CAPSULE REVIEW MEGA-POST (PAGE 5 OF 5):
I would be tempted to call Aquamarine sugary if the term didn’t
imply a headache after the product’s digestion. The movie, directed with a
seeming effortlessness by newcomer Elizabeth Allen, is as light and
marshmallowy as ‘tween flicks come, but leaves the viewer with far more
post-viewing satisfaction than most of its standard-issue counterparts.
Not that it’s particularly profound or anything of the like: the plot
follows the misadventures of a mermaid (Sara Paxton) and the two human
friends (teenage singer “JoJo” and Emma Roberts) that she acquires when
she is washed up into their beach-club’s pool after a storm. However,
Aquamarine’s humorous delivery and charming lead performances make it
enjoyable enough to permit the viewer to look back on it with smiles
rather than shrugs.
It isn’t everyday that one is able to watch Matthew McConaughey get bit by
a chipmunk and a lizard in the same movie, which is probably a good thing.
I’m not sure if the strangeness of these scenes in Failure to Launch
was the fault of the actor, who is nowadays becoming Hollywood’s Number
One choice for a leading-man, but they certainly fall flat. Otherwise, the
movie exactly what one would expect out of a big-studio-produced
romantic-comedy. It has several charming moments and McConaughey and
fellow lead Sarah Jessica Parker, who plays a woman hired to assist her
co-star’s thirtysomething-and-still-living-at-home to leave the nest of
his parent’s home, share a considerable amount of onscreen chemistry
together. In the near future, Failure to Launch will make a fun
lazy-afternoon rental, but the audience never has enough emotional
interest invested in the characters to allow the sum of its parts to merit
anything more.
Coming of age is often a glamorized
transformation in the modern-day land of pseudo-sophisticated independent
films, but Tsotsi suffers from no such glamour. Winner of the 2006
Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and helmed by South African Director
Gavin Hood, it is a stunning tale of a troubled youth’s path to
redemption. In a memorizing performance, first-time actor Presley
Chweneyagae plays the title-character, a thug living in a ghetto of
Johannesburg who leads his own small gang. One night, he decides to
conduct a solo-job by stealing a woman’s car in a nearby rich
neighborhood, but gets much more than he bargains for when he finds her
baby inside after crashing the vehicle while making his getaway. Tsotsi
isn’t heartless enough to merely leave it to fend for its own, and finds
himself facing a troubling inner-dilemma when he begins to raise the baby
and comes to love it. Chweneyagae’s portrayal of the character’s fragility
when he comes to understand that the baby is dependant upon him functions
as a poignant representation of the failings of an unstable society and
the individual’s ability to overcome them. It is impossible not to
sympathize with Tsotsi, but equally as difficult to forgive his actions.
Through and through, Tsotsi is an effectively thoughtful and often
emotional motion picture.
Directed with simultaneous style and
incoherency, somewhere in ATL is a very good movie. Each scene in
the film works by itself, but director Christ Robinson fails to bring them
together to create a product that flows. From ATL’s innovative
opening mix-track of Ray Charles’ “Georgia On My Mind” and a contemporary
hip-hop cut to its electric, colorful rollerblading montages, sketches of
the movie work as ingenious blends of old-fashioned storytelling and
modern-day urban culture. The picture even contains some rather poignant
scenes featuring New-New (Lauren London), a teenage girl from a wealthy
family who secretly sneaks off against her father’s wishes to watch the
film’s focal rollerblading matches in the ghetto. However, despite the
fact that the majority of ATL does exactly what it should, it
looses its punch somewhere between its intersecting-subplot style
execution and its choppy editing. There’s a lot to admire in screenwriter
Tina Gordon Chism’s script, based on a story by the Antwone Fisher;
the excellent performances by the young cast; and much of the film’s
production design. Unfortunately, these elements don’t come together
nearly as fluidly or effectively as they should have.
Say what you want about Paul Weitz’ filmmaking career, but the
writer/director has never made a bad movie. American Dreamz doesn’t
come anywhere close to the level of emotion found in About a Boy,
In Good Company, or even American Pie, but it offers its
fair share of good laughs and is unmistakably a Weitz film. More of a
comedy that exaggerates the already-existing humor found in current-events
than an analytical satire, the two main targets of American Dreamz
are TV’s “American Idol” and the Bush Administration. The plot follows a
brainwashed, clumsy terrorist named Omer (Sam Golzari) who is sent to
America by his superiors “as a sleeper cell.” However, they are actually
shipping him off to live out the rest of his life only under this
assumption because they fear that his continued participation in the
organization will jeopardize future attacks. In the U.S., strange chain of
events leads Omer to be a contestant on TV’s “American Dreamz”, alongside
bubble-gum-popping goody-goody Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore). When the heads
of the terrorist group discover that the American President (Dennis Quaid
as a very Bush-inspired figure) will be judging the finale of the
show, they decide to utilize Omer after all. They send orders to him to
conduct a suicide-bombing during the episode, killing both he and the
Commander-in-Chief.
The fact that Omer, a terrorist, is depicted as
a humorous character is slightly distasteful when one keeps the current
international-climate in mind, but American Dreamz is so
over-the-top that this never comes across as entirely offensive. In fact,
one of the main things I admire about the movie is that it targets its
humor in a highly malicious fashion, leading to an often hysterical
result. Weitz, working hand-in-hand with his cast (Moore is particularly
good in her role), is able to capture a synergy between the performances
that contributes to the general hilarity of the film. However, despite its
abundance of clever material and acting, American Dreamz never
transcends the level of these big belly-laughs and, as a result, is
nothing more than a simply good film. Had Weitz been able to create a
deeper product under the same premise, it could’ve ranked among his best
films. Still, American Dreamz offers audiences some funny and
biting material to chew on, which is becoming more and more of a rarity in
Hollywood nowadays.
Nicole Holofcener’s Friends with Money
is about as slice-of-life as a movie can get when it features Jennifer
Anniston as a depressed, pot-smoking schoolteacher who chooses to quit her
job and become a maid. Actually, to her credit, Anniston is rather
believable here and delivers a solid performance. Her co-stars—Frances
McDormand, Catherine Keener, and Joan Cusack—are equally as good, but they
also never have to struggle with fitting their roles’ prototype of wealthy
suburban moms. Friends with Money is a portrait of all four of
their characters’ troubles in life, bridged by, as the title observes, the
friendship between them. The movie doesn’t really go anywhere—one could
argue that that the developing relationship between Anniston’s Olivia and
Bob Stephenson’s Marty is the most plot-like device throughout the entire
duration—but it doesn’t need to. Only these characters can make the
realizations that they need to in order to improve their outlooks on life;
by the end of Friends with Money, some do and others don’t. The
film plods along to the refreshing tune of everyday life and, for this, I
greatly admired it.
There’s no doubt about the fact that Spike Lee
knows how to make a great movie. For two hours, Inside Man is as
focused and lean as a Hollywood-style heist film has ever been.
Suspenseful and intelligent, I found its plot’s cat-and-mouse-style game
to be far more riveting than those of most mainstream films of the sort.
From Denzel Washington’s cool collectedness as a detective following a
bank-robbery to Clive Owen’s mysterious evilness as the robber, I was
genuinely gripped by the film, ready to grant it a glowingly positive
review. But then came time for the conclusion, which is, to say the least,
one of the biggest third-act cop-outs of recent-memory. Not only does the
outcome of the heist-plot that Owen’s Dalton masterminds function as an
obvious and boring finish to a previously exciting movie, but also it does
nothing to affect the audience’s emotions. After being consistently jarred
for two straight hours, as a viewer, I wanted a nerve-wracking finish to
bring home Lee a win. What I got was a lukewarm, anticlimactic ending; I
left the theatre feeling nothing but disdain for the film. As I’ve said in
the past, a disappointing movie is often worse to watch than one that the
viewer expected to be bad in the first place. Inside Man’s crap-out
of an ending certainly respects this principle.
I’m not sure that writer Gerald Petievich and
director Clark Johnson knew that they were making a dramatic-irony-themed
film rather than a thriller when they conceived The Sentinel, but
their approach will certainly be a surprise to audiences given the
contrary way the film was marketed. The trailers and ad-spots for The
Sentinel suggest that it is full of suspense, in the same vein as
supporting-actor Keifer Sutherland’s television show “24”. However, this
couldn’t be more farther from the truth. Following Secret Service Agent
Pete Garrison (Michael Douglas) as he runs from authority after being
falsely accused of plotting to kill the President of the United States,
the film’s plot is actually rather straightforward. The audience knows
that Pete failed the polygraph test that pinned him as a suspect not
because he wanted to kill the President, but because he lied about having
an affair with the First-Lady (Kim Basinger). One could make the argument
that The Sentinel’s thrills lie within the game of guessing the
identity of the real Secret Service Assassin, but most viewers will be too
concerned with Pete’s quest to prove himself innocent to participate in
such. For the most part, The Sentinel is swiftly crafted and
well-performed, but because of the way it is assembled, it seems far too
straightforward. When the real assassin is revealed, the viewer feels
little-to-no adrenaline as a result. I was never exactly bored by the
movie, but was never on the edge of my seat at any point of it, either. In
a couple of months, The Sentinel will make for a worthwhile
Friday-night rental.
September 11, 2001. Three Arab men awake in their hotel room before
sunrise, pray to their God, shave themselves, and get dressed. “It’s
time,” one of them proclaims in a weary voice. As the scene progresses, an
aura of terror fills the auditorium; United 93 is a haunting motion
picture because it is so surreally real. The men board the plane and,
after take-off, the focus of the film shifts to Air Traffic Control
Headquarters as its employees become clued into the other flight
hijackings taking place on the East Coast of the United States. Cut back
to the plane. The men begin their hijacking; the passengers are frantic.
The innocent civilians’ horrified emotions bleed through the screen and
into the auditorium. One of the men takes control of the plane. Those
onboard call their families and discover that both buildings of the World
Trade Center have already been crashed into, as the audience observed
twenty minutes before at Air Traffic Control Headquarters in real-time. A
group of passengers makes the decision that they will need to take control
of the airplane, no matter what the cost. It is in this decision that the
viewer observes perhaps one of the most stunning and heroic events of
contemporary history.
Directed by Paul Greengrass (The Bourne
Supremacy, Bloody Sunday) without the slightest bit of
exploitation, United 93 is a great film. As a result of a
combination of superb acting and the employment of the director’s
trademark hand-held cinematography, the film allows the viewer to feel as
if they are a first-person observer of the events taking place. In several
ways, United 93 transcends mere cinema and brings the tragic event
to life; when watching, I didn’t sense any of the required
manipulation of filmmaking. United 93 exists solely as a memoriam
of the events of September 11th, allowing the viewer to be
affected by its contents in the way that they choose. It is just as much
about the uplifting hope and courage of the passengers onboard as it is
about the evil cause the terrorists were consumed by. It is just as much
about the human suffering of the event as it is about the politics
surrounding it. Supremely affecting and highly thoughtful, Greengrass’
film is a multi-dimensional masterpiece that is a testament to the fact
that it is not “too soon” to make movies about the Darkest Day of American
History.
Say what you will about ‘ol Tom Cruise’s little fling with a girl who
could be his daughter or his belief that there are aliens living in the
Earth’s volcanoes, but the fact remains that the guy can still deliver an
intense, super-cheesy-cool performance. Mission: Impossible III
proves no exception. Back for a third time as pop-culture’s
action-film-God Ethan Hunt, Cruise’s character has now decided to dump his
super-agent day-job and start a family. However, as expected, he is coaxed
into returning to kicking ass and taking names when his former trainee,
IMF-agent Lindsey (Keri Russell), is taken hostage by evil-villain Owen
Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Lindsey dies in a poorly crafted opening
action sequence, but the rest of this part-revenge, part-spy film is made
in a flowing, entertaining style.
Cruise and his former Mission: Impossible
co-stars—namely Billy Crudup, Ving Rhames, and Laurence Fishburne—are all
back for the ride, but this installment also adds three new components to
the equation: Hoffman filling the villain’s shoes, Michelle Monaghan
playing Cruise’s love-interest, and J.J. Abrams taking the director’s
chair. The first is genuinely creepy in his role and the second shares
some rather touching scenes with Cruise, but the true magic of the film
lies in the change made behind the camera. Abrams, who helmed both TV’s
“Alias” and “Lost”, has a true knack for pacing and executing the non-stop
action that consumes Mission Impossible III’s contents. His
effortless touch allows the long sketches of bullets flying, cars
exploding, and Cruise running to be entirely interesting. I liked the
approaches of the first two directors of the franchise, Brian DePalma and
John Woo, to their films, but this offering plays much more fluidly than
its predecessors thanks to Abrams’ work. The world may not be ready for
another Mission: Impossible flick anytime soon, but if the day
comes, allowing Abrams to return to make it would be a very smart move on
the studio’s part. As for now, I’m fully pleased with what Ethan Hunt has
accomplished in Mission Impossible: III; he deserves some
well-earned time-off.
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