SON OF RAMBOW DVD: 3 ½ STARS

A number of months ago Michel Gondry’s movie Be Kind Rewind gave us two characters who made their own versions of movies after they accidentally erased an entire video store worth of tapes. They made their crazy versions of films like Ghostbusters and When We Were Kings because they needed something to rent to their customers. It was a funny, touching film, but for my money a small British film about two kids who bond over their remake First Blood is more effective because the kids redo the movie because they want to, not because they have to. For the sheer love of the movies, give me Son of Rambow.

Set in a small English town during a summer school break in the early 1980s Son of Rambow is a coming of age story about two boys who bond over a shared enthusiasm for the first Rambo movie First Blood. Using a clunky video camera they learn life lessons as the making of their film becomes a metaphor for growing up.

Son of Rambow is an engaging, low key kid’s film that the whole family will enjoy. Aside from the appealingly unusual story the film’s main hook are the performances of the two young lead actors. Bill Milner as Will, an introvert being raised by his ultra-strict Plymouth Brethren mother and Will Poulter as wild child Lee both give natural performances without a hint of the precociousness that infects so many kid actors. Poulter in particular has a malleable face that seems to belong to a person much older than his ten or twelve years.

Son of Rambow is a deceptively simple look at the inner workings of the lives of complicated young boys that avoids the sentimentality that often mars films aimed at kids.

STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS: 1 STAR

In 2005 George Lucas announced that Revenge of the Sith would be the last Star Wars movie. After six films with a combined box office upwards of 4 billion dollars and an ancillary industry that spawned novels, toys, television shows, video games, web sites, (including the awesome Wookiepedia) and comic books it seemed the franchise had come to an end. “The circle,” as Darth Vader said in the original film, “was complete.”

Complete maybe, but not quite done.

Like Luke Skywalker, Lucas cannot escape his destiny, which is, apparently to crank out Star Wars movies until the intergalactic cows come home. Star Wars: The Clone Wars began life as a television series but soon was expanded and blown up for the big screen to become the first ever animated Star Wars film to open in theatres.

On the Star Wars time line the new one fits between Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Call it Episode 2 ½--apparently Lucas is no longer content to with whole numbers, and now has to resort to fractions to stretch the story out. When the unnecessarily complicated tale begins the Clone Wars between the Confederacy of Independent Systems and the Galactic Republic are underway. The situation is made more complicated and treacherous after Jabba the Hutt’s son is kidnapped by a band of rebels. Jedi masters Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor) are sent to rescue the Hutt-let and find out who is behind the abduction. Aiding them is Anakin's apprentice, a precocious youngster named Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein). Soon they will battle the real evil, Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) and his minions Asajj Ventress (Nika Futterman) and General Grievous (Matthew Wood) who are plotting to start a three way war between the Galactic Republic, the Confederacy of Independent Systems and the Hutts.

The first thing you notice about Star Wars: The Clone Wars is stilted animation. The press notes say that director Dave Filoni didn’t want to do photo realistic animation, but his choice to employ video game styled figures whose lips don’t even move in time with the words they are saying may have gone a bit too far in the opposite direction. Attention seems to have been paid to the backgrounds and battle scenes, but the characters—both humanoid and alien—are so wooden they make Hayden Christensen’s Skywalker look positively relaxed. Bad girl and Dark Jedi Asajj Ventress is nicely realized and suitably evil looking, but the story’s supreme bad guy, the fallen Jedi Count Dooku, looks more a like a fit and trim wood carving of Santa Claus (with a beard made of icing) than a Machiavellian mastermind who could control the universe.

Stylistically the movie borrows from a variety of inspirations including anime, manga and even the Supermarionation of Thunderbirds Are Go but this mixed bag fails to impress the eye. Visually it’s all a bit ho-hum and doesn’t approach the interest or beauty of Pixar’s WALL-E which has become the benchmark if animated sci fi.       

Next you’ll be baffled by the story which makes little or no sense for the first thirty minutes or so, although, to be fair, once the movie focuses on the kidnapping and rescue the plot haze does lift somewhat but its too little too late. The beauty of the original Star Wars trilogy was its simplicity. You had good versus evil, some romance and cool effects. Once Lucas introduced trade disputes and Clone Wars the movies became too complicated and lost much of the humor and color that made the originals sparkle. Star Wars: The Clone Wars suffers from inheriting the incomprehensible story lines of Episodes II (my vote for the worst movie of the entire series) and III.

Finally, if you’re still in the theater you will be struck by the dialogue. And not in a good way. This is the real Jar Jar Binks-ation of the franchise. I can only assume that the three writers who worked on the screenplay—Lucas isn’t credited as a writer, he has a “characters and universe” credit—were aiming at a younger audience but the painfully childish dialogue between Anakin and Ahsoka is so predictable and trite that I can’t even imagine tweens buying into it. Dialogue has long been a problem in these movies—Harrison Ford allegedly told Lucas, “You can type this s***, George, but you sure can't say it,” during the production of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope—but this one plumbs new depths.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars does have some cool moments which will please hard core Star Wars fans—Anakin leading a vertical assault on a temple for example—but is a disappointing addition to the Star Wars catalog.

SWING VOTE: 2 ½ STARS

Swing Vote is the kind of movie that Hollywood used to pump out by the truckload. Directors like Frank Capra and Preston Sturges had a corner on patriotism, cranking out movies about ordinary men and women who made a difference. While the politically patriotic film saw its heyday in the 1940s with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and State of the Union only to be almost completely wiped out by post Watergate cynicism, this new film starring Kevin Costner as a regular man who holds the outcome of a Presidential election in his hands hopes to resurrect the genre.

Coster is single father Bud, a New Mexico egg factory worker who spends as much time drinking and hanging out with his friends as he does sorting eggs. His daughter, a precocious twelve-year-old named Molly (Madeline Carroll), is the true adult in their relationship, but in one impulsive moment she sets off a chain of events that conclude with Bud’s uncounted vote becoming the swing vote that will decide who becomes the next President of the United States. When both the Republican incumbant (Kelsey Grammer) and Democratic hopeful (Dennis Hopper) come to his small town of Texico, New Mexico to court his vote Bud and Molly learn hard lessons about how politics and the media really work. In the end, however, Bud learns the much more fundamental lesson that every vote counts.

Although Swing Vote’s story is as corny as anything Frank Capra ever committed to film its earnest message is relevant as the November McCain / Obama showdown looms and voter apathy is causing Democrats and others to have heart palpitations. As presented, the every vote matters mantra is heavy handed and a little bit old hat—but not untrue, just ask Al Gore—but Costner grounds the movie with a comic performance that keeps the light and airy story from floating off into the ether.  

Costner isn’t known for his comedic skills. Bull Durham and Tin Cup aside, he has rarely used his light touch in such an obvious way. In his hands Bud is just this side of being a drunken good old boy caricature. He does pratfalls, bangs his head on low hanging signs and wears a perpetual goofy grin most commonly seen in the stands of Nascar races. His gradual realization that there is more to life than booze and good times seems a bit sudden, but Costner somehow manages to pull it off and even delivers the inevitable “I don’t understand much, but I know my country” speech with panache.

Unfortunately despite Costner’s charm the movie doesn’t quite work. Kelsey Grammer has a nice turn as the dim bulb President, and Dennis Hopper and Nathan Lane do their usual journeyman work but director Joshua Michael Stern has a hard time balancing all the disparate aspects of the story. As a co-writer he’s even handed in his treatment of the Republicans and Democrats—both sides are treated fairly and equitably—but the style of the film fluctuates wildly from jarring music video editing to laid-back Hal Ashby style rural landscapes to Paper Moon hi-jinks. If he had committed to one cinematic texture Swing Vote would be a better film.

I’m not sure if Canadian audiences will care about Swing Vote and its take on jingoistic American politics, but its heartfelt “rock the vote” message is a good one no matter where you live.

STEP BROTHERS: 3 ½ STARS

Step Brothers, the new R-rated comedy from the Judd Apatow sausage factory, is a look at extreme Peter Pan Syndrome. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, last seen together in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, play 40ish men who still live at home and become bunkmates and reluctant step brothers when their parents marry. The familiar reprimand “Grow up and act your age” fell on deaf ears with these guys.

Ferrell and Reilly play Brennan Huff, a thirty-nine-year-old who recently lost his part-time job at Pet Smart who lives with his mother, Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) and Dale Doback, an unemployed forty-year-old who still resides under his father Robert’s (Richard Jenkins) roof. When Nancy and Robert tie the knot Brennan and Dale are forced to share a room in Robert’s luxurious home. Sparks fly as the two immature men clash, arguing and beating one another with golf clubs.

Eventually their shared love of Star Wars and karate helps them find a bond and they become tight friends. Unfortunately as one big immature, lazy force they are twice as destructive as before. Their aggressive behavior prevents them from getting jobs and finally drives a wedge between Nancy and Robert. Will their parent’s impending divorce finally force these middle-aged slackers to grow up?  

Step Brothers is essentially an 80s teen comedy with two 40 year olds in the roles that would have been played by young nerdy actors Anthony Michael Hall and Larry B. Scott in 1985. It’s got a meaner edge and certainly worse language than the classic teen comedies of twenty years ago, but the message of being true to yourself could have come straight from the pen of teen scribe guru John Hughes. Besides, any movie that uses a Dane Cook Pay-Per-View Special as a punch line is OK by me. 

The chemistry between Ferrell and Reilly as the poster boys for arrested development saves this one-joke idea from becoming monotonous. They play off one another well and as their step-sibling-rivalry escalates so does their outrageously childish behavior. It’s like watching two overweight, foul mouthed ten year olds with thinning hair going at each other.

Step Brothers is silly R-rated summer moving-going fun.

SHREK THE THIRD: 3 STARS

Three is a very popular number in the entertainment world. There were three Stooges; the Schoolhouse Rock folks did a song called Three is a Magic Number and even William Shakespeare favoured the number, giving King Lear three daughters, and writing about the three witches in Macbeth. This summer there seems to be a revival in the importance of the number three at the movies, with no less than six threequels hitting the screens.

We’ve already seen Spider-Man 3 clean up, making $148 million on its opening weekend, with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Ocean’s Thirteen, The Bourne Ultimatum and Rush Hour 3 soon to come. By August we really will know once and for all whether “three times is a charm” or not.

The latest franchise to come back for a third time is Shrek. The giant green ogre, voiced by Toronto’s Mike Myers, is now happily married to his ogre bride, the Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz). When her father, the frog king of Far Far Away dies he anoints Shrek as the next king. The trouble is Shrek doesn’t want the responsibility that comes along with the job. He sets off, with his companions Puss ‘N’ Boots (Antonio Banderas) and Donkey (Eddie Murphy), on a quest to find the other living heir to the throne, Arthur (Justin Timberlake). Arthur, or Artie as he prefers to be called isn’t exactly king material, but reluctantly agrees to become the leader. In the meantime the exiled Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) has returned with an army of fairy tale villains to forcibly take the throne. Shrek and his pals—Pinocchio, the Ginger Bread Man and the Three Little Pigs—must save the kingdom and ensure that the rightful king sits on the throne.

Shrek the Third doesn’t do anything that we haven’t already seen in the first two instalments. More fart jokes, more of Puss ‘N’ Boots dewy cat eyes and more pop culture references and even more recycled pop songs from the likes of Smashmouth. What we don’t get is enough funny lines from the two characters who really carried the first two movies—Shrek and Donkey. Their roles this time has been watered down, perhaps to make way for the flood of new characters.

There are laughs here, but with those laughs comes a sense of déjà vu, like we’ve seen all this before. Call it the curse of the threequel. The first Shrek was magical—funny, fresh and memorable. The second instalment less so, and, because familiarity breeds contempt, (well, maybe not contempt, but at least tedium) the third even less.  

Not that the sameness of Shrek the Third to its predecessors will matter to young kids who tend to enjoy watching the same thing over and over. For adults though, Shrek the Third may seem like that third helping of desert you had at Christmas dinner. It tasted good while you ate it, but in retrospect perhaps you wish you had stopped at two.   

SPIDER-MAN 3: 2 STARS

Spider-Man 3 contains elements that every fan-boy has been hoping for, and several they haven’t. It takes the best and worst elements from the first two outings, combining them into one over-long movie that relies too heavily on CGI magic and not enough on pacing and story.

The new film picks up where the last one wrapped up. All is right in the world of Peter Parker. His heroic exploits as Spider-Man are being trumpeted in the press and his soon-to-be-fiancé MJ (Kirsten Dunst) has landed a starring role in a Broadway play. Soon, though, things turn sour. MJ has trouble dealing with Spider-Man’s newfound fame; his old friend (and son of the Green Goblin) Harry (James Franco) tries to kill him; he must battle a new foe, a molecularly challenged escaped convict known as the Sandman (Thomas Hayden Church) while, on a more mortal plane, fighting to keep his job. On top of this a black, gooey creature from outer space has attached itself to his DNA, changing him from super hero to super heel.

Director Sam Raimi has created a tangled web; a slick but sluggish movie that brings the wow factor with several impressive action sequences, but fails when it focuses on the characters. Raimi pads the 2 ½ hour movie with long shots of MJ and Peter staring soulfully at one another with dewy eyes. He loves those shots like Pete Doherty loves cocaine, but they slow the movie’s momentum to a crawl.

The section of the movie that deals with Peter Parker’s dark side almost feels like it was dropped in from another, rather silly, film. Spurned by MJ, unemployed and profoundly bitter, Parker—like Superman and Batman before him—explores the flip side of his do-gooder personality. This amounts to flicking his hair across his forehead in a way that makes him look more like Garth Brooks’ faux rock singer Chris Gaines than a badass and ogling at women, a la John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Playing his transformation into a cad for laughs diminishes the importance of Parker’s examination of his dark side.

Fans can look forward to state-of-the-art action sequences—one in which an office building is destroyed by an out-of-control crane is spectacular—but may find some other aspects of the story—MJ’s two musical numbers, Parker’s ridiculous bad boy nightclub behavior and Aunt May’ (Rosemary Harris) matronly presence—harder to swallow.

To decipher what’s wrong with Spider-Man 3 all we have to do is look back at movie history. Sequels with the number 3 in the title rarely hold up, particularly when their predecessors are highly regarded.

Godfather 1 and 2. Yes please. Number 3? Not so much.  

Batman, Batman Returns and Batman Forever? Yes, yes and no thanks. 

X-Men 3? I hope it is their last stand.

In movie terms the third time often isn’t a charm. By the third time around expectations are often impossibly high, so filmmakers feel the need to kick it up a notch. In most cases it doesn’t work—less really is more—and you end up with something like Spider-Man 3, a movie that feels bloated by too many subplots, too many villains and too many characters.

SHOOTER: 3 STARS

Who says you can’t fight City Hall? In Shooter, the new film from Training Day director Antoine Fuqua, Mark Wahlberg plays the excellently named Bobby Lee Swagger who not only fights City Hall, but burns it down, shoots it up and leaves it for dead.

Swagger is a former Marine scout sniper who quit the military after his commanding officer left him and his partner unprotected during a dangerous (and illegal) mission in Ethiopia. Post army he leads a quiet life in the mountains, hanging out with his super-cute dog and reading conspiracy theory books, until the day he is visited by a Colonel who asks for his help in quelling an sophisticated assassination attempt on the President. Allowing his patriotism to get the best of him he reluctantly agrees to help. What he doesn’t know is that he’s being set up as a fall guy in an elaborate government plot that makes the Kennedy Assassination look like an episode of Matlock. To clear his name he goes all Rambo against the men who set him up and the body count grows as he exacts his revenge.

Shooter is over-the-top melodrama that relies on action and kinetics to cover up a ridiculous story. As the lone gunman Swagger is positively super-human in his ability to out wit, out smart and out play the various government agencies that want him dead. We are asked to believe that his military training equipped him to become a one-man militia, taking on the might of the army with items bought in convenience stores and Wal Marts. His teacher must have been McGuyver.

Bullet holes aren’t the only holes in Shooter, the plot is full of them, but Fuqua keeps the energy up and fills the screen with enough snappy visuals to engage the eye, even if the mind wanders.

Stranger Than Fiction DVD

Sometimes all it takes is one scene to rescue a faltering movie. Stranger Than Fiction, the new film from Finding Neverland director Marc Forester is a great example of a film saved by one tender scene that sheds a light on an otherwise inscrutable character.

Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, a by the numbers IRS auditor. Numbers rule his life, not only at work but in his personal life as well. He counts the number of brush strokes he uses to clean his teeth, the number of steps to the bus stop and can do extremely complicated equations in his head.

His drab Kafkaesque existence is upended when he becomes aware of a narrator’s voice in his head. The voice doesn’t speak to him directly, it simply documents his life, like a writer describing a scene. It’s bothersome, but benign until the day it announces that Crick’s death is imminent. Crick, with the help of a professor of literature (Dustin Hoffman) tries to decipher the source of the voice, coming up with a surreal conclusion—Crick is a fictional character in someone’s book who by some means manages to live in the real world. The realization that his life might not be his own and a budding romance with an anarchist baker (Maggie Gyllenhaal) fill Crick with the desire to make his life mean something.

It’s a strange, but sweet meta-story, one that echoes themes from The Truman Show, Adaptation and Pleasantville of a character in search of a story.

At the beginning of the movie Ferrell is a blank slate, a character so devoid of personality that he barely exists. The actor has a rough road ahead making this character compelling enough to maintain our interest. For me he doesn’t really succeed until midway through the movie when his romance with the baker starts to develop. [SPOILER ALERT] In one great scene he hesitantly plays a song on guitar for Gyllenhaal and immediately takes the character from zero to hero. With his high pitched, tentative voice mumbling through the opening verse of Whole Wide World, a song about long lost love, it is touching and a big step toward Crick taking power over his own life. It’s the scene where Ferrell takes control of the character and is one of the most romantic sequences in a movie since Paul Giamatti and Virginia Madsen talked about their love of wine in Sideways a couple of years back.

Stranger Than Fiction is an odd movie, with high points, the aforementioned serenade, Emma Thompson as Crick’s unwitting narrator that far outweigh its negatives. The metaphysical angle doesn’t quite work, but the winning performances and strong message of finding one’s self worth rise above any deficiencies.

SMOKIN’ ACES: 2 STARS

It’s pretty easy to spot the movies that influenced Smokin’ Aces. Take a shaker full of the nihilism of Fight Club, add a dash of Lock Stock and Two Smokin’ Barrels’ crazy visual style and the mayhem of anything by Quentin Tarantino and you get the all-star bloodbath that opens today.

The story is fairly simple, but told in a flashy way. Buddy Israel is a Las Vegas strip magician who, like so many Vegas entertainers before him, gets involved with the mob. His friendship with the goodfellas soon turns to business and Buddy becomes a wannabe wiseguy. Things quickly go south for Buddy and to save himself from jail he becomes an FBI informant. While out on bail he disappears, holing up at a ritzy Reno hotel while his lawyer negotiates a sweet deal for him. While he is in hiding both the mob and the FBI are looking for him. Who’ll find him first?

Director Joe Carnahan brings heaps of style to this crime story, taking pains to introduce each of the characters—played by an all-star cast including Canadian Ryan Reynolds, Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Alicia Keys and Jeremy Piven—all of whom are trying to hunt down Buddy. In fact, the set up with its elaborate daisy chain editing that connects one person to the next is the most entertaining part of the movie. When the action finally gets underway the movie becomes just another shoot ‘em up with elaborately staged (and really loud) gun battles. What starts off as an offbeat crime drama soon takes a turn into familiar territory.

SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS: 2 STARS

If you watch a lot of daytime television you’ll often hear the phrase “tough love” bandied about. Dr. Phil suggests using it when dealing with difficult kids. Judge Mathis dispenses it in his courtroom everyday from noon until one pm. Usually it involves humiliating someone until they are bullied into behaving the way their tormentors want them to.

It is also the method that Billy Bob Thornton employs in his secret School for Scoundrels night classes. He takes self-described losers and nerds who have never had any luck with women—or anything else for that matter—and transforms them from meek to chic using a toxic mix of degradation, threats and manipulation as confidence building tools. Think of him as Miss. Manners without the Miss or the Manners.

At the top of his class is the slack-jawed Roger, played by Jon Heder, who, once again riffs on his listless character from Napoleon Dynamite. When Heder successfully uses some of Thornton’s techniques to woo his beautiful neighbor Amanda, he learns the hard way that the pupil must never eclipse the master. Thornton hatches an elaborate plot to steal Amanda and humiliate Roger. 

Based on a 1960 British comedy of the same name, School for Scoundrels falls a little flat. Heder is so good as the non-descript Roger that he barely registers on screen. Roger’s problem is that he is forgettable, and I fear that may be Heder’s Achilles’ heel as well.

Billy Bob Thornton fares a bit better as the confidence building con man, but he isn’t doesn’t seem as invested in bringing out this character’s truly despicable side as he has been in the past. In Bad Santa there seemed to be no limits to how deep he would mine the depravity, and even in the more family friendly Bad News Bears from last year he plumbed the depths to create a the kind of skuzzy guy who would wear a t-shirt that reads “She Looked Better Last Night” to Little League practice. In School for Scoundrels he pulls of a few good laughs, but it feels like we’re getting the watered down version of Thornton’s patented low life character. 

Snakes on a Plane

Like Edith Piaf singing La Vie en Rose, the first verse of Howl by Alan Ginsberg, Angelina Jolie’s lips, Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, or delicate chocolate flecks in mint ice cream, the sound of Samuel L. Jackson saying “Mother fucker,” is sublime. No one says it quite like him. It is as artful as Pavorotti’s high c, and a lot less showy than Cirque du Soleil. It is his Pietà and in Snakes on a Plane he uses it sparingly, but very effectively.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last year or so, Snakes on a Plane is not just a movie, not even just a Samuel L. Jackson movie, but a full blown Internet sensation, hyped on the Internet by fanboys (and girls) who eagerly anticipate the movie’s opening by posting their own SoaP even before they have seen little more than a trailer. They created websites and even wrote some dialogue—most notably, “I've had it with these mother fucking snakes on this mother fucking plane!”—that eventually made it in to the film all based on the allure of a simple, but very silly title.

The beauty of the story is in its simplicity. There’s a plane. There are snakes. Samuel L. Jackson wants the snakes off the plane. End of story.

After months of Internet driven buildup the movie opened Friday without the benefit of a press screening. Not that SoaP needed reviews to add to its bottom line. This is as review proof as it gets this summer. The reviews wouldn’t have added anything to the hype and most outlets ran a story on the film anyway. The question though, remains, is it a good movie? Nope. Is it a fun movie. You bet. This is the kind of movie that Hollywood has been churning out for years, a b-movie that relies on outrageous thrills, some T&A and some gross, gruesome scenes. And snakes. Lots and lots of pheromone crazed snakes.

It’s the kind of movie that engages the audience Rocky Horror Picture Show style. At the screening I went to people were reacting to the screen, throwing rubber snakes and yelling funny lines in response to the dialogue. It is the kind of movie that inspires drinking games. I’m not sure how it will play in an empty theatre, or on DVD, but with a Friday-night crowd of rowdies Snakes on a Plane is, as Samuel L. Jackson might say, “mother fucking fun.”

STEP UP: 2 ½ STARS

I’ve seen a few episodes of So You Think You Can Dance, the reality talent show that pits ballerinas against mambo kings to determine who America’s favorite dancer is, so I feel very qualified to review the new dance film Step Up.

After trashing an arts high school auditorium juvenile delinquent Tyler (Channing Tatum) pays his debt to society by performing two hundred hours of community service in the school. While sweeping floors and emptying trashcans he meets Nora, a beautiful, rich student who needs a dance partner for the school’s Senior Showcase. It just so happens Tyler is a talented street dancer and steps up to help her practice. Sparks fly, lips lock and two-steps are stepped as the pair fall in love.

Sound familiar? It should if you’ve seen the movies Save the Last Dance, Saturday Night Fever or even Dirty Dancing. It’s as if the filmmakers cut and pasted their favorite elements from those movies, and then added in a hint of another art school movie, Fame. It’s not very original, and it’s completely predictable but high school dance movies aren’t about the plot, they’re about good-looking people twirling on the dance floor. In this respect Step Up succeeds.

Director Anne Fletcher wisely cast two leads who can actually dance—I know they can dance because I watched some episodes of So You Think You Can Dance. Jenna Dewan as Nora, the rich girl who falls for the bad boy, is a professional dancer who has toured with P. Diddy, Michael Jackson and appeared in dozens of music videos. She knows her way around the dance floor and it shows, she’s natural and unforced in the dance scenes. Channing Tatum isn’t professionally trained but he has a natural street style that suits his character. On the dance floor they work well together and that chemistry gives the movie most of its strength.

SUPERMAN RETURNS: 4 STARS

People are very fond of the Christopher Reeve Superman series. Both on and off screen Reeve proved to be a hero and embody the kind of courageous spirit that Superman represents. So the pressure is on director Bryan Singer and neophyte actor Brandon Routh (rhymes with South) to top the Reeve movies, while at the same time being respectful of them. It’s a difficult tightrope to walk but Singer and company have succeeded.

Superman Returns picks up the story five years after 1981’s Superman II. The Man of Steel has returned to Earth after a five-year exile on the remains of his home planet. In Metropolis he tries to resume his old life as Clark Kent. The Daily Planet gives him back his job as a mild mannered reporter, but he is heartbroken to discover that his old flame, Lois Lane, has a hunky boyfriend, a son and a Pulitzer Prize for her article “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.”

Meanwhile, cue-ball-headed criminal Lex Luthor, fresh from a prison stint, has also returned to Metropolis with a monstrous plan to use Superman's alien "crystal technology," to create a new continent in the Atlantic, flooding North America and leaving him with the only—and most valuable—inhabitable land. Superman must stop him before several million people are killed by his insidious plan, but first he has to sort out his romantic life with Lois.

Almost thirty years ago the tagline for the Superman: The Movie was “You will believe a man can fly” and back then, before the “wow” period of special effects the sight of someone convincingly soaring through the stratosphere was enough to satisfy many viewers. In 2006 though we’ve seen men fly, giant apes made of pixels and binary code and we’re jaded. We take it for granted that Superman can fly and it will look cool.

Singer knows this and he doesn’t skimp on the action—Superman’s rescue of an air force jet plane is breathtaking and his deflection of a bullet is just plain cool—but while your eyeballs are dancing he’s reeling us into the engaging story, balancing scenes of a lovesick Superman with the spectacle that we expect from a big summer movie.

As for the character of the 2006 Superman, well, he’s adopted several human traits—he’s smarting from Lois’ rejection, and longing for his dead father—but Singer wisely keeps him on the straight and narrow. Portraying virtue on screen may not be as exciting as Batman’s tortured thirst for vengeance or exploring Spiderman’s tragic side but Singer doesn’t tamper with the core of the character in an attempt to update the character or add a contemporary twist on his psyche. He is still a Christ-like alien to Earth sent to help human beings in need. It may be corny but in an era where people’s dark sides are so readily on display it is refreshing.

As Superman newcomer Brandon Routh had big tights to fill. He’s the same age as Reeve was when he took on the role, and could easily win a Reeve look-A-Like contest, so comparison is inevitable, but Routh holds his own. He’s a bit stiffer than Reeve, but he has a face that looks like it was torn from the pages of the original Superman comic book and exudes an all-American charm that enhances the character.

Kevin Spacey crafts Luthor as an insecure megalomaniac who will stop at nothing to get his way. He says he based his portrayal of evil genius Lex Luthor on Ken Lay of Enron. Less successful in a supporting role is Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane who proves to be the film’s only hint of kryptonite. She just doesn’t exude the kind of personality that we expect from Lois Lane, the hard-bitten (but really a bit of a softie) reporter. Her namby-pamby work made me long for Margot Kidder’s sexy, sharp-tongued portrayal of Lois Lane.    
In the last year or so there has been no shortage of flying and fighting superheroes in the movies. Batman began again. Daredevil dove, Elektra irked, the X-man excited and Catwoman crashed. Now Superman returns to the big screen after a nineteen-year absence, bringing the best of the old with him and combining it with new and exciting technology. Superman Returns works as a popcorn movie and as something a little deeper.

THE SENTINEL: 2 STARS

In The Sentinel Michael Douglas plays a long time secret service agent who is the prime suspect in a plot to assassinate the President of the United States. On the run, he is tracked by his former protégé, a hotshot agent played by Keifer Sutherland and a rookie in the form of Desperate Housewife Eva Longoria. It’s a stylishly directed thriller that feels cobbled together from the outtakes of older, better movies like In the Line of Fire. It even borrows from so not so great movies like Murder at 1600 and The Kidnapping of the President.

Like the recent film Inside Man from Spike Lee, The Sentinel is a by- the-book b-movie that is slightly elevated by the direction. It looks great, but the clichéd scripting really deflates any excitement that Canadian director Clark Johnson gets going—we’ve simply seen these characters and situations too many times before for them to have much impact. It’s too bad that the dialogue sounds like it was ripped from the pages of a Dick Tracy comic because there are a couple of sequences that are quite exciting. A shoot-out in a busy shopping mall briefly quickens the movie’s pace but it isn’t enough to earn a recommendation.

The script is so flat it manages to make Eva Langoria seem bland, quite a feat when you have an actress who created one of the most interesting characters on prime time television in the form of the conniving Gabrielle on Desperate Housewives.

The Sentinel isn’t an awful movie, it just isn’t a very memorable or interesting one.

SCARY MOVIE 4: 2 STARS

The only scary thing about the Scary Movie franchise is how much money they make. The first one appeared six years ago as a quickie written and directed by the Wayans Brothers that spoofed slasher movies. It cost $19 to make and grossed over-or maybe that should be grossed out-$150 million. Since then the franchise has prospered more than Paris Hilton's libel lawyers.

The new one, number four, throws some recent frights into the blender-The Village, Saw, War of the Worlds, Dawn of the Dead and The Grudge-and gives them a good shake, combing all the best bits. Director David Zucker, most famous for his Naked Gun spoofs, milks the material for all it is worth. Scary Movie never met a pratfall it wouldn't take, a flatulence joke that couldn't be escalated to operatic proportions or an opportunity to poke fun at the elderly, the infirm or the unfortunate. No one is safe, even Oprah takes a shellacking.

If it is shocks you want with your laughs look elsewhere. Scary Movie 4 doesn't have the icky-gross edge of the other films in this series, but there is a punch line every ten seconds or so—they don't all land, particularly in the sparsely funny first half of this 75-minute film, but enough of them do to make this worth while for fans of the filthier and funnier movies Airplane! or Naked Gun. The film's strongest asset is Anna Faris, a veteran of all the Scary Movies, who speaks her own brand of Japanese in the film's best scene.

Bottom line, this is an all or nothing kind of movie. If you enjoy the idea of Dr. Phil sawing his own foot off—and who doesn't—then Scary Movie 4 will be right up your alley. If the idea of seeing Leslie Neilson naked turns you off then maybe you should stay home and watch Masterpiece Theater instead.

SLITHER: 3 STARS

Before all the vulgar and vile action really takes off in Slither we see one of the characters watching The Toxic Avenger on television. This callback to an earlier cheesy horror film sets the tone for Slither. That would be gross, gory and gooey.

The plot is really basic b-movie stuff. A small town of heavily armed rednecks is invaded by slimy extraterrestrial slugs and a lovesick acid barfing, squid-like alien. The residents are turned into zombies who are mentally connected to a millennium old creature intent on destroying all life on Earth. Only a handful of people avoid mutating into undead automatons, and of course, they are charged with saving not only themselves, but also the rest of humanity. So far, so standard—like a mix of Night of the Living Dead and Shivers—but the thing that sets this apart from the your everyday mutant from outer space flick is the skillful way that director James Gunn balances the gross-outs and shocks with genuine laughs.

Like the recent zombie spoof Sean of the Dead, Slither is a throwback to the 1980s when horror films like The Toxic Avenger had a healthy dose of fun mixed in with the foul. Particularly entertaining are Canadian actor Nathan Fillion—you’ll remember him from the Joss Whedon show Firefly—as the dim-witted sheriff and Michael Rooker as he unlikely named Grant Grant.

Also, as a huge David Cronenberg fan any movie that uses a shot for shot homage to Shivers gets my vote.

SQUID AND THE WHALE DVD: 4 STARS

The Squid and the Whale, a coming-of-age story about a teenager whose writer parents are divorcing, gets my vote for the most over-looked movie of 2005. Before the Oscar nominations were announced I thought that Jeff Daniels’ performance as the self-centered failure-of-a-father-figure was a lock for a Best Actor nod. Daniels is an actor who is so natural a performer that I think we often forget how good he is. I’d lump him in the same category with another Jeff—Jeff Bridges—who is also often overlooked.

The film is a semi-autobiographical story by former New Yorker writer Noah Baumbach and avoids the pitfalls that so many family dramas that deal with divorce fall into. It’s poignant, funny and in a movie filled with great performances and scenes one sequence stands out as one of the best not only from the movie, but one of the best of the year. There is a scene in a doorway between Daniels and his ex-wife, played by Laura Linney, where in just a couple of minutes we learn all we need to know about their relationship—the tenderness that once existed and the bitterness that now touches every moment of their lives.

The Squid and the Whale is one of the best movies of last year, and if you missed it at the theatre check it out on DVD.  

SHE’S THE MAN: 3 STARS

Here’s what I learned while watching She’s the Man:

1.    The easiest and most convincing way to change your sex from female to male is with a length of elastic bandage, a wig and fake eyebrows.
2.    When the twin you have been impersonating is a head taller, a different sex and sounds nothing like you, no one will be able to tell you apart.
3.    It is possible for soccer players to go days on end without taking a shower or visiting the locker room.
4.    And… none of the above matters when you have a lead actress as likeable as Amada Bynes.

Like 10 Things I Hate About You from a few years ago She’s the Man is a riff on a Shakespearean play—Twelfth Night—updated to modern day and teaming with teenagers. Here Amanda Bynes plays a tomboy who lives to play soccer, but her uptight school won’t let girls play. When her brother hightails it to Europe for two weeks she hits on the idea of disguising herself as him, going to his school and joining their soccer team so she can have the satisfaction of beating her old school in the opening game of the season. Of course she didn’t count on falling for her roommate, the hunky jock Duke. Her ruse is almost discovered several times—like when she’s in drag, out with the boys and her cell phone goes off with Barbie Girl as her ring tone—but no one seems to catch on.

She’s the Man’s humor is so broad it makes Benny Hill seem like Noel Coward and Bynes never misses a chance to bug her eyes out or take a pratfall but her energetic and likeable performance saves what could have been an extremely tiresome movie. Good support from Arrested Development’s David Cross as the goofy principal and soccer coach   Vinnie Jones should help keep older audience members interested.

She’s the Man isn’t one of the great gender-bending movies. It’s no Boys Don’t Cry, or even Bosom Buddies, heck, it’s barely Just One of the Guys but worth a few laughs for tweens.

SYRIANNA: 4 ½ STARS

Syrianna certainly has the most complicated and ambitious movie currently in the theatres. The movie consists of overlapping storylines, a technique director Stephen Gaghan used effectively in his Academy award winning script for Traffic a few years ago. The stories range from the back-room boys in Washington to the men sweating in the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, to a dirty tricks CIA operative to form a political thriller that shows the human consequences of the furious pursuit of wealth and power.

Syrianna has much to recommend it, from George Clooney’s portrayal of a CIA hitman who struggles to find his moral center while those around him seem to be losing theirs to the skilful way that director Gaghan weaves together the complicated story, building up to an unforgettable climax.

Clooney’s is a quiet performance that grows more interesting as we learn more about his character. Little by little we are let into the world of international political dirty tricks and past the steely façade of Clooney’s career CIA agent.

Releasing Syrianna at this time of year when most of the films in the theatres are of the “feel good” variety is a bit of a risk, but it may be a welcome antidote to talking lions, giant apes and dancing Broadway producers.

SHOPGIRL: 3 STARS

In recent years Steve Martin has made a career of playing father figures. Usually he has a whole brood of wacky kids who help him scoop up all the money that his family comedies earn at the box office. In Shopgirl—based on the novella of the same name by Martin—he plays a different kind of character—he’s still a father figure but this time he’s dating a woman young enough to be his daughter.

Claire Danes plays the title character, a young woman torn between an older rich man who lavishes his riches, but not his undivided attention on her, and the younger Jason Swartzman who resembles a puppy dog—always happy to see her, but also kind of hyper and annoying.
This is Martin’s first role in some time in which he actually acts. His performance here is a throwback to the days of films like The Spanish Prisoner and Novocaine, when his characters didn’t simply react to the antics of his film family but actually had some substance.

Like Kirsten Dunst’s recent bravura performance in Elizabethtown, Claire Danes breaks through here as a really compelling screen actress. With her willowy good looks and slightly melancholic air she is perfect for the role of the damaged but optimistic Mirabelle.

Shopgirl isn’t a typical romantic comedy. Martin is too smart for that. The story has whimsical elements, but both as a screenwriter and actor Martin brings a quiet melancholy to the movie that speaks volumes about heartbreak and love lost.

If only it had been just a tad shorter and the schmaltzy music a tad bit less overbearing, Shopgirl, could have been one of the best films of the year.

SEABISCUIT

In a summer brimming with high flying angels and gravity defying archaeologists comes a movie designed to appeal to that most neglected segment of the movie-going population, adults. Nothing blows up and there isn’t a flaming helicopter or open running wound anywhere in sight. In an attempt at counter programming Universal has scheduled Seabiscuit to go mano-e-mano against drunken Caribbean pirates, scantily clad adventurers and three dimensional spy kids, hoping to bring in the parents of the kids who have been dropping their allowance money at the box-office all season.

Who knows, it just might work.  The last time I checked people over the age of fourteen enjoyed movies too.

Seabiscuit is the inspiring story of a horse who became an American folk hero during the depression years. Everything about this movie screams prestige, from the Academy Award winning cast to the narration by PBS regular David McCullough to the sumptuous art design. Hell, screenwriter / director Gary Ross even used to write speeches for President Clinton! The result is a predictable, but likeable movie that demands nothing more from you than to feel better when you leave the theatre than you did when you came in.

Based on a book of the same name by Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit reintroduces us to one of the great sports stories from the early part of the last century. There was a time when everyone knew the story, he was so famous in fact that on one occasion hundreds of businesses closed for half a day so their employees could tune in to hear Seabiscuit race against Triple Crown winner War Admiral on the radio. These days, though, because Seabiscuit didn’t endorse Nike or Pepsi, his story has been largely forgotten.

The film begins in the heady days before the stock market crash of 1929. Businessman Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges) made his fortune selling cars, and promoting his vision of “the future.” After the tragic death of his son, the future doesn’t seem so bright anymore. Tom Smith (Chris Cooper) is an outsider, shunned by most horse professionals because he believes in healing, not killing wounded animals. At a head taller than any other jockey on the horse racing circuit, Red Pollard (Tobey McGuire) is considered a fringe player, but he loves horses and prefers this life to the alternatives – starving on the streets or getting the tar knocked out of him in underground boxing matches.

Seasbiscuit, an undersized horse of good breeding but little in the way of talent is the center around which each of these men revolve. Through hard work and care Seabiscuit is transformed from a candidate for the glue factory into a champion, and basking in the reflected glory are Howard, Smith and Pollard.

Seabiscuit picks up speed in the middle stretch, after a slow first hour. Much of the opening of the film feels like a history lesson, disrupting the flow of the story. Not that you could easily derail this story. Ross has played fast and loose with the facts – for example, Pollard was actually a mean drunk, not the nice guy presented here – cobbling together a story that sometimes feels like Chicken Soup for the Equine Soul.

Inspirational messages tumble from everyone’s lips, as though pearls of wisdom flow from their mouths as easily as turning on a facet and watching the water coming pouring out. The script overuses several of these nuggets – ie: “Sometimes when the little guy doesn’t know he’s the little guy he can do big things…” – which only reinforces their corny sentiments.

If the dialogue seems stilted, the racing sequences certainly do not. Ross puts the viewer directly in the action in a series of beautifully realised shots that seem to be taken from the horse’s point of view. In those days racing was a brutal sport where jockeys would punch and shove one another in mid-race. Seabiscuit does an admiral job of recreating the tension and aggression involved in the races with long shots that give the viewer the opportunity to follow the action without confusion. 

In the end Seabiscuit is clichéd and predictable, but good work by Bridges, McGuire and Cooper coupled with the movie’s indomitable spirit make it a pleasure that is hard to deny.

SPY KIDS 3-D: GAME OVER

Robert Rodriguez is putting his extremely profitable kid’s franchise to bed with a 3-D story that is, unfortunately not as multi-dimensional as the name would imply. Three years ago the original Spy Kids seemed like a breath of fresh air, it was a colourful, exuberant affair that burst with inventiveness and humour. The inevitable sequel, 2001’s The Island of Lost Dreams, proved that there is some merit in the theory of diminishing returns, while Game Over confirms that additional incremental input will produce a declining incremental amount of output.

In other words, most sequels suck.

In this instalment older sister Carmen (Alex Vega) is being held hostage in an elaborate virtual reality videogame called Game Over, run by the evil Toymaker (Sylvester Stallone). Brother Juni, (Daryl Sabara) who has retired from the spy business to concentrate on his career as a private eye must rescue his sister and shut down the game. Once inside the cyberspace monolith he loses his heart to a brave young girl (played by Emily Osment, sister of the Oscar nominated Haley Joel), races giant motorbikes and gives the viewer a headache watching all the swirling action through flimsy red and green 3-D glasses.

Rodriguez may have based the character of the Toymaker on himself. Like the evil genius in the movie, Rodriguez appears to be lost in his own creation, too fascinated by the 3-D technology to concentrate on giving the movie any kind of plot. What little story there is simply kick-starts the action, placing Juni in the game, and thus is an excuse to rev up the special effects. Turned loose in cyberspace the film careens through forty mind-numbing minutes of Super Mario Brothers quality graphics that flip and fly through the air, and even though things appear to literally jump off the screen, Spy Kids 3-D is flat.

Spy Kids 3-D has everything the first two instalments didn’t have from cardboard characters, to headache inducing special effects all the way down to bland dialogue.

The film is packed with several “don’t blink or you’ll miss ‘em” celebrity cameos. Rodriguez pal George Clooney provides one of the film’s few legitimate laughs (Spoiler Warning!) with his subtle Sylvester Stallone impression, while Cheech Marin, Steve Buscemi, Elijah Wood, Bill Paxton and Salma Hayek check in, but aren’t given much to do. Only Ricardo Montalban as the wheelchair bound grandfather seems to relish his role. Once inside the game he hams it up, trading in his chair for an animated metal superhero costume. He’s entertaining to watch because he seems to be having so much fun with the silly material. He even sneaks in a joke about “fine Corinthian leather.” It’s a line that the kids won’t get, but anyone over the age of thirty will recognize from his years as the spokesperson for Chrysler.

Montalban brings some joyfulness to the movie, and so does Stallone, it’s just a different kind of joy. It’s the kind of mean-spirited delight that comes from watching a formerly popular actor completely embarrass himself onscreen. Displaying an emotional depth that ranges from Rocky to Rambo, Stallone plays the evil Toymaker and three of his alter-egos, a nerdy scientist, a burn-out hippie and a war mongering general. The last time I heard such “hilarious” accents I was at my nine-year-old nephew’s school play.

Once Rodriguez moves the action out of the videogame the film takes on a warmer, more familiar tone, but it is too little too late. One hopes that the movie’s name is prophetic, and it really is game over for the Spy Kids franchise.   

SIMONE

Simone is a wickedly funny satire on the movie business and the nature of celebrity. Al Pacino is Viktor Taransky, a middling filmmaker who has never had a hit. When his star walks out on him in mid production on his latest film he must find a replacement or the movie will never be released. A chance meeting with an eccentric computer programmer with terminal cancer – a tumour developed in his eye from staring at a monitor for too long – leads Viktor to his new leading lady, a synthespian named Simone, (a shortened version of Simulation One). The blonde, blue-eyed vision of beauty doesn’t actually exist except on a floppy disc, but becomes an overnight sensation after the release of picture. Taransky must resort to trickery to keep his secret and her identity under wraps. As she becomes more and more popular – at one point being nominated for two Best Actress Academy awards in the same year, and winning both of them – Taranski realizes that his personal success is completely linked to her existence, and it eats away at him. Pacino shines as Taranski. Gone are the dark days when he simply yelled his way through a role. The histrionics have disappeared and he has started acting again. His Taranski is an interesting character, a man who only cares about art, but finds himself tangled up in the most artificial business in the world. Pacino plays him with humour and restraint. Catherine Keener is here playing an entertainment executive for the third time in the same year – Death to Smoochy and Full Frontal were the other two – and hands in the kind of solid, funny, sexy performance she is known for. Winona Ryder has a small role as a fiercely difficult actress named Nicola Anders. I remember think that after her dreadful performance in Mr. Deeds it seemed like Ryder had forgotten how to act. Well she’s back in my good books after seeing her in Simone. While she doesn’t exactly steal the movie, she’s very good.

THE SHIPPING NEWS

When did Kevin Spacey become a great big cuddly toy? Gone are the days of the jittery career-making performances of The Usual Suspects, Seven and American Beauty. Now he chooses to tug at our heartstrings via homesick aliens and scarred school teachers. The new and improved cozy Kevin rears his head again in The Shipping News. Spacey’s portrayal of the down-on-his-luck Quoyle helps redefine the word maudlin as he leads his character on a voyage of self discovery. The problem is we don’t connect with Quoyle’s soap opera-ish problems enough to actually care about him. The E. Annie Proulx’s novel had a bleak beauty to its storytelling, but director Lasse Halstrom’s softening of the book’s eccentricities leaves us with a film that has as much edge as a bag of marbles.

SIGNS

Signs takes a great deal of time and creates a very elaborate context to teach us one simple, and not very original idea: everything happens for a reason. Mel Gibson is Graham Hess, a former minister who left the church after the tragic death of his wife. Everywhere he goes his former parishioners call him “Father,” even though he vows “not to waste one more minute of his life on prayer.” You see, Hess lost his faith when his young, beautiful wife was taken from him, cut down in her prime. When giant crop circles appear in his corn field and then start popping up all over the world, it seems his faith is to be tested once again. Are these bizarre configurations a hoax, or a sign that an alien invasion can’t be far behind? Bet on the latter. When the tall green ETs do touch down Hess fights for the survival of his family, and learns more about the complex nature of fate. In the end he realizes that life is not just a series of coincidences, but a carefully arranged pattern that fits together like a jigsaw puzzle – everything happens for a reason. Director M. Night Shyamalan handles the material with his usual incredible visual style, but unfortunately the story is too thin to sustain interest. The aliens are not the focal point of the movie, but simply used as a plot device to help Hess learn about himself and his beliefs. Shyamalan has an almost Hitchcock-like ability to build suspense, unfortunately, unlike the late-master he doesn’t follow-up the anticipation with any thrills. Signs is limp – all fore-play and no sex. If you’re in the mood for an exciting alien invasion movie skip Signs and rent the 1953 Byron Haskin directed War of the Worlds, you’ll have a better time. 

SPIDER

David Cronenberg’s latest film is a trip into the mind of a severely mentally disturbed man. Institutionalized for twenty years after the death of his mother Dennis “Spider” Cleg (Ralph Fiennes) is released to a halfway house, and tries, shattered though his mind may be, to piece together the shards of his life. Fiennes delivers a fine, virtually dialogue free performance as the title character, but it is Miranda Richardson as several characters – all the women in Spider’s life – who really steals the show. Cronenberg handles the material with elegance, shooting 1950s London in shades of grey and beige, a color scheme that telegraphs the shadowy world that Spider inhabits. A spooky, cerebral thriller.

SPIDER-MAN

I’m always wary of movies based on comic books. There have been good ones – Ghost World, Batman, Blade – but the track record is not good. Spider-man is one of the good ones, maybe even one of the great ones. Director Sam Raimi hit the right balance between action and story, between reality and fantasy. Raimi has a steady hand with story – just rent A Simple Plan if you’re not convinced – and knows about action and special effects from his Evil Dead days. He has crafted an old fashioned super-hero movie that made me nostalgic for the days of Christopher Reeves as Superman. I would quibble with the decision to put a Green Goblin mask on Willem Dafoe. Why cover up his expressive face with a cheesy looking mask? Dafoe could have been more effective and twice as scary had we been able to actually see his face. Tobey McGuire is nails the socially inept Peter Parker, putting a human face on the superhero that is very charming. This one’s a winner that is sure to spawn a web-full of sequels.

SPUN

Spun is a wild ride, an ADD movie that seems to say, “If you don’t like what’s on screen right now, don’t worry it’ll change in the next ten seconds.” Director Jonas Akerlund, cut his teeth in the frenetic world of music video and it shows. Spun spins out of control from its opening minutes, shooting out images and plot points willy nilly. This makes Snatch look slow by comparison.  If you can keep up with the pace, there is something here. Akerlund takes us deep inside the crystal meth culture, and it is an unnerving but hilarious journey. We meet a group of characters tied together by their association with one man, the crystal meth cook. We get a good sense of the lives of these characters, and even like some of them, no matter how addled they are by their addictions. What we see in Spun isn’t story driven as much as it simply a slice of life – a dirty, sped up slice of life. Good performances compliment the material, particularly from Mickey Rourke as the Cook, Jason Schwartzman as the likeable speed freak and John Leguizamo who sheds almost all his inhibitions in this role.

STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN

Standing in the Shadows of Motown shines some light on over-looked musicians of the 60s – the house band at Hitsville USA. The Funk Brothers were a revolving band of session players who provided the back-up on every great Motown hit of the 60s straight through to the mid-70s. They didn’t receive credit on the records, and were paid scale for their contributions. Thirty years later they were brought together again to perform and reminisce about the glory days of Motown. Think of it as the American Buena Vista Social Club. The film has its flaws. The re-enactments don’t really work, and guest singer Bootsy Collins is a really bad dancer, but the sheer joy with which these musicians interact and perform overshadows any shortcomings the movie may have.
STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN DVD
Artisan / Seville / 2002 / 110 minutes

The Funk Brothers had to wait a long time to get their due. From the late Fifties through to the early Seventies this revolving group of Detroit session musicians defined the Motown Sound – a danceable blend of R&B and pop – by laying down the funk as the back-up band on hundreds of records produced by Hitsville USA. It wasn’t until Marvin Gaye’s 1970 album What’s Goin’ On that the musicians were given credit on a Motown album, and they would have to wait another thirty-odd years for the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown to tell their stories and show their faces. Essentially a concert film with the history of The Funk Brothers woven in, Standing in the Shadows of Motown functions more as a meet and greet with these sadly neglected musicians than an in-depth documentary. The documentary segments – including several ineffective flashback sequences and lots of stock photos – don’t dig deep enough. Sure, there are some funny stories, a few touching moments and a sense of the camaraderie between the bandmates, but the history is often sketchy and there is no explanation as to how the Motown Sound evolved over the years. The musical sequences, however, make up for many of the film’s shortcomings. The Funks play host to a variety of singers, including Joan Osborne, Gerald Levert, Me'shell NdegeOcello, Bootsy Collins, Ben Harper and Chaka Khan. The guests are a hit and miss proposition but the band is always a pleasure to listen to. This two disc set features Spanish and English subtitles, a trivia track, deleted scenes a close-up and personal featurette called Dinner with the Funk Brothers and a touching tribute to the band members who passed away before the movie was made. Despite its failings as a historical document, this DVD has a great beat and you can dance to it…

STAR WARS: EPISODE II:  ATTACK OF THE CLONES

I breathed a sigh of relief after seeing Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones. George Lucas has made up for the sins of his past, redeeming himself for subjecting viewers to the awful Episode I: The Phantom Menace, a movie so bad I thought it might sink the whole Star Wars franchise. The latest instalment, I’m happy to say, is a marked improvement. It’s not perfect, but at least Jar Jar Binks is kept to a minimum, and Yoda’s transformation into a butt-kicking action hero is worth the price of admission alone. Torontonian Hayden Christensen is convincing as Anakin Skywalker, although falls a little flat in the love scenes with Senator Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman). Those scenes seem to be trying to emulate a 1930s mannered romance style of acting, but it doesn’t really work here because there doesn’t seem to be much chemistry between the two actors. The love story isn’t the draw here anyway. Star Wars fans want elaborately staged action sequences, and in Episode II Lucas delivers. Early on there is an exciting chase through the night time skies of Coruscant, and the film’s last 45 minutes have the kind of exhilaration and showmanship associated with the best moments from the original trilogy.   
  
STOLEN SUMMER

Pete Jones, winner of the Matt Damon/Ben Affeck produced Project Greenlight, is at the helm for Stolen Summer, a coming of age story about an eight year old Catholic boy who decides that converting Jews to Christianity is his ticket to heaven. It’s a great opportunity for Jones, a former insurance salesman, who beat out 10,000 other wannabe screenwriters / directors on the Survivor-style reality show to win 1 million dollars to make a film that Miramax would then release. He’s learning filmmaking in public, which explains why Stolen Summer has the feel of a student film. A more skilled director might have been able to reign in the melodrama, and cut the earnestness. A troupe of skilled actors are underused, although Aidan Quinn as the working-class Catholic father and Kevin Pollak as the local rabbi struggle through the Hallmark inspired script, handing in well measured performances. The film isn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but what it lacks in slickness, it more than makes up for with heart and charm.

THE SUM OF ALL FEARS

This is a ridiculous movie. First the casting of Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan just doesn’t make sense, chronologically (he’s already been played by the much older Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin) or physically – Affleck just isn’t commanding enough for the role. Secondly the movie is simply capitalizing on North America’s new found fear of terrorism on home turf, and thirdly the screenwriter Paul Attanasio took huge liberties with the Tom Clancy novel, including, in a stroke of misguided political correctness, changing the bad guys from Middle Eastern to Nazis. Of course everyone hates Nazis, so the filmmakers are not going to offend anyone (Hollywood finds it so hard to get good hateful villains now that Russia is no longer communist) but are we to believe that there is a worldwide conspiracy by super-rich and powerful Nazis to pit two world powers against one another? And how, after the blast (yes, there is a huge atomic explosion), does Ben Affleck piece together this entire conspiracy using only a cell phone and a palm pilot? I’m willing to suspend disbelief in most movies, but this movie has holes big enough to fly a jet through.

SUSPICIOUS RIVER

This is a rather distasteful indie film from Canadian director Lynn Stopkewich. Set in Washington state, where apparently it rains all the time, it features Molly Parker as a hooker motel clerk who is trying to raise money to escape her dreary life. One of her clients, Callum Keith Rennie, appears to be her ticket out of dullsville, but turns out to be her worst nightmare. To describe these people as dysfunctional does dysfunctional people a disservice. The movie is populated by characters would make even Jerry Springer blush – drunks, cheaters and physically abusive men. The only missing deviant behavior here is incest and necrophilia, and that’s only because Miss Parker has already covered the latter in 1996’s Kissed for the same director. Parker and Rennie are remarkable actors, and Stopkewich is a capable director who isn’t afraid to push the envelope and take chances with her craft. I only wish they would have given us something to aspire to instead of dredging up the seedy lives of these miserable characters.