Ron's Popcorn Reviews.com

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted January 9, 2010

In the vein of classic screwball comedies, It’s Complicated overcomes a tired premise with a smart script and likeable characters. And great performances, which goes unsaid (it’s Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin…what do you expect?). It’s not the typical romantic comedy with young and beautiful stars. This is a romantic comedy aimed at much more mature audience that will relate to these characters. For everyone else, It’s Complicated is just a pleasant and charming little place of escapism.

Meryl Streep plays Jane Adler, the owner of a bakery/restaurant in Santa Barbara. Ten years ago, she was married to Jake, played by Alec Baldwin. Jake cheated on her with the much younger Agnes, played by Lake Bell, and this led to a divorce. Now, Jane is completely lost while Jake is married to Agnes and raises a little boy that’s not his. Her kids are all grown up and moving on. On the weekend of her youngest son’s college graduation in Manhattan, Jane and Jake meet by chance at the hotel bar. They have a drink, which turns into a few drinks, which turns into a night of drinking, and eventually…you get it. Now Jane is having an affair with her ex-husband, who is cheating on his current wife with his old wife.

Things get more complicated (there’s a reason for that title) when Jane starts a fling with her architect, Adam, played by Steve Martin. The only one who even has a clue about her affair with her ex-husband is Harley, Jane’s future son-in-law, played by John Krasinski. Caught between the man she once trusted and never stopped loving and a charming architect, Jane’s life is pretty…complicated.

This is a funny, smart, charming, twisted and breezy romantic comedy. At times, too breezy. The setting is Santa Barbara, the score sounds like it was taken straight from an elevator, the sights of beaches and villas will make you think this movie is an ad for a vacation spa. And none of that matters. In fact, it makes the movie even better. This is escapism at its finest.

The most charming part of this movie, besides the performances of course, is the relationships between all the characters. Jane and her future son-in-law have such a sweet rapport and the way he worries at a hotel when something is going wrong is very endearing in the sense that you realize how close family this is. The hotel scene is terrific, where everyone winds up in the same place and it’s a hectic maze. You savor every moment of the chemistry and warmth. The weed scene might have been taken too far but seeing Meryl Streep play a stoned woman is something that cannot be missed.

This is becoming a tired cliché, but Meryl Streep never fails to astound. This actress is a legend and whenever she is in a movie, it goes unsaid that she will give a terrific performance as always. But I am still mesmerized at how effortlessly she transitions from a stone cold and pale nun in Doubt to such a warm and endearing woman in It’s Complicated. After all these years, watching Meryl Streep do her thing on screen is still something worth seeking out. Alec Baldwin displays some funny and perverted nastiness as a guy you can never trust but you always like. Steve Martin is effortlessly endearing as a nerdy and slightly pathetic architect. The real treat here though is watching Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin dance a verbal tango on screen.

It’s Complicated isn’t quite as predictable as you would expect, but even when it does use formula, it’s nice to see it used so well. So this isn’t an innovative and revolutionary film directed by James Cameron (not to imply that Avatar is) and it doesn’t have any long-term effects on you, but a breezy and charming little movie with great performances is always welcome in my book.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted January 2, 2010

When it was announced that Peter Jackson, the Oscar-winning visionary behind the cinematic adaptation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, would turn Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones into a movie, I was very excited to see his vision of the novel. Unfortunately, he practically forgot the source material. The novel was said to be unfilmable, and if a visionary like Peter Jackson can’t do the story justice on the big screen, then perhaps it is just that. The movie never fails to engage your eyes, but often stumbles when attempting to engage your heart.

The novel’s general plot is in the film. In the winter of 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon, played by Saoirse Ronan (the amazing young actress from Atonement) is raped (barely hinted at in the movie) and murdered by a creepy neighbor named George Harvey, played brilliantly by Stanley Tucci. It goes unsaid that her parents, played by Rachel Weisz and Mark Whalberg, are devastated. Susie’s soul goes off to a personal heaven, a sort of “in-between.” She looks down on her grieving family and her killer while learning how to let go of her own anger. The novel perfectly combined and balanced the tones of girly fantasy with gritty crime drama. However, the movie has a tough time running smoothly between heartbreak and fantastical afterlife.

What makes Jackson’s film suffer even more is that Alice Sebold’s novel isn’t perfect to begin with. The killer exits the story in a less than satisfying fashion in both the book and the movie. Call me a sadist, but I want to see this horrible human being suffer for what he did instead of simply falling off a cliff by accident. The book ended on a note of both hope and melancholy. The movie tidies things up and doesn’t even end the same way as the novel. The whole family dynamic of Susie’s mother cheating on her husband and then returning to her now grown-up kids is completely effaced from the film. An important element in crafting the character of George Harvey is also no where to be found in the movie. Basically, Peter Jackson keeps Alice Sebold’s general plot, waters down the grittiness of the source material, gets rid of the powerful and complex moral dilemmas, and keeps the weak points, such as George Harvey’s anticlimactic death.

Worst of all, Peter Jackson treats Susie as a subplot. Practically no time is dedicated to seeing Susie in her afterlife as she grows and learns to let go. The Lovely Bones is her story and how she learns from all of this. Jackson doesn’t focus on that and he doesn’t even really focus that much on everything going on with her family. He delivers an awkward mix that isn’t leaning one way or the other. He throws at the audience bits and pieces of each storyline and none of it all comes together and satisfies like the book did.

Many of the serious and mature elements of the novel that made it so powerful are barely hinted at in this film adaptation. The rape is hushed up and only implied in order to make the movie eligible for a PG-13 rating. Abigail’s (Susie’s mother) affair with the detective in charge of the murder investigation can only be understood if you actually read the book (there’s a suggestive scene in the movie in which Abigail visits the detective but if you haven’t read the book, you most likely won’t get the hint). At least Michael Imperioli, who plays Detective Len Fenerman, is a good enough actor to tell a story of his own through a guilty look in his eyes when Jack (Susie’s father) tells him what a good friend he has been throughout the investigation. The whole time span when the kids grow up and get married and resent their mother is never shown. And the entire back story of Susie seeing George Harvey’s childhood and pitying him isn’t here. These things that made Sebold’s novel so heart-wrenching and challenging are gone in favor of making a much lighter movie. And the movie isn’t even light!

Visually, Peter Jackson’s version of The Lovely Bones is beautiful. The scenes in Susie’s personal heaven are dazzling, especially in a particularly good montage. Loads of eye candy to be appreciated here, but none of that can compensate for a rudimentary and awkward adaptation of such a satisfying and smoothly written book. 

Stanley Tucci, an actor who has never given a bad performance, still manages to amaze audiences at how well he can act. Despite the character of George Harvey being scripted much less complexly than he was in the book, Tucci manages to capture the man’s essence through mannerisms and the way he reads is dialogue. Judging on how the character was written for the screenplay, he probably would’ve come off like a caricature of evil, but Tucci overcomes that by playing him as a much more pitiful and complex man. Saoirse Ronan, a mesmerizing actress of only 15, is unbelievably confident with herself. In both Atonement (for which she had to master an English accent) and The Lovely Bones (flawless American accent), you can’t believe how good she is. She comes off like a pro who has been doing this for years. I was mesmerized by her performance in Atonement, a performance that you wouldn’t believe could be played so perfectly by a 13-year-old girl in her first movie. This is a true star who has already been nominated for an Oscar among numerous other awards, and she’s only 15. If she’s still acting in her 30’s just imagine how many nominations and awards she will have.

I’d rather see an adaptation of The Lovely Bones from a director like Terry Gilliam or Alfonso Cuarón. Those are directors able to do much more tender and small-scale pictures. Peter Jackson is much more famous for doing epical films like The Lord of the Rings and the remake of King Kong. He’s not suited to do a movie set on a much quiter and dramatic note as well as adapting a book of this sort. Unfortuantely, a disappointing cinematic version of The Lovely Bones is what it took to show us this. He had the perfect ingredients (a perfect cast, dazzling visuals, perfect location) but his complete lack of sensitivity for the source material, which wasn’t pristine in the first place, comes off as a rudimentary and uneven experiment of tones and storytelling.

If only some director could come in, take Peter Jackson’s lush visuals and cast, and insert the strong parts of the book while writing out the weak parts (George Harvey’s unsatisfying death!), The Lovely Bones could be a great movie. But that’s wrong. Taking a hefty portion of someone else’s work and throwing in your own ideas is frowned upon. Sort of like taking a great and challenging book and throwing out all the elements that actually made it great and challenging.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted December 29, 2009

It is the measure of a performance when an actor can truly transcend his or her character’s hopelessness to the audience. In A Single Man, both Colin Firth and Julianne Moore effortlessly make the viewer feel destitute of happiness and joy. Do you hate a movie for this? Not quite. If it gets you to feel the way it wants you to, that’s some kind of achievement already. But A Single Man, though successfully melancholy, whisks by before you can really channel it and understand it. Do you resent a movie to some extent for this? I can’t help but to.

The movie is set in 1960’s Los Angeles at the peak of the Cuban Missile Crisis. George Falconer, played by Firth, is a gay English professor who has lost his partner Jim, played by Mathew Goode, in a car crash. Months have trudged by and George can no longer stand the constant emptiness and heartbreak. He tells us that waking up is the hardest part because he has to recall what character to play in society. He decides that this is the last time he will have to wake up and feel the isolation. Today, George Falconer is going to kill himself, but first he wants to routinely go through his day and make his final goodbyes. The movie tracks this day in George’s life and the things he experiences, which are mostly emotions instead of actual events, that may only push him further towards committing suicide or sway him from the idea.

A significant factor in this dilemma is his undying friendship with Charlotte, played by Julianne Moore. Though he is gay, she and George seem to have had a sexual relationship when both still lived in London. Charlotte has never found her footing in America and spends her days enclosed in her huge house with a bottle of gin. George, though clearly unhappy even before Jim’s death, kept her going. On the night that he wants to kill himself, he and Charlotte spend the evening drinking and conversing. This scene is pure and unfiltered brilliance. There is no actual arch to it, but it tells us everything we must be aware of about Charlotte and George and their relationship. A Single Man is being hailed as Colin Firth’s movie, but Julianne Moore is the shining star in this scene, grasping the essence of a neurotic alcoholic defeated by life but still dignified enough to consider herself a superior intellectual.

This is a fine looking movie. First time writer and director Tom Ford, a former fashion designer, beautifully crafts this bleak world through the use of a heavily desaturated color scheme and hypnotic surrealism. Some may find the highly detailed examinations of people in George’s life distracting, but an easy way to understand this movie is to realize that we are seeing everything through George’s eyes. When he blocks things out because he stuck in a flashback, we’re in that same state. He examines his secretary and her beauty, so we see the exact images he is looking at and we hear the same sounds he is hearing. There are lots of bizarre and surrealistic shots, but we only see them because George is seeing them and thinking them. Besides, these shots are also gorgeous in their uniqueness and style.

For the first half hour, I’m thinking A Single Man might be a brilliant if at times uneven little film, depending on how Ford decides to tie together George’s predicament. For the remainder of the movie, I continued to be dazzled by the beauty on screen but unaffected by the unfolding events. It continues to buildup and prepare you for something unpredictable but significant and then it spits out the anticlimax of all anticlimaxes. It takes a completely different route as if denying that it ever gave the audience any idea that all these weird little things might actually, oh I don’t know, lead to something. A Single Man ends on a quiet and pointless note. The subtext or message of the final acts completely went over my head. I won’t call it stupid because maybe I just don’t understand it, but this greatly lowered my opinion of what could have otherwise been a great movie examining the conscience and meaning of life.

Many are saying this movie is all style and no substance. For the first hour, Ford perfectly balances both. In the final act, the problem is too much substance, or too much of nothing. The style, whether you think there is too much of it, is amazing. The score is beautiful, the direction is masterful, and the color scheme is marvelous. This is a movie that really understands its time period, just as the great AMC show Mad Men does (I actually read that the sets for Mad Men were used for this film). It captures the aura of the time period and what it was like to live a double life. It also conveys the constant state of fear (there is a brilliant scene in which George lectures his students about fear) in American society. This was just after the McCarthy era when everyone was afraid of communism and nuclear war. A Single Man gets the general mood and spirit of that time period with little examinations of different cultural trends and shifts in the early 1960’s, like family values and of course the uprising of the hipster/artsy intellectual culture.

A Single Man could have been a great movie had it followed a steady pace. It went in reverse in the final act and was anticlimactic. The performances are terrific and the direction is superb, but this movie would have benefited from a more exciting script. I appreciate the philosophical themes but none of them were carried out. They were just exposed from time to time but then suddenly forgotten. This is a good movie, but not an incredible or deeply affecting one. It passes by and you forget about it. A Single Man is good, but not compelling enough to stand as one of the great examinations of our culture and shifting trends, nor is it compelling enough to stand as one of the best movies of 2009.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted December 28, 2009

The hardest thing about making a movie following the life of an alcoholic who has alienated everyone in his life is making the protagonist likeable, so that way the audience can root for his recovery. Darren Aronofsky and Mickey Rourke crafted this type of character flawlessly in The Wrestler. Crazy Heart, a movie that often feels like a watered down version of The Wrestler, missteps at every turn to make Bad Blake anything but a low life loser who deserves little to any sympathy.

Jeff Bridges is being highly praised for what is being marketed as the performance of a lifetime and the performance that will get him his long overdue Oscar, and he is certainly strong as Bad Blake, a boozing country star. He was once a popular performer but is now stuck doing gigs at bowling alleys and bars in small towns. At one venue, he meets Jean, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, a reporter interested in getting an interview. The two begin a fling, with Blake acting as a stepfather to Jean’s 4-year old son. Now the question is if Jean and her kid can inspire this boozer to turn his life around? Maybe in movie land that is possible, but in reality it’s simply naïve to have faith in this man.

Jeff Bridges is solid as Bad Blake, but he can’t make us care for someone who doesn’t deserve any sympathy. Randy “The Ram” Robinson from The Wrestler genuinely tried to do something with his life. We rooted for him because we saw that deep down this is a good person who let fame get the better of him. I can’t believe people are actually saying Bad Blake is even remotely as likeable. This man has been given countless chances to be a good person. He walks with a confident swagger and thinks its okay to screw this one up because another will always be waiting. He believes calling his 28-year old son, whom he hasn’t seen or heard from since he was a toddler, and saying, “Hey, it’s your old man” is actually a righteous thing to do. What’s even more ridiculous is that his good friend, played by Robert Duvall, says, “That’s the first step to getting him back. It’s never too late.” Anyone who honestly believes that quote from Duvall will love this movie and its protagonist who is simply not a good person. I happen to think that after a certain number of chances a person doesn’t deserve anymore.

As simply a movie, Crazy Heart is well-made. It has no actual problems. Mine is that I can’t have any faith in Bad Blake because he shows no signs of changing, but that is my personal outlook. It’s solidly acted, with Bridges giving a convincing performance and Maggie Gyllenhaal fulfilling her duties as the obligatory and naïve love interest. Collin Farrell shows up as Tommy Sweet, a famous country star who shot to stardom under Bad Blake’s wing. The character’s loyalty to the legendary singer turned boozer is heartwarming, but Farrell needs a more convincing southern accent. Like I said, there is nothing inherently wrong with the movie as long as you are gullible enough to think that Blake is someone to count on.

The music is the métier of the film. Weary Kind is a beautiful song that unfortunately makes Bad Blake seem more tortured and warm than he really is. Similarly, Bruce Springsteen made one of the greatest songs ever for The Wrestler, which actually defined the character perfectly. The duet with Bad Blake and Tommy Sweet is perhaps the highlight of the movie.

I don’t understand Bad Blake and I don’t want to. This movie will win over you or displease you based on your experiences. I happen to be unwillingly close to someone like this, so I am familiar with this story and this type of person. From personal experience, I can tell you that this man will never change. Maybe the ending of the movie will convince you that Bad Blake has indeed turned his life around, but the film doesn’t earn its ending. I will never be able to like Crazy Heart because I don’t agree with its philosophy. Something as little as that plays a big part in getting a viewer to believe in this story, especially one who knows this man too well.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted December 27, 2009

In his analysis of Citizen Kane, Roger Ebert wrote, “A man always seems the same size to himself, because he does not stand where we stand to look at him.” Guido Contini thinks of himself as the main character in a movie, where anything he does is forgiven because, well, don’t you forgive protagonists in movies for their faults? He doesn’t live in reality, which is where we stand to look at him. He lives in a fantasy where he will always remain the same dashing and tortured soul, instead of the actual pitiful man in reality. Rob Marshall’s Nine is a big and glossy musical with huge Hollywood stars, but its nothing like the shallow movie you expected. Each gorgeous shot is filled to the brim with philosophical meaning and symbolism, instead of actors and musical numbers screaming “Oscar!”

Guido, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, is Italy’s most successful director. He’s like a pioneer of new wave cinema. His last two movies were flops, and now producers and the press are pressuring him on details of his new movie. They want to know whether it will be Contini’s signature cinema Italiano, or if it’ll be another incomprehensible exercise in pretentiousness. He himself doesn’t know, and ten days before shooting is supposed to begin, he hasn’t written one word of the script. After vanishing from a press conference, Guido checks into a spa resort, hoping to clear his head. Things only get crazier instead of better. His obsessive and insecure mistress Carla, played by Penelope Cruz, arrives at the resort and wants to be seen with him in public. When his beloved wife Luisa, played by Marion Cotillard, arrives, both women get radical. In the meantime, Guido is going through an internal crisis of Catholic guilt and has flashbacks to his childhood. With the women in his life demanding attention, greedy producers setting deadlines, a screenplay to write ten days before production is set to start, and a crisis of faith, Guido may not survive the craziness around him.

Nine is not a musical in the traditional sense. There are no awkward moments when characters suddenly break into song and dance. All of the musical numbers, which are visually dazzling as expected, are fragments of Guido’s imagination. In reality, no one is singing. I suppose that’s why the movie comes off as more of a character study or a human drama rather than an over-the-top musical, because no one in the real world is actually bursting into song. The events taking place in reality are authentically acted and written like they would be in any drama about a man completely lost in his own world.

This is a deeply philosophical film. Anyone can relate to Guido’s state of anxiety and uncertainty. This movie warrants countless essays dissecting it for philosophical meaning and symbolism, but I’ll try to keep my analysis brief and coherent. Every person is a main character or dashing soul to him or herself. They don’t see themselves from the perspective of another main character or dashing soul. For example, a sidekick in some action movie. Does the sidekick know that he or she is just a sidekick? They have a past just like everyone else, and they are the leads in their own movie. Guido understands this and acts on it. He expects every other character in his life to view him as the lead in their lives, instead of viewing himself as a subplot in someone else’s life. He treats everyone around him as a minor character in his movie instead of as a person with the same outlook on him in their own movie. This is why Guido can’t sustain relationships. He has an ego, one that makes him believe he is not a lead, but the lead. Everyone, including me, lives their life as a film whether they admit it or not. The people around us seem like minor characters in our movie, but we fail to realize that we are also minor characters in their movie.

Rob Marshall displays some serious symbolism here. No movie about the theater since Synecdoche, New York has been so prone to interpretations and analysis. Countless shots are thought provoking and further my idea that Guido views his life as a movie, maybe even literally. In the final act of the film, all of the characters except for Guido put on makeup and converse among themselves. Carla the mistress and Luisa the wife talk like fellow actresses, as though everything that happened in the movie was of Guido’s own creation. It almost seemed as if they were preparing to be in that movie inside his head.

When Guido realizes he is wrong and gets out of his fantasy and into reality, we see how much he really hates himself because he realizes the pitiful and pathetic man. We see, especially through the lighting, Guido’s harsh reality. Many more things like this had my mind racing as to the nature of the surrealism of the film and the symbolism. It’s rare that such a big and glossy production can provoke so many thoughts. What’s even rarer is that this is a musical. But again, this is not a musical in the traditional sense.

But what am I doing? Talking about philosophical subtexts? You all want to hear about the visually dazzling musical numbers, and there is no shortage of those here. Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Kate Hudson, Fergie, and Judi Dench all have gorgeous scenes brimming with great music and vibrant dancing. I personally think Fergie’s was the best, because of its very artsy and antique spirit, but Kate Hudson’s was almost as good and combined modern filmmaking with a very classic and hyperkinetic style. The sets are great and the dancing is exhilarating.

The performances are fantastic from everyone in the cast. People rely on Daniel Day-Lewis to deliver but Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard are equally strong, with Cruz perfectly channeling an obsessive and disturbed mistress and Cotillard heartbreakingly true as a dignified and strong wife. After all, this is a movie filled with Oscar winners and nominees. Daniel Day-Lewis and Marion Cotillard even won in the same year.

Nine seamlessly combines entertainment, dark comedy, heartbreaking drama, Catholic guilt, Italian culture, dazzling visuals, commentary on the entertainment business, and serious philosophical subtexts and the mix of these qualities makes it one of the most memorable and powerful musicals of this decade. I was completely taken by surprise by what I expected to be an empty and shallow exercise in big stars chewing the scenery. I am not familiar with Federico Fellini’s 8 ½, but I can say from a noob’s point of view that Nine never fails to dazzle and exhilarate. Isn’t that what we go to the movies for?

 Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted December 26, 2009

Guy Ritchie’s take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic detective will no doubt be met with skepticism upon arrival, but Sherlock Holmes is one of the most entertaining and clever films to come out this year. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law take on the iconic roles of Holmes and Watson, respectively, in an updated and darker version brought to life through hyperkinetic direction, hip dialogue, a terrific score from Hans Zimmer, and wonderful performances. The less you think about the classic characters, the more you’re likely to enjoy this wildly entertaining adventure that’s well worth your time.

The story (created entirely for the film with no connection to Doyle) begins with Holmes and Watson flaunting the attempts of Lord Blackwood, played by Mark Strong, to perform black magic on an innocent girl. Blackwood is arrested and sentenced to be hung. In the months leading to the hanging, Holmes and Watson face more personal issues. Watson wants to leave the business and get married. Holmes is afraid of losing his best friend and stays locked up in a room with the curtains drawn. The bromance between Holmes and Watson never fails to amuse and ring true thanks to the undeniable chemistry between Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law.

On the eve of his execution, Blackwood calls on Holmes as a last request. The detective obliges and is told by Blackwood that the two of them are about to embark on a journey that is beyond nature and understanding. At first, Holmes discards the babblings of an insane cultist, but after Blackwood is hung and somehow “rises from the grave,” his bizarre claims might not be so ludicrous. The situation grows only more mysterious after the visit of Irene Adler, Holmes’ former love interest, played by Rachel McAdams, who is working for a shady (both figuratively and literally) employer. Holmes and Watson embark on what seems to be a suicide mission since Blackwood may in fact have supernatural powers, but the genius duo piece the clues together and unravel a political conspiracy through old school methods that never fail to fascinate and dazzle the viewer.

Sherlock Holmes is ridiculously satisfying and brilliant. I can’t imagine anyone, even Baker Street aficionados, not being intrigued and entertained by it. So perhaps the classic Holmes is much more mannered and gentlemanly than the crude one on display here. Perhaps the classic Watson is much more plump and dimwitted than the charming and suave one here. But do I really care? I’m a huge fan of the updated tenants at 221B Baker Street. I did not expect this rather awesome film from the likes of Guy Ritchie, especially after the prosaic trailer.

The mystery itself is extremely well handled. I was shocked at how well it was tied together with absolutely no loose ends or plot holes. During the finale, Holmes displays his brilliance and describes all of the events and how they were possible and I was astounded at how it all made sense and came full circle. There was one missing piece that I figured the filmmakers just got sloppy with, but even that was explained a little later in the film. Just as you think a plot hole or a loose end will pop up, Ritchie and the team figures out some ingenious way to address it and explain it. No matter how crazy or unexplainable you think something may be in this movie, it all makes sense by the exciting and well earned conclusion.

Guy Ritchie makes this movie into a gorgeous visual spectacle. He does a rare thing by making the sets and the direction come together with the screenplay to only better tell the story and this just makes for a richer experience. The look of the film is dark and gothic, reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd. Very few filmmakers can achieve that specific atmosphere and mood for a film, but Ritchie is very successful at giving Sherlock Holmes a European gothic feel. What makes his work more impressive is that he mixes the grim look of the film with a very funny script. The movie does not take itself too seriously which is a mistake so many directors do when making a big blockbuster. Ritchie respects the darkness and humor of the story and that shines through his direction. He combines cutting edge filmmaking with a classic story seamlessly.

Another technical element that better tells the story is the excellent score by the great Hans Zimmer. In one year, Zimmer makes one of the best scores of 2009 and one of the worst. The former is of course for Sherlock Holmes, and the latter is for Angels and Demons. His score for this move is perfect a perfect blend of Victorian music and a light banjo tune that highlights, without drawing too much attention to itself, the sinister and light feel of the film. It doesn’t pound at your ears with insane devil chanting, but is a very charming tune that lurks in dark gothic alleys, better creating the atmosphere of the movie. Like the script and the performances, the score avoids any pretentiousness.

Sherlock Holmes is awesome. The relationship between Holmes and Watson is one of the great onscreen bromances. The performances maintain a great sarcastic wit. The story is airtight and intelligent. The action is suspenseful and well choreographed. The score is beautiful and subtle. The direction is hyperkinetic and vibrant. What else do you want from a big blockbuster? This is the most pleasantly surprising movie of the year. It’s the guilty pleasure of guilty pleasures, and I love it. What’s even more charming and nostalgic is that even through the changes in the characters, Guy Ritchie still manages to grasp the aura and spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic stories.  It may not be everyone’s Sherlock Holmes, but for me, 221B Baker Street has never been so exciting.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted December 21, 2009

The Messenger is one of the most powerful and dynamic films I have ever seen about war veterans. It is uncanny that two terrific movies about the war in Iraq to come out in one year, with the best being Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker. Ironically, not one frame of this movie takes place in Iraq or anywhere overseas. This entire film is set in America, and dissects the common soldier who has been torn apart by his experiences and his feelings of inadequacy and isolation. Directed by Oren Moverman, an Israeli war veteran, this movie understands and feels its characters, resulting in one of the most authentic war films I have ever seen.

Ben Foster plays Sergeant Will Montgomery. After being injured in Iraq, he is assigned to a Casualty Notification service under the command of Tony Stone, played by Woody Harrelson in an Oscar caliber performance. Stone has strict rules and philosophies about their job. You should never say “good morning” or “good afternoon,” because really, there is nothing good about this particular morning or afternoon. You always park a certain distance from the house of the people who are about to discover that their loved one has died, because if they see the car, it creates a minute of unnecessary agony. Montgomery at first dislikes Stone and his indifferent attitude. After months of working together, the two men realize that they are each other’s only portal to any kind of understanding. They cannot survive without each other in surroundings where no one understands their behavior and psyche.

The trailer for The Messenger is selling this as a romance between Montgomery and a widow, played by Samantha Morton. After watching this film and thinking about it, I strongly believe that The Messenger is really about Will Montgomery and Tony Stone connecting in order to survive their environment. The ethically wrong romance is treated as more of a subplot than the central idea or theme of the movie.

Moverman’s film is filled with long powerful shots that have you thinking far after he diverts the camera. The most philosophical and meaningful for me was a shot in the final act of the film when Montgomery and Stone sit on a couch as Montgomery recalls an experience in Iraq that led to his injury. The terms and language they use has no meaning to us and it shouldn’t. The power of that shot lies in the faces of the two actors playing these two complex men. The message it conveyed to me is that they understand each other like no one else could. The way Stone listens to Montgomery’s story had me thinking as to what was racing through his mind and the emotions he was feeling. We are not meant to understand them, but observe them and their bond.

Another powerful scene is at a wedding rehearsal. Montgomery’s high school sweetheart is getting married to man ready to commit and she tells Montgomery to stay away. After getting into a fight and getting drunk, the two men show up at the party and make fools of themselves. Montgomery stands up to make a toast only to be interrupted by the groom, who says, “For our soldiers. We support you all the way.” Montgomery turns to Stone and says, “Hear that? They support us.” Stone laughs and says, “All the way.” Then he makes a crude toast to the soon to be newlyweds and sings in his drunkenness. Stone supports him in his singing, all the way. This once again conveyed to me that in a room of so many people, the only person who understands Will Montgomery is Tony Stone, and the only person who understands Tony Stone is Will Montgomery.

The scenes in which the two men notify the newly grieving people are gritty and powerful, brimming with authenticity. Steve Buscemi, of all actors, plays the father of a soldier who has just died. His two scenes validate The Messenger as one of the most raw and heartbreaking autopsies of the common soldier. Some scenes are absolutely tormenting.

As good as Ben Foster is, the dynamite performance here comes from Woody Harrelson. He creates this character on so many different levels of feeling and emotion. We feel his loneliness and how much he values himself based on his work. He doesn’t just abide by the protocol of a Casualty Notification officer. He lives by it. When the character bursts, jolts go through the audience.

This movie, like all great movies about war, has no political agenda. Whether you supported the war in Vietnam or not, The Deer Hunter appealed to all because it was about the soldiers, not their political allegiances. Likewise, The Hurt Locker was simply about the universal soldier affected by war. Following that trend, The Messenger is about the isolation of a soldier and his or her need for understanding.

The Messenger is not perfect and could have benefited from a more developed relationship between Montgomery and the widow played by Samantha Morton, but the central theme of the film is the understanding and friendship between the two soldiers and that is developed and conveyed perfectly. The movie also let me down in the final act, where it practically abandons the grittiness in the rest of the film. Little things like this keep it from being a four star movie and keep it from achieving the same level of greatness as The Hurt Locker , but for any critic who thought that Jim Sheridan’s clichéd Brothers from earlier this year was a raw and honest war film, witness the ferocious power of The Messenger. This is what an authentic and original war movie really looks like.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted December 20, 2009

James Cameron’s ridiculously high budget Avatar will always be remembered as the $400 million movie. I will always remember it as the $400 million movie that I walked through the leavings of a snowstorm to see in real IMAX. Or I might remember it as the colossal waste of money. Avatar comes more than a decade after Cameron’s Titanic (maybe Cameron took a hefty portion of Titanic’s exponentially high gross to finance this project). This epic fantasy is quite different than the romance between a beggar and a socialite. Basically, everyone’s heard of Avatar and most likely everyone will see it. Who isn’t interested in what $400 million can do in a movie? But Avatar is this year’s, heck, this decade’s biggest disappointment.

The movie takes place in 2154 on a distant planet called Pandora. Corporations are interested in the planet because of “unobtainium,” a precious mineral that sells for a nice profit on the black market, though not half as much as it cost to make this movie. The problem in exploiting this mineral is getting past the Na’vi, an indigenous population that rests on the biggest deposit of unobtainium. The Na’vi  are blue and stand 10 feet tall and look almost like real people, once you get past the overwhelmingly computerized look. Sam Worthington stars as Jake Sully, a paralyzed marine who might have a second chance on Pandora. He is allowed to communicate with the Na’vi through the “avatar” program. The program combines human DNA with Na’vi DNA, creating a hybrid that looks like a native. Jake can control his avatar through a genetic link while he lies in a bed of sorts. This program was started by Grace Augustine, played by Sigourney Weaver.

Jake is told by Colonel Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang, to learn from the Na’vi people and gain their trust so it will be easier to negotiate with them. Quaritch promises to arrange a surgery that will allow Jake to walk again if he successfully completes this mission. Jake enthusiastically complies. He goes into the wildlife of Pandora, through his avatar, and is saved by Neytiri, played through motion-capture by Zoe Saldaña. Jake is accepted by the Na’vi and learns their ways. Now he is torn between his promise to Quaritch and his growing respect for the natives. So the marine goes through a transformation and realizes that massacring innocent people is wrong. This leads to an epic battle that is the highlight of this entire 2 hour and 40 minute movie.

Do I have to say it again? $400 MILLION! I’m not even sure if that’s the budget because the studio constantly changes its estimates (it’s becoming annoying). The point is that Avatar looks like a cartoon. Yes, I sad it. The movie being touted as a breakthrough is nothing of the sort. District 9 from earlier this year was made on a budget of $30 million. That’s milk money compared to Avatar’s budget. The special effects in that movie are much better than they are in James Cameron’s so-called “breakthrough movie that will revolutionize cinema.” District 9 made the aliens fit into the shot seamlessly. In Avatar, the Na’vi look extremely computerized and stick out when they are in scenes with humans. I have no idea what the $400 million (or whatever the damn budget is) went into. I saw the film in IMAX 3D, on the only real IMAX screen in Manhattan, and it still looks cartoonish. The landscapes are gorgeous, but the Na’vi look fake, just like their personalities.

This is a very flawed film. The story is soaked in clichés and is predictable from start to finish. It’s obvious that Jake will eventually fall in love with Neytiri and with the Na’vi culture. This is all formula. Then there are the unbearably corny scenes of Jake praying to the “Tree of Souls” and rounding up the Na’vi for the battle between the natives and the greedy corporation (at least it leads to one of the best battles ever on screen). The dialogue is hackneyed and the situations are melodramatic. If only the $400 million filmmaking could compensate.

I generally hate those movie robots that are inhabited by real people who have to move their arms around so the robot will replicate them. The robots act human and it’s creepy and stupid. This is the main reason why District 9 sank for me in the third act. I was willing to make an exception for Avatar because the movie takes place in the 22^nd century. But when the robot controlled by Quaritch takes out a giant knife and starts flipping it around like a real person, I gave up and had to admit that Avatar is simply a disappointment.

I like the performances from Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Giovanni Ribisi, and Stephen Lang. I first saw Sam Worthington in Terminator Salvation earlier this year, in which he gave a mundane performance. Here, Sam Worthington creates a fully fleshed out character that we can root for despite the clichéd narrative. I noticed a clever technique that James Cameron used to convey Jake’s shifting alliances. At first, Jake is seen in his regular form. As he begins to blend in with the Na’vi and become one of them, Jake disappears into his avatar and that’s the only way we see him for most of the time. When we see Jake in regular form again, it’s like a harsh jolt back to reality. Stephen Lang is deliciously sinister as Quaritch even though I wish the character was give a little more humanity. Sigourney Weaver is eccentric and complex and dynamic as Grace Augustine, the founder of the Avatar program. Giovanni Ribisi is hilarious as the arrogant and ruthless head of the corporation. Fine performances elevate Avatar from its hackneyed script.

I sincerely like Avatar and I wish it could have been a better movie. The reason why I sound so harsh on the film is because of how much it was built-up. James Cameron failed in every way to make his movie live up to the hype. If this movie had been made on a $40 million budget by Michael Bay, I would’ve said, “Wow, Michael Bay was actually to make a semi-intelligent movie with great action.” Since this is a James Cameron movie made on one of the greatest recorded budgets of all time, the standards are set higher. It’s the case between everything you imagined Avatar to be and everything it turned out not to be.

The best scenes are between Worthington and Lang. The scenes with the Na’vi are dull and corny. The only highlight to them is seeing the gorgeous landscapes which absorb you into this world, especially in 3D (better in real IMAX 3D but the high ticket cost is not worth it because of the rest of the movie). The epic finale is worth the price of admission alone, which is why I ultimately have to say this is a movie to see. Experiencing that battle in true IMAX 3D is exhilarating and gorgeous. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie failed to measure up to that battle.

To me, James Cameron will always be the director who wasted one of the greatest budgets of all time. Avatar is not a breakthrough and it will not change the way we watch movies. This is not the revolution in cinema you’ve been hearing about. Ignore all of the lame comparisons to Star Wars you’ve been hearing (unfortunately, the great Roger Ebert begins his review of Avatar with: “Watching Avatar, I felt sort of the same as when I saw Star Wars in 1977.” He also says that Cameron is the only man left in Hollywood who knows how to spend a budget like this wisely). There is nothing wrong with a movie just being good, but when it’s made on such an insane budget, it doesn’t get to be just good. It has to be something incredible. Something truly epic.

I woke up before 7 a.m. to see the only available showing in true IMAX. I walked through inches of snow and slush to get to the subway. I waited through the train delays. I stood in line in the cold so I could get decent seats. I was disappointed. Is Avatar memorable? Yes, but not for its content. It is memorable because of all the craziness involved with getting to the theater. It is memorable because it is the biggest waste of money in the history of cinema. I don’t think that’s the impression James Cameron was going for.  

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted December 16, 2009 (Early Review)

It is unconventional for a costume drama to open up the Toronto Film Festival. At the same time I suppose The Young Victoria is an unconventional costume drama. This sub genre has been soaked in clichés for several years, but this hidden gem represents a light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, this film avoids almost every cliché exploited in a typical costume drama. The heroine is not married to an abusive and possessive sociopath and we the audiences are not subjected to a bore.

Queen Victoria, played by Emily Blunt, narrates the first few cuts in which we see her as a young girl. She describes the solitude of her being, trapped in a palace under the close watch of her mother, played harrowingly by Miranda Richardson, and her power hungry step father, played by Mark Strong embarking on a string of dynamic and terrific performances.

As Victoria grows up, her step father begins to excessively shove a “regency” in her face. This regency states that Victoria will give up her right to the throne when her uncle, played exuberantly by Jim Broadbent, dies. She continually refuses, which only angers her step father who slowly begins to abuse her psychologically and is on the brink of physical violence. After her uncle dies, she takes the throne from under her greedy parents and denies them even the right to give advice.

Victoria is a liberal and a romantic, something uncommon in the 1800’s among hordes of old school politicians. She finds solace when conversing with her shady advisor, played by Paul Bettany, and her compassionate husband, played by Rupert Friend. The Young Victoria greatly succeeds at creating strong male characters instead of settling for the cliché that every man in those times has to be abusive and sadistic.

The first half of this film is almost like a contemporary conspiracy picture. Victoria’s second uncle plans to send in his nephew to infiltrate her trust in order to steal the throne. One of the advisors passes down paintings and teaches Albert, the nephew and also Victoria’s future husband, the names of these people and to be wary of them. It’s almost like a costume drama about an inside job. Then we are taken to Victoria’s struggles as the Queen. The first half hour of this movie is fine filmmaking.

There is a dinner scene executed with great grandeur and impeccable attention to detail, not just in terms of design, but more in the placement of certain characters, the lighting, and the body language. Jim Broadbent is heartbreaking, funny, and perhaps even pitiful in this one scene of emotional torment. His dialogue and the way he chooses to project his voice, as well his posture, gives us an insight into this man’s soul. We fear what he might say but know exactly what he feels. When he finally does let his emotions pour out, it does not feel phony for one frame. Broadbent does not strike one false note.

Emily Blunt delivers a charming performance as Queen Victoria, a young liberal amongst conservative policies. When we first see Victoria, she is a fun loving and charismatic soul. As we watch her grow up through her uncle’s abuse and several deceiving advisors, we almost forget that she started out as a young hipster. Blunt evolves so naturally in the role that we see her as an actual person, a wild youth and a mature and responsible adult, and we aren’t even aware of the crescendo in her character.

What the general population and even most professionals expect from a costume drama are the actual costumes. The Young Victoria chooses to focus on its characters rather than what they are wearing. The script, written by Julian Fellowes, rarely trails off into the dopey drama shamelessly exhibited in Pride and Prejudice and Marie Antoinette. This is a movie that pays attention to the effects of Victoria’s actions on the public instead of indulging itself with the soap opera audiences rolled their eyes to in The Duchess.

The Young Victoria at times plods with unnecessary melodrama, but there is more to praise about this movie than there is to criticize. It’s not an especially memorable or impacting film, but it is thought provoking in its contrast between Victoria’s struggles and the political climate today. Some may see it is a history textbook, but I view it as a symbol of the way politicians have evolved since the 1800’s, and how they have in some ways stayed the same. It tells us of the nature people harbor inside no matter what century they live in. Victoria supports public housing like Obama supports public healthcare. There is always a fight to be fought and progression to be made, whether you live in 1836 or 2009.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted December 11, 2009

Since his lauded 2006 critical darling, Letters from Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood has tried and failed to sweep the Oscars with yet another Awards season favorite. His latest film, Invictus, is unlikely to do any better than Changeling or Gran Torino at winning over Academy voters. It will however resonate for many people, as well as me, as the most inspirational movie of the year. Invictus seemed like the type of film that would dominate the Oscars and stand as one the best movies of 2009 (a Clint Eastwood movie starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela is bound for Oscar glory) but it turns out to be a much quieter and low-key drama.

Morgan Freeman stars as the first black president of South Africa (I am assuming anyone reading this knows who Nelson Mandela is). The country is on the brink of civil war. At a Rugby match, Mandela notices that all of the whites are cheering for the Springboks, the national South African team, and that all of the blacks are cheering for the opposing team. The blacks hate the Springboks because to them it symbolizes the Apartheid-era. Mandela realizes what must be done to unify his divided nation. While most black citizens want the team banned, the president makes a smart decision backed by smart reasoning: Taking away the beloved team from the whites would only reinforce their fears of a black takeover.

Matt Damon plays Francois Pienaar, captain of the Springboks. The team is doing horribly and newspapers and fans are calling for Pienaar’s instant removal as captain of the team. Sensing that he and Pienaar are more or less in the same position, Mandela invites him for tea. The two scorched leaders meet and silently agree to lead their nation to glory. The only way to do that is through rugby, a language that speaks to everyone in South Africa. The Springboks go from being a disgrace to world champions in the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

Invictus banishes naïve ideas that South Africa was suddenly a unified nation after the fall of Apartheid. The movie is soul-stirring and greatly inspirational, due in most part to a fantastic performance from Morgan Freeman. The film suffers from rather mundane drama and poor editing. Invictus is the type of movie we expect to sweep the Oscars just after seeing the trailer, but this isn’t quite an Oscar contender (except for Morgan Freeman’s performance). It doesn’t carry the complexity or compelling drama necessary to make this a rousing picture, let alone win Awards. Don’t get me wrong; this is a very  good film, but it is not great.

Morgan Freeman is the actor you would always picture to play Nelson Mandela in a biopic. Their resemblance is undeniable. In one of the early scenes, a news report is being shown and it might as well have been archive footage. On a fuzzy camera and from a great distance, it is impossible to differentiate Freeman from the legendary man he is portraying. Freeman reminds us that pure skill can only do so much when an actor is portraying a real-life person. Frank Langella was great as Richard Nixon, but Freeman’s embodiment of Nelson Mandela is always just a tad more believable because of how much they look alike. Again, skill can only do so much when an actor is portraying a real-life person. The same goes in reverse: A resemblance can only do so much when an actor is portraying a real-life person. Freeman always seems like a warm man to being with, which is why he is the perfect choice for this role. He shows us Mandela’s warmth, intelligence, and charisma. It is a terrific package of acting worthy of a nomination for Best Leading Actor.

Some may find it puzzling that the first Nelson Mandela biopic is actually a sports drama about a rugby team, but this is the perfect device for showing Mandela’s struggle to connect to the people of South Africa. Had this movie been all politics, it would have been mostly boring and inaccessible. It is instead greatly entertaining and inspirational. By showing Mandela through rugby, Eastwood shows his more humanistic and personal side because he is, after all, a rugby fan. A sport is a universal language, as shown in the movie and in society. More people can connect and relate to the story because it’s not stuck in politics and speaks to a wider audience. Besides, going to a movie about Nelson Mandela and not seeing him as a regular person with emotions and hobbies would be boring because then we would only see him as the person we read about in textbooks.

Invictus ultimately fails to be a grand and rousing experience because of its editing. Several scenes don’t have to be present. A few of these unnecessary moments can be dissected for a message, but I’m not so sure that the meaning is deep or symbolic enough to have a place in this movie. Take for example a completely pointless shot of one of Mandela’s bodyguards (the actor who plays him was also in Skin, another movie this year dealing with Apartheid) sleeping as everyone else celebrates a victory for the Springboks. The symbolism of this shot is clear: the bodyguard doesn’t care and hasn’t been won over yet by a team that represents the Apartheid regime. All he cares about is protecting Mandela. Is the meaning of that shot worthwhile enough? Is it really worth inserting into the final product? Then there is a very weird and distracting scene of a plane, seemingly attempting to assassinate Mandela, which flies alarmingly close over a stadium in order to pump up the fans. This could have easily been left in the cutting room.

The movie eventually deteriorates into an average sports drama, with the last half hour consumed in a dull and overlong rugby game. Eastwood builds the suspense but the clock ticking as if every second is a drumbeat and the slow motion shots of players colliding into each other grows boring. Invictus occasionally strikes brilliance (my favorite scene is when the Springboks go and play rugby with a group of impoverished black children. The music and the direction hints at a near masterpiece) but is never consistent in being so. What could have been a movie for the soul and the Oscars is just for the soul, and I suppose there is nothing inherently wrong with a movie that’s very good. I just feel a tad disappointed when Clint Eastwood directs a movie about Nelson Mandela starring Morgan Freeman and it doesn’t turn out to be the second coming of Citizen Kane.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted December 9, 2009

Any war movie released alongside Kathryn Bigelow’s masterful The Hurt Locker has its work cut out. Jim Sheridan’s Brothers, adapted from the Danish picture Brodre, does not even try to aspire to any level of greatness. It is the typical war movie, bearing tired clichés of the “all American” family living in a small town that experiences a tragedy. Everything in this movie feels generic.

The film begins with Sam Cahill, played by Tobey Maguire, a day away from deploying to Afghanistan. He is married to his highschool sweetheart Grace, played by Natalie Portman, and they have two daughters together. His brother is Tommy, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, a troublemaker just being released from prison. They have an alcoholic war veteran dad who is proud to call Sam his own while denouncing Tommy (formula!). When in Afghanistan, Sam’s chopper gets shot down and he is presumed to be dead. He is actually captured by the Taliban and held somewhere in a cave.

Grace is notified that Sam has died. Now Tommy, the black sheep of the family, has to step into the spotlight and be a father figure for his two nieces. He gradually begins to change from being a drunken loser to a caring and responsible adult. He wins over Grace, who has never been very fond of him, and takes care of his brother’s family. Things get complicated when in the midst of their shared grief, Tommy and Grace share a kiss. They move past it and acknowledge that it didn’t mean anything. Then, like a formulaic movie halting a nearly perfect Oscar season, Sam returns home. He acts out and leaves his family in a state of fear.

Brothers is not a bad film. It features fantastic performances but suffers from a generic script by David Benioff and underwhelming direction by Jim Sheridan. The director is completely indifferent towards this story. He shoots the whole movie impersonally and doesn’t seem to know or understand the characters. Kathryn Bigelow conveyed her characters’ emotions through certain camera techniques and lighting in The Hurt Locker. When Brothers is sad, happy, sentimental, or suspenseful, Sheridan doesn’t care enough to convey that. He relies too heavily on his three leads to create an atmosphere. They do what they can, but a director is there for a reason, not just to yell “action” and “cut.”

David Benioff must have rummaged through every recycling bin of war movie clichés to put together this script together. There is the alcoholic war veteran father who constantly puts down the misbehaved son and over praises his other offspring who followed in his footsteps. There are the overly innocent daughters. There is the small conservative “all American” town that has “Bring our Boys Home” written in every diner. This has all been done before!One of the few good scenes has an ironic line from Natalie Portman’s character where Gyllenhaal says, “You’re the cheerleader who married a football player,” and she responds, “I’m such a cliché.” The biggest cliché in this movie is the father, played by Sam Shepard.

The shifts in tones are clumsy and awkward. For the first half, the movie switches back and forth between Grace’s grief back at home and her relationship with Tommy to Sam’s capture in Afghanistan; it never works. The score is psychotic and pounds at your ears in the scenes in Afghanistan. The performances from the three leads are very good, most notably Natalie Portman who has never displayed such powerful acting before. She strikes a perfect balance between the grief stricken wife and the strong woman with great conviction. Tobey Maguire at times overacts but is effective in creating a soldier who has experienced things that will leave him traumatized for the rest of his life. The little girls who play Sam and Grace’s daughters are flat out creepy and unconvincing. One of them screams things like “they have sex all the time” (wasn’t aware a 7 year-old knew so much about sex) and after her phony outburst looks at the rest of the cast for assurance that she was convincing.

Thanks to strong performances and a solid final act, Brothers is saved from being a complete mess. Had David Benioff made his script deeper and more personal, this movie wouldn’t be as generic and clichéd. Jim Sheridan could’ve also made his direction more in touch with the emotions on screen. What could’ve been a powerful drama fails because of uninspired and impersonal filmmaking. Brothers is a reminder of some of the biggest problems in cinema today. 

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted December 6, 2009

Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air is the best movie of 2009. It is a testament to the talent of everyone involved in making this wonderful film. In its plot, its carefully written dialogue, and its array of emotions relatable to anyone living in this economic and cultural climate, Up in the Air is for and of its time. It is about Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizer. In other words, he gets hired to fire people. In a bad economy, business is great.

Ryan is played by George Clooney in a performance that defines a career. Think of him as a contractor. An employer doesn’t have the balls to fire an employee, so they make a call to a company that sends out Ryan to do it for them. He’s skilled in making unemployment seem like an opportunity. Ryan loves his job. He hates home and enjoys the relationship-free lifestyle. He flies around the country, staying at a new hotel every couple of days, occasionally gives lectures on the virtues of a solo life, and aspires to collect ten-million frequent flyer miles. When asked why, he says the miles are the goal.

On one of his trips, he meets Alex, played by the lovely Vera Farmiga. This is the frequent-flyer woman of his dreams. Their relationship is casual but soon enough he starts to go against his own philosophy when he genuinely begins to fall in love with her. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is formula. The other woman in his life is Natalie, played by newcomer (she had a small part in the Twilight movies) Anna Kendrick. She is hired by Ryan’s slimy boss, played by Jason Bateman, to revolutionize the corporate downsizing business. She preaches that the efficient way to fire people is via video chat. Ryan believes in a more dignified way of work. His boss tells him to take Natalie along on the road to show her how it’s done.

In this economy, Up in the Air defines the time we live in. In a few scenes, Ryan and Natalie arrive in offices that are practically empty. They have long lists of employees to fire, and they do so. Their morals don’t matter to them. They have a job to do. Their pain comes after when they’re in private and can afford to reflect and assess. The firing scenes are both hilarious and tragic. Jason Reitman toys with our emotions, making us laugh and sigh at the bittersweet scenes. This is dark comedy. The scene where this is most on display is with J.K. Simmons. One second you could be laughing and the next you could be heartbroken. Simmons is terrific in this short but brilliant scene, where he combines a deadpan style of humor with genuine drama.

Jason Reitman, making his third feature film after Thank You For Smoking and Juno, knows how to capture the cultural climate better than any other filmmaker working today. His films always feel like a breath of fresh air because of their honesty, wit, and relevance to the time we live in. I read that during filming, he posted notices saying that a documentary is being made about people who have been laid off in this recession and everyone is welcome to come and share their thoughts on camera. No wonder Up in the Air flows with authenticity. This is why his movies are so honest, because he knows the emotions people are feeling right now. He always manages to convey those feelings and thoughts through people who are hated, such as Nick Naylor in Thank You For Smoking and clearly Ryan Bingham.

The reason why his movies, excluding Juno, mean so much to me is that I can relate to the protagonists instead of the citizens judging them. I wonder whether people in the audience see Ryan Bingham through the eyes of the people he’s firing or see everyone else through his eyes. As odd as it may seem, I have always been able to identify with Nick Naylor and now Ryan Bingham. They do tough things that are possible because, as Nick says in Thank You For Smoking, they have “flexible morals.” I easily put myself in Ryan’s shoes and understood every emotion he was feeling. I knew his pain and his joy, even when it’s not evident on screen. This is not because Reitman has made a predictable movie (he didn’t), but because I can relate to the character in ways that others can’t.

When I first saw Thank You For Smoking, I thought it was the work of a genius. I still do. Then I saw Juno, which was very good but not quite great. Jason Reitman’s films were now at an even number. One could only pick and guess as to what movies Reitman liked to make. I was hoping and guessing that Thank You For Smoking would be his trend. Now with Up in the Air, his best and deepest and most mature film to date, I see that my guess was correct. I find that Juno is his only movie with characters that I can’t relate to or understand. He’s not interested in peppering Up in the Air with the same satirical one-liners in Thank You For Smoking and he’s definitely not interested in injecting the movie with the same self-conscious indie-mania as in Juno. This is a much more personal and mature film.

His title sequence for Up in the Air isn’t quite as original as those for his two other films but I’m going to stop with comparisons. This is a great film. This is the only film to come out that understands these times. This is a modern movie in the sense that its characters think and act like modern people. It talks about how much we rely on technology to go about our day and how technology makes us think we can do things in an undignified manner if it means doing it the easier way. It also talks about the human condition and our complicated emotions towards ourselves and our loved ones. And most importantly, this is a movie so relevant because of the economy.

I am crazy about this movie. Up in the Air is my favorite movie of the year and maybe one of my favorite movies ever. This is the type of movie that I get on DVD and watch over and over again because I find something so fresh and honest in it. It is incredible and exhilarating because of how effortlessly it relates to current times. George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, and Anna Kendrick all give Oscar-caliber performances in an Oscar-caliber film. Clooney and Kendrick are wonderful throughout, but Farmiga is required to show certain emotions later in the film which is where it becomes clear that she deserves awards recognition.

The best movies are those that mean something different to everyone. They are the movies that everyone can call their own and have personal investment in. Up in the Air is that movie for me this year. It is a personal movie for me that I can relate to and find things in it that no one else can. Similarly, it can mean something different to someone else. It’s my movie. It’s someone else’s movie. When a movie is so personal and dear to me, I can’t always clearly lay down my emotions about it because it’s hard to pinpoint them. All I can say is that I am madly in love with Up in the Air. It is a movie that I can’t say stands as one of the greatest motion pictures of all time, but stands as one of my favorite movies of all time. To me, it is perfect in every way.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted December 3, 2009

All film critics and film fanatics have two things in common. The first one is obvious. The other is a feeling of complete irrelevance. Whether we’re arguing with a group of teenagers over the sexism in Transformers or convincing those same teenagers to see The Hurt Locker, we can never win. Unfortunately, majority often does rule. I felt irrelevant when reviewing New Moon a couple weeks ago, and I feel irrelevant now when reviewing Old Dogs, an over-the-top and clinically insane slapstick comedy with zero heart or wit.

Robin Williams and John Travolta star as Dan and Charlie. The two are best friends since their frat days and now work together for a sports marketing agency. Dan (Williams) is the cautious type who looks before he crosses the street. Charlie (Travolta) is a womanizing slacker. Seven years ago after Dan’s wife filed for a divorce, Charlie took his buddy to Miami where they met Vicky, played by Travolta’s real life wife Kelly Preston. Vicky and Dan get married after a wild night and file for an annulment the following day. Seven years later, Vicky arrives to tell Dan that he has fathered twins and that she will be going to jail for trespassing on a chemical plant. Roll out the crotch injuries. Dan takes on the task of caring for his two kids, one of them being played by Travolta’s real life daughter, and…oh you know, learns to love them.

If you want to see this movie after the trailer, then you will like this movie. The trailer perfectly showcases why any sane person would not want to see it. If you found the gorilla cradling Seth Green to be hysterical, the over-the-top gags on display will seem like you hit the “family comedy of the year” jackpot. If you want to partake in the cliché, Old Dogs is readily available to any hyper kids who find that a good hit to the crotch is what it takes to make any comedy memorable.

I hate this movie. I complain about formula and clichés all the time, but Old Dogs is the meanest and shallowest “family fun fare” of the year. Is homophobia really appropriate in a kid’s movie? Ask yourselves if you want to take your kids to a movie about a guy who has kids after a one-night stand. Matt Dillon comes in as a testosterone fueled bigot, and his appearance will upset any normal person who understands that homophobia has no place in a PG movie. The slapstick is redundant and painfully unfunny. These characters are put into bizarre situations just so one of them will get hit in the crotch or hurt themselves in some way.

The exposition is sloppily presented. The back story of how Dan fathered his children is revealed through extremely awkward and contrived dialogue that doesn’t make any sense in a logical scenario. Would a businessman try to win over his clients by telling them an inappropriate story of how his business partner got laid in Miami? My guess would be no. But the people responsible for Old Dogs need some way to introduce us to the plot. And for the record, why would anyone swing a gold club backwards after swinging it forward? Maybe so Seth Green can get hit in the groin and probably for that reason only.

The physical comedy is not funny because it’s completely ludicrous. Can someone really survive after a tire is thrown in their face by a gorilla? Does anyone find Seth Green singing to a gorilla to be funny? And there are even penguins that attack Travolta and Williams and lots of other craziness aimed at being funny. It’s frantic and uninspired.

The child actors are terrible and this is in many ways due to the lazy script. When two kids see their father for the first time, would they run up to him and scream “daddy” as if they’d known him their whole lives? Would a man who has just discovered that he is a father to seven year olds be so casual as to take them to a carnival and pretend as though everything’s fine? Old Dogs doesn’t contain one true or poignant moment. The relationship between Dan and the kids, and Charlie and the kids, is phony.

The conclusion is there because it needs to be, not because it earned its way to it. The script jumps from point A to B. One moment Dan is terrified and annoyed by his kids, the next he falls in love with them and is ready to be a dad. We know this is how the movie is supposed to end, but it doesn’t feel true for one minute. The characters are all prototypes. They don’t ever seem like real people we can care for.

We know that most of these actors haven’t lost their charm. Robin Williams was just in a nearly brilliant comedy, where he happens to play a father, called World’s Greatest Dad. He gave a fantastic performance. Williams can do good work but he chooses this junk that makes him seem like an overacting waste of talent.  

Once in a while a formula movie will come out that one can say is heartwarming despite the predictability. This is not a warm movie. It’s phony and heartless. Neither Travolta nor Williams contribute any depth or wit. None of it is funny. Old Dogs is made from the guys who did Wild Hogs, one of the worst movies of the decade. Can you believe that they made a movie that’s actually worst? Don’t find out, because that requires you to experience the unwatchable Old Dogs.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 28, 2009

The Road, a masterpiece of cinema based on Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel, does not like its travelers. Every moment of hope and happiness is instantly diminished, since these people, as Robert Duvall’s character says, “Cannot afford such luxuries.” This bleak narrative will undoubtedly make audience members uncomfortable in their seats. Many viewers in the theater I saw it in were driven to tears. I can’t blame them. But The Road is not meant to be an uplifting tale of courage. It is in fact exactly the opposite.

The planet has been ravaged by an unexplained natural disaster. The sun doesn’t shine through a thick ash cloud, crops don’t grow, and food is scarce. The few survivors on the globe are now violent cannibals, killing and eating every traveler they find. The Man, played by Viggo Mortensen, and The Boy, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, can be considered noble compared to the rest of the savages. They represent the small percentage of people who wouldn’t be corrupted by these terrible circumstances, even though The Man is certainly not a saint. Their goal is to go south. What they hope to find there does not matter. Maybe The Man knows that nothing except disappointment awaits them there, but human beings have a need for mobility. This goal is just to keep him going until he keels over and dies, something to keep him occupied.

This is a movie about human nature, through and through. Harrowing and heartbreaking, The Road is relentless in showing us the darkest side of humanity. The cannibals were most likely good and honest people before this unexplained cataclysm, but these circumstances have turned them into insane monsters willing to do and kill anyone to survive. The Man does not care about himself, but only about his child. I don’t think anyone can leave this movie and honestly say that they would not be broken and corrupted by the living standards The Man and The Boy must survive in. Almost everyone in the audience would either become a cannibal or kill themselves before insanity got the better of their souls. The Boy is the only character who can be actually considered good. The Man does certain things that make us hold him in contempt. His only redeeming quality is that every horrible decision he must make is made to protect his boy’s innocence. The Boy is what redeems humanity on the violent and bleak roads.

The acting is outstanding. Viggo Mortensen gives the performance of his career. An Oscar should be guaranteed. He gives The Man so much pain in his eyes that they tell a story of their own. We understand his pain and his longing for what he once had. When he says to his wife, played by Charlize Theron, “I’ll do anything” in a flashback scene, I honestly believed him. I’ve heard this line in movies time and time again, but I don’t know if any actor or actress has said it with this conviction. When he said this, I imagined the most bizarre and disgusting thing possible, and I believed that this man would do it if it meant protecting his son. Kodi Smit-McPhee gives what may be the best performance by a child ever. He stands on a par with Mortensen in emotional force. Their chemistry is undeniably and almost unbelievably authentic.

The images are disturbing and evocative. Distant shots of Viggo Mortensen’s starved body shock us. Director John Hillcoat does not shy away from violent and raw images of bloodied and limbless “people.” In their condition, the word “person” cannot be pronounced convincingly. The landscapes are bleak and simply gorgeous. Hillcoat and his cinematographer are both deserving of Oscars.

I must note the criticisms of the film, because apparently it does not compare to the book by Cormac McCarthy. Now if that name sounds familiar, he’s the writer who wrote the novel on which No Country for Old Men is based. I bought The Road about a year ago and never got around to reading it. I’m glad I didn’t. Many critics, such as Roger Ebert, have criticized the film for not being emotional enough. Ebert wrote, “The Road evokes the images and the characters of Cormac McCarthy's novel. It is powerful, but for me lacks the same core of emotional feeling.” I have no idea how this movie can somehow lack a “core of emotional feeling.” It practically drove me to tears several times. Every critic who has read the book is unhappy with the movie. I say judge the movie on its own merits, but if reading the source material detracts from this emotional powerhouse, I’m overjoyed that I didn’t. Now, The Road can remain as special to me as it is.

Told with raw ferocity, The Road is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. As much as I enjoyed Roland Emmerich’s 2012, it’s a cartoon compared to the power of this movie. I cannot make the argument that this is a pleasant film. It is heavy-handed and at times overwhelmingly bleak, but I don’t consider that a bad thing. John Hillcoat inserts a few scenes where you can actually muster up a smile, but even those are set against an undertone of tragedy and heartbreak. It is unlikely that a more powerful movie, injected with so much raw emotion, will come out in 2009. The Road takes a piece out of you.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 27, 2009

I suppose it’s an embarrassing fact for me that I have never seen a Werner Herzog film until today. Then again, I suppose that’s a good thing, since I was only more captivated by Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. In my experience, if you see a director’s classic works, you’re bound to be disappointed by their new releases. For example, the first Martin Scorsese movie I had ever seen was The Departed in 2006. I was only about 13 at the time. Had I seen GoodFellas and Raging Bull before that, The Departed might not have been so amazing. After seeing it, I discovered Scorsese’s works and today, at 15, he is my favorite director. Now, at 15, I have the same feeling after watching Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans as I did in 2006 when I saw The Departed. It’s only my nature to go and seek out every Werner Herzog film listed on Wikipedia.

The film begins in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Sergeant Terrence McDonough, played mesmerizingly by Nicholas Cage, and his partner Stevie, played by Val Kilmer, discover a drowning prisoner. Terrence and Stevie stand over him and make a bet as to how long it will take for him to drown. When pleading for help, the prisoner is told by Terrence, “You want me to get wet on a count of you, shitbird? I got on Swiss cotton underpants.” For some reason, he has a slight change of heart and jumps in to the water to rescue the prisoner. Months later, Terrence is returning to work with severe back pain and a promotion to lieutenant.

To call this man corrupt is to put it too lightly. Terrence literally camps outside of clubs waiting for a pretty girl to walk by with her boyfriend who can barely walk. He drives up to them, violently tells them to empty out their pockets and handbags, and then has sex with the girl as her boyfriend is forced to watch. In another scenario, Terrence catches a college football player buying pot. Since he has a gambling problem and constantly bets and loses on the same team, to which this player belongs, he tells the player that he will not arrest him if the player leads the team to victory. Terrence sneaks into the property room at his precinct and steals confiscated drugs for his own use and the use of his girlfriend and call girl Frankie, played by Eva Mendes. This is not a good man.

Things in life go haywire when he investigates the murders of a family of illegal immigrants. This massacre is tied to Big Fate, played by Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner, a drug lord. Simultaneously, he must come up with money to pay off goons who are after Frankie and to pay off his gambling debts. And he still wants an hour or two a day to snort cocaine. All in a days work.

Nicholas Cage is absolutely brilliant as Terrence McDonough. He plays him like the demented offspring of Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange. As over the top as the character is, Cage always manages to make him convincing, even in a scene where he is required to cut off an old woman’s oxygen supply. If he can do just that scene without wincing, Cage should automatically be listed on the Oscar shortlist for Best Leading Actor. He makes Terrence McDonough into one of the most memorable screen villains of all time.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans has one of the best scripts of the year as well. The movie is in constant motion, never boring the audience for one minute. Just as the excitement is dying down from one exhilarating scene, Werner Herzog inserts another and another, keeping the viewer’s pulse pounding consistently. The film also reminded me of how formulaic and predictable cop movies are lately. This is the most original and shocking cop movie since The Departed. Nothing in this film can be foreseen. All you as a viewer can do is sit back and prepare to be bewildered by the brilliance displayed on screen.

Herzog’s color scheme is perfect for conveying the moods of Terrence. This is credited to the gorgeous cinematography. For most of the movie, New Orleans is shown as a gray and dark landscape, perhaps capturing Terrence’s dark soul and creating an almost neo-noir type setting. Then, in a beautiful and poetic scene where Terrence talks about his childhood, the shots are colorful. During his protagonist’s trips, Herzog holds the gaze of iguanas in a very saturated shot, creating a very serene and trippy image. Due to the cinematography, the movie does at times feel like a neo-noir. The direction doesn’t go against the dark storyline, but only better tells it by becoming its soul.

As my first exposure to the genius writer-director Werner Herzog, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans feels like an instant classic. This is the same way I felt about Scorsese’s The Departed. Herzog joins the list of directors I have begun to admire in recent years. After Scorsese, I discovered the genius works of the Coen Brothers after No Country For Old Men (overrated). Then, The Wrestler inspired me to seek out the works of Darren Aronofsky. Now, I know these directors’ resumes by heart. The Big Lebowski and GoodFellas have become so dear to me by now that I can quote them in my sleep. I thought I had pretty much discovered all the great directors, but after Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, I realize that my film education is still just beginning.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 26, 2009

In 2009, two very talented directors, known for their offbeat art films, took on two very well-known childrens’ books. First, there was Spike Jonze’s magnificent adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Now, there is Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. The latter achieves a difficult task: being better than the former. As much as I love Where the Wild Things Are, I’m crazy about Fantastic Mr. Fox. Wes Anderson turns Roald Dahl’s novel into a visual masterpiece that I think stands as one of the best family films of all time.

Brought to life through the tedious process of stop-motion animation, Fantastic Mr. Fox gets everything right. George Clooney voices Mr. Fox, an aging animal going through a mid-life crisis. When he and his wife, voiced by Meryl Streep, are trapped on a farm, she tells him she is pregnant. This means Mr. Fox can no longer continue his dangerous job of stealing chickens, and has to reside to a much more every-day type job. Two years later (12 in fox years), Mr. Fox is a journalist living with his wife and their son Ash, voiced by Jason Schwartzman. Sensing his days are numbered, Fox goes back to his old job of stealing meat from the nearby farms.

He and his comrades plan on hitting three neighboring farms: Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. Problems arise after a failed raid of Bean’s alcoholic apple cider cellar. The three farmers get together and plan to camp outside of Fox’s tree with guns. When the stakeout goes wrong, resulting in Fox loosing his tail, the farmers go to extreme measures to kill the animals. Fox is put on the spot when everyone he knows blames him while also depending on his cleverness to save the day.

Fantastic Mr. Fox is unlikely to appeal to mainstream audiences. Unfortunately, adults who take their kids to crap like Monsters vs. Aliens don’t trust them to understand a much more sophisticated movie like this. The themes are not that of a typical animated movie. They are much more adult-oriented and mature. Instead of being about “finding your place in the world,” like almost every other animated movie, Fantastic Mr. Fox is about ego and the extents that some people go to so they can satisfy theirs. Furthermore, the movie greatly explores human nature, only through talking animals. This is not light stuff. But Anderson doesn’t present it in a brooding and depressing way. With Mr. Fox realizing that his family is more important than his ego, he is able to gain some kind of peace with himself.

A very humanistic and psychological aspect of the story is Ash, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Fox. He doesn’t feel good about himself but the movie doesn’t give him some kind of superpower that changes him. He is forced to remain being small and “different,” and this is how he learns to accepts himself. This movie is generally about coming to terms with your flaws and accepting that you are not Superman.

But analysis of the philosophical subtexts comes in second when considering the groundbreaking look of the movie. Wes Anderson has created an innovative, retro, and rough-hewn style to the film. I know I use the terms “vintage” and “throwback” excessively, but this movie really does have a vintage-ish beauty to it. Just look at the style of the film. Anderson’s simple camera movements further provoke me to call this movie retro.

The voice acting is uniformly excellent. George Clooney and Meryl Streep are both wonderful, but my favorite performance comes from Jason Schwartzman. One scene in which he explodes on his cousin is hilarious. He actually says to his cousin, whose father has pneumonia, “I’m tired of the sad house guest routine.” This is a line that can be uttered by any actor or actress, or just by a person walking on the street. However, no one can deliver it with the same self-assured tone that Jason Schwartzman possesses.

With Fantastic Mr. Fox, kids get the rare chance to see a family movie that isn’t watered down with clichés and lame characters. Too bad not that many kids will actually see it. “He loses his tale?! Good god, I’m not taking my kid to that!” To the ignorant adults who will most likely say those words: Trust your kids! Don’t underestimate their intelligence. You can take them to Monsters vs. Aliens and spend extra money so they can put on those stupid 3D glasses and forget the dopey experience a day later, or you can take them to Fantastic Mr. Fox, save a couple bucks because it’s the rare animated movie released in 2009 that isn’t in 3D, and give them a terrific experience. Your choice.

I can’t shut up about this movie. I love it. I’m even going to use the cheesiest pun possible: Fantastic Mr. Fox is fantastic. It might be corny, but so true. This isn’t simply a family movie to enjoy “with the whole family,” but a movie to actually analyze and think about. I guess you can do that with your family too.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 26, 2009 (Early Review)

Leonardo da Vinci once said that “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” This is the perfect phrase to use when describing The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. Its sophistication is due to a simple narrative which achieves a sort of mellow charm not seen in many movies outside the “buddy comedy” subgenre. Pippa Lee is surely not a simple woman, but she would never let anyone know it. It’s her complexity that makes her achieve simplicity, if that makes any sense.

Robin Wright Penn plays Pippa, a woman in her late 40’s experiencing not quite a mid-life crisis, but a type of realization of her life up to that point. She simplifies things and that makes her understand her life. As a young girl, her bipolar mother, played by Maria Bello, treats her both as a trophy and a slave. A teenage Pippa, played by Blake Lively, is confronted with her mother’s addiction to pills. She responds by taking pills herself, which results in her running away from home to her aunt’s house. Her aunt is a lesbian living with Kit, played by Julianne Moore. Through Kit, Pippa explores her own sexuality.

Her wild days are interrupted by the charming but much older Herb Lee, played by Alan Arkin. Herb tames and nurtures Pippa, resulting in a long and seemingly happy marriage. In the present day, she is the one nurturing the ailing Herb and has two children with him. Things are further complicated when the disturbed son of a neighbor enters Pippa’s life.

The movie relies on Robin Wright Penn’s charisma, which is one display for the entirety of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. Some may find her calm nature irritating, but her restraint is what makes this a great performance. Pippa is not the typical housewife in a mid-life crisis story. Writer-director Rebecca Miller could have taken the formulaic route by making her character slowly breakdown until the scene where she explodes in public or simply tells of the people she depends on. Instead, Pippa has long ago come to terms with herself and knows how to control her emotions. In the instances where she does breakdown, it’s a reaction to something that just happened instead of bursting as the result of a life filled with turmoil.

Rebecca Miller’s flawed script mostly fails on tying Pippa’s two personas together. We understand that she went from being the party girl, played by Blake Lively, to the caring housewife, played by Robin Wright Penn, but we never actually believe the transformation. It feels like Pippa just jumped from one point in her life to the next without any real development. This may be in part due to Blake Lively’s weak performance. She knows the words on the script, but not the emotions of the characters that make Pippa such an interesting and charming woman.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee ends on a hopeful note. Without the charming performance from Robin Wright Penn, I’m not so sure it would’ve gotten there too smoothly. The movie isn’t preaching about starting life all over again and getting second chances. In fact, the message is quite the opposite. It is Pippa’s experiences and choices that form who she is today, and guide her along her journey.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 21, 2009

Romeo & Juliet is referenced to several times in New Moon, the adaptation of second entry in the insanely popular but overwhelmingly dull Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer. Do any of the teenagers who obsess over the romance between Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen recognize the similarities or understand the allusion? Probably not. But the fans don’t make this series any dumber or more intelligent. The first entry in the Twilight movie series was a horrific showcase of terrible writing and bad acting, but New Moon, no matter how corny it may be and no matter how ignorant the fans may be, isn’t quite as horrific.

Kirsten Stewart and Robert Pattinson both return as star-crossed lovers Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, respectively. After the events of the first Twilight, Bella is being hunted by Victoria, the lover of the vampire Edward killed. After an incident at Bella’s birthday party, Edward leaves her believing that this is the best way to protect her. His departure leaves her prone to Victoria’s attacks. Bella suffers bouts of depression, lightened by the presence of Jacob Black, played by Taylor Lautner. Jacob is a werewolf and protects Bella from Victoria. Bella is conflicted, as all teenagers are in teen angst films, between her love for Edward and her growing attraction towards Jacob.

These plot developments take up a fair amount of running time, but the climax takes place after a spontaneous trip to Italy and tops off the 130 minute movie. I haven’t forgotten how much I hated the first Twilight movie and definitely haven’t forgotten the terribly written first half of the first novel, but there’s something about New Moon. The film comes to life in several snappy scenes of interplay between Kirsten Stewart and Taylor Lautner. Both of these actors give weak performances when pitching it solo but when they are on screen together, they bring out the best in each other. Their chemistry is undeniable.

The believable romance between Bella and Jacob is however diminished by everything else. Point blank, this is a boring series of novels. The books posses no meaning, only painfully phony emotions and a very creepy romance. Edward is over a hundred years old but he still feels attraction to a highschool girl. Do you remember that ridiculously lame line in the first Twilight where Edward compares Bella to heroine? I burst out laughing. New Moon cuts down on those corny lines, even though Edward still manages to fit in, “You give me everything I want by breathing.”

The teenage angst is draining. After Edward leaves Bella, she starts screaming in the middle of the night. Everything is extreme. I can’t honestly believe that she would be depressed for months and have nightmares just because he left her. Some how, teenagers understand these extreme emotions. I don’t. The characters, and real-life teenagers, take themselves way too seriously, and this makes it impossible to relate to them.

One of the biggest problems in this movie is its heavy reliance on the first Twilight. It utilizes flashbacks from the first movie to move this one along. Anyone unfamiliar with the books or the first film will be completely lost and bored.

Robert Pattinson, looking ridiculously pale, is unconvincing as a 109 year old vampire. After over a century, one might think Edward would mature and come up with better pick-up lines. Pattinson plays him like an immature and whiny teenager. His attraction to Bella, besides simply being creepy, makes no sense because after living for so long, he should understand that she is just a kid. He should mentally be a very old man and have some semblance of wisdom, but he acts like a child. Kirsten Stewart acts her usual moody self but the scenes with Taylor Lautner are the highlights of her performance. Much later in the film, Michael Sheen appears out of another movie. Sheen has lately been giving terrific performances as Tony Blair, David Frost, and most recently Brian Clough. I don’t understand why he chooses projects like Underworld: Rise of the Lycans and New Moon. In the former, he gave a decent performance despite a generally weak film. In New Moon, he overacts as a member of the “Volturi,” a vampire tribe. Don’t ask. Decent performances come from Billy Burke and Anna Kendrick.

The soundtrack draws too much attention itself because of how much it contradicts the events on screen. Where the music should be suspenseful, it is cheery. The special effects represent a step back in CGI. The fight scenes between the werewolves are amateur and highly unconvincing. The werewolves look extremely digitalized. Director Chris Weitz doesn’t know how to exhilarate an audience with action, or anything else for that matter. He does however offer more energy than Catherine Hardwicke, the director of the first movie, but that’s not saying much.

For all of its flaws, and there are many, I was fairly entertained by New Moon. It's no where near as atrocious as the first Twilight and it has me tentatively awaiting the next entry due to be released this summer. It is, overall, a decent movie. Yeah. It stings to say that. 

In the meantime, the lifeless characters of the Twilight Saga should take a trip down to Bon Temps. HBO's True Blood kicks Twilight's ass in every way. Bella could learn a thing or two about emotions from Sookie Stackhouse and Edward could sure use Bill Compton's aide to come up with some better pick-up lines. And Lafayette--well, he's just Lafayette, and he packs more energy than both entries of the Twilight Saga put together.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 19, 2009 (Early Review)

How does one describe the best feeling a moviegoer can have? More importantly, how does one pinpoint their praise for the movie that evoked those feelings? Broken Embraces is a brilliant work of art and concocting adjectives and tying them together is the closest I can come to convey my love of it. Told in noir like fashion and set to a tale of lust and glamour in a Latin version of Hollywood, this movie pays tribute to the “Old Hollywood” filled with scandals and dark love stories.

The film opens with a blind writer and director named Mateo Blanco, played like a classic Hollywood romantic by Lluís Homar, engaging in a flirtation with a woman who helped him cross the street. He uses the pseudonym “Harry Caine.” There is mystery lurking in his distant and thoughtful eyes which is only fueled when a suspicious stranger shows up at his door. This stranger is the son of Ernesto Martel, a wealthy financer who has just passed away. Clearly there is something more going on than just a blind filmmaker using a fake name and denying any association with Martel.

Mateo’s agent, Judit, played with heartbreaking conviction by Blanca Portillo, contacts Ernesto’s son and tells him to stay away. Pedro Almodóvar, writer and director of Broken Embraces, continues to give us tantalizing pieces of information until he finally indulges in the story behind the conflict between Mateo, Ernesto Martel, Ernesto’s son, and Judit.

Mateo tells a story to Judit’s son which involves the key players of any noir. There is the hero, the girl, and the villain. The hero is Mateo, a young and successful filmmaker. The girl is Lena, a stunningly beautiful and wild actress played by Penelope Cruz who is clearly paying tribute to Marylyn Monroe. The villain is the monstrous and evil Ernesto Martel, played with a chilling calm by José Luis Gómez. The labeling of each character is intentional since we are meant to view this tale as a 1950’s Hollywood tragedy told in noir fashion.

We switch back and forth between 1994 and 2008 until this mystery comes full circle and we learn of the tragedy that has fallen upon Mateo. He narrates this story like a classic noir. We see the girl, Lena, through his eyes and his eyes only, making her the perfect damsel in distress. He in some ways is turning the recollection of his affair with her into a film he creates inside his head. She fits the profile of the typical femme fatale, and to him, she is perfect in that role and even more perfect for him. He makes Ernesto into a villain, attributing to him no semblance of humanity. This is all okay, because we are seeing things through Mateo’s perspective.

What's clever is how Almodóvar makes us see the distinctions between reality and Mateo's vision of reality. At first, we see events taking place in Madrid in 1994 seemingly at random. This is before Mateo starts narrating. The first time jump to Madrid is a down-to-earth city story. We see Lena as a struggling and normal person whose father has cancer and we see Ernesto Martel as a nice businessman offering his help. The characters at this point are just regular and flawed people. When things are told from Mateo's perspective, events suddenly become more dramatic and story like.

Also interesting is how Almodóvar chooses to convey reality and Hollywood fantasy through locations. The realistic Madrid in 1994 is shot in day-to-day streets and locations, told like a contemporary city drama. As soon as Mateo's imagination and dramatizations dictate the story, scenes are constricted to more noir like settings such as mansions, movie sets, and beautiful beaches. The scenes outdoors are either dark and gritty or idealized and beautiful.

Broken Embraces evokes the great noirs set in Hollywood such as Sunset Boulevard and Mildred Pierce. Albeit Mateo's cinematic and dramatized view is more fascinating and haunting than reality, but reality is important in setting this film up as a neo-noir.

The film has a lyrical and poetic beauty to it. Even the sex scenes between Mateo and Lena are treated with such poetry, once again evoking an idealized and haunting vision of Hollywood. This movie vibrates with its love of cinema and the scandalous history that trails not too far behind it. Broken Embraces premiered at this year's Cannes Film Festival in the Palme d’Or category and lost. One can only hope it fares better at the Oscars in the Best Foreign Language category. My only dissatisfaction is Almodóvar’s choice of color scheme for the scenes narrated by Mateo. Had only he shot them in a darker shade, the scenes would have been even more textured and surreal and could have better evoked the "Old Hollywood" setting.

What makes Broken Embraces more special to me is that I had only heard of the film minutes before seeing it. I didn't know the plot or the stars, except for noticing an retro throwback poster with Penelope Cruz. My knowledge of its premiere at Cannes and the director himself only came to surface after I had seen the actual film.

Resulting in my complete ignorance of the movie, I was unsuspectingly consumed into this dark universe of love, lust, and revenge revolving around an "Old Hollywood" story that I could not foresee at any turn, but only relish in the joy.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 15, 2009

Have I ever been so wrong about a movie before? The power of Precious (stuck with the subtitle “Based on the novel Push by Sapphire”) puts me to shame. In my blog entry about this movie, I tore it apart before even seeing it. I was sure it would be some melodramatic and sappy story about a poor black girl living in Harlem who rises above. While I got the gist of it beforehand, because that is generally what happens, I was never prepared for the electrifying depths of Precious. This is so much more than what I expected.

Newcomer Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe stars as Clareece “Precious” Jones, an obese and illiterate 16 year old girl pregnant with her second child from her own father. Her abusive mother is the monstrous Mary, played with colossal force by Mo’Nique. Precious is given the chance to attend an alternative school where her academic needs would be better tended to. Mary on the other hand belittles Precious, saying that instead of attending school she should start collecting welfare. Precious decides to go and at this school she meets Ms. Rain, played by the lovely Paula Patton. Ms. Rain inspires her to learn to read and write, but she herself cannot deny that Precious is a traumatized young woman with no possibility of a bright future.

Things start to look up for Precious, but Lee Daniels, the director of Precious, will not give us an optimistic hallmark picture. Though things may get better for her, and the last shot implies that she may break free of this life of despair, Daniels respects the intelligence of the audience enough to acknowledge that Precious will forever be traumatized to some extent. No sugary screenplay is going to convince viewers that this girl is on the road to happiness.

The performances define the power of Precious. Amidst the impressive ones from Gabby Sidibe, Paula Patton, and Mariah Carrey (yes, Mariah Carrey), Mo’Nique is the shining star. Her monstrous take on the mother from hell is electrifying, harrowing, colossal, heartbreaking, and every other adjective you can think of. In a pivotal scene with Mary, Precious, and Mrs. Weiss (a social worker played by Mariah Carrey), Mo’Nique does the impossible: She makes you pity and hate Mary even more. In an interview I read between Roger Ebert and Lee Daniels, he states, “Mo'Nique's saying, 'You no good bitch; you ain't never been nothin', you ain't ever gonna be nothin' and da, da, da, da, da.' I said, 'Keep going, Mo'Nique.' She's, 'Lee, there's nothing else I can call her.’ And we just started laughing.” Watching this heartbreaking movie, you could never believe for one moment that anyone on the set could muster up the joy to smile, let alone laugh. Furthermore, you could never believe that Mo’Nique has a career as a comedienne. What she gives audiences here is raw dramatic power.

Gabby Sidibe’s performance is all about response. Precious is a character that things are being done too instead of the other way around. She’s not someone who makes decisions but reacts to what is going on. Every action Precious takes is driectly linked to something that is done to her. Sidibe’s talent is reflected in her subtlety because she cannot have an outburst of emotion at any point. Though her character goes through a semblance of a metamorphosis, she still has to uphold the illusion that this girl will be forever haunted.

The performances are given more resonance because of Lee Daniels decision to give a subliminal exposition. The viewer can slowly start to paint a picture of how Precious went from being a happy little girl in photographs to a traumatized adolescent, and how Mary went from being a loving mother to a mentally unstable monster. We begin to understand how things went from good to terrible, for both Precious and her mom.

Granted that I was terribly wrong about Precious, the movie nevertheless has its flaws. The dream sequences that Daniels peppers the screen with are highly unnecessary. Precious Jones is probably the most tragic girl in the history of movies but watching her imagine these things doesn’t mix well with the rest of the film. It goes against the grim tone and feels like it’s from a different movie all together. There are a few scenes in which this device works, like when Precious discovers she has a disease and spaces out. That example has meaning and a subtext to it while the rest didn’t match the melancholy mood.

It is the measure of a man when he can admit that he is wrong and I was wrong. This is nothing like the sappy melodrama I expected after seeing that awful trailer. Precious is a much more raw and harrowing film of despair and the audacity of hope (Obama’s book serves as a great title for an article about this movie.) If you are not affected by Mo’Nique’s monstrous performance, you simply have no heart.

Precious is not a masterpiece, but it is a deeply stirring drama with exceptional performances. Lee Daniel doesn’t always make the best narrative choices which is where the movie suffers, but if you’re someone like me who was repulsed by the trailer, see this movie as soon as possible. It will make you go through so many different emotional fields in under two hours. When the movie is over, you’ll be stuck in a tunnel of complex feelings, but the spirit of Precious will lead you home.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 13, 2009

Since the year 2012 is looming, Hollywood is obviously trying to cash in. So who better to bring in box-office numbers by tearing up the planet than Roland Emmerich? Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow clearly reflect this guy’s knack for disaster movies but he has outdone himself with 2012, employing every possible special effect to destroy the world in every imaginable and unimaginable fashion. He has indeed created the disaster movie of all disaster movies. The surprise in 2012 is that it’s actually good. Very good, in fact.

The movie centers around a divorced and struggling writer named Jackson Curtis, played by John Cusack, trying to redeem himself by saving his family from the cataclysmic destruction. But things start off in 2009 when a young scientist named Adrian Helmsley, played by the very talented Chiwetel Ejiofor, discovers that Earth has an expiration date. He informs the President’s Chief of Staff, played by Oliver Platt, and this gets him a job in President Thomas Wilson’s administration. Wilson is played by Danny Glover and his daughter is played by Thandie Newton. When the threat is given validity, construction begins on enormous ships that will preserve humanity.

Jackson’s story picks up a few days before the destruction happens. His ex-wife, played by Amanda Peet, is living with Gordon, played by Thomas McCarthy. He takes his kids to Yellowstone for a couple of days where he discovers an army base and encounters the crazed Charlie Frost, played by Woody Harrelson. Now since this is a disaster movie, Yellowstone is there for obvious reasons. The rest is unimportant. Jackson becomes the typical unlikely hero in the typical unlikely hero situation. He does everything to get his family to the ships, which costs ten-billion euros a seat.

2012 is full of clichés and impossibilities, but it’s such a thrilling ride that it’s impossible not to be entertained. By impossibilities, I’m not noting the obvious reasons like Los Angeles disappearing before the characters’ feet. I’m talking about Jackson and his family surviving when clearly they never would’ve made it. This is one of those movies where a key character supposedly falls or drowns, only to reappear when all hope is lost for his or her survival. But who cares? The movie achieves what it sets out to do and it does this very well.

First of all, the performances are uniformly good. Jackson is indeed a cliché, being the typical unlikely hero, but John Cusack is so endearing that it’s impossible not to root for him. Oliver Platt and Chiwetel Ejiofor are both excellent, delivering several powerful exchanges that make the viewer evaluate their morals and make tough decisions. On one hand, Ejiofor’s character is right. How can we measure the value of any person? But Oliver Platt’s character is equally correct. From Platt’s point-of-view, either everyone dies or a large percentage. I believe he is right. In some situations, you have to be realistic and prioritize. Unfortunately, Emmerich’s script paints Platt’s character as a greedy bastard and Ejiofor’s character as the hero. They are both people who are forced to compromise morals, and I wish Emmerich’s script conveyed that at least half as well as the performances.

But Emmerich’s script has several strong suits and greatly contributes to why this film isn’t the low-grade disaster movie it appeared to be. I’m not this filmmaker’s biggest fan and I am well-aware of his cliché ridden scripts, but trust me when I say 2012 represents his talent. Where he succeeds is in crafting the emotionally poignant themes of family and the brevity of life. The characters are subjected to terrible tragedy and our hearts leap out for them. Not every situation is sentimentalized (one character hopes to speak to his son for the first time in years before they die but unfortunately the son dies just as he is about to speak into the phone). There are several raw scenes where a happy conclusion is simply impossible. Where Emmerich greatly sentimentalizes is with Jackson and his family, but do you really want Jackson to die and leave his kids heartbroken?

In the midst of destroying Washington D.C., Las Vegas, The Eiffel Tower, The Sistine Chapel, and Los Angeles, Roland Emmerich didn’t let the catastrophe overwhelm a poignant and well-crafted story. Critics will tear 2012 apart for having so much CGI (it’s a disaster movie!) and for having a somewhat happy ending. But honestly, after the non-stop tragedy and destruction, a happy ending is greatly welcomed.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 11, 2009 (Early Review)

Pirate Radio (entitled The Boat That Rocked in the U.K.) is a fictional story. It is by all means a wonderful story, but wholly fictional. So how can a film based on someone's imagination be more accurate and authentic at portraying a cultural revolution than Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, which is based on a completely true story? If a director and screenwriter have enough cultural insight to choose the right tracks to convey the 1960's, the right clothing, the right atmosphere and dialogue and energy, they have done what Ang Lee couldn’t with his handling of the Woodstock festival. They have created an entertaining and original movie that feels right in the way it showcases pop music and the spirit of the open minded people who had the courage to start a revolution by creating such wonderful songs as “Hello Goodbye” and “Purple Haze,” only two tracks on a long list of greatness.

Set in 1966 England, Pirate Radio is about a group of hipsters living on a boat in the North Sea, broadcasting pop music all day and night. The public is divided. There are the young people wanting to break free of old school traditions and wear Converses and skinny jeans and checkered shoes and listen to great music, and then there are the buttoned  down bureaucrats who want to drink their tea to the tune of Mozart. The movie focuses on Radio Rock and the government agency bent on shutting them down. Minister Dormandy, played very well by Kenneth Branagh, has no actual reason to shut them down except for his contempt of this underground culture. He hires Twatt (yes, Twatt), a civil servant with a slightly shorter stick up his ass than the completely square Dormandy, to find loopholes.

Radio Rock is broadcast from a boat with some of the coolest and weirdest people of the 60’s. The Count, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, is the head DJ until Gavin Cavender, played by Rhys Ifans, returns to sex up the broadcast. Carl, played Tom Sturridge, is a newcomer to the boat after his mother, played by Emma Thompson, sends him there to clean up his act (a boat filled with drugs and alcohol, not to mention women coming and going every week, is not the best place for that). He, I suppose, can be considered the protagonist of the story even though most of the characters share the spotlight equally. Carl’s godfather is Quentin, played by a wonderfully eccentric and lively Bill Nighy, the ship’s captain. Other characters include the chubby but very confident and slick Dave, played by Nick Frost, the thoughtful but sexually unsatisfied lesbian cook, played by Katherine Parkinson, and the completely zany Bob, played by Ralph Brown. These people share some poignant moments together and go through love, rivalry, and betrayal. Every single character is given a unique and complex personality, creating a much more layered and authentic movie going experience.

Pirate Radio uses these characters and their situations as masks to cover the more philosophical and important story. The movie is really about a clash between tradition and progression. The government agency in the film is set on keeping things the way they are. They represent the ignorance involved in some key issues today, such as gay marriage. What Dormandy and Twatt fail to realize, as do hardened conservatives about same sex marriage, is that no one is forcing this lifestyle on to them. Dormandy and Twatt can continue being squares and listening to classical music and drinking their tea. Why can’t other people enjoy rock music? Similarly, allowing gays to marry doesn’t mean that straight people have to become gay. The zany cast of characters on Radio Rock are simply offering an alternative choice. I am in love with this music. I know most of the songs in this movie by heart. On the other hand, I hate rap. I personally don’t understand the appeal of listening to people rhyming about drugs and wife beating. However, no one is forcing me to listen to hip hop, just as I am not forcing anyone to listen to The Beatles or The Who or Jimi Hendrix. These people on this ship aren’t forcing anyone to listen to the bands and singers I just mentioned either. They are offering it. That is diversity, and no uptight government official should be able to take that away.

Bill Nighy gives one of the best performances in the film. Everyone would expect him to play Dormandy based on his very appropriate and old English aura, but he so effortlessly fits into the zany character of Quentin, the ship’s captain. Seeing him in this movie, you would never believe that this is the same man who starred in last year’s Valkyrie. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is perhaps in the top ten of the best working actors today. He can play any role you give him and make it convincing. Look at his resume, with difficult roles ranging from his work in Doubt and Capote, especially Synecdoche, New York, to his utterly charismatic and funny performances in Along Came Polly and The Savages. Now he takes on the part of an eccentric and slightly egotistical DJ. Naturally, he gives a terrific performance. Other standouts include Nick Frost as a slimy and self-centered DJ, January Jones, from Mad Men, in a small but effective part, and Kenneth Branagh and Jack Davenport as the men working to shut them down. Davenport does a good job of leaving speculation open as to whether his character might even secretly relish in listening to this music.

Pirate Radio starts to suffer at the conclusion, when everything becomes too sentimentalized and even absurd. Without revealing anything, the fate of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character is completely ridiculous. A beautifully photographed but silly scene involves two characters on the brink of drowning and instead of swimming up, they stay at the bottom of the water engaging in some kind of Three Stooges gag. I find it hard to believe that in the freezing water the characters could have floated there for that long while debating with hand gestures as to whether or not they should salvage records or leave them on the sinking boat. The first time I saw Pirate Radio, this actually greatly detracted from my enjoyment of the film. The second time, I was able to let it pass but just those two scenes keep this from being a great film that it had already set itself up to be during the rest of the running time.

The movie features one of the best compilation soundtracks ever. Every song reminded me of my love for 60’s rock. “All Day and Night” by The Kinks and “Elenore” by The Turtles are wonderful valentines to the origins of old school rock. The movie captures not just the music world of that time, but the energy in the air. But Pirate Radio is terrific not just as a culturally insightful movie, but simply as a movie. You don’t have to be familiar with the music (it does help though) to be entertained and touched by the film. The characters are endearing enough and they share some very heartfelt scenes together. For me, the movie works on many levels. It works a portrait of a cultural clash, as a commentary on some of today’s issues, as a movie exploring the origins of pop music, and just as an entertaining and absorbing movie going experience.

The end credits showcase a number of album covers, which wouldn’t have been possible if not for the people who had the courage to introduce rock and roll. The credits not just symbolize the birth and prosperity of pop music, but the birth of pop culture.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 11, 2009

The number of times Charles Dickens’ timeless holiday tale A Christmas Carol has been adapted is countless. There is a definite number of feature films and television specials, but the amount of theater productions most likely overwhelms the fifty movies that A Christmas Carol has been turned into. It should come as no surprise that a director like Robert Zemeckis finally took this movie and turned it into a 3D-computer animated showcase. This is 2009, after all. Now people are wondering the obvious: After more than a century of theater adaptations and decades of holiday specials on television, does A Christmas Carol still carry the magic of Charles Dickens’ tale? Well…yes and no.

The Zemeckis directed Disney adaptation of A Christmas Carol has Jim Carrey in the title role of Ebenezer Scrooge. Let’s be honest. You literally have to be from another planet not to have seen or heard some version of this classic story. So I think giving a plot description is completely unnecessary and pointless. Rest assured in knowing that nothing in this version is original except for an exhilarating chase sequence and gorgeous overlooking of London in the moonlight.

The elements of this adaptation that make the answer a “yes” to the question earlier in the review are mostly behind-the-scenes. This Carol mostly succeeds because of a script worthy of being named the best in this pantheon of adaptations. The language is authentically Victorian and that provides a major boost in creating the atmosphere of the movie. In a moment where there could have been a line that would ruin the setting, (Scrooge could have said “come again” but instead says “I’d rather not”) Carrey perfectly reassures us that this Carol isn’t interested in any wink-wink dialogue. This adaptation is firmly grounded in its time period, and that is a very good thing.

But let’s be frank once more. Audiences don’t care one bit about a good and absorbing screenplay. They are going to “Disney’s A Christmas Carol starring Jim Carrey in digital 3D opening in a theater near you this holiday season” for the 3D and those annoying glasses. Anyone who reads my reviews and/or blog is perfectly aware that I am not an advocate of the 3D format. Very rarely have I actually recommended seeing a movie this way. I am glad to admit that A Christmas Carol is worth putting on those Steve Urkel glasses. Robert Zemeckis, who has honed the stunningly beautiful but bland Polar Express and Beowulf not so long ago, seems to be the only filmmaker capable of making good 3D. There are practically no gimmicks that showoff the format in his Carol. No snowballs flying at the screen or any of that nonsense. Zemeckis respects Dickens’ vision by not watering down his dark fable into a sight gag. And the visuals are often beautiful. Still, the ghosts look to cartoonish and work against the much grittier looking set pieces. The scenes in which the haunting beauty comes to life are outside in London. Had Zemeckis made the movie one-tenth as gorgeous as when Scrooge is flying through the air towards the moon overlooking the industrialized city, this Christmas Carol would have been absolutely brilliant.

Without a doubt people are drawn to this movie because of Jim Carrey’s name, but the actor restrains his physicality in favor of making a very tragic Scrooge. His performance is definitely on a par with Alistair Sim’s in 1951. Gary Oldman executes the most sympathetic Bob Kratchet yet, never settling for making the character a pitiful or sappy caricature. The one performance that made the movie feel animated and phony comes from Colin Firth, who reads his lines like a madman. Firth’s performance isn’t too distracting since his character isn’t on screen to often. This also the creepiest take on A Christmas Carol. There are several extremely scary moments so taking a five year old to this is not the wisest of choices.

Robert Zemeckis has without a doubt crafted A Christmas Carol unlike any before, but his telling of the story is often bland and dry. By now it’s impossible to make the tale original but Zemeckis presents it in a very mundane way. I understand why he wanted to remake the story but 3D isn’t innovative enough to make this Carol extremely memorable.

On the wings of Carrey’s and Oldman’s performances, as well as the groundbreaking 3D, A Christmas Carol is well worth seeing on the big screen and yes, in that dreaded format.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 6, 2009

Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko seems like a fairytale with a happy ending compared to his latest film, The Box. This masterful and tragic movie goes to far greater depths than one could imagine. It has the power to make you weep, frightened, and heavily shaken. Calling it amazing is such a petty description for a movie that, to its very core, is real. Yes. The Box is a supernatural thriller. But the powerful emotions involved make this movie so much more.

Set in a highly detailed and absorbing 1976, Norma and Arthur Lewis, played by Cameron Diaz (one of the best female performances of the year) and James Marsden, are a couple having trouble with money. They have a son named Walter and live in a middle-class suburb in Virginia. Norma is a schoolteacher and Arthur is an aspiring astronaut at NASA. Early one morning they receive a package at their doorstep. The package contains a box with a “button dome.” There is also a note indicating that they will have a visitor later that day. This visitor is Arlington Steward, played by Frank Langella in a role slightly different from Tricky Dick.

Steward, having a badly burned face, politely strides in, sits down, and explains to Norma the meaning of the box. First, he shows her the key to the button dome. After that, he gives her a hundred dollar bill to keep. Then, he straightforwardly lays down the dilemma. If they push the button inside, two things will happen. First, someone whom she and her husband do not know will die. Second, they will receive a payment of one-million dollars. They have 24 hours to decide.

The Box is being called silly and preposterous. What I want to know is how? It’s a fantasy. Obviously realism isn’t a major factor in a supernatural thriller. That being said, The Box contains more humanity than half of the movies I’ve seen this year. Kelly’s powerful movie greatly succeeds at pulling viewers in by containing a story of one of the most basic things in life: Choices and consequences. In the world of this movie, what happens is completely acceptable. If Norma and Arthur were chased by a robot, then yes, this movie would be preposterous. The Box creates a world where these supernatural events are wholly believable.

But what differentiates a movie like this from something like Transformers is the humanity of the production. A heavy dose of authenticity comes from where you’d least expect it: The performance from Cameron Diaz. When I was getting excited for The Box based off an excellent trailer, the element that was making me less enthusiastic was Cameron Diaz’s involvement. This is not an actress like Ellen Page, who gets people more eager to see a film just because she stars in it. Diaz has starred in the awful Charlie’s Angels films and the extremely superficial What Happens in Vegas, among other low-quality pictures. Behold her powerful work in The Box, a performance that in a perfect world would get her an Oscar nomination. Diaz disposes of all her sex appeal in favor of creating a layered and sympathetic character. When she cries, not pretends to for the camera but actually forces tears to flow, it is one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the year because of how real it feels. She does not strike one false note.

To simply call The Box “entertaining” is a great disservice to how powerful it is. “Entertaining” can be said of Tootsie. This movie is far more stirring than the average entertainment SNL has to offer. “Heartbreaking” is what this movie deserves to be called. Emotions aside, the film is also incredibly creepy. People go to horror movies to be scared and dramas to be moved. Here’s a movie that succeeds on both levels. Richard Kelly creates a very eerie and mystical world, heightened by the dreamlike texture of the cinematography and a very chilling throwback score by Arcade Fire. The only part of this entire film that works against it is a scene that divulges just a little too much information about Langella’s character and his motivations. This is however a small quibble with a movie that has so much to offer. Audiences and critics will instead be irritated at how little information the movie gives but I think that’s one of the great strengths of The Box, its ability to maintain mystery by not disposing of its haunting qualities.

The movie puts into play many factors. NASA, nosebleeds, water collections, and Mars experiments are all included in the movie. For some reason, many think this is a bad thing. I believe Kelly does this so audiences can have many different theories as to the nature of the events that occur in the film. This keeps The Box mystical. We don’t know why or how these things happen and that makes the movie more hypnotic and interesting. Not everything ties together by the conclusion of the film but again, this leaves room for debate and speculation. Why people think this is a weakness instead of a strength in a film is beyond me.

Do not be disheartened by the negative buzz surrounding this movie. Its ability to make you lost and dazed is what gives The Box its mystifying quality.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 6, 2009

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a classic example of misleading advertising. The trailer for this movie suggests an outrageous slapstick comedy rather than a much lower key and deadpan style of humor. Audiences will flock to see George Clooney sport a silly moustache and kill a goat by staring at it. They will either leave the theater greatly disappointed or oddly touched. The thing about a movie like this is that it can blend an over-the-top storyline with over-the-top characters but yet somehow still have a heart. In other words, it’s what a comedy should be.

The zany adventure story begins with a small town journalist by the name of Bob Wilton, played by Ewan McGregor, interviewing a moron who is convinced of having superpowers. This man mentions a name. Lyn Cassady. Wilton discards the whole interview and deals with more important problems such as his marriage. When in Kuwait to cover a contracting convention, Wilton stumbles upon Lyn, played by George Clooney. Cassady reveals to the naïve reporter a wild story of army experiments. Whether this is true or not is completely up to the viewer. If they want to believe the opening title “More of this is true than you would believe,” be my guest.

Lyn Cassady’s tale goes like this: in Vietnam, a soldier by the name of Bill Django, played by Jeff Bridges, hits his head and sees a vision. Django decides that this means he must create an army of psychic soldiers. Lyn calls them Jedi warriors. Soon enough, the New Earth Army is formed, led by Django. He teaches these soldiers how to apparently fight with their minds. Basically, the army is training people to be psychics. Lyn is one of these “Jedi warriors.”

Lyn now claims that he has been sent on a mission in Iraq, and Wilton, sensing this might be his big break, asks to join. What follows is pure entertainment and hilarity.

It’s evident that these soldiers are nothing more than hippies on acid but the humor in the film comes from Lyn’s strong belief that this is real. Bob Wilton’s motivations for joining Lyn are never quite clear. Most likely, he doesn’t believe that this is possible but wants the adventure and definitely wants to get away from his failed marriage. The movie doesn’t insist that these soldiers actually have psychic powers except for a snippet of humor in the final shot. The heart of the picture lies in the friendship between Bob and Lyn and their acceptance of reality.

George Clooney and Ewan McGregor are a great comedic duo but the greatest joy I got out of the film was watching Jeff Bridges be The Dude. Had The Men Who Stare at Goats been completely focused on Bill Django’s New Earth Army, the films might’ve as well been called The Big Lebowski Strikes Again. All they would need are bowlers getting strikes psychokinetically. Bridges is perhaps best known for his role in the brilliant Coen brothers cult comedy and blends much of The Dude’s personality into Django. Clooney is terrific in the role of Lyn because of how well he convinces the viewer that Lyn actually believes in his psychic powers. The only indication of Cassady possibly understanding that he is just an average guy comes in a poignant scene at an army base.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is not brilliant but it achieves what it sets out to do. Practically every attempt at humor pays off. Ewan McGregor gets a laugh or to just by starring in the movie. His confusion as to what a Jedi is…you’re clever enough to figure that one out for yourself. The final shot is clearly aware of McGregor’s Obi-wan reputation. The film makes a smart move by avoiding heavy handed political messages. The movie does not care about politics or the war on terror. The closest it comes to having a social comment is by simply pointing out that our government wastes money on ridiculous things.

George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, his Dudeness, and the rest of the cast succeed at making The Men Who Stare at Goats a breezy and light hour and a half of hilarious madness.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 5, 2009

Moviegoers today probably have no memory or knowledge of 1970’s blaxploitation pictures. Instead of spoofing those movies, Black Dynamite embraces the spirit of them to remind people. This is a hilarious, ingenious, and technically brilliant homage to B movies. But Black Dynamite doesn’t simply parody B movies. It sorta is a B movie.

Michael Jai White is perfect in the satirical role of Black Dynamite, a womanizing, nun chuck slinging, gun firing anti-hero living in the ghetto. His brother is murdered which drive on a blood thirsty rampage leading him to none other than Richard Nixon. In the process, he even finds a beer that shrinks genitals. Can’t see the commercials during the Super Bowl advertise that. “If you have problems in the sack, come to us to make them worst or even microscopically non-existent.” Cute marketing pitch.

Describing the plot of Black Dynamite is pointless. This is a movie to observe as a detailed homage rather than a serious story of racism and corruption. Director Michael Sanders has it all right. The saturated color, choppy editing, cheeky music (The main theme for the movie is downright brilliant), and awkward acting all work in favor of forming Black Dynamite as a B movie in itself. It’s a treat just to sit in the theater and marvel at the detail and overall spirit that is transferred straight out of actual blaxploitation films. Oh yeah, and you also get to laugh out loud a couple hundred times.

The actors do a great job of being convincing at being unconvincing. The scope of their talent in this film stems from their ability to perfectly deliver lines that were unintentionally cheesy in the original pictures. The dialogue is hilarious and when Tommy Davidson looks at the White House and says it’s the “honky house” I was just about convinced that Black Dynamite is one of the funniest movies of the year. A scene of particular brilliance involves Black Dynamite and his sidekicks unraveling a mystery of Greek mythology and how they got from Athena to nicknames for Richard is beyond me. While they were piecing it all together, I was too hypnotized by the sheer brilliance of the scene to catch the explanation.

Black Dynamite falters in the third act but there’s nothing like a good nun chuck duel with Richard Nixon to highlight the final thirty minutes of the film. Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez now have some competition in making B movies about…well, B movies.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 2, 2009 

Apartheid (Afrikaans for apartness) was a system of racial segregation legally enforced by the ruling white minority in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. The Population Registration Act (1950) classified all citizens by racial group. People of different races were forbidden to enter the same shop, attend the same school, or live under the same roof.

Skin, based on the true story of Sandra Laing, begins with this written on the screen. With this information that any viewer attending the movie learned in middle school, Skin positions itself as a preachy history lesson bearing no authenticity and certainly no likeability.

The Apartheid set drama is about Sandra Laing, a black looking child born to two white parents, played by Sam Neil and Alice Krige. The movie traces her legal battles to be classified as a white person and her departure from home. Her parents put her in a white school but the teachers see her as a distraction. The state could even take Sandra away from her parents. Her father becomes increasingly angry, demanding that Sandra be classified as a white citizen. Her mother and father raise her, send her to a good school, do everything in their power and beyond to make life easier for her, but what she gives them in return is her back. After getting mixed up with a black man working for her father, Sandra throws away her life and runs away from home.

Skin has the germs of a compelling story but nothing presented here is convincing nor is it anything to care about. It’s all quite simple. Yes, Apartheid was without a doubt wrong. In a perfect South Africa, Sandra’s father would have never had to tear himself apart. But he did, and he did for his daughter. He did everything he could to get her classified as a white person so she can go to a good school and get a proper education and have some semblance of a normal life. It is wrong that he had to do this in the first place, but under the circumstances it was necessary. She flips him off, hooks up with an abusive black man, and reclassifies herself. She spits in her father’s face. There is one scene which actually didn’t feel like preachy bullshit. In the “new South Africa,” Sandra runs into a judge she remembers from the case concerning her classification. He says, “I heard you reclassified yourself as a colored, and after all that trouble your father went through.” Exactly. After everything her father did for her, she has the nerve to spit in his face and denounce him. Worst of all, this movie has the nerve to show him as a monstrous villain in the wrong and poor little Sandra as an abused girl in the right.

Apart from a loathsome heroine, Skin always feels like it is preaching to the audience. The movie is extremely subjective. All the whites in the film are chubby pigs and all the blacks in the film are handsome and intelligent. In a particularly infuriating and completely untrue scene, Sandra sits in a classroom as a white teacher walks by and preaches to students that being different is wrong. I wanted to laugh at how unconvincing it was but scream at how untrue it was. Apartheid was by no means right, but trying to show that teachers believe this bullshit is propaganda.

The only honest movie I’ve ever seen about South Africa is Blood Diamond. That movie did not attempt to classify characters as good and evil. It’s also one of the only movies about South Africa that has the courage to show a black man as a villain instead of showing them as angels. 2009 has been littered with films about post-Apartheid South Africa (District 9, Disgrace, Clint Eastwood’s upcoming Invictus, and of course Skin) and this one is the worst of the bunch. Convincing movies about racism show everyone as people and not prototypes. They do not classify their characters as light and dark. I thought that’s why Apartheid was so bad in the first place.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted November 1, 2009

Samantha Hughes has four-hundred dollars in her back pocket. There’s a number for a pizza place on the fridge. The house is spacious with a decent sized television set. She has a check to write for Monday and the apartment of her dreams waiting for her. Oh, and there’s a number for pizza on the fridge. The House of the Devil, a creepy and creative little piece of nostalgic filmmaking, will take advantage of everything Samantha Hughes enjoys and wants and use it to deliver her to her doom.

Directed, written, and edited by Ti West, the film is in the spirit of Rosemary’s Baby. Samantha, played by newcomer Jocelin Donahue, is a college student who has just found the perfect apartment. The landlady, who remembers how her own daughter struggled to find a place, is generous towards Samantha by waving the deposit and only requiring a check for the first month’s rent. Even though this is a major discount, Samantha still has to come up with the money for the first month, so she dials a number for a babysitting gig.

Mr. Ullman, played by Tom Noonan (playing a character equally creepy to his role in Synecdoche, New York), calls Samantha back and asks her in a chilling and estranged voice to meet him on her campus. She is stood up but still receives a call later that night, apologizing and asking her to baby sit that night. Samantha needs the money and asks her friend to give her a ride. The house is in the middle of nowhere, big, and overwhelmingly eerie. There, Samantha meets Mr. Ullman and his wife, played by Mary Woronov, and is told that the job is actually to baby sit Mrs. Ullman’s mother. Initially hesitant but then willing if the price is right, she takes the job and settles in. Everything seems perfectly normal and too good to be true, but is it ever really?

The House of the Devil, which is generally an homage to 80’s slasher flicks and B movies, seems to draw most of its inspiration from Rosemary’s Baby. Jocelin Donahue has Mia Farrow’s innocent and plucky bookworm charm. The number on the refrigerator for a pizza place is mentioned by Mr. Ullman a few times, hinting that it is very important to him for Samantha to order this specific pizza. Similarly, the Cassavattes gently pushed the disgusting milkshake in front of Rosemary’s face. Gently, but in an intimidating fashion. The greatest similarity between Ti West’s practically unheard of The House of the Devil and Roman Polanski’s iconic Rosemary’s Baby is their heroines, two beautiful, innocent, and kind women that can easily be taken advantage of.

An especially effective performance comes from Tom Noonan, who greatly employs his cold voice to create an aura of eeriness and mystery. Noonan becomes a haunting presence in the film from the moment the audience is allowed to hear his voice on a payphone, before his face is even revealed. Noonan is a master of subtlety. In Synecdoche, New York and The House of the Devil, he is incredibly restrained and calm. This effectively makes his character chilling, creepy, and almost inhuman.

But the performances only add a layer of eeriness to the film. Another layer is added due to Ti West’s brilliant filmmaking. The House of the Devil is not only set in the 80’s, but feels like a movie from the 80’s. That’s not a red flag, since this is intentional. West shot the movie on 16mm film, perfectly evoking the retro 80’s atmosphere felt in the original Halloween. The closing scenes are all done in a much more hyper-stylized fashion, which will heighten the experience for some but may detract from the throwback feel for others.

The pacing is perfect, slowly building the tension only to deliver audiences to an anticlimactic and half-baked conclusion. For most of the film, events move at a restrained pace, never jumping to scares but letting the atmosphere effectively creep audiences out. This is all wonderful, but the payoff is very unsatisfying. Nothing that happens in the 70 minutes before the conclusion indicates this over-the-top twist. It builds up towards something completely different but radically takes a different route, leaving viewers out of the loop. The slow pace prepared me for something much more exciting than what was eventually on screen. The benefit of having such a calm but eerie atmosphere for the film is that when something shocking does happen, it scares viewers much more than if the movie had constantly attempted to deliver scares.

The House of the Devil will never achieve Paranormal Activity fame, nor does it deserve to, but it’s an effective little throwback horror movie that will still send chills down your spine if and when you discover it. The difference between this movie and Paranormal Activity is that this movie still has the element of surprise, something that the recent box-office hit has lost through all of the midnight screenings and hype. Ti West clearly admires directors such as Hitchcock and Polanski (the first 40 minutes of The House of the Devil is slightly reminiscent of Psycho) and makes this movie as a criticism of contemporary horror and as a reminder of what the genre used to be and will hopefully be once more.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted October 30, 2009

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted October 24, 2009

A common stereotype of animated films is that they have to strictly be in the realm of lighthearted stories for children. Several filmmakers, most notably Tim Burton, have gone against the status quo by making dark and gothic animated movies. However, none have gone as far as Adam Elliot, the writer and director of the Australian claymation/stopmotion picture Mary and Max. This is a stunningly gorgeous parable about friendship and misfits. This film defies all standards set for animated movies, creating a bleak and depressing universe inhabited by antisocial and nearly sociopathic beings.

Mary Daisy Dinkle, voiced by Toni Collette as an adult, is a young and misunderstood girl living in Australia who finds a name in a phonebook. This name belongs to Max Jerry Horovitz, voiced by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, an obese, mentally unstable, and anxious man living in Manhattan . Mary finds solace in drinking condensed milk while watching her favorite cartoon. At school, a boy makes fun of her having an oddly shaped birthmark on her forehead and for having clothes that look like they were made by an alcoholic. In fact, they are made by an alcoholic. Her mother drinks sherry, steals, and is too drunk to sow buttons on Mary’s ripped jacket, so she used laundry clips. She doesn’t have any friends and hopes Max Horovitz will change that.

She sends a letter to Max with a chocolate bar in it and asks him where babies come from. He receives this letter in New York and becomes nervous and anxious until finally deciding to sit down at his typewriter and craft a response. His idea on the origins of babies is that if it is a Jewish baby, an egg is laid by a rabbi. If the baby is Christian, an egg is laid by a nun. If however the baby is an Atheist, an egg is laid by a prostitute. This is an example of the small things that unite Mary and Max. They both are friendless, view the world in different and depressing ways, and are completely confused or, as Max calls it, “confuzzled” (a mix of the words “confused” and “puzzled”).

Max finds comfort in food. He is obsessed with chocolate. Almost any food he eats is either Kosher or something containing chocolate. He even goes as far as to replace a sausage with a chocolate bar, calling it a chocolate hotdog. Max eats over fifty of these hotdogs a day. He attends a seminar that attempts to inspire overweight people to cut down on sweets but Max is only more frustrated with these meetings. He grew up as an Orthodox Jew but now labels himself as an Atheist, despite still wearing his kippah and keeping a torah in his apartment. Max is also frustrated with the smells of New York and with people throwing cigarette butts on the ground. Many more quirks are scripted into Max, making him a wholly unique and three dimensional character despite his bizarre animated design.

From the mid 1970’s through the early 1990’s, Mary and Max are each other’s only friends, trading letters and candy. Through these years, they experience love, harsher depression, bouts of alcoholism, and even happiness. In a way, Mary and Max might believe that these letters are what keep the characters going, or at least going long enough to experience these emotions and changes. The film doesn’t insist that everyone must necessarily turn their lives around. Max’s addiction to junk food doesn’t magically disappear because of the inspiring letters Mary sends him. He lives his life as an obese man and no letters or friends will ever keep him from indulging in a chocolate hotdog.

The visuals, which actually convey the mood of the characters, are like nothing you’ve ever seen before. The design for Manhattan is gorgeous, evoking the look and style of a film noir. For Max’s segments, the scenery is reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, only animated. The same gray and European gothic imagery is present, creating a very specific mood that Max feels every day. Mary’s segments are more bright and colorful. This is because Mary is still optimistic for a better future and a happier life. Max has nothing left for him and will continue living in his mundane and depressing existence. I was reminded of an Australian movie earlier this year called $9.99, which used the same method of animation. For some reason, they didn’t quite work. With Mary and Max, they not only work but heighten the magnificent experience of watching it.

The ideas and social commentary present in the film only pushes this further away from being a kids’ movie. Mary confuses the term “agoraphobia” with “homophobia” in describing her isolated neighbor. Max writes to Mary about condoms and never having to use one. Mary is hinted to have an obsession with sex. A darkly funny scene involves a piranha biting Mary’s neighbor’s leg off. These characters are not Simba or Nemo or even Carl Fredrickson. They are seriously flawed and disturbed beings.

Hauntingly beautiful and harrowingly structured, Mary and Max is one of the most inventive and original pieces of animation I’ve ever seen.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted October 21, 2009

Movies employing crafty murders, sometimes from the confines of a jail cell, must always have a crafty and ingenious explanation. Take for example The Dark Knight, a film that succeeds on all levels because of how intricately plotted it is. It never missed one step and clearly explained its labyrinth murder plots. This is not the case with Law Abiding Citizen. While it succeeds at being an entertaining and often suspenseful thriller, any attempts to convey a moral or social message fail miserably.

Gerard Butler plays Clyde Shelton, a family man and an engineer who is subjected to a terrible tragedy. One night two criminals break into his home, knock him out, and murder his wife and daughter. The story picks up several months later when we see rising attorney Nick Rice, played by Jamie Foxx, strike up a deal with one of the murderers responsible for Clyde’s grief. The deal is that Darby, the man wholly responsible for the murders, is to testify against Ames, a scared accomplice who urged Darby not to carry out the crime, and receive third-degree murder. Ames will be put on death row. When Clyde is told of this, he is left even angrier and with a greater feeling of hopelessness.

Fast forward ten years. Nick Rice is now the district attorney and a family man. Darby has been released and spends his days snorting cocaine. We pick up on the day of Ames’s execution. The lethal injection procedure goes terribly wrong, prompting an investigation. Police rush to Darby’s apartment, where he puts up a gunfight and is advised by a mysterious caller to locate a police vehicle with a sleeping cop. The man occupying the vehicle is none other than Clyde Shelton, ready to strike back at the corrupt legal system which let the murderer of his wife and daughter go unpunished. After brutally killing Darby, Clyde is arrested and interrogated by Price. This time, Clyde is not going to be the victim. He makes it clear to Price that prosecuting him won't be an easy task. Everyone responsible for the deal that let Darby walk away with a minor sentence is now in danger, including Price and his family.

Law Abiding Citizen is a mindless thrill ride, offering entertainment if you suspend all logic. Dissecting this movie for plot holes and illogical errors would grow boring after five minutes. The film is dealt a rather lousy script, one that labels its characters as embarrassing clichés. As soon as you see someone in this movie, you can automatically draw comparisons to countless other characters in countless other films. Nick Rice is the typical crusading government official, reminiscent of every hotshot attorney in about any law movie. He's brooding and unbelievably intelligent, finding clues that even the most seasoned detectives would spend months discovering. The character of Clyde Shelton shamelessly rips off Heath Ledger's Joker and even Hannibal Lecter. Viola Davis (the woman who toyed with your principles in Doubt) has a small role and is the most generic character of all, mirroring every stubborn but motherly boss at a government office. I for one remembered S. Epatha Merkerson in Law & Order. No attempts are made to create interesting and original characters, detracting from any emotional investment may entrust in this movie.

The violent crime that set the plot in motion comes too abruptly. Within the first five minutes, Clyde is already a grieving widow and father. The only reason the audience can feel any pain is because of the nature of the crime itself. It is nearly impossible to care about the characters when they are denied any development to make them blossom from a generic idea on paper to a three dimensional human being. I bought in to Gerard Butler's transition from grieving man to violent anti-hero, but Jamie Foxx's crusading district attorney is too bland. Foxx, looking distracted, knows all too well why he is in this movie and never attempts to hide his motivations from the camera.

The story itself is completely absurd. Firstly, the ten year jump is unconvincing, offering no indications of aging. In fact, in the midst of Clyde's hatred, he is still able to maintain abs and look like King Leonidas. Secondly, Law Abiding Citizen ignores the need for logic if it is ever going to come off as believable. The whole plan stemming from Clyde's madness is ludicrous. In The Dark Knight, the Joker's overtake of Gotham City is completely plausible. We see his intricate plan step by step and know all the players of the game. I don’t want to reveal anything, but someone had to come in to the solitary confinement at least once and notice something. The key to this so-called mastermind plan is ripped off from The Shawshank Redemption, again making this a wholly unoriginal piece of work from F. Gary Gray. On top of the borrowings from superior samples of cinema, the movie features very strained and unconvincing line readings about the corruption and leniency of our legal system.

There is one powerful scene in the beginning, when Clyde pleads Nick not too offer Darby the deal. Something in Gerard Bulker's convictions makes us cry out for him. A huge mistake the script made was too eventually make Clyde so inhumane that any righteous mission he wanted to carry out lost its message and became a grizzly rampage.

Law Abiding Citizen is the kind of pulp entertainment one expects on cable on a Saturday night. It is not however the morally ambiguous psychological thriller it so desperately wants to be. That title belongs to Silence of the Lambs, a film among piles of others that this movie borrows ideas from. First step to making a harrowing and powerful psychological thriller: be original.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted October 20, 2009

After weeks of hype and an ingenious user-friendly marketing campaign, Paranormal Activity is now in wide release after receiving one-million demands on its website. Now the question is if the breakout indie horror flick can still manage to creep audiences out despite the insane buildup. Any film being lauded as "one of the scariest movies of all time" is bound to disappoint to some extent, but Paranormal Activity is still able to deliver chills by relying more on its content rather than the blurb on its poster.

Shot in a Blair Witch Project fashion, the story centers around a young couple being plagued by a demon. Mica and Katie are seemingly happy. They live in a spacious middle-class home, both have decent jobs, and they're in love. Katie however has been haunted by a demon since her childhood and brings this trouble along with her into Mica's life. One day he gets a video camera, through which the story is told, and begins to film everything hoping to get footage of supernatural occurrences. To his surprise, odd and unexplainable activity goes on in the night, which he catches on the camera. Katie may not be crazy after all.

Paranormal Activity is creepier than it is scary. For most of the movie, the demon is a very ghostly presence. It may or may not exist. Only in the last twenty minutes or so do Katie's fears actually earn credibility and form a terrifying reality for these characters. I was more creeped out than I was jumping out of my seat, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I appreciate a movie that has enough faith in the audience to leave its supernatural phenomena up to debate by maintaining eeriness instead of divulging too much story.

The exposition is craftily presented. What scares us more than just the creepy noises in the middle of the night is the back story which gives it resonance. A particularly unsettling scene would lose its effect had there not been that brief but crucial exposition. The way it's presented is another strong suit of the film. It didn't appear as though the characters were going out of their way to tell this back story. It's only natural they reveal this information under their circumstances. The snappy interplay between Mica and Katie and the emotions they reveal to the camera also help keep the story grounded in reality. This gives the movie a more authentic and layered atmosphere, which only makes it that much creepier.

As for the blurb on the poster, I must argue with it. First of all, this is not one of the scariest movies ever made. It delivers a few jumps and chills but nothing that warrants such high praise. Secondly, I highly doubt it will "leave an imprint on your psyche." Again, it has chilling moments but if you could withstand The Exorcist, Paranormal Activity should prove to be a bland experience in comparison. As for the "guaranteed nightmares," we shall see.

Losing the element of surprise that snuck up on audiences since 2007 at sold out midnight screenings, Paranormal Activity, shot on a budget of a mere fifteen-thousand dollars, still manages to be the creepiest and one of the most inventive movies of the year.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted October 18, 2009

When something is funny, it is because it is so outrageous but can still sustain authenticity in a real situation. Couples Retreat takes a preposterous setup, a script that treats its characters as caricatures, and attempts to lecture the audience about the true meaning of love through one predictable and overused joke after another. To put it simply, this is not a funny movie because nothing in this uneven mess of a romantic comedy sustains any credibility in a logical scenario.

The premise is another gimmick used to deliver the characters to the same happy ending as always. Here it goes: four couples are all best friends. There is the strong couple that makes it through tough times. They are Dave and Ronnie, played by Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman. Then there is the distant couple that wouldn’t be together had it not been for that one night in high school. They are the football player, Joey, played by Jon Favreau, and the cheerleader, Lucy, played by Kristen Davis. Of course there is also the adorable and picture perfect, but nevertheless exhaustingly over efficient, couple. This couple, composed of Jason and Cynthia, played by Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell, are on the verge of a divorce.

At a birthday party for Dave and Ronnie’s son, Jason and Cynthia drag along a boring PowerPoint presentation on the pros and cons of getting a divorce, and a solution. The answer to their problems is Eden, a couples resort on a beautiful island. Problem is no one who isn’t a supermodel or a millionaire can possibly afford to stay there. But the triple checking duo of Jason and Cynthia find an affordable option. The catch: It’s a group rate, so unless all of their friends come along, Jason and Cynthia will be forced to get a divorce. As expected, the other couples are hesitant. All you have to know is that they cave in. How is not important, nor is it believable.

On the island, none of them can stand each other. Joey and Lucy, who practically loathe each other as it is, feel tempted to cheat any chance they get. Joey wants to go to Eden East, a singles resort on the other side of the island, where he plans to stalk every attractive young girl he can find. Lucy wants the hunky male masseurs and yoga instructors. Dave and Ronnie are forced to realize the problems in their marriage through a mandatory couple’s therapy session everyday. Jason and Cynthia only grow more apart, becoming more convinced that a divorce is their only option. But something happens. If you don’t know what this something is, I must ask: Have you ever seen a romantic comedy in your life? If not, perhaps the studio has finally found someone who cannot identify formula and clichés.

Couples Retreat is by no means terrible. I’m shocked I didn’t absolutely hate it. But it’s still pretty damn bad. The jokes could be considered amusing if they had not been so preposterous. In one scene, Favreau’s character is getting ready to masturbate. Just at this moment a bellhop comes in to deliver food. This would have been a very funny scene if you suspend all logic. What kind of resort allows their employees to randomly waltz into a guest’s room without knocking? If you however want to pretend that logic doesn’t exist in a movie set in reality, you might end up laughing at every pathetic attempt at humor in this movie.

As for the acting, everyone just plays their part as if they were sleepwalking. Vaughn is doing his usual shtick again. Bateman is stuck in a ridiculous caricature role and Bell isn’t much better off. Favreau and Davis are at times amusing; usually something having to do with Favreau’s raging hormones, but everyone is just in their part, as if they were taking a strong Nyquil to get through the whole thing. For the most part, the jokes are lame and obvious. Just as you think a hilarious payoff is peaking, writers Favreau and Vaughn settle for the safe humor. The characters are simply put into some of these situations just to get that laugh, made more obvious because as soon as that attempt at humor comes the scene ends and moves on to the next long drag of humorless exercise.

If you think this comedy could be anymore unfunny, behold a painfully stupid scene of Vaughn’s character challenging a strict hotel employee to a Guitar Hero duel so they can enter Eden East. The ending is of course the same as in every romantic comedy. All the couples, no matter how different they are, start to love each other again. Do writers Vaughn and Favreau need a reality check? Half of the couples should get restraining orders instead of falling back in love. Take for example the relationship between Favreau and Davis. These two hate each other. Not one scene in this entire movie do they share an authentic conversation. At least the reconciliation of Vaughn and Akerman is slightly believable.

Neither a total failure nor a clever comedy, Couples Retreat is able to sustain some level of entertainment because of occasional amusing interplay. After all, no one can be mad at the cast (excluding Vaughn and Favreau) for participating in this film. They got to go to Bora Bora. I however did not. I got a boring 90 minutes comprised of bland characters put into lame situations for the purpose of deriving a laugh, a laugh that can be heard in a distant echo.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted October 16, 2009

Film is an art form that makes it possible for even the craziest and most impossible fantasies to come to life. It makes us believe in magic again. Spike Jonze's adaptation of the lauded 1963 childrens' book by Maurice Sendak Where the Wild Things Are, a book composed of just nine sentences but beautifully drawn images, takes this concept to heart, and in doing so reminded me of why I fell in love with movies in the first place.

Jonze takes these nine sentences and builds something fantastic, magical, and I suppose even wild. Our hero is a little boy named Max, played by the adorable Max Records. At home, he is frustrated and trapped in his own world. He isn't presented as an innocent and misunderstood boy. Jonze and writer Dave Eggers (the quirky genius behind Away We Go) take a less formulaic road and decide to show him as an angry and disturbed child. After a violent confrontation with his mother, played by Catherine Keener of Jonze's Being John Malkovich, Max runs away from home in that iconic wolf costume and goes to where those wild things are (in Sendak's book, Max's room transforms into the island.)

Crashing in a sail boat, Max explores the island and meets a group of oversized teddy bears, but these wild things are far from comforting. They are violent, angry, have personality disorders, and are often hostile. After Max fabricates an innocent story of superpowers that can only come from the mind of a little boy, the wild things crown him as their king, believing his powers will drive out the sadness they suffer. His first order of business is to have a rumpus, leading to a fun and vibrant scene beautifully perceived by Spike Jonze.

Things quickly grow out of control. The wild things deal with their own problems amongst themselves while Max experiences the difficulties his mother faced trying to control him. His closest friend on the island is Carol, a wild thing voiced by James Gandolfini. Often experiencing violent mood swings, Carol may very well be bipolar, and has a serious anger management problem. While he is presented as a sort of guardian of Max's, Carol is at times the villain and the core of darkness throughout the story. In a way, he might even be a fragment of Max himself.

For the most part, Where the Wild Things Are is a raw and daring fantasy.  Abandoning any form of a normal narrative, the film is practically an anti-"cheery kids' adventure” story. The characters are angry, disturbed, and depressed. Some scenes are so dark and frightening it’s a shock the movie only got away with a PG rating. Mostly, the film is composed of adult themes, presented through childlike creatures. There is no story arch, mostly just characters talking over one another and mumbling to themselves. It’s almost as if Quentin Tarantino decided to do a kids movie. The film's beauty stems from its simplicity. Jonze employs hand held cinematography and that gives the movie a simple look, which is why all of the gorgeous scenery looks so real. Jonze intentionally gives the movie a raggy (rough-hewn is the term I hear most often) look and feel to evoke a vintage and very throwback atmosphere. I love that he actually had the nerve to make the actors dress in the furry suits instead of creating the wild things digitally (only the facial expressions were done through special effects), therefore adding a dose of authenticity.

Where the Wild Things Are is a valentine to our childhoods. It’s equally nostalgic as it is heartwarming. It makes us travel back to our innocence and happiness before we grew up and started perceiving things in a more realistic way. For and hour and a half, Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers not just treat the kids to a magical and unforgettable experience, but they also make adults and older kids alike feel something that most movies, even those better than this one, cannot offer. This is a movie existing inside its own imaginative head and is not affected one bit by problems of the real world.

Only Spike Jonze could have made this movie as wonderful and magical as it is. Maurice Sendak, the author of the childrens’ book, fully endorsed this project and lauded at Jonze’s final product. This movie is stunningly beautiful. The scenes of Max playing games with the wild things are vibrant and exciting. A particularly beautiful scene occurs when Carol shows Max a little model town he built. Max dives into a hole that he can crawl through and stick his out to see the detailed architecture. Carol then pours some water into the delicate trail and the result is a marvelous and, like everything else in this movie, a magical sight.

Jonze somehow is able to jump from one tone to another without leaving the audience behind and making the transition seem natural. He conveys Max's thoughts through a beautiful score, composed by none other than Carter Burwell blended with Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's, and natural sounds. Some may find the loud soundtrack offputting, but all the filmmakers are trying to do is mirror Max's inner struggles, thoughts, and frustrations.

My problem with Where the Wild Things Are becomes a prevailing factor much later in the film. Jonze and Eggers decide to take a rather sentimental route with their characters, detracting from the authenticity. Still, the movie remains heartwarming.

As for my four star rating of the movie, let me explain. More and more I’m beginning to realize the total irrelevance of star ratings. They don’t mean anything. The love one has for a movie cannot be measured that way. Admiration for a film is often a complicated, sometimes personal, reason. So logically, Where the Wild Things Are is a three-and-a-half-star movie. But that’s only if you reference some weird rubric that has no bearing on the soul of the actual film and the feelings that it evoked. Inside, I know this is a quite miracle of a movie, a movie that made me feel innocent and happy , as though I was a little boy again, snuggled up in bed with a wolf suit and reading a childrens’ book. Can you really measure that by stars?

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted October 11, 2009

Every year, some obscure art house picture sneaks into critical acclaim and widespread applause from audiences. Last year, this movie was the terrific Slumdog Millionaire. This year, that movie is Lone Sherfig’s An Education, a hidden gem likely to captivate the heart of American moviegoers. To call this a heartbreaking film doesn’t quite capture the intensity of its performances as well as the tragic betrayal that the characters suffer. I decided to see this movie as soon as possible, before having my head filled with all the hype and having my opinion influenced. You should do the same.

The story centers around a young girl named Jenny living in 1960’s England. Newcomer Carey Mulligan delivers the performance likely to be buzzed about later this year, and damn is it a fine performance. Jenny’s parents, played by a wonderfully eccentric and poignant Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour, push her to apply to Oxford University. She herself isn’t sure if she wants this life. Sure she will have an impressive transcript, but at what cost? In Jenny’s eyes, after Oxford she will settle into being a boring woman living a boring life. One day she meets the charming but much older David, played by Peter Sarsgaard, who gives her a ride home on a rainy day. They instantly feel attraction towards one another and David is even able to win over Jenny’s strictly conservative parents.

David represents the life Jenny wants. He takes her to Paris and introduces her to people who share her intellectual and cultural interests. Through him, she meets and befriends Danny and Helen, played by Dominic Cooper and a perfectly cast Rosamund Pike. There is something dangerous about this circle of friends, but Jenny knows this is what she’s been waiting for. She loves the danger and the fun and the unpredictability these people have to offer. However, her new lifestyle of traveling to Paris and other weekend getaways start to take a toll on her school life. Her parents are ready to name David their son-in-law, but Jenny’s much more cautious teachers warn her of the mistake she is making.

An Education is simply a captivating and absorbing film. Carey Mulligan, in a performance likely to make her a star, evokes the glamorous Hollywood actresses of the 1960’s. Her sassy and innocent appeal is reminiscent of an Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. Surely the characters of Jenny and Eliza Doolittle are completely different, but Eliza’s convictions and strengths shine through Jenny. In some ways, her fast-talking cleverness reminded me of Ellen Page in Juno. In three pivotal scenes with heavyweight Emma Thompson, Mulligan holds her ground, never hinting that this might all be staged. She slowly and subtlety evolves from a nurtured rebel to an independent woman only to revert back to being a scared and uncertain adolescent. It is a brilliant and transformative performance, ranking among the best of the year and perhaps the best female performance of the year.

However, just because Carey Mulligan is wonderful, that’s no reason to ignore the other fantastic performances in the movie. Alfred Molina has perfect comedic timing and tragic conviction to make this a complex and three-dimensional character. At times, Molina mixes the comedy with the tragedy, creating a bittersweet scene blooming with authentic human emotions. Rosamund Pike is perfectly cast as Helen, an ignorant and slightly bland but nevertheless interesting and endearing woman. While Helen is certainly beautiful and very engaging, at times she is simply clueless. She cannot process the idea that Jenny would use French words in a casual conversation. In many instances, her facial expression is enough to make you laugh out loud, especially in a scene involving classical music. Pike injects the right life and spirit into Helen to keep her from being a caricature. She makes her character a little zany, mixing in class and elegance to create a complicated woman trapped between her loyalty to her friends and her moral obligations to—you’ll find out for yourself.

The cinematography by John de Borman is beautiful and detailed. An especially gorgeous scene is a montage of Jenny and David’s trip to Paris. It evokes the essence of classy 60’s throwback advertising, integrated with modern high definition filmmaking, and it creates a vintage and dreamlike texture to it. Another hyper-stylized sequence involves dog racing, offering some kinetic and grainy shots. The cinematography perfectly creates a texture and tone to the movie.

Lone Sherfig does something rare with her direction of An Education. Most period pieces either focus entirely on the visual cues indicating the time periods, or only focus on the characters. Either way, it always creates an uneven film. Sherfig integrates the period piece cues with character actions. For example, the detail to the cigarettes the characters smoke is impeccable. For some reason, many movies set in the 60’s forget that filtered cigarettes were not extremely popular in that decade. The directors usually give their actors Marlboros or Newports to smoke, detracting from the authenticity of the movie. Sherfig gives her actors filterless cigarettes, creating a subtle but noticeable cue to the time period that only better creates the atmosphere of the film.

The comedy in the movie is subtle, occasionally hilarious, and observant. Take for example a scene with Emma Thompson, another great performance in the film, where Jenny and her principal argue about Judaism and religion. While Emma Thompson’s remarks about the religion of Christ are funny because of how ignorant they are, they are also reflective of the cultural views of people in England in that specific time period. Post war England was a bleak and depressing place, and somehow An Education is able to convey that through comedy.

The script by Nick Hornby is so poignant because it refuses to give the audience ridiculous plot twists. When the twist does come, people aren’t so much going “that’s it?” as they are gasping at the cruelty and consequences of what has just occurred. We don’t need some unbelievable surprise that would take away from the humanity of the picture. The twist isn’t anything incredibly shocking in the sense that it can’t be seen coming. It is shocking because of the consequences it creates. I will not go into detail but you’ll know what I mean when you see it. It is tragic because of the effects it will have on a character’s life, and that’s enough to make my jaw drop.

An Education has already gained momentum and arrives to theaters on the wings of Oscar buzz. It is likely to be a major contender, ranging from its spectacular performances to the beautiful direction and cinematography, and the darling of awards season, and deservedly so. This is a great film.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted October 7, 2009 (Early Review)

In the beginning of the 1974 season, Leeds United was the best soccer team in England . Don Revie was the best manager in the country. Brian Clough was considered a shame on the face of Derby County. The Damned United, a terrific movie written by Peter Morgan and starring Michael Sheen, shows us these several events in different time periods, tied together by different aspects of human nature.

The movie begins with the manager of Leeds United, Don Revie, announcing his resignation to the press. He plans on coaching the national team in the Euro Cup. His replacement is Brian Clough, played by rising star Michael Sheen, former manager of Derby County . Clough has been outspoken in his distaste for the way Leeds United plays and must now forge a connection with the players and the chairmen that all hate his guts. Now you must be thinking of The Damned United as a typical sports movie. You're assuming that Clough will start to connect with the players, win over the greedy chairmen, and lead the team to glory, surpassing Revie's achievements.

You could not be more wrong.

Instead of having a clichéd narrative, the movie takes us into Clough's days as manager of Derby County and the bitter rivalry with  Leeds United and Don Revie. After ignoring warnings from the chairman of Derby , played by Jim Broadbent in another spectacular performance, Clough recruits several expensive players. This however was worth the cost, because Derby quickly rises to the top of the second division. In the following season, Clough and Derby County reach the top of the first division and are on even terms with Leeds United. Internal quarrels rage on between Clough and chairman Sam Longson, leading to the respected manager being viewed as a disgrace.

In 1974, Clough is a mess. He took on the job of manager of Leeds, a rival of Derby, only to prove to himself that he is better than Don Revie. The players resent him and complain to the board about his coaching. After an embarrassing departure from Derby , Clough is on the verge of having an even more embarrassing departure from Leeds . At this point in the film, I realized director Tom Hopper and screenwriter Peter Morgan were never attempting to make this an inspirational sports movie. This is a portrait of Clough and his slow descent into a self designed prison of personal demons.

The Damned United often strikes Frost/Nixon territory. Michael Sheen is in the title role and Peter Morgan constructs the layered screenplay, but there is something about the way both movies portray its complex figures that evoke the similarities. There are actually two scenes very similar in essence but different in terms of technicalities. One of these involves a drunk Clough calling Revie in the middle of the night, similarly to a drunk Nixon calling Frost around the same time. The other is an interview, where both Clough and Revie get personal and emotional.

However, the characters of David Frost and Brian Clough are practically exact opposites. Where as Frost was charming, mannered, confident, and charismatic, Clough is angry, insecure, jealous, and compulsive. Just the concept of Michael Sheen being able to master both of these men in impeccable and flawless performances is reason enough to brand Sheen as one of the best character actors today.

The story comes full circle through greed, pride, ego, betrayal, and most importantly through the competition between men. Clough's jealousy and feelings of inferiority towards Revie stem from a game in which Revie strolled past him without shaking his hand. In the interview reminiscent of the finale in Frost/Nixon, Revie excuses himself by stating, "I probably didn't know who you were." One can attribute many of Clough's insecurities to his own inner rage but when anyone hears that they are invisible, feelings of inferiority are natural.

The movie plays on two levels which are unaware of each other. It works as a human drama and as a portrait of England in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Hopper does not pepper the screen with period piece clues. He films his characters and everything else just fits in with the background, creating the tone and mood of the film.

Excellent supporting performances come from Timothy Spall and Jim Broadbent.

The screenplay is certainly worthy of an Oscar nomination but it would never appear energetic and lively without Michael Sheen's line readings. The best scenes are so good because of how well Peter Morgan can visualize Sheen reading the lines he writes for him. This comes to light in the moments when Sheen goes on tirades. They are funny, witty, thought provoking, and in some instances heartbreaking. He leaves the character he is talking to speechless after he utters some sheer fast talking brilliance.

The lighting and cinematography is beautiful. The first images (not the opening montage) are engrossing. How does one really explain why the cinematography is good? It looks beautiful, creates a mood, and sets up a tone. That's what cinematography is supposed to do, and that is what it does here. In a particularly beautiful scene, Clough sits  in his office as a game rages on, and the brightness in the room is dependent on the cheer. It is a spellbinding and almost lyrical shot.

An interesting and layered aspect to the story is the dynamic between Clough and chairman Sam Longson. I'm not even mentioning the deeply intricate relationship between Clough and his dear friend Peter Taylor. At the beginning of the movie, Longson is almost like family. Clough's kids call him Uncle Sam. However, Longson and Clough begin to hate each other. They imply to each other that the other is worthless and both start hatching plans to ruin the other's career.

Beautifully shot, terrifically acted, expertly crafted and told, and featuring a vibrant soundtrack as well as a subtle yet effective score, The Damned United is a dammed good film.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted October 7, 2009

A teen movie such as Whip It is rare. In fact, any movie like Whip It is rare. First of all, it is insanely and wildly entertaining as well as satisfying. Second, it is a teen movie that avoids stereotypes. Instead, it shows that the stereotypes in high school movie are actually quite accurate. Third, it makes you want to stand and cheer, and when Bliss, played by the awesome Ellen Page, knocks down a stuck up bitch something inside you causes an uproar of applause. But mostly, Whip It is so rare and wonderful because it is a movie in which I literally had a huge smile on my face for most of the film.

Page plays Bliss Cavender, a small town girl with big dreams. She is stuck in the boring and shallow suburbs of Bodene, Texas. Her mother, played by the wonderful Marcia Gay Harden, pushes her into beauty pageants and wants her to be like every other preppy drone in her school. Bliss works at a local restaurant that requires her to wear an embarrassing uniform and serve the famous town burger known as the Squealer. Basically, some stupid jock must eat the whole thing in less than three minutes and the burger is free. Good god! Bliss discovers that a roller derby match will be held at some indie rock venue, and being an indie rock kid, can’t wait to go just to feed her curiosity. This leads to one of the best scenes in the movie.

Since Bliss and her best friend Pash, played by Alia Shawkat, live in the dull and uniformed town of Bodene, going to a roller derby match is considered “weird” and “unacceptable.” As in most towns of this sort, the whole community is infatuated with high school football games. So Bliss and Pash stick on some football jerseys from school and wave “Bodene” flags. Her parents are so happy she is finally giving in to the “school spirit” phenomena. But not quite. They run out of the house, take of the jerseys, and go to see the roller derby match.

At this roller derby match, Bliss sees the life she wants. She doesn’t want to be stuck in this town, raising her kids settling into her mother's life. She turns up at tryouts, formally meeting the skaters: They are played by Kristen Wiig, Drew Barrymore (marking her directorial debut with Whip It), Zoe Bell, Juliette Lewis, Eve, Ari Graynor, and Jimmy Fallon as a zany announcer and Andrew Wilson as their coach. Bliss makes the team and must lie to her parents about where she will be in the evenings. The premise may seem clichéd but the charm and spirit of this movie is irresistible.

The performances are excellent, especially from Ellen Page, Kristen Wiig, Marcia Gay Harden, and Daniel Stern, who plays Bliss’s dad and has an endearing warmth about him. Page is taking on a much different character from her star-making role as Juno. They are practically opposites. Juno was confident, fast talking, sassy, and a smart ass (in a good way). Bliss is much more quite and reserved and in some ways very insecure. After she starts skating for the team, her confidence is heightened and she can finally knock over that girl who concocted some lame ass prank. The girl tapes two naked Barbie dolls together, implying that Bliss and her best friend are lesbians, and ties them in Bliss’s locker. When Bliss and her parents are called into the principal’s office because of this, Bliss’s mom says, “She has to cheer tonight!” in response to the principal saying that the girl has a bruise. Bliss replies, “A bruise and she’s still cheering? What an athlete.” Perfect comedic timing and sarcasm on that delivery. To make the scene even better, Daniel Stern can’t help but smile at his clever daughter.

Marcia Gay Harden’s character is exceptionally well-scripted. She is not a prototype of the typical suburban housewife. Instead, she is a mail woman who smokes cigarettes. She is painted as a flawed and complex woman who the audience can feel sympathy for. Bliss isn’t created to be a flawless heroine. We often times see her mother’s point of view on the situation. For instance, in a scene with Kristen Wiig’s character, Maggie, we clearly see that Bliss isn’t so perfect and innocent. Maggie tells her that she was completely wrong to lie to her parents and no matter how much Maggie loves Bliss like a daughter and a sister, she can acknowledge this. The script avoids being biased. It is authentic and poignant, featuring very complex and difficult characters. Drew Barrymore, marking her directorial debut, fills the skating scenes with energy and hip 70’s style art direction.

It's cliched and corny but it's a lot of fun. You don't have to remember this movie but you can't help but cheer.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted October 7, 2009

What would you say or do if you couldn’t lie? What if you’re inner thoughts were revealed to society? And remember, no lying. In an alternate universe inhabited by Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Rob Lowe and a movie studio that can only produce movies based on true stories, there is no question as to whether telling a lie is even possible. There is no such thing as a lie. There isn’t even a word for. The word “truth” doesn’t exist either. Saying whatever you think is natural and there is no way to get around it. Despite The Invention of Lying being sold as a lighthearted romantic comedy with some added fantasy, this is mostly a social commentary evoking some very provocative and important questions.

Ricky Gervais stars, directs, and writes The Invention of Lying. His acting responsibilities put him in the role of Mark Bellison, a screenwriter in this alternate universe where lying is impossible. Literally everyone tells the truth. A waiter confides to a customer that he took a sip of a martini he was bringing to her table. Women cannot simply shrug off a man, instead telling him that he is unattractive overweight. People don’t say to new moms how cute their babies are. Basically, whatever anyone thinks about another person is revealed to him or her. Since lies don’t exist, fiction is impossible in books and movies.

Mark works in a production company where people are assigned to centuries. He works in the 13th century department, writing a film about the Black Plague. One night he takes out Anna, played by Jennifer Garner, who must tell him right away, not that it’s technically her fault, that she was just masturbating and is feeling pessimistic about their date. Mark gets to hear no holds barred that he is not attractive, has a snub nose, and probably won’t be getting another call from her.  

The now fired Mark can’t pay his rent, causing him to go to a bank to withdraw all of his remaining funds. However, something odd happens. Mark is able to tell a lie. When asked how much money he has left, instead of saying the truth, which is that he has three hundred dollars, he says eight hundred. The exhilarated and bewildered Mark must tell his friends right away. The only problem is that there are no such words as “lie” and “truth.” So he must say, “I said something that wasn’t.” Basically, Mark has just invented lying. He uses this to win the girl, get his job back by writing a crazy science fiction love story, and help people by giving them hope for a better tomorrow. I’d rather not say anything else, except that the remainder of the plot has some ideas and allegories on faith and the afterlife.

The Invention of Lying can be interpreted several different ways. But no matter how you spin in it, this is a ridiculously satisfying and heartwarming movie. There is a scene in which Tina Fey, who plays Mark’s assistant, calls Mark a “fat fagot.” Now this homophobic slur in some ways stunned me. Would a movie being marketed as a family comedy really use this word? I was going over the scene in my head, trying to figure out why this sudden homophobia in liberal Hollywood. Then it struck me. The movie isn’t trying to insult gays at all. It is trying to unmask the true feelings of people who pass themselves off as accepting individuals. This is why I use the word “provocative.” Think about it. With all of the debates going on over gay marriage, people are jumping on the bandwagon to support homosexuals and lesbians. But what do they really feel? Do they just want to be viewed as empathetic people? What’s inside the head of the people who tell their friends that they’re not the least bit homophobic? I am not a homophobe, but do you know that? What if I’m lying to you? The whole point of this slur being used in the movie is to show how people really think and what they really feel. Maybe Brad Pitt, who is an outspoken supporter of gay rights, is truly a homophobe and uses the word “fagot” at least six times a day. Maybe he just wants to appear empathetic.

The idea of The Invention of Lying is to unmask our society. There are a few brilliant cameos from big names included just for this reason. We get faces like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Jason Bateman, and best of all Edward Norton. The Norton cameo completes this task better than any of the others. He plays a cop who stops Mark and his drunken friend, played by the very funny stand-up comic Louis C.K, and starts babbling on about his corruption which supports his cocaine addiction, as well as being glad the two are white or else he might have to draw his gun without provocation and lose his weapon.

So yes, there are plenty of clichés sampled here. And in some odd way, they work. The romance is so endearing and breezy that you can’t help but root for Mark and Anna. Not everything works but enough of it does. The social commentary is thought provoking without being preachy. Several scenes are highlighted with a light and charming score. The writing is sharp and the performances excellently convey the farcical feel of the script. Now again, I am saying I very much like The Invention of Lying, and I honestly do, but you cannot know for sure whether I am telling the truth? In the ideal but very flawed world this movie creates, a film like this couldn’t even exist, and that’s quite a shame.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted October 4, 2009

The concept of zombies are, believe it or not, very funny. They walk around with their mouths open and arms stuck out looking like autistic kids on heroine. Most horror movies dwelling in zombie subgenre don’t realize this. Zombieland does. Most horror movies about zombies suck. Zombieland does not. One of the protagonists endlessly craves a Twinkie. Similarly, this homage/satire represents something we all crave and look for endlessly: A funny, campy, bloody, and gory good time.

The movie begins with Jesse Eisenberg of Adventureland (there’s a title similarity I just noticed) giving a voice over explaining the current state of the country. Zombies took over America and now run around killing off the weak ones. The cautious ones, though very few, survive and travel with rifles and shotguns. Eisenberg plays Columbus (all of the characters are referred to by their home town), and he happens to be one of the few cautious ones. Walking through an abandoned highway, he spots an Escalade with none other than a gun slinging, fast-talking, and knife wielding Woody Harrelson. Harrelson plays Tallahassee, an angry redneck wishing for nothing more than to stumble upon a box of Twinkies.

In a grocery store Tallahassee believe to be loaded with the cream filled junk food, Columbus and the guy with the sweet tooth are stripped of their weapons by Wichita and Little Rock, played by the delightful duo of Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin. Expectedly, they team up and go on a zombie-bashing rampage, hoping to reach an amusement park in California. Zombieland is at heart a campy and offbeat road trip movie, peppered with flesh-eating monsters and ounces upon ounces of gore.

This is the kind of entertaining and blood-filled thrill ride audiences wanted Jennifer’s Body to be. If Zombieland is my reward for sitting through the dull Megan Fox vehicle, so be it. I had a great time watching Woody Harrelson yell out profanity after profanity while swinging a guitar into a zombie’s head. Jesse Eisenberg, who was so sincere and funny in Adventureland, plays practically the same character, give or take the gore. Eisenberg is good at playing the awkward and dorky kid who changes after meeting a girl. Hopefully he won’t make a habit out of it. The best scene in the movie involves a cameo, hilariously written, that concludes in a way reminiscent of the dark humor trademarked by the Coen brothers.  

The exciting finale avoids stupid and boring action. The ingeniously crafted epic battle of man and zombie takes place in an amusement park, full of fast swinging rides ready to splatter a group of flesh-eating monsters. And then, no matter how formulaic or expected it may be, we all get what we want. Tallahassee gets his Twinkie, Columbus gets the girl, and we get a bloody good time.

I have a friend who is in love with vintage zombie flicks, such as Night of the Living Dead, and constantly complains about the treatment of them in contemporary horror. He says, “They’re the undead! They’re supposed to be slow! Why are they track stars?!” The zombies on display in this homage/satire of films such as Night of the Living are far from track stars. In fact, they walk so slow one might think they just ate a shitload of Twinkies.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted October 3, 2009

For over two decades, Joel and Ethan Coen, popularly known as the Coen brothers, have crafted some of the weirdest, zaniest, and most original films I, or maybe even anyone, has ever seen. Heck, they’ve made some of my favorite movies of all time. Their new film, A Serious Man, tells the story of a Jewish academic in a midlife crisis, plagued with a cheating wife, moronic kids, and a nearly insane brother. Now if you think that’s all there is to it, you obviously don’t know the Coen brothers. Expecting normalcy from them is just, well, not too realistic.

I often wonder what the job of a psychiatrist is like. After all, they sit around all day listening to people whine about their pathetic problems. However, when Larry Gopnik says his life sucks, he might even be understating the seriousness of his situation. The year is 1967, and Larry, played by the unknown but terrific Michael Stuhlbarg, is a college physics professor, getting shit form left and right. He lives in a middle-class Jewish suburb in Minneapolis, suffocated by the lunacy around him. His wife wants to leave him for Sy Ableman, his slimy and pretentious colleague. His two kids steal money from his wallet for pot and plastic surgery. A student is bribing him for a passing grade on a failed mid-term exam and his brother--oh never mind.

As Larry’s life becomes increasingly chaotic, he seeks the help of three rabbis, and the advice is for the most part gibberish. One tells him a bizarre story of peculiar teeth reading "save me" in Hebrew and when Larry asks what the point of the story was, the man sitting opposite from him looks bewildered and replies, “I don’t know.” In his quest to become a devoted and serious man, Larry is only further separated from his faith. The moral of this film is another question.

The Coen brothers, despite being awfully good at hiding it, always imbed a message in their films and present them in the most bizarre way. One, or at least I, can spend hours dissecting their films and finding fables in them. Fargo, for example, is about innocence being threatened by evil. Marge Gunderson is the innocence and the changing times are the evil. In The Big Lebowski--oh just take the damn thing for what it is. So what is the moral message of A Serious Man? Better yet, what the hell is the point of it?

Without a doubt this is the most personal film Joel and Ethan Coen have ever made. Also their most poignant. Maybe even their most beautifully made (Roger Deakins' cinematography is gorgeous and the best of any movie I've seen this year). Definitely their most spiritual and philisophical. But in all of their films, the craziness builds up to a boiling point. Even Burn After Reading, one of their best films, has an over-the-top and ridiculous while nevertheless meaningful and hilarious finale. Barton Fink, another great picture from the duo and perhaps the closest thing resembling A Serious Man, also builds up until it bursts in an over-the-top resolution where nothing actually even really gets resolved. Here, the ending is so abrupt that I believe the Coen brothers simply meant to convey a philisophical message that, for the most part, went over my head. I have an idea of what it all means, but I'd rather not say and instead relish in the heated debates likely to start when this movie is unveiled to wider audiences. There are scenes of brilliance and this is a very good movie, but it’s not profound. But at the same it is just that.

The fable that serves as a prologue seemingly has no bearing on the actual story. Maybe it does. I’m not even quite sure what the meaning of the prologue is as a self-contained story. Whenever you don’t understand a Coen brothers movie, it’s usually because you’re too weirded out to get it. This genius duo is always hiding in a dark corner, chuckling at the audience who isn’t in on the joke, amusing themselves with our bewilderment. In some ways, that can be applied to Larry Gopnik. He is mesmerized by the insanity taking place around him. It seems like everyone he knows is on some joke, except for him. His wife, Sy Ableman, and his kids think similarly and are in some alternate universe, where it’s acceptable to ask Larry to pay for the funeral for his wife’s lover. Larry is just experiencing the cruelty of Joel and Ethan Coen’s brilliant and dark screenwriting.

Am I writing this review prematurely? Most definitely. I’m sure my opinion will develop better tomorrow or the day after when I’ve had some time to process this weird and psychotic, maybe even brilliant, movie. But my initial reaction is polarization, which is not generally a bad thing. The mesmerizing, and in some ways even anticlimactic, ending is either brave, philosophical, or simply pretentious. Chances are, after a few hours of not being able to get this movie out of my head, maybe even a few days, I’ll understand everything. I will laugh at how brilliant and ingenious it all is and how I missed it the whole time. After all, I’ve never heard of anyone loving a Coen brothers movie the same day they’ve seen it for the first time. The only time I remember that happening is when I first saw Burn After Reading, and even then it took a few hours to process.

There are certainly moral and spiritual questions presented throughout A Serious Man. The Coen brothers look deep into the essence of faith and god. Is there a god? What does he owe us? What do we owe him? It asks us if there even is a point to the world we live in. The view this movie has on the universe is incredibly bleak, as with most Coen brothers productions. It does not sentimentalize its subject matter even though it easily could have since the Coens are going back to their childhood memories. But then again, it’s the Coens. I would be shocked and deeply saddened if these geniuses finally caved in to being sentimental and dopey filmmakers. They dissect not just the Jewish faith, but spirituality as a concept.  

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted September 26, 2009

There is a scene somewhere in the beginning of Disgrace disguised as a poetry lecture. If viewers can understand the symbolism presented in this brief exhibit of intricate screenwriting, they are set for the next two hours. Make no mistake. Disgrace is a demanding film. It not asks but demands for its audience to see the philosophical subtext of every single frame. This is perhaps why it is as sickening and almost even ugly as it is. Ugliness resonates not from the way the movie tells itself, but from its despicable characters. And that is perhaps why it is as harrowing as it is.

The simple parable begins in a simple way. David Lurie, played by John Malkovich, is a professor of poetry at the University of Cape Town. From the second we see him, David is a despicable and pathetic creature. Without a doubt, the character’s presentation is intentional. He spots a pretty girl named Melanie after one of his lectures and offers her a drink. The 52 year old David is intrigued by this young beauty and soon enough they begin a sexual relationship.

Very few directors know how to convey the way their characters feel just by capturing a shot of their face or their body language. Steve Jacobs just happens to be one of the few. As David sweats over the scorned Melanie, Jacobs is unrelenting in his detail to her face. She never has to say it, but we know exactly what her thoughts are about this slimy disgrace of a man. It doesn’t take long for David to appear before a council considering his removal from the university. He makes no pleas for pities or forgiveness. Instead, he goes in front of the board and says he is guilty, demanding in a raspy voice if they can please go by the books so everyone can get on with their lives. This is how David lives. He makes a mistake and goes on living his life, learning absolutely nothing, just wanting to move forward to the next mistake.

The now unemployed David takes a trip to see his daughter on the countryside. Several hints are given as to his contempt for his daughter as well as his uncompromising love for her. She is gay and while he is remarkable at hiding his distaste for it in front of her, he clearly disapproves. After a violent robbery and sexual assault takes place, David is keen on protecting his dear daughter Lucy from ever being alone again, but problems quickly arise.  

Only the gape of your mouth can begin to describe the effectiveness of John Malkovich’s mesmerizing performance. Words do not even come close. An Oscar nomination is definite. If he does not receive one, it will be perhaps the biggest snub since Martin Scorsese’s loss to Kevin Costner in the Best Director in category in 1991. Even bigger than last year’s complete ignorance of Spike Lee’s visionary work in making Miracle at St. Anna. Malkovich is cold and relentless in his portrayal of a terrible person who feels no shame. Towards the end, David Lurie becomes a bit more likable but we know his redemptive actions are nothing more than the self pity of a man who wants to convince only himself of his nobility.

The decisions and view points of these characters are sometimes completely infuriating. David’s daughter, Lucy, played by South African actress Jessica Haines, is a person you at times want to smack over the head for her naïve foolishness. How she is able to forgive a lunatic for committing a horrific act against her which will scar her for the rest of her life is a mystery. David is at times the only character we understand, while still despising him for his overall weak morale. He seems to be the only one with the brains to call the police when he sees a rapist, while everyone else looks at him in a scathing manner.

The similarities between the shots of Malkovich playing the guitar and Picasso's The Old Guitarist are not accidental. Steve Jacobs uses nature as his score. The wind and the sound of people walking on rocks create great tension. The combination of the noises form a chilling and impending sound of death and terror. The last shot of the film is unsettling and leaves the viewer shaken. The music utilized in the frame highlights the unnerving sense of tragedy of a life forever marked by a violent occurrence.

Disgrace ultimately struggles to come to a conclusion, which detracted from my investment in the film. David goes back and forth on his moral compass when for once he is in the right and his foolish daughter is in the wrong. Nevertheless, this is a deeply disturbing and provocative film. This parable is not about right and wrong and the choices we must make. It is about a man who senses the darkness inside him but can never comes to terms with who he truly is; a disgrace.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted September 25, 2009

Surrogates is a film that falls smack down in the middle of being good and being great. It is not as wonderful as I hoped it would be, but definitely not as bad as it could have been. It leans more towards being a groundbreaking achievement than it does at being a near disaster. There is more to praise than criticize about this crafty neo-noir sci-fi thrill ride. Like I said, smack down in the middle.

The story begins sometime in the future in which humans have degenerated into insecure and anti-social beings. 14 years ago, a man invented the very first “surrogate,” a robot that allows one to go about their day in the comfort of a “stem chair.” Originally, these were just designed for the disabled. When they proved to be effective, the military started purchasing units so their soldiers could engage in combat not on a battlefield, but in an office that looks like a video game convention. Eventually, the robots became available to the public and 14 years after surrogates were invented, nearly ninety-eight percent of the population utilizes them in daily life. The other two percent are rebels living in slums.

FBI agent Tom Greer, played by Bruce Willis, is one of the ninety-eight percent, and hasn’t been outside without his surrogate in years. Part of the appeal of surrogacy is the ability to live dangerously without ever harming yourself. For instance, one can jump of the Empire State Building, feeling only the exhilaration and adrenaline. Due to this perk, homicides are now nearly impossible. That’s why when an operator is killed through signals from his surrogate, Greer and his colleagues find themselves in the middle of a conspiracy that may be perpetrated by the least likely of people.

When Greer himself is almost killed through his surrogate, he is quick enough to unplug and must go out in to the world in his own flesh for the first time in years. He starts to realize the damage done to society by this addiction to surrogacy. He uncovers the layers of mystery surrounding the homicide and is lead to a huge conspiracy. Bruce Willis has been typecast as the action hero who saves the world, but in his role as Tom Greer, he possesses a moral ambiguity that makes us root and relate to him.

Surrogates is not the dumb action movie it appears to be. In fact, there is very little action and even when there is, it is exhilarating and expertly made. When first viewing the trailer, my feelings were mixed. I was definitely interested but it was very possible that this would turn out to be a stupid and brainless shoot em’ up extravaganza. Reminiscent of Minority Report, one of my all time favorite movies, I was bound to be excited. Thankfully, the brilliant idea is carried through, and the result is a thoroughly entertaining and though provoking experience. Certainly not on the level of Minority Report, but maybe in the same league.

The movie is honest about its social commentary instead of disguising action as views on society. The surrogates are generally better looking versions of their operators. In some cases, the surrogates look completely different than their owners, and occasionally even being a different gender. The allegorical message is about people’s obsession with the media and the feelings of insecurity experienced by a plain Jane when her looks don’t measure up with Angelina Jolie’s. Another way to look at it is the idea that movie stars are truly average looking people. Rosamund Pike, who plays Greer’s wife, has a flawless and gorgeous surrogate. The real her has greasy hair, probably from not showering for years, and has a scar as well as wrinkles. If Jessica Biel lost the makeup, who knows what her appearance would be.

The few action scenes present are well-crafted, not the least bit brainless, and very exciting. So I did have problems with the film, but some of my praise may just be pointed at how happy I am this did not turn out to be the potentially mind numbing movie it was likely to be. Then again, Surrogates is not quite as good as I wanted it to be. It avoided ridiculous and over-the-top action but perhaps wasn’t as psychological and engaging as I hoped. Nevertheless, several scenes are very psychological, most notably when Greer finally walks outside in his own skin.

Another major moral element to the story is the dynamic between Greer and his wife. We see both sides of their marriage. He wants to experience life with the woman he fell in love with. He wants to feel real emotion with a real person, not a robot. She cannot bring herself to come to terms with a tragedy and does not want a disfigured image of her to be seen. Many people in the audience should be able to relate to the obsession with physical appearance. Bruce Willis and Rosamund Pike are terrific as these two complex characters that share many heartbreaking scenes and add a layer of morality to the film.

When most critics despised Surrogates from the moment they saw the trailer, I was intrigued and eager to give it a chance for months before its release. It paid off. 

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted September 21, 2009

False advertising is perhaps the greediest aspect of Hollywood. In these cases, producers spit on the vision of a filmmaker, for the purpose of bringing in bigger crowds and turning in a higher box-office gross to the studio. This is the case with the wonderful new film from Steven Soderbergh, The Informant! It is being marketed as a silly farce, instead of the much more sophisticated and complex drama that it truly is. Not to say that the film underwhelms on the laughs, but the power of the movie lies in its ability to make the audiences heartbroken as they witness the slow deterioration of a man and the effects it has on those around him.

A nearly unrecognizable Matt Damon turns in a fantastic and intricate performance as Mark Whitacre. He is a rising star at the corporate giant ADM. He is part of under-the-table dealings, such as price fixing. After being extorted by a Japanese businessman, ADM starts to cooperate with the FBI. Sensing his opportunity to do something righteous, Mark tells agent Brian Shepard, played by Scott Bakula who deserves a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance, about the price fixing schemes.

Ironically, right around this time Mark starts to receive raises and kickbacks, making him reluctant to continue informing the FBI. However, since Shepard and Bob Herndon, played by Joel McHale, already know of Whitacre’s involvement in these illegal acts, he has little options left, and must continue feeding them information or else he will be a defendant when the investigation goes public.

For three years, Mark leads a double-life, continuing his rise to the top of ADM and informing the FBI of corruption at the company. When a raid of all the key players takes place, Mark goes from being a cooperating witness to a target. Lawyers for ADM quickly discover the amount of forgeries Whitacre has committed, and because this is a breach of his agreement with the FBI, Mark is left out in the cold with no where to go. He either faces the consequences, or continues fabricating stories and concocting lies to avoid jail time.

The Informant! is a heartbreaking story of self destruction. Mark continues digging the hole deeper, lying more and more until driving even Brian Shepard to tears. In a particularly powerful scene, Mark lies to his wife and Shepard about a letter from his psychiatrist. Shepard confronts him with his fabrication, and Mark still tries to find wiggle room. He attempts to lie about a magazine, driving his wife to tears as she witnesses this destructive behavior. We hear Mark’s thoughts, as he tries to explain to himself why he is a compulsive liar. Shepard grits his teeth and asks, “Why do you keep lying,” as his eyes water up. Mark’s thoughts say, “I don’t know.” This scene stuck with me for the rest of the film, and even until I went to sleep that night.

Anyone can relate to Mark Whitacre. He creates an image of himself in his head, as a righteous hero, and this leads him to lie and steal, anything to protect himself from realizing his self-image is mere idealization. He constantly uses the phrase, “Over there it’s always ‘dump it on Mark Whitacer.’” He knows if he accepts that he makes mistakes, the dashing Mark Whitacre in his mind will become the Mark Whitacer of reality. He creates, as I believe we all do in our lives, a movie inside his head, in which he is the protagonist and ADM are the bad guys. That movie went well until the FBI turned their back on him. Then he turned his movie into an outlaw picture. When that didn’t work, Mark loses his way. It is important to understand that this is only my analysis of the film, so don’t take my theory on the movie inside his head as the intentions of the director and writer.

No one wants to accept that they are an average person, and they create images of themselves and do things to meet the standard they set for themselves after viewing movies and television shows. Mark Whitacre was a victim of his own insecurity. He informed the FBI because he believed it was the righteous thing to do. It to him was what any hero of a movie or television show would do. He wanted to find the bad guys to support his self-image as the good guy.

We slowly witness Mark deteriorate as his self-image is destroyed. He is no longer the hero or the good guy. He is a criminal. Who can possibly accept this about themselves? The people around Mark tell him to get real, only fueling his insecurity and feeling of unimportance.

Matt Damon is incredible. He never ever lets the weight gain and the wig distract him from digging deep into this man’s soul. Not for one second does he become the caricature that is being marketed in the trailer. Sure he does some stupid things that could nearly ruin the investigation and make the audience crack up, but Damon refuses to give in to becoming a parody of this man. It is a complex and heartbreaking portrayal of a disturbed and sad individual. What makes his performance more saddening is that this movie is in fact based on a true story that is, as the poster points out, unbelievable and outrageous.

Steven Soderbergh shoots the entire picture in a textured and dream-like quality. At times, the movie is simply a marvel just because of the HD filmmaking. The score, composed by Marvin Hamlisch plays a big part in setting up Soderbergh’s vision of the story as a nod to some old school spy movies. With all of the philosophical hoo-ha I’m writing, I have to mention these technical credits which stood out for me in creating the tone of the film.

Perhaps every thought of mine on The Informant! that you have just read is a gross over analyzation of a movie meant to be taken much more lightly, but this is what I experienced. These are the feeling I felt. If Steven Soderbergh did not mean for his farce to be taken as a philosophical view on a man’s psyche, he sure fooled me. Whatever this movie is meant to be, it is what it is in my eyes.

I have seen The Informant! three times in its opening weekend, and each viewing has had a profound effect on me.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted September 21, 2009

Jennifer’s Body is being marketed several different ways using the same pitch. How it is marketed to you depends on your perspective. To a group of teenage girls, this is being sold as a sexy horror movie. To a group of teenage boys, this is being sold as Megan Fox being a horny cannibal. To intelligent crowds, this is being sold as a satire of teen anxiety movies and campy horror flicks, greatly due in part to the script being credited to Diablo Cody, writer of the breakout hit Juno. The same exact trailer was presented to all of these demographics and this weekend, crowds will finally be able to correctly interpret who this movie was made for. Here’s a hint: it ain’t for the enlightened circle.

Megan Fox stated that she is a good actress, unfairly treated by Michael Bay. Now here she is working from a Diablo Cody script. Turns out Michael Bay had nothing to do with the lack of talent in this young sex symbol. She plays Jennifer Check, a typical slutty cheerleader with a knack for attracting high school guys. After a night out with her best friend Needy, played by Amanda Seyfried, Jennifer is kidnapped by an indie rock band and turned into a flesh eating demon.

Needy is the typical high school dork. What’s strange is that she is best friends with a popular girl like Jennifer. It appeared, if only to me, that the stereotyping of these characters was intentional since I was under the impression that this was going to be a satire. Now after seeing the movie, I’m not so sure. Jennifer’s Body does occasionally poke fun at teen horror movie clichés but it spends an awful lot of time employing them to movie the story forward.

Jennifer starts to seduce boys in her school, only to eat them when their pants are down and they’re prepared to do anything for her. Several murders and disappearances happen in the small town and Needy starts to catch on, leading to danger in the small town of Devil’s Kettle.

At times Jennifer’s Body is reminiscent of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell. Both attempt to satirize the teen anxiety as well as teen horror sub genres. However, Drag Me to Hell succeeded in bringing audiences an intentionally campy and often times funny and scary mash up. Jennifer’s Body becomes what it is satirizing. The script by Diablo Cody lacks the fresh and biting dialogue presented in Juno. There were several clever and sharp scenes but director Karyn Kusama focuses way too much on sexing up Fox rather than bringing Cody’s script to life.

Megan Fox represents the stereotyping of attractive women in cinema today. Clearly she is relishing in the chance to make fun of her own image but her take on Jennifer is too much sex and very little character. Perhaps this is intentional but one grows tired of seeing Fox do nothing but stand in front of the screen for the purpose of arousing prepubescent boys.

Since this is only her second script, one has to wonder if Diablo Cody is the talented and razor sharp soul who brought us Juno, or the bland and boring writer who crafted the disappointing Jennifer’s Body. Megan Fox may grow as an actress in the future, but blaming Michael Bay is a lame excuse for not possessing acting abilities. The best scenes feature J.K. Simmons as an over-the-top and clueless science teacher. Simmons brings a zany and outlandish personality to a character that is likely two dimensional on the page.

At times intentionally campy, but more often unwittingly so, Jennifer’s Body is made bearable by some sharp lines of dialogue, which come very rarely, and the performances from J.K. Simmons and Amanda Seyfried, whose performance in Mama Mia! I did not compliment. Prominently, this is a movie for teenage boys and as incorrect as this may sound, they will be leaving the theater hunched over with a sweater over their jeans.

Jennifer’s Body approaches satire, but gives in to self-indulgence.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted September 19, 2009

I generally despise those filmmakers who believe that telling a story out of order will somehow make their film seem profound and complex instead of just pretentious and predictable. But Guillermo Arriaga isn’t just a filmmaker. He’s a visionary. He has written the masterful 21 Grams followed by the staggering Babel. However, he has crafted the phenomenally stupid The Burning Plain, and a film as ridiculous as this one sticks out like a sore thumb on a director’s or a writer’s resume. Perhaps he realized how pretentious his movie was, so he decided to add shots of birds flying through rainy skies.

Now if you thought Charlize Theron was incapable of giving a bad performance, behold her work as Sylvia, a chef at a high profile restaurant. She engages in affairs with several men and has constant thoughts of suicide. Then we see a funeral taking place after a trailer explodes. The flaming trailer is actually the opening shot of the film. Two families scream profanities to each other at this funeral until we go back to the dull and empty story of Sylvia and the birds flying through gray skies.

The third sub plot, which is closely intertwined with the story of the funeral, is that of Kim Basinger’s extramarital affair with a handyman named Nick Martinez. After this storyline is introduced to the film, it becomes pretty clear who each of these characters are and the events that leads them to their fate. The Burning Plain can even be called shockingly predictable. The shock comes in how Arriaga failed to layer his story with mystery.

The performances range from horrible to bland, never surpassing mediocrity. Jennifer Lawrence is worst of all (I am not revealing her character so I do not spoil anything but hopefully you won’t see this movie anyway.) She reads her lines in a dead monotone. There is a scene in which she tells her boyfriend that she is pregnant and to expect emotional poignancy from this dull actress is sadly just wishful thinking. In fact, The Burning Plain has practically no scenes of poignancy, except for one.

The shock in this film came from the one moment in which I actually cared about the characters presently on screen. What happens in the scene is by no means astonishing. I was shocked because after an hour of watching this movie, I felt something. Actually felt something.

With most directorial debuts, I would write in my review that it is a commendable first try. For Arriaga’s directorial debut, I cannot muster up the enthusiasm to say I look forward to his next attempt. If he really wanted to make the supposed twist surprising, he would have fared well by avoiding obvious signs which clearly tell the audience that two of the storylines take place in the past, such as cars in the parking lot of a K-Mart. But even if he did stray away from the visual clues, his movie still divulges it’s twists and turns long before it gives up at trying to be mysterious.

This is a truly ugly piece of filmmaking. From the performances to the script, The Burning Plain is a predictable and loathsome picture. It boasts with attempts at complexity and intricacy. Just because you shoot on a rainy day and catch some birds flying through the air doesn’t mean your movie is profound. It just makes it even more pretentious and self-indulgent.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted September 10, 2009

There is a provocative idea in the Tim Burton produced 9. This is a more subtle and mind boggling element than perhaps anything else in the movie. After an unidentified apocalypse, artsy looking rag dolls set out to destroy the machines that creep around the empty city in which our heroes are invented. One of these rag dolls, number 6, is a goon and his stitching is made of white and black stripes. I continued to wonder throughout the swift 80 minutes as to how the process of re-stitching the poor doll would occur and the toll it takes on the doll’s pride. In a very brief length, 9 unfortunately fails at setting up an underground society and instead focuses on more familiar themes.

Elijah Wood voices 9, the final rag doll created by a scientist who donated his humanity to each of his nine creations. 9 awakes and ventures into an empty cityscape, beautifully and hauntingly rendered. He goes out to explore and runs into 2, voiced by Martin Landau. Shortly afterwards, 2 is taken by a machine reminiscent of those damn Michael Bay contraptions.

9 is taken to the safe house of the rest of the rag dolls. There he encounters 5, voiced by John C. Reilly, and a selfish and cowardly leader, 1, voiced by Christopher Plummer. Literally minutes after this, Acker jumps into his story, as if hoping the audience will simply ignore the fact that they know practically nothing about these rag dolls and really have no reason to root for them. Character development is so overrated.

The first five minutes are exhilarating, imaginative, and hauntingly beautiful. The rest is full of action. Even though I typically complain about excessive action because it usually turns into a mindless exercise, 9 has expertly choreographed action. Too bad the stitched dolls aren’t developed enough for us to care about them as they survive this labyrinth of chaos. In one especially well made and graceful scene, one of the dolls runs for his life, or a fraction of the scientist’s life, set to the tune of Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which blocks out the obvious cries of terror from the little stitch figure. Brilliant.

Shane Acker is working with only one hour and twenty minutes, a running time that cheats Acker’s vision. His original 2005 animated short which was nominated for an Oscar is much more thoughtful than this full length adaptation. The idea of a rag doll being re-stitched is provocative and is some ways even tragic but Acker never dives into that story and therefore ignores a potentially heart-breaking sub plot. 9 automatically is ready to go out and save the day. He is never introduced to these other rag dolls on a deeper scale to prompt him to be so heroic.

Even with a frantic and underdeveloped narrative, Acker still delivers spellbinding imagery. If you want to see this movie, the only way to see it is on the big screen. On DVD, this will be an underwhelming disappointment. On a theater screen, Acker’s visual eye can be better appreciated, despite a weak narrative.

The marketing for 9 has been heavily stressing that Tim Burton is a producer. I suppose that is why I had high hopes for the film despite a bad trailer. Burton should have lent a hand to Acker in the storytelling aspect for the movie, instead of just attaching his respected name to deliver Acker to box office success.

I should mention that this is not a movie to take children under 10 to. At times terrifying, 9 deserves its PG-13 rating, exhibiting those brief occurrences in which the MPAA gets it right for a change.

With an all-star voice cast and a Tim Burton touch to the storyline, crossed with elements of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Wall-E, 9 had big ambitions and arrived in theaters awaiting high expectations. If there is only one reason to see it, I would say it is for these stunning visuals that Acker creates. Strictly judged based on its narrative, I say it is a disappointment. Too fast-paced for its own good, 9 underwhelms.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted September 4, 2009

The loathsome All About Steve is several things at once. Firstly, it is the worst movie I have seen so far this year. Second, it is simply one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Third, it is the worst movie Sandra Bullock has ever starred in and yes, I have seen Speed 2. Fourth, it is the worst romantic comedy I have ever seen. Fifth, it is the worst movie any of these actors have ever starred in. Notice a trend? All About Steve is all about being the worst.

Sandra Bullock gives a phenomenally bad and annoying performance as Mary Horowitz, a crossword constructor for a local newspaper. She is lonely, creepy, annoying, and obsessive. She meets Steve, a cameraman for a news channel, played by Bradley Cooper who is the star of the insanely profitable and infinitely better The Hangover. Steve is a nice guy who is set up on a blind date with the nightmare that is Mary. Within minutes of meeting each other, Mary hops onto him ready for sex while in the meantime talking ad infinitum. Believing that Steve is in love with her, she becomes obsessed with him and stalks him, finding him at various news coverage locations.

Mary is intelligent in the sense that she knows tons of useless facts. She cannot however use her brains filled with information to understand that Steve is terrified of her and that his co-worker Hartman Hughes, played self indulgently by Thomas Haden Church, is taking advantage of her stupidity to see Steve suffer for the fun of it.

Clearly Mary is intended to be a stalker, unlike with He’s Just Not That Into You where a character is meant to come off as a hopeless romantic but really comes off as an obsessive creep. Mary is also supposed to be cute and lovable. This she is not. The funny moments come when the people around Mary either tell her to quit yapping or as a bus driver does, stop at a diner for people to go to the bathroom when really she just waits for Mary to get off and then she drives away. Good for her.

Mary is far from adorable or likable and whoever intends for her to be viewed that way is wildly deranged.

There is not one intentionally funny moment throughout All About Steve. It starts trying to blend a romantic comedy with a deranged black comedy and then throws in elements of screwball and slapstick and the result is a dreadful and insufferable film that awkwardly mixes genres.

All About Steve is not a comedy. It is a horror movie.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted September 4, 2009

A brilliant comedy is one that delivers laughs and plays on emotions. Take for instance this year’s spectacular I Love You, Man. It effortlessly develops its characters and creates empathy for them, making them complex and endearing. Mike Judge’s Extract misses brilliance by a long shot, settling for being a breezy and weightless distraction from the big and brainless summer action flicks.

Jason Bateman plays Joel, owner of Reynolds Extract, a food flavoring company he claims to have built from the ground up. He’s a complete loser but one we are greatly able to relate to and root for. His wife, played by Kristen Wiig, is becoming more and more distant every day. His employees are lazy and mostly stupid. After a worker loses a testicle in a domino effect accident, Joel’s life becomes a hectic journey through marital problems and issues with his own state of being.

Since Extract is not a deep movie, it does not deserve a deep review. Nothing in this film calls for me to dissect it and try to find a deeper meaning. I enjoyed spending time with these characters but I’m not so sure I want to revisit them. Jason Bateman is terrific and understated as Joel but he is the only fully developed character. I suppose we are meant to see all of the other characters through his eyes, which is why we cannot feel much empathy for them.

Mila Kunis plays Cindy, a small time con artist who scams people by…well by looking like Mila Kunis. Being such a major presence in the storyline, Cindy should have been a fully developed and complex character. Instead, we practically loathe her. No attempts are made to show a different side to her. She is presented as a heartless crook with no remorse whatsoever. The only time we are introduced to a more tender view of Cindy is in a motel but that lasts for only a few minutes.

Ben Affleck plays a stoner pal of Joel’s and while he is at time endearing, he becomes an increasingly bland character. Had he been given more screen time, he could have been a hilarious entry in this cast of wacky personalities. Maybe Zanex is key. 

Mike Judge’s film offers plenty of laughs and treats viewer to a relaxing and breezy hour and thirty minutes. Had he only attempted to make this a deeper comedy with some semblance of moral ambiguity, Extract could have been one of the best movies of the year.

Nevertheless, there is no harm in watching a movie simply for the purpose of entertainment, and Extract is genius at providing that.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted September 4, 2009

Julie & Julia can in some ways be called inventive. It takes two different people and two different memoirs and combines them to form one film about parallel lives separated by several decades and tied together by the love of cooking. Writer and director Nora Ephron adapts Julia Child’s autobiography My Life in France and Julie Powell’s blog turned book Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen to bring a story of self realization through cooking.

Meryl Streep gives a towering and charismatic performance as the famous chef Julia Child. Her husband Paul, played terrifically by the always reliable Stanley Tucci, is a government employee who is transferred to Paris for four years in the 1940’s. Julia falls in love with France and begins learning to cook at the respected Le Cordon Bleu. She starts teaching Americans in Paris how to cook French cuisine and works on a book, now widely regarded as a genius cooking guide.

Intertwined with Julia Child’s escapades to the highest rank of French cuisine in the middle of the 21^st century is Julie Powell’s story set in 2002. Julie, played by Amy Adams, is a public servant answering calls about insurance claims following 9/11. She is growingly jealous of her gossip lunch pals who are rising writers and are having their blogs adapted into premium cable shows and books. Her husband Eric, played by Chris Messina, suggests that Julie writes a blog of her own. So Julie embarks on a difficult task: cooking her way through all 524 in Julia Child’s book Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

These two lives intersect through personal struggles. As Julie is cooking these recipes and blogging about them, she creates an idealized and perfect version of Julia Child in her head. As we see the real Julia Child, we witness her flaws but are nevertheless endeared by her charismatic personality. Julie is more of a brat, and it seems the audience is supposed to view her through her husband’s eyes. Otherwise Nora Ephron has penned a protagonist viewers can’t establish a personal connection with.

Ephron mostly succeeds at forming strong male characters in a seemingly female oriented outing. Paul, Julia Child’s husband, is a rich and layered character whose personality on the page is wonderfully brought to life by Stanley Tucci. Eric, Julie Powell’s husband, is a witty and sarcastic man that the audience can greatly relate to as he begins to suffocate in Julie’s prison of food and narcissism. Both men are fully developed and we can see why they greatly love yet detest their often difficult wives.

Terrific supporting roles come from even the tiniest of characters. In a few strong scenes, Jane Lynch steals the screen as Julia’s eccentric and endearing sister. Perhaps my favorite scene in Julie & Julia is when Tucci’s character gets into an argument about politics with Julia’s hardened Republican father at a wedding. The body language and facial expressions convey exactly how each character feels about the other and it is a terrific exhibit of both complex acting and strong writing.

Because I saw Julia & Julia nearly a month after its release, it’s only natural that I have heard both the praise and the criticisms for this film. The most prominent complaint I’ve read is that Ephron should have focused more on Julia Child and less on the self absorbed Julie Powell. Julia’s struggle to get to the top of the French cuisine circuit is no doubt more engaging than Julie’s efforts to mimic her recipes for the purpose of becoming famous, but Julie’s story is still an important component to this film. What Nora Ephron is attempting to show is how two different women into two different time periods and cultural climates can be tied by their love of cooking. My major complaint with Julie & Julia is far different.

As you think the movie is coming to a close, Nora Ephron throws several conclusions at the audience. Just as you are sure that Ephron has come to a satisfying point of closure for both Julia Child and Julie Powell, she continues her tale and it eventually wears out its welcome. Many writers and directors associated with a film of this sort want to close out the picture with a sentimental shot. Ephron gives us about five of these. She didn’t settle on a closing and I started to feel as if I was being jerked around.

Still, Nora Ephron creates rich characters in a rich story brought to life by strong performances topped off by mouth watering shots of French cuisine. As the title of Julia Child's cook book points out, it really is an art.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted August 29, 2009

Woodstock is considered to be one of the biggest cultural events of the 20^th century and maybe even the biggest of the 60’s. I suppose it’s only appropriate that Taking Woodstock, a film depicting the organization and work put into creating the iconic festival, be released around the time of its 40^th anniversary. The movie has the same value of the chocolate milk the farmers in White Lake offer to Woodstock’s organizers: Sweet and refreshing but nothing to stop you in your tracks.

In August 1969, Elliot Tiber, played by Demetri Martin, is an aspiring interior designer in Manhattan who travels back to his home in Upstate New York to assist his parents in their attempts to bail out their sorry excuse for a motel. The El Monaco is broken down and shabby. The sheets are dirty, the pool is filled with bleach, and the theater troupe in the barn is lame. Elliot has a permit for a music and arts festival every summer but usually the “concert”’ is just Elliot playing records on the lawn. After a hippie festival is thrown out of Wallkill, Elliot contacts Woodstock Ventures in hopes of bringing in tourism and money. Estimating only 5,000 guests, Elliot and his parents as well as other citizens in the small town of White Lake and even the organizers themselves are stunned as the Woodstock Festival of 1969 became bigger than anyone could ever imagine.

Elliot’s parents are played wonderfully by Imelda Staunton and Henry Goodman. Staunton is exceptional. She evokes the loving, tough, and fast-talking Jewish mother and if there was ever a qualified person to point that out, that would be me. She embodies the character’s grit as well as her insecurities and complexities. Though she is certainly a source of most of the humor, tragedy is woven into her eyes seamlessly. The audience never sees her as a caricature even in a hilarious meeting with a bank employee, but someone who has been to hell and back and retains her cynicism and protective and motherly traits. Henry Goodman plays a typical Jewish father: quiet and reserved yet thoughtful and loving. These two wonderful and rich characters deserve their own sketch comedy show.

Emile Hirsch is amusing but never believable as a Vietnam War veteran. His character would have benefited from more screen time and more development. Demetri Martin is poignant and complex as Elliot but several flaws can be found in the scripting of his character, such as the lack of emphasis on his real aspirations in life. Martin is still good enough to keep us rooting for him through his confusing and difficult state of being. Taking Woodstock takes advantage of the exposition to make this a movie less about the festival and more about a self journey of realization. Elliot comes to terms with his sexuality, his desire for modern culture, and his desperate need to be liberated from his parents.

Perhaps my biggest issue with Taking Woodstock is the lack of energy that made the festival such a mystical and magical weekend (no, not hallucinogenics): THE MUSIC! Where in this movie about a historically significant cultural event centered music is the actual music? There is no need for long and adoring scenes of the performers such as Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, but there has to be some exploration of the depth and energy that made Woodstock so magical and significant. The closest the audience is ever exposed to the concert is in one remarkable and exhilirating scene that nevertheless is still bland on the songs. Elliot engages in a threesome while being high off acid in a VW. When he comes out of the van, a gorgeous computer generated landscape is shown with hundreds of thousands of people chanting and waving lights. Elliot, being on acid, sees all the people turn into a dreamy and hypnotic wave. This is the best scene in all of Taking Woodstock, dazzlingly made by Ang Lee and cinematographer Eric Gautier.

Ang Lee puts forth his best when it comes to capturing the landscapes and the peaceful setting of this event. Featuring tender and poignant moments, Taking Woodstock is a breezy and pleasant film that never taps its full potential because of too much focus on the organization of the festival and almost no emphasis on the actual results of these characters’ efforts.

The festival promised three days of peace and music and this movie promised, at least to me, to be a terrific Oscar contender. Hippies got what they were promised. I on the other hand did not.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted August 25, 2009

Cold Souls is a surrealistic film set to a Charlie Kaufman-esque storyline that attempts to derive emotions from its audience by inducing long periods of silence. In this period of silence, I assume that writer and director Sophie Barthes is trying to get the viewer to think about the movie up to that point as well as find a deeper meaning in the story. I was thinking about how unfortunate it is that I can’t see my watch is because of dimmed house lights. Sorry Sophie. Make a more interesting film next time.

Paul Giamatti plays a fictionalized version of himself, going through depression while trying to perform adequately in a remake of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Finding himself constantly anxious and dissatisfied for lack of separation between the character and himself, he finds a listing for “Soul Storage.” Here is where the film starts being reminiscent of Charlie Kaufman’s works, most notably Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The “Soul Storage” company is to Paul what Lucuna, Inc. is to Joel Barish. The doctor he enlists for the containment of his soul is Dr. Flinstein, played by a wonderfully bizarre David Strathairn. Paul’s debate with Flinstein on whether to deep freeze his soul is one of the only interesting and funniest scenes in the film, mostly because Paul is arguing with himself and attributing his positive view on containing his soul as Flinstein’s own opinion.

Though feeling fairly less anxious after getting his soul removed, Paul finds himself completely unaware of anything ranging from his professional to personal life. After “renting” the soul of a Russian poet, he decides he wants his own soul back but in the world of Cold Souls, customers of “Soul Storage” have to deal with the chance of having their soul trafficked by mules. Paul embarks on a trip to Russia with Nina, a mule, to get his soul back from a wealthy distributor.

While having some clever moments, Cold Souls greatly drags through the first half. Watching Paul going through his routine of babbling to his wife and staring at the ocean grows repetitive and dreary. The scenes in the “Soul Storage” building are quirky and funny but as soon as he steps back into the real world, boredom comes rushing back in to the film. It finally sparks to life when Paul and Nina go to Russia but by then it is too late to save this potentially excellent motion picture.

Paul Giamatti is solid in this role though never crossing the threshold of emotional poignancy to become a rich and complex character. None of the actors make their on screen personas memorable except for David Strathairn who is unfortunately devoid of much screen time.

Cold Souls runs for a mere hour and a half though giving the impression of being over two hours. It is incredibly over plotted with many unnecessary subplots that come off more as footnotes and never tie together. This is not a terrible film nor is it even necessarily bad. There are some elements to like but the movie ultimately greatly disappoints because of very unemotional storytelling, being highlighted by some moments Charlie Kaufman would be proud to claim as his own.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted August 22, 2009

Quentin Tarantino is a director who even at the weakest point in his career is still a genius. Since Pulp Fiction 15 years ago, he hasn’t neared the height of the standard he has set for himself. With Inglourious Basterds, he may have come close. While not quite as good as Pulp Fiction, Tarantino writes his finest script and makes his best film since audiences were first introduced to the idea of  people being able to talk about nothing and still be fascinating in 1994. According to Tarantino, this movie is his baby. He has spent nearly two decades writing and perfecting it to introduce audiences to yet another original form of storytelling from him; the idea that not every World War II movie has to follow the history books.

Tarantino’s war epic employs his signature style of genre blending and is being sold as a “spaghetti western with World War II iconography.” Brad Pitt plays Aldo Raine (homage to Aldo Ray who had a thick raspy voice and starred in many Westerns in the 50’s and 60’s such as What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?) and this guy want 100 Nazi scalps "taken from the heads of a hundred dead Nazis." He assembles eight Jewish soldiers to capture Nazis and brutally kill them. Other storylines include a young woman named Shosanna who narrowly escapes death by SS Colonel Hans Landa (played by Christoph Waltz who won Best Actor at Cannes this year for this movie and deserves an Oscar nomination) and comes to France to operate a movie theater.

As with most of Tarantino’s films, the several subplots find ways to intertwine. So yes, it is done better in Pulp Fiction but Tarantino shouldn’t be a prisoner of his own success. He gave us that masterpiece so we can appreciate it and adore it for generations to come. Not so we can constantly be disappointed whenever he makes a film not as brilliant and amazing.

The film slightly lets me down because of the lack of focus on the Basterds, led by Aldo. The movie navigates away from what seemed at least to me to be the central storyline and also the most interesting one. Tarantino compensates for this as he compensates for any flaw in any of his movies. He gives us razor sharp and wonderfully bizarre writing that is both fun to listen to and fascinating. At times the exchanges did go on for too long, most notably a bar scene with Diane Kruger which overplayed its charm by about 8 minutes, but Tarantino then gives us some kick ass bloody action to satisfy our cravings for some ridiculously exciting scenes that only he can deliver and it leads us to a jaw dropping and hilarious grand finale.

One of the biggest compensations he gives for any possible flaw you can nit pick out of this glorious film is the lack of grisly violence. Watching the trailer I could tell this would be a gruesome film (one of the characters brutally bashes a Nazi’s skull with a baseball bat) but Tarantino is quick with the violence, expect for a few graphic scenes, and spares us excessive gore. Scalping Nazis is a dirty business but he makes this just as violent as it needs to be and doesn’t emphasize on blood and guts as he did with the two Kill Bill volumes.

Something that may only be special to film critics and movie enthusiasts are the nods to noir and B movies such as The Dirty Dozen and how Tarantino plants his love of film in this movie. One of the British soldiers is a film critic. Shosanna engages in a conversation about cinema with a repulsive and weasely German war hero. The film also glroifies the use of 35mm prints which always creates more textured frames.

If you are a true lover of cinema and you love the work of Tarantino (the two usually go hand-in-hand) then you will applaud this great film. If you're into mindless and excessive action, get lost. Tarantino loves dialogue and gives audiences a fair share of it here. So maybe in a couple scenes the exchanges go on a bit too long but it never ceases to be quirky, bizarre, and great fun to listen to. The theater I went to was packed. I expected when the credits rolled, the seemingly typical audience that indulges in summer action flicks would complain about the long scenes of talking. Thankfully, I was wrong. The house was loud with applause and I overheard several members of the audience analyze the film. Some were saying "the guy who played detective was amazing" and someone else pointed out "this is his best film." It isn't his best film, but the concept of standard audiences applauding a movie like this where you have to think and recognize the nods to other film is, to me, a sign of hope that moviegoers may be coming out of the dark age. When I left the theater, a fresh new line was gathering for the next showing. I wonder if they were as thoughtful.

Brad Pitt is over the top and gloriously so. Sure his character is slightly a caricature but here it is intentional and his lines are memorable and evoke Vincent explaining the true meaning of a foot massage. His performance is destined to become iconic and Pitt is becoming on of our greatest method actors. Christoph Waltz is a revelation. He is so gentle and even poetic as the SS Colonel but he never lets us forget how twisted he is. He has charming moments that are so successfully blended with creepiness and absurdity that it’s hard to say you hate him but also difficult to say you like him. He is so terrifying and is in four languages that sometimes I got the essence he could read minds. The opening scene, a terrific piece of filmmaking, demonstrates the variety and complexity of this character. Just for that opening scene, Christoph Waltz already deserves a nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Tarantino is a director who pays great attention to detail. Take for example the film-within-a-film directed by Eli Roth, who also stars in Inglourious Basterds, which is used for the premiere of a major German movie. Clearly a nod to Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda pictures, Tarantino doesn’t include just a pointless film playing in the background for the scene. He includes a real movie made very well by Roth that brilliantly creates the atmosphere of cinema houses in the 1940’s and the makings of German propaganda films.

Out of consideration for my readers, I’m choosing not to describe why this is such an inventive look at World War II. Unfortunately, I have heard way too much about the movie and didn’t experience the same polarization as critics did in Cannes because of how publicized the conclusion was. If you have already heard about the ending of the film, you know exactly what I’m refusing to reveal. If you haven’t, do yourself a favor by avoiding reviews after you read this one and go see the movie for yourself and be shocked.

Tarantino writes another rich and textured script with memorable lines and characters. As for the title, he points out that if you actually think about it, “bastards” really does sound like “basterds.” The u in “inglorious” is there…well because I guess it’s just Tarantino. If you want to come close to the experience of his iconic homage to B movies in 1994, he presents to you Inglourious Basterds.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted August 21, 2009

Fifty Dead Men Walking tells an intense and intricate true story that took place in Ireland during the Troubles adapted from the personal account of Martin McGartland. While most citizens had their opinions on whether someone should be protestant or catholic, Martin went about his day trying to make a life for himself. In one scene he says the obvious, a concept that evades religious groups. “The people full of themselves think they know you and me better than we know ourselves and they think they know more about god.” Everyone has their own version of the man upstairs, and unfortunately because some people take it upon themselves to enforce only one view, Martin McGartland is on the run today away from the Irish Republican Army.

McGartland is played by Jim Sturgess. He sells stolen goods door to door in Belfast during the Troubles. After pursuing the legal police force in Ireland, nicknamed “peelers,” in a chase, he is detained and asked by an official named Fergus, played by Ben Kingsley who gives an award caliber performance, to go undercover in the IRA. Martin is a young kid trying to get a girl and a buck, but here he is asked by this wise and honest man to do something that can save many lives. At first hesitant but then willing, Martin goes in to risk his life even if it means putting his family in danger.

Sturgess evokes the essence of a seasoned actor with his performance as McGartland. Finding the right strings to pull, he effortlessly portrays Martin as a sympathetic and naïve kid who grows over the course of events and becomes a paranoid man. He brings to the screen the right blend of cockiness and wits that made Chris Pine so excellent in Star Trek and a growing sense of responsibility and heroism. Ben Kingsley has a Paul Newman role as Fergus, McGartland’s handler. Kingsley as well finds the perfect mixture of traits for his character. He is demanding and authoritative while simultaneously being a warm father figure to McGartland. Their relationship is the best element of this film and greatly resembled Leonardo DiCaprio’s rapport with Martin Sheen in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed.

With fine performances and some intense set pieces, Fifty Dead Men Walking still never achieves a personal connection with the audience. While we certainly sympathize with McGartland and fear for him, we never get inside his head and see his vulnerabilities. What made Scorsese’s undercover epic so thoughtful is how deep he dove into the psyche of an informant. DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan was a scared and paranoid rat that we not observed, but embodied in a way. Kari Skogland, writer and director of the film, doesn’t seem able to make us more than just flies on the wall. She doesn’t make our pulses pound as Scorsese did in The Departed.

Comparing any crime drama about informants to The Departed is, for me at least, a natural impulse. Scorsese set the bar for this genre with that film just as Tarantino set the bar for genre blending B movies. Fifty Dead Men Walking is a very good movie, just not what it could have been seeing as it is adapted from McGartland’s memoir. Skogland’s greatest achievement in the film lies in the dynamic between McGarltand and Fergus, evoking the fatherly relationship between Billy Costigan and Charlie Queenan.

Fifty Dead Men Walking is the second film I’ve seen about the “Troubles” in the past two weeks, the first being Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Five Minutes of Heaven and several of my criticisms are the same.

Kari Skogland seemingly focused most of her energy on writing the script rather than the direction, which isn’t a horrible thing, but every filmmaker who takes on the task of writing and directing a movie should deliver both a rich screenplay and good direction. The filmmaking isn’t necessarily bad and Skogland creates a few very well made chase scenes, but for the most part does not capture the setting of war torn Ireland. If she chooses to focus on the script, I believe it should have been more personal and deep than it is. Skogland, in my opinion, would have faired better had she made the film just an hour longer and shortened the part about McGartland being undercover, and taken up a big portion of the running time by showing McGartland actually on the run. That is more interesting to see than him visit Scotland and engage in a fling with a fellow IRA member played by Rose McGowan.

As for the real Martin McGarltand, he is still on the run today from the IRA, which receives donations from Mickey Rourke. Strange to think that as I watched this film and as I am writing this review, this poor man is still in hiding even after the “Troubles” seem to be settled. McGartland's tale is deep, intense, and heart wrenching. I hope he is safe wherever he is because after all, fifty men marked for death are still walking because of his bravery.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted August 20, 2009 (Early Review)

We live in a shallow world. Children go to school to hear how they’re not good enough because they’re not preppy and stuck up clones. Adults drag themselves to work to experience pity from their more popular co-workers. No one cares enough about you to put down their cup of coffee to ask something deeper than “how are you?” Once you die, everyone suddenly cares because if they don’t, they’re exposed as the heartless leeches they truly are. World’s Greatest Dad unexpectedly and shockingly transforms into a completely different film midway through, which keeps it from achieving greatness but nevertheless achieves at being something original and smart as well as exposing our shallow society.

Robin Williams turns in a terrific performance as Lance Clayton. His son Kyle, played by Daryl Sabara, is an ignorant moron who spends his days masturbating and being rude to pretty girls in school. Lance’s girlfriend is about the shallowest person in his life and goes for the buff creative writing teacher. His written works have been rejected five times. The testosterone fueled principle at his son’s school and Lance’s place of work is ignorant and unaccepting. One kid stands out, and that is Kyle’s best friend Andrew. Nothing is going right in his life, which drives Lance to do something terrible but forgivable and maybe even understandable because of his circumstances.

A major genre shift comes awkwardly and unexpected. I was wondering if it would find footing again. It does not quite do that but compensates by serving audiences truthful and subtle social commentary. Take for example the death of Michael Jackson. Go back only one day before he died and listen to what people were saying about him. You’ll hear words like “freak” thrown out amongst accusations of child molestation. Look at what people are saying about him now. “He was a tortured soul who left us too soon.” “We will miss him dearly.” No one cared when he was alive because there was no reason to and you wouldn’t look bad. Posthumously, he’s more respected because if you don’t appreciate him now, you’re worried you’ll be exposed as a shallow and heartless imbecile.

How can Lance be successful if he doesn’t have a big name? He sees society turning into shallow eggheads and the only way to reverse things is to use a tragedy to teach people good music, good literature, and life lessons. The dark humor presented surpasses that of any black comedy. The first half is bitingly clever and sharp but then it takes that huge risk of becoming something completely different. That change of genre keeps it from being a great film, but it left me with a huge smile on my face. Not because of the tragic twist but because finally a film has the guts to expose the shallow zombies that act like they care or act like they’re something other than stuck up and preppy morons.

The speech Lance gives at the end of the film is incredibly true and sinceire. Everyone looks at him in a patronizing way but why are they so innocent? They held profit from this tragedy. They were suddenly interested in this poetry teacher who just wants to sit down with his students and teach when before they treated him like a doormat. What Lance did is wrong but why are these “socially accepted” zombies innocent? He delivers a line that I think anyone can understand and relate to. “I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone.”

Robin Williams is genius as Lance. What the character does is morally wrong but Williams makes us understand why he is doing this. He finds the blend of tragedy and empathy that makes us root for and even relate to him. The people in Lance’s life are a little less developed but they don’t deserve a second look. These are the same people we encounter every day that make you feel less than you are. Maybe you’re a bad person but they will make you feel like a cowardly villain.

World’s Greatest Dad abandons any sense of “correctness” or normalcy. This is one of the darkest comedies you will ever encounter. Yet it all works because of Robin Williams and this script and because it just affected me more than it will likely affect anyone else because of certain ways I could connect with it. This is admirably dark and twisted and enjoyable despite how sick it may come off to be. If you’re a person who thinks your life is incredible and you’re a narcissist, you won’t find one thing to like in this gloriously pessimistic and realistic view on society.

Maybe I would have disliked World’s Greatest Dad had I not been able to relate so greatly with three of the characters. At times, I thought it was shocking how much I can actually identify with them. Robin Williams is so good as Lance and the script is nearly brilliant that I have to recommend this film with glee.

This is a deeper movie than it appears to be. If you think what happens here is played for laughs, you fit the profile of the preppy asshole people encounter every day. Why are you better than the guy in the next cubicle? For now you’re just John Cue. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re Odysseus.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted August 15, 2009

It’s an old stereotype that film critics are generally heartless cynics. I am truly sorry that I might have just confirmed that stereotype, because as the closing credits started rolling for The Time Traveler’s Wife I literally burst out laughing. A couple people in the audience shot me hating glares as they were wiping away tears of sadness, but I continued to laugh uncontrollably. I really am sorry if I can’t take a movie like The Time Traveler’s Wife seriously, but when a woman cheats on her husband with himself only younger so she can get pregnant, it, at least to me, seems like a Saturday Night Live skit.

Eric Bana, sporting several different haircuts, plays Henry, a man cursed with the ability to time travel. The problem is that he can’t control it and will never be able to, which leads to much pain for his family. He is in love with Claire, played by Rachel McAdams. She meets him as a young and struggling man and tells him that she knows him. She, I suppose you can say, sets her life of heartache in motion by telling Henry to visit her as a young girl in her parents’ meadow. They get married and he constantly disappears, leaving her all alone. If you think me saying that they get married is a spoiler, then I hate to break it to you but you’re just not too bright. Read the title.

This is an extremely confusing film. Time travel as a concept is illogical. Those who have mastered it are of course the creators of Lost who have done a fine job incorporating it into the show’s fifth season, and H.G. Wells. I should also mention this year’s Star Trek but that is credited to the creators of Lost. The Time Traveler’s Wife may be the worst attempt at depicting time travel. The holes in the storyline pile up one after another. Dissecting this film will drive you mad. For instance, if Henry knew that he would one day sleep with Claire while she is married to the older him, why did he never mention it. Claire must have told the younger him about the vasectomy, meaning Henry would grow up and know that his wife will become pregnant anyway. If that didn’t make any sense, good luck trying to figure it out for the price of admission.

Conveniently, Henry usually finds clothes that look good on him and reappears whenever needed. He never disappears during a serious situation except when his life is in danger. You may think that this is all because of his instincts, but no higher meaning to his genetic anomaly is ever mentioned. Henry is a time traveler who meets a pretty woman. That’s about the sum of it, and the film never attempts to show understanding of this. Fans of the book will probably enjoy this adaptation because I’m certain this is the same sappy escapism offered in the source material. For anyone with more than two brain cells, this will be a laugh riot because the inconsistencies and contrivances and plot holes quickly appear and never really get resolved.

I would love to sit at my desk and type away about all these illogical errors but it will grow boring for you sitting at your desk and many other readers doing the same. I am not even sure I want to revisit them, because I can’t fully make sense of it. It doesn’t compute, which is all I need to know to say The Time Traveler’s Wife is illogical because if I can make some sort of sense out of Synecdoche, New York, a film with a vastly higher cinematic IQ and a much deeper sense of love and life and depression, then I know I’m not the one failing to understand The Time Traveler’s Wife.

Everyone plays their part adequately, which is the best anyone can say about these performances. Eric Bana plays the character of Henry as he would play a man in a mid-life crisis. He never makes the audience sense his isolation and loneliness as well as his knowledge of his impending demise. The only reason we care is because after all, he’s a nice man trying to make ends meet. We never sympathize with him because he must have known the life in store for his wife, but he still decided to put her in this predicament.

The outcome of Henry and Claire’s story is surely tragic but so what? She must have known this would happen. The Time Traveler’s Wife prides itself on being sentimental and sappy and I guess that appeals to many audiences since the tears were flowing in the theater I saw it in. I’m not a total heartless cynic because there were a few moments when I sighed at the drama but there were too many illogical errors and too many gooey contrivances for me to really care. I sure hope Claire develops better taste in men, because this one obviously didn’t do it for her. That’s about as deep as The Time Traveler’s Wife goes.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted August 14, 2009

Ponyo comes from the brilliant and imaginative mind of Hayao Miyazaki. As with all his films, he employs magic and anime to tell his story. While Pixar is the best animation studio, Miyazaki is perhaps the greatest sole animator in film history. Ponyo is far from the magic and greatness of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, which completely created a vivid and dark universe, but it is nevertheless enjoyable and unique.

The story is centered around Sōsuke, voiced by Frankie Jonas (yes ladies, the unknown Jonas brother) finding a gold fish, voiced by Noah Cyrus (Miley Cyrus’s younger sister). Ponyo, the gold fish, escaped from her father’s captivity under the sea and after meeting Sōsuke, wishes to become human. This horrifies her father, voiced by Liam Neeson. After tasting human blood, Ponyo is able to become a human if she focuses all of her energy on it. When the balance in nature is uneven due to Ponyo becoming a human girl, her father and mystical mother attempt to restore it before sea level reaches the moon.

Obviously describing Ponyo is difficult because after all, it sounds rather silly, but experiencing this visceral film is a wonder. Where it falls short of the standard set for Miyazaki by works like Spirited Away, is its overall lack of structure. Sōsuke is a cute kid but his hero status literally seems to just pop out of thin air. One second he is an innocent boy and then we miss his transition into a hero the next.

The magic fails to come together to create a full and rich film. Despite the hypnotic animation, Ponyo always feels a bit rudimentary. The storyline is never clear which is not always a bad thing, but here it feels as though an important portion was left out. It occasionally drags due to the lack of structure and maybe even meandering.

Ponyo also may be Miyazaki’s most realistic film. This is a film dominantly set in a very average atmosphere. The only scenes that are fantastical are the underwater segments with Ponyo’s father and mother. The rest is just beautiful and surreal.

If this was Miyazaki’s first feature, everyone would be breathless. Since this is the same animator who has exposed us to works of wonder and amazement such as Spirited Away and even Howl’s Moving Castle, it’s hard to greatly appreciate an obvious step down from brilliance. Still, Ponyo manages to entertain and amaze because of the animation.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted August 14, 2009

While the 2009 summer blockbuster season has been for the most part mediocre, it has been a great summer for science fiction movies. There is Star Trek, a big budget popcorn movie that exceeds every expectation set for a standard popcorn movie, and Moon, a genius indie gem. If District 9, feature debut from Neil Blomkamp, had remained on the course it started in the first hour, it would have not only joined the great science fiction films this summer, but perhaps become one of the greatest science fiction films ever made. Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worst leading to a boring concluding battle scene that seems concocted from the mind of Michael Bay himself.

The genius portion of District 9 begins with a faux documentary that sets up the background for the universe this movie creates. 20 years ago, a giant spaceship arrives in Johannesburg, South Africa and hovers over the city without making any movement. Everyone waited for an attack to occur or something to appear but when nothing did, special teams were sent up to the craft and tasked with breaking their way inside. What they found were weak and unhealthy extraterrestrials. The aliens are brought down and confined to a township and divided from humans. Clearly this is meant to reflect Apartheid. When the citizens of South Africa, white and black, are tired of being scared by these aliens, a government agency known as MNU (Multi-National United) is set up to control the aliens, nicknamed prawns.

The central story begins when citizens become angry at how close District 9 is to civilization and MNU decides to move them to a new area. Wikus van der Merwe, played rather spectacularly by Sharlto Copley, is leading this mass eviction with a diplomatic stance. He doesn’t know the horrors truly being done to prawns and represents the white population during Apartheid. To him, everything is fine while in reality injustices are being done. While evicting the prawns, Wikus stumbles upon a shack that is owned by a clearly much more intelligent alien than the rest of the uncivilized beasts. He accidentally sprays a mysterious liquid onto his face and starts coughing and feeling uneven just before his arm is fractured by an attacking prawn.

After leaving District 9, he feels even more sick and stops at a South African fast food restaurant where he discovers black liquid pouring from his nose. When arriving home, he is treated to a surprise party only to go to the bathroom and start vomiting. His wife rushes him to the hospital after he collapses where doctors unwrap his arm and find it is becoming the body part of a prawn. As he is considered to be a hybrid, MNU, headed by Wikus’s father-in-law, decides to put him in an isolation ward. He becomes the subjects of many experiments that are truly horrific sights and is about to be cut apart so bio companies can duplicate his tissue. Wikus escapes and seeks refuge in District 9.

Here is where the film falls into a generic action movie spell and never recovers. The entire second half is nothing but loud shootouts and big explosions. Wikus finds himself to be aided by a prawn named Christopher, who invented the fluid that caused him to start becoming an alien. Christopher tells the fugitive that to heal him, he will need the fluid which is now being held four stories underground by MNU. This leads to a shootout, which leads to a car chase, which leads to a ridiculous and long battle scene that reminded me very much of the boring finale in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

District 9 has been hyped about since Peter Jackson unveiled the footage at this year’s comic-con. Without a doubt, this is an original and imaginative movie directed brilliantly by Neil Blomkamp. While for the most part it is different, the finale is a generic sci-fi shoot em’ up extravaganza. It actually involves a robot. The best elements of the film is the reality used to make us care about the injustices being done and the political metaphors employed to remind us that we need to learn from the past. Despite the plot, this is a movie grounded in reality. It rewrites history and recreates a whole city. When Wikus enters a robot suit and starts running around and blowing everyone to bits, it is laughable and impossible to take seriously. The realism of this situation and the credibility is wasted as this robot starts to function. Despite the unfortunate turn of absurdity, first time director Neil Blomkamp delivers a movie that even a seasoned director would be proud to call his own.

Sharlto Copley delivers a perfect performance as Wikus. During the faux documentary that I suppose can be called a prologue, it is clear that Wikus is a nice man but a weasely one. Copley doesn’t attempt to make a hero out of him. Of course Wikus grows throughout the course of events but he is still a weak man. He isn’t a typical action movie protagonist just as this isn’t a typical action movie. He’s not extremely handsome or muscular nor is he a suave and mysterious character. This is an ordinary man thrown into a dire situation where he has to use his wits and isn’t required to become and action hero.

While District 9 attempts to make the prawns reflective of the black population in South Africa, it is very difficult to feel any sympathy for them. It is wrong dissect them in labs but while blacks were civilized, prawns are not. They rob people and hurt them, cause havoc in their confined area, and never give any reason for citizens to stop hating them. They are monsters and these aliens are unlikely to gain much sympathy from audiences unlike E.T. for instance. Not to say that to evoke sympathy an alien must be adorable, but it should have at least some semblance of a heart.

The marvel of Neil Blomkamp’s direction is his ability to flawlessly blend CGI with real locations. It gets better. He does this with hand held cameras, but that’s not the best part. He does this on a reported thirty-million dollar budget (that’s a very low budget for a film)! X-Men Origins: Wolverine had a budget that surpassed a hundred-million and the special effects were cartoonish and clearly made by a CGI team. The mother ship hovering over Johannesburg is a wonder to behold. How it remains to appear so realistic is a hypnotic mystery. The aliens and the beauty of the mother ship, all shot on hand held cameras which gives it a more real looking texture, represent a step forward in CGI.

District 9 could have been a truly great film. Because of a slam bang and generic second half, it is just good. After all, Neil Blomkamp has to appeal to the crowds who flocked the theaters for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and I’m sure was under pressure to include that ridiculous finale. This is his first movie, and he didn’t want to risk not being a box office success because of bad word-of-mouth and then not being financed for future projects. I have to mention it again though. This is his first movie. For a debut, his directorial work is simply amazing. When he becomes the respected director he is destined to become, we will see his true style of storytelling.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted August 13, 2009 (Early Review)

The emotional and moral payoff in Five Minutes of Heaven lies in the intense meeting between Alistair Little and Joe Griffin. These are two men, wonderfully played by Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt, who have haunted each other since the day Little shot and killed Griffin's older brother when both were still very young and growing up in Northern Ireland during the violent civil conflict in the 1970's. What I was asking myself is how this meeting will play out.

This is a very short film, or maybe I should say short for its subject matter.  In only a brief hour and a half, screenwriter Guy Hibbert attempts to completely dissect two men and show a deep and tortured side to them. What Five Minutes if Heaven depicts is obvious: Little is sorry for the crime he committed and Griffin is angry and traumatized. That's it. It never goes deeper than that. Of course a grown man is sorry for what he did as a young and naive kid and undoubtedly the man affected by the crime is depressed for being blamed for his brother's death. Little destroyed his own life as well as Griffin's, and we know that. Now we need reason to care, and the only reason we do is thanks to Liam Neeson’s tortured improvisation as Little and James Nesbitt’s no holds barred performance as Griffin.

The effect of this on Griffin is never shown past the several days during which the film takes place. He is shown as a kid, being blamed by his mother for not stopping Little. Then he is shown on the day of a TV interview set around the meeting of the two men. Lastly, he is shown getting in a fist fight. The lack of screen time devoted to Griffin's family is one of the reasons why this is a rather cold film, and also a major reason why this movie should have easily went on for another hour.

Little's redemption is never shown, just mentioned. It's as though we're supposed to sympathize with this man because of the nature of the story. This is a movie easily divided into parts. First is the killing of Griffin's older brother in 1975. That takes up a very brief time. Next, it's right to the TV interview where Griffin has to see Little face to face. That finishes up the first hour. The last thirty minutes is a voice over from Neeson and a quick fist fight. It is simply underdeveloped. It has big potential and gripping moral dilemmas but the ideas that could have made this a masterpiece are left hanging in mid air. Add another hour, keep the fistfight, kill the voice over, shorten the part about the TV interview, show the effects of the crime on these two men over the course of much more than just several days, elaborate on Griffin’s family, add more depth to Little, and here is a perfect film worthy of Best Picture.

All the right ingredients are present but Guy Hibbert just isn't a great chef. Here are two fantastic performances, terrific hand held cinematography with a perfect muted color scheme, and a tense and gripping story. This should have been the movie everyone raved about during Oscar season. The fist fight scene towards the end would have been the clip chosen to represent the film in the Best Picture category. What we end up with is the ingredients for a great film that we are endlessly throwing together in our minds because we know what this movie should have been.

When Five Minutes of Heaven reached its conclusion, I wasn't quite sure how to feel. I was sure I experienced some form of a deep experience but at the same time it feels weightless. This is a movie that does certainly impact you but in a very subtle and restrained manner and I'm left contemplating whether that is a positive thing. No one needs extravagant melodrama but it seems Hibbert tried so hard to avoid sentimentality that he leaves this movie incomplete. There is still much more to be told even after the 90 minute mark. 

I never stopped thinking about how it would play out between Little and Griffin had the interview happened. It looks as though even Guy Hibbert couldn't muster up the emotional tour de force punch needed, so he simply avoids the scene. Five Minutes of Heaven never feels like a complete movie, rather just a part of one.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted August 3, 2009

After calling Knocked Up, a genuine and heartfelt movie about relationships, sexist, what better flick to star in to prove just how much you despise stereotyping than the misogynistic The Ugly Truth. This is a despicable romantic comedy employing every cliché in the book as well as exploiting women as…how did Katherine Heigl put it? “Shrews?” Yeah, I think that’s about right.

So, to show everyone how much of a feminist she is, Katherine Heigl plays Abby, a controlling and bitchy television producer who practically stalks a man before agreeing to go on a date with him. She’s the type of young and successful woman who fantasizes about the right guy. The type of boring schmuck who, at the end of the day, still only cares about getting into a girl’s pants. At this point of, dare I say, character development, it’s typical of a movie like this to throw in a cynical “see-the-big-picture” type of guy who is actually really thoughtful on the inside…of course. This womanizer is no other than Mike Chadway, played by Gerard Butler.

What is the purpose of this oil and water matchup? Well if it’s not obvious to you just by reading the above paragraph then you must be the person this movie is aimed for. Anyone who has actually seen a romantic comedy before knows how this crude and annoying flick will play out way before it’s over. If you’ve seen the trailer, you have a good chance of describing the whole thing by scene by scene.

Mike is put on Abby’s show in a segment called “The Ugly Truth,” hence the title. At first, she is ready to do anything to get him fired but when she needs to get laid, she decides to listen to him. He helps Abby get a surgeon who looks like an underwear model but he’s Abby’s image of the perfect guy. You know, picnic and classical music…that whole lovely ordeal. Soon, Mike starts falling for his prodigy even as he is helping her to get with the surgeon who is clearly a jerk.

If more people went to see, dare I say, 500 Days of Summer, which is, dare I say, an honest look at love and relationships, maybe the Hollywood executive wouldn’t pitch out more and more romantic comedies that start and end the exact same way.

I can point out that Gerard Butler is at times amusing and maybe even a little, dare I say, honest but I refuse to give Katherine Heigl any credit. If she wants to go and call Knocked Up sexist, then I can call her a complete hypocrite. There is an idiotic and excruciatingly unfunny scene following Mike giving Abby a pair of vibrating panties. What woman in her right mind would wear these to a business dinner, let alone bring along the remote? A stereotypical one! Conveniently, the remote some how rolls out of her purse to the amusement of a little boy who punches the damn thing to maximum (remember those days when if the word “damn” was used in a movie than it would automatically be the most notorious one among the housewives). When Meg Ryan faked an orgasm in a deli, it was genuinely funny, cleverly written, and well executed. All I can say for this half baked attempt at a laugh is that it’s not the least bit amusing but, and this is a very important “but,” it is extremely sexist.

Without a single poignant moment, The Ugly Truth makes The Proposal seem like a drama. It's no secret that I don't like big Hollywood romantic comedies, but 2009 actually had some very good films about love. The Ugly Truth just had to arrive and ruin the trend. Not as horrid as Bride Wars and not as forgettable as Ghosts of Girlfriend's Past (which may or may not be a good thing), the idiocy of this synthetic and plastic look at relationships is occasionally made bearable by Gerard Butler but as for Heigl, it takes a lot of nerve to bash a movie as being sexist and then star in one that defines the term.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted August 1, 2009

Judd Apatow has been known over the past few years as the man responsible for the laughter radiating from theaters in America. In Funny People, he experiments with a more serious and mature theme and the result is more of a base hit than a home run. As a whole, this occasionally amazing but mostly flat comedy doesn’t do justice to the genius pairing of Apatow, Adam Sandler, and Seth Rogen.

Sandler plays George Simmons, whose character is seemingly reminiscent of Sandler himself. George is a hostile and grouchy actor who made a career from starring in formulaic family films (the similarities between Simmons and Sandler are present throughout the first half) and occasionally performing standup comedy. He has pushed away anyone who ever cared for him. Rogen, Apatow’s most prominent muse, plays Ira Wright, an aspiring comic denounced by his friends and colleagues for perceived lack of humor. Ira lives with his roommates, played by Jason Schwartzman and Jonah Hill, who aid the comedy with hilarious interplay. George receives news that he is suffering from a rare and deadly form of leukemia. With no one to care for him, he enlists Ira as an assistant and a sort of confidant.

For George, the one that got away is Laura, played by a wonderful Leslie Mann in her first leading role. She is stuck in an unhappy marriage to a ridiculous Aussie named Clark, played by a very funny Eric Bana. The second half of the film revolves around George and Ira taking a road trip to see Laura and her family. Naturally, conflicts and tensions arise due to the presence of a past love and a current spouse. The ingredient that Apatow includes in this scenario to make us care is realism. He doesn’t sugarcoat the situation with a happy ending. Right or wrong, the conclusion of this scenario is how it would most likely play out in real life.

There is much to like in Funny People due to the drama and the potent performances, but ultimately the movie is dragged down by an excruciatingly over long running time of 150 minutes and rather one note drama. The dynamic of the story is the relationship between George and Ira, but throughout the course of events, nothing changes between them. Seth Rogen doesn’t seem to hold his own ground when he is on screen with Sandler but greatly improves his performance in the second half where we see things through his perspective. At the start of their situation, George treats Ira as his lackey and by the climax, it remains that way. Ira also fails to defend himself from this jerk’s bullying. For instance, Ira makes George a play list, and George replies by saying “Just keep writing me jokes you idiot.” What worked about Pineapple Express is the gradual change of heart between Rogen and James Franco. We see their friendship develop on screen. Here, I never got the sense of a bromance forming.

Sandler is terrific and while he is certainly grouchy, it isn’t exaggerated to the level of let’s say Jim Carrey’s character in Yes Man. In that movie, Carrey was a jerk because the script told him to be and for no other particular reason. In Funny People, George actually has a reason to be a crank and his vulnerability is present as it would be in any person who has just discovered he is dying and has an eight percent chance of surviving. Rogen, as I already pointed out, is pushed around by Sandler both on and off screen. Something happens with Ira though. In the final act, he takes control of the situation and is more of the protagonist instead of just George’s underling. Leslie Mann is an actress consistently portrayed as a neurotic and annoying robot in films like Knocked Up, but here she finally gets a shot at a leading role and damn is she wonderful. What is there to say about Eric Bana? He goes from a terrifying performance in Star Trek to a completely light and almost dimwitted role. This may be the silliest we’ve ever seen Bana and it’s also one of his best performances.

The editing stands out among several scenes that are intended toy with our emotions. For example, we see George performing stand up. What do we do? We laugh of course. Simultaneously, we see George crying in a shower and lying limp over a toilet while we are still listening to the set of jokes. In other words, George is masking his pain and the horror of impending death by going up on the stage and doing what he does best: being a funny guy. What else does a dying man do? He’s simply passing the time.

High definition cameras are used throughout the movie and the look is marvelous. The texture is bright and energetic unlike the dominantly flat storytelling. The criticisms I’ve read of the film are of course the running time which causes a lack of tightness in the script, and mostly that it goes downhill in the second half. I respectfully disagree. The first half is overlong only highlighted by a few funny stand up bits. The second half is much more lively and energetic. The second half is also the source of very funny comedy and heartfelt drama. This is where the performances come into play. The final act also strikes me as what you would expect from Apatow. There is nothing wrong with experimenting with mature themes but those are also utilized in the second half, where the audience is required to make moral decisions about life and the pain of losing the ones you love, and it’s still brilliant without being pointless meandering.

All in all, Funny People is without a doubt worth seeing. There are moments that are laugh out loud hysterical, such as interplay between Ira’s roommates where Jonah Hill explains to Jason Schwartzman why his idea of a poetic send off to heaven is ridiculous, and teary scenes in which we see George trying to hide his pain only too unsuccessfully. I respect Apatow for coming out of his comfort zone, however, while at times it works, at times it doesn’t. This is one of those films where, after putting it in perspective, you're only able to remember all of those funny and touching moments that make this such a good movie and forget about all of those bits that drag it down and keep it from being one of Apatow's best. I have no problem with a long movie as long as there is enough material to keep me interested. With Funny People, the material started to wear thin way before Apatow finished telling his tale. The performances are spectacular if occasionally only adequate. Sure I was disappointed, but maybe I just had ridiculously high expectations.

Good or bad, this is Judd Apatow’s deepest and most mature film to date, directed or produced. While it’s a hit-and-miss effort, it’s a strong first attempt at drama that occasionally strikes brilliance. After two hits, like The 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, he has earned his spot in the hearts of viewers where he can experiments and still draw crowds. From Funny People, we can assume Apatow has more drama, not necessarily mixed in with comedy, in store for us and I take comfort in knowing that he is only 41 but just gathering steam.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted July 21, 2009 (Early Review)

In the Loop is a movie where dropping the f-bomb every couple of seconds is actually funny and oddly intelligent. This is in part due to the overall intelligence and satire of the story. I mean, how often do you see a minister who is about to be fired sitting in a closet in the U.N. munching on mints and feeling bad for himself, while also thinking about whether or not declaring war is a good idea? People generally have an idea of political movies being uptight and serious, but In the Loop simplifies politics to just being a job where you can curse your brains out and meanwhile have some Chinese food and mints.

Tom Hollander plays Minister of Development Simon Foster. After being asked a question about war and responding that “war is unforeseeable,” his office is pampering him and treating him like a child. The head of his advisors is Malcolm Tucker, played brilliantly by Peter Capaldi. Tucker barges into Foster’s office, verbally assaults his secretary, teaches the new advisor that when he says “fuck off” and you “eff off,” you will go far. This same man practically mind tortures the Secretary General, telling him “Well I know you don’t like me swearing, so f-star-star-star-star, off you cunt.” Yes, this is a movie that revolves around the f-bomb.

What goes on in this film is confusing, funny, witty, brilliant, and all around, “f-star-star-star-star-star,” awesome. The performances are wonderfully eccentric and crude. Peter Capaldi deserves a nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his work here. He is the smartest man in the room, while also being a foul mouthed and rude son of a gun. Tom Hollander is so perfect for this role because of his silliness and over simplification of things. You expect a minister to worry about world affairs. Instead, he worries about whether or not watching a porno in a hotel room will start a media scandal.

In the Loop is one of the smartest movies you’re likely to see this year, and also one of the funniest. Now “f-star-star-star off.”

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted July 20, 2009 (Early Review)

Marilyn Monroe once stated that the only way she can find herself as a person is to be an actress. In some ways, The Answer Man works like that. Arlen Farber has some sense of unimportance or personal doubt, so to find himself, he says he can speak to God and therefore becomes a celebrity. The Answer Man feels cheap. Not because it is a low budget film, but because the relationships and the dialog presented in movie are contrived and fabricated. I’m sure writer and director John Hindman would like the audience to be involved and believe that the scenarios and conflicts these characters go through and overcome are inspirational, but this always seemed like a movie about a small and angry man slipping deeper into disappointment and depression.

Jeff Daniels attempts and fails at trying to make Arlen Farber a likable guy who is just going through a mid-life crisis. Instead, we get the sense that Farber was always and will always be a complete jerk. With the impending release of the 20^th Anniversary edition of his Q&A book entitled Me and God, he starts crawling back into society on all fours…literally. The book has become a worldwide sensation and has been translated in over a hundred languages. He is so famous, yet no one has seen his picture. I guess it’s quite convenient for Hindman when his protagonist has to go out in public.

Elizabeth is played by the lovely Lauren Graham, famous for her role in Gilmore Girls. She is a chiropractor who has moved from San Francisco to Philadelphia with her seven year old son. Arlen crawls into her office after he throws his back out. Right away, the cynical jerk who curses every being at his doorstep becomes infatuated with the sweet and beautiful physician.

Lou Taylor Pucci plays Chris, the manager of a small book store and a recovering alcoholic. After being released from a rehabilitation center, he discovers his shop has been closed for nearly a month due to an incompetent employee losing the keys. Farber harasses the store and tries to get rid of his books. Chris cannot afford any books since his store has been abandoned for twenty-seven days. Farber doesn’t care. He just wants to get rid of the books, for reasons never explained. He even resorts to just giving Chris the books for free. So Chris concocts a plan. He will accept the literature in exchange for answers to his spiritual questions. Arlen agrees.

Naturally, these people all come together and become friends and lovers and it is all tied together in a neat bow.

What I wanted to know while watching The Answer Man is why this book, amongst others written by fanatics, is so respected and well-known. Farber simply wrote a Q&A that he made up and that’s it. I don’t understand why he is such a celebrity and why this book “redefines spirituality.” What makes this book stand out? Religious fanatics write spiritual books all the time. Hindman does not even hint as to why this is.

I suppose these performances can be considered unique but these some what eccentric characters are becoming a cliché. These aren’t even exactly eccentric characters. They seem formulaic and uninteresting. The script is far from witty and way below memorable. The romance is forced and is never even close to believable. The film started to become engaging in the middle of the second act, but it soon falls back into its own formula. The attempts at making Arlen seem vulnerable and only evil to mask his insecurities fail completely.

The Answer Man is, for lack of a better adjective, okay. That’s it. Not good, great, bad, or awful. Just okay. It’s at times breezy and won’t make you puke. I guess that’s already praise for a movie with a very bad trailer. Daniels is appealing but to terrible of a person to be likable. Graham is very good but too often melodramatic. Pucci is just not good. After his father dies in the movie, he still cannot muster any emotion for the audience to sympathize with him. The sole flawless performance comes from Olivia Thirlby. She is sweet and innocent and occasionally very funny.

I think by the end of The Answer Man, my mind was more focused on why this book is so famous, and less on the characters.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted July 19, 2009

Now this is what I’m talking about. This is romance. This is comedy. This is drama. This is a perfect blend of all of those genres. 500 Days of Summer hates formula, and every brilliant non-linear moment of it assures the audience of that. This is the movie for those who despise The Proposal all the way down to 27 Dresses and for those willing to expand their minds. Here is a romantic comedy that is far from clean cut. Here is a romantic comedy where leaving your funny bone and your heart at the door don’t do much for you.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Tom Hanson, a romantic who has been taught about love through movies and pop songs. Zooey Deschanel plays the girl of his dreams, Summer Finn. A voice over at the beginning of the film clearly puts it out there: This is not a love story. Clear and simple. To be honest, this is in fact is not a love story. Instead of being told in a typical narrative, the movie begins with Summer breaking Tom’s heart. After that we get memories out of order, only identified by an animated background stating which day this is of him being with Summer. We see the happy times, and the sad times, all mixed together in a bag, and we try to find where things went wrong, but Summer answers our question when discussing former boyfriends. She answers “Life.”

The key to understanding this movie is to realize it is based on perception rather than reality. The character of Summer that is exposed to the audience is Tom’s vision of her. This surrealistic device used by Mark Webb comes to light in a scene using split-screen. Tom is attending a party that Summer is hosting and he has his “Expectations” and then he begins to experience the less romantic “Reality.” At this crucial point in the mind of the main character, it is seen that everything on screen for the past hour or so has simply been an idealized vision of this woman. Deschanel is playing Tom’s vision, instead of an actual person, which is not a bad thing. Deschanel is wonderful in this role. For those willing to accept this offbeat and original movie for its unorthodox narrative, the film will prove to be brilliant. Those that just want brainless escapism set to a formulaic and bizarre process created by Matthew McConaughey himself will find themselves having to think and they may or may not grow accustomed to actually analyzing s piece of art in a movie theater.

If 500 Days of Summer will ever be remembered or go down as a classic of the romance genre, it will be due in most part to the extraordinary filmmaking. As a friend pointed out after we left the theater, “That is how you direct a romance.” In a way that answer is sufficient, but I think director Mark Webb has gone beyond good direction. He becomes creative and dares to be original in a genre where so many films cannot be distanced from one another. Just look what’s going on with romantic comedies. Take The Proposal from earlier this year for instance. Two cynics meet, start falling in love, officially fall in love, have a falling out, and then there’s the traditional happy ending. 500 Days of Summer is a completely fresh take on the “boy meets girl” process.

In the animated background in which the audience is informed of what day it is of Tom and Summer’s love affair, the weather plays a big part. Day 1 has bright and happy colors, as to say it’s a beautiful time in this romance. By Day 500, leaves start falling and the background turns gray and depressing. There are recurring elements throughout the non-linear storytelling to show the transition of their relationship. We often see these comparisons one after another. In the beginning of the movie, we see a memory of Tom and Summer at a furniture store, taking place in the mid-200 days, where Tom is saying “honey, the sink is broken.” Summer looks non-caring and upset. Right after that, we rewind back to earlier days, where the couple pretend that they are living in this store and act as though this furniture is their own. A shot seen in the trailer gives you a taste of the creativity, in which Tom walks down the road and the setting turns to an architectural sketch.

This is an honest and pure take on romance. Even the dance number that features an animated bird sitting on Tom’s shoulder is more realistic than the love scenario in The Proposal. The performances are potent and warm. The filmmaking is brilliant and artsy and overall, a great feast for the eyes. I actually cannot complain about recent romantic outings because we've recently seen Away We Go, another sinceire take on love, and Adventureland much earlier this year, but this one takes the cake because of how well it is made.

You can call 500 Days of Summer a breezy romantic comedy or label it an art house film, but I think everyone just has to admit that it’s simply a great film.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted July 15, 2009

It seems after the bizarre announcement from the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences a month ago, which states that there will now be ten instead of five nominees for Best Picture, every movie to come out since has been called by at least one critic to be the front runner for the big award of the night. Yes, I’ve even found a critic saying that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a possible candidate. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the same is being said of Harry Potter and the Half- Blood Prince. I’m not too sure of its standings at the Oscars, but I certainly know this entry ranks as the weakest of the six films. Disappointing, since the sixth book has always been my favorite. While the latest installation in the hugely popular franchise about a boy wizard is a visceral experience in cinematography and vivid imagination, it is a rather dull and uninspired one in storytelling.

I’m not going to pretend thatyou don’t already know the basis of this franchise, so let’s get straight to the point. The film opens up with another Death Eater attack on London. Shortly afterwards, Harry Potter, played again by Daniel Radcliffe, is sitting in a café where he gets himself a date. As he might expect by now, normal things don't usually happen to him, so keeping up high hopes for a date is being naïve. Albus Dumbledore, played spectacularly by Michael Gambon, comes to call upon Harry for a trip. Afterwards, they teleport to the home of Horace Slughorn, played by Jim Broadbent who gives the best performance in the movie.

After that, it’s off to Hogwarts, where more dangerous adventures await.

While Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling had a clear and concise storyline, it is rather vague in this film adaptation. Instead of staying true to the book’s dark and haunting tone, director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves decide to throw the characters into corny and unnecessary situations of teenage anxiety. After suffering through that in Twilight, which caused this movie to be delayed eight months due to unwanted competition at the box office, I looked forward to the seemingly grim and brooding adaptation of my favorite book in the series. I got something else entirely.

Not to call this a bad film, because it’s actually quite decent, but with this franchise, using an adjective like “decent” is hardly praise. The first two movies were dark yet whimsical and provided intrigue for all audiences. The third, and best, film was much more grim and haunting. The fourth ventured into comic relief while still maintaining the general eerie quality of the book. The fifth movie was good though not great, but at least it still held some of the enchantment of this franchise. This one just feels flat and has officially lost that wonderful spell of Harry Potter.

Instead of just changing certain aspects of the book, the movie completely abandons the storyline of the source novel. The ridiculous and boring sub plot with Ron Weasely and a stalkerish girl feels shoehorned in simply for the purpose of providing a few laughs which ultimately evade it. The most interesting element to the film is Draco Malfoy’s internal conflict, and that was a major factor in the book, and it happens to be the best part of the movie. Go figure.

Now where this Potter triumphs over its predecessors is in terms of filmmaking. The advancement of film technology is seen through each installation of this film franchise, and here it hits a landmark. There is a terrifically shot and choreographed scene in a field which uses HD equipment as well as shaky cam, similar to what was used in Michael Mann’s glorious Public Enemies earlier this summer. For the record, that great moment, amongst many mediocre ones, interrupted a potentially terrible scene, in which Ginny, Ron’s sister, is just about to kiss Harry.

Alan Rickman gives a truly remarkable performance given that he most likely knows the fate of his character in The Deathly Hallows. The way he carries himself and acts throughout the course of events, as well as his hints through body language, will instantly be noticed by anyone who has read the books. Tom Felton gives Malfoy three dimensionality and fully fleshes out his vulnerable side. Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson are all rather wooden here. Helena Bonham Carter has a fairly small role in the script but when she is on screen, she steals it. Creepy yet sexy, Carter is a brilliant actress and there is no better person for these gothic roles that she has made memorable in Sweeney Todd among other films.

For people who have read the novel, it will be clear what is important and what isn't. For newbies, it will be a long and boring two and a half hours of trying to figure out the point of the entire film. For instance, the potions textbook played a major part in the novel and it was clear it held great meaning. In the movie, it is treated as an after thought. The central storyline in Rowling's book is Harry and Dumbledore's exploration of Voldemort's past through memories. In Kloves' script, it is shoehorned in so fans of the books won’t complain. The whole story arch of the entire novel is restricted to only being an uninteresting sub plot. It seems he wanted any actual structure out of the way so he can divulge to the audience with the personal lives of Harry, Ron, and Hermoine. Things like these contribute to the meandering and scattershot storytelling that will most likely be hard for Rowling diehards to follow, let alone a common moviegoer. Ultimately, it is a long and boring movie with an enormous build up and practically no payoff.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince has a few good moments and is wonderfully made, but it ultimately fails due to the abandoning of the dark and haunting storyline in the novel, or for that matter any storyline whatsoever.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted July 12, 2009

If you thought Sacha Baron Cohen’s worldwide phenomenon Borat was offensive, multiply that by about ten times and you might come close to the sense of his new film, Bruno. Whether you go in expecting another vulgar comedy like his 2006 hit, or expecting a played out shtick, Bruno is the funniest, most offensive, vulgar, disgusting, shocking, and nauseating movie of 2009, yet somehow you can’t deny the joy of it.

Cohen embraces another character from Da Ali Gi Show. Instead of being a wannabe gangster or a Kazakh reporter, he is now a gay Austrian fashionista named Bruno. After getting blacklisted on the Austrian celebrity status, he travels to Los Angles to become “the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler.” Embarking on all sorts of crazy tirades, Cohen succeeds on his intention of unmasking the pop culture obsessed and homophobic society we live in.

What truly angers me is the audience going into the film. Many think that, as with Borat, Bruno is just played for laughs. Though many of the scenes are in fact staged, a lot of them are pure. No one would risk their life to bring you a stupid joke so you can have a laugh. Cohen is attempting to exploit American ignorance, which he has done through his movies and it is more evident when you look at the reactions from mainstream audiences. I’ve heard homophobic teens scream things like “it’s got more dick than a gay porno.” If you’re too ignorant to realize what this man is doing, you might just be thinking the same thing and more importantly, you have proven Cohen’s point.

Yes, there are many moments in which genitals are the source of laughter and the funniest scene in the movie does in fact have to do with his genitals, but to come out of a film missing the point by that far, you must have only seen the cause without noticing the effect. When viewing a film such as this, you can never leave the theater and go to your friend and describe a scene. Part of the film’s brilliance is the shock, and you have to go in completely fresh, which is why I will not describe one moment of the comedy.

Sacha Baron Cohen has been called a genius and an idiot. I believe he is a madman. Not to deny the hilarity of this picture, but Cohen does things where he truly puts himself in danger. It’s at times impossible to know what’s real and what’s staged, but I know for sure his movie on Ron Paul was a hundred percent real. As for comparisons between Borat and Bruno, don't expect to find any here. While many of the same tactics are employed and the ultimate goal is the same, these are two completely different characters with two completely different agendas.

Bruno is a must-see, no matter for what reason you are going. As a comedy, this is gold. As social commentary, it is strong and has a voice. If you think this is all one pointless shtick to get a laugh or two from the audience, snap out of it.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted July 7, 2009

Many couples sit around and whine about not finding a good place to raise a family. The problem is they never try to find it. Burt and Verona decide they're not going to just hope that special place will arrive at their door. They go and do something about it, embarking on all kinds of wacky journeys, making Away We Go a memorable a slice-of-life tale.

Burt and Verona are played by John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph. They are expecting their first child and realize their current location is unfit to inhabit a baby. So they start off simple. They go to Burt's parents' house for dinner, but they're in for a surprise. His parents, played by Jeff Daniels and Catherine O'Hara, plan on moving to Belgium just a month before the baby is due. This causes Burt and Verona to travel across the country in hopes of finding the right place.

First, we arrive in Phoenix to visit Lily and Lawl, played by Allison Janey and Jim Gaffigan. Lilly is Verona's former boss and is happy to see her, though expressing her joy just a little too loudly. After witnessing Lily's interaction with her kids, such as labeling her young daughter a lesbian with "junk in her trunk," the young couple decides Arizona is not their fairy tale home.

Next we go to Tucson to meet Ellen or, as she calls herself, Ln. She is a “cousin" of Burt's who is more of a childhood friend but as Burt points out, their parents started calling them cousins when they were kids. Ellen is played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Expecting a fit and loving mother, the couple endures a psychotic hippie with a strange view of basic fundamentals. Just about as I got fed up with Ellen and her husband, so did Burt and Verona, leading to a hilarious scene.

After that it's Montreal and an unexpected visit to Miami, following the departure of Burt's sister-in-law. Away We Go is so many great things at once. First of all, it is extremely funny. Every attempt at humor succeeds. Secondly, it is sincere. This is a character driven story about human emotion and the essence of happiness in a difficult time. It's fairly rare that a movie is able to so perfectly strike a balance between comedy and drama, two complete opposites.

Every performance is fantastic. John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph both shine as Burt and Verona. The supporting characters are hysterically executed from and extremely smart script. Allison Janey is a laugh riot as a foul mouthed and rude woman who has no internal quarrel when calling her daughter a "dyke" out loud as well as publicly discussing her "huge jugs" until her kids "sucked them dry." Maggie Gyllenhaal is as over-the-top as it gets, but she keeps her character firmly grounded in reality. This is a mother that believes having sex in front of her kids is okay because it exposes them to nature, and yet I still never rolled my eyes at this character as though she was simply a caricature. Though all of the supporting roles are over the top, I strongly believe those were the intentions of writers Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida as well as those of director Sam Mendes. I also don't think we are ever supposed to like them. Any mother who insults her daughter in such a vulgar and casual way isn't painted to be a sympathetic character. Funny, but not likable. We see these people through Burt and Verona's eyes and the writers of Away We Go really do a good job of conveying their emotions to the audience, making us understand exactly how they view each situation.

Watching the trailer, many will get the idea of Away We Go being a low key indie gem. If you're going into this film expecting comedy similar to Little Miss Sunshine, your jaw might just drop as did mine. Several times I actually felt I was watching an Apatow comedy. The movie, though being heart felt and honest, is far from low-key.

Some critics dislike this movie film and some admire it, while I just simply love it. Away We Go features the best ensemble effort I've seen in 2009 and proves the great talent of director Sam Mendes, who is somehow able to make a graceful transition from the devastating Revolutionary Road to this heartwarming film. Burt and Verona are two folk characters who make Away We Go joyous and wonderful.  

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted July 6, 2009

Find me any avid movie enthusiast who doesn't miss vintage Woody Allen, and if you do, I'll be the first to point out that they're not avid movie enthusiasts. Allen returns to his origin style of storytelling, which earned him a special place among the great filmmakers of all time, with Whatever Works. If Allen had made this movie decades ago he'd be hailed as a prodigy, but after getting a taste of Annie Hall, nothing measures up. Whatever Works fits like a favorite old sweater, and as Boris, the title character, would point out himself, that's a cliché.

Like early Woody films, Whatever Works is about a cynical, snarky, grumpy, and fast talking Jew from New York. Larry David stars as self-proclaimed genius Boris Yelnikoff. He was considered for a Nobel Prize in physics, only to be denied the honor. His marriage is shaky and he gets a divorce after a failed suicide attempt. He feels he is surrounded by idiots and teaches chess to "brain dead zombies" and "creatons." Boris believes his mentality is one of a kind and a mind like his practically doesn't exist in a race of “inch worms.”

Melody, played by Evan Rachel Wood, stumbles across his path. She is a 21-year old runaway from Eden, Mississippi. According to Boris, she is simple minded and "phenomenally ignorant," but he lets her stay at his apartment for a few nights, which turn into months and years. Watching Whatever Works, it's hard to believe these bizarre events occur over the course of two years but Larry David and Woody Allen working together is like having your favorite dessert at your favorite childhood restaurant.

Melody's mother, played by Patricia Clarkson, arrives to see her daughter who has now married Boris. At first, she is the stereotypical conservative: uptight and strongly religious. After spending a few weeks with the famous New York City "romantics,"she becomes a hippie. A year after that, Melody's father, played by Ed Begely Jr., arrives and my description of the plot ends there.

Larry David is, for lack of a better adjective, perfect in this role. His performance is a miracle to behold that only Woody Allen deserves to exploit. When David turns to the camera, it is hilarious and evokes those moments in Annie Hall I treasured as a kid. Evan Rachel Wood is lively as Melody. This young actress has demonstrated great talent and variety recently. She so naturally fits into this light and funny role after giving a flawless and heartbreaking dramatic performance in The Wrestler.

Patricia Clarkson is a delight and Ed Begely Jr. is astoundingly funny. The paths of these two characters are predictable but it’s hilariously amusing how they travel along them.

I think it should be noted that Whatever Works was written in the 1970’s. Woody Allen wrote the part of Boris for Zero Mostel who had unfortunately died before the production. So Allen tucked the script away and recently decided to revisit the idea. I have no idea how Mostel would have played this part, but David is brilliant in it. As for Boris’s claims of him being a great mind, I have a feeling he is just more of a hardened cynic than a genius but David is a true comedic genius.

Though the movie is not great Woody Allen and, like most other recent films with his signature title card, excluding Vicky Crisitna Barcelona and Match Point, will be critically rejected, I for one experienced a pleasant case of déjà vu that brought back great memories of watching Annie Hall and Manhattan growing up in Woody's hometown as well as his stage for truly original and memorable films.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted July 4, 2009

All human beings have desires, ones that cannot be fathomed to some and cannot be explained to most. If there is a theme present in The Girl from Monaco, I believe it is of these desires that cannot be understood or explained. Though done in a low key and subtle fashion, this film conveys the theme well enough to make you think, but not well enough to be memorable.

French actor Fabrice Luchini plays Bertrand Beauvois, a lawyer taking on a big murder case in Monaco. The son of the defendant hires a bodyguard, played by Roschdy Zem, to protect Bertrand during the trial. He and Christophe, the bodyguard, develop a friendship that goes just a bit too out of the range of plausibility.

Bertrand meets Audrey, played by Louise Bourgoin, a young and beautiful weather reporter. The character never striked me as someone who would be a weather woman but I think that’s the point. Some how, this gorgeous twenty something is attracted to the much older and plump Bertrand. Obviously, the lawyer who can’t get a date isn’t complaining about having Audrey, but he almost seems to accept it too irrationally.

Audrey and Christophe have a history and the bodyguard constantly tries to warn Bertrand against seeing her, for reasons never fully explained. In the beginning of the film, The Girl From Monaco fills the audiences’ heads with many ideas and theories as to what this attraction may consist of. Is Audrey sleeping with Bertrand for information on the trial? Is she part of the plot to kill Bertrand? Why do her parents accept that she is with a man older than themselves? By the climax, the movie leaves these questions up in the air, as if denying that it ever sparked them.

The Girl From Monaco is not a great film, nor is it a deeply emotional one either. It seems that all of the characters simply want something, and where better to discover yourself than on a beautiful beach community in France. The music and the care free storytelling is meant to give off breezy escapism, and at that, this movie succeeds.

Fabirce Luchinni is annoying as the title character, always complaining or changing his mind about whether or not he should be with Audrey. This flaw seems more because of a faulty script, but Luchinni does not attempt to give this character any depth. Roschdy Zem gives an outstanding performance, unlike the rest of the cast. Zem never lets the audience forget that his character is troubled, even when he is charming. Louise Bourgoin is extremely sexy but is there as eye candy. Not to say that her presence is just for sexual innuendo, but Bourgoin never attempts to make Audrey feel important or complex.

The relationship between Bertrand and Audrey is never believable, unlike the more fleshed out and developed one between Bertrand and Christophe. Anne Fontaine never manages to clearly get her message across. It is about, I assume, human nature and the sickening prospect of death, and the desires that not only want to be fulfilled in a lifetime, but need to be.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted July 3, 2009

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs was practically panned by most people the moment it was announced, and who can blame them? After a movie as bad as Ice Age: The Meltdown, no one can have high hopes for a sequel. Though not as great as the 2002 original, Dawn of the Dinosaurs succeeds at overcoming the 2006 sequel and being, above all things, a really good and original animated feature.

Now that Manny, voice of Ray Romano, Sid, voice of John Leguizamo, and Diego, voice of Dennis Leary, have becomes friends and, in many ways, a dysfunctional family, the franchise is ready to move on to more friendly and familiar stories, such as one of the characters expecting a child.

Ellie, introduced in The Meltdown and voiced by Queen Latifah, is pregnant with Manny’s child. Diego is going through a prehistoric animal style mid-life crisis. Sid is still as silly as he ever was, only this time he is raising baby dinosaurs. This is where the main storyline kicks in. After raising these baby dinosaurs for a day, the mother arrives to take back her babies, kidnapping Sid in the process. Manny, Diego, Ellie, and Ellie’s annoying brothers go to find Sid, encountering the hilarious Buck, voiced brilliantly by Simon Pegg, and a big dinosaur named Rudy.

While this storyline is not as imaginative and vivid as the plot in Up or Monsters Inc, Dawn of the Dinosaurs makes the best of it. My favorite element of the movie is the emphasis on Scrat, the squirrel in the trailers who always loses his acorn. While the first two films excluded my favorite character from the main part of the movie, this entry greatly involves him. To make things more appealing, Buck, an adventurous weasel, is a great addition to the franchise.

Adding to my string of compliments, this entry is also the funniest. Whether this humor is kid friendly is another question, but for older audiences, the comedy works naturally. The laughs are quick and don’t emphasize on the sexual connotations. For example, after Manny’s baby mammoth is born, Sid rushes over in joy and exuberantly yells, “It’s a boy!” Manny replies, “No idiot, that’s the tail.” Jokes like that obviously make more sense to older audiences but they are not focused on to the extent where they become inappropriate for the children.

A rather awesome action scene finalized my praise for this movie. The characters are fighting dinosaurs and some of them hop on pterodactyls, and the sound editing is brilliant. The flying dinosaurs whoosh by, creating the sound of a fighter plane. The color palette offers variety instead of sticking to the same dull hues like in Monsters vs. Aliens. The voice work has perfect comedic timing, excluding Queen Latifah, who made her character into a cliché.

After seeing the film, I was excited to see what other critics said about it by checking the Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes. After seeing a lame approval rating of only forty-five percent, I realized many refuse to judge a movie on its own terms. Instead, they are unforgiving of failed predecessors. If you were let down by The Meltdown, go to see Dawn of the Dinosaurs. It may surprise you.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted July 2, 2009

John Dillinger was public enemy No. 1 and he robbed banks. Melvin Purvis caught bad guys. They were both the best at what they did. Michael Mann's nearly flawless Public Enemies doesn't attempt to describe what drives these men. There is no deeper meaning. There is no special bond or moral agenda between them. There is just Dillinger and there is just Purvis, robbing banks and catching bad guys.

Johnny Depp portrays the notorious criminal and Christian Bale plays the straight-edge federal agent. In 1933, Dillinger and his gang were at the top, and the FBI looked like a joke. When J. Edgar Hoover, played by Billy Crudup, assigned his finest g-man, Melvin Purvis, to the task of capturing Dillinger, things became harder for both sides of the law.

The FBI cracked down on Dillinger associates, becoming desperate to catch the man who had made a mockery of them several times by escaping jail only moments after arriving. In the midst of this, Dillinger didn't have a thing to be afraid of. People were too busy trying to find him to even look across the street. He used this to his advantage. In a terrific scene, he strolls into the office dedicated to tracking him down, with a slight grin on his face, as if he was simply at a museum. He asks the officers listening to a ball game on the radio, "What’s the score?" They reply, without ever even turning around.

Melvin Purvis needed to catch Dillinger. Not because he wanted to redeem himself or because he wanted revenge, but because it was simply the task at hand. Reading this, you might think Public Enemies is a dull and pointless, but the drama generates from simply one line delivered by Johnny Depp: "We're havin' too good a time today we ain't  thinkin' about tomorrow." That single line is the basis of the dramatic display. Dillinger slowly starts to realize that he has to think ahead and be cautious, because his times of waltzing out of prison are through. The woman he loves is no longer safe. I think that is what Public Enemies is really about, a man finding himself all alone in a place where he always had the upper hand, realizing he is no longer the charming folk hero but a scared and paranoid being.

Depp gives an Oscar caliber performance in a role made for him. No one but Depp could walk into a police station with cops who are dedicating and risking their lives to capture him, and look as relaxed and amused as he does. Sure Depp has the look and charisma for this character but it's all in the execution, which he carries out without one false note.

Bale brings just the right kind of discipline to Purvis while still being a gentleman. His role doesn't require the kind of flash and emotion needed for a character like Dillinger, and he accepts that. Even in their one scene of interplay, Bale doesn't attempt to steal it from Depp. He's not supposed to. Purvis asks the criminal, "What keeps you up nights Mr. Dillinger?" Depp replies with a soft and sarcastic tone, "coffee." Purvis is the serious and intelligent hero. Dillinger is the wild and charismatic outlaw. Neither actor attempt to be anything else, which is why they so effortlessly embody their characters.

Marion Cotillard shines as Billie Frechette, the woman Dillinger falls for. Here is a performance which goes beyond the requirements while still being wonderful. It seems Frechette is meant to be the damsel in distress, but her last two scenes are pure brilliance, especially her final one which happens to also be the final scene of the film. She isn't intimidated by the police, only ashamed. She gives the policeman a scathing look which calls him a low life and a coward. Cotillard is mannered and strong-willed, while also being warm and down-to-earth.

The big flaw comes surprisingly from behind the camera. Michael Mann is his own film's No. 1 enemy. Almost every scene uses hand held, giving the film a texture resembling a TV movie. Now imagine how good the talent in front of the camera has to be as well as the narrative for me to be able to rave about this film. Mann creates authentic sets but the use of hand held is simply wrong for this movie. There are several scenes, most of which being the shootouts, where this technique works perfectly, but not when Cotillard is simply walking around her apartment. The gun shots are so authentic they captured my attention every time. Something about them fascinated me. Mann has without a doubt recreated the period masterfully, only to make it hard to appreciate with his camera work.

With a movie as good as Public Enemies, any technical flaw can be forgiven instantly. A narrative as wonderful as this one and performances as amazing as these not only attempt but succeed at redeeming Michael Mann's choice of direction. At the end of the day, John Dillinger still robbed banks and Melvin Purvis still caught bad guys, and no matter how you shoot it, these men were still the best at what they did.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted June 30, 2009

Power. Women. Money. Freedom. That life is appealing, but at what cost? Sin Nombre is a brutal and raw image of gangland life in Mexico as well as a tragic account of a journey across the border. This is a movie where nothing can be expected to turn out well and where a happy ending seems like something out of a fairy tale. Sin Nombre tells a story of flawed people who suffer consequences and experience tragedy and in real life, good doesn’t always triumph over evil. What this film asks of you is which side is good and which side is evil, or if there even is a side.

The movie opens up with Willie, played authentically by Edgar Flores, staring at what appears to be a painting. He then leaves to pick up Benito, a young boy who wants to become part of Willie’s gang. To be part of the gang, you have to appear before “The Magician”, played by Tenoch Huerta, and receive a thirteen second beating to prove that you can take pain.

The parallel story is about an adolescent girl named Sayra, played by Paulina Gaitan. Her father left her many years ago and went to the United States. He started a family only to be deported. Now that he is back in Mexico, he wants to go back with his estranged daughter and make her part of his new family. Like any other abandoned kid, Sayra is angry with her father and rightfully so, but she knows she can have a life in America.

These two stories intertwine through choices and consequences. Director and writer Cary Fukunaga doesn’t attempt to give the audience a happy tale and preach that Willie and Sayra meet because of fate or destiny. Every moment of them being together results because of the actions these characters take. Every single tragedy that falls upon these people is a consequence of their choices.

Many of these actors are newcomers and all of them are far from household names. The best performance in this movie comes from Tenoch Huerta. He is ruthless and terrifying but his interpretation of evil never becomes a caricature. I found myself being able to believe that this man is a terrible person but I never forgot that he is in fact, a person. Edgar Flores is incredible as Willie. He does things that make you look at him in disgust but we know that he feels great regret. The road he chose will never let him go back and this character is simply a tragedy all on his own.

The movie is filmed on location and the setting feels authentic. The culture of these people and the homes they live in give the audience a taste of life in that country. Fukunaga drops little hints throughout the film of what gangland culture is without enunciating it through dialogue. Fukuanaga at one point simply puts a cigarette in Tenoch Huerta’s hand and tells him to smoke it. Looking at that shot closely, you may notice something that shocks you, disgusts you, or just better conveys the darkness of this man.

The third act nearly destroyed Sin Nombre. It becomes primarily a love story that feels underdeveloped and without cause or reason. This love though, still arises from choices and actions, and it causes great tragedy. One choice costs someone their life, which in turn makes a family lose someone, and connected by that same choice, a young man loses his life, and a young girl is all alone in a big world. But the last shot gives us hope that maybe this girl will be the only one who will be able to survive throughout this entire string of tragic choices.

Sin Nombre has a beautiful score, composed by Marcelo Zarvos, which flows into every scene. It is a score of self reflection, and every time it is used, I knew that that the characters were thinking about their life and yes, their choices. For a great two acts, Sin Nombre is flawless. The third is unfortunately rash, frantic, condensed, strained, and mediocre.

The ethical questions obviously turn up, most about the treatment of illegal immigrants in the United States, but this movie always feels like it is about more. It is about the human soul and the mistakes even the best of people can make. The film’s title translates to “Without Name.” Simple, but with great meaning.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted June 28, 2009

Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker is everything a summer action thriller should be. In other words, it is everything Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is not. This war epic provides a fair share of explosions and action, but more importantly it fleshes out its complex characters and has a story and a heart. The suspense is unbearable and here is a movie where we don’t really want there to be a ton of explosions, because that would mean the people we have come to care about in the swift running time will either die or sustain some serious injury. This is a movie set around its characters, and not around the things that go “boom.”

The Hurt Locker gets right to the point, and begins with a bomb squad led by Sergeant Thompson, played by Guy Pearce, getting ready to dismantle an explosive. Now when a fairly big movie star such as Guy Pearce gets blown up in the first several minutes of a film, you should know automatically that the filmmaker responsible isn’t going for a star driven blockbuster. After the death of Thompson, the squad, now consisting of Sergeant JT Sanborn, played by Anthony Mackie, and Specialist Owen Eldridge, played by Brian Geraghty, receive their new bomb specialist, who is the complete opposite of Thompson.

Staff Sergeant William James, played by Jeremy Renner, an actor destined to receive an Oscar nomination for this film, is a rowdy wild man. He has dismantled 873 bombs by doing what his heart tells him, instead of doing the logical thing. The first scene in which the audience sees him in action, he throws a smoke grenade so his team doesn’t see him, and goes off alone. In another instance, he simply tosses his headset to the ground, ignoring the warnings from Sergeant Sanborn. This is how Will James goes about his line of duty, giving the finger to the man who follows protocol and lighting up a cigarette at the end of a long day.

The Hurt Locker consistently conveys the sense of paranoia and the “life and death” scenario. Each time a character goes out to dismantle a bomb, our pulses are pounding. Each time someone looks as though they might be a terrorist, our hearts skip a beat. Kathryn Bigelow involves the audience in every scene, by use of hand held cinematography and gritty filmmaking.

If this movie does goes down in cinematic history as a war classic, it will surely be due to the astounding technical credentials. The cinematography, done by Barry Ackroyd, is masterful. In several scenes, some of which are in the trailer, the energy from the explosions spreads in slow motion, and slowly knocks off the rust settled on abandoned cars, and causes rocks to levitate in the air. Another use of this brilliant filmmaking is when a bullet hits the ground in the same slow motion technique, and causes a screechy magnetic sound as it bounces off the sand. To read of these visual orgies is one thing, but to see them composed on screen by Ackroyd is something else entirely. The cinematography junkies will experience nirvana.

And, completely off topic, Evangeline Lilly has a small role that made me experience a Lost brain rush.

The Hurt Locker is better and greater than any Iraq war movie to come along so far. It doesn’t care about the political standings of these characters and Bigelow doesn’t attempt to include any political agendas. It only attempts, and succeeds, at bringing us a gritty and raw view of war as a drug. Kathryn Bigelow does what Michael Bay could never do, which is bringing us a movie with explosions and complex drama. And, god forbid, a story which has been touched by human hands.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted June 28, 2009

You know who deserves to suffer through the unbearable sequel to the 2007 blockbuster Transformers? The morons who stand in line and buy a ticket stub. And they can have it, just like they can have Transformers 3,4,5, and so on. After all, they’re responsible for this prospering franchise. If they didn’t over flood the theaters for these movies, the film itself wouldn’t make any money and then no production company would provide a big enough budget to make them. Problem solved. The only hole in this idealized vision of cinema is that mass crowds are too dumb for any other movie, and find something like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen entertaining.

Shia LaBeouf reprises his role as Sam Witwicky and Megan Fox returns as his super hot girlfriend, Mikaela. This time, instead of engaging robots in big battles on the streets of Los Angeles, Sam is off to college and Mikaela works at an auto shop. After touching a piece of the cube that was destroyed in 2007’s Transformers, Sam starts having visions of symbols.

Sam’s robotic Camero, Bumblebee, stays at home. Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, is working for the Army, as well as most of the other Autobots. The Decepticons arrive to kill Sam, who has the map to a magic key in the desert programmed in his mind. After the robots attack Sam’s campus, the Autobots and Mikaela arrive to save the day. Within a few hours of escaping death, Sam, Mikela, and Sam’s roommate, Leo, played Ramon Rodriguez, find themselves on the run as fugitives.

I don’t know what the correct adjective is to sum up how bad this movie truly is. Michael Bay is a cash junkie, not a filmmaker. He’ll do just about anything for laughs and gasps from the audience. He’ll even be racist and include robots that talk like pimps and have gold teeth. He overuses the long and admiring 360 shots of the robots transforming, set to a really corny “hero” score composed by Steve Jablonsky. Bay may just be the worst working director in the business, and the DirectTV commercial he did a year ago in which everything around his house explodes, assures us that this guy is never going to mature as a filmmaker. He will stick to loud summer blockbusters for the rest of his career, or at least until they stop making money.

I’m sure most have heard about the small controversy involving robots that represent African-American stereotypes. Michael Bay stated that he only did it for the kids and no racism was involved. In that case, I wonder if the part where Sam’s mother, played by Julie White, buys marijuana and starts telling everyone about how her son lost his virginity was also for the kids. And what about all those super hot girls dancing like strippers and some how being sexully aroused by Rainn Wilson, the language, Megan Fox having her butt perked at the camera, and the scene where a college girl is on top of Sam begging for sex while a robot comes out of her dress revealing her underwear? Was that also for the kids? To put it simply, Michael Bay contradicts himself with his own movie.

The explosions come like candy out of a box. During the final battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons, Tyrese Gibson accidentally calls in an air strike on the wrong position. This just seems like an excuse for another big explosion and a slow motion shot of Megan Fox’s cleavage. At the beginning of the movie, small robots start shooting in Sam’s house. He calls upon Bumblebee, his Camero, to destroy the bots. The Camero destroys half of the house, and it seems no neighbors notice and the house is still intact. I don’t like to nitpick, but there is a scene in which John Turturro and Ramon Rodriguez escape being devoured by a huge robot who only moments ago sucked all of the sand out of the desert including tanks and other robots, and they avoid this fate by holding onto a metal bar.

Where Revenge of the Fallen improves on its superior predecessor are the battle scenes. In the 2007 blockbuster, you could never quite tell what’s what during the fighting between the robots. It basically looked like a huge of hunk of metal. Here, we are at least able to make out the machines during hand-to-hand combat.

A scene I actually enjoyed (I know, hard to believe) was set in outer space on another planet. The setting reminded me of where Yoda lived in Empire Strikes Back. You can’t see the area to well due to huge robots blocking our view engaged in dull conversation, but for a brief time, the landscape is coherently seen. If Empire Strikes Back was made with today’s technology, I imagine the swamp which Yoda inhabited would look something like this.

The women in this movie are treated like porn stars by Michael Bay. The first scene Megan Fox appears in has her perched over a motorcycle with her butt out at the camera. The slow motion shots of her cleavage had the dominantly male audience moaning, as well as the scene I mentioned with the motorcycle. Ms. Fox isn’t a bad actress. The problem is the lack of a good director. With the first Transformers and its sequel, she hasn’t had the opportunity to demonstrate any talent. It seems she’s there to attract teenage boys. I read an interview with her on MSN, in which she criticized herself in the first movie and said her performance is much better in this one. She also stated that Revenge of the Fallen is going to be “the best movie of the summer.” It’s not even the best movie being released this week.

The robots are lame. One is a small twerp who is sexually aroused by Megan Fox and humps her leg and can’t even break out of a metal box. Another has a metallic beard (don’t ask) and needs a cane. Then there are the racist robots with gold teeth and a Camero who feels emotion. What happened to classic robots. Here they get hurt and have feelings and are affected by mouse traps.

This film makes Terminator Salvation seem like a complex human drama. The comic relief is forced, the action is boring, the entire film is loud and frantic, and yet when the credits rolled, audiences clapped and roared with applause. With a merciless running time of two and a half hours, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is easily the worst summer blockbuster I’ve seen thus far and one of the worst films of the year.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted June 21, 2009

The most common flaw in romantic comedies is a lack of chemistry between the leads. The Proposal, starring Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock as the unlikely couple, has plenty of that. The only problem is a lack of originality. Being far better than the sum of its trailer parts, The Proposal still fails to exceed expectations set for average movies.

Reynolds plays Andrew. Bullock plays Margaret. He’s a quiet and sarcastic secretary. She’s a bitch on wheels. Finding out her visa has long expired, Margaret asks Andrew to marry her. Though he’s hesitant, he quickly begins to sense he has no other choice. If she’s deported back to Canada, he’ll be out of a job and won’t get his dream promotion as editor. He agrees. They go to his wealthy parents’ house in Alaska for the weekend to fool everyone and, as in all romantic comedies, they genuinely fall in love. Gimme’ a break.

The family scenes are embarrassingly unfunny and clichéd. At least we’re spared the humiliating childhood stories. Betty White is an angelic and natural comedic presence amongst the beautiful movie stars trying too hard to derive laughs. She plays Reynolds’ wise crackin’ grandma and never fails to amuse despite a wicked and twisted unfunny conclusion to her character. In the third act, The Proposal becomes too dark for a light romantic comedy.

Reynolds and Bullock seem to have chemistry on-screen and there are several well-written moments where the laughs come naturally. This is why the Apatow comedies are better. The Proposal gets a couple laughs in but starts trying extremely hard. At one point, Bullock breaks into dance next to Betty White. Really? I’m not saying there’s a whole lotta’ material to work with but this is about as low as it gets.

Craig T. Nelson occasionally pops in as Reynolds’ way too evil dad. Steenburgen acts this role almost as if her family is really going through a crisis. But any realism with her character flew out the door when she takes Bullock and her mother-in-law to a strip bar. I’m giving up hope for Malin Ackerman. Her performance in The Heartbreak Kid is probably the worst I’ve seen by an actress in this decade. In Watchmen she was adequate, not great. But I think this movie pretty much assured me that this woman just isn’t cut out for acting.

Occasionally, the film is amusing but the unfunny gags dominate the running time, making it for the most part dull. The Proposal has shown great mercy on me by not including that ridiculous slapstick on display in the trailer (I’m talking about the part where a pillow’s weight is apparently equivalent to a hammer). So in return, I’m going to show it some mercy by not panning it and suggesting that you can watch it on HBO.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted June 20, 2009

Moon is a work of sheer genius and beauty. It’s a miracle to make a film of this caliber. A story inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey transforms into a stand alone classic, venturing into far greater emotional depths than 2001 ever dared to explore. No one liners like “exhilarating” will do the movie justice, even though in all honesty, it is exhilarating among other things.

Sam Rockwell strikes all the right emotional strings as Sam Bell, an astronaut isolated on the moon due to a three year contract with Lunar, an energy company. Sam has something to look forward to: two more weeks and he gets to go home. For three years, his only friend has been Gerty, a robot voiced chillingly by Kevin Spacey. Gerty is obviously the HAL 9000 element to the story, even though by the climax the robot becomes more of a dynamic presence. Complications arise after Sam hallucinates following an accident. Or are they hallucinations?

The rest of the plot is layers upon layers of brilliance written by Duncan Jones, who also directs the movie. Moon is a marvel of a film. It doesn’t walk you through developments like Angels and Demons would for instance. The pace is subtle but strikes excitement because of the unknown. Moon relies on the unknown, because for two thirds of the film, it generates the suspense.

When we do figure out the mystery, it feels as though brutality has been performed on the human soul. Tragedy strikes in the form of truth. A movie like this sparks fervent analysis. Is the twist a use of metaphor suggesting the unimportance of humans? Is it saying Sam doesn’t matter and what is being done to him is okay as long as it’s in the greater good? Towards the end, he says “we’re humans.” Now that’s an example of power in the form of subtlety. Sure the line has been uttered many times in numerous films, but not in this context under these circumstances.

When reviewing Moon, you really have to focus on the style rather than the substance because critiquing the content would be impossible without giving away the heartbreaking turn of events. I forgive the movie for having rather ordinary shots because of how detailed and layered the story is. Rockwell carries the movie, and after seeing the film, you realize to what extent.

The more I was invested in the story, the more I started to feel scared and almost isolated. We see the situation through Sam’s eyes. There are no scenes in which we find out something that the character himself doesn’t know. When he makes a discovery, so do we. At a certain point, the mystery almost tantalizes the viewer. Where Duncan Jones succeeds is giving us great writing to carry us through those twenty minutes of confusion. A movie like this requires patience and thought. It tells the story and the interpretation of the course of events is up to you. This is one of those rare beauties where leaving your brain at the door won’t service you.

Jones is a real filmmaker. He avoids the mistake that Alex Proyas ran into with the theatrical cut of Dark City. The director’s cut doesn’t feature the revealing voiceover that takes away from the suspense, even though the theatrical did. So here’s how I imagine the situation: A producer in Hollywood sits with Jones and gives him an ultimatum. He can either change some things around so the movie will get a wider release, or he can stay with his original cut that requires thinking and be constricted to a limited release. The sad truth is mass audiences can’t stand sitting through what they don’t know for half a movie. They don’t want to wonder. They just want a big explosion. That’s why Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will be a mega blockbuster. Jones stayed with his original cut and refused to be bullied into dumbing down his film. Bravo.

In a period of cinema where sci-fi is repetitive, 2009 bats it out of the park with two masterworks of the genre: Star Trek and now Moon. The former is a blockbuster because of how well-known the franchise is. The substance on the other hand doesn’t appeal to mass crowds because of how layered it is. The latter had the potential to attract mass crowds only to turn them away after seeing the movie because of how intelligent it is. Jones makes no attempts to make his film appeal to teenagers and that is why it’s as great as it is. Leave the theater and try not to reevaluate everything you believe in.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted June 20, 2009

The meaning of life is on sale for ten bucks. Aw, jeez! I don’t have any cash because I spent it on the unworthy $9.99. Oh well, I’ll go ask my pops for a few dollars. The Israeli/Australian stop-motion movie would have you intrigued as soon as someone says “Israeli/Australian stop-motion movie.” Sadly, the it disappoints because of its lack of plot. The film starts with a homeless man asking for money so he can buy coffee and cigarettes. When being denied the money, he shoots himself. After that, I totally missed the point of the entire production.

$9.99 feels like an experiment from start to finish, which is why an emotional investment or intrigue is impossible. The clay animating style is pointless and creepy. There are elements to the story that probably work better as clay animated segments but those elements are bizarre and disturbing and have no place in the movie in the first place.

The film is a collection of tales that are meant to teach basic morals. I missed the whole moral part though. I suppose one of the characters consistently failed to read someone the meaning of life because the audience is supposed to figure it out for themselves during the course of the film.

$9.99 is one of those pictures that deserve a review simply stating “indifferent.” There’s not much to like or dislike. Oh wait, there’s a criticism. Being indifferent towards a film is definitely not a positive review. But it’s not exactly negative either. I liked the segments involving a young boy receiving a piggy bank to save up for an action figure only to forget about the action figure. I assume the “moral” center of that story is appreciating what you have.

When the credits rolled, I’m sitting in my seat trying to find a point in what I’d just seen. Maybe I missed something. Once putting the movie into perspective, I realized I didn’t miss a thing. There was nothing there. Viewers will do soul searching in hopes of figuring out a movie they see as intricate and “passion project” like. There’s no emotional or moral pay off which is where $9.99 ultimately fails.

This is being pushed so hard to be seen as an art film but there’s no beauty to be seen in it. The stories on display are bizarre simply for the sake of being bizarre. God! What’s up with all these filmmakers trying to create a pointless movie hoping it will be viewed as a passion project? If you’ve got a story, make a movie. If you have a pen and paper and a camera, please spare us.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted June 15, 2009

I can thank Tony Scott's remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 for one thing: avoiding a well-worn cliché. But for avoiding that single cliché, the movie employs about four even more tired ones. When will audiences finally be treated to a hostage movie that simply avoids all of them? This movie is a string of tired clichés made more obvious by formulaic performances, weak storytelling and of course all that noise.

Denzel Washington plays Walter Garber, an MTA official who gets more than he bargained for when he was "putting his socks on this morning". Ryder, played by John Travolta, hijacks a subway car and holds it ransom for 10 million dollars. So naturally, Garber becomes the unlikely hero who, by the end of the movie, becomes someone whose heroism is stretched out of any plausible range. The police has one hour to get the hijackers the money or Ryder kills a hostage for every minute the money is late. What happens in this movie could never take place in one hour.

Ryder requests that Garber contacts the mayor, played by James Gandolfini. To get a quick thing out of the way: I grew up in New York City and I have never seen a mayor ride a subway. Gandolfini can play a crank, a mob boss, or maybe a hard-ass principal. He cannot though play a mayor. He comes off as a scared and wimpy caricature of Rudy Giuliani. But to be fair, he does say "I don't have my Rudy Giuliani suit on".

Scott's Pelham 123 isn’t really a bad film. The problem is that it's not exactly good either. This is pure mediocrity. The performance from Washington is too constrained and saint-like while Travolta is too unconstrained and ridiculous. Washington is the guy who wouldn't dare come home late and Travolta is the guy who would make a woman on the train give him a dance on the pole right after he shoots a guy. Neither personality is believable. And all those clichés! But to the film’s credit, we do find out that Washington’s character is in fact flawed.

The movie does have its strengths. For instance, despite the frantic direction by Tony Scott, Washington and Travolta have several gripping exchanges. The problem in their shared dialogue is Travolta’s religious fanaticism. There were several suspenseful and brutal moments when we finally realize that Travolta isn’t just “another idiot with a gun”, as described by Gandolfini. What’s interesting is that the scenes when the hijacker and the civil servant are talking over microphone are much more fascinating than the scenes when they are actually together. The scenes down in the tunnel held my interest despite the clichés but when Washington became Superman, the intrigue wore thin.     

The climax is absurd because Washington's character is not a dashing hero. Like he himself says in the film, he's just a guy on the other end of the mic. And Travolta's plan is so faulty that it wouldn't come even close to succeeding, therefore never requiring Washington to do the impossible.

Scott's direction is too flashy. The first ten minutes of the movie are shot in a frantic slow motion kinda' deal and the rest is just plain frantic. It looks like a kid had too much sugar and decided to play with a camera.

Two things that particularly irritated me is its action-movie music and frantic style. One second the frame is subtle, the next there are loud cop cars driving insanely fast with horrible rock music pounding at our ears. It is so obvious at times that Travolta is being over-the-top to use up running time. When there's no material, he is called upon to go nuts, say "mother f------" after every other word, and start firing. God, the noise in this movie.

Now for the "Book of Hostage Movie Cliches". The one that the movie avoids is making the hostage negotiator, played by John Turturro, hostile towards Washington's character. But it makes up for it with a scene in which Washington's wife says "do whacha' gotta' do, but we outta' milk, so you pick up a gallon on your way home". Then after that insignificant piece of dialogue that we're expected to forget, the last shot of Washington is him walking home with a carton of milk. There is also a terribly corny exchange between Washington and Gandolfini having to do with sirens and the Yankees.

Travolta's character had me confused. At times he is so ruthless and evil and then he is sympathetic and then they throw in some religious fanaticism. By giving the character these traits, instead of creating a complex human being with a wide range of emotions, they created a bizarre person written by another person who was experimenting with tone. In most hostage movies, the crazy guy never shoots anyone. Here he does. Okay, so the movie avoided two clichés. As in all hostage movies, there has to be a little boy with a worried mom. We know Travolta won't shoot the boy, but then that's a cliché. But if he does shoot the boy, he's too ruthless to be believable. So why not just avoid that young boy cliché in the first place?

In fact, all of The Taking of Pelham 123 is either too noble or too ruthless to be believable. It's a clashing of good and evil when both are stretched out of proportion, as well as the director's boundaries of style and the writer's twisted version of right and wrong. Oh and one more thing! There's a rat that acts as Chekhov's gun. There's some originality! Nah, I'm just kidding. That rat was bound to crawl up the guy’s leg.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted June 13, 2009

Land of the Lost works on three levels: Camp, comedy, and charm. This is an adaptation, or maybe parody, of the 1974 TV series. It makes no attempts at being extremely original which is why, for the most part, it is. The characters are as by-the-book as they get and there is a large amount of disgusting fluids and jokes about feces, but somehow, Land of the Lost succeeds and satisfies.

Will Ferrell plays Dr. Rick Marshall. He’s been laughed out of the scientific community after he conducts research on time travel and an embarrassing appearance on the Today Show hosted by Matt Lauer (Matt Lauer may be known to some as the guy who was called “glib” by Tom Cruise a few years ago). A fervent supporter of Marshall’s work is Holly, played by the lovely Anna Friel who first charmed audiences with her work on Pushing Daisies.

Holly drags Marshall to a field test of his equipment. There they meet Will, a stoner-like guide at a sorry excuse for an amusement park, played by Danny McBride. To the surprise of Marshall, his equipment works and he, Holly, and Will are transported to a parallel dimension where a motel with a pool that still somehow has a working filter can exist in a vast desert with dinosaurs running around. The rest of the plot is too condensed to explain but there are lizards, who look more like cheap alien props from the 60’s, and a primate that looks like a parody of the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The main reason why Land of the Lost works as well as it does is for the throwback sci-fi. I admire films like Moulin Rouge! for its homage-like style filmmaking which pays tribute to its inspiration. Land of the Lost works as both a tribute and a parody to classic sci-fi. A problem many will have with the movie is the cheap looking special effects. Well those are intentional, as well as the lizard suits.

Will Ferrell is an actor I’ve harshly criticized for movies like Blades of Glory and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, but he has occasionally surprised me with Stranger Than Fiction and now this movie. He has a dimwitted charm that he doesn’t take overboard like he does in most of his films. Anna Friel’s character demands her to be strong willed and sexy. That’s exactly what Friel goes for and that’s exactly what she delivers. Danny McBride is supposed to be perverted and funny which he also succeeds at. These characters aren’t hard to master and have been acted many times before, but these particular actors do it with some style and charm.

On another day at another time, I might’ve hated Land of the Lost like most other critics, but I was in the mood for a nostalgic and rude adventure comedy. That’s what I got out of this movie. It was funny, it was cool in its own way, and I really enjoyed it. So for 10 dollars, I think it’s a pretty good deal.

Movie Review by Ron Rapoport

Posted June 8, 2009

The Hangover is dealt a tough task: To take a tired premise that has been recycled again and again in Hollywood and turn it into a funny movie. To the delight of moviegoers, director Todd Phillips and the talented cast succeed, making The Hangover funny, original, and engaging.

Bradely Cooper takes on his first leading role as Phil, a laid back schoolteacher and family man. He's going to Las Vegas with his buddies for his best friend's bachelor party. Justin Bartha plays Doug, the soon-to-be groom. Doug brings along his future brother-in-law, Alan, a deranged and creepy bearded guy played by Zach Galifianakis. And finally there is Stu, the constantly worried and on edge successful doctor, or dentist, which his friends never fail to point out.

As in all Vegas oriented comedies, the guys get drunk out of their minds and have a rough hangover the next morning forgetting everything that happened the previous night. Here's the problem: Doug, the soon-to-be-groom, has gone missing in Sin City, leaving his friends worrying and searching for him as they discover last night's wacky adventures.

A specific monologue that I enjoyed that most people will take for granted as just laughs, is when we hear all of the characters' voicemails. The monologue takes place in the beginning, which is chronologically the end, and it sets up the characters we are about to meet. Doug has a very normal voicemail showing us that he's a down-to-earth guy. Stu has a slightly stuck-up and self glorifying voicemail which shows us he's the guy who's successful and uptight. And then there's Phil, who has an offensive but funny voicemail which shows us he's the slick, immature, and cool guy in the group. From this we automatically know what kind of circle of friends this is and we're ready for the type of comedy we are about to laugh to.

Bradley Cooper usually has the unimportant comic-relief best friend role, with an exception being He's Just Not That Into You and now this. He's proving he be can be funny in a leading role and his slacker-homophobic charm works great on-screen. Ed Helms physical appearance is perfect for this role and so is his acting. He's a pushover and mostly uptight. You would imagine a guy like Ed Helms playing this part. Zach Galifianakis has probably the toughest role and he executes mostly well. He has to be the nerdy and creepy guy who no one wants to be around while not turning the part into a caricature while also being slightly likable. The Hangover is partly so funny because of the cast and their performances.

Where the movie hits a speed bump, a minor but noticeable one, is where Helms' character marries a prostitute while being drunk. This subplot has been used in countless Vegas comedies and with an original Vegas comedy, it's sad to see the w