THE WILD HUNT: 4 STARS
 
“The Wild Hunt” takes place in the world of LARP. No, that’s not a place like Middle Earth or Oz, it’s an acronym for Live Action Role Playing. Imagine Dungeons and Dragons outdoors and with elaborate costumes and you get the idea. Players create a mythology, don costumes and physically act out their characters' actions. “The Wild Hunt” examines what happens when the real world collides with fantasy land.
 
The film starts simply enough. Dumped by his girlfriend Evelyn (Tiio Horn), lovesick Erik (Ricky Mabe) follows her to a LARP event where she now wears the pelts and crown of a Viking princess. Also attending is Eric’s wacked-out brother Bjorn (Mark A. Krupa) who takes his role as a Viking warrior a bit too seriously. As the Viking showdown with the Celts approaches Eric realizes he must carry a foam sword and play along if he hopes to leave with Evelyn on his arm. Here the story deepens. Eric’s outside interference is unwanted, not just by Evelyn but also by the evil Shaman Murtagh (Trevor Hayes). Eric’s presence throws off Murtagh’s plan to “sacrifice” Evelyn in The Wild Hunt ceremony. Before you can say “Pass me the mead,” bona fide violence erupts and the line between fantasy and real life blurs.        
 
“The Wild Hunt” is a strange beast. Set against a backdrop of Viking mythology, complete with battles, elves and some real violence, it is by turns amusing, engrossing and horrifying. The tone of the film darkens as the running time ticks by. The violence—both mental and physical—becomes more realistic as the LARP spins out of control, but none of this would matter much if the characters weren’t as well developed as they are.
 
Both Eric and Bjorn have story arcs that exist in real life and fantasy land. Eventually as the two meld the brothers discover what really makes each of them tick. It’s interesting stuff, and even if the tone is a little uneven, “The Wild Hunt” remains one of the most intriguing films of the year so far.

THE WOLFMAN: 3 STARS

Like its star Benicio Del Toro, “The Wolfman” is a little wonky but strangely appealing. The film, which has more to do with the atmospherics of Hammer horror than, say, the theatrics of the lame “Underworld” series, is a perplexing beast that mixes some fairly good shocks with a lifeless lead performance.

Del Toro is Lawrence Talbot, a Victorian-era actor who returns to his ancestral home outside London after his brother is attacked and killed by... something.  Awaiting him at the dusty old country house is his estranged (and just plain strange) father Sir John (Anthony Hopkins) and his brother’s fiancée, Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt). Determined to find out who or what mauled his brother, he launches an investigation that leads to a gypsy encampment on a full moon. Guess what? He gets bitten by a werewolf and every full moon transforms into the thing he hates most.

Director Joe Johnston, (the helmer behind “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” and “Hidalgo”) proves he has a knack for old school horror atmosphere—the film is all cobwebs, shadows and candlelight—and action scenes but absolutely none for dealing with the heart and soul of the film—the characters. The Talbots and Gwen dominate the movie but are more sketches of horror movie characters than fully drawn individuals. Hopkins (who gets the movie’s best intentional laughs playing the Worst. Father. Ever.) and Blunt squeak by on acting chops alone, but Del Toro, who is in nearly every scene, isn’t so lucky.

Perhaps he was poorly cast or perhaps he isn’t really trying, it’s hard to tell. He doesn’t have a natural flair for the courtly dialogue that seems to roll off the British tongues so easily, but then again, the dialogue doesn’t exactly sparkle. When your most memorable line is, “I will kill all of you,” (repeated twice for emphasis) you know more time was spent on the set decoration (which is great) and the transformation scenes than the words.    

Despite lots of dramatic moments—long stares, meaningful glances—there is little actual drama. The story is pure B-movie horror and exists solely as a vessel to keep things afloat until we get to the action scenes and the Holy Grail of every wolfman movie, the all important man to beast transformation.

On that score the movie entertains. Blood squirts, a disembodied hand shoots a gun and more blood squirts. It’s a gory little flick that takes off after a slow start with some decent jolts (once it gets over using loud sounds to create tension) and two great transformation scenes courtesy of special effects wiz Rick Baker.

“The Wolfman” isn’t going to do for werewolves what “Twilight” and “True Blood” have done for vampires—werewolves are too hairy to be sexy—but despite its flaws is a howlingly fun Saturday afternoon matinee movie.

WHEN IN ROME: 2 STARS

The good part of “When in Rome,” the new Kristen Bell film, is that it doesn’t follow the usual unlikely boy-meets-unlikely-girl romantic comedy set-up. The bad part is that just because it doesn’t follow the usual rom com rules doesn’t mean it isn’t predictable.   

Bell is Beth, a work obsessed curator at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. After her last boyfriend “ripped out her heart and fed it to the pigeons in Central Park” she lost faith in romance but when her sister impulsively decides to get married in Italy Beth reluctantly takes a couple of days off, where she ends up drunk in the “fountain of love” plucking coins from the water. Little does she realize that an old legend declares that when you take coins from the fountain, you take the heart of the person who tossed the coin in the fountain in the first place. Soon she is being unwillingly courted by four men—an artist, a street magician, a sausage salesman, a model and willingly courted by Nick (Josh Duhamel), an ex football star. The question is, “Is the love for real or just a magic spell?”

“When in Rome” is as frothy as it gets. It’s a romantic fantasy with no foot in reality. In fact, the only fantasy here is that anybody thought this was a strong enough idea to carry a whole movie. There are a few laughs sprinkled throughout and the audience I saw this with laughed intermittently, but the jokes—like an Italian priest mispronouncing “lawfully wedded wife” as “awfully wedded wife” not once, but twice!—are more amusing than actually funny.

The movie does earn some legit laughs—a tiny European car gag is silly fun—from the more comic savvy members of the cast like Will Arnett, Danny DeVito and Dax Shepard, (Jon “Napoleon Dynamite” Heder continues his string of more annoying than funny performances), but when the attention shifts away from them to the leads “When in Rome” flat lines.

Bell’s idea of physical comedy is to smile with spinach in her teeth and while she’s an agreeable screen presence she isn’t really suited for this kind of comedy. Ditto Don Johnson who plays her father. The years have been kind to Johnson, but he doesn’t have a natural gift for comedy. As for Anjelica Huston as Beth’s testy Guggenheim head curator... well let’s just say I choose to remember her glory days in films like “The Grifters” and “Prizzi’s Honor.”

Josh Duhamel fares slightly better. He’s the charming (but slightly goofy) single guy with the perfect bachelor pad—complete with a barber’s chair, a pinball machine and neon cocktail sign—who can deliver a joke well enough but appears to me to be a modern day Tab Hunter; more male model than an interesting actor.

“When In Rome” is further proof that romantic comedy needs a shot in the arm. A few weeks ago, on the release of “Leap Year,” I suggested that someone like Quentin Tarantino should come in and completely reboot the genre. Seeing “When in Rome” didn’t change my mind.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE: 4 STARS

This adaptation of the classic Maurice Sendak 1963 children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” isn’t a movie for kids as much as it is a movie about being a kid. The story of Max, a lonely kid who goes to where the wild things are, is a work of profound vision from director Spike Jonze.

The story, based on a book of only nine sentences, couldn’t be simpler. A high-spirited but lonely boy named Max (Max Records) throws a tantrum when his mother (Catherine Keener), invites her boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) over. When she tries to send him to his room he bites her, flees the house and sails to an imaginary island populated by Ira (voice of Forest Whitaker), Carol (James Gandolfini), KW (Lauren Ambrose), Judith (Catherine O'Hara), The Bull (Michael Berry Jr.), Douglas (Chris Cooper) and Alexander (Paul Dano), seven make-believe giants who crown him king of the Wild Things. For the most part life is easy on the island but soon Max becomes homesick and sets out for his real home.

The end.

This is the kind of movie the Hollywood studios don’t make anymore, a slow moving simple film about deep feelings. It’s not a slick, brightly coloured kid’s film with a connect-the-dots plot and an easily digested moral.

Not much happens. There are some very arresting images. Max and Carol rolling down a sand dune, a “wild rumpus” and a dirt fight, but it’s not about the action, it’s about primal feelings, things that are either not usually touched on or glossed over in most kid’s films—sorrow, loneliness and the difficulty of growing up.

Jonze has made a beautifully emotional and simple movie, both in message and style. The dialogue is basic, almost incidental to the story, as if it was written by a kid; or at least someone who understands how kid’s think and speak. It’s uncomplicated but the cast, both human and monster, brings depth to the plain spoken script.
 
Max Records, in his first major film role, is understated and instinctive, holding the film together with a compelling performance. The look of the beasts has been accurately adapted from the book. They essentially look like huge Muppets with very expressive eyes. Their furry faces combined with very naturalistic voice work from Gandolfini and company bring their search for acceptance and love to life in some very unexpected ways.

“Where the Wild Things Are” is a magical film that will please the arthouse crowd but likely will leave less adventurous viewers a little perplexed. The dark, melancholy tone isn’t typical of children’s entertainment, but since this isn’t really a kid’s film that shouldn’t matter.

WHIP IT: 2 STARS

There’s nothing groundbreaking about Whip It, the directorial debut of American sweetheart Drew Barrymore. It’s the dance movie where the hero or heroine learns about life through ballet or hip hop. Or it’s the Spelling Bee movie where the main character learns self confidence at the Scripps National competition. In this case the back drop is the wild and wacky world of women’s Roller Derby, but the story is very familiar.  

Based on the Shauna Cross novel Derby Girl Ellen Page plays Bliss Cavendar an unhappy teenager from small town Texas who suffers from adolescent ennui. She’s Juno without the pregnancy or the sharp tongue. She’s tired of beauty pageants, her over protective mother and being seventeen. When she stumbles across a flyer for a female Roller Derby league in nearby Austin she sees a way out of her mundane life. Turns out she has a natural ability as a derby demon, and an equally natural ability at attracting skinny guitar players. Soon enough, though, she realizes that skinny guitar players aren’t always the best dates and just because she’s found a new family at the roller rink she can’t throw her old family away.

The world of female roller derby is a colorful, eccentric world that should really lend itself to a rollicking big screen treatment. Unfortunately Whip It doesn’t do it justice. First time director Drew Barrymore gets some of the details right—the women all have fun, campy names like Bloody Holly, Smashly Simpson and Babe Ruthless, and play for teams with names like the Hurl Scouts—but the Roller Derby sequences don’t have the over-the-top rock ‘n’ roll feel they should have. The game scenes are too genteel by half and could have used a bit more rough and tumble energy. It is worth noting however, that the actors seem to be doing their own stunts and some of their falls look quite realistic and quite painful but it isn’t enough to make it feel like authentic down and dirty roller derby.

The feminist aspect of the story—roller derby is often associated with third wave feminism—is blunted because the game is more a plot device than the focus of the story. There is camaraderie among the women on the team and their journey is quite interesting but the film too often detours from the roller rink to Bliss’s love life or struggle with her family.

Barrymore does some good work here. She does a nice job at wordlessly showing Bliss’s alienation in the scene where she takes a bus to her roller derby audition. As she physically leaves the town she has come to hate you get the sense that in her mind she had really left years before. It’s a nicely handled bit of business as is a touching “please don‘t judge me” sequence late in the film between Bliss and her parents (Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern). There’s also some very funny moments and a show stopping performance from Eulala Scheel (Harden’s real life daughter) as Bliss’s younger sister.

But for all the well handled moments there are still the bungled derby scenes which should have added real punch to the story, but instead don’t make much of an impression. If you want to see the real deal derby check out Hell On Wheels, a documentary about the creation of the all-female roller derby league in Austin, Texas in 2001.

WHATEVER WORKS: 3 ½ STARS

For Woody Allen there is no place like home. After a protracted absence from his beloved Manhattan—the locale for his most famous films—Allen has set his latest, Whatever Works, in the Big Apple. Perhaps the change in location to Europe was as good as a rest for the filmmaker, or perhaps he is reinvigorated by shooting on the streets of New York again. Whatever the case, with Whatever Works, he has made the first true neurotic Woody Allen movie since 2002’s Hollywood Ending.    

Larry David stars as Woody Allen, although his character’s name is Boris Yellnikoff, a brilliant but misanthropic man who lives in a state of constant pessimistic despair. Boris is so foul tempered, so out-of-step with humanity (or nattering microbes as he calls them) he makes the caustic character David plays on Curb Your Enthusiasm look positively cordial by comparison. When a homeless waif named Melody (Evan Rachel Wood) inserts herself into his life by moving into his walk-up apartment and treating him to homemade southern cooking, his world view softens, but only a touch.

Whatever Works feels like a throwback to the kind of observational films Allen made in the 1970s. His best work has always focused on the basics of life—love, morality, sex, religion and the randomness of the universe—and Whatever Works signals a welcome return of Allen’s trademarks after a series of entertaining, but fluffy films. Also at hand are Woody staples such as an old school jazz soundtrack (the film kicks off with Grouch Marx singing Hello, I Must be Going from the 1930 film Animal Crackers), the familiar Allen font in the credits and the even more familiar May – December romance storyline.    

The acerbic heart of the film is Larry David, main character and fourth wall piercing narrator. It can’t be said that he brings a lot of charm to the movie, but that’s the point. It’s a rare actor who could pull off a line like “It’s true, I have been patient with your phenomenal ignorance,” and not completely alienate the audience but David has the disagreeable old coot routine down pat and knows that viewers will go along with him no matter how bumpy or uncomfortable the ride. My only complaint about the performance is that it seems so constrained. David is an improviser at heart and occasionally his long scripted to- camera monologues feel forced.  

Balancing out the sour with the sweet is Evan Rachel Wood as the naïve Melody, a young former pageant queen from the Deep South. She hasn’t given many comic performances but here she is dimwitted perfection. Wood milks every laugh out of the script, particularly when she is regurgitating Boris’s high brow theories on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the like.  

Whatever Works is only occasionally laugh out loud funny, but is a welcome return to his roots from Woody Allen. Call it How Woody Got His Groove Back if you like, but nobody else does jokes about ego and super ego with as much panache.

WOODSTOCK: 40TH ANNIVERSARY ULTIMATE COLLECTOR’S EDITION: 4 ½ STARS

With the peace and love of the 1960s a long distant memory along comes a reissue of the movie that defined the hippie era. Roger Ebert called the original film an “archeological study” of the Woodstock nation, a nation of alienated young people who were expressing themselves in a way America had never seen before. Almost 40 years since that hot August weekend the images in the film are still as vibrant and exciting. It’s a concert movie, but it’s about so much more than just the music.
 
Seen as an historical document the new collector’s edition of Woodstock on Blu Ray really brings the forty year old festival to vivid life. Shot with 16 cameras the original film provided an overview of the three wild days on Yasgar’s farm but the new package, with two hours of never before seen musical performances, enhanced sound and extras like interviews with Grace Slick and Martin Scorsese is the next best thing to having been there. In fact, perhaps it’s better than the real thing, what with the hippie audience’s dubious affiliation to hygiene and the lack of port-a-potties on site.     

The movie takes us back to a time when popular music meant something; when people truly believed that a person with a guitar and an anti-establishment attitude could change the world. It may seem naïve now, but there is no denying the passion on display in many of these performances. Richie Havens’s Freedom leaps off the screen, and Country Joe and the Fish’s I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To’-Die Rag is a darkly humorous but powerful statement against Vietnam. Those songs may never have reached the top of the charts but it is hard to image anything by Britney, Lady GaGa or Rhianna having the same kind of cultural impact. The documentary is a time capsule from a era when music and musical messages mattered.    

The re-mastered Woodstock Blu Ray offers a fascinating glimpse—it’s more than a glimpse actually, the new director’s cut is four hours long!—into a well documented time but while we may have seen many of these images before the power of the film really becomes apparent when you watch the movie from start to finish. It’s the sights and sounds of a world in the midst of a huge sea change and while its message of peace of love might sound corny in our cynical age, it heartening to go back to a time—even if it is just for four hours—when anything seemed possible. The best thing is you don’t even have to take the brown acid to have a good time.

WATCHMEN:
FOR FANBOYS AND GIRLS: 4 ½ STARS
FOR THE UNINIATED: 2 STARS

The advertising tagline for Watchman is: Who watches the Watchmen? It’s me. I watched the Watchmen. All 163 minutes of it.

For the uninitiated Watchmen is one of the most highly acclaimed superhero stories of all time, and the only graphic novel to be included on Time magazine’s list of “the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.” Written by comic book legend Alan Moore it resembles a traditional superhero story only in the way a housecat resembles a puma. They both have four legs and a tail but are distinctly different creatures. Ditto Watchmen and its caped brethren. The graphic novel has masked crusaders and characters with super powers but the first ten pages of the book has more existential angst and deep meaning than any ten issues of The Fantastic Four.

Like the book the film, directed by 300 helmer Zach Snyder, is a layered and complicated story set in an alternative reality 1985. Nixon is still president, the Cold War is chillier than ever and the United States won the Vietnam War with the help of a group of masked avengers, led by the powerful Dr. Manhattan, called the Watchmen. The Watchmen, however, have outlived their usefulness and following a ban on superheroes have either retired or become government-sanctioned secret agents. When the Comedian, a former member of the masked crime fighting unit, is brutally
murdered, the enigmatic vigilante Rorschach tries to discover who would want to knock off former masked superheroes.

Watchman is a slavish adaptation of Moore’s work. Perhaps too slavish. At two hours and forty-five minutes it’s considerably shorter than the five hours Terry Gilliam said he would need to do the book justice but Snyder’s take on the story is too literal, too unquestioning.    

In an attempt to please the fanboys who regard the graphic novel as a holy text he’s taken pains to be as true to the book as possible. Many of the shots look like panels from the novel and the movie is packed with enough character and story details to keep the geeks happy but it may be too densely packed for the casual viewer. In fact, I think the first hour—call it the secret lives of superheroes part—is unwelcoming to anyone unfamiliar with the source material. It’s cool looking—many reviews are calling Snyder a “visionary” but I to wonder if after only three films he can be labeled as such—but an excess of style doesn’t translate into good storytelling.

When Snyder does finally get to the climax it’s an exposition fest with the bad guy detailing his wicked plot step-by-step, just like an episode of Murder She Wrote. In a movie filled with fractured timelines and splintered storytelling it seems like a letdown, an overly traditional way of wrapping up all the loose ends.

Snyder may have rushed the ending but he doesn’t skimp on the action, filling many sequences with disturbing images and brutal violence. Imagine dogs chewing on a child’s dismembered leg, a man graphically bludgeoned to death with a cleaver and gallons of squirting plasma and you get the idea. Equally dark are the tormented characters. All superheroes are conflicted but this bunch with their parental issues, insecurities, narcissism and unhinged love of violence would give Freud nightmares.

While some judicious editing would have been in order Snyder should be commended for hanging on to the graphic novel’s political edge. Although written over two decades ago the story has many timely elements. When Adrian Veidt / Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) says to Lee Iacocca, “The world… deserves better than you have given it,” he could be talking today to any of the heads of the Big Three.    

Rated a hard “R” this is not a superhero movie for kids. Its way too dark and violent for the Iron Man set but should be right up the (dark) alley for older comic book fans. If you aren’t familiar with the book or the novel’s trademarked image of a yellow smiley-face button splattered with blood, you will likely be in for a bit of a baffling experience.

THE WRESTLER: 4 ½ STARS

Second acts in Hollywood are rare. Once an actor is infected with the stink of failure it's hard to wash off, particularly when the fall from grace is very public and seen by many people as well earned.

In 1985 Mickey Rourke was being called the new Brando; by 1995 Hollywood wasn't calling at all. His career flameout rivaled that of other Tinsel Town wash outs like Orson Welles and John Gilbert, two legendary performers who blew their shot at screen immortality with a combination of ego and bad choices. Couple career suicide with a volatile reputation, an interlude as a professional boxer which caused neurological damage and forever altered his once matinee idols looks and you have a Hollywood Babylon story that looks doomed to end
poorly. And it almost did, after fifteen years without a lead role in a film Rourke was a write off, Hollywood's forgotten man, until director Darren Aronofsky crafted a role for him that allowed him to face his demons in a very public way.  Call it primal screen therapy if you like, but his achingly honest portrayal of burned out wrestler Randy the Ram may just earn him an Oscar nod.

In The Wrestler Rourke plays an over-the-hill pro wrestler, a once famous athlete capable of filling Madison Square Gardens, now a raggedly collection of shin splits, aching bones and broken spirit. He ekes out a living doing small time matches in rec centers for the handful of die hards who remember his glory days, but the good times are a long distant memory. On his off hours he works part time in a grocery store and tries to court stripper Cassidy played by Marisa Tomei. When a heart attack sidelines his big chance—a rematch with his greatest rival on the twentieth anniversary of their MSG bout—he must face up to his decline and leave behind the only life he’s ever known. An attempt to reconnect with his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) gives him little comfort and it seems he only has one chance at happiness—even if it kills him.

Sound depressing? Well it is, but it’s also a fascinating look at the
downside of fame which parallels Rourke’s own fall from grace. In the hands of another actor—Nicolas Cage was originally slated to play the part—Randy the Ram would be an interesting portrait of failure but Rourke brings a gravitas to the character that goes beyond mere characterization. His real life experience on fame’s downside gives him a unique perspective on Randy, allowing him to bring the shame of failed expectation to the forefront. When Randy is at his lowest point, living in reduced circumstances and making ends meet by working behind a deli counter, the shame of being recognized as a former hero, a fallen star, is a feeling Rourke has lived in real life and the scene in the film feels all the more real because of it.

The Wrestler doesn't take the easy road. Aronofsky, best known for directing PI and Requiem for a Dream, is unflinching in his portrait of Randy and it can make for some uncomfortable viewing. We all know that wrestling is fake, but the toll—physical and emotional—it takes on its practitioners is very real.

The physical toll is easy to spot. Rourke's face looks like he's been beaten up by an angry plastic surgeon and his slouching walk belies years of extreme physical abuse both inside and outside of the ring. The emotional side of the film is just as powerful, but not painted in such broad strokes. Much of what Rourke does here is internal; the look on his face as he scans a sparsely attended autograph session, an ego buster of an event where he tries to hawk $5 photographs to a handful of former fans or a heartfelt speech to his daughter that relies on his fractured facial expressions as much as it does the words he's saying.  It's all powerful stuff that takes us inside Randy's fruitless search for honor, dignity and love.

The Wrestler, like so many of the Oscar movies released this year is a good film with an amazing central performance. Think Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married or the powerhouse trio of Amy Adams, Meryl Streep and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt. They are all interesting-ish movies that are elevated by the acting. The Wrestler is a great film, but it wouldn't approach the stellar heights it hits without Rourke.

I don't know if this is the beginning of a comeback for him or not. There can't be that many roles out there that can take advantage of the particular kind of pathos where art and real life collide, but The Wrestler should finally bring Rourke the kind of mainstream notice he deserves.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED: 2 ½ STARS

In What Just Happened Hollywood turns the camera on itself, exposing the day-to-day life of a once hot producer on the verge of a career meltdown. Robert De Niro stars as a movie mover-and-shaker plagued by bad test screening reports, a superstar actor who refuses to shave off a silly Santa-esque beard and low ranking placement on Vanity Fair’s Hollywood Power list. It’s a peek behind the curtain that reveals the dark—and often ridiculous—inner workings of the movie business.

Ben (De Niro) is having a rough two weeks. A test screening for his latest film, a thriller starring Sean Penn, didn’t go well and now the studio is demanding a recut version with a different ending. Bruce Willis’s facial hair is jeopardizing his next production and his ex-wife is involved with a new man. To weather these storms he must use all his skills as a negotiator, father figure, hand holder, problem solver and politician or see himself become yesterday’s news, replaced by someone younger and hungrier.

Despite the film’s catchy advertising tagline, “In Hollywood, everybody can hear you scream,” What Just Happened isn’t a particularly scary look at the business. Based on a memoir by real-life producer Art Linson—whose credits include The Untouchables, Heat, Casualties of War, Fight Club and Into the Wild—it is almost affectionate in its dissection of Hollywood’s foibles. The film’s broad strokes are obvious—stars can be temperamental, directors are self-indulgent brats—but when the director Barry Levinson gets down to brass tacks, as he does in a scene where a studio head (Catherine Keener) coldly orders Ben’s assistant out of a meeting, he more accurately portrays the harsh realities of what life with the Hollywood sharks is really like.

If the film contained more scenes like that What Just Happened might have been able to raise its temperature from tepid to a rapid boil, but unfortunately settles for Hollywood stereotypes and warmed-over industry in jokes.

What Just Happened is aided by an all star cast headlined by De Niro who hands in nice understated work, Stanley Tucci as a slick screenwriter, John Turturro as a neurotic agent and Bruce Willis and Sean Penn who both lampoon their Tinsel Town bad-boy images. It’s fun to see Willis trash a dressing room or Penn nod knowingly when his director commits career suicide at the Cannes Film Festival but even these fourth-wall piercing cameos aren’t as funny or satiric as they should be.

What Just Happened claims to be an insider’s view of what veteran director Norman Jewison called “this terrible business” but lacks any real insight.

W.: 2 STARS FOR THE MOVIE
4 STARS FOR THE PERFORMANCES
3 STARS TOTAL

W. isn’t the first warts and all presidential biography to hit ever the big screen. In fact, it isn’t even the first Oliver Stone directed warts and all White House portrait to enter theatres. Nor is it the first time George W. Bush has been given the Hollywood treatment—among others Timothy Bottoms played him on the sit-com That’s My Bush and in 2006 British director Gabriel Range stirred things up with Death of a President about the fictional assassination of Bush—but it is the first time Stone has immortalized a sitting president.

Josh Brolin plays Bush from his frat days at Yale through to his time as a mostly unemployed good old boy, through to becoming the born-again governor of Texas to answering a call from God to run for President. Along the way the character is arrested and bailed out by his powerful Dad, signs up for AA, gets married, starts wars and uses lots of Bushisms like “misunderestimate.”

It’s a jam packed life, ripe for a full-on biographical treatment, but it is also a well documented one. As audiences we all know the story. We’ve seen it on television, read about it in the dozens of books written about the man and his presidency, so Stone’s job was to come up with new material, or at least a new spin on old material to keep the story compelling. Unfortunately as far as bios go it is same-old. Stone doesn’t dredge up much new material, and save for a few scenes deep inside the White House’s war rooms, there isn’t much here that will come as a surprise to anyone with even a passing knowledge of Bush and his troubled presidency.

Luckily for Stone he has a top flight cast of actors breathing life into characters that are most frequently seen standing behind a White House podium giving carefully prepared answers to a scrum of reporters. Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, General Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld all make appearances. Richard Dreyfuss nails the commonly held idea of Cheney as puppet master, the White House master of Doublethink and Newspeak. Toby Jones, a British actor best known for voicing Dobby, the house-elf, in the Harry Potter films plays power architect, or "Bush's Brain," as he's sometimes called, Karl Rove as a ruthless political animal, convinced of both his moral superiority and his king-making ability. Thandie Newton, using a nasal, flat voice brings out the humor of the toadying Condoleeza Rice while Jeffrey Wright and Scott Glenn seem to be channeling Powel and Rumsfeld respectively.

Leading the cast is Brolin who, despite a career downturn that spanned most of the 1990s, has been moving from strength to strength of late starring in movies like No Country for Old Men and upcoming Milk with Sean Penn. Here as Bush he nails the president’s beady-eyed squint, the malapropisms—he’s the decider!—and the over confidence. It’s a remarkable performance that goes well beyond mimicry; at once filled with swagger but plagued by self-doubt. In Brolin’s hands George “don’t call me Jr.” Bush is portrayed as a simple man so determined to prove his mettle—to his father as much as the country—that he makes some dubious decisions in an attempt to appear decisive and powerful.

It’s a showy performance, but one that doesn’t stoop to parody. Bush is a larger than life character and Brolin’s take on him is big and brassy. It’s also almost guaranteed to be nominated for Best Actor come awards time.

So Stone has delivered an unexpectedly even handed portrait of one of the most polarizing figures of recent history. I’m pleased was able to put aside partisan politics but my major complaint of the film, aside from some obvious omissions—there isn’t a hanging chad in sight—is that it isn’t tough enough. Stone, in an attempt to be empathetic has played it too safe with the story of America’s worst president ever. Perhaps it would have been a different movie had he waited ten or fifteen years to make it, but as it is W. feels overly restrained and straightforward.

THE WOMEN: 2 ½ STARS

There is no small amount of irony that the man who wrote Under My Thumb and Some Girls, songs reviled by women’s groups everywhere, is one of the producers of a new female empowerment movie starring Annette Bening and Meg Ryan. Mick Jagger, perhaps atoning for past lyrical crimes against women, was one of the money men behind The Women, a loose adaptation of the Clare Booth Luce play and hit movie.

The names are the same from the 1939 film (which starred Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell and Joan Crawford in the roles now taken by Ryan, Bening and Eva Mendes) and the general idea is intact but the story of a wealthy woman who discovers her husband is having an affair with a Sak’s Fifth Avenue perfume counter attendant has been tweaked and brought forth into the twenty-first century. Gone are the Countesses and dude ranches of the original; in are lesbian characters (Jada Pinkett Smith), expensive clothes and one-liners geared to appeal to a female audience. There’s also been a philosophical shift. The original exposed society women as catty and shallow whereas the new girl power vision celebrates female friendship, eliminating most of the cattiness—although the odd slyly mean remark like “There’s a fine line between an outfit and a get-up…” slips through. 

Now that studios have finally figured out that it’s not just teenage boys who pay to see movies, more and more films are being aimed at a female audience. Sex and the City and the The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, both recent movies that dealt with female bonding and friendship, were just the first shots across the bow. Apart from its female demographic The Women hits another, usually neglected, target audience: older women. This movie is aimed at the mothers of the teens and young women who flocked to see the Sisterhood sequel and the adventures of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte.

From its opening joke about marked down shoes the film is so unconcerned with a male audience it goes so far as to not include one single male character. There aren’t even any men in the crowd shots. Estrogen rules in every frame of the film.

Director and screenwriter Diane English (best known as the producer and writer of Murphy Brown) hasn’t exactly improved on the original, but she does keep things going at a sitcom-like pace, peppering the action with so many jokes—only about half of which actually land—that the whole thing could best be described as amiable rather than good.

The main cast—most veterans of light comedy—are as amiable as the script. High points include Candice Bergen, who continues her run as the summer’s reigning cameo queen, and her effortless way with a one liner. As in Sex and the City she has The Women’s best line with, “Such a bad facelift… She looks like she’s reentering the Earth’s atmosphere.” Also delightful is Cloris Leachman as the crotchety house keeper prone to admonishing her boss with sayings like, “Keep your Wonder Bra on…” While the dialogue isn’t exactly as elegantly snappy as Luce’s words, these two old pros deliver their zingers effortlessly.

The Women doesn’t have the naughty edge of Sex and the City or the youthful exuberance of the Sisterhood movies, but it shares common ground with those pictures in its heartwarming message of friendship and empowerment.

WARGAMES 25TH ANNIVERSARY DVD: 3 ½ STARS

To fully appreciate WarGames, the Matthew Broderick film now celebrating its 25th anniversary with a special edition DVD, you have to cast your mind back to a time before computers dominated everyone’s work space. It’s a Cold War thriller about a teenager who unknowingly kicks off the countdown to World War III by playing a computer game. Made at a time when computers were still perceived as strange, high tech gizmos it played on people’s distrust of technology and perceived Russian threat.

These days the movie plays like The Brat Pack Meets Dr. Strangelove. It remains an engaging thriller, well constructed and acted, but the technology involved now looks so out of date, so hopelessly archaic it harkens back to a time when calculators were considered high tech.

It all looks terribly dated but director John Badham sticks to a traditional and timeless thriller set up, concentrating on character rather than the technology. It’s a smart approach that keeps the intrigue front-and-center, making the ancient looking computers secondary to the overall story. This focus on plot and procedure keeps the story fresh despite being a quarter of a century old. The technology angle is all rather silly and seems really alarmist to today’s eyes, but in an age of identity theft the idea that computers can cause harm is still relevant. 

Matthew Broderick shines as 17-year-old David Lightman, a social outcast who uses his technological skills to hack into his high school’s computer to change his grades. Opposite him is Ally Sheedy as the perky Jennifer Mack, David’s teenage crush who gets caught up in the action. Also look for Dabney Coleman as a cantankerous computer-reliant defense specialist.

It’s been a quarter of a century since “Shall we play a game” briefly became a popular catchphrase, and while WarGames doesn’t strike the technophobe-Cold War-chord it did back in 1983 it does stand up as an entertaining teen thriller.

THE WACKNESS: 3 STARS

Fans of kid’s entertainment may be a little take aback at the latest role for Josh Peck. The former star of the Nickelodeon comedy for kids Drake & Josh has shed the goofiness of the TV series, but not all of his teen angst for his big screen starring role.

Set in New York in 1994 The Wackness focuses on an unpopular and troubled high school student named Luke Shapiro (Peck). To make ends meet Luke sells pot to a ragtag bunch of regular clients, including Dr. Jeffrey Squires (Ben Kingsley), a psychiatrist who trades therapy sessions for weed. At their meetings the pair realize that despite the great gap in their ages their lives are running a parallel course. Their relationship becomes strained when Dr. Squires’ marriage runs into trouble and Luke starts dating the doctor’s step-daughter (Juno’s Olivia Thirlby).

The Wackness is a coming of age story, the kind of thing we have seen many times before, but despite some familiar situations the movie is much more satisfying than many others in the genre.

Using a great deal of personality in his direction Jonathan Levine creates a sense of time and place. From the sultry summer heat of Union Square as Luke makes his rounds to the cool reserve of the doctor’s Upper West Side office to Luke’s crack-pot customers he skillfully incorporates New York City as a character in the piece. As a result The Wackness presents a universal story—without the sugary sweet tone of many coming-of-age stories—that could only have happened in this very specific place.

Best of all though are the performances. Lately Ben Kingsley has turned into one of those British actors who will accept almost any role offered to him. Like Michael Caine, another actor who never met a role he wouldn’t take, Kingsley is a masterful actor who often wastes his gifts on projects that are beneath him. For every Sexy Beast on his resume there’s a BloodRayne or Thunderbirds movie. Any more roles like The Love Guru and old Sir Ben just might be asked to renounce his knighthood.

Happily in The Wackness he essays a role equal to his abilty. His Dr. Squires is a complicated character, one part randy old hippie, one part wise health care professional and one part over-the-top neurotic. The beauty of the performance is that Kingsley pushes each element of Squires’ personality to the limit but keeps him completely believable and by the end, even sympathetic.

Josh Peck, in his first serious young adult role, does something remarkable; he doesn’t let Kingsley steal the show. In a low key performance he radiates charisma as a guy who, as his kind-of girlfriend Liz says, only sees the “wackness” (the downside) in everything and not the “dopeness.” His take on Luke is believable and empathetic and should connect with teen and young adult audiences. 

The Wackness covers ground we’ve seen before—the heartbreak of first love—but does so in a surprisingly fresh and interesting way.

WALL-E: 4 ½ STARS

WALL-E, the new movie from the animation wizards at Pixar, is the first art film for kids I have ever seen. The story of a lonely robot who inadvertently gives humankind a second chance is aimed at kids but doesn’t look like any other kid’s movie you’ve seen. If you’re expecting the same-old from Pixar—maybe Finding Nemo 2: That Darned Fish or Toy Story Three: This Time It’s Personal—think again. WALL-E is an ambitious and beautiful stand alone film. It’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for children.

Set in the year 2700, Earth is now a dystopian world rendered uninhabitable by wasteful and excessive humans who exited the planet centuries ago. For seven-hundred years WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) has lived alone (save for a friendly cockroach named Hal) compacting the heaps of trash and collecting trinkets left behind when the exodus from Earth happened.

The monotony of his lonely life is interrupted by a search robot named EVE who thinks one of WALL-E’s discoveries is the key to repopulating the planet. When she heads back to the mother ship to pass along the news WALL-E tags along, unwilling to lose the only friend he’s ever had. 

WALL-E is one of the most unique children’s films I have ever seen. Despite its relatively simple story, it’s risky filmmaking that has more to do with the great science fiction films of the 1970s than family friendly fare like Nemo. The world director Andrew Stanton has created here is a dark one, where Earth is a wasteland (with tones of The Andromeda Strain and The Omega Man) and overly pampered humankind has reverted back to an almost child-like state.

Add to that the fact that there is no dialogue at all for the first 30 minutes and only sporadic chit chat after that, and you are left with a film that can only be described as a brave and adventurous outing in the formulaic world of kid’s entertainment.

This is a kid’s film that doesn’t pander to kids; that assumes they can use their imaginations to fill in the blanks left by the lack of talk. Most kid’s flicks entertain the eye but don’t give their minds much of a workout. WALL-E does both. It’s the evolution of children’s films; after this the wisecracking animals and toilet jokes of Madagascar and the like will look like relics, as current as Steamboat Willie.

A few famous names pop up on the cast list—Jeff Garland, Sigourney Weaver—but Stanton doesn’t rely on them to sell the movie. Nor does he use current pop culture references to earn cheap laughs à la Shrek. Instead he relies on the most old fashioned of devices—good storytelling—to tell his futuristic story. 

Coupled with the good story is spectacular animation from the computer nerds at Pixar whose great achievement here is to give WALL-E and EVE, two inanimate objects, complex emotions while staying true to the characters without stooping to cheap manipulation.

Director Stanton’s great achievement is to fill every frame with a sense of wonder and provide the viewer with one of the most unique and satisfying movie experiences of the summer.

WANTED: 3 ½ STARS

Wanted is about fathers and sons. It’s about a deadly fraternity, called, with startling clarity and simplicity, The Fraternity. It’s about bullets etched with epitaphs and tattooed assassins.

At its center is Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) a cubicle-dwelling accountant so mild mannered he allows his best friend to carry on a torrid affair with his girlfriend and can’t stand up to his nagging boss. He’s a nobody; the kind of guy who Goggles his name and draws a blank. No Results. When a simple trip to the drug store to buy his anti-anxiety medication turns into an out-of-control shoot ‘em up between dueling killers (Angelina Jolie and Thomas Kretschmann) he is indoctrinated into the secret world of The Fraternity, a millennium old band of assassins. It seems his estranged father was a world class killer and Sloan (Morgan Freeman), the organization’s enigmatic head honcho believes Wesley has what it takes to join the exclusive club.  

After a vigorous and violent training he goes from slacker to whacker; they mold him into a highly skilled killer ready to carry out the ancient code of The Fraternity and kill the man who offed his father. 

Based on a high octane comic book series by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, Wanted has the same manic energy of the graphic novels. Director Timur Bekmambetov uses Matrix-style action, combined with Quentin Tarantino-style attitude and a nod to the goofy humor of the Transporter movies to create an over-the-top bash-fest that takes off like a rocket from its opening minutes and doesn’t let-up until the end credits roll.

Unlikely action star James McAvoy, best known as Mr. Tumnus, the naive satyr in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, holds his own amidst the crazy carnage. As his character goes from office contract manager to contract killer the diminutive McAvoy proves that he can be convincing as both a dweeb and stone cold killer. Angelina Jolie, as the appropriately named Fox, riffs on her Mrs. Smith character—a kind of deadly runway model—managing to be simultaneously sultry and tough. Morgan Freeman puts a nasty spin on his well-worn calm but commanding film persona, playing a rare, for him, morally ambiguous character.

There’s nothing subtle about Wanted. The violence is graphic, out-of-control and plentiful—it’s Fight Club without the brainy subtext—the story is in-your-face and even Danny Elfman’s score can only be described as bombastic. It’s a shock to the senses that will delight action and comic fans but may leave the faint of heart dazed and confused. 

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS: 1 STAR

In What Happens in Vegas a young successful woman marries an unemployed guy after a night of drinking. No, it’s not the Britney Spears story, it’s a new romantic comedy starring Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher.    

The premise is right out of Rom Com 101. Kutcher is Jack, a good looking womanizer who can’t hold down a job. Diaz is the beautiful but controlling Joy. In other words they are stereotypes: he’s a slob; she’s a controlling harridan. One drunken night they hook up in Vegas, and despite their differences they wind up getting hitched. In the cold light of day they both realize they don’t really like one another and need to get an annulment, pronto. That is until Kutcher puts her quarter in a slot machine and wins three million dollars. Her quarter, his pull. Back home a judge (Dennis Miller) rules that neither gets a dime of the cash or an annulment unless they try and make their marriage work for six months. Wacky hi-jinks ensue.

Anyone who’s read the Rom Com Handbook knows it’s only a matter of time until the best friend says, “Oh my God, you’re falling for her…” and we discover, once and for all, that opposites truly do attract.

What Happens in Vegas has four solid laughs and 95 minutes of clichés provided by a script that appears to have been written by the Rom Com Automatic Script Generator. It plays to the worst kind of stereotypes, the type of gender humor that should have gone out with Lucy and Desi. Worse than the old fashioned “men and women cannot coexist” approach is an painfully unfunny scene makes fun of domestic abuse.

Diaz and Kutcher, both romantic comedy veterans, are the above the title stars but it is the supporting cast that squeezes the laughs out of this battle of sexes material. Rob Corddry and Lake Bell are the best friends—known in the Rom Com Handbook as “wacky sidekicks”—and have all the best lines. Bell has the same kind of appeal as her co-star Cameron Diaz showed in There’s Something About Mary—she’s beautiful and goofy—and it’s the first time Corddry, who was always so great on The Daily Show, has been funny in a movie. He can take a throw away line like, “She’s awfully hostile for a girl named Joy,” and turn it into one of the funniest things in the whole movie.

The famous Vegas tourist board slogan should be the headline for this review: What Happens in Vegas, despite two funny supporting performances, really should have stayed in Vegas.

WAR INC: 2 ½ STARS +1 STAR FOR AUDACITY = 3 ½

In the last year a number of movies about the Iraq war have come and gone, barely making an impact with audiences. Well intentioned, but earnest movies like Lions for Lambs, Redacted and In the Valley of Elah were box office poison to a public inundated by images of the war on television. The latest film to comment on the war is a subversive new “what if” satire co-written by and starring John Cusack.

Partially inspired by Naomi Klein's article Baghdad Year Zero, and set in the near future, War, Inc. is a vicious spoof set in the fictional desert country Turagistan. The war torn country is occupied by Tamerlane, a private corporation run by a former US Vice-President (Dan Aykroyd). Once they have completely decimated the place, he reasons, why would they then ignore the entrepreneurial opportunities that arise?  

Cusack is Hauser, a hit man (he describes himself as “a morally twisted character from a Céline novel” or “like a reject from the Island of Dr. Moreau”) outsourced by Tamerlane to assassinate a Middle Eastern oil minister (Lyubomir Neikov) who wants to build a pipeline through the country thereby interfering with Tamerlane’s sole proprietorship of the land. Posing as a trade show producer, his cover involves setting up a televised party that will include a pop star’s wedding. Complicating matters are a Central Asian sexpot singer Yonica Babyyeah (Hillary Duff) and a snoopy reporter (Marisa Tomei).   

War, Inc is kind of like the love-child of Wag the Dog and Grosse Pointe Blank. It’s darkly humorous, veering from slapstick to sincerity and back to satire with a side trip to soap opera land. The unevenness in tone may trouble viewers uncomfortable with sharp shifts in style, but adventurous viewers may find it exhilarating.

Some of the jokes are obvious—the tanks which patrol the Emerald City safe zone are festooned with advertisements à la Nascar—and some good sight gags are dampened by heavy handed direction—visual gags that are seen in wide shots are needlessly emphasized in close ups—but there is an anarchy to the film uncommon in the mainstream.

There is less and less satire on our screens these days because audiences have to work to get the deeper meaning of the piece and Hollywood doesn’t want people to have to think, they simply want them to buy tickets and popcorn. War, Inc, however, is food for thought. It is outrageous and not easily pigeonholed, but is very clear on where it stands on war profiteers, making interesting comments on the involvement of corporations in the wake of war. Are you listening Dick Cheney?

Showing maimed returning soldiers hasn’t been an effective tool for filmmakers to spark comment on the war, perhaps the jokes and satire of War, Inc. are what it will take to get people to finally respond to a movie that provocatively, but slyly comments on the current situation in the Middle East.

WALK HARD: 3 ½ STARS

In recent years the template for the big Hollywood musical biopic has been perfected and written in stone. Take a troubled childhood, throw in a tragedy involving a younger sibling, some drug use, a tumultuous romance, lightening strikes of musical inspiration and you have—take your pick—Walk the Line or Ray, two successful biographies that cleaned up at the box office.

Walk Hard, a new outrageous comedy from the team that busted guts with Knocked Up and Superbad, uses all the usual clichés and more to present the story of the amazingly resilient pop star Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly). The film opens, as biopics so often do at the end of the singer’s career, with an elderly Cox about to take the stage for the first time in years. As Cox stands in a darkened hallway deep in thought a stage manager tries to get him on the stage. “Dewey Cox needs to think about his entire life before he plays,” explains his longtime drummer played by SNLer Tim Meadows, and the movie takes off, amplifying and poking fun at all the usual clichés of the genre.

Walk Hard is ridiculous, but ridiculously funny. Like This is Spinal Tap it takes elements from rock ‘n’ roll legend and twists them until they become almost unrecognizable. Screenwriters Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan looked to Brian Wilson for the drug addled “musical masterpiece” scenes, while the child-bride story is lifted whole from Jerry Lee Lewis’ life and they’ve even thrown bits and pieces of Jim Morrison, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan and Elvis. It’s a musical gumbo that equals the life and unruly times of Dewey Cox.

No matter how silly the movie gets—and it gets very silly—John C. Reilly, who’s built like Johnny Cash, but sounds like Roy Orbison, for the most part plays it straight. His earnest take on Dewey is hilarious, particularly when the 42-year-old actor is playing the 14-year-old Dewey. Look for fun supporting work from White Stripes singer Jack White as Elvis, Harold Ramis as the record company head and Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman as John, Paul, George and Ringo and cameos from Lyle Lovett, Jewel, Ghostface Killah and Jackson Browne.

Unlike Ray and Walk the Line Walk Hard doesn’t have a back catalogue of tried and true hits to fill out the soundtrack. Not to worry. Apatow and company have done a great job of coming up with convincing and catchy “hits” for Dewey to sing. The original songs from the title track to Dewey’s others chart toppers, like Hey Mr. Old Guy and Guilty As Charged were written by pedigreed songwriters like Marshall Crenshaw and even Brian Wilson’s Smile (which is parodied in the film) co-writer Van Dyke Parks.    

Musical biopics were ripe for parody and like other movie spoofs—Scary Movie and Airplane! come to mind—Walk Hard does a good R-rated job at taking the Mickey out of the genre.
WEST SIDE STORY DVD
MGM / 1961 / 153 minutes

In the interest of full disclosure I have to admit that I am not a fan of musicals. In fact, the term “all singing, all dancing” is usually enough to send me running and screaming. Despite winning ten Academy Awards on its release in 1961, MGM’s West Side Story has never been a favorite of mine, and I haven’t seen it for years. So it was with mild disinterest that I viewed the new slickly packaged 40th anniversary DVD reissue of this retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story. As it turns out I was in for a pleasant surprise. While I still find the larger-than-life Puerto Rican accents grating and have to suppress giggles at the vision of tough gang members dancing in tandem, this new version boasts a wonderfully remixed and re-mastered audio track, a digitally polished Panavision picture and interesting extras, adding up to a beautifully done reissue. The two disc set offers a wide screen presentation of the film, with English, French and Spanish subtitles and spoken language options; a new, comprehensive 56-minute documentary that includes every major West Side Story figure, and a host of shorter features, including alternate trailers, original film intermission music and three photo galleries. As an added bonus MGM has included a thick print scrapbook featuring the entire script, an original lobby brochure and behind the scenes photos. Nice package all in all, and while West Side Story will never make my Top Ten Favorite Movies Of All Time list, this reissue has made me reconsider the work, especially the lyrical beauty of Ernest Lehman’s script and the nice supporting performances of George Chakiris and Rita Moreno. Recommended.

THE WILD DOGS

This film’s title refers to the dogs that were left homeless in Bucharest, Romania when dictator Ceausescu decided to level the city and rebuild it in his vision. After years of unchecked breeding, these stray dogs number in the thousands. Director Thom Fitzgerald (The Hanging Garden) uses scenes of the dogs snarling and fighting as a metaphor for human behaviour. It’s a bit heavy handed perhaps, but given the setting and nature of the story it seems appropriate enough. Fitzgerald weaves several plot lines together – an ineffectual dog-catcher (Mihai Calota) fears he will lose his job; a decadent ambassador (David Hayman) takes advantage of his position of power, while his pampered wife (Alberta Watson) begins to understand the crushing poverty that exists all around her and a pornographer (Fitzgerald) comes to town to search for inexpensive models to photograph. It’s a complex narrative, and Fitzgerald almost manages to bring it all together. There is a feeling that shards of the story are left dangling and the themes of redemption that are sprinkled throughout seem a bit too tidy, but by an large it works. My main complaint is the casting of Fitzgerald in the lead role of the pornographer. He simply isn’t a strong enough actor to convey the emotional arc that his character goes through. For the movie to work we must believe that this is a man who could make his living taking naked pictures of underage girls, and could then realize the evil of his ways and change into a decent guy. Fitzgerald simply never convinced me that there was a transformation happening internally – his performance is all surface. I found myself wondering what a more accomplished actor might do with this role. Don McKellar or Tom McCamus could have pulled this off, but I would have liked to seen Callum Keith Rennie take on the part. He has the toughness to make us believe he could be involved in something unsavoury and the acting chops show us the character’s salvation. The Wild Dogs is still a powerful piece of work, just not as affecting as it could be.

WORLD TRAVELER

World Traveler’s star is one of the best and most under-rated actors working in film today. Billy Crudup impresses every time out, but hasn’t yet found the role that will propel him onto the A-list. Unfortunately World Traveler isn’t likely to raise his profile. He plays Cal, a successful thirtysomething who suddenly leaves his wife and child in search of something intangible just beyond the horizon. On the road he meets people who force him to examine the painful corners of his life. Directed by Bart Freundlich, (Julianne Moore’s real-life husband), the movie crawls along at a snail’s pace, and never really exploits the energy inherent in a road picture – just being on the road with the top down and the pedal pressed to the metal. Cal is the typical “the guy who’s trying to find himself,” but he is so self-centered that as a viewer I found myself wishing he would just get lost and never come back. There is some strong acting here though. Canadian Liane Balaban (New Waterford Girl, St. Jude) has a minor but satisfying role. The best work in the film, however, belongs to James LeGros who has a chance meeting with Cal in an airport. They knew one another in high school, and LeGros has been harbouring a grudge against Cal for fifteen years. In a scene that is almost worth the price of admission he unloads an avalanche of resentment on Cal, who listens and decides to change his life. It is a well written scene, wonderfully played by Crudup and LeGros, but not enough to carry the whole movie.   

WAR: 1 ½ STARS

In 1969 an R&B singer named Edwin Starr had a hit song that I thought it might be appropriate to quote here. “War! What is it good for?” he sang, “Absolutely nothin’! Say it again.” Starr may have had a loftier message in mind than a review for a Jet Li / Jason Statham movie, but if the shoe fits.

War, is the story of an FBI agent (Statham) determined to avenge the death of his partner by bringing down both the Yakuza and Triad crime organizations in San Francisco. The key to cracking the case is Rogue (Jet Li) a hit man for hire who appears to be playing both sides of the fence.

This should have been big dumb fun; the kind of movie that starts with a punch to the head and pummels away at you for ninety action-packed minutes, but instead War limps along for most of its running time. It doesn’t have half the manic energy of Statham’s last film Crank, or nearly enough of the acrobatic physicality that Li is famous for.

Then there is the story. Any movie about double crosses and Machiavellian dealings between crime groups has to be careful to be clear about who’s crossing who or the script can turn to mush. War, with its twists and double and triple crosses, is so confused you need a slide rule to keep up on what’s going on.

War is stylishly filmed by former video director Philip G. Atwell, and is filled with cool cars, beautiful women and just enough action to whet your appetite. It has all the trappings of a solid b action flick, but without the extra spark needed to push it over the top into Funland.

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY: 4 STARS

The Wind That Shakes the Barley, the new film from director Ken Loach, does a remarkable thing. It puts a human face on a complicated political situation and makes hundreds of years of strife understandable and compelling.

Set in county Cork in the early 1920’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley is essentially the story of two brothers who start off as allies and end up as enemies. Damien O’Donovan (Cillian Murphy) is a young doctor about to leave his native Ireland to intern at a prestigious English hospital. His brother Teddy, a fierce nationalist and activist with a deep hatred of the English doesn’t want him to go and tries to convince him to stay and fight for a free Ireland.

Damien isn’t politically active, but a series of events change his mind. After witnessing the brutality of the Black and Tans, the British army who guarded Britain’s interests in Ireland, firsthand as they kill an Irish lad for refusing to speak English and beat a train conductor for refusing them entry on his vehicle, he joins his brother in the Irish Republican Army.   

They work together for a time, until the Anglo-Irish Peace Agreement, which formed the Irish Free State as a dominion within the British Empire, leaves them on different sides of the ideological fence. Teddy sides with the Free Staters who believe in compromise with the English, while Damien sticks with the IRA’s goal of a totally autonomous Ireland. 
The film, with it’s brutal depiction of the English Army has already stirred up controversy since the film won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. In Britain right-wing newspaper columnists have compared director Ken Loach to both propagandist Leni Riefenstahl and Hitler and have suggested that the veteran filmmaker should leave the country if he hates it so much. Loach’s film likely won’t garner that kind of hysterical response when it opens here today, and nor should it.

The film doesn’t simply condemn the English, it showcases the plight of a suppressed people who wanted something very basic—the right to govern themselves. The film is uncompromising, showing brutal, ugly and realistic violence on both sides, but also speaks to conflict outside of Ireland. The depiction of torture in the film brings to mind Abu Ghraib and Guantànamo, suggesting that not much has changed in the intervening 85 years.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a well-acted, well-directed film which suggests that freedom isn’t always free.

WILD HOGS: 1 STAR

Wild Hogs boasts an all-star cast of old pros with a collective career span of 94 years. This is relevant because Wild Hogs is a movie about middle age and the kind of life lessons people pick up as the clock ticks on. The film’s leads, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, Tim Allen and William H. Macy, are all in the throws of middle age and should have learned by now to avoid stinkers like this. With almost 100 years of experience between them they are old enough to know better.

In this baby boomer fable four weekend warriors try desperately to cling to their youth. During the week they are average citizens plucked straight from central casting—a henpecked husband, a computer nerd, a dentist who craves the gravitas that comes along with the title doctor and an investor who looks like he’s on top of the world, when in reality he’s broke and about to be served with divorce papers by his model wife—but on the weekends they are The Wild Hogs, a bike gang complete with porcine insignias embroidered on their leather jackets by their wives. A better name might be The Mild Hogs.

Eager to shed the shackles of middle age the Hogs decide to hit the open road, leave Cincinnati, drive across America and dip their toes into the Pacific Ocean. Their Easy Rider dream soon becomes a nightmare when they happen across an honest-to-God biker bar. Stripped of their dignity by the down and dirty Del Fuegos, Woody (Travolta) seeks revenge and accidentally blows up the biker bar. On the run from the bikers they seek refuge in a small tourist town where there is the inevitable show down between the hooligans and the heroes.

There is the occasional laugh in Wild Hogs, but considering Brian Copeland, the pen behind My Name Is Earl and Arrested Development, wrote the script this should be sharper, funnier and less clichéd than it is. You can squeeze a titter out of an audience by showing an inappropriately naked middle-aged bum or by telling weak bladder jokes, but we’ve seen and heard all this before. The jokes are too easy, and rarely rise above the level of slapstick. Many movies have tread this same path, but only Albert Brook’s Lost in America manages to balance the humor with the pathos of middle age.

More disturbing than the shallow treatment given the main characters is the film’s blatant homophobia. In one running joke Travolta’s character repeatedly shudders at Macy’s familiar touch, even though they have been friends since childhood. Other scenes involving a gay motorcycle cop and an effete karaoke singer at a country fair qualify as gay bashing. 

The cast tries valiantly to make the best of the material, managing the snappy dialogue like the pros they are, but aren’t convincing as long-time friends. The lack of chemistry sucks some of the fun from their scenes together. Ray Liotta hands in a nice turn as a sadistic biker, showing off his rarely used comedic skills.

Wild Hogs is a predictable story of middle age that is far less than the sum of its parts.

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS: 1 STAR

When A Stranger Calls, the remake of the 1979 cult hit starring Carole Kane, has all the usual slasher movie ingredients: a remote location, good looking teens, a nubile starlet in the lead and a relentless killer. Unfortunately it also has wooden acting, leaden pacing and a ridiculously long wait before there is any action.

Camilla Belle, who was very good in a little film called The Ballad of Jack and Rose a couple of years ago plays the teen in peril. She is babysitting two young kids in a beautiful, yet remote home that looks like the architect was inspired by MC Escher’s paintings of never-ending stairways. Soon after she arrives the obscene phone calls start and for the next hour we are treated to her answering the phone, looking scared and yelling, “Is there anybody there?”

When it is discovered that the phone calls are coming from within the house—that’s not a spoiler, it’s in the ad—the action picks up, but only slightly. The last few minutes of the movie are suitably nerve jangling, but hardly worth the effort to make it through the general tedium of the first hour and the everyday-objects-filmed-in- a-sinister-way red herrings.

Walk the Line

This has been a banner year for celebrity bios on film. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a lock for an Academy Award nomination for his performance as the title character in Capote and David Strathairn’s turn as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night and Good Luck has won raves. Add to the list of possible nominees the two leads in Walk the Line. Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter are both Oscar worthy in a film that, unfortunately, isn’t a match to their talents.

Walk the Line follows the tried and true film biography template that Ray mined so successfully last year, providing the greatest hits of Cash’s life—a traumatic childhood event, a cruel father, years of pill popping, an on-again-off-again relationship with June Carter Cash and his rise to fame—in a competent but disposable film.

Phoenix—who imitates Cash’s vocals in a convincing deep rumble—brings the larger-than-life Cash crashing down to earth, playing him as a weak-willed man who fought a lifelong battle with the demons of his past. In Walk the Line’s version of events popping pills was the only remedy for Cash’s daddy issues. Reese Witherspoon’s June Carter is the best performance since Election. Her façade of cheeriness carefully masks Carter’s own inner heartbreak and inner strength. The scenes they share are the film’s strongest and it’s a pity that their relationship isn’t the main focus of the story.

Walk the Line is slick Hollywood product—everything that Johnny Cash wasn’t—and could have benefited from a more audacious and gritty approach.

THE WEATHER MAN: 1 ½ STARS

The forecast for The Weather Man is not good. Stormy skies lie ahead for Nicolas Cage who plays David Spritz, a television weatherman in Chicago who is up for a gig on a national morning show based in New York. His career is progressing well enough, but his personal life is a wreck. He has an ex-wife, two kids who don’t like him and a disapproving father who rains on his parade every chance he gets.

The problem with The Weather Man is tone. Billed as both a comedy and a drama—a dramedy if you will—it is neither. Clumsy writing blunts funny moments and the drama doesn’t work because we don’t really care about these characters. Cage plays Spritz as a self-absorbed schmuck who comes to realize that his existence is meaningless. I agree with him.

WALLACE AND GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT: 4 STARS

People fondly remember Chicken Run, the Aardman Animation claymation hit from 2000, but they love the plasticine pals Wallace and Gromit. The big-screen debut for the cheese-loving inventor and his mute and long-suffering canine side-kick will satisfy viewers who, up until now, made do with watching the shorts A Grand Day Out and The Wrong Trousers. 

The story takes place days before the annual Giant Vegetable Competition. Wallace and Gromit's pest control company—Anti-Pesto—must do battle with a floppy-eared mutant rabbit who is nibbling on all the oversized vegetables.

Co-writer and director Nick Park has loaded the movie with fanciful Ruben Goldberg-like contraptions; visual gags, bad puns—the cheese loving Wallace’s bookshelf features titles like East of Edam and Grated Expectations—as well as some double-entendres for the parents in the audience. There is at least one pretty good in-joke in there for film geeks too—a snippet of Art Garfunkel's song Bright Eyes, from the rabbit-themed cartoon Watership Down, is heard on a car stereo. Park also tips his hat to the British love of gardening, King Kong and the Hammer Horror movies.

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is smart family entertainment—funny and textured enough that the whole family can enjoy it.

WEDDING CRASHERS: 3 ½ STARS

Wedding Crashers is a comedy of manners—bad manners that is. Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn make their living as smooth talking mediators in difficult divorce cases. The side effect of this is that they are really good at talking malarkey to get people to do what they want—especially women. This dovetails nicely with their sideline of crashing weddings and using their charm to score food, drinks and bridesmaids who they say “throw their inhibitions to the wind” at marriage ceremonies. For these guys wedding crashing is more than just a hobby, it is a way of life with a strict set of rules, one of which says that they must never fall in love with any of their conquests. Of course, both break the rule—Vaughn hooks up with the slightly psychotic daughter of a well connected politician and Wilson with her beautiful sister, played by Canadian Rachel McAdams. Much of the success of Wedding Crashers is due to the chemistry between Vaughn and Wilson, who keep things cruising along at a good clip with snappy dialogue—much of which seems improvised—and their considerable charms. Neither are stretching as actors here—we’ve seen Vaughn’s manic motor mouth routine in a few films recently, and Wilson isn’t displaying any of the acting muscle he did in The Royal Tenenbaums—but audiences won’t care because although the film has some pacing problems, little comic momentum and is fairly predictable, but it does have enough funny lines to be enjoyable.

WAR OF THE WORLDS

The grand-daddy of alien invasion literature, HG Wells, might not recognize many of the details from his 1898 novel War of the Worlds on the screen—director Steven Spielberg has updated the material to present day, changed the setting to the United States and the aliens are no longer Martians—but the spirit of the book is very much evidence. In fact, the themes of the story may have more resonance with modern audiences who live with Terror Alerts and paranoia of a new enemy.

Here we have Spielberg exploring the dark side of two of the movies that made him famous—ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and in the process he has made a scary and intelligent popcorn movie.

Spielberg is equally at home telling small, personal stories like Catch Me if You Can while at the same time being able to manage large scale special effects epics like Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park. Here he blends both skills, giving us a story of one family’s flight from aliens that threaten to take over and destroy the world and relentless action. His vision of the devastation caused by the angry aliens is immediate and intense. When the giant tripod warriors first arrive and begin incinerating buildings and evaporating Earthlings at random it is an action sequence that equals the opening minutes of Saving Private Ryan for sheer muscle.

The film can’t possibly continue at that pace, and Spielberg finds ways to make even the quietest scenes—an extended scene in a basement with Tim Robbins as a disturbed man who wants to battle the beasts has extended wordless sequences—bristle. Those scenes will thrill, but the horror doesn't just come from the aliens, but also from the insensitive way that humans treat one another in this panicked situation.

Despite an ending that is as sudden as it is unsatisfying—it’s almost like the filmmakers got bored and decided to wrap it up a day or two early—War of the Worlds has the earmarks of a summer blockbuster. That is if post-September 11 audiences are ready to view devastation, turmoil and horror as entertainment.

WE ARE MARSHALL: 2 ½ STARS

Blame Rocky for the state of sports movies. The come-from-behind-to-win-or-almost-win the big game was used very effectively in the first (and most recent) Rocky movies but filmmakers have been using it for inspiration ever since. That’s thirty years of inspirational coaches and underdog players. The sports and that faces change, it’s just the story that remains the same.

We Are Marshall attempts to tell a slightly different kind of story. Based on the true story of the Marshall University football team, it’s coaches, staff and fans who were all tragically killed when their plane crashed in the Appalachian Mountains on November 14, 1970, the film chronicles a town’s need to heal after a heartrending loss and a new coaches’ struggle to rebuild the team.

Matthew McConaughey, in a quirky performance and even quirkier 1970s sideburns, plays the coach hired to start from scratch and whip together a team that will boost the spirits pf the town.

The movie’s structure doesn’t stray too far from the tried and true sport’s movies conventions—guess who wins the big game—but there is something in McConaughey’s strange performance that is quite entertaining. He’s still an inspirational coach, but at least he’s a weird inspirational coach. That’s not much, but it’s enough of a departure from the sports movie norm to set this movie apart from the pack. 

WORLD TRADE CENTER: 4 STARS

Oliver Stone’s films often express alternative theories of reality. In JFK he explored the vast conspiracy theory that has sprung up around the assassination of John Kennedy. His takes on Alexander the Great, Jim Morrison and Richard Nixon were all as contentious as the subjects were diverse. Stone almost never plays it safe but in World Trade Center he has put aside the provocative material he is best known for and made his most straightforward film in years. Focusing on the plight of two 9/11 first responders and their families Stone has made a film about a difficult subject that offers hope instead of controversy.

The power of the best Stone films is very much on display here—unforgettable images include the shadow of the plane that crashed into the first tower and the resulting twisted wreckage of the building—without the self-indulgent tendencies that mar his less interesting work.

Stone hones the story down to two men, Sergeant John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno, two Port Authority workers who were trapped under tons of rubble when the second World Trade Center tower collapsed on them as they prepared to evacuate people from the devastation. He focuses on their struggle to stay alive and their hope that they will be rescued. Above ground Stone cuts to the families of McLoughlin and Jimeno and their search to uncover information about their loved ones. 

It’s a very effective way of dramatizing the events of 9/11. By narrowing the scope of the story down to two families the viewer gets an up-close and personal look at the tragedy of the day. From afar the story is too large, the kind of evil that caused the destruction too hard to understand but we can understand the tears of a wife who doesn’t know if she is a widow or not or a long hug between two people wracked by grief. Stone handles these moments gently.

Not so gentle is the actual event itself—the felling of the towers. Stone puts us inside a collapsing building and it is harrowing. The mournful wailing of the twisting metal, the giant chunks of cement and the black billowing smoke make it seem like hell on earth. We all saw it on television on the day, now Stone has placed us inside the building and it is harrowing.

The two men trapped men are helpless and must survive on the hope that the ray of light they can see far above them is a lifeline. Otherwise all is lost. Despite acting with only their faces—the rest of their bodies are trapped under rubble for most of the film—Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena hand in multi-layered performances. As they talk to one another, keeping one another company in their underground hell, we learn what makes them tick. What could have been tedious, claustrophobic scenes of the two men pinned by giant slabs of rock become strangely uplifting as they talk about their families and their lives in a desperate attempt to stay alive. Stone, through his actors chooses to celebrate the human spirit and the ties that bind, not the ideology of separation. By excluding any mention of al-Queda Stone shows that his movie has no political agenda. It is simply a movie about people rising above a dreadful situation.

World Trade Center isn’t the final word on 9/11. As the defining event of a generation filmmakers will revisit this story many times, many different ways, and while the film reveals little about the event it portrays, it speaks volumes about the people it affected.  

THE WILD: 2 STARS

I never thought I’d be nostalgic for a movie that I reviewed just last year, but The Wild made me pine for the salad days of Madagascar, another animals on the lam from the zoo movie. Both films are animated; they feature similar plot lines—in both films a group of animals escape from a New York City zoo to return to the jungle and discover something about themselves—and both films rely on silly humor aimed at the tween set.

The Wild features much more photo realistic computer animation than Madagascar, although the animals—a father and son set of lions, a koala, a squirrel, a giraffe and a snake—look more like domestic stuffed animals come to life than real citizens of the wild. The filmmakers, led by Canadian born and trained Steve “Spaz” Williams, have crafted a movie that looks great but is thin in the story department. Perhaps some of the time spent on the animated binary code, ensuring that all 16 millions hairs on the poodle character looked realistic would have been more wisely used coming up with a story that could be described in words other than “ho-hum.”

There are some clever pop culture references—how many kid’s movies reference Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness?—and some funny lines, but too often the movie resorts to childish theatrics and slapstick to be in the same league with Finding Nemo, The Lion King or even Madagascar.