woodyreviews

We Need to Talk About Kevin...absolutely bleak

2012-01-31T21:50:00.000-06:00

If you put this movie together with Michael Fassbender's Shame you would have the perfect Double Feature for Hell.

Shame and We Need to Talk About Kevin are two of the darkest, most disturbing movies that I have seen in a long long time. Tilda Swinton plays the mother of a mass murderer. Did I say it was bleak?

We see flashbacks of her life and the growing unrest and evil developing in her son. It is really tough to watch.

These flashbacks are mixed with her current day life which is dreadful, full of hate and lonliness.

This is a movie that I literally could not finish. I will admit to fash forwarding through the last five minutes of Shame but I stopped Kevin dead in its tracks, ejected the disc and shredded it. I don't need that in my life! Adios dark and disturbing movie.

grade D (though Swinton is very strong)

mcw

Man on a Ledge...should've jumped early

2012-01-31T21:43:00.000-06:00

The Sting is a great caper film. The Italian Job is one of my favorite heist films. Man on a Ledge would like to be half as good as both of those movie. It isn't.

Sam Worthington plays a ex-cop wo has been framed and sent to prison for supposedly stealing a diamond from a nasty cartoon character of a villian played by Ed Harris. He escapes custody during his father's funeral, checks into a classic New York Hotel, eats a last meal and walks out of the room's window onto a ledge 20 plus floors above the street.

When the cops show up he requests, by name, a female officer played by Elizabeth Banks. I'm not sure in what world Banks makes a credible NYC cop but I know that it isn't this one.

The film keeps no secrets that while Worthington's cop walks the ledge above the crowd, his younger brother and girlfriend are breaking into a super high tech, high security building to get even with the scowling Ed Harris. That break in could not be less credible.

Man on a Ledge takes an interesting premise and screws it up incredibly!

Don't bother.

grade C-

mcw

Haywire....taut and tidy

2012-01-31T21:21:00.000-06:00

Director Steven Soderbergh shows us in Haywire that it doesn't take a compelling actresss or tons of cash to make an entertaining and exciting movie experience.

With MMA star Gina Carano in the lead, Haywire tells the story of a rogue black ops agent who was double crossed and has now been targeted for death. The tagline for the movie says it all "They Left Her No Choice".

The plot is both simple and complex, The acting, especially Carano's, is pretty weak but the all star cast which includes Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Bill Paxson and Channing Tatum plow through the script, hardly taking a breath.

Haywire is a stripped down version of a Bourne movie and honestly, just as effective. Soderbergh does a nice job trying to cover for Carano's weaknesses and the film moves at such a pace that you really don't have a lot of time to think. What Carano lacks in acting chops she more than makes up for in the action scenes. She is a bad ass!

It is nice to go into a movie with low expectations and be completely surprised. Haywire did just that.

grade B+

mcw

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close....powerful

2012-01-31T19:56:00.000-06:00

Not sure why this movie took so long to roll out across the country but I was very anxious to see it. Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot and The Reader) has directed some wonderful films and to put together Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock in a film with echoes of 9/11 seemed to be a no-brainer.

And for the most part it is.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close probably gets the prize for worst title of a movie this year and I hope that that doesn't keep you away from it. It is essentially a touching story about a young man (Thomas Horn) struggling to make sense of the death of his father (Hanks) in one of the World Trade Centers on Sept 11th.

He and his dad had a very unique relationship that included lots of puzzles and mysteries and little secrets to solve. It was both challenging and playful. When the boy finds a key, hidden in a vase, after his dad's death, he feels as if this is one more game that his father is playing with him. He systematically scours miles and miles of New York City, trying to find the lock that this key opens.

In the meantime he also engages a man he believes to be his long lost grandfather, played marvelously by Max VonSydow (in an Oscar nominated performance). VonSydow's cahracter does not speak and the only way he communicates are through a notepad and a simple Yes on the palm of one hand and No on the other.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is an excellent movie full of love and a lot of pain. Horn is perfectly cast and his sad, scared child is both searching for, and concealing, a secret.

The movie has moments of brilliance and there were lots of sniffles in the theater the night I saw it!

grade A-

mcw

Red Tails....TV Movie of the Week

2012-01-31T19:40:00.000-06:00

Red Tails takes the fascinating history of the Tuskeegee airmen and turns it into a Hallmark Movie of the Week looking film that in no way shows respect for these great men and their courageous lives.

Set in Itlay in 1944 we see this squadron of black men forced to fly inferior aircraft that is unfit for combat. They are not allowed to participate in any of the air attacks and are kept mostly grounded.

The cast of unknowns with the exception of their commanding officers, Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr (with a ridiculous looking pipe!), are not strong actors and the director does them no favors.

I saw Gooding Jr and Howard the othe rnight on CNN bemoaning the state of black films in our country and how movies like Red Tails can't find an audience. Obviously they didn't get the message about making a good movie and people will want to see it. I'd argue that Red Tails doesn't deserve an audience. How they can make that argument in a year with The Help clobbering the box office and up for an Oscar is ridiculous!

This is a movie that believes in words like triumph and tragedy but should also know words like cheesy and hokey.

Too bad because it is a great story and because of this movie, fewer people will want to hear it.

grade C-

mcw

Carnage....not a fun afternoon

2012-01-31T19:24:00.000-06:00

Roman Polanski directing a movie featuring Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, John C Reilly and Christoph Waltz would almost always be cause for celebration. This would not be the case for the film Carnage.

The film opens with very aggressive music and credits as we watch a group of boys arguing and ultimately fighting after school. One boy is obviously hurt badly in the fight.

The next scene (and prettymuch every single scene after that) is in the NYC apartment of Foster and O'Reilly's character as we see them dealing with the parents (Waltz and Winslet) of the boy who hurt their son.

Carnage is based on a play and I've rarely had a movie like this feel so much like a play. And that, by the way, is not a good thing.

We see these two couples argue with each other, get along, argue amongst themselves, vomit, get drunk and argue even more. All in the space of 70 minutes in a tiiny NYC apartment.

I found the whole lot of them annoying and I couldn't wait to get out of the theatre. The acting is strong but the filmmaking and story gave me the creeps.

grade C (and generous at that)

mcw

Joyful Noise....only when they're singing

2012-01-31T19:14:00.000-06:00

Joyful Noise looked like it might be a lot of fun. The pairing of Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton looked promising. The gospel music looked like it could be very good too.

The music is good.

Joyful Noise is set in small town Georgia and tells the tale of a church choir dealing with the death of its leader, oddly played by Kris Kristofferson. His wife, played by Dolly and Queen Latifah's character are left to fight over the reins. When Dolly, and her sizable fortune, are passed over, fireworks begin.

Add to that Dolly's "bad news" grandson who reappears in town and immeditaely starts hitting on Latifah's daughter.

And just when it gets really corny, the fortunately break into song.

This movie has more cliches and silliness than a person should have to endure in one sitting. The dialogue is really bad, like grimacing when you hear it bad. It is like watching Sister Act 12.

The music is truly special and it is the only thing that kept me from exiting early from this dog. When it shines, it shine brightly and reminds us of how special this could have been.

When the choir wins competition after competition and heads to a national competition in L.A. it was laughable. I've seen Glee episodes with more realism.

The only thing I can recommend is the music. You might be better off with the soundtrack.

grade C+

mcw

The Grey...Neeson's January Testosterone dose

2012-01-30T20:02:00.000-06:00

Liam Neeson has maade some great movies (Rob Roy, Schindler's List) but like Mark Wahlberg he likes to put on a little action too. For the last few years we've been treated to Taken ( a great action thriller) and Unknown (not so great) and now The Grey!

He plays a man, struggling with suicidal thoughts and the loss of his marriage who takes a job essentially guarding an oil pipeline in Alaska from the wildlife that might interfere. In this case, wolves.

He and a large group of men load into a small cargo plane heading for Anchorage and in the middle of the trip the plane crashes spectacularly. The film is a visceral experience and that experience starts with this crash which is about as intense as you want to see. The rest of the experience consists of two things, the elements and the grey wolves.

I've rarely felt the intensity of the cold, bitter cold and harsh winds like I did in this movie. It is a major character in the film and it is done very well. The wolves on the other hand are most effective when we see very little of them. They seem to haunt and stalk a small group of survivors as they trek across this frozen land looking for shelter from the wind and the animals.

This is the wolves' world and they pick these guys off on by one as the film goes on. In the end it is just a matter of who is gonna die and how. It was a compelling film that couldn't find a strong ending. It held my attention very well but I was looking for more.

grade B

mcw

Contraband....Marky Mark kicks butt

2012-01-30T19:46:00.000-06:00

What I love about Mark Wahlberg is that he is a very good actor (Boogie Nights, The Fighter, The Lovely Bones etc.) but he is not above a well made action movie (Four Brothers, Shooter, We Own the Night) here and there to shake things up.

His latest is Contraband and he plays a former smuggler who has gone straight and lives a good life with his wife (Kate Beckinsdale) and two sons in New Orleans. All is well until his flunky brother-in-law, still in the smuggling business, tosses a bunch of dope over the side of a boat about to be boarded by the Coast Guard. He gets away from the authorities but now the drug lord, a very scary Giovani Ribisi, wants his money or his cocaine.

Wahlberg steps in to try to smooth the waters but this backfires and he is forced to accept one more job to pay off the idiot's debt. This takes him and a group of cronies to Panama to smuggle some conterfeit bills into the U.S. I suppose I wasn't surprised when the job goes bad but the movie really stretches its credibility in the second half of the film.

Contraband wasn't as smart as I wanted it to be. I wasn't looking for a whole lot but I need some believability in my action films too.

grade C+

mcw

Shame...be warned

2012-01-30T19:28:00.000-06:00

Shame could be one polarizing movie experience if you don't know what you are getting into. Hell, it will be a polarizing movie even if you do know what you are getting into. It is rated NC-17 for a reason and it won't take you long to figure out why.

Michael Fassbender plays a man addicted to sex. Seriously addicted, and it is really starting to affect his life. He is an addict and needs an intervention.

The last thing that he needs is his sister (Carey Mulligan) to come visit unannounced. She brings more than her share of baggage with her and the two of them together are just a mess. This is a dark, dark look at a very sick man (and woman) struggling to maintain a normal life while still feeding his addiction.

Fassbender gives a spectacular and unbelievably brave performance (see George Clooney's comments from the Golden Globe Awards!) as this deranged man. Nudity is obviously not a concern of his. It is a very hard performance to enjoy but you have to appreciate it.

The movie itself was way too much for me. I'm no prude but holy cow this is a raunch fest from start to finish with little redeeming value other than two very strong but crushing performances.

Consider yourself warned.

grade D+

mcw

The Iron Lady...Streep again dazzles

2012-01-30T19:15:00.000-06:00

Just when you think that you've seen everything Meryl Streep has to offer, you see her performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady and you would swear that she totally disappears. I would have told you that Viola Davis from The Help would win the Oscar this year but now I would tell you it is a horse race and whoever gets hot at the end will be the victor.

But a near perfect performance does not assure you of a great film. The Iron Lady tells the story of Thatcher's rise to greatness in England from very humble beginnings. It is a fascinating story but the filmmaker, director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!!), has used a supposed present day story to wrap the film's stories. We see Thatcher in present day England suffering from dementia and hallucinating visions of her dead husband (the always great, Jim Broadbent) as if he is still living with her.

If she is in this condition, it seems very awkward to watch this. If she's not, it is creepy. Either way, they could have framed the stories differently in my opinion.

It is too bad that they chose this storytelling device because it detracts from what would otherwise be a fine look at a great woman in history.

Either way, Streep is the odds on favo to take home Oscar.

grade B

mcw

The Artist...I didn't buy it

2012-01-30T18:49:00.001-06:00

The Artist is being called the odds on favorite to win the Oscar for Best Picture. I couldn't be more confused by that logic.

It is a simple film, shot in black and white with little to no soundtrack other than music. Let me be perfectly clear, it is all but a silent picture. I've read that people around the country have walked out of theaters thinking that the sound system was broken. Nope, they want it to be this way.

The film is an homage to the classic silent films of yesteryear, set in Hollywood in 1927. A major Hollywood silent film (Jean Dujardin) star meets a wanna be actress (Berenice Belo.) In a riff on A Star is Born, her star begins to rise as his begins to fade with the advent of talking pictures.

Cute setup, unique concept but it grew tired for me early on and then proceeded to continue to wear out its welcome. It felt gimmicky to me, certainly not Oscar material. I might give it another try to see if I missed something but I'm not sure if I can live in a world that hands this movie an Oscar for Best Picture and leaves The Help standing at the altar.

grade C+

mcw

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy...challenging

2012-01-30T18:38:00.001-06:00

The new film, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy is based on the Cold War espionage thriller novel by John leCarre. The cast is top drawer, including Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Thomas Hardy, Toby Jones and Colin Firth. The director is Tomas Alfredson who gave us his creepy adaptation of Let The Right One In three years ago.

The story, as best I can tell, is about a Russian mole in British intelligence and Gary Oldman's character has been tasked with finding this mole by John Hurt's character. I say as best I can tell because this movie is obviously a lot smarter than I am. Control works for the Circus and he's asked Smiley to find out whether the Tinker, the Tailor, the Solider or the Spy are the mole. There are lots of code names and designations but it is hard to track them all. The film features lots of flashbacks but they are hard to identify and harder to pin down from a timeline standpoint.

I saw this movie at home on a screener copy and my wife and I both hated it. I went to the theater to see it and it made a lot more sense. It is a very, very good film but it is a smart film and it isn't gonna slow down to pander to the audience. I suppose that's a good thing but maybe a little explanation up front would have helped.

If you are into the spy game and those kinda movies, you will most likely love this one. I can appreciate while still realizing that it is so much smarter than I am.

grade B

mcw

Top 10 for 2011...handful of great, handful of very good

2012-01-02T20:45:00.164-06:00

Who would have thought that I would see the best movie of the year on a Saturday afternoon in Indianapolis in mid-August? The Help is the only movie that I saw in 2011 that moved me the way movies used to move me all the time. In many years you would see a handful of really great movies. Not anymore. That doesn't mean that they don't make very, very good films these days but it takes a certain magical mix to make a really great film.

1. The Help is a historical film about an important and embarassing time in our history as a nation. It is handles with decency, well placed humor and great emotion. The cast is excellent from top to bottom but the two women who shine are Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer. In an all but rookie director's hands, this famously popular novel is translated perfectly to the screen.

2. Bridesmaids is a radical departure from The Help but this too is a movie that rises above what it should have been and takes what we were expecting in a completely different (and hilarious) direction. Again, the casting is perfect with Kristen Wiig (also the co-writer), Rose Byrne, Maya Rudolph and especially Melissa McCarthy who steals every scene in the film. Maybe it should be lower on the list but I couldn't find another that succeeded as well as Bridesmaids. Those who didn't see it because it sounded like a chick flick missed the year's funniest movie.

3. Buck didn't have a huge theatrical run on thousands of screens in a nationwide release pattern but what it did have was a great story about a unique man and how he deals with life and helps others deal with theirs. A documentary about the original "horse whisperer", Buck Brannaman, a man who, to this day, travels the country putting on seminars for people who are struggling to learn to live with their horses. Sure he helps them to handle these majestic animals but in doing so he helps them heal other wounds that they might have. Not a lot of people saw this movie and that is a true shame. It is worth tracking down.

4. Crazy Stupid Love was a movie that many didn't see coming. Steve Carell plays a suburban father who is shocked when his wife (Julianne Moore) asks for a divorce one night after dinner. Alone and confused, he latches on to a guy at the local singles bar (Ryan Gosling, cast against type) who acts as his Jedi master in the way of seducing women.

Throw in Emma Stone and Marissa Tomei and you've got a fun, fun movie that always surpises and never disappoints. Bridesmaids was the funniest R-rated film I saw all year but Crazy, Stupid, Love wasn't far from it and carries a PG-13 rating.

5. The Debt is one of those classic spy thrillers but has the additional fun of telling two stories with the same people in different times of their lives. The movie opens with three former Israeli Mossad agents being honored once again for a past success on the eve of a book about them being released. The present-day versions of these heroes are played by Hellen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciaran Hinds. The movie then begins to flashback to the mission n 1965 for which they've become famous. In this version they are played by Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas and Sam Worthington.

The Debt is like an onion being peeled back, layer after layer as we slowly see what really happened back in 1965 and how it impacts the group in present day. Director by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love and Her Majesty Mrs Brown) seamlessly goes back and forth in time telling a great story and telling it very, very well. I'm not sure why this movie didn't get more notice in the theaters but maybe it will have a second life on video.

6. Moneyball shows us that Brad Pitt has more going for him than his good looks. This adaptation of the very popular book about the Oakland A's baseball team and general manager Billy Beane's new philosophy on building a winning franchise was easily one of the year's best.

Directed by Bennett Miller (Capote) and featuring a cast of great talent; Robin Wright, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Moneyball takes what is essentially a movie about the inner workings of a baseball team trying to compete in this age of "checkbook baseball" and delivers an entertaining and insightful look at an organization under attack from within. Never boring and oftentimes very funny (thanks to Jonah Hill) with a scathing portrait of manager Art Howe. You don't have to be a baseball fan to appreciate Moneyball.

7. Win Win came out early last summer and was not in town long. Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy who has directed only three films but all three are fantastic. The Station Agent in 2003, The Visitor in 2007 and Win Win this year. If you've not seen all three of these movie, make a point to get to them.

Win Win stars Paul Giamatti as a small town lawyer who also coaches wrestling at the local high school. When a client's teenage grandson enrolls in the school and ends up being a wrestling stud, all kinds of stuff happens. this is not a sports movie, it is a movie about family, integrity and doing the right thing. Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale and Jeffrey Tambor add great support.

8. Margin Call is one of those dark independant films, this one showcasing a particularly nasty period in our country's history, the Wall Street collapse during the financial crisis, and those responsible for it. This movie reminded me a lot of the classic Glengarry Glen Ross with it's dark subject matter and talented ensemble cast. Zacahary Quinto, Stanley Tucci, Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Simon Baker, Demi Moore and Jeremy Irons is not a bad cast!

This is a snapshot of a one day period on the very cusp of the collapse and we see some of the decisions that are made, and why. It is a sombering and infuriating look at the idiots in charge and the selfish calls that they make with no regards to anyone but themselves. Tough to watch but great filmmaking.

9. Ides of March is the fourth movie that George Clooney has directed and it is a scathingly honest look at modern politics and the people who dedicate their lives to the cause. It would be a perfect double bill with Margin Call in the "What is Wrong With Our Country" film festival.

Clooney also stars in the film as a Governor running for President. Ryan Gosling plays one of his top aides. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the campaign manager and Paul Giamatti plays the opposition's campaign manager who tries to recruit Gosling's character to his team. Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood also bring great characters to the movie.

Ides of March leans neither right of left but tries to keep it right down the middle and show that no one is perfect and many on both sides are corrupt. Easily on of the year's best.

10. Warrior and Real Steel seem to be two unlikely additions not only for this list but to actually both tie for slot number 10. They will seem this way only to those who have not seen them.

I've said all year that Warrior is the best movie that you didn't see this year. The story of two tough brothers (Brendan Conlon and Tom Hardy) and their abusive father (Nick Nolte) create a compelling threesome of pain and revenge. The MMA action is thankfully limited (until the finale) but it makes a nice backdrop to this story of pained souls looking for redemption.

Real Steel is a stupid movie about a dad (Hugh Jackman) who has abandoned his son (Dakota Goyo) but finds him back in his life when his mother passes away. Jackman plays a down on his luck former boxer who now travels the country managing fighting robots. When his son tags a long and they rescue an abandoned fighting robot literally from the junkheap, the movie comes alive and ends up being one of the most fun films of the year. It is not the action though that landed the movie on this list, like Warrior it is the heart and sould of the film that makes it succeed.

So there ya go...let the complaining begin.

Others that could have but didn't make the list....A Better Life, The Way, Descendants, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocal and the final Harry Potter film.

mcw

The Darkest Hour...better than expected!

2012-01-02T16:34:00.000-06:00

Kinda an odd time of year for a horror film but you gonna love the tagline "Survive the Holidays". The Darkest Hour is a very simple and surprisingly entertaining sci-fi thriller. It's more thriller than horror though the trailer wants you to think its a horror movie.

We follow a foursome (Emile Hirsch, Olivia Thirlby, Max Minghella and Rachel Taylor) through the streets of Moscow after some type of an alien invasion of Earth. What looked like innocent lights slowly descending from the sky suddenly turn deadly as they contact humans. After hiding in a bunker for days, this group wanders out into the abandoned streets now completely desolate and empty.

The planet has been all but emptied of life and the invaders are still mining the planet for resources as handfuls of resistance try to take back the cities (planet!)

I know this will shock you but I found the story sufficient and the action strong enough to hold my interest for the merciful 90 minute running time. Nothing bloated (TinTin!) or self impressive (War Horse) here, just a bare bones sci fi thriller/action film.

The cast is impressive with strong movies under their belts like Into the Wild, Milk, Juno, United 93, The Ides of March and The Social Network. The director, Chris Gorak, was a former art director for people like Steven Spielberg, Terry Gillium and David Fincher. Lots of talent in front of and behind the camera.

Is is a great movie, oh God no but it was a nice way to spend a holiday lunch hour. Still not certain on the holiday release though. This could've made some serious cash without all the holiday competition.

grade: C+

mcw

The Adventures of TinTin...the second Spielberg holiday stumble

2012-01-02T16:09:00.000-06:00

Not quite the way I planned to spend New Year's Eve but neck surgery and a dorky looking neck brace made a dark theater sound appealing. I wish I had seen a better movie.

The Adventures of TinTin brings us an animated look at a classic Belgian children's character brought to the big screen by none other than Peter Jackson (producer) and Steven Spielberg (producer/director). The animation is the motion capture look of films like The Polar Express and the film is done in 3D.

TinTin (Jamie Bell) is an investigative reporter who we see purchasing a model ship at a flea market only to be deluged with offers from strangers to purchase the model. Not surprisingly, the model is stolen from his apartment (How old is this kid and where are his parents?) setting off a world-wide chase to find the model and the reason why everyone wants it.

TinTin and a drunken boat captain (Andy Serkis) are in a race against a bad guy (Daniel Craig). That's essentially the set up for the whole film and then we get a seemingly endless string of Indiana Jones-like action scenes that manage to beat the audience into submission.

I'm not really sure who The Adventures of TinTin was made for? The animation would lead you to believe that it was designed for kids or at least families but the action (guns, violence and lots of alcohol) would not be appropriate for the younger kids. The film is not going to appeal to kids a whole lot older than 10 year olds, so it is kinda stuck in between with not much of an audience to appeal to.

The 3D is impressive but not worth sitting through this film which could have been 30 minutes shorter. Technically the film is flawless (as you would expect) but storywise a yawner.

grade: C+

mcw

My Week with Marilyn...a lot of fun

2012-01-02T14:07:00.000-06:00

My Week With Marilyn gives us a glimpse back in time to the making of the Marilyn Monroe/Laurence Olivier film The Prince and the Showgirl. We see this story from the eyes of a production assisitant named Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne). Monroe is played by a very well cast Michelle Williams and the role of Olivier is taken by the horns by Kenneth Branagh.

Clark has all but begged for a role in the film business and he is rewarded with a position with Laurence Olivier's production company. His first job is on this Monroe picture.

Monroe is seen in all of her frailty with some pretty serious substance abuse issues as well as depression and mental instability. Her recent split with husband Arthur Miller didn't help her state of mind. This was a major star, arguably the biggest star in the world, who was being overwhelmed by her own celebrity.

In steps this lowly production assistant who befriends Monroe and helps to steer her through the pitfalls associated with making this film.

My Week With Marilyn, based on Clark's memoirs, gives us a nice glimpse into old Hollywood and this fascinating actress. Olivier is also seen as a bit of an anal-retentive freak but he was not only starring in but also producing and directing the film. He had a lot of the line and more than a handful of hassles from Monroe.

Redmayne is up to the challenge in this role but it is Williams who shines as Monroe. I would not be surprised to see an Oscar nomination in her future.

grade:B

mcw

We Bought A Zoo...finally a triumphant Christmas release

2011-12-26T20:06:00.000-06:00

Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson and director Cameron Crowe seemed like an odd group to be involved with a PG-rated movie titled We Bought A Zoo. I was hesitant to whether or not I even needed to see this one. Boy am I glad that I did.

The film tells the true story of a journalist struggling with the recent death of his wife. He is also struggling with keeping the family stuff straight. His cute as a doll daughter (Maggie Elizabeth Jones)and her sullen 14 year old brother (Colin Ford) also miss their mom greatly.

Tired of the pity he feels at work, Benjamin Mee (Damon) quits his job on the same day that his son is expelled from school. Feeling the need for change he packs up the family and buys an acreage just outside of town that also happens to house a rundown small zoo. Not only does he inherit the animals but also the handful of employees who have busted their tails to keep the place barely operational. This might have been a bit more than he bargained for but Mee pushes forward.

Scarlett Johansson plays the zookeeper in this crazy new world. I'm guessing that most zookeepers are not this good looking and that most of them have uniforms that aren't quite as snug. Not that I'm complaining.

Like many of Crowe's films you get a great soundtrack of tunes and a cast of crazy characters. The cast of crazies might be a bit too much but it's a small complaint.

We Bought A Zoo is as cheesy and corny as it looks and at times it went overboard with the sweetness but it has a very strong heart and that heart is firmly in the right place. The last half hour of the film is very emotional and touching in just the right way.

This is a perfect movie for the whole family and the PG rating makes that happen. I was starting to wonder if all of the holiday films were going to disappoint me this year and then I stumble on this gem of a small movie. I was charmed and wonderfully entertained.

grade B+

mcw

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo...this was not a good idea.

2011-12-25T22:55:00.001-06:00

On Wednesaday April 28, 2010 I reviewed a Swedish film titled The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo. It was love at first sight as you can see from this blurb from the actual review.

"It is not typical of me to heap praise on a film in the manner that I am about to but I was really impressed with this new Danish film. When I say that it reminded me of great films like Silence of the Lambs and Chinatown, I realize the level of praise that that brings, especially when talking about a Danish film in Swedish with subtitles."

Later in the review I talk about the probability of American versions of this trilogy.

"They are in the early stages of adapting this trilogy for American audiences and I can't wait to see how badly they screw that up. One look at this film will convince you that an American version of the same story is nearly impossible. Perhaps with someone like David Fincher behind the camera? Perhaps."

So my lovely bride of nearly 25 years and I wander out on Christmas night to see what Mr Fincher has brought us for Christmas. A mixed bag for sure...

The film opens with some real freaky credits to set the tone and then jumps in full speed into the movie. Daniel Craig as the journalist, Rooney Mara as the "Girl" plus Christopher Plummer and Stellan Skarsgard all do their damndest to recreate that original film and they do a pretty good job but the original was so damned good!

It will be interesting to see if this dark and violent film connects with American audiences. The movie obviously tells the same story but it does it in a very antiseptic and sterile way. It also moves so fast that the whole mystery that has eluded people for 40 years seems to be solved in only a matter of a few weeks. I know it sounds weird but I also missed the weather. The original film was surounded by such cold that you really felt the chill. In the new film Craig runs around without a hat or coat most of the movie??

Director Fincher also changes a couple of things at the end which really doesn't change a whole lot but still didn't need to be changed.

I suppose I was bound to be disappointed but I hoped that Fincher could pull it off.

Buy or rent the original Swedish versions and see how well these three great books can be translated to the screen. You can also see my original review on this blog under April 2010.

A nice try but it lacked the depth I craved and loved in the first.

grade B (the original would have been graded a good, solid A)

mcw

War Horse...great trailer worked, movie didn't

2011-12-25T22:24:00.000-06:00

The opening box office for Steven Spielberg's War Horse will be HUGE. There wasn't a spare seat Christmas day at the Fleur and the Copper Creek was packed Christmas night. My group was disappointed.

I'll admit that I was a little nervous going in. I wasn't sure if Spielberg could resist the temptation to go all gooey and sappy on this one. He couldn't. Never really tried!

The film opens with the birth of the colt, soon to be known as Joey. As the colt grows up we see a drunken farmer way overbid to purchase the horse at an auction. This is not the horse he needs for the farm and his must way overspend to outbid his landlord. No one ever stops to tell us why he loves the horse so much and why he and his landlord are having this little pissing match.

The horse of course turns into a great work horse and the farmer's son raises him and trains him well. But Mother Nature steals the crop he needs to pay the nasty landlord and the farmer sells the horse to the British army as WWI is about to begin. His son is devastated.

The horse is left an orphan when the officer that rides him is killed in battle and he soon falls into the hands of the evil Germans. Then he ends up in the hands of a grandfather and his daughter, then back to the Germans who all but work the horse (and his friend horse!?!) to death.

In a pivotal scene, the horse breaks free, running right down the middle of the front line with both sides shooting and bombs exploding. Nothing can slow this amazing horse except for yards and yards of barbed wire and fence posts which finally drag him to the ground. It is a good thing that both sides can see him and that two opposing soldiers step out of the trenches to help free this wonderful beast.
The German even brings some much needed wire cutters. Only this fantastic horse can stop the fighting in the middle of a war.

At this point I nearly slipped into a diabetic coma as the syrupy mess rolled out in front of me. As the EMT's rolled me from the theater I noticed that the farmer's son was in one of the bunkers and though he was blinded by poison gas, he could whistle and call the horse to him from his hospital cot. He could then ride his home (of course his eyesight returned and the horse recovered from all the barbed wire cuts) and the sky turned a bright red and he trotted up the rocky path to once again reunite with mom and dad.

As the ambulance door closed I could see a bunch of 60 and 70 year old theater patrons shuffling to their cars and mumbling that "they just don't make 'em like that anymore". Code blue for me.

grade B-

mcw

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows...same old same old

2011-12-25T22:05:00.000-06:00

If you saw the first Sherlock Holmes film with Robert Downey Jr as Holmes and Jude Law as his pal Watson, you've pretty much seen the second film too. That's not to say that it is bad but it is nothing new and juts a whole lot of the same stuff we got before. The first film was 2 hours and 8 minutes, this one, pretty much the same running time. That's almost 4 and a half hours of the Downey/Law banter and director Guy Riche's manic filmmaking. I'm ready to wave the white flag.

Rachel McAdams appears briefly. The original girl with the dragon tatoo, Noomi Rapace is added poorly and the mastermind Professor James Moriarty (Mad Men's Jared Harris) is not nearly as nasty or brilliant as expected.

The movie is way too long and could have been trimmed by at least 30 minutes. It is too big and too complext for its own good. Didn't love it, didn't hate it.

grade B (and I'm being generous due to the holiday season)

mcw

Young Adult....the Juno team misfire

2011-12-25T21:58:00.000-06:00

Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody directed and wrote, respectively, the hit movie Juno in 2007. They try to capture lightening in a bottle twice by reteaming for the dark comedy Young Adult and let me tell you, it didn't work.

Charlize Theron stars as a depressed ghost writer of a Young Adult fiction series. She lives an empty life in Minneapolis with her yippy little dog, one night stands and obsessing about her old high school boyfriend (Patrick Wilson). When she receives an announcement from her old boyfriend and his wife that they've had a new baby, she goes over the edge and travels back to Mercury, Minnesota to try to win him back.

Intriguing setup for a dark comedy but let me tell you that the whole tone of this movie changes rapidly, and not for the better. Everything seems to be off just a little and that little makes a big difference in a movie like this. It's like a song sung out of tune.

The tone is weird and then moves to creepy and sick.

We never undersstand her affection for this milque toast old boyfriend and he is about as appealing as a wet dishrag. I will admit that this is a very, very brave performance by Theron and the supporting performance by Patton Oswalt is outstanding, but the movie never gets traction in any direction.

Theron's character is miserable and you end up feeling nothing but pity for her as alcohol and mental issues take her to a disturbing level. One that I was not wanting or, quite frankly, ready for.

Young Adult was not a happy 90 minutes in the theater. Dark, way too dark!

grade C-

mcw

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocal...a great treat!

2011-12-19T22:27:00.000-06:00

To my knowledge I've never seen a full theatrical film in the IMAX format. When I say that I mean a full film shot in IMAX and shown in IMAX. I've seen Harry Potter and Superman films converted to IMAX and I did see the pieces of the last Batman film that were shot in IMAX but never a full film.
That was my loss.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocal at the IMAX theater in the Science Center of Des Moines was one fine movie-going experience. I would stop just short of calling it a near perfect moviegoing experience. The movie is surprisingly great but the experience of watching it on that huge screen, with that fabulous sound system, was absolutely outstanding.

And to see the first real breathtaking glimpse of the next Batman film prior to the movie was just like a cherry on top!

Ghost Protocal opens in Budapest with a mission gone awry and an agent is murdered during what was supposed to be a routine intercept of materials. We quickly are whisked to Russia where we see the MI team breaking Ethan Hunt from a prison.

When we get the backstory on the Budapest scene we find out that the intercept was nuclear launch codes. After a thrilling breakin at the Kremlin, the MI team finds that the codes have now been matched up with a device and the whole world is threatened with nuclear disaster. And when the Kremlin job goes bad, the team is cut loose by their American government and left to get themselves, and the rest of the world, out of harm's way.

I will give Tom Cruise credit for keeping this series fresh and alive with action, strong directors and a talented supporting cast. The additions of Paula Patton (a bad mama jama) and Jeremy Renner to the MI team couldn't be more perfect. Even Cruise who has been the anchor on a couple of these films, is much more relaxed and tolerable this time out.

Director Brad Bird who brought us the fun animated films The Incredibles and Ratatouille, takes the helm here for his first live action movie and it is a stunner. The whole key to a movie likes this is to make the preposterous posterous and Bird passes the test with flying colors.

One last piece is the humor. Simon Pegg plays the fourth member of the MI team and he has some great moments of comic relief. The humor helps as much to lessen the tension as it does to increase the fun.

I will tell you that this was one of the best theatrical experiences I've ever had and I'm tempted to put the stupid movie on my best of the year list because of it.

Do not see this movie in a regular theater. Treat yourself to an experience and see it on an IMAX screen! You will not regret it.

grade A

mcw

The Sitter...this year's lump of coal

2011-12-19T22:01:00.000-06:00

I thought that I had been pretty good this year. I honestly tried hard. So why did the Christmas season bring me a huge lump of coal titled The Sitter? Everyone else must've been good this year because there were only 8 of us in the whole theater.

Bad Santa proved years ago that raunchy can be very funny and effective during the holiday season. The Sitter proves that it is not an easy thing to pull off. The movie is like a sick and disgusting version of the classic Adventures in Babysitting.

The Sitter stars a a fat Jonah Hill (versus the new skinny version we've seen lately) as a deadbeat man, living with his divorced mother. She has an opportunity to meet someone new in her life but at the last minute a sitter for her friends cancels, threatening to scratch the whole night. Hill's character reluctantly offers to babysit her friends' kids for the evening.

Oh, I alsomt forgot to tell you that the movie opens with one of the most disgusting and sick scenes I've ever had to witness. I wish I could share how sick it is with you but I will spare you. I wish I had come to the movie about ten minutes late and spared myself.

So back to this crappy film. The three kids are hell on wheels, worst kids ever-type stuff. As if that's not bad enough, Hill's character's girlfriend calls him early in the night and offers to do it with him if he comes to this party and brings her some cocaine. Of course how could he pass that up?

The rest of the movie is a complete mess as these kids and Hill's character go from bad to worse in what turns out to be a raunchy, boring and unfunny film. the kind of movie that you want to take a shower after.

Admittedly there are a few funny lines and there is the kernel of a nice relationship in the film but if keeps getting sidetracked by the stupidity of the plot.

I will be way to kind to this movie and give it a grade of C-.

mcw

Hugo...Martin Scorsese and 3D filmaking!

2011-11-27T21:31:00.000-06:00

Certainly any new Scorsese film is a reason to get excited but to see the great director take on a 3D project was intriguing to say the least. You can tell from the opening minutes that the 3D is special, even the Paramount logo with the stars over the mountain range were really impressive in 3D.

Hugo tells the tale of a young orphan (Asa Butterfield) living in the Paris train station in the 1930's. He lives in the long forgotten rooms behind the huge clocks. His father was a clockmaker who also worked at a museum. A fire in the museum one night killed his father. His custody falls to a drunken, angry uncle who kept the clocks in fine shape at the station. After his uncle disappears, Hugo keeps the clocks working so no one suspects anything.

He is constantly stealing things to stay alive and to further a project that he and his father had been working on. F. Murray Abraham plays a toy store owner who catches him stealing and puts him to work in his shop. Abraham's character has a goddaughter, played by Chloe Moretz (Kick Ass and Let Me In) who befriends Hugo and helps him with his secret projects.

Hugo is a pet project for Scorsese's 12 year old daughter but it is also an homage to old time cinema and the early roots of this great art form. What that is doing in, what's for all intents and purposes, a children's film is a bit of a mystery.

From a technical standpoint, Hugo is a tremendous success. The filmaking is exactly what you would expect from Scorsese and the 3D as I said before is outstanding. My issue comes with the storytelling piece of the movie. The characters don't seem to fit well and the chemistry between actors and actresses didn't seem to work well either. This should have been an emotional and magical film but it felt too technical and structured. I never lost sight of the fact that I was sitting in a movie theater,

That's a shame because this could have been a wonderful holiday tradition. Still a nice effort and some dazzling special effects. Not quite enough for me though.

grade B

mcw

Arthur Christmas...Holiday Fun and Charm

2011-11-27T18:21:00.000-06:00

The Thanksgiving holiday each year brings with it a cornucopia of family movies along with the unofficial kickoff of Oscar season. This year the family movies include The Muppets, Hugo and a fun little animated movie titled Arthur Christmas.

Perhaps I should have been paying closer attention but I need to warn you that you will have to sit through a Justin Bieber music video of his weak new version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

The movie opens with a little girl in England writing and mailing a letter to Santa. We see that letter hit the North Pole where Santa's son Arthur answers all of the letters.

We fast forward to Christmas eve where we see exactly how Santa delivers all of the gifts around in the world in such a quick fashion. He is commanding a huge spaceship with a cloaking device that prevents them from being seen. The presents are delivered in a precise military manner by hoards of elves who descend from the ship and in a matter of minutes, canvas the whole town, delivering just the exact gifts to the homes where they should go. It is a really creative look at how this operation might need to be pulled off. the fat jolly guy is brought in at the end to place a gift under a tree to signify that this mission is completed. Santa, in this case, is in his 70th year of delviering gifts and it is expected to be his last, with his oldest son Steve taking his place. Grandsanta, his father is also still hanging around the North Pole.

When all is said and done, and Santa has returned form anotehr successful Christmas mission, it is discovered that one present has been missed and that little girl in England has been missed. Everyone is content to live with the statistical perfection but Arthur and Grandsanta won't stand for one child to be left out.

They fire up the old sleigh and reindeer and go old school on the delivery.

Arthur Christmas is a charming, exciting and fun holiday treat for the family. The voice talent of Jim Broadbent (Santa), James McAvoy (Arthur), Bill Nighy (Grandsanta) and Hugh Laurie (Steve) is all exceptional and the 3D animation is outstanding.

The writing is crisp and funny and the imagination behind this film is a marvel to see unfold. I think that this is a great time no matter how old you are.

grade B+

mcw

Like Crazy...an art house look at a love story

2011-11-27T17:46:00.000-06:00

The indie buzz was hot an heavy over Like Crazy, calling it an honest romance and a realistic look at love in today's world.

I'm not sure that I'm completely on board with those feelings.

We meet the couple in a college class in Los Angeles. They meet cute as Anna, a British student on a visa, leaves a note on Jacob's windshield. A charming little relationship begins and we watch as they get to know each other and fall in love. She needs to go home for the summer due to here visa status but she cannot bear to be without him and decides to stay longer.

When she does return to England for a wedding she finds that due to the violation of her visa, she cannot return to the U.S. He crosses "the pond" to visit her and even after they decide to marry, she cannot get back into the states. This causes stress on their relationship and he eventually comes back to the U.S. without her.

He finds another woman, she finds another man and suddenly the visa situation is cleared up. Back together, they try to rekindle the romance that they once shared so strongly.

Like Crazy is a lightweight and slow paced look at a relationship between this young couple. There wasn't a ton of chemistry between the two of them and they seemed more like spoiled kids than the adults that they were trying to be. I didn't hate the movie but I didn't love it either. Maybe I was not the target audience?

grade C+

mcw

The Descendants...Clooney and Payne, a match made in heaven?

2011-11-27T17:22:00.000-06:00

Alexander Payne has only directed a handful of films but they have all been special. Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt and Sideways would make a pretty darned good filmography. And now he adds The Desendants starring George Clooney as a husband dealing with a comatose wife (boating accident) and the father of two rebellious girls also struggling with mom's condition.

We very, very briefly see mom at the beginning of the film but for the most part the movie opens with Clooney sitting in the hospital room with his wife. His 10-year old daughter Scottie (Amara Miller) has been acting up at school and his college-aged daughter, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) has issues with both alcohol and her mother. Clooney as a self-described backup parent is way out of his league.

When he informs Alexandra that his wife is terminal and they will need to pull the plug in afew days, she shares why she and her mom were fighting. Mom, it seems, was having an affair.

As if that isn't even to juggle, Clooney's character and his extended family hold, in a trust, the deed to 25,000 pristine acres of Hawaiian property worth millions. The trust is set to expire in seven years and they believe the time is right to sell. Everyone in Hawaii has an opinion on whether or not they should sell.

The movie is essentially Clooney with his two daughters (and Alex's idiot boyfriend, Sid) coming to grips with mom's imminent death and trying to find the ex-lover so that he can be notified of the accident too.

The Descendants is a classic Alexander Payne film, real-life flawed characters struggling with everyday issues and just trying to keep from spinning out of control. Payne is a brilliant storyteller and a very good filmaker. He presents us with strong characters, multi-layered stories and great emotion. the movie begins slowly but then just simmers as the slow burn starts to pick up speed.

Clooney is tremendous in a non-Clooney role but the real star of the film is the young actress playing Alexandra. Woodley stars in a TV series "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" and she really shines in this, her breakthrough theatrical film. I wouldn't be surprised if she and Clooney both nabbed nominations for this.

The Descendants does a nice job of kicking of the important Oscar season!

grade A

mcw

The Muppets...great fun for all ages

2011-11-25T21:51:00.000-06:00

Admittedly I've have a rough couple of weeks with the Immortals and that horrible Twilight film so I decided to treat myself to an afternoon matinee the day before Thanksgiving with my old friends The Muppets. Who needs chicken soup for the soul when you've got Kermit and the gang back on the big screen for the first time in over 10 years?

First we are treated (courtesy of the Disney marketing department) to a new Toy Story short film which was kinda cute. There is a great bit where Buzz Lightyear is sitting in on a support group meeting for abandoned fast food toys. There is some really funny stuff there that any parent will immediately identify with.

Jason Segel of Bad Teacher, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Knocked Up fame seems an odd choice to resurrect the Muppet franchise but I understand that he is a longtime fan and he pushed hard for this movie to happen. Thanks Jason!

What he helps deliver is a wonderful reunion with some great old friends, some really cheesy and stupid songs and a plot that couldn't be more contrived or more fun if it tried. Much like real life, the film finds the Muppets no longer relevant and all but forgotten. Segal, his girlfriend (Amy Adams) and his little brother Gary (who looks very muppet-like to me) travel to LA on vacation together. Gary, who is a huge Muppet fan, insists that they visit the Muppet's studios which are rundown and abandoned. While there he overhears the plotting of an evil oil baron (Chris Cooper) who plans to buy the studio, raze it and drill for oil beneath it.

The mission is afoot now. They must find Kermit and help him gather the rest of the group in an effort to save the studio. Kermit is living a solitary life but he is persuaded to try to pull the old team together. Before you can say Jim Hensen three times, the group is put together and they've decided to put on a show to help raise the money. Somewhere Judy Garland smiles.

Of course you know what happens and how it all works out. It's the Muppets for Pete's sake. What I will tell you though is that you get lots of corny (really corny) jokes that still make you laugh, you get some silly songs and you get to spend some time with some good old friends.

As you might be able to tell I'm a huge Muppet fan and not a Christmas goes by without the mandatory viewing of The Muppet Christmas Carole. We spent way too much time in Iowa City sitting in a dorm watching The Muppets back in the day.

The Muppets is just what the doctor ordered. Great fun, great old friends, laugh out loud silly jokes and some fun celebrity cameos. this is great fun for all ages and I plan to sneak back out this long holiday weekend to see it again!

grade B+

mcw

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1....enough is enough

2011-11-25T21:31:00.000-06:00

Hot on the heels of the horrendous Immortals, we get the latest, and almost final, piece of the Twilight puzzle, prepousterously titled, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One.

Whereas the first three (?) films bored me to death, this one actually offended me.

Was it the idiot dad who brought his two year old daughter who ran up and down the aisle, the moms who brought pre-teen daughters or the teens texting each other during the film? Nope, they were annoying, the movie was offensive.

It seems that Bella and Enward are getting married (which has really upset a certain werewolf) so the whole first part of the film is some kind of Bride Beautiful layout, the wedding is stupid and then the newlyweds jet off to a tropical isle. There we see little more than sex and violent sex, to the point where the bedroom needs to be gutted since the rough sex has trashed the place. Have I mentioned that Bella is also covered with bruises.

Then Bella gets pregnant with the devil spawn who seems to have a very accelerated gestation cycle cuz she goes from sex to the delivery room in only a few weeks. The delivery itself takes longer than the pregnancy and it too is unbelievably violent and bloody. Of course Bella dies giving birth to the little bloodsucker...riiiiggghht. So everyone in the world knows that she doesn't die but yet we see her dead on the table covered in blood for what seems like an eternity. Vampires must not get brain damage from being dead for 30 minutes.

Did I mention that during this whole mess, the werewolves are fighting amongst themselves about who gets to kill these vampires and the new little sucker?

This is such a bad movie. This is such an inappropriate movie for anyone under the age of 15. I am a lesser person for having to sit through this.

The scariest thing about the whole movie is the Part One designation telling me I've got to sit through one more crappy Twilight movie. Arrgghh!

grade D

mcw

D

The Immortals...all sizzle no steak!

2011-11-25T21:09:00.000-06:00

Director Tarsem Singh delivers a visually stunning but mind-numbing look at a Greek mythology that tells the story of a mortal named Theseus (soon to be new Superman, Henry Cavill, chosen by the gods to fight against King Hyperion (a completely unbeleivable Mickey Rourke) as he wreaks havoc looking for some magical bow.

I'm not even sure if I can do a good job explaining what the heck happens in this movie. the gods are watching earth, there is a bad guy trying to find a magical bow which will give him great power. There are a bunch of guys trapped like sardines in a huge box where they've been for years!?

Frida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) plays the Oracle. Whatever that means. John Hurt plays Old Man???

As far as I could tell this was one mindless, bloody, slow-motion packed offensively violent film that should never have been made. The cast and crew stand little chance since the movie's only point was dazzling visuals. I can only imagine what even a tiny bit of story might have added to the experience. I will never know because there is no story as far as I could tell.

And during all this action, the gods will drop from the heavens every once in a while in golden outfits to help kick some butt.

Why did I have to see this film?

grade C-

mcw

C-

J Edgar...he had to be more interesting than this

2011-11-25T20:54:00.000-06:00

I'll have to admit that the pairing of director Clint Eastwood and Leonardo DiCaprio as the legendary lawman and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had me thinking Oscar gold. I left the theater scratching my head trying to figure out where this one went wrong.

The movie opens in the 1919 with Hoover working in the Attorney General's office during a time of great strife in our country. There were communist scares, Emma Goldman and radical bombings to deal with. Yet Eastwood focuses on Hoover's fastidious dressing and his strangely over to the top dedication to his mom (Judi Densch)

Because of his strong work, Hoover is put in charge of what will become the FBI. He has high, high standards and expectations for his team. He and his longtime secretary Helen Gandy (an unrecognizable Naomi Watts) build a team of men ready to take on the nation's challenges. One of the newest team members, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), is a favorite of Hoover's and becomes a life long friend. Or was he more than that? The film lingers on their relationship way too long. There have been rumors for years about Hoovers sexual prefernces and his alleged kinky lifestyle but to my knoweldge nothing has ever been documented by Eastwood and his team have taken it upon themselves to wade into those waters. As far as I'm concerned, to the detriment of the film.

The film moves from communism to the gangsters of the 1930's and huge cases like the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.

We see Hoover set up the card catolog for the National Library and develop fingerprints as a techinque to identify criminals. He was a fascinating innovator and the movie doesn't do that side of him justice.

The other area that I believe the film falters in is the slow descent into paranoia and his building an intelligence database to use to blackmail those he needed.

This is a fascinating man, who lived in a fascinating time and had access to some tremendously powerful historical events, he worked for eight presidents. The movie and its director could/should have done a better job with this subject!

grade B-

mcw

B-

Tower Heist...need more Murphy

2011-11-25T20:10:00.000-06:00

I'm pleased to report that Eddie Murphy, the funny, edgy and raunchy Eddie Murphy, is back and in fine form in Tower Heist. I'm saddened to tell you that his screen time is not nearly what it should have been.

Tower Heist tells the story of a Bernie Madoff-type character, played very evilly by Alan Alda, who includes the staff of his high rise NYC residence in the people he has swindled money from. His securities fraud has wiped out pensions and retirement accounts that these folks couldn't afford to lose.

After a beloved doorman attempts suicide, the manager of the high-rise (Ben Stiller) puts together a group of people to try to find the secret stash that they believe Alda's character has hidden in his condo. essentially what we have here is the Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight with Stiller, Casey Affleck, Matthew Broderick and Michael Pena being led by a career criminal (Murphy) in how to steal this money.

What could have been a comedic twist on the Oceans Eleven franchise moves from silliness to preposterous in a matter of minutes. There is some fun in the film and Murphy truly has moments that recall his brilliance but the movie should've been so much better and some much funnier.

It is also tough to understand why it was so obvious in one of the opening scenes exactly what their target needed to be. So much for that secret.

grade C+

mcw

C+

A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas...everyone's offended

2011-11-25T19:58:00.000-06:00

It is hard to have high expectations for a film titled A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas and that is probably a good thing.

We last saw our friend Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) back in 2008 as they escaped Guantanamo Bay. In the meantime Penn committed suicide on Fox's House and then worked for the Obama administration for a couple of years.

When we catch up with Harold and Kumar, they've gone different directions. Harold is a married, successful businessman but Kumar is still a slacker and a stoner. They don't see each other anymore until fate throws them together once again.

The story centers around a Christmas tree and Harold trying to please his father-in-law. When that tree accidently bursts into flames, the quest for a replacement tree sets the whole thing into action.

At this point it seems as if the filmakers had a list of people to offend and they pretty much left no one off of that list. One of the high points (no pun intended) or perhaps it was the low point was a brief trip to heaven where they chat up Jesus who has a naked woman on each arm. In Harold and Kumar's world this is heaven.

Then there is a strange little holiday gift called a WaffleBot, a recreation of A Christmas Story's tongue stuck to the cold pole without using tongues, a baby girl high on drugs, Neil Patrick Harris claiming his homosexual announcement was just to help him pick up chicks and finally a pretty bruised and battered Old Saint Nick.

The 3D is used to great effect for some very funny sight gags!

In the end, Harold and Kumar push their luck too far and end up going past funny to offensive but at least they offended everyone. This is a stupid movie that knows it is stupid and just continues to revel in that stupidity. A little too much this time for me.

grade C-

mcw

C-

Anonymous...I wouldn't put my name on it either

2011-11-25T19:30:00.000-06:00

There have been stories for years that it is possible that William Shakespeare had little or nothing to do with the famous works that he is credited with. The new movie Anonymous takes that very intriguing premise and delivers one of the year's dullest films.

According to this film, the Earl of Oxford actually penned these famous works but since the arts and writing were considered sinful, he passed the works on to a playwright named Ben Johnson who then had them stolen by a third rate actor named Will Shakespeare.

then we need to throw in a whole bunch of confusing political infighting and backbiting with the Essex Rebellion and the successionof Queen Elizabeth I. Most of this makes little sense since the film jumps backward and forward in time so often (and so poorly) that you have a very difficult time keeping up. The good news is that since the characters are so poorly written, you don't really need to bother since you don't care about them.

Directed by Roland Emmerich, best known for some action advernture films like Independence Day, tries to deliver a film that looks and feels important but couldn't be less important. I found it to be a self-important, convoluted mess and I honestly considered walking out.

grade D

mcw

D

The Way....Sheen shines

2011-11-25T19:21:00.000-06:00

Emilio Estevez helps write and directs his father, Martin Sheen, in an excellent film about a father searching to fill an emptiness in his life. Sheen plays an optomitrist who is informed that his adult son (played by Estevez in flashbacks) has passed away overseas in France.

A grieving Sheen hops the next plane to France to take possession of the body. He finds that his son has died accidently on a religious pilgrimage, the El camino de Santiago", from France to Spain.

Sheen decides to have his son cremated and he will carry those cremains with him as he finishes his son's pilgrimage.

It is an arduous trek but he meets many strangers and new friends along the way. They all, for the most part, have personal and private reasons for their treks.

The Way is a wonderful movie, full of life, full of love and full of spirituality. What I loved about the film was that it let the spirituality fill you without beating you over the head with it. Some of these type of film are so heavy handed but this one has a very deft touch and it was just that touch and a fine performance by Sheen that sold me on the film.

grade B+

mcw

B+

Puss in Boots...Banderas rocks

2011-11-25T19:10:00.000-06:00

I'm not a huge fan of the Shrek films so I do into a movie called Puss in Boots with a little bit of trepidation since the character was based on one from a Shrek film.

Antonio Baderas again voices Puss, a fugitive cat trying to clear his name. He has a paramour, another cat, Kitty Softpaws, voiced by a smoky Salma Hayek. Zach Galifianakis voices Humpty Dumpty. A murderous couple, Jack and Jill, have the magic beans. There is a beanstalk and a golden goose.

This is very much a fractured fairy tale but it is a great fairy tale, an advenure for the whole family. The characters are very funny, the writing crisp and the voice work top notch.

This, in my opinion, is so much better than those lame Shrek movies!

grade B

mcw

B

Margin Call....bleak but tremendous

2011-11-21T20:38:00.000-06:00

I'll assume that most people are like me and truly don't completely understand the financial collapse that we are just now crawling out of. Margin Call might shed a little more light on the idiotic things that happened to cause and because of that crisis.

The film opens in the morning at an investment house where we see massive layoffs followed by the revelation that the company has losses greater than its value. How it comes by this information and what is done with that information is the basis for a great film about a bunch of stupid people and a few sleazy ones who will do anything to anyone to help themselves and the company.

Who better to portray that evil but Jeremy Irons? The rest of the cast, Paul Bettany, Kevin Spacy, Zachary Quinto, Stanley Tucci and Demi Moore are also outstanding. The movie is dark and bleak as we watch the crisis unfold and the moves that that prompts. It kind of reminded me of 1992's Glengarry Glen Ross in its dark subject matter, fine acting and rough dialogue.

This is one of the year's best, bleak but important.

grade B+

mcw
B+

In Time...Timberlake running

2011-11-21T20:28:00.000-06:00

Justin Timberlake takes on an action role in the new film In Time. The setup is kinda intriguing, in the future, everyone lives until they turn 25 years old and then they must live on the time that they have earned for the rest of their lives. In this future, money doesn't exist anymore, time is money. And to keep track of it, there are these fancy little clock-like things embedded in your arm to keep track. Need to get a cup of coffee, that'll be 5 minutes of time. Need a new car, that could be 500 minutes of time. See where we're going here?

Unfortunately, just like in our society, the rich control all the time and Justin lives on the wrong side of those tracks! It is referred to as Darwinian Capitalism. The good news is that everyone for the most part still looks 25 years old which could get a tad confusing when mom, grandma and daughter all look like sorority sisters. Can you say confusing?

Timberlake gets involved in a bar fight and ends up saving the life of a total stranger who has lived for 105 years and he has just had enough. While Timberlake sleeps, the guys slips him all of his time and then commits suicide. This causes great concern on behalf of the bad guys who would like to steal that time and the cops who are trying to figure out how Timberlake ended up with all of this time.

Using his time to travel, Timberlake escapes into the wealthy zone and ends up at a party where he is chased out by the cops. On his way out he steals the home owner's daughter (wife, sister, grandma?), played with little to no emotion by Amanda Seyfried, as his hostage.

At that point the movie becomes a ripoff of Bonnie and Clyde with thinly veiled statements about our modern society. Maybe it would have been better to just have a fun action, sci-fi movie instead of trying to make a statement?

It has great promise but in the end lost it's energy and focus.

grade B-

mcw

B-

The Three Musketeers...did we need another version?

2011-10-23T21:07:00.000-06:00

IMdB lists 12 versions of the Alexandre Dumas classic tale from 1921 to this version! Is the story that good? I don't think so! I've never read the original book but I've seen my share of these movies and I'm just not into the swashbuckling adventure yarns.

The movie sets up the historical significance of the story with a weak King and Queen of England being attacked from all sides both outside the country and inside their castle. The movie opens with the three musketeers, Athos, Portos and Aramis teaming up with Milady to steal plans for a flying blimp-like war machine, designed by none other than Leonardo DaVinci.

One year later we are introduced to D'Artagnan, a young man who dreams of becoming a musketeer. He does end up joining the musketeers as he and the other three take on about 400 (intentional exaggeration!) of evil Cardinal Richelieu's army. Richelieu is played by the go-to bad guy for movies, Christoph Waltz!

Let's cut to the chase, the film is weak. Was it only made to showcase the new 3D technology? The 3D is a little better than average but not enough to make up for the weak acting and storytelling!

The other question I has was who was this movie made for? The story has elements of silly humor and the action is tedious at times. The characters are joking about half of the time and killing people the other half. An important question, Who are we making this movie for?, needed to be asked.

I know that it was not made for me!

grade C-

mcw

Higher Ground ... a welcome surprise!

2011-10-23T20:50:00.000-06:00

You've got to love The Fleur Theater! I showed up late on Friday night for the 7:10pm screening of Higher Ground a new movie directed by and starring Vera Farmiga (Up In the Air and The Departed). I'm guessing I missed the first few minutes of the film but I might have missed something before that. As the film credits rolled at the end of the movie everyone pretty much stayed in their seats and all of a sudden here comes a woman with a microphone to answer questions!? Turns out that the script was written by and based on a book by a Central Iowa woman, Carolyn Briggs. Here was Carolyn answering questions that people in the audience had about the film.

I don't know about you but I've only had this happen twice in my life and both times were at The Fleur. What a great tradition that theater has brought to Des Moines for the last 10 years! A supportive and involved local owner, strong management and superb choice of a variety of movies has made The Fleur the go-to theater most weekends.

Okay so what about Higher Ground? An interesting movie, especially after hearing comments from the woman whose life was a basis for much of the movie.

Farmiga's character grew up with a strong feeling for religion but also a streak of questioning and intelligence. A teenage pregnancy sends her to the altar sooner than she would have expected as she weds her high school sweetheart Ethan, the guitarist in a local band. Life is not easy for this couple and a bus trip to a band's gig turns tragic as the bus swerves off the road and into a lake. Everyone gets out okay including the baby who was sleeping in an empty cooler.

This brush with death moves them to a greater appreciation of God's power in their lives and they end up joining a group of evangelical Christians. Life is okay for a long time even though these people live by a strict code and have a very strange view of sexuality.

When a good friend struggles with a serious health crisis, Farmiga really begins to question the faith and the community that she lives in. This is presented very matter of factly without any kind of judgement.

Farmiga is a very talented actress and she shows again here why she has been so successful in Hollywood. She can portray such emotions with just a simple change of her facial expression. It is also interesting to note that the teenage version of the character was played by her younger sister Taissa Farmiga!

As a director, Vera has a strong eye and gets great performances out of a talented cast. As a storyteller, she has room to grow. The pace was a little slow and there were elements that seemed unnecessary. All in all a very strong first directorial effort and an interesting movie. Far from perfect but good none-the-less.

grade B-

mcw

Footloose...a pale imitation of the original

2011-10-16T15:17:00.002-06:00

I will be the first to tell you that there was no reason to remake the original Footloose but I also understand the economics of introducing a new generation to this film. 1984 was a long time ago in the media world that we live in.

If you are expecting me to trash the new version, you'll be disappointed. This is, for all intents and purposes, a carbon copy of the original film with just enough tweaks and twists to give credit to another screenwriter. Most of the songs are new but a handful of the originals remain in a little different versions.

The story is sappy, the acting pretty mediocre but the characters are fun and the dancing and toe-tapping tunes worth the price of admission. That review could suffice for either versions quite frankly. Is Kenny Wormald as good as Kevin Bacon? Julianne Hough the next Lori Singer? Dennis Quaid better than John Lithgow? Miles Teller as much fun as Chris Penn? Nope, no, never and not a chance.

But...the story is so much fun and knowing what is coming next didn't really bother me too much. What did bother me is that none of these high school kids looked even close to being able to pull off a college, let alone high school role.

And, as with our times, the girls dress more risque and act sluttier than in 1984. What we have are a bunch of hot and horney high schoolers looking to cut a rug rather than doing the horizontal bop!

Many of the classic elements from the original are back including the VW bug, the bar fight and the nasty bad guy.

This one seems to me to be a pale imitation of the original but a plae imitation of great fun is still enough for me to recommend. We also still get the toe-tapping finale.

Sue and I will take our Footloose and now my boys can have their own.

Grade B+

mcw

The Big Year...not a big film

2011-10-16T14:59:00.001-06:00

You would think that the pairing of Owen Wilson, Steve Martin and Jack Black would produce some really funny moments. That's not what you get in The Big Year. What you get are more thoughtful and touching moments than funny ones.

The Big Year, according to the film, is a bird watcher (now known as "birders") term for the birder who sees the greatest number of different birds in a calendar year. Wilson plays the defending champion, Martin and Black are this year's challengers. The film is a look at these men and a handful of others circling the planet looking for birds. Insert yawn here.

Director David Frankel also gave us two very popular films, the crisp, biting satire of The Devil Wears Prada and the soapy, sappy gush of Marley and Me. This is much more Marley than The Devil.

We get a glimpse into the lives of each of these characters and everytime we do, the film slows down greatly.

There's not much to The Big Year, it ends up being a fairly lightweight movie. Hard to get really pumped to watch birders race around the planet to track down a pink footed goose. This seemed to me to be more of a Hallmark Channel type of movie that a major motion picture. The opening weekend 3.3 million dollar box office doen't bode well for its prospects either.

Nothing offensive at all but nothing compelling either.

grade C+

mcw

Real Steel....the surprise of the early fall

2011-10-16T14:40:00.001-06:00

Who would have thought that a deft combination of the Rocky films with a bit of The Champ and a heavy dose of Rock Em Sock Em Robots would deliver the punch (pun intended!) that it does? Certainly not me.

Hugh Jackman plays a sleazy man, a former boxer now traveling the country working small town carnivals with a fighting robot. When his ex-wife dies, he inherits the son he abandoned years earlier. He literally sells the child back to his former sister-in-law's husband but he has to watch the kid for the summer as they are travelling out of the country.

He tries to dump it off at his old trainer's gym with that trainer's daughter (played by Lost's Evangeline Lily) but the kid will have nothing to do with that and insists on traveling with his dad. After trashing an expensive robot and losing a bunch of money in the process, they head to a junkyard where they discover an abandoned "sparring bot".

They clean up this bot and find that it has abilities that might allow them to win a fight or two and make a few bucks. This leads to an improbable run and a title fight which is right out of the first Rocky film.

Director Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) does a fabulous job of creating a completely beleivable world that we have never seen before. None of that fakey-looking Transformers crap. I never doubted for a minute that what I was watching was not real. That alone is a huge compliment!

The son Dakota Goyo is very good and at times a dead ringer for little Ricky Schroder from The Champ.

Real Steel has every cliche that you expect in a movie like this; the beautiful supportive female, the strong training sequence, the bad guys and the from rags-to-riches story of an underdog. In spite of the cliche cluster, the film works and works well. The special effects are truly special and the excitement, drama and heart are exactly what you would want!

Jackman does a tremendous job of holding this film and its believablity together. In less talented hands this might have been a mess.

I was completely caught off guard by Real Steel and pleasantly so...

Grade B+

mcw

Ides of March...our political reality

2011-10-16T14:20:00.000-06:00

Director and co-star George Clooney has assembled a spectacular cast in The Ides of March to tell the story of political corruption and the compromises a politican needs to make to be successful.

Ryan Gosling plays a press agent thrust into the throws of a conspiracy to take down the leading Presidential candidate (Clooney) around the Ohio democratic primary. He and the campaign manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) hope to parlay a victory in Ohio into the nomination. Paul Giamatti as their rival's campaign manager is intent on stopping them and changing the momentum of the race. At any cost!

When Giamatti's character reaches out to Gosling's, issues take place that throw the whole affair into tornado of nastiness. Evan Rachel Wood as a flirty campaign volunteer also plays a key role in this tornado. Marisa Tomei continues to turn in strong performances in small roles. As a reporter who will do what it takes to get a story she shows the negative side of modern journalism too.

The Ides of March shows us the nasty underbelly of politics and those who work in it. The dirty tricks, the unethical strategies and the compromises are all portrayed without any regard to party. Clooney does a very nice job of directing and telling an entertaining though never pleasant story.

The message at the core of the film is very strong and in my opinion, necessary.

Great actors and a timely, well told story. What more can you ask for?

grade B+

mcw

50/50....a pretty good bet

2011-10-16T13:42:00.000-06:00

Joseph Gordon Levitt is a talented young actor and he tackles a tough role in 50/50 and does it justice. It is the story of a man who at 27 is diagnosed with cancer and we see the pain and struggles that that brings to his life. He has a 50/50 chance of living! Based on the real life story of the film's writer Will Reiser, 50/50 also stars Seth Rogen, a real life friend of Reiser's who actually helped him through his cancer in real life.

Rogen and Gordon Levitt play Public Radio employees drifting through life trying to make a difference in the world. When the diagnosis is delivered by a horribly insensitive doctor, Gordon Levitt's girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) can't deal with it and dumps him but he finds a sympathetic shoulder with a rookie hospital counselor played by Anna Kendrick.

We watch as he deals with the issues of his cancer, the lonlieness, the isolation and the sadness. Rogen's character tries to cope by drinking, smoking dope and screwing women. This might work for him but the physical, psychological and mental toll it takes on his buddy is immense.

The film shows the desperation, the devastation and the eventual anger that the character goes through.

50/50 is a very good movie full of great performances and a script that manages to be heartbreaking and heartwarming simultaneously. It is not an easy film to sit through but it is well worth it.

grade...B+

mcw

Dream House ... don't be fooled!

2011-10-13T19:10:00.001-06:00

If you told me that there was a new movie, directed by Jim Sheridan (The Boxer, My Left Foot and In America), starring Daniel Craig, Naomi Watts and Rachel Weisz, I'd be pretty darned pumped up to see it. Then tell me that Sheridan is trying to pump new life into an increasingly tired horror genre. I'm there.

Now re-watch the trailer and imagine mediocre actors in these roles and a less talented director behind the camera...that's the movie I saw last weekend. What the hell happened here?

I don't have to worry about spoiling too much because the trailer already gave away way too much of this movie's plot. Craig and his family live in a wonderful new home, or do they. Maybe he is actually a deranged husband who is accused of killing that same family in that same house and has spent years in a mental ward.

If you can't spot the bad guys in this film way early, you haven't seen many movies. The only thing that could have made them more obvious would have been to literally have circled them in red pen!

The story has elements of supernatural which I'm not sure fit in very well. There is little to no suspense and the acting is pretty weak considering the talent.

I think that the problem was the story but why didn't someone realize this long before I forked over my hard earned cash to see it?

I had high hopes for this movie and they were dashed early and often.

grade C-

mcw

Killer Elite...nothing elite here!

2011-10-03T20:03:00.000-06:00

Supposedly based on a true story, Killer Elite tells the story of a British operative (Jason Statham) who is trying to retire to the Australian countryside with a ftching young lady. He is pulled from retirement when one of his partners (Robert DeNiro) is captured and is being held hostage.

A Middle Eastern leader is trying to exact revenge of the men who killed his three sons. If he can get Statham's character and his group of elite men to kill those responsible, his hostage will be released and all will be well. Riiiiight!

This is a violent and bloody film that uses action sequences instead of character development, explosions in the place of strong story and brutal killings instead of great writing.

The movie is a mess and I could not have cared less about anyone in this film. Clive Owen plays one of the guys being tracked. When you look at the talent involved, this movie should have, could have been so much better. All I found was a mess of loosely developed characters, tons of bullets and bangs and a story that takes waaaaaay too long to get to its conclusion!

grade C-

mcw

Moneyball...pays off well!!

2011-10-03T19:54:00.001-06:00

I've heard nothing but great things about the book Moneyball which details General Manager Billy Beane's efforts in Oakland to put together a baseball team using unique statistics and formulas versus the approach of looking strictly at traditional stats as MLB has done for years. I have not read the book but I can tell you that I was excited to see the movie! I was not disappointed.

Brad Pitt plays Beane in the film and we watch as his team makes it to the playoffs and loses to the Yankees, a team with almost three times his payroll. How is he expected to compete in a small market with a low payroll? He soon comes to the realization that his thought process must change. This change is embodied in the character of Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) a recent Ivy League grad and statistician who sees a new way to build a team. In a nutshell, buy players who are under the radar, have a low cost but a high percentage of getting on base. Pay for production not for big names! Amazingly simple right? Not so easy.

The season, and new strategy starts very, very poorly and Beane clashes with manager Art Howe (an unrecognizable Philip Seymour Hoffman) over his new team.

This wouldn't be much of a story (or movie) if the season doesn't eventually turn around. Moneyball is a great look at the inner workings of MLB but it is also a very strong look at a leader who has a vision and implements that vision in the face of great adversity.

Many have said that the non-baseball fans will like this movie more than true fans. I disagree. I loved this movie. Pitt is the actor we always hoped he would be. Hill not nearly as annoying as he usually is. Robin Wright is wasted but I loved Hoffman as Howe. Let me tell you, Howe does not come off very well in this movie! Not only does he not support the plan but he blatantly ignores directions from the GM and plays the game his way.

Moneyball is the early fall hit and should be on most moviegoers' "must-see" list!

grade B+

mcw

Straw Dogs...updating a Pekinpah classic

2011-10-03T19:38:00.004-06:00

The new film Straw Dogs is a remake of the old Dustin Hoffman movie with the same name from 1971. That film, which I saw in college was directed by the legendary Sam Peckinpah. It told the story of a couple in rural England who were taunted and tortured by a group of locals until they were forced to fight back.

The new movie moves the action to the Southern United States, Mississippi to be exact. James Marsden and Kate Bosworth play the couple. She is a famous actress, moving back to her small town after the passing of her father. Marsden plays her husband, an itellectual screenwriter excited to get some quiet to work on his screenplay.

Probably not a good idea to hire her ex-boyfriend (and his dumb ass buddies) to fix the barn roof! Everyone in town seems to be a walking cliche. From the drunk and abusive ex-football coach (an embarrassingly bad James Woods), his promiscuous daughter, the sheriff with a heart of gold to the good old boys who just want to get drunk and hunt, everything about this story seems to come out of some screenwriting computer program.

Let me just tell you, director Rod Lurie is no Sam Peckinpah!

Bosworth is not a great actress but she looks good running barefoot down the country road all hot and sweaty. She seems to have left all of her bras in Los Angeles. When the good old boys hoot and holler at her fine young body she gets mad because Marsden won't step in to defend her honor. So what does she do? What every woman would do in that situation, she goes upstairs to take a shower and deliberately undresses in front of the bumpkins.

The action quickly excalates from there to include the death of her cat and a gang rape. This is not an easy film to watch. On many levels.

A bunch of really stupid things happen in this movie before we finally get to the showdown where Marsden's character is forced to act. We pretty much know how he is going to win the battle since it has been hinted to earlier in the film.

Rather than spending the time going to see this new (and far inferior) version of Straw Dogs why don't you spend some time tracking down the original. It's been a long time since I've seen that version but I wish I had done just that!

The first movie was a serious film about pacifists and violence, this version feels dirty and creepy like some kind of high school slasher film.

grade C

mcw

Drive...arty and bloody

2011-09-21T16:02:00.001-06:00

I took Sue to Drive last weekend because I knew that the other option, Straw Dogs was going to be very violent. Big mistake!

Ryan Gosling plays a man known only as The Driver, a Hollywood stunt driver who in his off hours manages to get work as a getaway driver for a variety of low lifes. A pretty young woman (Carey Mulligan) and her son who live down the hall from him catch his eye, a sweet and tender relationship begins. Her husband is in jail and due to be released very soon. In the meantime they begin a nice friendship and spend quite a bit of time together.

This whole picture changes when the hubby gets released and we find that there are some people he owes money to who are not the nicest and they are threatening the wife and son. The Driver steps in and offers to help the husband out of this jam one time and never again. As you might guess that doesn't go well and suddenly the bad guys are tracking The Driver with not so good intentions.

This is a very independant looking film with a deliberate pace, very stylish and arty if you will and also a very quiet film. Gosling plays the character that Steve McQueen would have played back in the day, soft spoken but a man of action when his back is against the wall.

The cast is top notch. Besides Mulligan and Gosling we get Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Ron Perlman, Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) and a very dangerous and mean Albert Brooks.

For my taste, Drive was a little too impressed with itself. It also features some of the most over the top violence that I've seen in a long time. To watch Gosling literally stomp a guy's head like a Halloween pumpkin is cringe inducing! The violence was way too much for me and I can tell you Sue would have preferred Straw Dogs.

A mixed bag though, strong acting and very well made but too over the top with the brutality.

grade B-

mcw

Warrior...the best movie you won't see

2011-09-21T15:48:00.000-06:00

I'm not often taken by surprise by a movie but I can tell you that Warrior completely caught me off guard. I'm not a fan at all of mixed martial arts (MMA) and if Nick Nolte hadn't been in the film I might have skipped it altogether but that would have been a shame.

The story is amazingly simple. A broken family, headed by Nolte, reconnects as his two grown sons both enter a big money MMA tournament. They both have their own reasons which become more and more apparent as the film progresses. Mom is dead and dad was an alcoholic abusive father who has no relationship with his two sons at all.

The older son, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), is a schoolteacher who has a past history with MMA fights but medical bills have piled up and he secretly sneaks back in the cage to keep the family from losing their home. The younger brother Tommy (Tom Hardy) is a veteran back home with a history and a handful of secrets. Nolte, is now sober and has found God and oddly, Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

The two brothers, one from Pittsburgh and one from Philadelphia (Sound like Rocky!?) enter Sparta, the winner take all $5 million dollar tournament in Atlantic City nicknamed, The War on the Shore!

The tourney starts with 16 fighters and whittles it down to two. Guess which two end up in the final together?

This movie is as cliched as they come but the story and the acting keep it at such a high level that you sit in amazement at how intense and stressful it is. It is as fun as it is improbable. At nearly two and a half hours it never felt long.

Now, the other issue is the violence. It is there for sure but much like a good boxing movie, I tolerated it pretty well. It is a violent and brutal sport but until the end, the fighting was not a major piece of the story. That of course changes during the tournament but still it was okay as far as I'm concerned.

What I loved was the acting the (admittedly) hokey story but most of all the great drama and emotion that came with this move.

This will be the best movie you don't see this year!

grade B+

mcw

The Guard...Irish fun

2011-09-21T15:29:00.001-06:00

Brendon Gleason plays an Irish cop, one of those cops that lives in a gray area as far as his integrity goes. Why leave money or drugs on a dead perp if you can use them yourself? That issue aside, he is a bumbling cop that somehow always manages to stumble in the right direction and get his man.

On a high profile case, Don Cheadle plays an FBI agent sent in to help. He's American, he's black and he's not wanted. These two form an odd couple-like relationship. We've seen this a hundred times before but what makes this one work is Gleason who is just pretty damned funny. Cheadle to a large extent gets stuck with the straight man role but he fits it perfectly and really allows Gleason to shine.

Not that it is even close to the level of greatness, this movie reminded me quite a bit of one of my favorites from several years back, In Bruges with Colin Ferrell and Gleason! It's not at that level but I suspect that if you enjoyed In Bruges you will enjoy The Guard.

I will tell you that you need to pay attention because the Irish brogue that they speak in is very thick and the soundtrack isn't nearly as crisp as it needs to be to understand everything that they say.

Still a very funny movie though.

grade B

mcw

Contagion...wash your hands

2011-09-18T20:52:00.001-06:00

The new Steven Soderbergh film Contagion shows us very vividly what could happen to our world with the introduction of a deadly disease in even a remote part of our world. Soderbergh uses half of Hollywood to tell this story which crisscrosses the globe as we watch a virus spread exponentially from Hong Kong to Minneapolis etc., etc. in a matter of days.

Gweneth Paltrow doesn't feel good one day, a guy dies on a bus the next and on and on for days and months as the planet is brought to its knees in spite of the hard work by a ton of scientists, The World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control.

The panic, the crisis, the hysteria, the epidemic all portrayed in complete realism by some powerful actors and actresses.

Contagion is bleak and tremendously sad but also a wakeup call for what could happen. I can tell you I will never look at a bowl of M&M's sitting on a conference room table the same way again.

Scary!

grade B

mcw

Apollo 18...Blair Witch in space

2011-09-18T20:33:00.000-06:00

According to the movie Apollo 18 the last mission we sent to Mars was Apollo 18 not Apollo 17 as we've been told all along. According to this movie and the hours of lost video footage that has now been found and edited together, we did go back to the moon.

We sent three astronauts into space, to the moon on a mission that they weren't completely briefed on. Once on the moon, things aren't exactly as they planned. They find a dead cosmonaut which is stragne to them since the Russians supposedly hadn't been to the moon.

Apollo 18 tells a hokey story and tells it well. The old look of the film footgae is effective, the unknown actors do nice work and the filmmakers build great suspense and scares.

Admittedly it is silly and stupid but I can tell you it had me hook, line an sinker.

grade B

mcw

The Debt...above average espionage thriller

2011-09-18T20:13:00.001-06:00

Director John Madden has given us some great movies (Shakespeare in Love, Proof and Her Majesty Mrs Brown to name just a few) and he comes close to greatness again with The Debt.

The movie opens with three former Mossad agents being recognized again for a dangerous mission back in the mid-1960s. The three agents, Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciarin Hinds seem humbled by the notoriety or maybe they are still hiding something after all these years. As we flashback to see these three as young agents (played by Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas and Sam Worthington respectfully) on the mission that brought them their fame.

The Debt offers us seamless back and forth from 1997 and 1966 and we watch as the story unfolds at its own pace. It is fascinating to watch director Madden's film play out as we get bits and pieces of the truth as the film goes on. It is not what it seems and that's part of the fun.

30 years later this trio has the opportunity to set things right and it is a blast to watch it unfold.

The Debt is a great story, very well told and acted. If you are a fan of the spy vs. spy espionage thriller-type of film, here's the best film you will see this fall!

grade B+

mcw

Our Idiot Brother....and his stupid sisters

2011-08-30T20:47:00.000-06:00

I had high hopes for Our Idiot Brother and I walked out wondering why. Paul Rudd plays a very naive, sweet and innocent man just living a simple life. Our society and his three annoying sisters (Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks and Emily Mortimer) bring almost daily complications to his life and his innocence and honesty gets them in trouble too.

I found Rudd's character to be like a strange version of Forrest Gump in the fact that he kinda wanders through people's lives and changes them for better or worse depending on who they are. Not that this movie has even an iota of the talent behind that one.

Honestly, the only thin I liked about this movie was Rudd and I was not over the top with him either. The sisters are annoying and by the end of the film I was just glad to be rid of them. It was like sitting for two hours watching people that you didn't want to spend any time with.

I was glad when it was over.

grade C-

mcw

Columbiana...she's a bad mamma jamma!

2011-08-30T20:28:00.000-06:00

Avatar and Star Trek alum Zoe Saldana plays a woman, named Cataleya, hell bent on revenge in Columbiana.

As a very young girl she witnesses the brutal assasination of her parents in Bogota, Columbia. She escapes the attack and ends up at the U.S. Embassy and ultimately Chicago, Illinois.

We fast forward 15 years and we find a sleek, stealthy and smart killer systematically tracking the people who killed her parents.

There's not more to this movie than watching this beautiful (and bad ass) woman go through bad guys like crazy. Columbiana reminds me a little bit of one of my guilty pleasures, Nikita on the CW. Really well done stylized violence.

The film is stylish and well made and Saldana is almost as talented as she is beautiful.

Award winner, never. Entertaining for what it is, absolutely.

grade C+

mcw

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark...or do!

2011-08-30T20:10:00.000-06:00

If I've seen the original 1973 TV movie I don't remember but that movie obviously made a huge impression on Guillermo del Toro because he has chosen to remake it and give it a few modern twists. Del Toro is the writer and producer of the film but he turned over the directing reins to Troy Nixey, only his first feature length directing job.

Del Toro may not be a household name but he has helmed movies such as Blade II, Hellboy and Hellboy II, The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. Creepy stuff for sure.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark tells the story of a little girl named Sally (Bailee Madison), sent to live with her father (Guy Pearce) and his girlfriend (Katie Holmes) in a creepy old house that they are trying to renovate and get the attention of Architectural Digest. Sally is a very sullen, angry and unhappy child, obviously dealing with broken family issues among other things.

The opening scenes of the movie, pre-Sally and her family, show us an artist living in the old home, tortured by whispers in the basement and driven to madness and ultimately death. I'll bet that wasn't on the real estate listing.

Well guess what, Sally has been hearing whispers too! She tracks the whispers to the bowels of the house, hidden behind a sealed door to the basement. Never a good sign.

The rub in the film is that dad is so obsessed with the house that he barely notices anything, let alone a little girl with an active imagination and a nasty attitude. Dad's girlfriend is a little more attuned to what is going on but even she comes to the party way too late.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is a pretty darned creepy and effective scarefest. The movie has the look and feel of a 1970's film and Nixey does a good job of keeping the suspense high and not revealing too much until it is time for us to see.

I enjoyed this movie and I saw it with only one other person on a Sunday afternoon. I can only imagine how intense it might have been with a full house. The movie loses its focus toward the end but the creatures are sufficiently creepy and the movie has a nice touch to it.

grade B-

mcw

Fright Night...another film of my youth revisited

2011-08-30T16:22:00.000-06:00

Roddy McDowell is having his day in the sun 13 years after his death. Two recent movies, Planet of the Apes and Fright Night have been reimagined or remade and released within a month of each other.

The first Fright Night film was released in 1985, the year before I started reviewing films on cable. Seems like eons ago. Admittedly it has been a while since I've seen it but it didn't seem like it needed to be updated. It was a pre-cursor to the films like The Lost Boys which combined horror and comedy very effectively. Not an easy task by the way.

The new version stays pretty faithful to the original. A young man (Anton Yelchin) living with his mom (Toni Collette) suspects their neighbor (Colin Farrell) is a vampire.

Ferrell's vampire cuts a pretty wide swath through the Vegas neighborhood before the kid tracks down Peter Vincent, a Vegas showman with supposed knowledge of the supernatural and most specifically vampires. McDowell's Vincent was the host of a late night horror show on TV.

They have succeeded in keeping the humor strong in this remake but they've amped up the violence and body count. I suppose that that is to be expected in this day and age. I can tell you that the 3D gimmick is not worth the money, I had my glasses off most of the film. To wear dark glasses in a dark film makes some scenes so black that you could hardly see what was going on.

Ferrell is very creepy and Yelchin who played Chekov in the latest Star Trek film was really good too. My problem with the movie is that the ending is a mess, a bloody mess actually and then there is a resolution that just didn't seem to fit well with the movie. I won't spoil the surprise for you though.

Far from a great film but enough to entertain on a Friday night. On second thought make that a Saturday afternoon matinee and save a few shekels.

grade B-

mcw

Another Earth....I was expecting Sci-Fi

2011-08-30T15:43:00.000-06:00

For some reason I was expecting something different from Another Earth so my review of the film will be slightly skewed.

I thought it was some kind of sci-fi film. What it is is a very intense personal drama about a young woman who accidently inflicts a tragedy on a young family and how she copes with the aftermath of that event. All of this under the watchful eye of a second planet Earth which has inexplicably appeared in the sky above our planet.

So let's pull the sci-fi element out of the movie and just look at this film as a drama.

Brit Marling is very good as this young woman who is dealing with some very intense issues and trying to put this tragedy behind her. She takes a job cleaning the local high school and literally stumbles through life as if in a walking coma. William Mapother (Ethan from Lost) plays a composer whose life has also been affected by this tragedy. Marling's character begins a relationship with him even though he has no idea that she was involved with the tragedy.

Another Earth is a very independent feeling and looking film that will give you pause for thought and it features an ending designed to stimulate a conversation. Not a great film but an intriguing film in several ways.

If you like challenging films, this might be right up your alley.

Grade B-

mcw

One Day...good but felt a little contrived

2011-08-30T09:35:00.000-06:00

When you try to visit a pair of characters (Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess) over a series of 20 plus years and you do it on the same day, it takes a deft hand and great storytelling for it not to feel forced and contrived. In my opinion, that deft hand was missing on One Day.

We are introduced to the two lead characters, Emma and Dexter, as they graduate from University in London on July 15, 1988. They have a brief encounter and an aborted one night stand but after that become life-long friends.

One Day revisits these characters every year on July 15th so we can catch up and see how they are doing. He's off to India one year, she waits tables, he becomes a wildly successful TV producer and they spend one vacation together (in seperate rooms). His life begins to unravel as hers kicks into gear. Their plutonic relationship has a constant undercurrent of feelings from one or both of them for the other. This back and forth goes on (for too long) from 1988 into 2011 with some of them interesting some of them just okay.

This might have worked really well in the novel but I found it to feel very much like a movie. We see ups, we see downs, happy times and sad but we really never see any honest emotional scenes, they all feel fake.

Hathaway is as good as you expect her to be, Sturgess has not, in my opinion, lived up to the promise he showed in Across the Universe and Patricia Clarkson has another small but impressive role.

This should have been better. It could have been better.

grade B

mcw

A Better Life....a heartbreaking story

2011-08-30T08:54:00.000-06:00

A Better Life will most likely slip under the radar in most towns but it is worth looking for. I tells the heartbreaking story of an illegal immigrant, Carlos (Demian Bichir) living in LA with his high school aged son Luis (Jose Julian). Mom is gone and the family struggles to get by. Dad does yard work with a friend to make ends meet. Luis goes to school and longs for a better life than his father, also flirting with the neighborhood gangs.

The friend decides to get out of the business and offers to sell his truck, and essentially the business, to Carlos. Carlos initially balks at the offer but if he doesn't buy the truck he is out of work. He scratches together the money and hires an acquaintance to help him on his new route.

All is well until his new worker jumps in the truck and takes off.

A Better Life is a very emotional story, torn from the headlines,of a good and decent man who just wants to provide for his son. The performances are all very strong and the story is as good as it is sad. To watch the sacrifices that this man makes for his son and to watch the son finally come around to see his father as the good man that he is is a real treat.

A very fine movie with a strong heart.

grade B+

mcw

The Help...I smell Oscar nominations

2011-08-12T15:45:00.000-06:00

Writer Kathryn Stockett hit pay dirt with her novel about a novel about black women working as maids and nannies for white families in the early 1960's. In a controversial move Stockett chose her best friend from growing up, Tate Taylor, to direct the movie version of The Help. Taylor had dabbled in filmmaking but certainly was not even close to qualified to take the reins on a project of this stature. This Cinderalla story has a happy ending.

Emma Stone, who continues to dazzle and impress, plays a fresh out of college journalist who takes a job at the newspaper in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. Her job is to take over a column on cleaning but she dreams of writing an important novel. She's feisty, high spirited and progressive thinking. Let's just say that that was not the norm in Jackson, Mississippi back in the day.

After watching her friends and her own family treat their black house help very poorly, she decides to write an anonymous tell-all about these people and their "help". Two very brave black women decide to help her in spite of the fact that this could get them fired or worse.

The feeling of fear that these women portray is real and vivid. The movie is very tough to watch as we see generations of men and women being held down, literally by their white employers. They are treated horribly and not even allowed to use the bathrooms within the homes that they work. Seperate bathroom are built outside for them to use. To think that this happened in my lifetime is sickening.

The talent in the film is wonderful. Besides Stone, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer as the two maids who decide to speak their minds are outstanding. I think that Davis for sure will see an Oscar nod. The other fine turn is by Bryce Dallas Howard, the leader in the suppression of these people. She is pure evil and you hate her every time she's on screen. I consider that a great performance but one that is likely to be overlooked.

The Help is the first Oscar-caliber film that I've seen this year and I loved it. It operates on many levels and is very emotional and touching. It is an amazing story told by an all-but rookie director in a very, very finely made film. I would recommend a handful of Kleenex for most viewers.

I do have one bone of contention. As much as I admired The Help, I'm very puzzled by the ad campaign used to get people to see it. It really makes it look like a comedy and I'm here to tell you that while there might be some humor, most of this film is tremendously sad.

In spite of that it is a must-see movie.

Grade: A

mcw

The Change-Up...good actors at their worst

2011-08-12T15:18:00.000-06:00

The Change-Up allows very talented actors like Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman, Olivia Wilde and Leslie Mann to do some of their worst work ever in a movie that is so offensive you find yourself cringing.

This, as the TV commercials tell us, from the director of Wedding Crashers and the writers of The Hangover. Never a good idea to set the expectations high when your movie is this bad. Wedding Crashers and The Hangover were both great films. This is crap.

Did we need another body switching movie? Haven't we seen this cliche idea fail many, many times before?

So these two buddies, one a married man tied down with a wife and two babies and the other a free wheeling single guy sleeping his way through half of the women in town, covet each other's lives and after a night of drinking, pee together in a fountain and magically (not for the audience) switch places.

This leads to all kinds of fun like watching Reynolds (with Bateman in his body) star (pretty graphically) in a porn film with a woman and a man. Or Bateman (with Reynold in his body) watching his wife go through an episode of diarrhea with the bathroom door open?? Who thought that these scenes sounded funny?

This is a miserable and mean film that should be skipped at all costs. Don't do a cheap matinee, don't do Redbox, don't even watch and edited version on FX some late night. I left feeling like I need an apology and a shower.

Grade...D

mcw

Rise of the Planet of the Apes...those damned dirty apes

2011-08-12T15:03:00.000-06:00

I think that a prequel to the Planet of the Apes series makes a lot of sense. How did these apes get so smart and take over anyway? I just wish that the filmmakers and writers were as smart as the apes.

In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, James Franco plays a scientist working on a drug, which will not only make apes smart but can also help reverse his dad's dementia. So when bad things happen in the testing process, what's every smart scientist to do but to steal one of his test subjects, a chimp named Caesar and enough drugs to keep dear old dad (John Lithgow) feeling better. You just know that this is going to work out well.

Caesar grows to full size which is about the size of a small man but still is on a leash when taken out for walks. San Francisco must not have any laws about housing and raising a chimp in your home and then taking it to the Muir Woods for walks.

There is a female scientist (Frieda Pinto from Slumdog Millionaire) in the film that serves no purpose other than to prove that women scientists also have no values and think it is okay to live with a full grown chimp.

Caesar loses him temper one day and bites off a neighbor's finger (probably prompting the new no chimps in your house law) and is taken to the primate detention center. Of course everyone who works there is an idiot and they are secretly very mean to all the monkeys. How do you think that's gonna work out for them? While all of this is happening, we find that Caesar is really, really smart and coming up with a plan of great escape.

Okay enough.

I don't mind suspending belief in a movie with the title Rise of the Planet of the Apes but come on I can only suspend it so far. Franco is slightly more animated than he was at the Oscars but not nearly as powerful as when he got trapped in that canyon and cut his arm off (127 Hours).

The movie had promise and I will tell you that the special effects were pretty impressive but it just kept getting more and more preposterous until I finally got to the breaking point on it.

I'll be a little generous and give it a B- but I feel that the more I think about it the less I will like it.

mcw

Crazy, Stupid Love...Top 10 for sure

2011-08-01T20:50:00.000-06:00

The summer's best movie, and one of the year's best, opened last weekend, Crazy, Stupid Love.

With a cast to die for, Crazy, Stupid Love gives us the tale of a very dysfunctional group of people falling in and out of love. Steve Carrell plays a man whose wife (Julianne Moore) is sleeping with a co-worker (the always slimy Kevin Bacon) and she has asked for a divorce. Carrell is so devastated that he cannot see a 17-year old babysitter pining for him as she fends off hilariously blatant declarations of love from his 13 year old son!

Carrell's character heads to a bar to drown his sorrows and he watches a slick ladies man (a surprisingly effective Ryan Gosling) work his way through seemingly every woman in the bar. The two strike up an odd friendship as the ladies man offers to take the shlump under his wing and teach him the ways of the world. The transformation is as effective as it is funny to watch.

I don't want to give you a whole lot more information for fear it will spoil some of the fun but suffice it to say Marisa Tomei turns in one damned funny performance as Carrell's first conquest! Emma Stone also continues to impress me as the one woman who won't fall for Gosling's line of BS. She can do no wrong in my book.

I complained a couple of weeks ago about the Timberlake/Kunis movie Friends with Benefits having dialogue that seemed too smart for the characters. This movie has smarter dialogue and it seems perfectly natural for it to come out of the mouths of these characters, even the 13 year old.

The movie reminded me a lot of one of my favorite movies, Love Actually, in the fact that we are dealing with different people falling in and out of love in intertwined ways!

This is a smart movie about interesting and realistic characters that had me laughing often and out loud. There is a scene near the end (you'll know which one) that is just flat out a riot!

I can't imagine that this won't be high on my Top Ten list for 2011!!

Grade A

mcw

Terri...back to high school angst

2011-07-30T18:12:00.001-06:00

Jacob Wysocki stars as the title character, Terri, an overweight high school student who just does not fit in. John C Reilly plays the school principal who seems to need to step in and help this young man get through these difficult years. It doesn't help that the young man is living with his Uncle James who struggles with dementia.

Teased and taunted at school, Terri pretty much gives up and just goes through the motions, even going as far as showing up for school in pajamas.

We've got your typical high school dysfunction and the rarely surprising stupidity of teenage boys.

Terri's sometimes friend Chad is strange and his relationship with the school floozy named Heather is a bit of a stretch.

Terri ends up being a quirky little film about some misfits. It has moments of charm and sweetness but ends up being a little too uneven for me.

Grade B-

mcw

Cowboys and Aliens...just like Taco Pizza

2011-07-30T18:00:00.000-06:00

I love tacos and I love pizza but, in my opinion, the two do not go together very well. I kinda like westerns and I'm okay with sci fi movies but the new film Cowboys and Aliens is a failed attempt to mash the two genres.

Daniel Craig plays a stranger who wakes up in the desert with no memory and a strange looking metal bracelet on his arm. After showing his fighting skills versus a band of nasty bad guys, he wanders into town to be greeted with the usual stares and scowls. A fight or two later, he is being transported to a federal court when the spaceship appears, full of explosives and starts literally snagging people and pulling them into the sky. Until this point it had been a pretty typical western.

Harrison Ford plays the cliche rancher trying to get his idiot son out of a mess. Keith Carradine is the sheriff, Sam Rockwell the local barkeep and Olivia Wilde as a gorgeous woman in a dress with a sidearm and funny looking cowboy hat. Whoever designed her costume needs to be taken out and strung up!

Okay, so we've got a town under siege by aliens, a man with no name but some impressive fighting skills and then we encounter Craig's old gang and some nasty Apache Indians. Let's all get together and fight against the mean aliens who are stealing gold and killing people!

This movie is not impressive at all. The acting is weak, the characters less than enthralling and the action basically silly. Director Jon Favreau has delivered a mess. Why it took six writers will always be a mystery.

I will tell you that Craig makes a bad-ass cowboy and I loved him in the movie. Ford just grumbles and might want to consider retirement. He hasn't made a good movie since the mid-late 1990's and hasn't made a great movie in much longer than that.

Cowboys and Aliens manages to be big and bold but not tremendously bright!

Grade C

mcw

Beginners...Obi-Wan and Baron Von Trapp

2011-07-30T17:36:00.000-06:00

Beginners tells the story of a young man (Ewan McGregor) struggling with the memories of his father's (Christopher Plummer) death to cancer and before that, his coming out of the closet after his wife of 44 years died.

The movie is told in a series of flashbacks interspersed with current day scenes of McGregor's character and his relationship with a beautiful but damaged woman. The woman is played by the wonderful French actress Melanie Laurent who dazzled everyone with her performance in Quentin Tarentino's Inglourious Basterds.

The back and forth scenes from past to present manage to allow the story to slowly but methodically unravel. Beginners features fine acting by all three leads in what ends up being a very quiet and intimate film about what amounts to some pretty sad people and their relationships, past and present.

If you appreciate fine acting and don't mind a fairly sad storyline, Beginners might make a nice respite from the heat of the summer.

Grade C+

mcw

Captain America....cheesy fun!

2011-07-23T14:36:00.000-06:00

Captain America: The First Avenger is at least the fourth comic book movie of the summer. Thor, X-Men First Class, Green Lantern all preceeded Captain America. Out of those only Thor was better!

The movie opens in present day as we team a team of scientists pull a frozen ship from the landscape of Antartica or someplace like that. In the ship's wreckage a red, white and blue shield is found!

Off to 1942 Norway where we see an evil man (Hugo Weaving, soon to be revealed as the Red Skull, the leader of a Nazi deep science division known as Hydra) steal a mythical energy source as he kills all in his path.

Back to the USA where we find Steve Rogers, a scrawny, wimpy little geek trying to enlist in the war only to be turned down at every enlistment place. His 4F status keeps him from following his buddy "Bucky" Barnes to the war.

Stanley Tucci plays a former German scientist who escaped Hitler's grasp and has come to America with his serum which will turn regular soliders into super soldiers capable of winning the war easily. To prove his formula he chooses the soldier trapped in the geeky body of Rogers. The company commander, played by Tommy Lee Jones, frowns on this choice.

The serum works wonders but a Nazi plant in the facility manages to kill Tucci's character before being chase and eventually captured by the new super solider, soon to known as Captain America.

Rogers is used as a political pawn to raise money for war bonds by the political machinery but he quickly jumps into action when he finds that his buddy Bucky has been captured and is being held behind enemy lines.

Captain America: The First Avenger is an old fashioned comic book come to life. The WWII setting makes it a cheesy kinda "beat the Nazi's treat". The special effects are believeable and the cast, especially Chris Evans as Rogers is solid. Weaving also is great as the Red Skull.Director Joe Johnston has done a very good job of casting the movie. The only character I really didn't get was the love interest played by Hayley Atwell. She seemed more in the way than essential in my mind.

The ending sets up a sequel very, very effectively and if you sit through the credits (which you should) you will get a full trailer for next summer's Avenger's film.

Comic book summer silliness...I kinda liked it.

Grade B.

mcw

Friends with Benefits...works well in spite of itself

2011-07-23T09:48:00.000-06:00

What I decided after seeing Friends with Benefits is that I'm really not that impressed with Justin Timberlake. Seems to be a nice guy, obviously has talent in multiple areas but I just really have no connection with him on the big screen. I seriously doubt that this will affect his career but it did affect my viewing of his new movie. Fortunately for the movie, Mila Kunis was not only watchable but completely in control and amazing.

This is at least the third movie where couples try to get together for just casual sex and guess what? They can't do it. Last year we had Love and Other Drugs with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal and earlier this year we had Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher (unimpressive also) try to get along with No Strings Attached. Seems to be a hot topic in Hollywood.

So back to Mr Timberlake and Ms Kunis.

Kunis plays an NYC executive recruiter (it would have been so easy to use the headhunter reference!) who lures Timberlake's character to the Big Apple from Los Angeles to take a job as the Art Director at GQ Magazine.

The two make friends but eventually decide, since they have both had relationship issues in the recent past, to just get together for sex. No relationship, no emotions, just sex. Like playing tennis after work but with less clothes.

The amazingly chaste sex scenes drew hoots and hollers from the women in the audience that I saw it with. There are lots of fun situations and dirty talk but not really much nudity unless you like to see Justin's backside.

My one problem with the movie is that it felt very much like a movie. A movie too smart for its own good. The dialogue, though very smart and funny most times didn't feel real at all. These people aren't that smart or funny but the words coming out of their mouths certainly were.

The subplot with the dad and the dementia issues seemed forced too.

I loved the supporting cast, especially Richard Jenkins as the father, Patricia Clarkson as the crazy mother and Woody Harrelson as the gay sports editor at GQ.

But the reason to see the movie is Kunis who is so natural and so strong in this role. She plays a damaged young woman who has had family and relationship issues but she is a big, brass and brutally honest New Yorker who embraces life. The fact that she is drop dead gorgeous certainly doesn't hurt.

Friends With Benefits turns into a kinda sweet and charming date movie with a raunchy edge to it but in the end, I was glad to have seen it and did indeed laugh many times.

Grade B-.

mcw

The Trip...a quirky but unique adventure

2011-07-17T13:38:00.000-06:00

Actor/Comedian Steve Coogan and his buddy Rob Brydon tour the countryside of Northern England touring restaurants for a newspaper article. They play themselves on kind of a road trip of a movie.

The majority of the film is simply conversations between these two very witty and clever friends as they go from gourmet restaurant to gourmet restaurant. A tough assignment for sure.

As they sit and speak to each other they drift into impressions of peopole like Dustin Hoffman, Hugh Grant, Richard Burton, Al Pacino and especially Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Some of the stuff that comes out of their mouths is laugh out loud funny.

In between you get beautiful views of the English countryside, shots of random women leaving Coogan's room in the morning and these to pals driving from village to village. It is kinda like the two old men on The Muppet Show, Waldorf and Statler, on a road trip.

I'll admit that as much as I enjoyed this unique adventure, it did go on a little long at just under two hours. they could have shaved 20 minutes or so off of the film and really had me hooked. Still a fun time in the theatre and, for a change, something different and unique.

Grade B.

mcw

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two...saved the best for last!

2011-07-17T13:22:00.000-06:00

I'm not a big Harry Potter fan and am on record as finding this to be one of the least accessible film series I've ever seen. In my opinion, if you've not read the books, this film series is nearly impossible to understand. I usually just sit back and try to understand all of the action.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two (a mouthful in its own right) is the exception to that rule. Maybe it was the seven (!) films that I had already suffered through but this one seemed to be completely understandable and actually very, very good.

I saw it in 3D and I would say other than the Harry Potter shaped 3D glasses (which were very clever) you can probably see it in 2D without missing much. I can also tell you that the first glimpse of The Dark Knight Rises is worth the price of admission!!

So, back to HPDH2. The film opens with the burial of the house elf, Dobby but we quickly jump into the continued search for these Horcrux thingies. They use a combination of spells and costumes to break into this vault area past a bunch of goblins. The ride into the vault and the scramble to grab the Horcrux and escape are great fun.

Then we are off to Hogwarts where the second to the last Horcrux is hidden and where we will begin our final battle with the dark Lord Voldemort. HPDH2 has that epic feel that you go while watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It looks great and feels very impressive and important.

There is a great montage a little over halfway in that gives you lots of backstory and answers many questions that fans might have had.

HPDH2 is easily the best movie of the series and the most accessible. I almost felt like I knew exactly what was going on. I'm sure that I did not but hey at least I felt good about it.

The cast has matured greatly but I couldn't help but think how many people are going to be looking for work now that this series is over. That's a lot of actors and actresses out of work. Not to mention a ton of technical folks too.

I will give the producers, writers and directors (cast too) credit for maintaining a level of quality over 8 films that is incredible to behold. The visuals in this film are truly special.

HPDH2 is a fitting end to a wonderful tale and I'm pretty sure I heard sniffling from my wife sitting next to me.

Grade A.

mcw

Horrible Bosses .... could've been a classic

2011-07-17T09:49:00.000-06:00

This movie had hit written all over it from the moment you saw the first trailer for it. Great cast, funny concept and an R-rating which would give them room to get both nasty and funny.

Three friends (Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis) happen to all have horrible bosses (Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and Colin Farrell) who are making their lives miserable and holind them back. Over beers one night, a plan to kill these bosses is hatched.

At this point the movie goes awry. This had the potential to be an R-rated updating of 9-5 with a wicked edge and classic lines. That potential was not realized.

Horrible Bosses has some funny moments but the timing and the direction seem way off. Some scenes drag on forever and some seem amazingly short. To pull off comedy like this timing is critical and this one doesn't have it. don't get me wrong, I laughed many times just not as many as I would have liked to.

Comedy is an acquired taste and we all have different comedic tastes. I think that a lot of the younger (college aged plus a few years) audience will like this more than the older ones. We've seen in done before and we've seen in done better.

Not a bad movie and probably worth seeing but I'd definitely pay matinee prices!

Grade B-

mcw

Zookeeper.....only for small kids.

2011-07-17T09:36:00.000-06:00

Kevin James can be a very funny guy but his bag of tricks is not very deep and his humor runs out of gas very early in Zookeeper.

The movie opens with James on a beautiful white horse with a beautiful woman (Leslie Bibb) riding down an abandoned but beautiful beach. He proposes to the woman and is flat out turned down. Ouch. She likes him a lot but she is bothered by the fact that he works at the zoo.

Fast forward five years, he is still at the zoo with the typical oddball cast of characters that you expect in this kind of movie. One of them though is a beautiful woman (Rosario Dawson) who he can't seem to see right in front of him.

When he bumps into his old flame, he decides to quit the zoo and to find a real job to impress her.

This is where the wacky hijinks begin. The animals call a meeting to discuss how they can keep him from leaving. And they actually discuss this since animals have the ability to speak and always have. They have a code which prevents them from speaking in front of people. What we also didn't know is that they sound an awful lot like Nick Nolte, Adam Sandler, Sylvester Stallone, Cher, Maya Rudolph, Jon Favreau and Don Rickles!

With that level of talent involved you would think that the story would have been more compelling. You can see the ending coming from 10 miles away and most of the jokes are not really that funny. I did like the 1970's tunes on the soundtrack though!

Kevin James is a likeable guy and he can be very funny. He is pretty much an "everyman" and we can all in a way relate to him. But...his range is very limited and he hasn't worked to add a lot to it. he has the same facial expressions and actions that served him better in Paul Blart Mall Cop but not much more.

What I will tell you though is that if you were a 10 year old boy or girl, this might be one of the best movies that you have seen all year. So in that case maybe is succeeds?? Not so much for me though.

grade C-

mcw

Larry Crowne...what were they trying to do?

2011-07-17T09:18:00.000-06:00

Tom Hanks not only wrote, starred and directed in Larry Crowne but he also single handedly tries to carry it and ultimately doesn't get it done.

One of the films that many looked forward to this summer, Larry Crowne tells the tale of a man who is very happily working at a Target-like store. He is called in to see his bosses one day, expecting his tenth emploee of the month award. What he gets instead is a pink slip because he does not have a college education and thus cannot be promoted within the organization.

He is devastated. This store and the 20 year stint in the Navy are his whole life. Due to a recent divorce, he is upside down in his home and the bank won't help him.

He enrolls in a Community College to get his life back on track. One of his classes is a speech class which is taught by a tired, cynical and miserable woman played by, of all people, Julie Roberts.

Larry Crowne essentially follows these two characters and some not very believable or interesting fringe characters as they go about their lives. That a romance develops between Crowne and Roberts' character is a miracle and one that would never pass a believability test in my book.

This is not a bad movie but it is also not a good movie. It just kinda floats along and then ends. You leave the theater with a feeling of "eh". That's a lot of talent and money on the screen for "eh". Maybe it is best summed up as a puzzle that's pieces don't quite fit very well.

Grade C

mcw

Buck...best movie I've seen this year!

2011-07-17T09:08:00.000-06:00

Who would think that a documentary about a 50 plus year old man who crisscrosses the country teaching horse riding lessons would be one of the best films of the year?

Buck is one of those rare films that manages to rise above its humble beginnings and find an audience that is sure to appreciate it.

Buck Brannaman was a child star, appearing in the early days of television with his father and brother doing rope tricks. Through the course of the film we find out that his mother died early and that his father was physically abusive. In a life saving moment, a coach and local sheriff step in to save him from the abuse, taking him from his father and placing him with a wonderful foster family.

From an early age Buck was fascinated by horse men, those men who worked with, trained and exhibited horses. It is possible that he felt more comfortable with horses than humans but he drifted in that direction and is still there today.

For nine months a year he travels the country putting on demonstrations and training people who want to learn more about, and deal better with, their horses. He has a very common sense approach that surprisingly escapes most trainers and his training doesn't stop with the horse. The owner/rider is also being judged and trained in these sessions.

His unique abilities with horses attracted the attention of Robert Redford when he was making The Horse Whisperer and the stories surrounding that film, and his involvement with it, are great fun.

Simply stated, Buck is an amazing film about and amazing man with amazing skills. the film with give you insight into people skills, life skills and parenting skills. I am a better person for having seen the movie!

Grade A

mcw

Transformers: Dark of the Moon...better than number two

2011-07-16T15:36:00.000-06:00

The first Transformers was a fun action pic. Shia LeBeouf was fresh faced and lots of fun. Megan Fox was, well, Megan Fox. The sequel was an annoying mess. So why do we get yet another sequel, this time without Megan Fox? Two reasons, the need for director Michael Bay to blow shit up and make money, not necessarily in that order.

The movie opens as we see a huge snakelike transformer pretty much demolish everything and everyone in its path. Its name is Shockwave!

We change focus to LeBeouf's character to find him graduated from college and struggling to find a job. He finds a low level job with a company headed by John Malkovich. Of course this company is not exactly what it seems.

In the meantime we find that the whole 1960's space program was nothing more than a ruse to track activity by transformers on the moon. We find out that there is still stuff on the moon.

The Autobots, headed by Optimus Prime are trying to prevent the Decepticons and their leader Megatron (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) from destroying the planet Earth.

Frances McDormand (!?!) plays a bossy military leader and somehow Patrick Dempsey plays a rich, bad guy who is trying to woe LaBoeuf's new girl (played stiffly by Rosie Huntington-Whitely). Essentially McDreamy is in cahouts with Mr. Spock to destroy the planet and turn all of its inhabitants into slaves.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is not nearly as bad as the last film but that doesn't mean that it is good either. It is amazingly violent for the audience that will want to see this, incredibly stupid for the rest of us and ear shatteringly loud. An audiologist could make lots of money setting up a table in the theater lobby.

I will tell you that the special effects are awesome and the film itself is visually stunning. It is also two and a half hours long! Good God man find yourself an editor.

The destruction of Chicago rivals only what the Cubs baseball team is doing to the city this season. It is really not fair that they get picked on twice.

Grade D+

mcw

Bad Teacher...worse movie

2011-07-16T15:18:00.000-06:00

This had fun written all over it. Former flames Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz in a naughty movie about a teacher trying to sleep her way into a wealthy marriage. It is also R-rated with the promise of great sex and tons of nudity. How do you go wrong?

They found a way. Many ways actually. The problem? As far as I'm concerned, the blame lies somewhere between the writer, the director (Jake Kasdan) and Cameron Diaz.

Her character, if you can call it that, is obnoxious, annoying and downright mean. She has no redeeming qualities and not for one minute do you feel as if you could/should cheer for her.

Timberlake is horribly miscast as a dweeby teacher unsure of himself with the ladies. Jason Segal is wasted in what is little more than a walk-on role.

This movie was a painful waste of an afternoon.

All of the supposed promise of the movie was never realized. The highlight of the movie was the end. I was just delighted that it was over.

Grade D

mcw

Tree of Life...a confusing mess

2011-07-10T19:51:00.000-06:00

Terrance Malick has done some interesting films (Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line) but he has done some pretty self-indulgent work too that I once referred to as a pretty nap. The New World and parts of Days of Heaven fall into that category.

I'm not even sure where Tree of Life falls in this discussion. It has moments that are interesting and a whole lot of self-indulgency but it cross into some kind of weirdness that literally had me shaking my head trying to figure out what I was watching.

Essentially it is the story of a family with lots of dysfunction and tremendous tragedy. In the early years of the family Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain play the parents and in later years, their son Jack is played by Sean Penn.

This storyline ammounts to about half of the movie, the other half is some kind of bizarre visions of the creation of the universe complete with raging waters, waving grasses and gurgling lava. Then we watch a dinosaur step on another's neck before trotting off into the woods. WHAAAAT? Really? A dinosaur?

Did I mention that the movie is two and a half hours long?

The first hour of the film is almost completely without dialogue or narration. This is not what I consider to be entertaining filmmaking. The family dysfunction in not pleasant to watch and the great majority of the film makes little sense to me. I completely understand the different between art and commerce in the movie business but this seems like a mess to me.

It is best described as "weird as hell".

In my opinion, a D.

mcw

Cars II...the first Pixar disappointment

2011-07-10T19:30:00.000-06:00

Though Cars was not one of my favorite Pixar films, it was a crowd pleaser which has continued to garner fans and, as importantly, sell merchandise.

With that in mind, many were anxiously awaiting Cars 2. I'm sorry to have to tell you that the wait was not worth it. Even the unexpected Toy Story short film before the movie was just so-so.

Cars II starts with a James Bond-like action sequence which will go right over most of the kids' heads or even worse, bore them. We are introduced to a new super spy car/character, Finn McMissile, voiced by Michael Caine.

We are then off to Radiator Springs where we see Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy) and we find that Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson back as the voice) is still on the racing circuit and doing very well and preparing for the World Grand Prix. Mater is asked by McQueen to help in the pits as he heads into this big event.

Somehow, Mater gets involved with McMissile and his accomplice Holly Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer) and the rest of the movie literally tunr into some kind of high espionage Bond/Bourne kinda movie which, quite frankly, did absolutely nothing for me.

Pixar had a stellar record from a critical and box office standpoint but it will have to rely on box office alone on this one. Pixar's first misstep. Probably should have gone direct to video on this one.

A shaky C in my book.

mcw

Mr Popper's Penguins....Predictable but perfectly pleasant

2011-06-19T13:17:00.000-06:00

The last time I actually saw (this takes out Horton Hears a Who and the animated A Christmas Carol..both very good) Jim Carrey in a good movie goes back to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events in 2004.

The last time I saw Carrey on screen was as Ewan McGregor's lover in last year's I Love You Phillip Morris which I turned off less than halfway through.

Leery would an accurate description of my approach to Mr. Popper's Penguins. Based on a classic children's story from the late 1930's, the movie adaptation tells us the story of a grown man with daddy issues who has become a great business man and a so-so father himself.

When he receives a package from his late-father, he is surprised with one solitary penguin. Followed days later with another four penguins. His disgust and hate of these birds begins to dissolve when he begins to find them charming, as does his daughter, son and ex-wife.

The penguins help him to be a better man and a better father and they help to heal several emotional wounds in his life.

MPP is a silly, but fun, and eventually heartwarming movie without being even in the least bit believable, but a strong performance by Carrey and this group of funny little birds.

I loved his personal assistant Pippi who only speaks in alliterations using "P's". Cute and funny.

This is not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination but it is a fun movie for the whole family and this summer you could do a lot worse. Unfortunately, most parents probably took their kids to see Green Lantern and scared the bejesus out of them. Should've spent Father's Day weekend with Mr Popper and his crazy penguins.

I will give it a good solid B!

mcw

Green Lantern...a miserable experience

2011-06-19T10:00:00.000-06:00

My old radio partner Steve Deace is the biggest Green Lantern fan I have ever met. Come to think of it, he is the only Green Lantern fan that I have ever met.

He has already weighed in via Facebook that he thinks the critics are being too harsh on this movie and that it isn't that bad. Never have I missed those Wednesday evening sessions more than right now.

I found the Green Lantern movie to be a miserable experience and I couldn't wait for it to end. How's that for succinct and to the point?

The film starts with a very confusing mythology about some immortals and a group of 3,600 "soldiers" who monitor all sections of the universe, harnessing the power of free will (which happens to be green) and keeping the world safe. These 3,600 soldiers make up the Green Lantern Corps.

Now that we are totally confused, the movie opens on some planet where we see (an immortal, I think?) attack and suck the lifeforce out of three men, leaving nothing but ashen carcasses, and flees. Hope you brought the little ones for that trick!

Then we see some purple faced guy, one of the Lantern Corps, attacked and mortally wounded. He asks his ring to find a replacement and his ship careens through the universe only to crash land on Earth.

Finally we get to see Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan, a cocky fighter pilot still haunted by the fiery death of his father, also a fighter pilot, in a plane incident. He is a poor man's version of Tom Cruise in Top Gun.

To make sure we don't get any real character development, the movie then introduces us to Dr. Hector Hammond (Peter Skarsgard) a brilliant scientist who is asked to come in (by Angela Bassett!?!) to perform an autopsy on the now dead purple guy.

I might as well tell you now that Tim Robbins plays an evil Senator who happens to be Hammon's father. That info will come into play later, not that you will care.

Back to the lifeforce sucking bad guy, now known as Paralex (?) who gets his lifeforce by sucking fear from people across the universe. He/it continues to grow until it resembles those sidewalk snakes that you used to light on the 4th of July. They grow into huge tubes of ash and specks of fire until finally dying out and washing away to leave a nice stain on your driveway.

I do need to tell you about one of the big action scenes too. Now evil Dr. Hammond tries to take out his evil dad in a helipcopter crash but fortunately Hal Jordan steps in to turn the helicopter into part big green car and then creates a Hot Wheels-like track to help it from crashing. Really? You've got to be kidding! Of and this silliness is capped off with his father being burned to death in the copter anyway! No nightmares for the kids there!

This is a miserable movie, amazingly violent and amazingly stupid.

The only thing that Steve Deace and I will agree on here is that Thor is by far the best comic book movie of the summer.

A generous C- is the grade just cuz I don't need the geeks at Cup O' Krytonite slashing my tires next time I stop in for a cup of coffee.

MCW

Midnight in Paris...Woody in full fluff mode

2011-06-17T20:52:00.000-06:00

Woody Allen has been pretty much miss and hit lately with, in my opinion, many more misses than hits. Though I loved Vicky Christina Barcelona, most of the other recent stuff that I've seen was okay at best.

So here we have Midnight in Paris a fluffy movie about a romantic writer (Owen Wilson) in Paris with his fiancee (Rachel McAdams) and her parents.

Wilson's character is a successful Hollywood screenwriter who dreams of writing that great American novel. He loves the literary and artistic history of Paris and dreams of hanging with the greats of the past. Adams' character is more interested in doing touristy things, dining and dancing with friends.

As he walks home alone one night after a dinner, Wilson's character sits on some steps to rest as the clock strikes midnight. The next thing you know, he is transported back in time and he finds himself at a party with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Cole Porter to name only a few.

He bops back and forth between the past and the present for the rest of the movie as he begins to find himself and realize who he really is.

What I really loved about this movie was the cast. Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein, Marion Cotillard as Picasso's mistress Adriana, Adrian Brody as Salvador Dali and Lea Seydoux (Inglourious Basterds) as a flea market operator. Anytime a movie has characters such as these, as well as Alice B. Toklas, Luis Bunuel, T.S. Elliot, Matisse, Degas, Gaughin and Toulous Lautrec, you know it is not your typical Hollywood movie.

And it isn't. Is it a great movie? Absolutely not. Was it fun and am I glad that I saw it? Certainly! Cute, sometimes clever but overall pretty lightweight stuff.

Not bad for recent Woody Allen though and I'll grade it a B-.

mcw

Super 8...reminiscent of greatness

2011-06-17T20:33:00.000-06:00

I will give J.J. Abrams huge kudos for keeping this movie under wraps for months and months. That is not an easy thing to do on a normal movie but with Abrams' status in the industry and with Stephen Spielberg as his producer, this had to be a daunting task. Was it worth it? Pretty much!

Super 8 tells the story of a bunch of goofy kids from Lillian, Ohio in the summer of 1979, trying to make a movie about zombies on an old 8 millimeter film camera.

They sneak out of their homes late one night to film a scene at a railroad station and they accidently witness one of the most spectacular train crashes
that I've ever seen on film. It seems to go on forever at a deafening volume level. As they scramble to avoid the disaster, the camera is dropped while it is still running.

This footage becomes a touchstone for much of the action that follows.

The train crash was not what it seemed to be. The Air Force swarms in the next day as car engines and neighborhood dogs start to go missing along with the wire from some electric poles and a bunch of those new-fangled miscrowave ovens!

What caused the crash and what does the military know that they won't tell anyone else?

Super 8 is the kind of movie that will remind you of many other great movies like E.T., Stand By Me and for me, especially, The Goonies. It is a fun movie, a great one to see on a hot summer night at a drive-in. It is full of silly, stupid stuff and a ton of late 70's nostalgia. The blasting soundtrack of 70's hits, the poster for John Carpenter's Halloween on the wall in a bedroom and references to Three Mile Island all do a great job of creating a perfect atmosphere.

The cast is good without being great, kinda like the reason the train crashed. While it might remind you of some classic movies, Super 8 is not as good as any of those movies.

Very good but not great and a solid B+!

mcw

X-Men: First Class .. when box office falters, re-boot franchise!

2011-06-09T09:12:00.000-06:00

After the original X-Men film (which by the way was pretty darned good) and two sequels (which got progressively worse) it was time to jump-start the franchise by going back in time to see where all this mutant stuff started.

So here we get X-Men: First Class. Directed by Matthew Vaughn who has directed four films now and hasn't missed on one yet. Layer Cake, his first is still the best but all of them manage to entertain to different degrees.

The film opens in Poland in 1944 with Nazis sending people to death camps. We see a young man (soon to be Magneto) separated from his parents and in an effort to get back with them he displays powers that no one understands.

No one, except for the really bad Nazi guy (Kevin Bacon), who wants to use these powers for his own agenda.

Flash forward to the United States where another little boy (soon to be Dr Xavier) catches an intruder in his parents estate but his telepathic powers tell him that she is not who she seems to be.

Now really jump forward to 1962 where the two men decide to join forces. Xavier to recruit and help shelter and develop the mutant population and Magneto help though really still harboring thoughts of revenge on Bacon's character.

Bacon's character has his own group of mutants...bad mutants doing bad things. Mad Men's January Jones plays one of those mutants who might be bad but looks good!!

From this point the movie relies on history to provide the tension and backstory needed. The Cuban missile crisis is a perfect event to base the film's action around and is seerves the movie well.

X-Men: First Class is a pretty good comic book movie but far from a great comic book movie. The cast is amazing considering the type of film and they all succeed in establishing their own individual characters. If anything I think that the film is too aggressive and maybe could have benefited from the story being a little simpler and the run time being a little shorter. At over two hours for this kind of a movie, it got a little long in the tooth for me.

Not as good as Thor but still a fun time if you like these kind of films and I give it a B-.

mcw

Hangover II...more like stale leftovers.

2011-06-08T20:51:00.000-06:00

In hindsight we might have seen this coming. The Hangover was such a great film because we had no idea of what was going to happen and the characters were all new and fresh and we had just met them.

In Hangover II we know the characters already, they have gone from fresh to annoying and everything that was unpredictable in the first film is easily predictable in the sequel.

Ken Jeong as Mr Chow was refreshing and original in number one...annoying as hell in number two. Dr. Stu all buttoned up and freaking out in the first, is whiney and amazingly irritating in the second. Zach with the unpronounceable last name..classic in original...marginally entertaining in the sequel.

Let's cut to the chase...I didn't laugh once. I laughed more in the first five minutes of the first film than I did in this entire film.

Here's the plot. Stu is getting married in Bangkok. There's an abbreviated bachelor party and guess what (???)someone goes missing. They probably won't make it back for the wedding and crazy things are going to happen. It is no surprise that Mike Tyson shows up at the end but I was happy to see him cuz I knew it had to be almost over. Except of course for the pictures of what happened.

Why don't you make the same movie and strip it of all originality, humor and interesting characters...then call it Hangover II and it will make a boatload of money and you can start picking the location for your next sequel.

Didn't laugh once.

Grade...being generous, a D!

mcw

Kung Fu Panda II...finally a sequel worth seeing.

2011-06-08T20:33:00.000-06:00

Two of the summer's biggest films go head to head in a Memorial Day weekend throw down, Kung Fu Panda II and The Hangover II. Since I'm behind writing this blog, I can tell you that The Hangover II wins the box office prize but gets slaughtered by the critics while KFP II wins the critics over but no on goes to see the movie. What up with that?

If you've not seen the original KFP, you need to. Brilliant filmmaking great characters and a fun, well told story.

I'm happy to report that KFP II follows that same formula and manages to up the ante and once again deliver great fun. Why no one is seeing this movie is a travesty. Last year we had a ton of great family films. This year we have not and when one comes out and is all but ignored, it is too bad.

The new backstory is very solid and it brings us to present day with a gorgeous white peacock, Lord Shen, (voiced excellently by Gary Oldman) as the villian who is hell bent on revenge and taking back what he feels is rightly his.

This puts the peacock in direct conflict with the Furious Five from the last film, all voiced by the same actors, including, of course, Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Lucy Lu and Jackie Chan.

The battle is epic, the animation is outstanding (finally another movie worth seeing in 3D) and once again Jack Black proves that the only movie he can carry these days in an animated one. The measure of a movie like this is the villian and Oldman nails it. He is creepy good.

The film also has a nice message and turns out to be quite heartwarming in the end.

I'm gonna give this a good solid B+!!

mcw

Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides...Zzzzzzzz

2011-06-08T19:41:00.000-06:00

Johnny Depp and his alter ego are back for yet another installment of a series that should have quit while it was behind after the first film. Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides is, to an extent, a reboot of the series and introduces a few new characters while saying goodbye to others. Penelope Cruz as a former love interest is the highlight of the movie (she's no Keira Knightley but who is?) but Ian McShane as Blackbeard is all growl but no menace.

In a nutshell, which is what the filmmakers need to try do more of, there's a whole group of folks searching for Ponce DeLeon's Fountain of Youth. Depp runs into an old flame (Cruz) and they are all along for this search with Blackbeard. Then Geoffrey Rush shows up wondering why he is in this film again. Actually he is still pissed off at Blackbeard and vows revenge. This group of folks all have different agendas and as a viewer you care little about any of them.

To activate the magical silver chalices, you need the tears of a mermaid. Little did we know that mermaids are carnivorous creatures with teeth like pirhana! What? Evil schools of mermaids? Really? I could have stayed home and mowed the lawn and had more fun.

Can you tell that I'm not a Pirates fan? These movies bore me to tears and I'll be damned if I can explain why they are so popular. As far as I'm concerned, it is endless fight scene after endless fight scene with Johnny Depp waltzing through from time to time trying to be funny.

The opening box office was softer than expected but still strong enough to guarantee yet another sequel. Maybe I'll stay home and mow the lawn.

mcw

The Beaver...Mel and Jodie go dark!

2011-05-25T14:03:00.000-06:00

Neither Mel Gibson or Jodie Foster has ever shied away from dark movie content and The Beaver is just that!

Gibson (aka: Mel The Fallen) plays the president of a company who had fallen into deep depression. He drags himself from work to home with no energy or effort. Foster plays his wife and she and their two sons do their best to tolerate him but life just gets too messy and they leave the house.

Digging around, Gibson's character finds and old family puppet, a beaver, and he slips it on his hand and it is like a lightbulb turning on. He suddenly has an alter ego and a voice for all the negative thoughts in his head. If this sounds a little odd, be assured, it is!

And it gets weirder.

Gibson's new "appendage" goes with him everywhere and speaks for him at all times. At first this is a good thing and it helps him mend fences with the family and completely revitalizes his company. He becomes a national phenomenon.

Then the story twists again and the puppet has more control over the man than is healthy. They two cannot be seperated and that causes major issues.

Gibson's resolution is as dark as the film's topic.

Despite its dark subject matter, I enjoyed The Beaver. Gibson and Foster show how they have managed to continue working in Hollywood for so long. They make these characters come alive and incredibly believable.

The film reminded me a lot of the old Anthony Hopkins/Ann Margaret movie Magic except in that case it was a ventriliquist dummy taking over Hopkin's life.

Foster's direction is strong though the storytelling was a little soft in the middle.

Overall a very good film though the subject will put some people off.

Gradewise I'd give it a B.

mcw

Everything Must Go..Will Ferrell Can ACT!!!

2011-05-17T07:35:00.000-06:00

First-time director Dan Rush adapts a Raymond Carver short story with Everything Must Go and manages to deliver a thought provoking film with a standout performance by Will Ferrell.

Ferrell plays a high end salesman, released from his job of 16 years for a series of episodes, most involving alcohol abuse. For his years of service he is given a swiss army knife with his name on it which he promptly sinks into the car tire of the guy who fired him.

He heads home to tell his wife and as he pulls down his street he finds all of his wordly belongings on the front lawn. His wife has left him, changed all the locks, cancelled the credit cards and frozen the bank account. Not a good day to say the least.

Ferrell makes himself at home on the lawn, pirating electricity from the neighbors to power his refrigerator and other small appliances. He is content to sit in his yard and drink himself stupid with cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

The police break up his little pity party but he manages to stay, calling this a yard sale. He grabs a neighborhood kid to help him and essentially sits on his lawn for days trying to get his life together. Rebecca Hall as a newly moved in neighbor adds additional emotion to the film. Laura Dern manages to show up late in the film and also adds depth.

This is Ferrell's film to lose and he doesn't do it. There was no sign of any of the Ferrell silliness or his stock expressions which I've grown a little tired of. His performance is restrained and emotional. Two words that I never thought I would use to describe a Will Ferrell performance!

I liked this movie a lot but it is not a real upbeat film. This is a very sad man in a very sad situation. Alcohol abuse and addiction is not easy to watch. The performances are all dead-on and the story very well told.

Everything Must Go is not your typical Will Ferrell film and for me that is a good thing!

A solid B+

mcw

Bridesmaids..funniest movie in years

2011-05-16T21:11:00.000-06:00

I'll admit that I have not watched Saturday Night Live in probably 20 years but we've seen some very talented actors and actresses come from that show over the years. After seeing Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids I would have to put her in the upper echelon of those performers. She not only stars but co-wrote the funniest film I've seen since The Hangover.

Wiig and Maya Rudolph play lifelong friends whose friendship is tested when Rudolph gets engaged while Wiig's Annie struggles to get back on her feet after her bakery failed during the recession.

As the wedding party is being put together, Annie finds herself at odds with Rudolph's character's fiancee's boss' wife Helen (Rose Byrne from tv's Damages) a fabulously wealthy and dominating woman. Their battles start quietly but eventually erupt in hilarity. The rest of the bridal party are crazy, quirky characters who make you smile everytime that they are on screen. Melissa McCarthy steals every single scene that she is in as the sister of the groom. A plus plus size woman, she is so over the top and out of control that you have no idea what will come from her mouth next other than to know it will be damned funny.

Without giving away all the fun, the food poisoning scene is a classic never to be forgotten and the plane trip, another instant classic.

The misconception that this is a "chick flick" is dead wrong. It has enough humor for everyone and, what makes it so sucessful is that it has enough heart for all too.

But the film lives and dies with Kristen Wiig's Annie and I'm here to tell you I would have a hard time not wanting her to get an Oscar nomination for this performance. It will never happen but dammit it should! She's that good.

Flat out funny, raunchy and deservedly R-rated, Bridesmaids is the best comedy of the year (and yes I know that The Hangover 2 opens in two weeks).

Be shocked. Be grossed out. Be disgusted but be entertained.

A dead-on A!

mcw

Fast Five...Vin Diesel and The Rock...muscles abound

2011-05-16T20:51:00.000-06:00

Who would have predicted that the movie The Fast and Furious would spawn FOUR sequels? And remember when Vin Diesel was too good to come back for a couple of the sequels? Now this is the only job he can get!

A couple of years ago (sequel four, Fast and Furious) they brought the original cast all back together and delivered a nice piece of action. Here they up the ante again by adding Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson to the cast.

The gang is gathered in Rio to pull off a completely unbelievable train heist of three cars. The heist goes awry and the team is sent into the vertical slums of Rio to hide from both the authorities and the bad guys.

Fast Five takes itself very seriously, maybe more so than it should but it does not disappoint its fans. Paul Walker and Vin Diesel are just as fun as ever and the addition of The Rock, though horribly predictable, is kinda fun too.

Directed by Justin Lin who did the two previous sequels sends his movie headlong into the abyss with such reckless abandon that as a viewer you have no choice but to hold on tight and enjoy the ride. Even the subtitles are on sterioids!

Fast Five takes the traditional formula and twists it into a caper-type film, much more like The Italian Job than the Fast and Furious films. Intersting to note that the sequel to The Italian Job was supposed to be called The Brazilian Job...me thinks that they just got their film swiped out from under them.

a solid B-

Thor...our first of many comic book movies

2011-05-16T20:28:00.000-06:00

The summer begins with a bang. And a pop and a crash and a boom, actually nine hundred and fifty booms! Thor is a loud film and honestly a pretty good film. Maybe the summer will be okay after all?

Those who are not familiar with the Marvel character, Thor is a warrior from the planet Asgard. His father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) is the wise leader who manages to keep the peace in the universe. His brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is a jealous sibling who longs for dad's attention and has aspirations for the crown.

Directed by Kenneth Branagh, Thor tells a very Shakespearian tale of two brothers fighting for dad's love and dad's throne. Thor defies his father and risks war. He is banished to Earth where he immediately bumps into a group of scientists lead by Stellan Skarsgard and Natalie Portman (she of the most recent Academy Award Best Actress). Being banished to a planet to hang with Natalie Portman is not a bad deal.

Thor was never one of my favorite characters, an Asgardian God with a big hammer than can cause some hurt. But the film manged to entertain well enough. Lots of mythology and galaxian travel mumbo jumbo. Chris Hemsworth as Thor is pretty darned good. I believed!

Two things that bugged the hell out of me. One was Rene Russo as Thor's mom. Rene Russo! Really? Who thought that that was a great idea?

The second thing was the blatant and distracting product placement. It is so brazen as to be very unsettling. Did they need that extra money so badly?

Branagh does a nice job with the direction but for such a Shakespeare fan, this had to be right up his alley.

Thor isn't a bad start to the summer season and I'll give it a B+.

Water For Elephants...a good chick flick!

2011-05-16T19:32:00.001-06:00

The trailer for this movie had me wanting to see it for the last several weeks and I was not disappointed.

Robert Pattinson (he of Twilight fame) plays Jacob, a vet student during the depression who is told during one of his final tests that his parents have just tragically been killed in a car accident.

Broke, essentially homeless and overwhelmed with grief he hops a train headed for parts unknown. The train just happens to be the travelling home of the Benzini Brothers Circus. This world is magical to the grieving young man and he quickly finds a home.

Reese Witherspoon plays the circus' main attraction and the wife of the boss (Christoph Waltz). It doesn't take long for Witherspoon's and Pattinson's characters to make googly eyes at each other. This causes some pretty serious conflicts and their resolution is the key to the movie.

Water for Elephants is a big movie, a rich and lush-looking film that feels both old fashioned and grandiose. The cast is strong and they all do well especailly Witherspoon who is radiant in the role.

Hal Holbrook bookends this storybook romance and is a delight to see on screen again.

Is Water for Elephants a perfect film? Far from it but it tries hard and is very, very gorgeous to watch.

A good solid B.

mcw

The Conspirator...a good history lesson

2011-05-16T19:18:00.000-06:00

Robert Redford doesn't direct very many films, eight to be exact. A few of those were great films (Ordinary People, A River Runs Through It) a couple were noble efforts that didn't succeed (The Horse Whisperer, Quiz Show), two were oddball quirky films that worked for some (The Legend of Bagger Vance and my personal fav, The Milagro Beanfield War), one was an embarrasingly bad film (Lions for Lambs) and so now we get The Conspirator!

I give Redford credit for finding a piece of history that most didn't know but I sure wish that he had done a little bit better job with it.

Everyone knows that John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Not many know that it was a conspiracy and a handful of people were involved with this assasination and that Lincoln was not the only target. In the film, Robin Wright plays Mary Surratt, the only female to be charged as a co-conspirator in this horrific crime against our country.

The film follows a young attorney (James McAvoy) who is enlisted by an influential Senator (Tom Wilkinson) to take the case of Surratt. At first he refuses but finally, in the name of legal fairness, he takes the case. It is hard to tell whether Surratt is guilty or not, she is being railroaded by a government that wants or needs to solve this case and bring the guilty to death as soon as possible so that the country can start to heal.

Redford takes a fascinating piece of history and fills the movie with familiar faces which is distracting to say the least. To see Justin Long (I'm a Mac TV commercials) in a historical drama is odd. Kevin Kline seems out of place also.

My other trouble with the film is that Wright plays the part so stoically and almost completely uncommunicatively that it is difficult to get any kind of feelings toward her at all.

In the end the movie ends up delivering an interesting piece of history but didn't deliver it as effectively as I would have liked to have seen it!

Let's give it a C+.

mcw

Jane Eyre...the classic tale retold

2011-05-08T21:13:00.000-06:00

Is it possible that I've never seen a film version of the Charlotte Bronte novel? If I have it certainly didn't come back to me seeing this version.
I think that I would have remembered a crazy woman living in the walls eating flies.

Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) is very convincing as the title character, an orphan with an evil stepmother and a horrific upbringing with no love and no friends.

She literally walks away one night and ends up as a governess in the home of a wealthy man (Michael Fassbender) known as Mr. Rochester. He is at frist cold and offputting but eventually he warms to this kind soul and they fall in love. On their wedding day all kinds of craziness happens and, if you are unfamiliar with the story, this is where the crazy woman and the flies come into play!

This is a very sad story but I enjoyed the film which was very, very well made and well acted. Dame Judi Densch plays one of the servants in Mr Rochester's home and she is always good to watch. Fassbender is strong and Wasikowska continues to impress.

The movie takes kinda a creepy turn at the end and becomes more of a thriller or even a horror film. Everything gets real creepy real fast.

The novel was written in 1847 and the story is pretty much a soap opera but the acting and filmmaking kept my attention.

mcw

Arthur...don't waste your time

2011-05-08T20:56:00.000-06:00

In anticipation of returning to the microphone at WHO Radio with the new guy who is British, I thought it only right to see some British films. Jane Eyre and Arthur are both British right? Jane Eyre was interesting for several reasons but Arthur was not, for any reason interesting.

The cast, Russell Brand, Helen Mirren and Greta Gerwig can't hold a candle to the original film's stars (Dudley Moore, Sir John Gielgud and Liza Minnelli). Jennifer Garner and Nick Nolte are okay as they take on their roles but nothing special for sure.

The story is familiar, a rich brat is forced to grow up when he is pressured by his family to marry a woman that he doesn't love. He is in love with a woman with no social status at all and the family rejects his choice. His only friend is his butler (or in this case nanny?) Hobson who tries to allow Arthur to follow his heart.

Not to sound cliche but this is a pale imitation of a great 1981 comedy.

Brand is horrendous and never funny or charming. Most of the time he is just annoying. Gerwig is cute at best but certainly nothing special. Everyone in the film seems to be overacting and nothing but nothing feels real.

I found it to be dreadful and at most times actually boring. Two words that you don't want assigned to your comedy!

The ending which was so charming in the original is flat and a huge disappointment.

Skip it and try to find the original!

mcw

Win Win...great fun.

2011-05-08T20:41:00.000-06:00

Paul Giamatti is a great actor but many times takes odd and offbeat roles (Barney's Version and The Last Station anyone?) that don't allow him access to the mainstream movie audience.

Win Win should be different. Writer/director Thomas McCarthy, in my opinion is three for three in films that he has directed. Including The Station Agent, The Visitor and now Win Win, I've loved all of them.

Giamatti plays a small town attorney struggling to keep his business viable. He volunteers to act as the guardian for an old man (Burt Young) only so he can keep the monthly stipend. When a strange young man (Alex Shaffer) shows up claiming to be a grandson the old man never knew about, the film comes alive. Giamatti is also the high school wrestling coach, and a lousy one at that. When this grandson goes to school and joins the wrestling team he is a great wrestler and singlehandedly raises the team from its previous depths. Life is good and everything seems under control.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Giamatti has nothing under control. His wife (Amy Ryan) knows nothing of the business troubles. Jeffrey Tambor and Bobby Cannavale play his two best friends and co-coaches on the wrestling team. They are little help to him and when the kid's mom (Melanie Lynskey) shows up looking for money, all hell breaks loose.

Win Win is one of the better films that I have seen all year and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Giamatti is his usual great self and the rest of the cast, the story, the acting and the writing are all superior.

See it.

mcw