MAN ON A LEDGE: 2 STARS

If I had to choose one word to describe “Man on a Ledge,” the new heist drama starring Sam Worthington and Jamie Bell, it wouldn’t be thrilling or even breathtaking. No the word that best sums up the movie is implausible. Your enjoyment of the film will depend on how often you are willing to suspend your disbelief.

Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, a former cop sentenced to twenty-five years at Sing Sing prison for a diamond heist he may or may not have committed. After a daring escape he launches an elaborate plan to prove his innocence. Step one is perching himself on the ledge of the twenty-first floor of a Manhattan hotel. From that vantage point he orchestrates a “Mission: Impossible” style scheme to uncover the plot that sent him up the river.

“Man on a Ledge” is not what Hitchcock called a Refrigerator Movie. That is, one that seems to make sense while you’re watching it, but later, when you’re at home in front of the fridge thinking about it, the inanity of it becomes clear. Nope, this one is loud and proud in its complete lack of logic.

Plot wise so many things don’t add up that according to this movie’s way of thinking one plus one must equal five. But, as I said earlier, if you can suspend disbelief and go along for the ride “Man on a Ledge” proves not to be a bad movie, just a silly one.

Stereotypes abound—there’s the ruthless reporter who knows that  jumpers are good for ratings, the troubled cop, the coldblooded businessman—and an  overly elaborate plan that plays itself out just a little too easily. Add to that a bit too much talk about “how far you would go to clear your name” and one scene of completely gratuitous almost nudity and you end up with a poorly plotted time waster that skates by on the strength of its characters.

MARGIN CALL DVD: 4 STARS

“Margin Call,” a new Wall Street drama with an all-star cast including Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons and Demi Moore, deserved a better run at the theatres. Now on DVD and download, this overlooked movie of the beginning of our recent financial crisis has a compelling story and great acting but didn’t find an audience theatrically.

A fictionalized account of what may have happened at Lehman Brothers et al, “Margin Call” is set at a Wall Street firm following a brutal round of layoffs. Using information passed on by one of the outgoings execs an analyst, played by “Star Trek’s” Zachary Quinto, discovers that the firm is wildly overleveraged. Saving the company will affect not only the employees but the entire economy of the United States.

The way I have described it would sound melodramatic if it wasn’t bound so closely to fact and that’s the beauty of the movie. It takes complex financial transactions, dramatizes them and presents them in a way that makes sense and shines spotlight on the terrible mess the greed of these Wall Street firms caused.

But without great characters a movie solely about the crisis wouldn’t be necessary in the wake of Inside Job,” the Oscar winning documentary that covered pretty much the same ground.

Luckily “Margin Call” abounds with interesting characters even though doesn’t exactly avoid the stereotypical portrayal of Wall Street types—there is the de rigueur associate obsessed with his colleague’s pay cheques, the over indulgent CEOs. But despite its occasional typecasting, actors like Spacey, Tucci and Simon Baker imbue their characters with humanity, creating multi-layered people concerned with the ethics of what they are doing.  

Perhaps “Margin Call” flopped because people don’t want to be reminded of the financial meltdown that left tens-of-thousands of Americans stuck with sub prime mortgages and made foreclosure signs the hottest landscaping feature of the 2008-2009 season. Perhaps it was because the star wattage of Stanley Tucci and Kevin Spacey wasn’t enough to put bums in seats. Whatever the reason, “Margin Call” remains a gem that will hopefully find its audience on the small screen.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL: 4 STARS

Like a cat, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), the indestructible secret agent star of “Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol,” has nine lives. Maybe more. He packs more death defying hero activity into one afternoon than... Scaling buildings and crashing cars, he's always on the go.

There's the usual assortment of exotic locations, international intrigue, beautiful assassins, clocks ticking down to zero, subtitles in various languages, but despite all that, MI4 makes WAY more sense than its predecessors. Clarity of story has never been a strong suit of the MI series, but “Ghost Protocol” trims down the convoluted plots of the first three movies.

The IMF—that’s Impossible Missions Force for the uninitiated—is disavowed after Ethan Hunt and his team Jane (Paula Patton) and Benji (Simon Pegg) are accused of bombing the Kremlin. Under the rules of Ghost Protocol they are left on their own with no support and must go rogue to clear their name.

“Ghost Protocol” is by no means a comedy but there are more light moments--usually courtesy of Simon Pegg--than in all the previous movies combined. There's even a short joke at Cruise's expense.

The jokes are place holders for the wall-to-wall action. If nothing else Ghost Protocol will make you chew your popcorn a little faster. Spectacular set pieces, like Cruise repelling down the outside of the tallest building in the world, and a car chase in a dust storm, should satisfy any action fan.

The various subplots may not, however. Too much time is spent on Jeremy Renner’s back story, a long-winded tale of combat fatigue that reveals a connection to Hunt. The movie is best when it is running and jumping and while the story doesn’t slow the overall momentum, it feels unnecessary.

In the end “Ghost Protocol” has everything you expect from a MI movie. There's action galore, a cool gadget for every occasion, the patented Tom Cruise Run--hands extended, determined look on face, hair blowing from the sheer velocity of his stride--and sneering bad guys.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN: 3 ½ STARS

The Oscar battle of the biopics is in full swing with the release of “My Week with Marilyn.” Michelle Williams hands in exactly the kind of performance the Academy loves. As Marilyn Monroe she turns the camera on Hollywood, playing one of its biggest stars at the peak of her career.

Based on two books by Colin Clark, “The Prince, The Showgirl and Me” and “My Week with Marilyn,” the movie’s main character isn’t Munroe, but Clark (Eddie Redmayne), the third assistant director on “The Prince and the Showgirl” starring Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Munroe. It was the summer of 1956 and Clark was a twenty-three-year-old, who, like the rest of the planet, was smitten with Monroe. The two form a bond, and for a few days it looks like his love for her might actually be reciprocated. Perhaps this should have been titled “The Week I Almost Made It with Marilyn.”

Everyone has been predicting Oscar success for Williams and rightly so, she’s very good, but the bulk of the movie is carried by Redmayne. It is his coming of age story that really fuels the movie’s dramatic arc and his youthful excitement at meeting and, possibly mating with, the movie star is infectious. Of course he’s playing against Williams and Branagh in much showier roles, so I suspect he’ll get the sort shrift attention wise.

As for the above the title stars, Branagh shows two sides to Olivier, the flamboyantly theatrical public persona contrasted against his testy frustration of having to work overshadowed the unprofessional movie star from America. “She’s all instinct, no craft,” he says.

Branagh is very good, but when placed against Williams’s Monroe his work seems to lack the soul she brings to every frame of film. He does have many of the film’s best lines, however. His delivery of lines like, “Trying to teach Marilyn to act is like teaching Urdu to a badger,” is letter perfect and adds much to the movie.

Even almost fifty years after her death Monroe is still one of the best-known actresses in the world. Her famous face adorns everything from wine bottles to Volkswagen commercials, and yet Williams manages to bring something new to someone we thought we knew so well. Her off-screen life, as dramatic as anything she ever did on screen, is tenderly portrayed here but the story isn’t as interesting as the performance.
Williams plays Monroe as a coddled woman-child, crippled by nerves, insecurity, but long on instinct but she goes beyond the little girl lost act so often associated with Monroe. She digs deep, cleaving the role into two parts—the sex-bomb and the vulnerable real life counterpart.

“Shall I be her?” she asks Colin as a crowd descends on them in public. She then shifts effortlessly from the private to the public Marilyn, blowing kisses and turning the flirt up to eleven. But when she is behind closed doors the performance glows. While some of the dialogue is a bit too Psyche 101—“Why do the people I love always leave me?” she pouts at one point—the complexity behind her eyes isn’t.

Williams has perfected playing dour characters in movies like “Blue Valentine,”—so it is a bit of a revelation to see her smile here—but this is something else—well rounded and revelatory.

“My Week with Marilyn” feels a little old-fashioned. The show biz story about, as they say in the film, “a great actor who wants to be a movie star and a movie star who wants to be a great actor,” is overtly theatrical, but Williams brings real soul and heart, handing in the Oscar worthy performance that eluded Monroe in real life.

MELANCHOLIA: 4 STARS

Near the end of “Melancholia,” the latest film from professional crank Lars Von Trier, his star Kristen Dunst wonders aloud if anyone would grieve if the world was gone. It’s the great existential question in a film which may be the most audience friendly study of depression ever.

Von Trier breaks the film into three portions. A montage of strange slow motion images and soaring symphonic music serves as a prologue. In its final image Von Trier lets us known how the story will end, establishing a tension that runs through every frame of the film.

Part One starts off happily enough with a young couple, Justine (Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard), on the way to an opulent wedding reception at the home of (Charlotte Gainsbourg), Justine’s sister. Soon, however, it becomes apparent that all is not right. Justine’s inability to feel happiness and her family’s recriminations at the reception ruin the day.

Part Two shifts the focus to Claire. She is obsessed with the news that a newly discovered planet, Melancholia, may be making a bee-line to planet Earth. In this half Justine takes a more passive role as Von Trier explores Claire’s fixation.

I’ve kept the synopsis sketchy because the plot details are less important than the sense of gloom Von Trier builds slowly over the course of the movie’s 135 minute running time. From the haunting images of the prologue to Dunst’s gravely restrained performance the film creates slow grind suspense. It’s a disaster movie in which the end-of-the-world theatrics are secondary to the disastrous relationships on display.  
    
Dunst has rarely been better, and Von Trier’s muse, Charlotte Gainsbourg, is a coiled spring of emotion, and even if they aren’t believable as sisters—they look and sound nothing alike—the strained relationship between them feels real.   

They are the film’s centerpieces, and the best used of all the actors, although Udo Kier as a testy wedding planner steals a scene or two.

“Melancholia” is, undoubtedly, Von Trier’s attempt to visualize his very public struggle with depression. It’s a feel bad movie, heavy with symbolism—Justine literally bathing in the light of the oncoming destruction for example—and in no hurry to explain itself, but in its own claustrophobic, closed-down way is a naturalistic and compelling look at people in distress.  

MACHINE GUN PREACHER: 2 ½ STARS

“Machine Gun Preacher” is set in a world where the line between mercenary and humanitarian is very thin. Gerard Butler plays the title character, a man who preaches fire-and-brimstone and can shoot the tail feathers off an ostrich at fifty yards.

When we first meet Sam Childers (Butler) he’s a tough guy fresh out of jail. He finds that old habits die hard—especially old drug habits. When his hell raising ways catch up to him something remarkable happens; he finds God. The former biker shifts gears and becomes a model citizen, even funding and building his own church. A sermon about the plight of Sudanese children prompts him to become a crusader for thousands of orphaned African children. He earns a reputation as a gun toting savior but his faith is severely tested when all his efforts to save the children seem to be for naught.  

“Machine Gun Preacher” is based on the real life story of Sam Childers, a former trigger-happy biker who founded the Angels of East Africa orphanage. It’s a very compelling story, almost in the territory of stranger than fiction, but this fellow’s colorful life hits a few rocky patches in its translation to the screen.

In an effort to hit all high points of Childers’s life director Marc “Monster's Ball” Forster speeds through the early part of the story, the transformation from hellion to angel, very quickly. The conversion is a crucial plot point and if we don’t buy into it we’ll have a hard time being on side for the rest of the story.

The rest of the movie skips and jumps around as well, as though it was cut down from a much longer movie. Luckily it moves along at such a clip that the strange blend of revenge and religion is never given the chance to settle for too long. That’s a good thing because it’s an uncomfortable mix. One minute he’s preaching, the next he’s gunning down Sudanese rebels. He’s Rambo with a bible.

The movie is inspirational and shines a light on some poignant issues, but feels more movie-of-the-week than serious drama about a man’s transformation.

Butler brings some intensity to the role, but Michael Shannon and Michelle Monaghan, as the junkie biker who learns to walk a different path and the born again ex-junkie stripper wife respectively, are wasted in roles that give them little to do.  

“Machine Gun Preacher” suffers from playing fast and loose with the events that lead up to the story’s main thrust—one man’s ability to change not only his life, but the lives of people around him—and as a result the transformation doesn’t have the impact it should.

MONEYBALL: 4 STARS

“Moneyball,” the new sports drama starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, begins with the Mickey Mantle quote, “It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about a game you’ve played all your life.” The legendary New York Yankees outfielder and first baseman played eighteen seasons in the big leagues but likely wouldn’t recognize the game as played in this behind-the-scenes drama.

Based on the book of the same name by Michael Lewis, Pitt plays Billy Beane, the real life General Manager of the Oakland A’s. Faced with having to piece together a pro team with a budget a fourth as large as the New York Yankees he breaks with one hundred years of baseball tradition—using scouts, instinct and guts—to find a scientific method to build a team on the cheap. With a Yale trained economist (Jonah Hill) he creates sabermetrics, a mind boggling combination of facts, figures and computer algorithms to recruit his team.

It all sounds very dry, but so did "The Social Network" before you actually sat down and watched it. "Moneyball" takes what cold be a dry subject of baseball stats and spices it up with complex, interesting characters, a compelling human story while leaving the usual sport’s movie clichés behind.

It moves at about half the speed of "The Social Network" but that's OK we're not dealing with the fast moving world of cyber space here but the more relaxed pace of America's favorite pastime.

But this isn't a baseball movie. Pitt and Hill, in a rare serious role, dominate the movie with their behind the scenes stories. Like "The Social Network" "Moneyball" places the onus on the characters and not the technology that drives the story. We've seen baseball movies before, but we've never sent the game from this angle. It's a new take on the game, one that may leave Mantel scratching his head but should leave audiences rapt.

MONTE CARLO: 1 ½ STARS

“Monte Carlo” sees three small town girls thrust into a world of Polo, fancy balls and good looking princes with exotic accents. It’s a buddy comedy plus one, (3 is the new 2 in comedy duos!) showcasing the talents of Disney star (and Bieber BFF) Selena Gomez, and Gossip Girls' Leighton Meester and Katie Cassidy.

Gomez is Cinderella… er… Grace, a recent high school grad who saved four years worth of tips from her waitressing job to pay for her dream—a trip to Paris. Along for the ride are her free-spirited best friend Emma (Cassidy) and evil step sister Meg (Meester). Instead of finding the new life she was expecting in France she finds nothing but pushy tour guides and fat men in berets until she is mistaken for heiress Cordelia Winthrop-Scott. For a few days she lives Winthrop-Scott’s glamorous life—it’s not stealing, she says, “it’s seizing the moment”—with her two American ladies-in-waiting before real life brings her crashing back to earth. But, because this is based on a fairy tale you know that by the end all three will wind up with the Prince Charmings they deserve.

Try as it might “Monte Carlo” doesn’t have the joie de vivre it should have to go along with its screwball premise. Mistaken identity is one of the cornerstones of the screwball genre, yet this movie is not screwy enough by half to be really entertaining. There’s some slapstick and attempts at comedy, but the pace is so s-l-o-w it sucks the funny out of what could have been an amusing little tween romp.

The Lisa Kudrow-esque Katie Cassidy gives it a go, bringing some spunk to the proceedings and Leighton Meester can do earnest rather well, but the film’s heavy lifting is left to Gomez who, as a lead actor, proves she’s charismatic, but not quite ready to headline a film.

For Gomez’s fans the setting, romance and clothes may be enough to sell the movie but anyone old enough to not know what “Wizards of Waverly Place” is may have a harder time finding enjoyment here. 

“Monte Carlo” doesn’t fall down because of the predictable story—if you can’t figure it out on your own the trailer pretty much spells it out for you—or because of Gomez’s appalling English accent. No, it’s the film’s blandness that brings it down. If you’re in the mood for rags-to-princesses stories this weekend better off to rent either “The Princess Diaries” or “What a Girl Wants” instead.

MR. POPPER’S PENGUINS: 3 STARS

Jim Carrey is back acting opposite wildlife, but unlike the “Ace Ventura” movies, this time out he's not talking out of his bum, or doing anything which parents may take issue with. “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” is total family entertainment, paced for young ones but with enough story to keep older kids and parents interested.

Loosely based on Richard and Florence Atwater's classic 1938 children's book the movie sees Carrey playing the title character, a ruthless NYC real estate agent who inherits a penguin from his late, explorer father. Through a series of misunderstandings one penguin becomes six, and the entire brood becomes a birthday gift for Popper’s young son. As the penguins take over his life, Popper’s professional career—he’s trying to engineer a deal to buy New York’s legendary Tavern on the Green restaurant—goes into a deep freeze but his formerly flightless personal life soars.     

There are laughs in the film, more for the kids than the adults, but I'm not sure I would classify this as a comedy. Carrey has a few funny moments, the penguins—who could be more rightly called Mr. Popper’s Pooping Penguins—engage in some animal antics, and Popper’s “p” popping personal assistant takes alliteration to new heights, but the movie is more about heart than humor. It’s about the importance of families, of spending time with the ones you love, whether they are ex-wives, estranged kids or flightless tuxedo-wearing birds.

Carrey finds a balance between his expert slapstick and the more naturalistic style of acting he’s flirted with in movies like “The Majestic.” The clowning is fun, but his journey to becoming a better dad is the more effective and memorable part of the story.

This isn’t the first time Carrey has appeared in a live action kids’ flick but the dark edge he brought to “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events” has been replaced with a sweet side, despite looking up penguin recipes on-line as an initial solution to his penguin problem.

“Mr. Popper’s Penguins” isn’t a classic children’s film, but in a summer cluttered with movies like “The Hangover Part 2” it is a welcome family alternative.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS: 4 STARS

The cliché when reviewing a Woody Allen film is to play the “Spot the Woody” game. Since Allen stopped actually appearing in his own films it has become de rigueur to speculate on which role Woody would have played. It’s a bit of a tired game, but in his new film, “Midnight in Paris,” (which opened the most recent Cannes Film Festival) Owen Wilson is clearly playing the part. He’s a nostalgic Hollywood screenwriter who yearns to be taken seriously as an author. It’s Woody alright, despite Wilson’s California beach bum style.

In a story that harkens back to Allen’s older magic realism films like “Purple Rose of Cairo,” Gil Pender (Wilson), an American on vacation in France, finds himself transported back to 1920s Paris. For a man with “golden Age” fantasies it’s a dream come true. He meets F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston, last seen as Loki from “Thor” and Alison Pill), hangs out with surrealists, sees Cole Porter sing at a party, drinks with Hemmingway and tries to steal Picasso’s girl Adriana (Marion Cotillard). Bringing him back to reality is his irritating present day fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her obnoxious parents.

It must first be said that “Midnight in Paris” is worth the price of admissions for the lovely shots of the fetching Marion Cotillard strolling the streets of Paris in a flapper dress. It’s also worth it to see Woody do for 1920s Paris what he did for 1970s Manhattan. He has one character say, “that Paris exists and anyone would choose to live anywhere else is a mystery to me,” and after seeing the film it’s hard not to agree. Allen’s cities are often as much a character as any of the actors and Paris is no exception. Now if he’d only shoot in Toronto. It might help tourism.

“Midnight in Paris” is a fantasy, but there is a point. Every generation looks back at the past with envy, Gil comes to realize that there really never was a “golden age” and that top be truly happy he must live in the present. That resolution is a bit of a revelation coming from Woody Allen, a man whose films seem to be from a different age but the skill he brings to this film proves he’s still a vital interesting filmmaker and not a relic from a past age.

MEET MONICA VELOUR: 3 STARS

In “Meet Monica Velour” Kim Cattrall, best known as “Sex and the City’s” iconic Samantha Jones, plays the title character, a former porn star, now a struggling, single mom. Her life changes when she befriends her biggest fan, Tobe (Dustin Ingram), an awkward eighteen-year-old boy who learns to accept her for what she is—she’s really Linda Romanoli—not for what she was.

‘You screw a few hundred guys,” Linda says, “and the whole world turns against you.”

“Meet Monica Velour” could have simply been Tobe’s coming of age story from mouth-breather to maturity, or a seedy look at a former porn star’s sad existence, or a May-December sex comedy but the quality of the performances and writing elevates it to interesting character study.

The character of Dustin is part Napoleon Dynamite, part Seymour from “Ghost World.” He’s a nerdy outsider with a passion for the past, and on the surface, an indie film staple. But Ingram dials back the eccentricity as much as the script allows, lifting the character above the level of cliché. The film could probably live without his underwear dancing scene, but the movie and its director Keith Bearden treat Tobe with respect and not just a quirky collection of personality tics.

As good as Ingram is, this is Catrall’s show. She’s left her “Sex and the City” Louboutins behind to present a rough and ready portrait of a woman on the downside of life. It’s hard not to relate Monica nee Linda’s struggles to create a life outside of her screen persona to Cattrall’s own close identification to Samantha Jones. Linda is not Monica, and Kim is not Samantha and the actress’s performance in this film should go a long way to dampening that association. If anyone sees this small indie film it should establish Cattrall as one of the more interesting performers in her age range.

I was sold on the film after one scene which feels comedic in the moment, but reveals itself to be dripping with pathos. Dustin and Linda have fought, and she’s in tears. Unsure of what to do he asks her an autograph, thinking that he’s about to be asked to leave and will likely never see her again. She flips from wounded woman to porn professional in a heartbeat and asks, “Do you want it on your underwear?”

Funny line, but not a funny situation as it reveals the tawdry way that Monica has learned to approach relationships.   
 
“Meet Monica Velour” could have been just another idiosyncratic indie film, relying on the entertainment value of its quirky characters but Bearden and Cattrall, aided by an able supporting cast, including a scene stealing Brian Dennehy, brings real warmth to the story.

MARS NEEDS MOMS: 3 STARS

I think “WALL-E” is the pinnacle of science fiction for kids but after seeing “Mars Needs Moms”... I still feel that way. It’s not really sci fi anyway; it’s more action-adventure in zero gravity, with voice work by “Robot Chicken” guys Seth Green and Dan Fogler.

The earthbound portion of the story is set in Anywhere, USA. Little Milo (voice of Seth Green) doesn’t like taking out the garbage. When his mom (Joan Cusack) gives him a firm, but effective talking to, she unwittingly becomes a Martian overlord’s first choice as the model mom for the nanny bots that raise that planet’s young’uns. When she is abducted Milo hitches a ride, determined to rescue his mom from the alien invaders.

The surburban part of “Mars Needs Moms” bored me silly but once the movie hits Mars it perks up. Milo stops being a whiny kid, the action kicks in, the female Martians look like ET’s younger sisters and the Mars background animation is spectacular, kind of “2001” by way of “Triumph of the Will” and “Brazil.” Too bad the character animation isn’t as consistent. Milo’s mom has a-not-quite-human feel about her, and there’s some fluxuation in Milo and his friend Gribble but for the most part look amazing.

“Mars Needs Moms” is standard Disney. It’s a well made piece of family entertainment—it should appeal to eight and nine year olds, but anyone younger than that might find it a bit intense—with some action and good messages for kids about family and friendship. And even though it’s probably the first Disney movie to feature a purple nurple, it doesn’t strive to be anything more or less than standard.

THE MECHANIC: 3 STARS
 
Jason Statham isn’t so much an actor as he is a brand. When you go to McDonald’s you know you can expect the two all beef patties, special sauce and the sesame seed bun to taste the same whether you’re in Toronto or Hong Kong. It’s that kind of brand management that has made Statham a star. You know what to expect from his movies—rippling abs, some high kicking action, his trademarked facial stubble and loads of explosions. It’s a simple formula but one that works for his fans. Perhaps the advertising slogan for his new film, “The Mechanic,” should be “New, But Not Improved.”
 
This time around Statham plays Arthur Bishop, a highly trained and highly dangerous hit man. “Pulling a trigger is easy,” he says in his distinctive rumble, “the best jobs are the ones where no one even knows you where there.” Like the character he plays in “The Transporter” movies, he’s detached, precise and no nonsense. When his mentor and friend Harry (Donald Sutherland) is killed Arthur turns mentor for Harry’s troubled son (Ben Foster), teaching him his deadly trade.
 
What Statham lacks in range he makes up for in muscle tone. His well crafted on-screen persona is equal parts stoic masculinity and lithe athletic ability. He’s Charles Bronson (who starred in the original “The Mechanic” in 1972) with better moves, a man of action and few words in the mold of Clint Eastwood, if Clint had a better roundhouse kick. In “The Mechanic,” his 27th film since 1998 (and he has at least five more in the pipeline), he doesn’t do anything we haven’t seen him do before, but no matter, he simply does the things we expect him to do. That’s what brands do, and as movie brands go these days he’s about as reliable as it gets.
 
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s brand, for example, tries to tread similar ground, but every now and again veers off course with a kid’s flick or comedy, but not Statham. “The Mechanic” and his other films are so true to brand they’re almost interchangeable. Only the character names, and, occasionally the facial expressions, change.
 
Is “The Mechanic” a good movie? If you liked “The Transporter,” then yes, you’ll like “The Mechanic.” If not, then perhaps the Statham brand is not for you.

MORNING GLORY: 3 STARS

In “Morning Glory” Canadian Sweetheart Rachel McAdams plays an eternally optimistic television producer. That’s how we know this is a work of fantasy. Like unicorns or a good Matthew Lillard movie, there’s no such thing an eternally optimistic television producer. She may be completely fictitious but she’s also perky, precocious and fighting for the survival of her morning television show.

After being fired from the producer’s chair of “Good Morning New Jersey,” Becky (McAdams) moves up to the big leagues, executive producing a network morning show in New York City. The trouble is the network is IBS—it can’t be a co-incidence that their name is an acronym for Irritable Bowel Syndrome because their ratings are in the toilet—and the show is Daybreak, a telecast so lowly rated one observer says “half the audience has lost their remotes and the other half are waiting for their nurse to turn them over.” It’s her job to whip the show into shape, despite the protests of its two high maintenance hosts, former Miss Arizona Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton) and the “third worst person in the world,” Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford).

“Morning Glory” is a screwball romantic comedy that has a sit com-ish edge, but is rescued by the charm of its leads. It’s a pleasure to see Harrison Ford grumping it up in his first all out comedic role in some time (that is, if you don’t count the ill-advised Indiana Jones reboot) and Diane Keaton has some good bitchy fun here but it is McAdams who really saves the day.   

Her effervescent screen presence keeps us interested even when the script is content to rely on predictable, feel-good story turns. “Morning Glory” often feels like a collection of good ideas that don’t quite hang together. The Patrick Wilson love interest angle feels tagged on and near the end the movie becomes a series of montages as various story threads are a little too conveniently wrapped up, but through it all McAdams shines.

There are echoes of “Broadcast News” throughout. That movie played up the romance a bit more than “Morning Glory” does and twenty-three years ago when the Albert Brooks comedy first addressed the trend of the show business-ification of hard news to pander to ratings the hard news side won. This time around Mike Pomeroy, a seasoned journalist with impeccable credentials, is told by the upstart Becky, “Your side lost” and asked to bring along a camera to his prostate exam. “Broadcast News” had interesting things to say about television and how TV is changing. “Morning Glory” doesn’t have that same kind of insight but it does have Rachel McAdams, which for this lightweight comedy, is enough.

MONSTERS: 3 ½ STARS

Big monsters are back. Movies like “The Host” and “Cloverfield” have reintroduced audiences to that rarest, but biggest of beasts, the giant out-of-control monster. Who needs vampires and zombies when you could have a ninety foot tall squid with a bad attitude and a Christmas bulb for a head?  

The latest addition to the big monster genre is “Monsters,” an indie movie that reportedly only cost $15,000. Part road trip, part romance and all atmosphere, the story of Andrew (Scoot McNairy), an opportunistic photojournalist, who must escort his boss’s daughter, Sam (Whitney Able), back to the U.S. border through the treacherous quarantine area inhabited by… you guessed it, giant creatures left there when a NASA space craft carrying samples of extraterrestrial life crashed.

It’s a pure b-movie premise and for the first fifteen minutes or so promises to be little more than a Roger Corman film with better CGI. Then something happens. The movie becomes about the relationship between total opposites Andrew and Sam as they bond over their trip’s hardships and the strangeness of their surroundings. It’s a giant monster movie that focuses on the characters and despite some wild plot contrivances, it works.

The character study is a slow burn that leads up to the big reveal, the unveiling of the creatures. For most of the film they are seen and not heard but director Gareth Edwards paces the film carefully building up suspense through use of sound effects to climax with a wild mating dance between two of the Lovecraftian beasts. It’s a strangely beautiful and eerie sequence that brings the movie to a close.

“Monsters” isn’t as effective as “District 9” or “Cloverfield,” two other recent movies that introduced us to new creatures, but it is a complex film with timely messages about immigration (the US is protected by a giant fence to keep the monsters out) and our reactions in times of danger.

MEGAMIND: 3 STARS

“Megamind,” the new animated kid’s flick starring Will Ferrell and Tiny Fey, ponders an age old question, asked by super villains from Lex Luthor to Doctor Doom: What’s the point of being evil is there’s no one there to stop you?

Self described super genius and master of all villainy Megamind (voice of Will Ferrell) has had a lifelong rivalry with Metro Man (Brad Pitt), a hero so special he can literally walk on water. Megamind has been trying to wrestle control of Mega City from Metro Man for years, and despite his best efforts cannot defeat the ridiculously square-jawed hero. That is, until the day he breaks out of jail, kidnaps intrepid girl reporter Roxanne Ritchi (Tina Fey) and finally outsmarts his nemesis. Metro City is finally his but now that his lifelong dream has come true he finds when there is no good guy, no yin to his yang, his evil existence is an empty experience. To combat his boredom he decides to create a superhero to spice things up... of course nothing could go wrong with that plan.

“Megamind” plays like the evil stepchild of “The Incredibles” and “Monsters vs Aliens” with some pop culture references thrown in—like a takeoff on the famous balcony scene from “Superman” and a wild spoof of Jor-El’s windswept hair. It’s a pleasant enough confection, with some genuine laughs sprinkled throughout, but given the talent involved—Ferrell, Fey and David Cross—it should be much funnier.
 
David Cross and Ferrell make the most out of their characters. Ferrell gives Megamind fun vocal tics—he pronounces Metro City as one long word, Metrossoity—but Fey, in the Lois Lane role, and Jonah Hill as the newly minted superhero, hand in the bland voice work that doesn’t add much to the movie. It’s a shame, spunkier voice work would have wrung a few more laughs out of a script that is more a funny idea than actually funny all the way through.

Little kids probably won’t get—or care about—the “Superman” references or Megamind’s secret taste for Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You,” but they will enjoy the larger than life characters, the 3D slapstick and even take away the message that there is good inside of almost everyone.

MACHETE: 3 STARS

Judging by the look and feel of “Machete” director Robert Rodriquez has clearly spent a lot of time at the local repertory theatre. Either that, or he’s hung around Quentin Tarantino’s house, watching old exploitation films from the 70s. The look and feel of his new film, “Machete,” inspired by a fake trailer he made for their co-directed epic “Grindhouse,” harkens back to a simpler, rougher time, but the context is very 2010. The film is part Mexploitation gore fest, part rant about illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States.

The story begins with federale Machete (Danny Trejo) trying in vain to rescue a hostage from the evil drug lord Torres (Steven Seagal). Less than three minutes into the film the knife wielding lawman has decapitated one unlikely bad guy and shot another using a gun still attached to a severed hand. Don’t trust this guy with the cutlery. The bust, however, goes bad and Torres ends up killing Machete’s wife and leaving him for dead. Cut to three years later. Of course Machete isn’t dead, but he is a broken man, living illegally in Texas, working as a day labourer. When he is asked to assassinate a radical congressman (Robert De Niro) it turns out that he is just a pawn in a much larger political game. Of course, Machete doesn’t like this. Machete doesn’t like lots of things—texting, for instance—and with the help of a radical Mexican rights leader (Michele Rodriquez), an immigration cop (Jessica Alba) and his brother, the murderous priest (Cheech Marin), Machete gets his bloody revenge.

“Machete” mixes Rodriquez’s usual blood and babes with a message, which could have been a good thing, but he is as subtle about hammering home his pro-immigration stance as he is when he sprays the walls with gallons of fake blood. As much as I like the “in-your-face-Tea-Partiers” attitude, I wanted less of that and more of the blood and babes. Rodriquez allows the pace to lag, wedging in too much story and too much “we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us” in what should be a down-and-dirty b-movie.

But when he gets it right, when Machete is slicing and dicing and Lindsay Lohan is wearing a nun costume, wielding a gun and trading quips with Robert De Niro, the movie is Saturday afternoon matinee fun. Where else but in a Rodriquez movie would a character survive getting shot in the head because an old bullet already lodged in his skull blocked the new pellet? Who else but Rodriquez could get the notoriously unfunny Steven Seagal to deliver an intentionally funny line?  

“Machete” has its moments and a timely message but falls victim to slack pacing. A shorter running time would still showcase Rodriquez’s ideas on race, class and immigration and result in a better movie.

MARMADUKE: 1 STAR

Wilson and Anderson! Together again after “Bottle Rocket,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Darjeeling Limited.” Whoops. Right Wilson, wrong Anderson. This weekend Owen Wilson collaborates with Brad Anderson, not Wes, in a live action adaptation of Anderson’s long running comic “Marmaduke.” The arty flourishes and subtle humor of Wilson’s work with Wes has been replaced with big-dog-in-a-little-car comedy.  

Marmaduke (voice of Owen Wilson) is an unruly Great Dane with a habit of speaking directly into the camera. As the film’s narrator he introduces us to his family and leads us through the story of how Phil (Lee Pace), a dog food executive in Kansas, winds up moving the family to California and working for that state’s biggest manufacturer of organic kibble (a slumming William H. Macy). Before you can say “Kowabarka” Marmaduke is “getting his bark on” in The Golden State, winning a surfing contest, falling for a girl dog with Farah Fawcett fur, faking a cat attack to impress Alfa dog Bosco (Kiefer Sutherland) and tearing up the house. Oh that Marmaduke!

Not since Bill Murray loaned his voice to “Garfield” has a hip actor gone to the dogs like this. We can forgive Wilson the odd misstep like “You, Me and Dupree” as long as he keeps appearing in movies like “Fantastic Mr. Fox” but “Marmaduke” earns him a week wearing a shock collar. Bad dog!

He’s not alone. Kiefer Sutherland, Steve Coogan, George Lopez, Sam Elliott and the Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie all take advantage of the easy money of voice acting, but it is Wilson, in the title role, who must take the lion’s share (canine’s share?) of the blame for this. Where is the Humane Society when you really need them? Somewhere Benji and Rin Tin Tin are rolling over (in their graves) at the state of doggie style movies for kids.

Tots may find some fun in the talking animals and gentle action, but there is nothing here for anyone over the age of five except bad puns—Dog Vader, anyone? Boneillionaire, perhaps?—and an allegedly heartwarming story that actually gave me heartburn.

“Marmaduke” is an instantaneously forgettable kid’s flick that’s all bark, no laughs. There are no treats in “Marmaduke,” doggie or otherwise.

MacGRUBER: 2 ½ STARS

There are one joke movies and then there are the SNL skit movies like “It’s Pat” that stretch a thin premise out to ninety minutes and then there is “MacGruber,” a spy spoof starring Will Forte as a secret agent ready to save the world with only a couple of celery stalks, some dental floss and a tennis ball. Similarities to “MacGyver” are intentional, but only the tip of this all-80s parody.    

As the movie begins MacGruber has been in retirement for ten years since the murder of his bride (Maya Rudolph) on their wedding day. He is pulled back into the fray when it appears that his arch enemy—Val Kilmer playing a bad guy whose name cannot be repeated here for fear of having to wash my mouth out with soap afterward—may have gotten his hands on a nuclear warhead. Using their wits (and the above mentioned celery stalks) MacGruber, along with his Blaupunkt car radio, cherry red Miata and cohorts Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) must stop him before the State of the Union address.

Like the television character it is loosely based on “MacGruber,” (the movie, not the man) aims to use odds and ends to cobble together a weapon capable of slaying the SNL skit movie curse. It’s not entirely successful, but as a parody of 1980s action films—and the fashions of the 1980s, the cheesy soundtracks of the 1980s and that decade’s cavalier attitude toward movie violence—it has its moments just not enough of them.

First the good stuff. The casting of Powers “Red Dawn” Boothe as a tough talking army colonel is inspired, as is the prerequisite “getting-the-team-together montage. Also great is the dialogue, the kind that used to roll off the tongue of sweaty action stars like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. “He can be quite a fly in the ointment,” says MacGruber, “so let’s get a couple of fly swatters.” Those lines, played straight as an arrow, and coupled with some crazy non sequiturs provide many of the film’s laughs and there are many laughs, until the movie starts to rely a bit too heavily on bathroom jokes. This movie is more consumed by bums (and their contents) than a diaper designer. Imagine if JCVD told poo poo jokes in “Double Impact” and you get the idea.

Up until the introduction of celery stalks to a place where the sun doesn’t usually shine, the movie is a silly homage to the excess of 1980s b action movies, afterwards it’s an only occasionally funny homage to the excesses of modern sketch comedy—awkward pauses, pushing the joke past its breaking point and juvenile characters.

Forte is 100% committed to the role of the inept MacGruber, but his cocky, but insane take on the character gets tired after the first half hour. Wiig fares better. It seems she is incapable of not being funny even when the material isn’t up to snuff. Val Kilmer, who is looking more like mid career John Travolta all the time, hams it up, but doesn’t have the same comic verve he did in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” but then, he had a much better script to work with that time out.

“MacGruber” has some laugh-out-loud moments, just not enough of them. It seems it would take more skill than Mcgyver to rescue this movie.

THE MESSENGER: 4 STARS

Taking its lead from “The Hurt Locker,” another Iraq war film that isn’t about the war as much as it is about the effect of war on the individual, “The Messenger” focuses on two very different soldiers doing one very difficult job.

With only three months left on his tour of duty Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is stateside after being wounded in Iraq. A bum leg and an eye injury sustained in combat will keep him on US soil, but his new assignment takes as much guts as staring down the enemy in battle. Paired with Capt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) he becomes half of a causality notification team, the messengers who deliver the bad news to the families of fallen soldiers.

“The Messenger” is first and foremost a human drama about how people deal with anguish and a war movie second. In fact there are no battle scenes but the emotional violence is just as jarring as the explosions in “The Hurt Locker” or the wild gunplay of “The Kingdom.” This is the least violent war movie ever. It’s a study of various kinds of grief from rage to acceptance to denial. More interestingly it examines the toll delivering the bad news takes on Montgomery and Stone. “There’s no such thing as a satisfied customer” in their business says Stone.

Stone, with his ever present toothpick, is pure military, obsessed with protocol—in his world next of kin are referred to as NOK and he has a strict set of rules he will not deviate from. Harrelson gives him an unpredictable edge, filling him with the tics of an unstated and probably troubled history.

It’s a commanding performance that suggests that Woody Harrelson is one of the best and most underrated actors working today. I don't know what happened on his six year hiatus from the screen but he emerged on the other end of it a better actor. He can be charming, funny, dramatic, but most of all, believable whether he’s playing a disturbed man who thinks he’s a superhero (“Defendor”) or the leader of the “Angels of Death Squadron” in a serious drama.

Playing opposite him is Ben Foster, an actor who up until now I have always associated with by-the-numbers psycho roles in “Alpha Dog,” “3:10 to Yuma” and “30 Days of Darkness.” I wrote him off as a slightly more kinetic Bruce Dern type, all bulging eyes and volatile energy, but his performance here is a revelation that should help him escape the typecasting hell he been trapped in. Foster brings a tortured vibe of someone who has just come back from a hellish situation but his character deepens when he begins to look beyond the NOKs as simply being part of the protocol of his job and recognizes them as people.

Harrelson and Foster have many great moments together but a wonderfully low key scene in a kitchen between Foster and Samantha Morton, a war widow he falls for, could be taught in film schools. In one long uninterrupted shot it’s a marvel of understated acting that carefully uses words and, more importantly, silences to portray their delicate, complicated relationship.

Outside of the three leads “The Messenger” is filled to bursting with good performances—look for a powerful cameo by Steve Buscemi and good work from Jena Malone—and only occasionally dips into melodrama. A monologue about the smell of “rage and fear” should perhaps have been rethought, but more often than not it is pitch perfect.

ME AND ORSON WELLES: 3 STARS

The star of “Me and Orson Welles” should be Zac Efron, the “High School Musical” heartthrob who makes his non-singing-non-dancing debut here. His Disney good looks have made him a star and he’s an agreeable presence on screen but he is overshadowed by another actor playing a man who died many years before the core audience of this movie was even born. Newcomer Christian McKay plays Orson Welles with such panache that Efron becomes a supporting player in his own movie.

Efron is Richard Samuels, a teenager with dreams of being on stage. So far it doesn’t sound too different from “High School Musical,” I know, but in this case the year is 1937 and the stage in question happens to be at the Mercury Theatre on Broadway. After an impromptu audition—he plays drums and sings a Wheaties jingle on the street in front of the theatre—Richard is hired as a bit player for Orson Welles’s (Christian McKay) landmark production of “Julius Caesar.” He is given little rehearsal and only one piece of advice; don’t criticize Orson Welles, ever. It is, he’s told, a privilege to be “sprayed by Orson’s spit” on stage. When Richard falls for pretty production assistant Sonja Jones (Claire Danes), however, he puts himself in the cross hairs of the temperamental Welles.

“Orson Welles and Me” is set years before Hollywood beat the stuffing out of Welles. Here he’s still a boy wonder—a maverick (before Sarah Palin came along and ruined the word for everyone else) and womanizer who financed his theatre company with the money he made as a radio actor. McKay is pitch-perfect in a role that has defeated other good actors in movies like “The Cradle Will Rock” and “Fade to Black.” The British actor, who played Welles in a one man show before making the film, looks the part and really gets inside the head of this brilliant but difficult man.  

When McKay isn’t on-screen, however, the story tends to sag a little. Efron and Danes do some good work and director Richard Linklater dies a nice job of showing the chaotic week leading up to the opening night of “Caesar,” but when the story leaves the theatre it becomes much less interesting. The backstage machinations, on-stage work—we see a hefty chunk of the play during the film’s climax—and attention to period detail—people actually say “Yowza!”—elevate it beyond a typical coming-of-age story but it really only comes to life when MacKay is front and center.

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS: 3 1/2 STARS

“The Men Who Stare at Goats” is the best movie with the worst name that we’ll likely see this year.  Despite its silly title—which makes perfect sense in context of the movie, but will be a mystery to anyone unfamiliar with the story—this screwball George Clooney film has many serious points to make about the state of modern warfare, but does so with a healthy dose of satire.

Based on a story that is “more true than you think” it begins when journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) uncovers a story about the New Earth Army, a secret psychic battalion of super soldiers sponsored by the US government in hopes of finding a new way to fight wars. The Pentagon wants to be the first super power to develop super powers. Teaming up with Lyn Cassidy (Clooney), a veteran psychic soldier, Wilton tracks down Cassidy’s mentor Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), an eccentric New Age shaman now working at a prison camp in Iraq run by Kevin Spacey’s character, Larry Hooper. Hooper is a former psychic soldier who lived in Cassidy’s shadow until he managed to subvert the original purpose of the New Earth’s Army and take control.  

Directed by hyphenate actor-turned-George Clooney’s best friend-turned-writer-turned-director Grant Heslov, the pen behind “Good Night and Good Luck” the movie has a wonky feel right from the get go. Its dizzying blend of slapstick, satire and drama is a hard thing to pull off, but Heslov with the help of his lead actors and a strong supporting cast including Coen Brothers regular Stephen Root, find just the right tone for the first hour.

In fact, the first sixty minutes of “The Men Who Stare Sat Goats” is giddy good fun; as fun a ride as there is in theatres this year. Its absurdist, filled with memorable images—Clooney staring down a goat, enlisted men doing the Watusi and a montage of Jeff Bridges embarking on a journey of enlightenment—and no joke is too broad. It’s as if Crosby and Hope had gone to Iraq instead of Singapore or Utopia. Then along comes Kevin Spacey who ruins all the fun.

It’s as if the filmmakers were afraid to stick to their guns and make a surreal free form movie so they added Spacey’s sniveling character to add in some conflict. It’s meant to up the drama of the piece but it’s the point at which the movie loses much of its zip. The conflict Spacey brings is simply not as interesting as the rest of the film. The final third of the film suffers for it, but it remains an unpredictable romp with some nice performances and pointed comments on the absurdity of war. I couldn’t help but think that if someone like Robert Altman had made this film in 1974 the message and the madness would have been intact without the spoiler of Spacey.      

MORE THAN A GAME: 3 ½ STARS

“More Than a Game” is billed as the LeBron James movie but the superstar player is only part of the tale. The best story in this new documentary, six years in the making, is actually the life story of LeBron's childhood coach, the man who shaped LeBron not only into a superstar athlete, but ushered him and his teammates from boyhood to manhood.   

The film chronicles the rise and, well rise of James and his high school cohorts, the Fab 4 (later to become the Fab 5), a group of fearsomely talented b’ball players who dominated every basketball court they dribbled on from grade school to graduation. Along the way we learn of their struggles and the personal price they paid to become national champions.

Like all sports movies it adheres to the usual win some-lose some formula designed to build drama, but because the story is so recent—most of it happens in the 00s—there isn’t that much drama to be had. LeBron is a superstar and he didn’t get that way by slacking or losing lots of games.

Far more interesting than the rise to the top of the high school athletics heap is the story of the camaraderie, teaching and sacrifice that got LeBron and his teammates there. Like all good sports docs, it’s not really about the sports, it’s about the story behind the game.

That’s where Coach Dru Joyce’s story comes in. He taught these guys how to play the game, but he also gave them something much more important than that. He became a father figure for these young men, giving them more than dribbling advice. He gave them the tools they needed to survive on and off the court, He gave them a winning attitude and that is the heart of the film. He’s an inspiring character who left a career in corporate America to do something really important—be a mentor.

The rest of the film is slickly produced and well put together but suffers from a lack of in-depth reporting and repetition of already established facts. We know coach and players worked hard. We know Dru Senior and Little Dru (one of the Fab 5) had personal and professional problems but much of the meat of the doc is left only half explored. More revealing is the look on James’s face when he and his mother discuss his difficult upbringing. It underlines the early life of pain he’s overcome and is one of the true, raw moments in the film that doesn’t feel overly slick and manufactured.    

“More Than a Game” is more than just a sports documentary but could have benefited from less repetition and more good old fashioned reporting.  

MOON: 3 ½ STARS

With a lineage like his it should come as no surprise that Duncan Jones’s first feature film, Moon, is a sci fi space epic. You see, Duncan Jones is better known as Zowie Bowie, first son of David Bowie, whose song Space Oddity became a top five hit forty years ago. He may be best known to triviaticians as Zowie but that should change with the release of this evocative and intelligent film.

Sam Rockwell is astronaut Sam Bell, a Lunar Industries employee living and working on a space station on a three year contract. “Three years is a long haul,” he says, wearing a t-shirt that reads It’s Almost Quittin’ Time. “It’s way, way, way too long. I’m ready to go home.”

His job is to tend to machines that are “harvesting solar energy from the dark side of the moon” and providing almost 70% of earth with power. His only companion is a robot / cup holder named Gerty (voiced by the appropriately named Kevin Spacey) although he can receive taped messages from his wife Tess (Dominique McElligott). The loneliness of the job is broken, however, when he discovers that he may not be truly alone.   

The comparisons to 2001 are obvious, made even more apparent by Spacey’s HAL-like delivery of his robot lines, but Jones has simply used Kubrick’s film as a visual reference on his way to creating a unique and fascinating film. Another thing he borrowed from Kubrick and many other sci-fi films of the 60s and 70s is his emphasis on ideas rather than special effects.  

Michael Bay this ain’t.

It’s a deliberately paced story packed with grand themes, unusual story twists and a dark covering of creeping dread. In the middle of it all is Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, the lonely astronaut.

For a decade Rockwell has teetered on the verge of enormous mainstream success. He’s co-starred in big studio pictures with Nic Cage and George Clooney (Matchstick Men and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind respectively), earned street cred by starring in small difficult films like Choke and Snow Angels and has occasionally been the best thing in so-so movies like Joshua. He’s an inventive and fearless actor who delivers a performance in Moon that proves, once and for all, that he can carry a movie virtually by himself.

As Sam he hands in a performance ripe with longing, confusion, horror and yes, even a bit of humor.

Moon—which could easily have been retitled ***SPOILER ALERT*** The Clone Wars: This Time It’s Personal for commercial purposes—is a promising debut from a new director and a reminder of how good Sam Rockwell is.

MY SISTER’S KEEPER: 3 ½ STARS

The synopsis for My Sister’s Keeper sounds a bit like a tearjerker episode of LA Law with a sci fi twist. It begins when Kate, the two-year-old daughter (Sofia Vassilieva) of Sara and Brian Fitzgerald (Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric), is stricken with leukemia. In an effort to provide for her and prolong her life the couple conceive Anna (Abigail Breslin), a designer baby, specifically to provide genetically matched organs, blood and bone marrow for Kate’s treatment. She is, literally, a donor child; a spare parts warehouse for Kate. All goes well until, at age 11, Anna refuses to have any more medical procedures and seeks medical emancipation from Sara and Brian. Hiring her own lawyer (Alec Baldwin) she sues her parents for the right to decide how her body is used. “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Kate had been born healthy,” says Anna.

There’s a lot going on here but the movie isn’t about the court case, or the test tube baby debate or even the medical ethics. Director Nick Cassavetes (son of indie legend John) wisely keeps the focus on the family, uncovering ideas of love, loyalty and how one person’s sickness can touch everyone in the household.

It’s touching, if occasionally calculating stuff. Cassavetes draws out the ending, pumping up the emotion with a heart tugging score, but despite my feelings of being manipulated My Sister’s Keeper works.  

I think it works because of the honesty of the performances. Cameron Diaz as the mother in the fight of her life, for her daughter’s life, sometimes dips into shrill territory, but otherwise hands in the best dramatic performance of her career. Jason Patric, a fine, underrated actor, brings strength and warmth to the role of the father. There’s also nice supporting work from Alec Baldwin as Anna’s slyly humorous lawyer and Joan Cusack as the conflicted judge, but the two stand outs here are the young actresses Sofia Vassilieva and Abigail Breslin.

Vassilieva (she’s Patricia Arquette’s daughter on Medium) is heartbreaking as the young girl who will likely not live to see her prom and gives old pro Breslin, (she’s 13 with 15 movies to her credit!), usually the scene stealer, a run for her money.    

Based on a bestselling novel of the same name from Jodi Picoult My Sister’s Keeper is the tearjerker of the year. At the screening I was at people were sobbing so loudly it was hard to hear some of the dialogue in the last twenty minutes or so. Trust me; bring a towel to wrap around your neck so you don’t have to sit in a puddle of your own tears.

MY LIFE IN RUINS: 1 DORIC COLUMN

Canadian born Nia Vardalos started 2002 as a struggling actress but finished the year with an Oscar nomination. She was the very definition of an overnight sensation. The low budget movie adaptation of her stage show My Big Fat Greek Wedding was the fifth highest grossing movie of the year and became the highest grossing romantic comedy in history. Then came some missteps. A sitcom based on the movie, which one writer dubbed My Big Fat Mistake, was cancelled after just a handful of episodes and an ill conceived (and unfunny) follow-up called Connie and Carla crashed and burned at the box office. And then nothing. For the last four years multi-plexes have been Vardaless zone, but that changes this weekend when her new film, My Life in Ruins, takes her back to where it all began, the Greek Isles.

Vardalos plays Georgia, a neurotic Greek American tour guide who takes groups of, as she says, “obnoxious Americans, miserable married couples and old people” on day trips through Greece. She’s unhappy, unsatisfied and unlikely to improve her love life while trotting through Greece with groups of elderly American day-trippers. That is until she meets Irv Gordon (Richard Dreyfuss) who gives her a lesson in how to have fun and points out that love may be closer than she thinks.

This has been a good year on film for the ancient world. Angels & Demons showed off some of Rome’s most beautiful attractions, and now My Life in Ruins does the same thing for Greece. Good for tourism, maybe not as good for movie goers.  

You know there’s trouble when one of the lead character’s names is Poopi Cacas and he has a nephew named Doodi Cacas. I’ll tell you, the character Poopi Cacas isn’t the only thing about this movie that is poopi cacas. A sitcom script that tries in vain to mix comedy with heartwarming doesn’t do anyone any favors, the actors or the audience.

Not once, but twice a character says to Vardalos, “You’re not funny. Stop trying.” If only she had taken that advice. She is likeable, and that gives the movie whatever warmth it has, but her broad comic style is better suited to the stage than the screen. Blown up to feature size her performance is revealed to be made up entirely of rolling eyes and quirky facial expressions. It’s like British pantomime with a Hellenic twist.

No one really survives the film with their dignity intact. Richard Dreyfuss, once the star of classics like Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind is firmly entrenched in the “old coot” phase of his career, and one has to wonder if things had worked out for Rachel Dratch on 30 Rock if she would ever even have considered reading this script, let alone sign on to play an unfunny stereotype.

It would be easy (and snarky) to say that My Life in Ruins should have been titled My Career in Ruins, but you never know, this could catch on with the same audience that made My Big Fat Greek Wedding a hit, but if you do go, go for the scenery and not the comedy.

MONSTERS VS. ALIENS: 2 ½ STARS

If you own any DVDs with titles like The Crawling Eye, Mothra or The Leech Woman then a new animated 3-D movie called Monsters Vs. Aliens may be right up your alley. Inspired by the giant bug and alien movies of the 1950s, the new DreamWorks film, starring the voices of Reese Witherspoon and Seth Rogen, is a loving homage to the crazy sci fi films of a simpler age.

When Modesto, California resident Susan Murphy (voice of Witherspoon) is struck by a meteor on her wedding day she suddenly transforms into a 49 ft 11 in creature named Ginormica. Labeled a monster by the American government she is captured by the military and shipped off to a secret government compound that houses other scientific oddities; “It’s an X-file wrapped in a cover-up and deep fried in a conspiracy,” says General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland).

Imagine an Area 51 for creatures like the insect-headed Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie), the Missing Link, a 20,000-year-old gill-man (Will Arnett), B.O.B., a gelatinous organism who began life as a genetically altered tomato (Rogen) and Insectosaurus, a 350 foot grub turned monster by nuclear radiation.

The motley crew of monsters is called into service after a UFO lands and an alien overlord named Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) demands that Earth be turned over to him. “Humans of Earth,” he says, “my quest has lead me to your planet. Give it to me now! You should, in no way, take any of this personally. It's just business. Gallaxhar out.”

The country’s highest ranking government officials—including General Monger and the President (Stephen Colbert)—feel that the monsters are the best bet to save the world from looming destruction!

One of the qualifiers I use when reviewing the new crop of 3-D films is to imagine the same movie without the flashy stereoscopy. If I think the movie would hold up on it’s own without the optical effects then it gets a passing grade. If not, then I knock a star or two off the rating. 3-D should enhance storytelling, not replace it.  

Recently Coraline earned my highest rating. It’s a beautifully animated film that uses 3-D to augment an already compelling movie. My Bloody Valentine on the other hand, took a bit of a smack down because it mistook special effects for a plot. Monsters Vs. Aliens falls somewhere between the two.
The animation and 3-D in the film is top notch. Unfortunately the outstanding tech side isn’t supported by a strong enough story or interesting enough voice work to place this in the same category as other DreamWorks movies like Kung Fu Panda or Shrek.

With humor aimed at kids, the kitsch factor at movie geeks (like me) and action for teens and young adults Monsters Vs. Aliens is a warm tribute to the mad science b-movies of the 50s that gets much of the tone right, but like the pictures that inspired it, is more fun to imagine than actually sit through. 

MISS MARCH: 0 STARS

According to Wikipedia the definition of coma is “a profound state of unconsciousness.” They can be caused by head trauma or any number of phenomenon and they are, as The Smiths sang in their top twenty hit Girlfriend in a Coma, “really serious.” They are also an unlikely inspiration for all manner of pop culture confections from pop songs—both Guns and Roses and Stone Temple Pilots have sung about them—to this weekend’s Miss March, a comedy about a twenty-something who comes out of a four-year coma to find his high-school sweetheart has become a centerfold in Playboy magazine.

This is what I call a Farch Comedy, the kind of movie that only seems to be released in the vast wasteland that is the February-March stretch. It’s a movie so unyieldingly unfunny, so relentlessly insipid it makes Dumb and Dumber seem like Les Amants magnifiques.

Starring two guys you’ve never heard of, and likely won’t hear much from in future, Miss March is one of the most annoying films to come down the pike in a long while.

Instead wasting time by writing a proper review for this piece of crap I have decided to simply transcribe the notes I took during the screening, word by word, minute by minute as I endured this chunk of cinematic hell.

7:15 pm “Utterly without charm...”
7:21 pm “Has all the production value of a Platinum Blonde rock video...”
7:34 pm “The woman next to me said, ‘This is disgusting...’”
7:38 pm “The only thing I can think of more annoying than the character of Tucker would be if James Blunt ever became a telemarketer...”
7:40 pm “This isn’t a story; it’s an idea... and a bad one at that.”
7:45 pm “Still utterly without charm...”
7:55 pm “First walk out. Two women just packed up and left.”
7:56 pm “Buy eggs and milk on way home...”
8:05 pm “The most famous person in the movie—other than Hef—is Craig Robinson, the guy from The Office who was arrested last year for possession of methamphetamine. I wonder what he was on when he agreed to do this movie...”
8:08 pm “Hefner looks like the Crypt Keeper and is obviously reading form cue cards.”
8:25 pm “There is a cringe worthy Crying Game-style revelation that’ll put you off drinking straws forever.”
8:28 pm “I can feel the will to live slipping away...”

Miss March is a bad movie. It’s so bad I had to create new words to describe it: “sucktacular” and “badriffic.” It’s the kind of movie that mistakes asking a formerly comatose man, “How’s that atrophy coming?,” as a cutting edge gag. It’s gag worthy all right, but not in the way the filmmakers intended.

MILK: 4 STARS

Anyone who thinks that history does not repeat itself need look no further than the new Gus Van Sant film Milk for proof to the contrary. As the recent vote on California’s Proposition 8 proposal to “change the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry,” hangs in the air the movie’s story of San Francisco Board of Supervisors  Harvey Milk’s 1978 battle against Proposition 6 brings into focus how little has changed in the fight for gay rights. Dubbed the Briggs Initiative, Milk defeated the law which would have banned gays and lesbians from working in California's public schools.  

Sean Penn plays the real-life Harvey Milk, a native New Yorker who, just after his fortieth birthday left behind his conservative, closeted life on the East coast for the more freewheeling San Francisco. “I’m forty years old,” he says, “and I haven’t done a thing I’m proud of.” When he and his lover Scott Smith (James Franco) bump up against the Eureka Valley Business Association’s “no gays allowed” policy Milk is pushed toward political activism. After several failed attempts at running for office, (and adopting the unofficial title of The Mayor of Castro Street), he becomes America’s first openly gay man to be elected to public office after winning a seat on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 1977. His meteoric rise, though, is cut short the following year when he and Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) are assassinated by former city supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin).

In this politically aware time Gus Van Sant has made a biopic about a an important political figure that pays less attention to the biography aspect and more to the issues that came to define Harvey Milk’s life. We don’t meet Harvey until the eve of his fortieth birthday, just as his political awareness was starting to blossom. Eight years later he was dead, so, unlike the recent W., Oliver Stone’s look at George W. Bush’s life, which dug into the president’s past, Milk focuses its energy on the bigger picture of gay rights and how Milk became an icon and martyr for gay pride. Van Sant sets the stage for Harvey’s rise to prominence, effectively creating a sense of time and place with the liberal use of archival news footage and careful attention to 1970s period details. Van Sant’s use of grainy film stock completes the illusion, making this look like an artifact from the 1970s.   

Penn fully embraces Milk, from the thick New York accent that characterized his speech to the goofy grin that endeared the real-life activist to his supporters, both gay and straight. (“I know I’m not what you expected,” he would say, grinning, to straight audiences, “I left my high heels at home…”) It’s a strong Oscar worthy performance, but this isn’t a movie about the performances and people as much as it is about ideas. Harvey Milk has already been the subject of several books and the Academy Award-winning documentary feature, The Times of Harvey Milk, so there is no mystery left to the story, but by focusing on the issues and Milk’s galvanizing fight for equality Milk achieves much more than a run-of-the-mill biopic could ever hope for. It’s about passion; it’s about when the ordinary man could bring about change with personal conviction, a bullhorn and no money. It’s about a man who didn’t consider himself to be a candidate, but part of a movement. It’s about a time when a community organizer could make a difference. On that last point, at least, it seems that history does indeed repeat itself.

MADAGASCAR ESCAPE 2 AFRICA:
MOVIE: 2 STARS
PENGUINS: 4 STARS
TOTAL: 3 STARS

You had to see this one coming. Any time a movie grosses 500 million dollars a sequel can’t be far behind. So from the same company that brought us Shrek 2 and 3 and the upcoming Shrek 4-D comes Madagascar Escape 2 Africa which sees all the original Central Park Zoo creatures—Alex the Lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer), Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and, of course, the penguins take another road trip.

As we rejoin the New York-raised zoo animals they are still marooned in Madagascar. When the penguins find an old plane it looks like they might be able to travel back home to America. Unfortunately the plane crash lands far short of their target. This time they end up stranded in Africa, “our ancestral crib,” as Marty the Zebra calls it. They soon discover that despite long lost relatives and some unexpected romance that the African jungle is a much different place than the concrete jungle they’re used to.

Madagascar Escape 2 Africa isn’t a bad kid’s flick, but it suffers from the usual symptoms of sequelitis. It isn’t quite as funny as the first movie, the story feels padded, even at a compact 89 minutes and the situation seems a bit too familiar. Not that any of that will matter to the little ones once they’ve seen the fun supporting cast.

The leads, save for Chris Rock’s hyperactive zebra, are rather bland, so luckily they are supported by lively and colorful secondary characters. Sacha Baron Cohen of Borat fame plays King Julien, the dramatic lemur monarch. His slapstick antics should amuse kids but his sly double entendres are aimed directly at adults. He has a funny, and possibly slightly inappropriate, line about almonds and a silver platter that’ll fly high over the tot’s heads but wake up their parents. In fact, the movie is peppered with lines referring to Darwinism and union trade talks that are clearly calculated to widen the movie’s appeal to all members of the family.

Kids will like the lemur, but they will love the penguins. Penguins are the new dogs. Not since the heyday of dog movies like Benji and Lassie has one species won over the hearts of so many. March of the Penguins was a left field hit a few years ago and an R-rated parody of that movie, Farce of the Penguins, soon followed. The little furry birds have also appeared in Happy Feet, the 3-2-1 Penguins series and even something called Penguins Behind Bars. Everybody loves penguins, and in Madagascar Escape 2 Africa their gangster shenanigans are the highlight of the movie. Next—a third Madagascar movie is already in the works—hopefully Dreamworks will pull back on the bland Alex the Lion character and focus on the penguins.   

Madagascar Escape 2 Africa is a family friendly movie with slapstick for the kids and slightly more sophisticated jokes for the adults.

MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA: 2 ½ STARS

I often find Spike Lee’s work very frustrating. I usually like fifty percent of each movie, but then there’s the remaining fifty percent that just infuriates me. It’s not bad filmmaking; it’s just unnecessary filmmaking. While the stuff that’s good is really, really good I find a lot of material in his films that doesn’t further the story, that is preachy, and simply doesn’t belong there. At almost three hours his new film, the World War II drama Miracle at St. Anna, is simply the latest in a long line of Lee’s films that could benefit from judicious editing.

Based on the novel of the same name by James McBride, Miracle at St. Anna tells the story of four African-American soldiers from the all-black 92nd Infantry Division fighting in the Italian Campaign. When one of them risks his life to save an Italian boy the four get trapped near a small Tuscan village.

The bones of the story were, in part, inspired by the August 1944 Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre wherein hundreds of Italian men and women were slaughtered by the Waffen-SS in retaliation to Italian partisan activity.

The film starts string with an extended clip from the John Wayne war movie The Longest Day. As Lee’s camera pulls back we see an older African-American man watching the movie in his apartment. “Pilgrim,” he mumbles to himself and the television, “we fought for this country too…” It’s a powerful moment, followed by a stunner of a scene set in the early 1980s that sets up the murder mystery subplot that bookends the World War II scenes that make up the bulk of the film.

Unfortunately once the film settles in WWII Italy it loses much of its steam. The story of the Buffalo Soldiers is an important and often overlooked story but Lee stretches the narrative past its breaking point, adding in a mystical element involving a statue head—the gritty realism of the war scenes are at odds with the supernatural aura surrounding the head—a Cinema Paradiso-esque child and characters that seem sketched rather than richly drawn. The movie, at two hours and forty-five minutes, feels overlong, but may have worked better had Lee given us some really compelling characters.

The four young actors portraying the soldiers, Laz Alonso, Michael Ealy, Omar Benson Miller and Derek Luke, hand in good performances—Benson Miller is particularly effective as the gentle giant Train—but are stymied by a script that presents them as plot devices or points of view rather than fully rounded people.

Miracle at St. Anna has some great moments. An early battle scene with the 92nd Division crossing a river is gripping, the massacre at St. Anna shocking and a claustrophobic clash between the Buffalo Soldiers and Nazi troops in an Italian village beautifully shot and edited. But for every high point Miracle at St. Anna has two more that seem out of place or inappropriate and I don’t want to even discuss the film’s final scene, a bit of magic realism that will leave many an audience member scratching their heads.

Spike Lee came to this material with a noble purpose—to shine a light on an underreported part of WWII history—but his heavy hand with the story undermines his good intentions. 

MASTERS OF HORROR SEASON TWO BOX SET:
PACKAGING: 4 STARS
DVDS: 3 STARS
TOTAL: 3 ½ STARS

The video store can be a daunting place. Thousands of discs, all in uniform sizes and colorful cases can boggle the mind. Occasionally a snappily designed box can cut through the quagmire, however. So it is with the Masters of Horror Season Two Box Set human skull packaging. The Skull Box leaps off the rack and catches your eye, and if you’re a horror fan that’s a good thing.

For the uninitiated The Masters of Horror is an anthology television series with each episode featuring a one-hour film helmed by a famous horror film director. Season one highlighted the work of genre legends Joe Dante, John Carpenter and Dario Argento. To commemorate the end of season two Anchor Bay has released the thirteen episodes in a ghoulish box set with DVDs where the brains should be.

Some of the same directors make return appearances—Argento, Tobe Hooper and John Landis all come back for more—but welcome newcomers include Norio Tsuruta who adapts Dream Cruise from a short story of the same name by Japan’s Steven King, Koji Suzuki and The Washingtonians from Romeo is Bleeding director Peter Medak. 
  
Not all are successful. The V Word from Ernest Dickerson, despite a fun performance from horror legend Michael Ironside, and Tobe Hooper’s The Damned Thing both start with great promise but wither before the end credits roll. Overall, however, the production value is of feature film quality, the stories unique—Cannibalistic Founding Fathers! Merciless raccoons!—and the set offers up an antidote to people who think that modern horror is dull and unimaginative. 

THE MUMMY: THE TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR: ZERO STARS!!!

We’ve been lucky this year. The summer season has provided a bumper crop of blockbusters from Iron Man in May to July’s mega chartbuster The Dark Knight which shattered every attendance record known to man. The good times had to stop sometime, though, and with the release of The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor they come to a screeching halt. Seven years after the last installment of the Brendan Fraser franchise The Dragon Emperor proves that bigger and louder is not necessarily better when it comes to summer entertainment.

In the new Mummy movie treasure hunter Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser) and family—wife Evelyn (Maria Bello taking Rachel Weisz’s place), their son Alex (Luke Ford who is actually only 13 years younger than Fraser and 14 years younger than Bello) and hapless brother-in-law Jonathan Carnahan (John Hannah)—are in Asia and once again run afoul of ancient supernatural forces when Alex awakens a wicked 2000 year-old Emperor Mummy (Jet Li). The evil one’s plan is double-pronged; he wants to use his army of undead warriors to conquer the world while getting revenge on the sorceress who cursed him two millennia ago.

Very loosely inspired by the 1932 Universal Boris Karloff classic the first two Mummy films were actually comedies disguised as horror. In the place of real scares were family-friendly thrills more in line with vintage Saturday-matinee horror-adventure classics than anything that’ll really send shivers down your spine. The third installment follows suit, except the jokes aren’t funny, the thrills are non-existent and worst of all, there’s no actual mummies. I guess that saved on the movie’s tissue budget but a movie titled The Mummy should have at least one character wrapped head to toe in toilet paper.

As big a waste of money and effort as we have seen on the big screen for some time, The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor fails on almost every level. Usually Brendan Fraser can muster some goofy charm as he walks through these low-rent Indiana Jones rip offs, but here he’s so disengaged you can almost see him reaching for the pay check while spouting bad one liners and battling blue-screen baddies. Maria Bello does a bad Rachel Weisz impression featuring the worst faux English accent since Kevin Costner created his own unique dialect in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Top billed star Jet Li has very little screen time and the rest of the cast are so bland they barely rate a mention.

In a summer where computer generated images on screen have become passé—both The Dark Knight and Hellboy favor practical effects to baffle the eye over CGI wizardry—The Dragon Emperor relies too heavily on fake looking binary code fabrications. The “wow factor” of CGI dried up long ago and the movie’s cheesy looking, but helpful Yetis and other computer created creations leave the film feeling old-fashioned and out-of-date.

Just like the evil mummies who cause so much trouble in this franchise The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor proves that some things should never be resurrected.

MAMA MIA!:
FIRST HOUR: 1 ½ STARS
LAST THIRTY MINUTES: 3 STARS
TOTAL: 2 ¼ STARS

Imagine if James Bong burst into song while pummeling the bad guys; or if Sophie’s Choice was a musical. Picture that and you’ll get how surreal it is to see Pierce Brosnan and fourteen time Oscar nominee (and two time winner) Meryl Streep prancing about a Greek Island singing the songs of 70s pop group ABBA.

Mama Mia! (their exclamation mark, not mine), the big screen adaptation of the wildly popular Broadway musical—apparently 30,000 people worldwide take in the stage show every single day—is a strange spectacle so unrelentingly sunny in its outlook viewers should take some heavy duty SPF 85 to the theater to prevent sunstroke.

In the film Donna (Streep) is a free spirited owner of a rundown B&B on the Greek Mediterranean on the alleged site of Aphrodite’s fountain of love. Twenty years previous she had summer romances with a trio of men—businessman Sam Carmichael (Pierce Brosnan), the uptight Harry Bright (Colin Firth) and slacker Bill (Stellan Skarsgard)—one of whom is the father of her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried).

After Sophie reads her Mom’s tell-all diary she realizes she has three possible fathers and becomes obsessed with finding the right man to walk her down the aisle at her upcoming wedding to Sky (Dominic Cooper). Unbeknownst to her mother, she forges invitations in Donna’s name to all three men. When the three arrive on the island, unaware of each other or Sophie’s existence, they spend the next twenty-four hours rekindling old romances, starting new ones and randomly bursting into song. Of course, Sophie’s choice is to decide which of these men is her real dad.

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd, who helmed the original stage show, Mama Mia! is a light and frothy confection that feels like a mix of High School Musical and Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 circa 1976. The silly story is buoyed by chart toppers by ABBA like I Have a Dream, Money, Money, Money and the title track but is let down by the director who fails to take advantage of the film’s beautiful island location with it’s crystal blue water, palm trees and clear skies. Instead she chooses to shoot the movie as though she was mounting a stage show. Maybe a better director—maybe, Julie Taymor’s Mama Mia!—could have opened this up some and made it more visually exciting.

That’s a picky little point though when there is so much else going on. Despite its idyllic vacation setting this is a movie that doesn’t know how to relax. If Meryl Streep isn’t dancing, she’s singing, if she isn’t singing she doing physical comedy. Ditto for the rest of the cast. As they say, if everyday was Christmas you wouldn’t appreciate it as much and the same is true at the movies when every second of a film is jammed with stimulus.

The unyielding pace mars the first hour of the film, cramming in too many songs, too many pratfalls and too much exposition. What probably works very well on stage with real actors loses some of its oomph when translated to the screen, although the abandon of the film’s Dancing Queen number is infectious and was probably a showstopper on the boards as it is in the movie.

It pays off, though, in the last half hour when, despite myself, I began to tap my foot to the songs and give in to the film’s cheery charms. The songs bring back a nostalgia for a simpler time when pop music was more fun than it is today—there isn’t a hint of gansta rap or emo in Mama Mia!—and the audience I saw it with were clapping and singing along with each musical number.

Mama Mia! starts off fluffy as Cool Whip on Jello, but develops a wistful feel in the last thirty minutes as the relationship between Sophie and her mother and three dads deepens. This is largely due to the performance of Meryl Streep.

Anyone who only regards Streep as a capital “S” serious actress may have to revise their opinion after seeing her play air guitar, sing to a fish or do a bang-on Celine Dion impression in The Winner Takes it All.

A project like Mama Mia! is on the opposite end of the spectrum from the films that made her famous, and even though this is likely part of her Robert De Niro Retirement Plan—she seems to have reached the juncture in her career where she leaves the interesting roles behind and takes only high ticket jobs—she commits completely and hands in a vibrant, energetic performance that is the emotional core of the movie.

I wish I could say the same thing about Pierce Brosnan. He’s fine in the film until he opens his mouth to sing. His vocal performance on S.O.S. is the kind of singing that people generally do when they think no one is listening and puts to rest the myth that all Irish people can sing.

Mama Mia! is a crowd pleasing confection that, for better or worse, will have you humming Dancing Queen as you exit the theater.  

THE MUMMY / THE MUMMY RETURNS DELUX DVDs: 3 ½ STARS

I haven’t seen The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the latest entry in the jocular action adventure series starring Brendan Fraser as a treasure hunter who constantly runs afoul of ancient supernatural forces yet—you’d get cranky too if Fraser woke you up after a 3000 year nap—but to get primed I did check out first two parts of the trilogy, The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, now out on deluxe editions DVDs.

Inspired by the 1932 Universal Boris Karloff classic both films are actually comedies disguised as horror. In the place of real scares are family-friendly thrills more in line with vintage Saturday-matinee horror-adventure classics than anything that’ll really send shivers down your spine.

In both films Brendan Fraser, with sidekicks Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) a clumsy yet intelligent Egyptologist and Jonathan Carnahan (John Hannah, the only actor other than Fraser to appear in all three Mummy movies) as Evelyn's bumbling, but money-hungry older brother, unwittingly unleash a 3,000-year-old Mummy’s curse and must, like a poor man’s Indiana Jones, do battle with the Wizard of Gauze and his minions.

As Rick O'Connell Canadian-born Brendan Fraser’s mission is to “Rescue the damsel in distress, kill the bad guy, save the world,” and he anchors the film with a goofy charm balanced with just enough heroic swagger to effectively echo the Saturday matinee stars the film pays tribute to.

The jokes are on the level of Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy but on the upside both films feature outlandish, but lavish special effects.

On the downside both films are a tad too long and occasionally veer into cheesy melodramatics, but both are thrill rides that will keep the eye entertained—the bad guy transforms into a sandstorm!—even if they don’t engage the brain.

MY WINNIPEG: 4 STARS

According to the new Guy Maddin film, My Winnipeg, his hometown has ten times more sleepwalkers than anywhere else in the world. That’s just one of the many details that emerge in this black and white love letter to the town he grew up in and still calls home. I don’t know if Winnipeg really is the sleepwalking capitol of the world, or how, exactly, one would set about to prove such a statistic, but facts aren’t the point of this lovingly crafted and beautiful film.

With the release of My Winnipeg Maddin has done two things. Firstly he’s crafted his most accessible film to date. His previous films—The Saddest Music in the World, a fantasy set in Winnipeg during the Great Depression, where a beer baroness organizes a contest to find the saddest song ever written and Brand Upon the Brain!, a silent movie about the power of memory to name a couple—usually set critic’s knees to knocking but have limited appeal outside of rep cinemas and art house theatres. My Winnipeg, while not exactly mainstream, could and should find a wider audience than any of his previous efforts.

Secondly he has stretched the definition of documentary. My Winnipeg’s deft mix of fact and fiction, bizarre recreations and Maddin’s memories make for a portrait of the town that has more to do with sense memory than information you’d find at the Winnipeg Tourist Bureau. While the facts may be in short supply what emerges is a fully rounded portrait of a unique city.

From horses encased in frozen river ice to the rides of the Happyland Amusement Park and the ultravixens of St. Mary’s Academy Maddin presents a deeply personal and heartfelt film that captures the spirit of Winnipeg. 

MEN IN BLACK II

In most cases sequels are the work of the devil. It is rare that the second kick at the can compare favourably with the original, although several films have managed to muster up enough inventiveness to keep things interesting. The Bride of Frankenstein and The Godfather II are examples of movies that equal or surpass their namesakes. Sadly MIB II is no Godfather II, heck, it’s barely Police Academy II. The first film was one of the funniest, original and entertaining comedies to come down the pike in quite a while, which makes the failure of the second one so much more profound.  MIB II seems tired – almost as tired as Will Smith’s lyrics to the movie’s theme song – and vaguely familiar, like we’ve seen it all before, only better. It’s the dumb younger brother who can’t seem to measure up to his older, brighter and better looking sibling. Smith and Jones fit their roles like finely tailored suits, but aren’t given much to do. Even the jokes feel dated. When Frank the talking dog cranks the radio and sings along to Who Let the Dogs Out I cracked a smile, but wasn’t that same gag in a car commercial about two years ago? The special effects are good just not that interesting. Only Smith’s elaborate fight scene against a cloned flying bad guy is truly inspired. Keep your thirteen dollars locked away in your wallet, and rent the original Men In Black on video instead.

MEN WITH BROOMS

Is there anything that Paul Gross can’t do? He co-wrote, produced, directed, wrote some of the score and stars in Men With Brooms. And he’s also good looking. But his greatest achievement might be making a movie with the central theme of curling that is hilarious, poignant and completely entertaining. The curling is used as a metaphor for life, and while we’ve seen baseball and hockey used in a similar way in other movies, Gross loads up MWB with enough great performances, gratuitous beaver shots (the flat tailed kind) and Canadian in-jokes to create something unique. Look for the Tragically Hip in a cameo appearance.    

MILE ZERO

Mile Zero is a film about male vulnerability. Michael Riley plays Derek, a psychologically brittle man who lets jealousy devour him, eventually pushing him to break the law. It’s a family drama about a family gone wrong. Riley excels in his role, as does Connor Widdows, the young boy who plays Derek’s son Wil. I could have used a little less of the home movie flashback scenes, but they did reinforce the sense of loss Derek was experiencing after his wife kicked him out of the house. It’s heart wrenching stuff, and while you can’t condone Derek’s actions, Riley makes him human enough that the viewer can at least understand his behaviour.

MINORITY REPORT

Based on a 1956 short story by sci-fi guru Phillip K. Dick, Minority Report is the first collaboration between two of Hollywood’s most powerful figures, Tom Cruise and director Steven Spielberg. Best described as cerebral science fiction, the movie is a feast for the mind as well as the eyes. The script tackles complicated moral issues while astounding us with spectacular action sequences. Spielberg has created a dazzling future world of hard glass and talking billboards (conveniently allowing for shameless product placement in the movie), but doesn’t get lost in the special effects and forget to tell the story. Tom Cruise plays police chief John Anderton, head of the Pre-Crime Unit. His specialty is using a series of high tech computers and three human ‘precogs’ to determine when crimes will happen, and stop them before they happen. Then one day he is accused of a committing a murder in the future, goes on the lam, and is hunted by the same people he once worked with. It’s not really a “who-dunnit,” as much as it is a “will-he-do-it.”  Cruise does a nice job of carrying the action, but it is Max Von Sydow as his friend and mentor Director Burgess who adds depth. Once again, after being nominated for an Oscar as the mute Hattie in Sweet and Lowdown, English actress Samantha Morton proves that she can outperform most of the actresses in Hollywood, and barely say a word on screen. Minority Report is smart, action packed and thrilling fun. Not only one of the best films of the summer, but one of the best of the year.

MONSOON WEDDING

In Monsoon Wedding director Mira Nair expertly knits together a joyous, sprawling story about a wedding, an affair, and a love-sick wedding planner. Nair is aiming her camera at life in modern day India, but still holds onto many of the traditions of Bollywood filmmaking. Monsoon Wedding is full of life – interesting characters, bright swirling colours, fabulous Indian music – and like one of Nair’s previous efforts, the Oscar nominated Salaam Bombay, seems poised to break through the cultural marketplace and become a mainstream North American hit. Also check out the marvellous score by Winnipeg-born Mychael Danna.

MR. DEEDS

If you liked Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore and Big Daddy you’ll probably enjoy Adam Sandler’s latest, Mr. Deeds. If you enjoy people falling down, bad poetry, and spastic colon jokes, then yes, this movie may be for you. If you still laugh at the same things that cracked you up when you were fourteen, then this movie is for you. Everyone else, though, should take note that Mr. Deeds is extremely juvenile, and while it raises the occasional laugh, they are too few and far between to qualify calling this film a comedy. Cult actors John Turturro and Steve Buscemi are both memorable in quirky roles that showcase their comedic sides. As Emilio the Butler, Turturro delivers his lines with the timing of a master, and makes great use of sight gags. He’s a scene stealer. Buscemi plays the pizza-loving Crazy Eyes, continuing his tradition of cameo appearances in Sandler’s films. I can’t figure out what happened to Winona Ryder here. It’s almost like she has forgotten how to act. As love interest Pam Dawson she turns in one of the worst onscreen performances of the year. I don’t want to kick her while she’s down, but for someone as accomplished as she is, this is truly awful work.  

MURDER BY NUMBERS   

Murder by Numbers comes off as a re-imagination of the Leopold and Leob story, crossbred with an episode of Murder She Wrote. Sandra Bullock is Cassie Mayweather, a veteran detective paired with Sam (Ben Chaplin) an inexperienced by-the-book cop to investigate the death of a middle aged woman whose mutilated corpse was found in the woods. The cops have little in common, so, of course, they fall into bed from time to time, only to bicker and fight during working hours. So far we’ve seen all this before. The thing that sets this apart from the run-of-the-mill murder mystery is the attention to the police procedural details, and the performances of Ryan Gostling and Michael Pitt as the two intellectual teenaged killers. Gostling’s Richard is a master manipulator, while Pitt’s Justin is the brains of the duo. Like the Leopold and Leob (the true-life inspiration for the Hitchcock movie Rope) the pair concoct the perfect crime, randomly killing someone without leaving any clues behind. Gostling is a charismatic actor who is able to ride the fine line between menacing and sexy, while Pitt (best known as Tommy Gnosis Hedwig and the Angry Inch) has the sensitive tortured-soul act down to a science. Directed by the steady hand of Barbet Schroeder, Murder by Numbers is a morality play about how crime doesn’t pay, no matter how smart you think you are.

MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING

This is a charmingly told tale of Toula, a frumpy Greek woman who meets Ian, the man of her dreams. The only problem is, he’s not Greek, a detail that doesn’t go over well with her tightly knit family. Along the way Toula’s family learns to accept Ian; Ian learns to love the lust for life his new extended family possesses and Toula learns about herself. Based on a one-woman play, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is pretty standard stuff, but told with such wit that it is virtually impossible not to get swept along for the ride. Nia Vardalos as Toula anchors the whole film, while a supporting cast of colourful characters swirl around her. Of particular note are Michael Constantine as her father, (a man so proud of his heritage that he can trace any word back to its origins in Greek… even the word kimono!) and Andrea Martin as crazy Aunt Voula, a loveable but overbearing relative who has an opinion about everything. Toronto residents will also enjoy playing “Spot the Locations” as much of the film was shot on The Danforth in the heart of the city’s Greek village.

The Matador

The characters in The Matador are more interesting than the story itself. Pierce Brosnan plays Julian Noble a jaded hit man, or “facilitator of fatalities” who meets Danny, a family man with a struggling business, played by Greg Kinnear, in a hotel bar. They become an odd couple—Julian needs a confidant while Danny needs distraction from his professional and personal losing streak.

The real revelation here is Brosnan’s performance as Julian, the hit man who develops confidence problems. We have seen Brosnan as the slickly comic private eye Remington Steele on television, the sophisticated James Bond and even as the suave jewel thief in The Thomas Crown Affair but until now we have never seen him in Beatle boots and a Speedo traipsing across a hotel lobby. His Julian is a manic creation—amoral, rude and unlike Bond, the character that has defined his career for the last decade, unshaven. With this one performance Brosnan has entered a new phase in his career, effortlessly leaving the urbane Bond behind.   

MADE OF HONOR: 2 ½ STARS

Remember My Best Friend’s Wedding? Julia Roberts played Julianne, a woman who realizes she is deeply in love with her best friend Michael (Dermot Mulroney) after he announces that he is to be married to another woman. Play switcheroo with the gender, update the wardrobe, add in the Highland Games and you have Made of Honor, the latest film from Grey’s Anatomy actor Patrick Dempsey.

Made of Honor may not have originality on its side but it does provide a few laughs and some beautiful scenery.

In this topsy-turvy reexamination of My Best Friend’s Wedding Dempsey is Tom, the kind of rich playboy who only exists in rom coms. He’s a unrepentant womanizer, wealthy beyond belief and always seems to be able to find a parking spot on the busiest of Manhattan streets. His best friend is Hannah (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’s Michelle Monaghan) is the Ginger to his Fred, the AC to his DC. They’re able to stay friends because they have no romantic bond.
 
That is until Hannah travels to Scotland on a six week business trip. Absence makes Tom’s heart grow fonder, and he decides to ask her to marry him as soon as she hits the tarmac back in the States. There’s only one problem, she returns from her trip with a fiancée in tow and plans to move to Scotland with her newly found and wealthy mate. Fearing he is about to lose the love of his life, Tom, who has accepted Hannah’s invitation to be her maid of honor, tries to derail the wedding and win Hannah’s hand.  

Made of Honor has all the usual romantic comedy ingredients—the prerequisite New York setting, madcap misunderstandings, the big moment of realization that person A can’t possibly live without person B and some beautiful exotic scenery. We’ve seen it all before in countless other movies, but Made of Honor pulls it all together in, not exactly a memorable way, but at least in a frothy enough way to make the audience I saw it with ooh and ah and make the appropriate romantic comedy cooing sounds during the screening.

Much of the success of the film has to do with Patrick Dempsey who seems born to star in these kinds of confections. He’s good looking, has a way with comedy and doesn’t mind doing a pratfall or two. Co-star Monaghan isn’t given much to do other than to react to Dempsey’s antics, but she is a presence and the camera loves her.

Made of Honor is an amiable, but ultimately forgettable rom com that relies just a bit too heavily on the conventions of the genre.

MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY: 2 ½ STARS

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day has a lot going for it. An appealing cast headed by Oscar winner Frances McDormand and nominee Amy Adams. Beautiful sets, costumes and an unerring eye for the beauty of prewar WWII England. Unfortunately those virtues are wasted on a story that can’t make up its mind whether it is a farce, a romance or a poignant study of the effects of age in difficult times. As a result it is all those things, but is less than the sum of its parts.

Calling itself a “fairy tale for adults” we join Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day just as the titular character, Miss Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand), is being fired from yet another job as nanny. She’s a difficult employee who isn’t good with kids, but babysitting is the only job she can get in pre-war London. If only she could hang on to the job long enough to collect a paycheck she’d be in better shape. Destitute, she wrangles her way into the job of “social secretary” for an air headed starlet named Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams). Delysia isn’t above using her feminine charms to further her career, and when a quick thinking Miss Pettigrew sorts out an inconvenient bottleneck of suitors at Delysia’s door she takes the dowdy nanny on a wild twenty four hour ride in which relationships will form and fall apart, war will start and an era comes to an end.

It’s a fanciful story, well acted—although the leading men are simply bland white knight types and little more—and steadily directed but its unwillingness to settle on a style, whether it is manic comedy or poignant character study. In the end it is neither.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day does have its charms. McDormand has corner on these kind of sad sack frumpy characters and she manages to pull the best out of Miss Pettigrew. Adams, the new Hollywood “it” girl, is all wide eyed effervescence in a performance that, thankfully, deepens as the film enters it final moments.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is an almost instantly forgettable confection—fun for a fleeting moment—but ultimately is a film whose ambitions exceeded its reach.

MAD MONEY: 1 STAR

Mad Money comes with quite a pedigree. Director Callie Khouri wrote Thelma and Louise. Star Diane Keaton is an Oscar winning actress with credits that include The Godfather, Annie Hall and Reds. Co-star Queen Latifah is an Oscar nominee and was the first hip hop artist to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Supporting actor Ted Danson is best known for his role as Sam Malone on Cheers and once won Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series from the American Comedy Awards. So you’d think with all that know-how, all those years of experience, that this team would be able to make a good movie.

You’d be wrong.

Mad Money, is a heist movie in the vein of Ocean’s 11, except the snazzy suits, stylish setting, most of the entertainment value and all the good looking boys are gone. In their place is Diane Keaton as yuppie housewife Bridget Cardigan, a woman used to the finer things in life who must return to the workforce when her executive husband is downsized. Faced with mounting debt she is forced to take a job as a janitor at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.

Realizing the Sisyphean task of trying to pay off her debts on her meager salary she teams up with two other employees—Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes—to steal worn-out money (hiding it in their underwear!) that has been taken out of circulation and is about to be destroyed.

Rich people on the skids have been the subject of a lot of movies and Mad Money greedily looks to them for inspiration. It is a caper film like Fun with Dick and Jane, but without the Dick. Or the fun. It’s aspires to the social comment of How to Beat the High Co$t of Living without actually seriously—comedies can have serious undertones too!— exploring any social issues. “Don’t get greedy” is about as deep as it gets here.

Don’t get me wrong it doesn’t take social context in order for me to get the joke, but this movie could use some perspective to deepen the humor. Why can’t Bridget get a job? Why is her husband unemployable? Let us get to know the characters and set up a real reason for us to care about them and the movie’s humor will have much more resonance. As it is Bridget and her husband are just formerly rich people who’ll do anything to keep up with the Jones and as a result, not very interesting.
But then again, there’s nothing much interesting about this movie. The story, although based on true events, is slight and the attempts to pump it up by introducing romance feel manipulative and sentimental, not sexy or interesting. It doesn’t feel worthy of a big screen treatment, and it comes as no surprise that it is based on a British made-for-television movie called Hot Money.  

The title says it all—you’ll be mad if you spend your money on this film.

THE MIST: 3 ½ STARS

If you’ve watched old Roger Corman movies like Attack of the Crab Monsters and thought, ‘I wonder what Corman would have done with a few extra dollars in the budget?’ well, wonder no more. The Mist, the latest Stephen King literary adaptation to hit the big screen is Roger Corman on steroids. Gone are the papier-mâché creatures—they’ve been replaced by expensive high tech computer generated giant bugs—but make no mistake, despite the tarted-up effects and big budget, The Mist is a good old-fashioned grindhouse film.

The set-up is simple. The day after a violent thunderstorm a mysterious a pea-soup fog envelopes the small east coast town of Bridgton, Maine trapping a couple of dozen people in the local supermarket. Outside they hear the screams of people not lucky enough to be indoors when the mist settled. Soon the grocery store takes on a Lord of the Flies vibe as the survivors start to splinter off into different sects, each with a plan for survival. When giant bugs materialize out of the mist and attack it’s everyone for themselves.

Based on a 1980 short story by Stephen King first published in the horror anthology Dark Forces, The Mist, like all good exploitation films, is remarkably timely. In his third adaptation of a Stephen King work director / screenwriter Frank Darabont plays up a storyline involving a fundamentalist Christian woman (Marcia Gay Harden) whose extreme ideas push the desperate group into uncharted and dangerous territory. While watching her twisted logic push the mist’s hostages to violence, one can’t help but equate her rants to the kind of fundamentalism that has poisoned the minds and actions of so many people around the world today.

Political statements aside, Darabont clearly loves the horror genre and knows how to slowly build tension until the audience is white-knuckling it waiting for the payoff. Once inside the supermarket he not only creates interesting dynamics between the trapped townsfolk, but also allows a feeling a dread to settle over the proceedings, punctuated only by bursts of breathless action.

Like the great grindhouse flicks of yore The Mist is a crowd-pleaser. Well defined characters—particularly the heroic Thomas Jane and over-the-top Marcia Gay Harden—and energetic direction had the audience I saw it with hooting and hollering at the screen. It’s entertaining and the best horror film of the year. Roger Corman would approve.

MARGO AT THE WEDDING: 3 ½ STARS

The decision to go see Margot at the Wedding shouldn’t be based on the caliber of the performances, the direction or the script, they’re all first rate. No, the decision to see this movie must be based on one factor: Do you want to spend 90 minutes of your life with some of the most disagreeable, despicable characters ever created for the screen? This crowd makes the people in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe look like Theodore Tugboat.  

The second film from Squid and the Whale director Noah Baumbach is a study in neurosis. Pauline (Baumbach's wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh) is estranged from her sister Margot (Nicole Kidman), a successful New York based author. The pair put their differences aside when Margot and son come to celebrate Pauline’s wedding at her remote country house. Margot, an outspoken raw nerve of a woman takes an instant dislike to Pauline’s intended, an out of work artist played by Jack Black. For the next ninety-minutes or so Margot plays mind games with the fiancée, her husband, her lover, her sister, the hillbilly neighbors and even her own son.

Baumbach, who seems to specialize in “families in crisis” films, has created an emotionally brutal movie brimming with keen observations on insecurity, neurosis and the deep vein of dysfunction that runs throughout this family. While occasionally cringe-inducing and painful to watch, it is never less than compelling. Watching these fine actors—even Jack Black shines here—explore the darker side of life is fascinating. Even the cinematography reflects the character’s state of mind—it’s gritty, unfocused and dark. Of the performances Kidman is particularly strong, unapologetically delving deep into the ugly side of Margot’s personality.  

To break the tension Baumbach peppers the story with unexpected laughs as he cranks up the dysfunctional heat. The result is a startlingly original film that may not be for everyone, but will delight therapists and those with strong enough stomachs everywhere.

MR. MAGORIUM’S WONDER EMPORIUM: 3 ½ STARS

In a world where wonder is in short supply, Mr. Margorium’s Wonder Emporium is an oasis of amazement. Located in an unnamed city (one that looks an awful lot like Toronto) it’s a Rube Goldbergesque kind of toy store where sock monkeys come to life, giant basketballs dwarf the kid customers and a mobile made of real fish hangs from the ceiling. In short, it’s FAO Schwartz on steroids and such an astonishing place even Kermit the Frog shop there!

The shop is run by Mr. Magorium (Dustin Hoffman) a 243 year-old “wonder aficionado” who sleeps upside down, wears too-tight Mr. Dress-Up suits and once played Jumping Jacks with Abe Lincoln. Years ago he bought enough shoes in a store in Tuscany to last his whole life. He’s now on the last pair and wants to get his affairs in order before he leaves the world.    

He plans on leaving the store to his manager, Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman), a young piano prodigy who lacks confidence in herself. His first step is to bring in an accountant (Jason Bateman) to audit the store—no records have been kept since the 1770s—and take care of all the paperwork. The accountant, or Mutant as Magorium calls him, is a workaholic with a distinct lack of wonder in his life. As Margorium’s last day approaches Molly must come to grips with the loss of her mentor, a magical store that is literally throwing a temper tantrum, a young misfit who doesn’t have any friends and the skeptical Mutant. In the end Molly learns that anything is possible—even magic—if you believe in yourself.
Mr. Margorium’s Wonder Emporium is a rarity—a kid’s movie that doesn’t try and cater to an adult audience by slipping in jokes that the little ones won’t understand. It is a gentle fantasy with corny jokes, some magical images, but none of the mean-spirited edge that crept into the similarly themed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The tone is sweet throughout, and while Hoffman’s performance borders on annoying—think Uncle Bobby on helium—the film’s sense of wonder and G-rated sensibility should have great appeal to kids.

MARTIAN CHILD: 2 STARS

If there is one message the filmmakers behind Martian Child would like you to take home it is: You Are What You Is. The latest from John Cusack is a family film about spare pegs and round holes which extols the virtues of being yourself. It’s a great message in this age where conformity seems to be king, but I wish it had presented in a more interesting movie.

Cusack plays a widowed science fiction writer who—rather improbably—adopts a troubled young boy (Bobby Coleman). Abused and neglected, when we first meet the youngster he is spending his daylight hours in a large box with just an eye slot cut in the side. Inside his sanctuary he protects himself from dangerous UV rays and occasionally takes a Polaroid of the outside world. You see, young Dennis believes he is from Mars and that the sun’s deadly rays will eat away at his skin. The snap shots, he says, are part of his larger mission to observe and document the human race as part of a Martian scientific study. With his pale skin, reddish hair and ever present camera he like the strange love-child of The Man Who Fell to Earth and Andy Warhol.  

Cusack, having been a bit of a social outcast himself, understands that the boy has obviously created the story to cover for a traumatic upbringing by his birth family, and allows him to keep one foot in outer space while trying to keep the other firmly planted on planet Earth. When the boy tries to conform to what others expect from him, and live by “Earth” rules, it leads to an epiphany between adopted father and son.

It’s hard to dislike a movie as earnest as Martian Child. It has interesting messages for kids on growing up and acceptance of others, and seems to understand that kid’s early days are not easy—Cusack’s character even says, “Childhood is barbaric”—but despite all the good stuff, it falls flat.

Like the weight belt that Dennis wears to stabilize his Martian gravity and prevent him from floating away into the ether, the movie too seems weighed down by a predictable plot and heavy handed lesson. We get it. There’s no harm in being a little eccentric. We got that in the first twenty minutes, and yet seventy minutes later we’re still being hit over the head with that sentiment. If the film had heeded its own advice and taken some chances, tried to be bit more eccentric it may have been a much better movie going experience.

MICHAEL CLAYTON: 3 ½ STARS

First time director Tony Gilroy is best known for writing the first two Bourne movies. Those scripts crackled with energy and high-wire tension. In Michael Clayton, a new legal drama starring George Clooney, he has dialled back the action but upped the intrigue.

Mixing elements of Erin Brockovich—corporate malfeasance, but without the bustier—and Syrianna, Michael Clayton sees Clooney playing the world weary title character, a lawyer who specializes in damage control.

He is called in to fix a situation involving his firm’s top litigator, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), who suffered a nervous breakdown while taking a deposition in a multi-million dollar case. Clayton soon puts two and two together and figures out that Arthur’s mental collapse was triggered by an ethical dilemma.

Feeling that he has not been following his moral compass and perhaps has indirectly had a hand in corporate malfeasance that has led to the death of innocent people, Arthur behaves irrationally and calls himself “Shiva the God of Death.” It’s Clayton’s job to set him back on track.

On the other side of the table is Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), a corporate lawyer who will do anything to protect her company’s reputation, even if that means breaking the law.

Michael Clayton is about the law, corporate responsibility and the limits to which a person will allow their morals to stretch before conscious kicks in.

Told mostly in flashbacks, Michael Clayton is the kind of socially aware, whistle blowing drama that packed ‘em in during the 1970s but has been largely absent from the multiplexes in recent years, but if anyone can entice audiences to a thriller with more paranoia than thrills it’s Clooney. His trademarked good looks are amply on display—Gilroy takes full advantage of his star, taking every opportunity to fill the screen with Clooney’s face—but this isn’t Danny Ocean, the calm, cool and collected character he played so successfully in the Ocean’s 11 series. Clayton is a conflicted character, a jaded, weak man with more problems than solutions.

Michael Clayton has some story problems—several storylines are left dangling and the end seems a bit too pat, but the three leads—Clooney, Swinton and Wilkinson—hand in great performances and it is a blast to see the great director Sydney Pollock, best known for making movies that unveil abuses of power, playing a grizzled senior litigator who may be a little less than honest.  

MR. BEAN’S HOLIDAY:
2 STARS FOR MR. BEAN FANS
0 STARS FOR BEAN’S SEVENTH LEVEL OF HELL WELL WISHERS

You either love the monosyllabic Mr. Bean or want to see him banished to the seventh level of Hell where constant pain will be his reward for all the idiocy he has loosed upon the world.

There is no middle ground.

Since 1990 Rowan Atkinson's annoying man-child spread the kind of absurdity that makes Jerry Lewis look like a master of subtly in fourteen BBC produced television episodes, an animated series and one 1997 movie.

He’s back in a new adventure, and this time he wins a trip to Cannes in the south of France. He brings a video camera along to document his trip, and it is that camera that triggers a series of events that will see him be accused of kidnapping a young boy, meet a beautiful woman (named Sabine. If they got marries she’d be Sabine Bean. Get it?), blow up a film set, and become the toast of the Cannes film festival. It’s a long and strange journey. At one point, I kid you not, a chicken makes off with his bus ticket.

That’s right, a chicken. Even the livestock are out to get him.

There’s something old fashioned about the humor of Mr. Bean. Either he’s paying tribute to the silent movie slapstick comedians of yore, or he’s a comedic recycler of epic proportions. There’s very little dialogue, (which would explain the enormous international success of the franchise) it’s mostly just grunts and mumbled words, so Bean must rely on physical farce to get his point across. The physical stuff can occasionally raise a smile, but I felt I had seen much of it before, and usually done better. The estate of Buster Keaton should perhaps be looking into copyright infringement.

It’s hard to be rough on old Mr. Bean because I guess the movies are aimed at kids, so you shouldn’t really expect edgy, interesting comedy, but I had to wonder at the appropriateness of some of the set pieces wedged in between the sight gags. Do kids really need to see a man commit suicide by jumping off a bridge after Bean has been rude to him on the phone? Is the sight of Mr. Bean dressed as a Nazi goose-stepping and Sieg Heiling meant to crack up an eight year old? At those moments the youngster sitting next to me said, “Why is he doing that?” to his dad. The dad didn’t have an answer and neither do I.

I’m not exactly sure who the audience for Mr. Bean’s Holiday is, but I am quite sure it won’t win many new fans, although I think it should keep the old ones content.

MIAMI VICE: 3 ½ STARS

First here’s all the stuff from the Miami Vice television show that you won’t see or hear in the movie version: pastel jackets with t-shirts underneath, Elvis the alligator, Jan Hammer’s distinctive theme song, or Phil Collins. In short, all of the stuff that made the “MTV cop” show a hit. 

This isn’t your Dad’s Miami Vice. Director Michael Mann, who created, executive produced, wrote and directed the original series has turfed everything except the two main characters in his attempt to update the 1980s classic for the big screen. Sonny Crockett, now played by Colin Farrell still hasn’t figured out how to use a razor, but aside from that it’s a whole new game. In fact, only about half the movie actually takes place in Miami.

In Mann’s new version of Miami it’s always night and danger seems to lurk around every corner. Shooting in grainy digital video, the director transforms the Sunshine State’s biggest city into a menacing paradise where both life and drugs are cheap. It is a world where the good guys don’t always win and the bad guys don’t completely lose.

Mann has loosely based the film on one of the television show’s most famous episodes, Smuggler’s Blues. The story begins with a sting operation gone bad which costs two federal agents their lives. It appears there’s an information leak in either the FBI or DEA or ATF and it’s up to Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) to put a plug in it. Working deep undercover, posing as drug transporters they begin by infiltrating the network of a mid-level trafficker called Yero. Yero will be able to hook them up with the drug kingpin, Montoya, and from there they should be able to bring down his entire empire. 

It’s not exactly the most original story we’ve seen at the movies this year, but the beauty is in the telling of the story, not the story itself. Mann has a way with this kind of material. Miami Vice, like his best work in the crime genre—movies like Thief and Heat—is dripping with cool atmosphere, enough to make up for the by-the-book story.

Less successful is the casting. Jamie Foxx and Mann have worked together three times now—on Ali, Collateral, which nabbed an Oscar nomination for Foxx—but this has to be their least inspiring outing. Foxx and Farrell don’t seem to have much chemistry, which is crucial to their roles as partners who would do anything for one another, but worse than that, Foxx isn’t given much to do. The character of Tubbs is so stoic and no nonsense that all he is required to do is stand there and look good. He does that well, but it feels like he is holding back.

Not so for Farrell who gives a performance of mock seriousness that sometimes borders on camp. He barks his tough-guy lines in a way that would knock the pastel off the original Crockett, Don Johnson. Johnson’s Crockett was unhappy and angry, but in the movie seems to have turned his life around. Now he’s angry and unhappy.

Miami Vice on the big screen isn’t a remake of the television series; it’s more than that. It’s the maturation of it. Mann has made a demanding but interesting film that reflects where he is now, not where he was when he created the television series.

MR BROOKS: 3 STARS

Mr. Brooks stars Demi Moore and Kevin Costner. No, it isn’t some lost artifact from the early 1990s; it’s a tightly scripted, but slightly wonky new serial killer movie headlined by stars who were at the top of the form when the first George Bush was in office.

Costner takes a break from his usual nice guy routine to play the title role, Earl Brooks, a successful business man with a beautiful wife (Marg Helgenberger) and an even more beautiful home. His life seems perfect, but the far-away look in his eyes lets us know that everything is not right in Mr. Brooks’ world. You see, he’s an addict. He’s been on the straight and narrow for two years, but something is pulling at him. That something is Marshall (William Hurt) a mayhem loving imaginary friend who looks a great deal like the professor from Altered States.

Marshall convinces Mr. Brooks to indulge his bad habit one more time, letting loose the Mr. Hyde that Earl tries to keep under wraps. They don’t go on a drinking binge, start smoking or take drugs. Mr. Brooks is far too straight laced for any of that kind of behavior. You see, Mr. Brooks is addicted to killing, and Marshall is the bad influence who convinces him to stalk and kill innocent people. When the usually meticulous killer makes a mistake at the scene of the crime he opens himself up to scrutiny from not only a very determined police detective (Demi Moore), but also a wannabe homicidal maniac (Dane Cook) who blackmails Mr. Brooks into schooling him in the ways of the serial killing game. 

We’ve seen the serial-killer-next-door scenario played out many times on screen, and as usual, in Mr. Brooks most of the female characters are underwritten. Helgenberger is wasted as Mrs. Brooks in a role that requires her to do little else than look good, while Moore’s determined cop routine, although well performed, is pretty standard stuff. In spite of its shortcomings Mr. Brooks has several points that vault it head and shoulders above the rest.

The story takes a few unexpected zigs and zags. Cook’s killer fan boy is a fun diversion and the seemingly red herring role of the daughter adds depth to the piece but it really is the performances of Costner and Hurt that make Mr. Brooks so entertaining to watch.

In Earl Brooks Costner, never an expressive actor, finds the perfect character fit for his acting style. Most of the time Costner’s bland approach undermines his characters, but Brooks is a man who controls his emotions, the blank look on his face hiding the barely controlled malevolence that wracks his brain. The actor’s dull exterior perfectly mirrors the image Mr. Brooks must portray to avoid being caught. This is a guy who looks like he couldn’t blow the foam off a glass of beer let alone put a bullet in someone’s head and that’s just as it should be.

William Hurt hands in a bravura turn as the evil alter ego who simply can’t contain his glee at the pandemonium he causes. He’s rotten to the core, but Hurt plays him more as a mischievous older brother who encourages his siblings to sneak a drink from dad’s liquor cabinet than a psychological force who pushes his host to commit heinous acts of murder.

A decade and a half ago these two actors almost co-starred in The Big Chill before Costner’s role ended up on the cutting room floor. Had that footage survived it would be interesting to see if they had the same kind of chemistry on-screen then as they do now. Mr. Brooks cooks with gas when those two do their evil twin routine.

Mr. Brooks isn’t on the same playing field as Silence of the Lambs or Psycho, but it is an interesting portrait of the killer next door. 

MUSIC AND LYRICS: 2 ½ STARS

Lately I have been very hard on that reliable old standby, the romantic comedy. I’ve said that the recent crop of them are neither romantic or funny and I even went so far as to suggest that The Holiday is misogynist. Today we’re talking about a different kind of romantic comedy, the trademarked Drew Barrymore Rom Com®. This genre contains some of the laughs missing from Because I Said So, the romance absent from Catch and Release and none of the woman bashing. What it does have are stories so formulaic I experience déjà vu while watching them.

The breakdown for a Drew Barrymore romance fest is simple. Act One sees the quirky couple—in this case she’s a substitute plant caregiver, he’s a faded 80s pop star—meet. Sparks fly. Act Two has the pair falling in love under unlikely circumstances. Things go great until the ugly confrontation that leads to separation and general unhappiness. Act Three contains the Grand Gesture. He or she, depending on the movie, moves heaven and earth to win the other back. Insert happy ending.

That’s the basic plot of all of her romantic opuses from 50 First Dates to Fever Pitch and beyond. Only the faces change. Barrymore is a warm, engaging screen presence and often that is enough to carry one of these movies, but Music and Lyrics falls flat. Her co-star, rom com vet Hugh Grant, seems off his game, and I didn’t sense a great deal of chemistry between the two.

On paper Grant’s casting as an 80s has-been pop idol seems inspired. He has the looks (and nails the 80s era mullet) and just the right self-depreciating attitude, but his comic timing seems askew and perhaps he’s a bit long in the tooth to continue playing his brand name bumbling Englishman role.

Music and Lyrics is predictable—here’s a spoiler: they get together at the end. Big Surprise!—but so are most romantic comedies. There are some laughs here, but with little chemistry between the leads it’s as though we’re laughing at them rather than with them.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith
 
Putting Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the two best looking people in Hollywood—strike that, the world—in one movie is a no-brainer, so now the question is, do they have chemistry? Happily, they do, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the movie that broke up Jennifer Aniston's marriage to Pitt and gave us the term “Brangelina,” works, not because of its outlandish story, but because of the performances from the two leads. They play married and highly paid assassins who don't know what the other does for a living. They discover the truth when they are ordered to kill one another. The movie is kind of schizophrenic—on one hand it is a study of a marriage that is eroding, falling apart because of a lack of intimacy, and on the other it is a flat out action film with crazy action sequences. The two play off one another well—my favorite exchange between them happens when she accidentally stabs him with a knife in the leg. "We'll talk about this later," he mumbles as he pulls the knife out of his leg. If you liked the black humor of the Jack Nicholson / Kathleen Turner film Prizzi's Honor, you'll like Mr and Mrs Smith.

THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES

The Motorcycle Diaries tells the story of an 8,000 mile trip by motorcycle, raft, truck and foot, from Argentina to Peru, undertaken in 1952 by Ernesto Guevara de la Serna and his friend Alberto Granado. Of course Ernesto goes on to become Che Guevara, but we don’t meet the Che who went crazy and was shooting people in the jungle—we’ll have to wait for the Bencio del Toro Che film for that—this is Che Guevara as the romantic rebel who undergoes a life-changing change. At the end of the movie we’re told that Ernesto would go on to join Castro in the Cuban Revolution, and fight for his cause in the Congo and Bolivia, where he died.

A great deal of the appeal of this movie can be attributed to its star, Gael Garcia Bernal (from Y Tu Mama Tambien). He was the resident heartthrob at the film festival in Toronto last year and lends this movie much of its heat.

THE MAJESTIC

You’ve seen the ad on television where Jim Carrey says that he “just wanted to bring something good into the world,” well, Jimbo, this ain’t it. The Majestic is syrupy, predictable crap that makes one long for the days of Ace Ventura and The Mask. Jim Carrey’s performance literally screams “Please nominate me for an Oscar! I promise I won’t talk out of my ass anymore.” Carrey is a talented actor, but this rubbish is beneath him and if this is the kind of movie he wants to make, I’m glad he’s giving up his Canadian citizenship. Hollywood can have him.

THE MATRIX RELOADED

Many, many words have already been written about The Matrix Reloaded so I won’t dwell on it here. I must admit, I didn’t really understand the original Matrix, so it stands to reason that I’m not really in tune with the sequel. I’m not a big fan of science fiction, but I AM a big fan of good looking women who kick butt and blow things up, so I enjoyed Reloaded. After an initial big bang in the opening scene the first hour drags slightly, with long talky sequences involving Oracles, alternate worlds and other things I didn’t really understand. But when it picks up, man look out. There is a wild sequence in which Neo battles hundreds of clones of the evil Mr. Smith and a twenty minute car chase that’ll blow the back of your head off. The little boy that I keep hidden away deep in my subconscious loved that scene. Then it ends. Suddenly. Abruptly. It’s a cliff-hanger that will either drive you to drink, or wet your appetite for part three of the series.

MISS POTTER: 3 STARS

Beatrix Potter wrote dozens of books with titles like The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes. Released at the turn of the last century, these stories about mischievous animals illustrated with Potter’s charming watercolors were as incredibly popular with kids as Harry Potter is today.

Miss Potter, a new movie starring Oscar winner Renee Zellweger as the author, focuses on Potter’s personal life, which was tumultuous as her books were placid. Buckling against 19th century mores the headstrong writer chose not to marry until age 47, preferring the company of her imaginary friends to real life. The movie leads us through the publishing of her first book, her battles with overbearing social climbing parents, an engagement to her first fiancé, played by Ewan McGregor, and her subsequent retreat to the English countryside. What emerges is an interesting, but incomplete portrait of the legendary writer.

Zellweger is a ringer for Potter, pulls off a convincing English accent, and succeeds in making Potter’s eccentricities seem plausible, but for all the technical aspects of the performance there isn’t much warmth here. Zellweger’s stiff upper lip hides any real emotion, and the few flashes of personality that find their way past her stern façade only hint at the reservoir of emotion underneath.   

Overall the movie is well constructed, if a little incomplete. Director Chris Noonan, whose last film, Babe, was eleven years ago, shows us the major events in Potter’s life, but lacking is the passion. It makes for a decent family film, although I doubt that kids will be too taken with the love story and the English reserve, but feels like less than the sum of its parts. Potter was a 19th century rebel who championed the ecology and used her vast wealth to preserve 4000 acres of farmland. She was an active and shrewd marketer of her own books and even did some scientific research on lichens that, one hundred years after she wrote it, was given credence by the British Linnean Society. Only mildly engaging, this stiff Masterpiece Theatre treatment of her life doesn’t do justice to Beatrix Potter or her legacy.

MARIE ANTIONETTE: 3 ½ STARS

Like the misunderstood queen the movie is based on, Marie Antoinette, the movie, has gotten a bad rap. It was met with boos at the Cannes Film Festival, blasted by critics and historians for not being an exacting look at the life of the teenaged queen. It may not get the details 100 % right, but if you want accuracy watch the History Channel. Sophia Coppola’s follow-up to the wildly popular Lost in Translation is more of a tone poem, a dreamy biography more concerned with feelings than facts.

As with her two previous films, The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation, Coppola once again shows her skill in capturing the youthful perspective of odd circumstances. Just as the Lisbon sisters of Suicides felt alienated by their suburban surroundings and family, and Lost in Translation’s Scarlette Johansson suffered the isolation of an unhappy marriage and strange country, the youthful queen of Marie Antoinette must deal with isolation and rejection, Versailles style.

Brought from her native Austria at age 14 as kind of a “womb for hire” Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) was thrust into a loveless marriage with Louis XVI, the boy king who had no interest in her, and the court of Versailles, a gossipy and cruel place so vicious they make the London tabloid press look like Miss Manners. As Antoinette attempts to acclimate herself to life in the court she embraces the decadence, spending lavishly while her subjects starved. Even her hair reflects her excess. As the film goes on her hair grows from a subdued hairdo to an outrageous bouffant that would make even Kim Jong Il green with envy.  

Coppola’s film is luscious. Shot on the world’s most expensive film set—she was the first director given permission to shoot at Versailles—the movie is uncommonly beautiful. More controversially she chose British pop music as the key songs on the soundtrack. Now this is no A Knight’s Tale, a medieval tale where the new wave music seemed out of place and strange. Coppola’s use of New Order and The Cure fit the mood of the piece perfectly. In one stunning scene Marie Antoinette is doing some at home shopping—merchants would bring their most beautiful and expensive baubles to Versailles for her perusal—and as the camera glides over the pink and blue shoes, Bow Wow Wow’s I Want Candy pulsates on the soundtrack. Music and scene mesh perfectly as the ornate shoes look more like bon bons than footwear and Dunst’s youthful enthusiasm is apparent.

Marie Antoinette isn’t strictly a biopic, or history lesson on the French Revolution. Instead it is a beautiful portrait of spoiled youth and the toxic culture of decadence that did her in.

MAN OF THE YEAR: 2 STARS

Man of the Year is an odd movie. It follows the campaign and eventual election to the office of President of the United States by a Jon Stewart wannabe, played by Robin Williams. The strange thing is, though, the campaign appears to be happening in Canada. Specifically Toronto. Apparently Presidential Debates are now held at the University of Toronto.

That was just one of the things I learned while watching Man of the Year. I also found out that you can spot the Canadians in big budget American films made here because they’re the ones without any lines. I also now know that films starring Robin Williams are likely to include reaction shots of people laughing, kind of like a laugh track to cue the audience to start giggling at his insane improvised rants.

Man of the Year re-teams Williams with director Barry Levinson. Levinson has figured out how to blend the Williams the improv comic with Williams the actor by only casting him in roles that contain some kind of performance element. In Good Morning, Vietnam he was able to riff on the radio in between the earnest emoting that earned him an Academy Award nomination. Here Levinson allows him to run wild on the campaign trail, essentially letting him do his stand-up routine at debates and stumping stops. We get a taste of Williams the actor, but much of Man of the Year is akin to an HBO Special with a message.

But it’s not just that, and that is the film’s fatal flaw. Man of the Year contains some pretty good, although pretty obvious, comments on the American political system, but it isn’t content to be a political satire like Bulworth, or even Levinson’s Wag the Dog. Instead Levinson has created a mixed bag of a film that is part comedy, part action, part industrial espionage and part thriller without ever settling on any one. The film’s trailer promises a few laughs, and they are there, sprinkled throughout an uneven story involving a large company that invents a computerized voting booth. When Laura Linney’s character discovers the computer program’s glitch she is fired and made to look like an unstable crazy person by her former employers who are more concerned about their stock options than the accuracy of the election.

I say pick a story. Either one will do. Is this an industrial espionage story or a political satire? I’ve seen the movie and I still don’t know.

MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND: 3 STARS

My Super Ex-Girlfriend draws on two unlikely sources for its inspiration—Fatal Attraction and Wonder Woman. In the film Luke Wilson plays Matt, a single guy who begins dating Jenny, played by Uma Thurman. At first she seems like the perfect girl for him but he soon realizes that not only is she beautiful, but she’s also jealous, needy and controlling. When her trifecta of super-neurosis become too much for him he decides to break up with her and turn his attentions to a co-worker. But like the song says, “breaking up is hard to do,” particularly when the dumpee is a superhero named G-Girl, hell bent on revenge.

The film is obviously an imaginary tale because it supposes that someone would break off a relationship with Uma Thurman. We’re in Lord of the Rings fantasy-land territory here.

We’re also in some pretty hilarious territory. My Super Ex-Girlfriend is director Ivan Reitman’s funniest movie since Ghostbusters, another special effects laden comedy set in New York. Reitman skillfully takes the idea of a super-gifted woman who falls for a regular guy—think Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie—and puts a spin on it. What if the woman was slightly nuts and didn’t take rejection very well?

In the dual role of Jenny Johnson/G-Girl Uma Thurman finally shows that she has a comedic side. So often cast in serious dramas Thurman hasn’t really displayed an affinity for comedy although she has tried to make us laugh twice in recent years in the forgettable Prime and The Producers. Perhaps working with a veteran comedy director like Reitman, the man behind the camera for Meatballs, Stripes, a couple of Ghostbusters movies and Kindergarten Cop, helped hone her comedy chops because she is funny here as the vengeful super-hero. She’s funny and as I like to say “Umessent.”

My Super Ex-Girlfriend is a welcome twist on the old boy-meets-girl story and is funnier and smarter than the trailers would lead you to believe.     

MONSTER HOUSE: 4 STARS

When I was a kid I used to read a series of books called Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators. They were kind of like the Hardy Boys, but always had a supernatural twist of some kind. They had names like The Mystery of the Green Ghost and were a precursor to the Goosbumps books in that they were exciting and scary. I bring this up not just to take a stroll down memory lane, but because the new film Monster House reminded me of the spirit of those books—harmless scary fun.

Like the heroes of the Three Investigator novels, Monster House finds a young trio of friends, two boys and a girl, trying to discover the secret of a gloomy old haunted house in their neighborhood that seems to come alive and devour anyone and anything that dares trespass on its front lawn.   

The movie was created using the motion-capture process last used for Polar Express. Behind each of the animated characters are performers who act out each scene on a “black box” set wearing special suits that capture their every move on a computer. Once animated the performances have the spontaneity of live action with the distinctive look of animation. I thought the animation in Polar Express was creepy—the characters put me in the mind of zombies performing a Christmas pageant—but Monster House makes much better use of the high-tech animation method.

Despite the animation and the movie’s outlandish story, you get the feeling from Monster House that you are watching real kids on a real adventure. The three leads behave the way kids do and the strong script allows them to talk to one another as kids do. Their dynamic as friends owes more than just a little to Harry Potter, but they are fun to watch, particularly Chowder, the little trouble maker who gets most of the laughs.

Some scenes in the film might be a little intense for younger viewers, but nonetheless Monster House is a good bet for the whole family.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3: 3 ½ STARS

MI:3, the latest in a series of action movies inspired by the classic television show of  the same name, stars Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt as a super agent and leader of the Impossible Missions Force. In the capable hands of Alias and Lost creator and writer J.J. Abrams the movie plays like a big screen version of Alias, which is OK, because Alias was basically just an estrogen injected Mission Impossible.
  
Abrams breathes some new life into the franchise by creating a home life for Ethan Hunt. When we first meet him he is engaged to a young beautiful doctor and pretty much retired from the field. He now spends his time training agents to do impossible super agent things and is trying to have a regular life. All that changes when one of his favorite pupils falls into the hands of the incredibly evil Owen Davian, played by Oscar winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He heads up her rescue mission and is lured back into a world of intrigue and international espionage.

But Abrams really brings out the movie defibulator with the introduction of a great bad guy. Casting Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who has traded the fey mannerisms of Truman Capote for a mean left hook and a bad attitude, is an inspired move. He’s not on screen for long, but there hasn’t been a bad guy that has so much with so little screen since Anthony Hopkins wore a muzzle in Silence of the Lambs.
The first two Mission Impossibles offered up incomprehensible plots, but each contained at least one great action sequence guaranteed to make your eyeballs dance. Remember Tom, the chopper, the train and the Chunnel from the first one? How about the acrobatic motorcycles from number two? Nothing in number three rocks as hard as either of those set pieces, but they certainly don’t skimp on the action—Tom is still cruising for a bruising. Action sequences sprout like tulips in the spring—many things go boom, many bullets are fired and even the Vatican isn’t safe but none of the stunts have the cool factor of Cruise lowering himself from a wire into a room sensitive to sound, weight and body temperature.

Part action flick, part travelogue--MI:3 could be subtitled Around the World in 800 Bullets--the movie works as a popcorn movie and the kick-off to the summer blockbuster season.

Munich

This past Christmas season saw two movies hit the theatres that could easily have been Stephen Spielberg productions—The Chronicles of Narnia and King Kong. Both feature the kind of fantasy that he made his name with, and both are the kind of large epic style films that he has as deft touch with. Instead we were treated to the flip side of Spielberg—the serious filmmaker.
Munich is loosely based on the book Vengeance by Canadian journalist George Jonas and details the aftermath of the Black September terror raid at the 1972 Olympics in Munich in which eleven Israeli athletes were murdered. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruited a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.
Eric Bana plays the head of the team of Mossad hit men, and for my money is the film’s tragic flaw. Bana has been given three shots at A-list stardom in the past couple of years—more than anyone else I can think of—and yet leaves virtually no impression on me as a viewer. I wanted to like him in The Hulk, but found his performance flat. I barely remember him in Troy even though he was second billed to Brad Pitt and now in Munich he, once again, fails to impress. As Avner, a former bodyguard of Golda Meir, we should believe that he is willing to do anything for his country, that he is an ideologue who is willing to break the law to get revenge, but also feel empathy for him. Unfortunately Bana just isn’t strong enough or interesting enough an actor to carry this kind of material.
Munich is a technically well-made film, although seems a bit flabby. Overlong at 164 minutes, the movie often feels like a grocery list of assassinations. One after the other people are stalked and blown up with very little variance in their modus operandi. Mid-way through I was dreading having to sit through all eleven killings. Luckily the movie is more than simply a revenge drama, and starts to take a different shape as Avner’s conscience gets the best of him. His moral wrestling match should be at the heart of the film, but unfortunately is a bit too obvious and in Bana’s hands doesn’t seem realistic.
Munich is an ambitious film that sags under its own weight.

Memoirs of a Geisha

Several years ago you couldn’t take the subway, sit in a coffee shop or go to a bookstore without seeing at least one person deeply engrossed in a copy of Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. It was only a matter of time before Hollywood scooped up the rights and turned the best selling book into a lavish holiday film.

In his follow-up to the Academy Award winning musical Chicago, director Rob Marshall spares no expense to bring Memoirs to the screen. The film is beautifully shot, wonderfully costumed—although there are some historical inaccuracies such as one character wearing a kimono crossed right over left, the way Japanese people clothe their dead—and filled with impossibly good-looking actors. Memoirs looks fabulous and is great eye candy.

On the surface Marshall was a good choice for this material as he is at his best when dealing with theatrical characters, and the Geishas seen in Memoirs are nothing if not dramatic. The problem lies once the viewer tries to scratch the surface. There’s nothing there! 

At the heart of the book is a love story that begins when Sayuri—Japan’s Next Top Geisha—is only a child and meets a businessman who is kind to her. As she becomes an adult she never forgets this act of kindness and carries a torch for him. Marshall makes a play for our emotions at this point of the story, but never connects. Because it is such a passionless affair Memoirs of a Geisha feels like a beautiful crystal vase—amazing to look at, but utterly empty inside. 

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS: 4 STARS

Usually I cringe when I hear that a foreign film has been altered for release in North America, but for once, they got it right. In the original version of this film the filmmakers dramatized the procreation cycle of Antarctica emperor penguins, focusing on a single couple out of thousands. Worse yet, they hired actors to voice the penguins murmuring sweet nothings to each other.

For release over here the film was re-jigged, losing the annoying penguin pillow talk, replacing it with a comforting and authoritative voice of God narration courtesy of Morgan Freeman, and widening the scope of the film to include the entire herd of penguins, not just the one couple.  

March of the Penguins is G-rated, but still shows some of the dangers and hardships faced by the birds—eggs that are not properly warmed and never hatch; chicks dying of starvation, exposure, or ending up in the stomach of predators. The brutal life-or-death battle against nature and the elements may frighten very small children, but the up-lifting finale and the extremely high cute factor of the waddling penguins finding love against a backdrop of brutal blizzards and biting winds make this a film the whole family can enjoy.

If you liked Winged Migration, you’ll LOVE March of the Penguins.