Movie Rants

STRANGE WILDERNESS: Might Make You Shoot Soda Out Of Your Nose

Critics Rant — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:07:37 GMT

By Sabrina Cognata

I guess the quickest way to sum up this movie is from something I overheard while in the theater. This guy leans over and looks at this friend after his friend spits his drink all over himself from laughing and says, “This might be the funniest movie of all time.” Although I think that is stretching it, I will agree that STRANGE WILDERNESS is over-the-top hilarity every moment of the film. While it doesn’t have any particular meaning and the story sort of flails all over the place in the end, the target is to obtain laughs and in this way, the writer’s and actors accomplished what they intended to.

Before I actually saw this movie I knew I had to see it because the commercials have this creepy shark that laughs and laughs. In fact, I’ve been calling it “The Laughing Shark Movie” for the last week in a half. I never knew a laughing shark could be so hilarious and I ventured to the movies with the intention of watching a shark laugh, but getting myself into so much more. This is the story of a failing animal show called Strange Wilderness, headed by Peter (Steve Zahn). He inherited the show from his father who has passed away and has started running it like a half-assed project for a 9th grade A-V class. His show about bears is typified by a voice over with information like “Attacks from salmon onto bears are much more rare.” Well, duh.

Anyways, Peter is faced with the fact that his show is about to be cancelled and in an attempt to save it, he heads to the Andes to hunt down Big Foot with his crew, your typical F-troop. Some of the highlights are when the crew stops to film some sea lions and Danny (Peter Dante) gets attacked by a shark and is gone for the remainder of the film until about the last five minutes. Another, fabulous part is when Junior (Justin Long) steals a bottle of nitrous to sell on the streets, but it starts leaking and in the middle of the film the entire crew flips out and starts partying with their bodies covered in dayglo paint and I am still not sure of the point of it, but it is hilarious.

Eventually, the crew makes it to the remote location where Sasquatch inhabits armed with automatic weapons and instead of filming the mythical creature the crew freaks out and kills him. In a bid to save the episode they pretend Big Foot commits suicide by hanging and talk about how his isolation lead him to this disaster. Their show gets cancelled and it looks like everything is lost, but then Peter gathers up his crew and they shoot one last episode about Sharks. This is where the laughing shark comes in and probably the most hilarious part of this film.

I realize the storyline has a ton of holes and in all the film makes little sense, but it is funny, and mind numbingly so. The film won’t be winning any major awards or anything, but if you’re in the mood for a tremendously good laugh via the miracle of bathroom humor, then this is the film for you.

THE EYE: Is It Worth Seeing?

Critics Rant — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:38:19 GMT

By Kofi Outlaw

THE EYE is the latest Japanese horror film given a glossy American makeover. It’s not the best of the bunch (THE RING), it’s not the worst of the bunch (ONE MISSED CALL), but is it worth a ten dollar movie ticket? I’ll let you be the judge.

Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba, looking pretty as ever,) is a talented violinist who has been blind since she was five. Though she’s used to a life without sight, Sydney longs to experience the world like other people and signs up for procedure called a “double cornea lift” which will hopefully restore her sight.

The operation goes well, though at first Sydney can only make out blurred images, as her eyes slowly adjust to the visual world. The trouble starts her first night after the operation, when Sydney notices her elderly roommate at the hospital wandering the hallway. When Sydney tries to coax the old woman back into bed, a mysterious shadow-figure manifests and snatches the old woman away. When Sydney wakes in the morning, a nurse informs her that the old woman died in her sleep.

In the weeks after her procedure, the ghostly sightings start to occur with increasing frequency. Moreover, Sydney has prophetic dreams of terrible experiences (people burning to death in a raging fire,) which are not her own. The stress leads her to Dr. Paul Faulkner (Alessandro Nivola), who specializes in helping cornea transplant recipients adjust to a sight-based world. Of course Paul thinks that Sydney is experiencing a stress disorder brought on by the sensory overload from her recovered sight. However Sydney believes that the dead girl’s eyes she’s inherited contain a terrible power, and until she sets things right with the eyes’ original owner, the terrible visions won’t stop. After a lot of begging and pleading, Paul reluctantly agrees to take Sydney to Mexico, to visit her donor’s home.

In Mexico Sydney uncovers the tragic circumstances of the donor girl’s death, and makes peace with the ghost. Paul and Syd head for home, thinking all is well, until, (in J-horror fashion,) one last, ghastly surprise is sprung on them.

Unlike so many recent J-horror imports, THE EYE is a film that is pretty polished and very tightly structured. The story unfolds at a good pace, each scene is competently composed and relevant, every thread of storyline serves a distinct and discernable purpose, and the “surprise” at the end is well earned and fits logically with the story that preceded it.

That all said, my only issue with THE EYE is that it’s a small firecracker rather than a stick of dynamite. There are some pretty good scares, but those are basically limited to the usual, ghost-jumping-out-from-the-peripheral, sort of tricks. The fact that any time Sydney has her eyes open, she’ll potentially see something horrifying, keeps the atmosphere of the film pretty unsettling for the first forty-five minutes—but as Sydney gets used to her affliction, so do we, and “the horror” quickly becomes more routine than scary. And unlike THE RING, the “surprise” ending of THE EYE is designed to be uplifting, rather than terrifying, and while it’s cool how that last twist ties together little hints sprinkled throughout the film, for my money, nothing beats a great eleventh-hour scare.

For her part, Jessica Alba puts in a full and genuine performance, and in my opinion does a much better job than her Japanese counterpart did; I tried to watch the original EYE some years ago, and it was so bland and boring, I yanked it after just thirty minutes. Parker Posey’s presence in this film is a mystery; the indie queen plays Sydney’s sister in a couple of scenes, but isn’t handed much to work with. Nivola is ok as Dr. Paul, but after seeing his depth in other work like the TNT miniseries THE COMPANY, I know he’s only going half-speed here.

Still, co-directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud do a better job bringing their second-hand import to the screen then they will probably get credit for. But then, those are the breaks when you don’t have the option of originality.

Should you go see THE EYE? Well, I was in the theater with a lot of teenage kids, and they belted out some pretty good screams at key moments. And, if you’re guy (or an admiring girl,) it’s a never a bad thing to have the lovely Ms. Alba be the center of the camera’s attention at all times. (All I’m going to say is: profile shower shot.) But if you don’t want to pay theater prices to see a less-exciting version of THE RING, then don’t. However definitely give the film a whirl when it’s released on DVD. For less than five bucks, THE EYE is definitely worth seeing.

MEET THE SPARTANS: Mankind Is Doomed If This Is The Number One Movie

Critics Rant — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:47:20 GMT

By Sabrina Cognata

I really want to like this movie. I want to be able to say that it was so hilarious that I died on the spot because I could not catch my breath. I want to sing this movies praises and brag about the fact that it was the box office king last weekend for a reason and even though I have all the desire in the world to say that it’s awesome, I can’t because it sucks.

Meet the Spartans is a spoof of the film 300. I guess I can waste some time saying that the relation is sort of based in the main characters and the general outline of the story, but that’s about it. Gosh, I wish I had more to say about it, but I feel like screaming This film sucks a ton of times should do the trick. Leonidis (Sean Maguire) is the lofty Spartan king that continually screws things up. I don’t mean this in the fact that the king himself is a bad king, but that the writer’s decided a great running gag in the film would be to point out that Leonidis is a spectacular failure cause in the end, you know, he dies.

Oh, something else the film points out is that Queen Margo (Carmen Electra) is Leonidis’s whore wife. Something the film did not intend to point out is that Carmen Electra is looking beat. She’s finally starting to have that same haggard look that Pamela Anderson continually flashes around. Tragedy. Anyways, a decent rule of thumb that I like to follow is if Carmen Electra is in a movie it is going to suck beyond human comprehension. You should probably follow it as well.

The movie is an hour and change of stupid gags and lame jokes about pop culture that will cease to be relevant in the next 20 or so years. While gags about AMERICAN IDOL and Britney Spears are culturally relevant, I cannot see if the joke will last the test of time and continue to be mildly funny in a few years. I mean, all the Anna Nicole jokes done in movies similar to this one are now sort of depressing since she dropped dead. Really, the only amusing running gag in the entire film is the underlying homosexuality of the Greek soldiers that is brought up every ten minutes or so, because it’s probably the only joke significant to the film.

Xeres (Ken Davitian) is announced as the fat guy from Borat and I think I might have laughed harder at that than anything else in the film. Sadly, nothing could help the fact that by the last twenty minutes of the movie I could barely keep my eyes open and was seriously fighting off the urge to go to sleep I guess if you suffer from chronic insomnia then this is the film for you, but other than that I found it to be a drab representation that falls short of funny and into pathetic.

THE AIR I BREATHE: It's Worth Taking A Breath And Jumping In

Critics Rant — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:49:30 GMT

By Curt Schleier

THE AIR I BREATHE received scathing reviews following its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. It seemed almost as though the critical establishment had a grudge against Jieho Lee, the young Korean-American director and screenwriter making his directorial debut. So I wasn’t expecting much and, frankly, was even tempted to skip the screening I’d been invited to.

Luckily I didn’t, because the film is an unexpected surprise. THE AIR I BREATHE is not only an interesting and at times exciting, it features sharply etched characters and proves intellectually satisfying as well. It is also a daring enterprise for the first-time filmmaker – one he comes close to succeeding at.

The film’s conceit (and ultimately its downfall) is that it was supposedly inspired by a Chinese proverb that breaks life down into four key elements: happiness, sorrow, pleasure and love. To start with, it seems there are far more basic human emotions than four; does greed ring a bell? What about anger and lust?

That aside, there are four inter-related vignettes, each featuring a cast member who is supposed to embody one of the emotions; the problem is that they don’t. Brendan Fraser’s Pleasure enjoys little during the film. Trista’s (Sarah Michelle Gellar) primary emotion is terror, not the sorrow she is supposed to symbolize. And Forest Whitaker enjoys little happiness as a hapless and timid banker who bets everything he has on what is supposed to be a sure thing – and loses it all.

Even Kevin Bacon’s Love is unrequited. He plays is a surgeon in love with his best friend’s wife. It seems Lee went a long way to make his story fit with the fable, when that was entirely unnecessary. The stories are actually fascinating on their own -- more so when they all come together in an exciting climax – and probably would have been even better if Lee hadn’t felt the need to mold them to fit the saying..

The unifying thread is Fingers (Andy Garcia), a hoodlum who earned his nickname because of his tendency to remove digits from those who don’t pay their debts in a timely manner. Garcia is brilliant, and his leering presence elevates the film. He’s so good an actor, he makes it look easy and I think that’s the reason he rarely gets the credit he deserves.

Pleasure is Fingers’ enforcer. He also has psychic power and can see into the future. But he has a troubled soul because she was unable to use his powers to save a childhood friend.

Happiness is a milquetoast who hears colleagues talk about a fixed horse race. He decides now is his time and places a large bet at Garcia’s emporium.

Trista also has a troubled past; she saw her father killed in an automobile accident. Her manager depleted her financial accounts and gave her contract to Fingers in order to keep his own. She is now his property.

Love needs to get a transfusion for the love of his life; the only person who has the rare blood type is Trista.

Lee does a really good job of weaving these disparate threads together. It’s hard to believe that this is his first film. The plot becomes a tad convoluted not only to fit within the framework if the proverb, but also to make the denouement work. But all in all, it’s a very satisfying movie. Lee has the potential to be big, and you can say you were there at the beginning.

RAMBO: Not Nearly As Atrocious As Predicted

Critics Rant — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:30:55 GMT

By Kofi Outlaw

The most surprising thing about RAMBO is that it isn’t the shoe-in for the 2008 Razzie Award like a lot of us thought it would be. The fourth installment of the “First Blood” franchise is actually a pretty faithful throwback to the “man-movie” action flicks of the 80’s and early 90’s, such over-the-top testosterone romps like DIE HARD, or LETHAL WEAPON, which would never play in our modern, femme-powered culture. The second most surprising thing about RAMBO, then, is how the film deftly (although inadvertently) demonstrates how outdated the “man-movie” action hero is.

The plot of RAMBO is as simple as to be expected: ex-war-machine John Rambo has retired from the battlefield, living out his days as a ferryman along the rivers of South East Asia. One day a group of idealistic American missionaries stumble into Rambo’s village, looking for passage up-river into war-torn Burma. Rambo tries to convince the foolish zealots to turn back, but they persist until Rambo agrees to cart them.

On the way to Burma, the would-be saviors witness Rambo dispatch a boatful of pirates, who would have otherwise killed them all, kidnapped the one woman in their party, and done unspeakable things with her, before they killed her as well. The missionaries are horrified at Rambo’s savagery, getting in his face about peace, non-violence, and turning the other cheek, even as they depart the boat and trek into Burma.

All that peace talk goes out the window the minute the Burmese army shows up at the village the missionaries are camped in, and slaughter EVERYONE. The one girl, Sarah, gets captured along with the loudest mouth among the missionaries (24’s Paul Schulze), and they are taken to a Burmese base camp as POWs awaiting a terrible fate.

The church soon comes looking for its missing members, a search which leads them to Rambo. Ol’ Johnny boy is recruited to once again make the trek up to Burma, this time to deliver an international team of mercenaries onshore, so that they can locate the missing Americans. Feeling guilty, Rambo follows the mercenaries into the jungle, and soon they have a bead on the where the missionaries are being held.

The Burmese army faction is led by a soulless (and nameless) commander, who enjoys making prisoners relay race across marshes peppered with mines, and occupies his evenings buggering little boys in the privacy of his hut. It is this kind of hell-on-earth that Rambo and company stumble into in the dead of night. With the help of some Burmese rebels, they liberate the missionaries, a few other doomed prisoners, and take off into the jungle to escape on Rambo’s boat.

Of course the plan goes down the drain, the army takes off after them in hot pursuit, and Rambo and the mercs must make a final stand against overwhelming forces.

RAMBO is not a film for the faint of heart. If you haven’t already seen the red-band trailer, this is a VIOLENT film (and I mean that in caps.) Beheading, disemboweling, disintegration, dismemberment; if it is fatal to the human body, this film has it to such an excessive degree that the camera is at times obstructed by all the blood. Bodies are shredded to bits by gunfire, grenades, knives, machetes, arrows, boulders, flame-throwers, RPGs, and one rusted bomb left over from WWII. I have to say thought, the action is filmed pretty well, and Sly continues to demonstrate that he at least knows how to hold a camera as a director. I definitely haven’t experienced this kind of visceral killjoy since my mother took me to see DIE HARD 2 when I was nine years old.

We’ll touch on briefly on the acting. Sly gives his usual mush-mouth, droopy-faced performance, delivering atrocious lines (which are already counted amongst the classic cinematic soliloquies,) such as “When you’re pushed, killing is as easy as breathing.” Ouch. The mercenaries, with their smart-mouthed banter, are a welcome foil to Sly’s weary scowl (good idea to include them and flesh-out the story a bit.) The Burmese soldiers and the unfortunate villagers are basically just an “ethnic backdrop” exploited like livestock in an abattoir—which explains why the story is set in Burma. Muslim groups would’ve STILL been be outside theaters in a picket line, had this film been set in Middle East.

However Sly (wisely?) avoids going the pro-America stance, offering an impartial “meditation” on the universal horrors of unchecked warfare. I’ll let you be the judge of whether or not he succeeds in delivering that blood-soaked message. All I know, is that by the end credits, when our hero is making that last long walk into the sun, (dressed in stone-washed jeans straight out of the 80’s,) you’re left with the unsettling notion that this dog has perhaps, at long last, had all the day he will ever have. All in all though, RAMBO is a going-away party that could’ve been twice as lame than it is. And in this case, that’s saying a lot.

UNTRACEABLE: The Internet Can Be A Dark And Scary Place

Critics Rant — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:13:44 GMT

By Faith McQuinn

UNTRACEABLE isn’t some masterpiece of thrilling cinema—it’s a been-there, seen-that type of thriller. But it does a decent job of exposing the very realistic, very scary possibilities of the Internet. Most of us can’t function without the Internet—it’s in our homes, our businesses and our cars. Naturally, a movie about an Internet killer would scare the crap out of a good bit of people, even though the story that surrounds it is rather predictable.

UNTRACEABLE is by no means SEVEN or SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. It is not a thinking man’s movie. It’s more like an advanced version of SAW with higher caliber actors.

Diane Lane is Jennifer Marsh, a special agent for the FBI Cyber Crimes Division. She and colleague Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) monitor the Internet for sex offenders and identity thieves. When they get an anonymous tip about the site killwithme.com, they discover a demented live feed of a kitten being tortured.

Attempts to shut down the site are unsuccessful, and the higher-ups decide one dead cat isn’t worth the trouble. Much to their dismay (but, of course, not to the audience’s), the site administrator steps up his game to human torture. The more people to visit the site, the faster the victim dies. And people are very interested.

With the assistance of Detective Box (Billy Burke), Jennifer, Griffin and their FBI cyber team must figure out a way to stop the killer and shut down his horrible website.

The story may seem fresh, but it’s not. I’ve seen this thriller many times before, and I’ve seen it done far better. Just this time around, the killer has thousands of accomplices, and viewers are made to think about the dark side of the Internet.

Early on, the killer’s identity is revealed. Some might not like this tactic, but I think it helped escalate the movie a little bit. Instead of playing this game of which one of the good guys might be the bad guy, it becomes a game of figuring out why the bad guy is bad. The answer, I will admit, is pretty well thought out.

The best thing about this movie is how spot on it is about the nature of online communities. I’m an Internet junkie. I do my banking, my shopping, my bill paying, and some of my TV watching online. I am not, though, a fan of online forums. The general public is not filled with the smartest people, and IQ levels significantly drop when people enter chat rooms. UNTRACEABLE exploits this idea without blowing it out of proportion. You may say that you would never visit a site that may or may not cause someone harm, but curiosity will eventually get the better of you. It’s like passing a car accident on the street. You don’t want to look, but you do anyway.

The worst thing about this movie is the cheap copout on story points. UNTRACEABLE is full of plot glitches that are simply there to keep the story moving. Jennifer Marsh is an FBI agent, yes, but she’s a desk jockey. She works in cyber crimes in front of a computer. The last time she probably saw the field was in her training at Quantico. So will someone please explain to me why she would be allowed to go into the field, let alone be part of the task force that goes to the killer’s house? Oh! It’s because the audience desperately needed her reaction to seeing a victim up close and personal.

Another instance is when the killer targets Jennifer and her family. The FBI takes her mother and daughter into protective custody. As we all suspect, Jennifer refuses the protection because she’s got to catch the bastard that terrorized her family. She moves into a dark, secluded hotel and has absolutely no police or FBI protection outside. Um…no. But if she had the protection, the killer wouldn’t have been able to get to her. Right? Right.

And then there’s the ending! I won’t reveal it because some people might not figure it out beforehand. Let’s just say that the movie loses major points for even thinking about hacking into a car computer.

For all its predictability and inconsistency, UNTRACEABLE at least stays consistent with its theme. The Internet is a helpful tool in today’s world, but it’s also a dark and twisted place where people have no morals.

TEETH: A Film With A Serious Bite

Critics Rant — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 18:52:07 GMT

By Kofi Outlaw

There is nothing I love more than a movie that doesn’t confuse what it is, with what is not. Films that are pure camp flounder when they take themselves too seriously. Films that try to delve into dark and sordid territory with a wink and a smile, often risk falling off the tightrope that is black comedy. TEETH—the story of a young girl with the fearsome anatomical mutation of “vagina denta”—is a movie which never pretends to be any less ridiculous than its laughable premise. And that is what makes it so darn enjoyable.

Dawn, a teenage girl living in small town U.S.A., faces the same hurdle as every other teenage girl from any-town America: how to cope with her emerging sexuality. In Dawn’s case, this means taking to the stage every week at church rallies, to deliver mindless bubblegum speeches about the importance of “the promise,” (a buzz-word for abstinence,) to crowds of doe-eyed, slack-jawed tweeners.

At home, Dawn’s naïve sexual views are forced to contend with the perverse indulgences of her stepbrother, Brad, whose idea of a good Friday night involves getting drunk, stoned, and having loud, carnal, cringe-inducing “backdoor” romps with his goth-queen girlfriend. Brad has a serious aversion to the standard routes of sex, for reasons he can’t clearly explain (think childhood “injury”)—just as Dawn cannot explain her own subconscious notion that sex somehow equates to pain and horror. (Metaphor Alert!)

Brad’s depravity makes Dawn only that more sure that “the promise” is the path for her. So it’s a big step, really, when she, a boy she’s crushing on named Tobey, and a few other friends from “the promise” group take a day walk and end up at the lake where young teens go to first get laid. The chaste teens keep cool heads, however the mere proximity to the hotbed of carnality gets Dawn’s impressionable mind working in all the “wrong” ways. When her stepbrother finally makes it clear that he wants to be the man who first defiles Dawn, the young girl decides to take her “relationship” with Tobey to the next level: kissing.

Of course Tobey, being the hot-and-horny teenage boy that he is, forgets all about his commitment to “the promise” when he’s making out with sweet Dawn, and within seconds, the meek church mouse is pinning the helpless girl down, and violently forcing his way inside her. Unfortunately for Tobey, Dawn is a girl with a pretty extraordinary flower. One gruesome castration later, Tobey is a corpse, and Dawn is plunged into a downward spiral of confusion and shame about the snake-fanged “monster” living between her thighs.

But in a world filled with rapists, molesters and other insidious males with their malicious members, Dawn soon learns that there are distinct advantages to having a built-in sexual defense mechanism. In encounter after cringe-inducing encounter, Dawn fights back against a pro-phallic world, learning to wield her sexuality as the formidable weapon that it (literally) is.

Writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein gets the tone of TEETH pitch-perfect. With subject matter this outrageous, and a not-so-subtle pro-feminist message at work, this film could’ve have taken itself WAY too seriously, and tried to poise itself as some kind of CARRIE for the youporn generation. Instead, Lichtenstein and co. render the film as a midnight showing, D-movie horror flick that is so trashy, it can’t help but to be entertaining.

The campy tone is bolted down in the very first frame, a shot of Dawn’s modest suburban house, the gigantic nuclear power plant in her backyard, complete with duh-Duh-DUH! warning music, which informs us that we are about to watch an old-school creature-feature unfold. Building on that promise we are treated to shockingly raunchy dialogue, (too explicit to even print,) camera work worthy of a low-budget porno, and a script jam-packed with every flimsy, corny, double (sometimes triple!) entendre, seen coming from miles away. And yes, more ketchup-covered, gnarled rubber penises than you could shake a stick at. (Snicker.)

The cast of TEETH does equally well at never for a second confusing the ludicrous nature of their subject matter with serious social commentary. Newcomer Jess Weixler plays Dawn so deadpan—first with painfully awkward, gut-busting naïvete about sex; later with equally humorous scowls, and general malice towards men and their members—that hilarity almost has no choice but to ensue from every airy, wide-eyed expression she flashes, every recycled bit of church-rhetoric she preaches, or every vicious hip-twist she gives, to relieve another despicable fella of his misused tool.

Through all the tongue-and-cheek, crotch-and-gore, antics, it gets a bit difficult to pinpoint where Mitchell’s sympathies lie as the filmmaker, or what message exactly we are to take from the film. Dawn’s impassioned speeches on abstinence are delivered like Hilter addressing the Third Reich at Nuremburg. Are we to take it that religious prudes, with their narrow-minded views, are akin to Nazis? On the other hand every new boy that Dawn cavorts with, turns out to be a scumbag hell-bent on raping her. (Even the one lad who is able to successfully copulate with her and keep his member eventually loses it for revealing he bet on the conquer.) Are those same religious prudes actually prudent for blindly adhering to their rigid views? The film never throws its lot behind any one point of view, and rightly so; the camp is what it’s all about.

I must say: it’s been a long time since I had so much fun seeing a trashy movie. I went to a late showing of TEETH, at one of the two theaters in the country currently showing it, and was part of a modest-sized crowd of grind house aficionados, not too shy to crack a six-pack in the theater. We laughed together, moaned at every awkward or disgusting bit of dialogue, and hid our faces in each other’s coats, as each gruesome, mangled bit of penis dropped from Dawn’s Venus fly trap. (Okay, so maybe that last bit is a stretch, but we definitely cringed as a team.)

TEETH deserves to have a wide-spread run in theaters. The premise alone has “cult-classic” written all over it, and the film definitely rises to that esteemed challenge. Go see it, if only to have a good bit of fun. I plan on keeping a copy of the DVD on hand for the rest of my life—to scare a bit of sense into all those hot and bothered young men my future daughter(s) might one day bring home to meet me.

27 DRESSES: Always A Bridesmaid, Never Number One

Critics Rant — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:04:14 GMT

By Sabrina Cognata

I bet you will not be surprised when I admit that I hate this movie in ways that can only be described with forms of genital torture. Here is the thing that you will never predict: the part where Jane (Katherine Heigl) and Kevin (James Marsden) fall in love while getting drunk, singing Benny and the Jets and dancing on a bar is my idea of perfection. So I guess the movie isn’t all bad, just mostly bad with a side of terrible romantic comedy.

Meet Jane, she’s been a bridesmaid twenty-seven times. Kevin notices her jetting between two weddings she’s maid-of-honor for that happen to be going on at the same time. He helps her after she has been attacked by some crazy chick who is trying to capture the bridal bouquet. He jumps in a cab with her and tells her that he’s been watching her go back and forth and starts questioning her about what she’s been up to for the evening. She calls him a cynic, exits the cab and leaves her 1987 date planner behind. Kevin decides to read it, realizing Jane’s a career bridesmaid and the perfect angle for a feature story.

Jane goes back to her boring life and we realize she’s super in love with her boss, George (Ed Burns). It is the sort of pathetic crush that makes you want to commit suicide for the main character. Shortly after, Jane’s sister Tess (Malin Ackerman) shows up and George immediately falls in love with her, leaving Jane to feel stupid, left out and angry. Tess notices that Jane has all these stupid clippings from the Commitment section and they’re all by the same writer. Meanwhile, Kevin’s selling the story of Jane’s feature article to his editor and is trying to cleverly court Jane. At first Jane wants nothing to do with him and basically wants to be angry that her crush is enamored with her sister. Tess decides the best course of action is to become George’s dream woman and modifies her behavior in a ton of ways to further enchant George. This makes Jane crazy.

Eventually, George proposes to Tess and Jane becomes even more upset. Kevin uses this as his opportunity to infiltrate Jane’s life by writing a piece in the Commitments section of the New York Journal about George and Tess. When he shows up Jane puts two and two together and realizes Kevin is the writer she’s been pining over and Tess immediately admits it. While talking to Jane he sees her closet filled with 27 dresses and they have a stupid fashion show and it’s easy to see that Kevin’s taken with her. He tries to keep his article from being published and asks his editor for a week to iron out some problems.

Jane guesses that Kevin hates weddings so much because he had a fairytale one and then the marriage ended disastrously. It turns out that she guesses right, his wife ran away with his best man and former college roommate. Things heat up even more after Jane gets her car stuck in the mud and the two end up drinking shots, singing Benny and the Jets terribly while dancing on a bar and having sex in the back of her car. HOT. Everything seems to be going perfectly in the post coital realm until the waitress notices that Jane is the 27 Dresses girl from the Commitment section. Jane flips out at Kevin. After this Jane goes on a mission to make everyone unhappy and she uses the slideshow at her sister’s rehearsal dinner to seek her vengeance. She shows the truth about her sister to George and then the wedding is called off. Kevin happens to be there and tells her that he came to support her and is leaving forever, but first he hands her a blackberry and asks her to join the 21st century. How romantic.

Jane’s father makes her apologize to her sister and Jane learns that everything isn’t perfect for Tess. The two kiss and makeup cause that is what sisters do. Later, George calls Jane cause he needs a date to a charity event. For one reason or another they kiss and Jane says she feels no magic. Just then her phone rings and the tone is Benny and the Jets, and let’s face it, nothing says love like Benny and the Jets. Jane races over to Kevin who’s covering his last wedding and she admits her affections for him and they race off into the cynical sunset just like I would have hoped. I bet they’re divorced in six months.

CLOVERFIELD: The Best Monster Movie We've Had In A Long Time

Critics Rant — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:46:50 GMT

By Faith McQuinn

If you’re going to see CLOVERFIELD because you’re looking for an in-depth character study or some sort of psychological thriller about an unknown creature or even some version of LOST in Manhattan, please move on. This movie is not for you.

If you’re looking for an exciting, gripping, realistic (well, as realistic as it can be) monster movie, then go right ahead and buy that ticket.

After months of cryptically cool trailers and all kinds of internet hype, CLOVERFIELD turns out to be exactly what I wanted it to be — a simple story about a not-so-simple monster attack. It’s a little BLAIR WITCH PROJECT with the camera, but these filmmakers know how to finesse shaky. It’s a little 28 DAYS LATER with its apocalyptic themes, but there are no freaky half-eaten bodies lying around. It’s a lot GODZILLA with the big, scary, parasite-leaking monster. (Yeah, it’s got little friends that attack too.) I jumped. I cringed. I laughed. I enjoyed every minute of it.

The movie opens on April 27, supposedly the most perfect day of Rob’s (Michael Stahl-David) life. He and his girlfriend, Beth (Odette Yustman), are going to spend the day at Coney Island. This cheesy little love fest gets cut short when the video jumps ahead to May 22. Rob’s brother Jason (Michael Vogel) has the camera, and he and his girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas) are planning a going away party for him. At the party, Jason hands the camera over to Rob’s best friend Hud (T.J. Miller) so they can record goodbyes for Rob.

The first part of the movie is Hud going around documenting the party with his horrible camera work. When Rob and Beth have a fight on the landing, Hud and Jason go out to talk to their friend when something happens. That something is the kickstart to the second act, and the crazy monster movie begins.

With Hud’s amateurish camera skills, he documents the crazy night that begins with the Statue of Liberty’s head landing in the middle of Manhattan, and ending with…well, I’m not going to tell you that. Why ruin it? What I will say is that CLOVERFIELD may fall nicely into the monster movie genre, but it does it more quietly than most.

You see the monster, but not fully. You’re always trying to figure out exactly what it is—just as Hud and company are. There’s not a lot of running and screaming, but there are lots of eerily quiet scenes that keep you energized and waiting for something not so quiet to happen. And then there’s that camera work.

I’ve read a lot of complaining about the home video look of the movie. People are saying it jumps around too much; they’re getting queasy. I didn’t think this at all. Yes, there’s definitely a lot of movement and unsteady shots, but even when the camera is whipping back and forth to catch the hysteria, there’s still a slightly steady hand to it. In other words, it jumps and shakes and moves, but it’s nothing like the camera work of BLAIR WITCH. I might compare it more to the BOURNE series.

Besides the camera work, I loved the characters. You really don’t get to know them all that well. Only Rob and Beth get any real backstory, but I didn’t mind. CLOVERFIELD isn’t about the people, it’s about them dealing with this situation. That being said, my favorite character is Hud. He’s the comic relief, the chatterbox you wish would stop talking but at the same time, it’s a comfort to hear his voice. You hardly see his face on screen, but his presence makes the whole disaster a little more grounded.

My only real complaint about the movie, if this can even be considered a complaint, is the shot that basically mimics one of the many home video shots from 9/11. It is unnerving and threw me out of the movie for about two minutes. I wish director Matt Reeves had made a different decision. I know it’s a movie with buildings collapsing in New York, and I’m OK with that. But this particular scene — a large dust cloud moves down the street and the characters find shelter in a convenience store — is a little too real and not enough monster.

Even with this little hiccup, CLOVERFIELD is one of the best monster movies I’ve seen in a long time. Yeah, take that, Peter Jackson.

FIRST SUNDAY: It's No FRIDAY, But It Has Heart

Critics Rant — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:36:54 GMT

By Kofi Outlaw

Let me start by saying that FIRST SUNDAY is but another victim of bad advertising — though in this case I wouldn’t necessarily blame the marketing dept. for dropping the ball. The laugh-out-loud movie the trailers promised never shows up, and what we’re left with is a religious-themed morality tale, that actually has a bit of heart.

Ice Cube stars as Durell, an earnest, hard-working father, striving to provide for the son he shares with baby mama Omunique (SCARY MOVIE’s Regina Hall). Though Durell’s dedication as a father is unquestionable, his lack of income pushes Omunique to consider selling her small beauty salon and moving from Baltimore to Atlanta, taking Durell J.R. along with her. For Durell Sr., the move would cost him his relationship with his son; as a convicted felon, he is barred from crossing state lines.

More often than not, diligent Durell finds himself in front of a judge thanks to hair-brained schemes concocted by his childhood friend, LeeJohn (Tracy Morgan). LeeJohn is the product of everything that could ever go wrong with the foster care system—a raving half-wit, always one step away from his next screw-up. Basically it’s Tracy Morgan playing…Tracy Morgan.

Just when Durell needs money to ensure his son doesn’t have to leave, LeeJohn gets him fired from his promising job at an electronics store. To make up for the blunder, LeeJohn invites Durell in on his latest scheme: driving a van of pimped-out wheelchairs across town for some Jamaican gangsters. Of course the simple task goes horribly awry, and Durell and LeeJohn once again find themselves in the courtroom of the gruff judge Galloway (Keith David).

The judge knows that Durell is a skilled electrician, and wants to see the young man realize his potential. Instead of jail, he sentences Durell and LeeJohn to 5,000 hours of community service, hoping that the indentured servitude will instill them with the humility and values they desperately need. However there is little time for personal growth when Jamaican gangsters are on your tail. Just when all doors seem closed, suddenly a window opens for the bumbling duo, in the form of a gorgeous and spunky pastor’s daughter (Malinda Williams), who catches Durell’s eye while on her way to church.

Like two red-rocket dogs, Durell and LeeJohn hustle after the siren, stumbling upon a spirited church congregation, who has been amassing a lot of money. The pastor (Chi McBride) and most of the congregation want to use the considerable funds to renovate the church and the downtrodden neighborhood surrounding it. One oily Deacon (Michael Beach), is pushing to use the funds to move the church out of the ‘hood, and into a nice, plush, suburb. LeeJohn comes up with a third option: he and Durell rob the church, and use the money to both pay off the Jamaicans and pay off the lease on Omunique’s beauty shop, ensuring that Durell Jr. can stay close to his father.

At first Durell wants no parts of the sacrilegious scheme. But as the threat of his son leaving looms closer, Durell surrenders his morals to the need of being with his son. The pair waits until first Sunday, when the congregation has the most offerings to give, and when darkness falls, they sneak into the church, looking to crack the safe and abscond with the loot.

Again the simple plan goes awry, as Durell and LeeJohn are forced to take the church council, the jubilant choir, and the choir’s flamboyant conductor (Katt Williams), hostage. The situation only gets worse when the Deacon opens the safe only to reveal that someone has already stolen the money.

The film then splinters into subplots that involve LeeJohn turning over a new leaf, thanks to some TLC from the Foster mother (Loretta Devine) he never had; Durell and the Pastor’s daughter, Tianna, facing off, while simultaneously growing more and more attracted to one another; the Deacon being exposed for embezzling funds from the church; and the church’s oldest member, Momma T (Olivia Cole), forcing Durell to realize that in trying to save his son through wrongdoing, he is actually losing the boy. Katt Williams, meanwhile, provides much-needed comic relief from the after-school-special atmosphere, with some well-timed one-liners.

Eventually Durell and LeeJohn experience a profound change of heart and back out of the robbery—too late, as the police are waiting outside the church’s doors to take them down. When Durell and LeeJohn once again end up in front of Judge Galloway, the church congregation (in true Christian fashion) turns the other cheek, testifying on their captors’ behalf, while the flustered Deacon ends up facing charges of his own for the embezzlement. Durell and LeeJohn avoid prison, and the church allots the necessary funds so that Omunique can keep her shop, and Durell can keep his son. The grateful duo become active members in the church, Durell gets his girl, and Jesus continues to travel the cosmos, delivering that love-thang when and where needed.

As I said, First Sunday isn’t the laugh-out-loud, FRIDAY knock-off, promised by the trailers—though I see why the marketing team went that route. The movie is one of those genre-straddling films that are neither fish nor fowl, as my mom used to say. While there are some funny moments, (thank Katt Williams for those,) the film saves its real punch for the emotionally heavy moment involving Durell’s relationship with his son. For all Ice Cube’s posturing as a scowl-faced foil to the comedic happenings around him (the FRIDAY series), or a stocky, scowl-faced, action hero (XXX 2), the rapper-turned-actor is really at the top of his game when infusing SUNDAY’s heavier bits with genuine emotion. When Durell is being torn-up inside about how to keep his son from leaving, we feel that conflict. When Durell is in the church, waving a gun, pleading for the money he needs, we feel that desperation. When Durell finally realizes that the church has given him the money out of kindness, and he hugs his son tight, giving praise to God for the miracle, we nearly shed a tear. At least I nearly shed a tear.

Aside from showcasing Ice Cube’s surprising range, FIRST SUNDAY has an equally solid cast. I’ve already given Katt Williams props for upholding his end, the comedic relief, but veterans like Devine, McBride, David, Hall, Cole and Beach, help to distinguish their characters from the stereotypical “urban archetypes” they could’ve been. Thank writer/director David E. Talbert for that, as well as the polished and professional look of the film. The only person who doesn’t uphold his end is the erratic Morgan, whose re-hashed portrayal of his eccentric character on “30 Rock” doesn’t quite make the transition to film.

I must take a special moment, however, to fawn over the lovely Malinda Williams. There are a couple of shameless sequences in the film where Ice Cube (and the camera) sneak extended peeks at Ms. Williams’ ample assets. I thank Mr. Cube and Mr. Talbert for those moments. Williams’ performance (while genuinely spunky) is also an important reminder that short hair on the right girl can definitely, definitely be hot. And who doesn’t fantasize about getting with the preacher/pastor’s daughter? But I digress.

FIRST SUNDAY is, ironically enough, a film perfectly suited to Sunday, Million Dollar Movie viewing. If you have an accurate idea of what you’re getting into ahead of time (and hopefully I’ve provided such a heads-up,) you will enjoy the movie. If you go into it thinking that you’re going to see FRIDAY pt. 5, you will most certainly be disappointed. My feeling is that same people who made Tyler Perry a household name will be the (only?) ones who find inspiration in FIRST SUNDAY.