the ragdolls to overcome the machine.

Again, the visuals on the movie are awesome. The world is sufficiently disastrous and the residual iconography and flashbacks give a cool, retro-fascist vibe. The ragdolls move like real people and the monsters, all hybrids of ragdoll/bones/machinery are truly creepy.

Here's why the story doesn't really work.

1) It's far too simple. There's no subtlety or complexity. It's just a series of -- hey, we need to go here and do this. There aren't really even any complications. Just obstacles that are overcome.

2) The world doesn't make sense when you think about it. Why does a scientist imbue bits of his soul into ragdolls? And bits of his soul into the evil computer? Why not make more machines to fight the machine? Why do we care if the ragdolls survive? Do the bits of his soul ensure the survival of humanity? I'm not sure. All I know is at the end, some glowy soul-rain came down after the ragdoll-souls were released from the machine. That means what exactly?

Similarly, how do the ragdolls work? They don't have blood or bones. Yet they seem afraid of falling from heights. Why? Presumably they'd just smack into the ground and get up and be okay. The only thing that kills them is having their souls sucked out by the machine. So the rest of the sequences don't have much jeopardy to them because their "lives" aren't at stake.

3) 9 seems like an idiot. The whole movie pretty much revolves around him trying to undo the awakening of the great machine creature. Which for some reason he does. AFTER WITNESSING A MONSTER TRYING TO PUSH A SYMBOL INTO A DEVICE. This is perhaps the dumbest move of all time. In fact, after he does it, two of the other ragdolls ask him variations of "What were you thinking?" I don't know. Because it's a really stupid move. So trying to undo it doesn't seem heroic so much as a necessity, being that it was a move born of illogic/stupidity.

4) A lot of the tasks undertaken are far too easy. 9 and crew are able to trash the machine creature by using an old artillery piece (which is odd, since the machines were able to exterminate all of humanity, and humanity was incredibly well-armed) and getting the souls out of the machine just requires finding the symbol and pressing some buttons on it like a game of Simon. If that was the case, how did humanity lose the war in the first place?

Someday, someone will make an adult animated film that matches top-notch visuals with an incredible story. Well, someone who's not Japanese will make it. They've been doing those kinds of films for years.

THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX - Germanic Terrorist Angst

After a lackluster weekend of films, I was looking forward to Uli Edel's THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX, about the rise and fall of the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 70s. I enjoy films based on true stories and films about terrorism, so this was sure to be a winner. Right?

MEIN SPOILERS BELOW(en)

THE BMC starts out promisingly enough, giving us the daily life of Ulrike Meinhof, a German upper-middle class reporter, interspersed with the chaos of political protests in Germany in the 1970s. When German police kill a harmless protester, it starts a chain of events that results in the creation of a German terrorist group. Eventually, Ulrike leaves her husband and takes up with the terrorists, training in the Middle East and robbing banks and blowing up buildings. Eventually she and the other leaders are arrested, and new generations of the group spring up, resorting to worse and worse acts in order to try to free the leaders.

All good stuff. However, the film has some major problems, almost all due to the script. One, Ulrike hangs herself in prison about halfway to two-thirds through the movie. She's the character we've been identifying with -- we saw her husband cheat on her, how she couldn't stand by the sidelines when chaos and revolution were going on around her, how she left her children for her cause. So when she dies, there's no one to really identify with. Particularly because all the major characters are in jail at that point as well. So we're watching a jail/courthouse drama intercut with new terrorists doing some truly heinous things.

Two, there are far too many characters. This plagues a lot of films based on true events (like PUBLIC ENEMIES). The filmmakers are so concerned with being historically accurate that they forget about being clear or entertaining. There are dozens of terrorists, some of whom die, some of whom wind up in prison; and it's hard to sort them all out. Combining or cutting characters would've helped, and could've let us focus in on the motivations for some of the characters (like Baader) or the two lawyers who quit practicing law and start robbing and killing.

Three, as a corollary to the above, it's sometimes unclear who people are or why they're doing things. The new generations of terrorists assassinate a banker. I'm not sure why they did that. They also kidnap and later kill a man. I don't know who he is or why they wanted to kill him.

Four, ideology. In the film, the RAF grew up to protest German complacency in the US/Vietnam war (using bases to store/move men and materiel) and in the US/Israel effort. Part of this was national guilt from doing nothing in WWII. However, hearing constant references from Germans to supporting the PLO and other Mideast terrorist groups doesn't sit well; Israel may have done some terrible things in the 1960s and 1970s, but they were also fighting for their survival. And Germans going off on Israel sounds a little Hitler-esque, whatever their actual intentions were.

Five, the film shifts focus, from a sort of fast-paced crime drama to a courthouse drama. And the courthouse and jail scenes are long and boring. We don't know the details of their cases, and their hunger strikes and false accusations of murder (in Ulrike's suicide, for example) aren't particularly interesting to watch. We know that the remaining RAF members have weapons smuggled to them, but almost an hour goes by between the time they get weapons and they commit suicide with them. Why did we have to watch all the stuff that came between?

Six, it's a little hard to identify with people who are committing terrorist acts in the first place. It's a little more palatable when it's people who have a stake in the action, such as Palestinians who have been abused or had family members killed. Watching middle class Germans decide to murder in cold blood, bomb offices, or ask for a Mideast plane hijacking to support their cause isn't something most people can empathize with.

Next, some of the characters' actions aren't adequately explained. A friend decides to drop out of the group in Jordan while they're training with other terrorists. He offers to raise Ulrike's children for her. Not only does she decide to give her children up to a Palestinian orphan camp instead of letting this perfectly nice guy take care of them in Germany, but she and her comrades then try to have him murdered by telling the Arabs he's an Israeli spy. Why? Why did they hate this man so much? A lot of individual operations aren't explained either. We don't know who the targets are or why they're being targeted. Which just ends up confusing.

Finally, the film engages in a sort of fake suspense. The newer members of RAF engage in more violent crimes because of Ulrike's "murder." But it's pretty evident she hung herself -- she was depressed, she was in prison for life, she was marginalized by the rest of her former comrades, she even has a voiceover right before she does it where she says something to the effect of "I can't take it anymore." So we know she didn't kill herself. Then, the film tries to use this again at the end, after the other members commit suicide. And it's played as if it's a huge surprise to the terrorist members; which makes them seem stupid.

A shorter movie that wasn't so ambitious could have worked better. Focusing on Ulrike Meinhof's journey from journalist to terrorist to prisoner to suicide. It would've given us a central character we could identify with and a clear beginning, middle, and end.

ALL ABOUT STEVE, All About Eh

I made a cardinal mistake this past weekend. I'd read the script for ALL ABOUT STEVE a few years ago. I wasn't too impressed. And yet, looking for a movie over the long holiday weekend, the girlfriend and I settled on ALL ABOUT STEVE. If I didn't like the script, odds were, it wouldn't turn into a great movie all of a sudden (although that has happened twice -- MR. AND MRS. SMITH and LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE).

ALL ABOUT SPOILERS BELOW

ABS tells the story of crossword constructor Mary Horowitz (Sandra Bullock), a 30-something weirdo who lives with her parents. When her parents set her up on a blind date with news cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper), she's instantly smitten and jumps him in his truck before they can even pull away from the curb. Steve realizes she's a bit odd, but not before politely telling her it's too bad she can't join him on the road. After she gets fired from her job for making an all-Steve crossword puzzle, she sets out to stalk her crush.

There are several obvious problems with the film/script. First, the movie plays out on one level throughout. Mary stalks Steve. She seems to like him solely because he's attractive. We know he doesn't like her -- he finds her annoying. So we're not rooting for the two of them to get together. We don't think Steve will ever come around to liking her, and he doesn't. He just warms up slightly from thinking she's a nutjob to thinking she's quirky. So the whole film's about Mary catching up to reality and learning that Steve's not the guy for her. Which everyone else seems to know from the start. Romantic comedies that work are about people we want to see get together overcoming difficult obstacles in order to wind up together. You have to root for the two of them as a couple. Here, we don't. We're not even supposed to.

There could have been some interesting ways to tweak the premise so the movie actually worked and held some mystery. You could've had Mary changing to attract Steve, and then realizing that she shouldn't have to change for love. But the movie just has her be her weird self throughout. Or, you could've done the movie from Steve's point-of-view, with him as the main character. He sleeps with a girl he thinks is great, and she turns out to be certifiable. She stalks him and puts his life and job in danger (one of the film's funny moments is when Steve mistakes a piece of a car for a machete and thinks Mary's trying to kill him). But the film doesn't really have Steve's job in danger, at least not from Mary. And we know Mary's not trying to kill him.

Second, there are no real obstacles to the film. Mary follows Steve around the country. She hits what could be an obstacle -- a hurricane, which trashes her car. But for some reason, even though the car's just flown a mile in the air, it's driveable. In fact, there are no obstacles at all until the very end of the movie, when Mary falls in a mine.

Third, Mary finds a group of weirdos whom she hangs out with and finds her place with. But they're such mutants, it's a little off-putting. One of them is DJ Qualls, usually cast when the filmmakers are going for a grotesque -- and he's made even weirder by the fact that he carves apples into faces for a living. Really? Mary may talk too much, but she's smart, and she's played by Sandra Bullock (even if she has awful clothes and a bad dye-job). Can't she find some non-freaks to feel at home amongst?

The film works in brief moments -- Mary falling in the well, the gag with the "machete," Thomas Haden Church screwing with Steve by continually telling Mary Steve's in love with her and wants her to follow him no matter what he might say to the contrary. But overall, there's nothing driving the story. Because it's a movie about a delusional woman coming to a very obvious realization -- that this isn't the man for her.

Oh, it's also not believable that a guy is going to blow off sex with an attractive woman just because she's talky. In order for a guy to really leave Sandra Bullock on the side of the road instead of schtupping her, she's have to have a penis or something. And still...

GAMER - Game Over for Originality, Logic

Having worked on 300 and seen the acting chops and personal magnetism of Gerry Butler first-hand, I'm definitely a fan. And I really enjoyed CRANK. From start to finish, it is what it is, a ridiculous, adrenaline-charged thrill ride that doesn't take itself or moviemaking seriously. So by the time your hero's rubbing up against an old woman to generate static electricity to keep his fake heart going or engaging in a fistfight as he falls out of a helicopter to his death, I was totally into it.

GAMER is the latest from writing/directing team Neveldine/Taylor. It stars Gerry Butler, Michael Hall, Kyra Sedgwick, and Alison Lohman. So it's not lacking for acting chops. While the idea's not the most original -- in the future, there's a real-life video game hybrid folks play by controlling death row inmates.; if you survive 30 battles, you're set free; the man who might achieve this is marked for death by the Bill Gates-like video game creator -- it's a good one that's worked before (THE RUNNING MAN, the newer version of DEATH RACE).

LEVEL UP FOR SPOILERS BELOW

Unfortunately, the movie pretty much starts and ends with its premise. The execution is sorely lacking. This is due to several factors.

1) There's no depth to any of the characters. Gerry Butler's a badass, the kid playing him is spoiled, Kyra Sedgwick's Oprah/reporter hybrid wants a story, Gerry's wife Amber Valetta is essentially a whore in a Sims-like game, there are some folks like Ludacris and Alison Lohman who want to stop Michael Hall because he's evil, and Michael Hall is evil. Everyone's a caricature. They don't even bother giving Gerry Butler's Kable an arc. You see in flashbacks that he's on death row for killing someone. The obvious thing to give his character some dimension is to have him be a guy who actually did bad and regrets it; he was a cop or an FBI agent who shot someone in custody due to a personal connection to the case. And it's the biggest mistake he ever made -- it landed him in jail, he's haunted by nightmares, it tore his family apart. And now, the only shot he has at getting out is by killing more people and butting up against that fear. That's some good personal conflict. The guy finds out he's good at killing people, and killing people could be his salvation, but it could also destroy his soul.

Instead, N/T opt for a cheesy and convenient backstory in which Gerry happened to be one of the original test subjects for the brain-controlling technology behind SLAYERS (the killing game) and SOCIETY (the sim game) and Michael Hall made him kill his friend as a test of the tech. Aside from being way too easy -- Hey, Kable's really a great guy and was set up all along! -- there's a major logical flaw here; namely, if Kable was part of an experiment that screwed with his brain and he killed someone while part of that experiment, wouldn't any credible lawyer be able to use that as an excuse or at least mitigating circumstances to get him off or get his sentence reduced from the death penalty?

2) The rules of the game itself aren't particularly clear. This leads to a host of confusion. A person can control a "slayer" through combat. If the slayer reaches a save point alive, he wins. And after 30 battles, you're supposedly set free (although no one's ever done it before). So if Kable's being controlled by Logan Lerman and the team's won 27 battles, why's Kable so great? If I pick up a video game controller and walk Master Chief through Halo 3 on Legendary difficulty, it's not a great accomplishment for my onscreen avatar. When I stop controlling him, he dies. The only attempt the film makes to answer this is a question a guard asks -- "Who aims? You or him?" (the answer, I'm the hands, he's the eyes). That doesn't really help.

Similarly, on the field of combat, there are obvious death row inmates, as well as a team of masked dudes who look suspiciously like the guards that later chase/fight Kable. Why would guards be fighting?

And Michael Hall's game includes basically NPC players who follow a series of scripted actions -- repeatedly crossing a street or purchasing goods -- in the middle of combat. This often leads to them dying horribly, since they don't have guns and don't have anybody controlling them. Now A) no one in their right mind would want to play the game as an NPC, even if they did only have to survive one game to be set free and B) let's assume for a moment that the world the movie sets up -- prison system going broke, this tech arrives, government settles on this as a solution to solve its penal system financial problem -- exists. Nobody would let live people get stuck in a game without a chance to fight and a high probability of dying.

Then there are little logic blips, like the fact that Michael Hall wants Kable dead so much he's setting a giant inmate with no controller out to kill him. But the inmate gets the drop on Kable and can't fire his gun because they're in a restricted area. Really? A Bill Gates type controls everything, including people (we later find out he's basically going to mind control all of society) but he can't override an automatic gun lock for two seconds?

Or why wouldn't Michael Hall just kill Kable if he really reprsented a threat to him in the first place? Or why is Kable a threat? The resistance (Humanz) goes after Kable because they somehow know that Kable was setup by Michael Hall. Which is weird, because they can't verify he's innocent until they hack into his brain and extract his memories. So Michael Hall wants Kable dead, but he doesn't just have a guard shoot him in the face in prison, and he fears him because he might escape and hook up with the resistance who will use previously unknown technology to see his memories? Um, okay.

Then you have Kable escaping the game once he gains control of his body. Michael Hall builds tech that can control your brain, and we've seen a prisoner try to escape jail earlier and get thrown a hundred feet in the air by some invisible force, and yet neither an invisible barrier nor some sort of shutdown procedure occur. A guy as smart as Michael Hall would probably have something in place in case someone escaped his game, like an auto-shutdown that paralyzes or knocks Kable out.

And finally, you've got Michael Hall with more money than Bill Gates and the smarts to implement this scheme and more (he's got nanotech in his head that can control the tech in everyone else's head and plans on unleashing the Nanex to everyone in society) and yet the security on his house is so crappy that Kyra Sedgwick can roll up and tap into some computer at his front door and broadcast Michael Hall and Kable's private conversation for everybody in the world to see? And Alison Lohman can hack into the Nanex network and hook Logan Lerman back up to Kable and have him kill Hall? Not to mention the fact that we've got yet another genius bad guy undone by his penchant for monologuing in front of the hero.

Neveldine/Taylor can shoot and cut the hell out of a movie. No matter what they do, you know it'll never be boring. Unfortunately, so far they've shown themselves to be far better directors than writers. They raise a bunch of interesting issues about control and power and video games and society, but due to the shallowness of the script, they all remain at surface level. Next time, they should let someone else do the writing and focus on the directing.

Non-Movie Post

I thought this was pretty funny, so I'm linking to it. Jian BBQ is a Korean barbecue hotspot on Beverly Blvd. in West Hollywood. And apparently, they've got a thing or two to learn about customer service.

ADAM - A Romance with Asperger's

Saw ADAM last night, a quirky romance about a woman who falls for her neighbor with Asperger's. Probably wouldn't have seen it if the girlfriend didn't offer to treat me to a movie.

AN ASS-FULL OF SPOILERS BELOW

ADAM hit upon a unique premise. I can't recall a love story between a "normal" woman and someone suffering from Asperger's (basically a high-functioning form of autism where the sufferer has problems reading facial cues, knowing what people are thinking, and the inability to pick up on sarcasm, innuendo, irony, or any situation in which words have a connotation as well as a denotation).

It tells the story of Adam, a single electronics engineer with a fascination for space. Adam's father just died; his dad took care of him and helped ease his transition into the world. Without him, Adam's got some problems. His new neighbor Beth seems intrigued by Adam, but a little put off by Adam's rudeness. Eventually, she realizes he has Asperger's. The two date after Adam engages in a couple of romantic gestures -- dangling outside her window in a spacesuit to clean it and showing her a family of raccoons who took up residence inside Central Park. Beth's father faces a trial for some accounting irregularities at his business. And Adam, with his lack of social skills, grills him about possibly going to jail. When Adam gets a job offer in a new town and wants to move away with Beth, Beth's dad (now about to go to jail) tells Adam Beth can do better. Eventually, the two split and Adam makes the move on his own.

Despite some good performances and a realistic script that makes the action and characters feel believable, there are several problems with the film.

First, in any kind of romance-based movie, be it an action film, a drama, or a romantic comedy, if you don't buy that the romance is important, the movie doesn't work. It never seemed believable that gorgeous, rich, smart Beth (Rose Byrne) would date a high-functioning autistic. The film sets up that she went out with a rich asshole who cheated on her and so she's looking for something different. But isn't there a middle ground between rich asshole and almost-RAIN MAN?

The romantic gestures don't offer enough explanation for why Beth goes out with Adam either. She mentions she can't see outside her windows, so he dresses up in his space suit and dangles outside her windows to clean them. Or attempts to. Instead, startling her. Because this was random and ineffectual, it doesn't feel like a big deal or that impressive. In fact, he almost kills herself and doesn't even manage to clean the windows. This could have been remedied with a bit of dialogue about how her last boyfriend (the rich asshole) never listened to her or what she wanted. When she said she wanted tickets to a concert, he even got the wrong tickets. That's when she knew the relationship wouldn't work, long before the cheating. Then, Adam cleans her windows based on an off-handed comment she makes and she's smitten.

Since we don't buy these two would ever date, we don't really care that they break up eventually. That's a major problem, removing the stakes from the movie entirely.

Film also tries to set up Beth's father as a jerk. He tells her she can do better than Adam. But he happens to be right. Adam's not that great. He's nice when he's not freaking out and he knows a lot about space. But he can't hold a normal conversation or interact with her friends and family properly. And he tends to freak out in full-0n child tantrum mode. What's more, since Beth actually doesn't end up with Adam, her father is proven right in the world of the film. Also, this whole dynamic -- overbearing father who's in legal trouble and eventually goes to jail doesn't like her underachieving boyfriend -- seems ripped from SAY ANYTHING.

Finally, the film makes a really odd choice in having Adam go to California by himself for a new job. While there, he suddenly becomes non-autistic -- or way less so. Script shows Adam at the beginning and throughout not picking up on verbal cues (sarcasm about continuing to carry heavy bags by himself) and having severe social anxiety where he won't go out with work friends and fears going out with Beth's. But for some reason, when he gets to Cali, he's noticing a co-worker's face while carrying heavy boxes and he offers to help and he's suddenly going out to bars with his co-workers. This would be fine if this was a normal character arc -- a guy goes from awkward to socially integrated. But it's Asperger's syndrome. Not a character weakness that gets worked out through the plot of the film. The reason Adam has those problems is because his brain is wired differently. It's not like he has one relationship and all of a sudden he stops being a high-functioning autistic. That'd be like a dude with paraplegia moving cross-country after a failed relationship and suddenly starting to walk.

DVD Corner - FALLEN, SPEED, DIE HARD 3 - Thriller Time

Been watching a lot of thrillers lately as "research" for a thriller I'm starting. And some action movies that verge on thriller territory.

BOATLOADS OF SPOILERS BELOW

I'd never seen FALLEN. You'd think Nick Kazan script + Denzel Washington + great supporting cast (Elias Koteas, Donald Sutherland, John Goodman, Aida Turturro, James Gandolfini) + great premise (detective watches a serial killer he caught get put to death; serial killer is really a demon who can jump bodies; demon comes back and frames/torments detective) would equal a great movie. But it doesn't.

First, the film is horribly slow and boring. This thing drags. Directory Gregory Hoblit chooses to use a washed-out, shaky POV shot to represent Azazel, the demon. And he does it literally every time something happens with the demon. So you see this nauseating shot hundreds of times. The plot, as such, is underbaked. You'd think an immortal demon would really have it out for the man who's getting in his way and have a great way to annoy him or kill him. You'd also think the demon would have some sort of big plans after thousands of years. Nope. Apparently all he wants to do is sort of mildly annoy Denzel. Which he does by framing him for some murders. Which could've been good, if that was the first act break. Then you'd have an entire movie of Denzel trying to figure out what's going on (his enemy's really a demon!) all the while avoiding the cops and trying to clear his name. But that action doesn't come until the end of the film, which is too late. Also, Azazel literally has no plan or anything. He's not trying to spark the end of the world (although he does write "Apocalypse" in chunks on various bodies), he's not trying to rule the world, he's not trying to let Satan out of hell. Just annoy Denzel.

The rules are also unclear. Azazel can jump into any body he wants. Except Denzel at the beginning. But by the end of the movie he can get into Denzel for some reason. That'd be fine if Denzel was somehow corrupted and it was all part of Azazel's plan. But it's not setup that way, so it just feels random.

There's no arc for Denzel's character. The obvious one would be a man who lost his faith, and in encountering the supernatural, he gets it back. That would easily mesh with the "action" as it were.

Denzel's got a retarded brother for some reason, I guess so he seems like a good guy for taking care of him. And so Azazel can eventually kill him. Azazel doesn't even seem that evil. He kills a couple people and then Denzel's brother. The film could've upped the body count and made him more threatening.

Finally, there are some really silly beats. For example, Embeth Davidtz is being chased by Azazel in various forms through a crowded street. Instead of Azazel getting in a fast, strong body and running her down, he jumps from body to body. So you've got a "chase" scene where a girl's running and various strangers are touching each other down a line, with the demon body-swapping in serial. All accompanied by a cheesy "whoosh" sound. This isn't cool or threatening, it's just stupid. The demon inside a big, strong guy is possibly threatening; the demon inside an old lady, not so much.

On to SPEED...

I hadn't seen SPEED since the theater and didn't remember it being that great. It's got a fantastic premise and was competently directed. But that was all I could remember.

Well, I was wrong. SPEED is a very good action movie. The premise is just as great as ever, the bad guy's clever, and the obstacles and escalations are great. Keanu gets dropped in a shitstorm at the beginning and things just keep getting worse for him throughout.

There are perhaps two weaknesses in SPEED. Keanu's character (Jack Traven) has no arc to speak of. He's not a reckless guy who learns how to reign it in to keep others safe; he's not a do-er who figures out you should look before you leap.

And after the bus blows up, the movie keeps going for a half hour and gets a bit silly. Dennis Hopper's character is so smart and methodical with his planning of the elevator job and the bus caper that what happens after his plans are foiled seems a bit reckless. He thought far enough ahead to get money away from hundreds of cops and escape onto the subway with a hostage wired with a bomb, but because Traven's chasing him, he loses his shit and kills the subway driver? That doesn't make a lot of sense.

However, with the action, you don't really miss the arc. And there's almost a solid hour of bus stuff just getting worse and worse, so you tend to forgive the movie for the third act. (And Keanu's awful retort to Dennis Hopper after he knocks his head off with a subway light -- "I'm taller.")

DIE HARD 3 marked John McTiernan's return to the franchise. And a great idea in having Hans Gruber's brother come back for revenge on John McClane. And a cool premise with Jeremy Irons running McClane all over town on a scavenger hunt (under threat of blowing shit up) as a distraction to robbing the Federal Reserve.

There's plenty of great action. And screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh does a good job with the action beats, with plenty of smart twists and turns, like the heroes getting out of handcuffs using a metal scrap embedded in McClane's arm from an earlier slide down a fraying cable.

Where the film slips is that McClane has little to no arc -- just warming up to calling his wife whom he hasn't talked to in over a year. So Hensleigh tries to give one to Sam Jackson's Zeus, a racist who hates white folks. Except that Jackson doesn't really start to like white people. He just warms up to McClane a bit. If that situation was played out in reverse, with a racist white guy, people would find it patronizing.

Another problem is that Irons' plot falls apart when you look at it. The first task he gives McClane is to walk around Harlem with a sandwich board stating "I hate N-words" (it actually says the N-word, I'm just being polite). And McClane is nearly killed by a street gang; Zeus jumps in to save him. If Zeus didn't, McClane would die. Now, Irons wants McClane dead. But he needs him alive long enough to keep running goofy errands on the scavenger hunt and keep the police tied up so he can rob the reserve. He plans on killing McClane via sniper at Yankee Stadium at the end of the day. Irons clearly didn't plan on Zeus being there or helping out, so that's clearly a big plot hole.

Another silly bit is that the way McClane catches Irons is... Irons has McClane and Zeus tied up to a bomb on a ship. McClane asks for some aspirin -- Irons suffers from migraines -- and Irons tosses him a bottle. After our heroes get off the ship just ahead of the bomb, McClane looks at the aspirin bottle and it's stamped Nord de Lignes, a big truck stop north of the border in Canada.

Here's the several problems with this.

1) Generally, if someone suffers from migraines, they have prescription migraine medicine like topamax or imitrex. Aspirin and the like don't really help with migraines.

2) I've never known truck stops or any other store for that matter to stamp aspirin bottles with their name/location

3) McClane somehow gets to fly to Canada with his gun and shoot at the bad guys; the US has no jursidiction north of the border. And McClane is a New York City cop, so he has no jurisdiction outside of the city

4) This whole beat is convenient. If McClane didn't ask for aspirin and Irons toss him some and the bottle was stamped, etc., McClane never would have found him. If McClane had somehow tricked this information out of him, that would've been fine. That shows our hero being smart, rather than our hero relying on a happy coincidence to solve his problems.

5) How the hell did the good guys find the bad guys? Presumably this is a major area filled with shipping containers, trucks, etc. The bad guys could just hide out there.

And then you've got McClane shooting an electrical wire with two bullets and dropping it on a helicopter and then saying "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker." Sigh.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - Wrong Spelling, Right Moviemaking

Not too much to say here, because I loved this film. Jews killing Nazis as brutally as possible? I'm in.

SCALPED SPOILERS BELOW

Basically, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is Tarantino's Jewish version of THE DIRTY DOZEN meets Spaghetti Westerns. It's funny, unique, and super-violent. And manages to string together the obvious influences along with a healthy dose of film history love. And for all its quirks, including slapping up a character's name in giant logo and a couple of asides hilariously narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, it pretty much works.

There's no reason why anybody in particular should like a film in which the heroes mash heads with bats, scalp fallen foes, shoot unarmed prisoners, and in which hundreds of people are roasted, shot, and exploded. But you do anyway. Because it's so unusual and so much fun.

The film's strengths are:

Most of the characters are fully dimensionalized, or at least enough for us to like or understand them. Particularly well-rendered are Shoshanna and Col. Landa, the delightful villain. Others, like Stiglitz, you get enough to understand this guy hates Nazi officers and is bound to snap. Brad Pitt's Lt. Col. Aldo Rayne is a bit of an enigma; you know he hates Nazis and is a cruel bastard, but you're not sure entirely why. But Brad Pitt does him with such flair, you don't really card.

Tarantino sure knows how to turn a scene, particularly in assembling all the elements of suspense and then cranking the tension up with everyday dialogue. Whether it's an oncoming basement shootout, Landa interrogating a French dairy farmer hiding Jews under his floor, or Landa and Shoshana sitting in a restaurant eating strudel, these scenes are all super-tense. If and when the violence erupts, it's almost a relief.

And finally, perhaps the film's biggest asset is its uniqueness. For example, when Pitt and crew pose as Italians to inflitrate a Nazi film premiere... Most films would have Pitt and his buddies barely pulling off the masquerade. But Tarantino wisely has them speak atrocious Italian with their horrible accents, and Col. Landa is so aware of it that he laughs hysterically and exposes their plot. It's funny, it's tense, and it's a bold choice that works well.

Plus, you gotta love a film that has Jews killing the shit out of Hitler and the entire Nazi high command.

There is perhaps one minor flaw, but it's an editing decision, not a script problem. Because the film's so long, it seems as if QT cut some of the action for time. So we're treated to Pitt captured, and then he's in a truck with one of his men who wasn't at the premiere. We never find out how BJ Novak got captured or what happened to the rest of the Basterds. But it doesn't really affect anything, because the film's almost over at that point and sailing along delightfully under its own weird steam.