The Other Guys

Funny but forgettable

When a bomb explodes before Bruce Willis, his cheekbones are highlighted with ash. When one explodes before Will Ferrell, he collapses in a puddle sobbing, "I've got blood blisters on my hands! I call bullshit on that!" The joke isn't just that he's a wuss (he is), it's that movie violence never measures up to the human pain of the real thing. Does The Other Guys measure up to a dumb summer comedy? Sure: it's dumb and consistently funny, and the weekend high in Manhattan is 88° which means the sizable audiences who'll escape to the movie theater for some air conditioning will find The Other Guys as good and fleeting as a street corner popsicle.

In dog years (or dog days of summer years), it's been eons since big-ticket action films were pure, raw action. (Though Sylvester Stallone is out to change that with The Expendables.) Instead, in a nod to audiences who fake-gripe that, "There's, like, no way he could have survived all those bullets, man!" Hollywood's made action flicks where comedians joke through hailstorms of lead, where there's no risk that Seth Rogen might actually die and, therefore, no real thrill or flutter of tension.

Into this mock-machismo climate struts--or really, tiptoes--Will Ferrell, who's spent his career lampooning masculinity. He's either under the bar (Step Brothers, Elf) or far, far over it (Anchorman, Talladega Nights). Here, he's femme. According to sour new partner Mark Wahlberg, demoted to a desk job after accidentally capping Derek Jeter in the knee during Game 7, even the sound of Ferrell's pee is feminine. Wahlberg is half a foot shorter than Ferrell, but he makes up for the height with a glower that could kill pigeons. His career's being kneecapped by this namby pamby transfer from Forensic Accounting who drives (gasp!) a Prius, which in this world is like cruising in a Barbie bike. (Quick! Somebody warn Leonardo DiCaprio!) And now while real cops Damon Wayans Jr. and Rob Riggle, and superstar cops Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson are out cracking skulls, these two are stuck at NYPD headquarters where Ferrell whistles the theme to I Dream of Jeannie while Wahlberg plays solitaire and grumbles.

With the entrance of shyster stockbroker Steve Coogan (whose motto is "Live for Excess!") and the $32 billion lost investment he's scheming to recoup, director Adam McKay gives this undynamic duo a chance to prove their mettle. Problem is, no one else cares, not Captain Michael Keaton (having a lark) and definitely not the audience. How can we when even McKay and co-writer Chris Henchy's script would rather squander time on Ferrell's sonorous Irish singing and supremely hot wife, Eva Mendes? (It's meant to be funny that the goon treats her like garbage despite having a doctorate and a killer push up bra, but that joke wears thin fast.)

At least unlike those uppity, over-achieving women, the movie knows its place as multiplex fast food. Or does it? At the credits, McKay runs infographics on real life Ponzi schemes, as if to suggest all the earlier shenanigans were just a warm-up for some learning. And it turns out that fact still beats fiction. While Coogan's scrambling for $32 billion, McKay reminds us that Bernie Madoff swiped double that ($64.9 billion). Of course, by this moment in the running time, choppers have now exploded next to Ferrell and left him without a scratch; they're fittingly harmless in a movie that will sell you anything for a laugh.

Distributor: Columbia
Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Samuel L. Jackson, Steve Coogan, Andy Buckley, Ben Schwartz and Anne Heche

Director: Adam McKay
Screenwriters: Chris Henchy and Adam McKay
Producers: Patrick Crowley and Jimmy Miller
Genre: Action/Comedy
Rating: PG-13 for crude and sexual content, language, violence and some drug material.
Running time: 107 min
Release date: August 6, 2010

Inception Review : A Fun, Intellectual Thrill Ride! -spoilers warning

A Fun, Intellectual Thrill Ride! -spoilers warning Great movie, there were some pre-teens behind us in the theatre and they all hated it repeatedly saying how confused they were. That made me laugh as I enjoyed this fun and fast-paced romp. If you went in with no expectations and a semblance of an intellect, you probably were thrilled and still challenged to keep pace with the events. If you came in expecting a bubble-gum action pic, you got disapointed and I am glad you did, wait for the next Transformers movie. This movie required patience and thought to follow so if you hated it you probably don't posess those qualites. I thought it was an inventive and well resolved plot, Yes, the ending leaves you guessing if it too was a dream, but that's what the Director wanted to do. At least respect Nolan had a vision for his film. I find it interesting that in the final level with the partial repeated opening scene that Saito was very old. This means he lived a long time in the dream, trapped for decades and waiting for Cobb to find him. And when he was asking Cobb if he was going to kill him he was actually saying are you going to rescue me now? I find that revelation to be chilling and very effective. This one is well worth repeated viewings and I am going to be waiting for the blu-ray with great anticipation!

Farewell (L'affaire Farewell )

An elegant story about the slow crumbing of the Iron Curtain

French director Christian Carion's follow-up to 2005's well-received Joyeux Noel is a decided step up in genre and ambition that confirms his strong command of material, even if it's not quite as devastatingly relevant as it wants to be. Based on Serguei Kostine's true-life tale of a KGB operative turned-double-agent during the waning days of the Cold War, there's no question that Bonjour Farewell possesses strong crossover appeal for political thriller fans not usually lured by foreign-language fare; the problem for micro-distributor NeoClassics will be converting that appeal into theatrical release dollars with sparse marketing resources. Final box office tally will depend entirely on how many screens NeoClassics is able to wrangle, and for how long.

The story begins in the early 1980s when the aggressive anti-Communist posture of American President Ronald Reagan (Fred Ward) is beginning to open fissures in the once formidable Soviet empire. One such fissure is a KGB Colonel, Sergei Gregoriev (Bosnian director Emir Kusturica), an unlikely traitor who simply sees the writing on the Iron Curtain. Motivated not by money or power but by a desire to see his son enjoy a better life than his own, the cool and collected Gregoriev begins passing documents and information to French intelligence via another unlikely spy, converted functionary and chronic neurotic Pierre Froment (actor/director Guillaume Canet). How their relationship evolves amid higher and higher geopolitical stakes puts a powerfully personal face on events, which even at the time were almost ritualistically depersonalized by their rapidity and unprecedented historical magnitude.

It's hard to watch Farewell without thinking of such '70s classics as All the Presidents Men and Network, mature dramas that Hollywood has since all but abandoned (with intermittent exceptions like The Insider). Boasting top tier Hollywood-style production values and thoughtful, character-driven writing, it's a picture custom-built for older, more discriminating audiences for whom the picture will also likely resurrect memories of the era. At the same time, Carion stays true to his French sensibilities, spending welcome time on the evolution of Froment and Gregoriev's peculiar relationship as well as considering how the affair impacts each of them in their private lives. Opportunities for Hollywood-style pandering (chase scenes, shootouts, etc.) are intentionally missed without so much as compromising a single, suspenseful beat.

Unfortunately, the film's slavishness to history, which is normally a strength in pictures of this sort, too often handicaps the power of the drama, detouring an otherwise intimate story at crucial moments in order to make a broader point about the magnitude of the events in question. While Ward's impersonation of Reagan never quite rings true, the mere fact that Reagan and French President François Mitterrand (Philippe Magnan) even figure in the story feels a bit too overly ambitious. That's not to say that Carion's intentions aren't well-placed, he means for the story to have both an emotional and an intellectual impact, and tries mightily to have it both ways. Such misgivings, however, are a minor blot on an otherwise very impressive effort.

In addition to the sterling efforts of Canet and Kusturica, both exceptional filmmakers in their own rights, the film benefits from a variety of fine supporting turns from an excellent international cast: David Soul, Willem Dafoe, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Diane Kruger and Benno Fürmann, to name only a few. Superlative cinematography from Walther van den Ende and another memorable Clint Mansell score cap the effort off with impressive aplomb.

by Wade Major
Distributor: NeoClassics Films
Cast: Guillaume Canet, Emir Kusturica, Alexandra Maria Lara, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Diane Kruger, Willem Dafoe, Fred Ward and David Soul
Director: Christian Carion
Screenwriter: Christian Carion and Eric Raynaud
Producers: Philippe Boeffard, Bertrand Faivre and Christophe Rossignon
Genre: Drama
Rating: Not rated
Running time: 113 min.
Release date: July 23 NY/LA, July 30 DC/CHI/SF, August 6 Exp

Spoken Word

It takes the Mexican-American melodrama Spoken Word a long time to express myriad sentiments that we've heard uttered many times before in many ethnic settings. Being centered on a Latino wordsmith-cum-performance artist doesn't really enliven the earnest effort. The performances of Kuno Becker as the aforementioned prodigal poet and Rubén Blades as his dying father ultimately help it avoid triteness and tedium. Not surprisingly, the Victor Nunez-helmed piece will elicit the warmest reactions in Hispanic markets, but it's proof that a knack for spinning verse is no guarantee of street cred in any culture.

Cruz Montoya (Becker) shoulders a number of burdens. He's a bi-polar recovering drug addict and alcohol abuser. He lost his mother at a young age and, more recently, a close friend shot himself in Cruz's living room. The latter incident apparently launched Cruz on his career as an urban poet. We meet the handsome twentysomething, now clean and sober, living with his painter girlfriend (Persia White) in the Bay Area. When not slamming down verbiage in West Coast cafes, he and a poet friend teach kids from Oakland's inner-city how to express themselves.

One November day Cruz gets word that his father has pancreatic cancer. After a three-year absence, he returns home to Santa Fe, New Mexico where neither Cruz Senior (Blades) nor his yuppified younger brother (Antonio Elias) is very happy to see him. The only two people that are genuinely excited are his childhood pal-turned-junky, George (Maurice Compte), and his former boss, nightclub owner and shady businessman, Emilio (Miguel Sandoval in oily, villainous mode).

Emilio wants Cruzito to once again manage a downtown hip-hop club, the scene of his former drugging and drinking. Since he's decided to stick around for the holidays to care for and mend fences with his father, he agrees--against his better judgment. Things get worse before they get better, but all's well eventually, in spite and because of the Grim Reaper's inevitable yuletide appearance. The enmity between father and son, and brother and brother, evaporates thanks in part to the bonding properties of a Chevy Impala that Senior, a retired teacher and amateur painter, has always prized.

Based on the experiences of Sante Fe poet and performance artist Joe Ray Sandoval, Spoken Word's primary flaw is that it takes its own sweet time. (Hence the snoring of the fellow seated next to me in one of Gotham's smaller screening rooms.) It plays ponderous, although Nunez (Ulee's Gold) is able to squeeze quite a bit of feeling out of the emotional climax, with Blades delivering understated authenticity and Becker wisely taking his cue from his elder castmate.

These quiet moments of touching family interaction are set up by a vision of machismo that exists despite the artistic tendencies of the males involved. It should be noted that the two female characters are strictly Madonna figures, nurturing and gently nudging their wounded men no matter how much guff or neglect they get in return. Having its Latino bona fides in tact and including a sprinkling of Spanish-language expressions doesn't prevent Spoken Word from feeling bland. Canned lines such as "Don't shut me out," uttered before Cruz even has a chance to absorb news of his father's illness, don't help.

The movie's defenders can point to lensing that nicely juxtaposes Georgia O'Keefe reminiscent backdrops with images of a lower-middle class Hispanic community tattered by drugs and crime. Less convincingly, they may cite the novelty of Cruz's literary vocation and the passages in which he recites his poetry in voice over, accompanied by relatively abstract visuals. It's difficult to form a strong opinion, pro or con, about the words themselves or the spoken-poetry movement they channel. Nunez visualizes these protagonist-P.O.V. bridges with tasteful restraint, but they don't impress one way or the other.

Communication may be essential to healthy relationships, and a few choice words amongst family members may promote fast healing. Yet just as ethnic dramas can be as tame and soporific as the whitest, white-bread scenario, linguistic dexterity does not ensure a vital motion picture. Advice Cruz gives to one of his writing students gets at what's missing: he exhorts him to "go deeper; move from the general to the specific." While in many respects Spoken Word is adequately specific, it's still not very deep.

by John P. McCarthy

Distributor: Variance Films
Cast: Kuno Becker, Ruben Blades, Miguel Sandoval, Persia White, Antonio Elias and Monique Curnen
Director: Victor Nunez
Screenwriters: William T. Conway and Joe Ray Sandoval
Producers: Karen Koch and William T. Conway
Genre: Drama
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 116 min.
Release date: July 23 NY, July 30 LA

Salt

After Salt, Angelina Jolie could be crowned the number one action star in the world. Period.

With Russian spy swaps suddenly in the headlines after all these years you would swear Columbia Pictures had a direct line into the White House for their marketing plan on the new action thriller Salt, but the timeliness of current events only makes this sizzling hot, explosive and nail-biting ride all the more pertinent. With Angelina Jolie on the run as a CIA agent accused of being a "sleeper spy" for the Russians we have the ingredients for a summer potboiler that Bond and Bourne together can't match for non-stop thrills. Massive financial rewards around the globe should be in store for Sony along with a no-brainer launch for a new franchise.

In a crackerjack and very lean 100 minutes (including credits), the lithe and physically dynamic Jolie burns up the screen and shows the boys how it's done. She plays Evelyn Salt, a top level CIA officer who has unexpectedly been "outed" by a defector (Daniel Olbrychski) as a sleeper spy. According to intel, sleeper spies were planted in the U.S. by the Soviets years ago as part of an elaborate plan to be executed on "Day X," the appointed time when a cell of spies is set to wake up and begin an attack on the United States. Freaked by the accusations, Salt goes on the lamb taking actions that make her look guilty. The officials are incensed and her actions cue an elaborate cat and mouse game between Salt and her once-close CIA colleague Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber); all of this occurs just as the Russian President is due to arrive in New York for a speech.

Initially concerned for the safety of her newly missing husband, Salt has a strong emotional reason for getting to the truth of the matter and stopping unknown evil forces before meeting with tragic consequences for herself, her family and her country. But of course there are twists galore and plenty of diversions set up by director Philip Noyce (Patriot Games, The Quiet American), to keep us guessing throughout about the real identity and motives of this woman.

Although the movie doesn't slow down for even a nanosecond, there is time for character and story development to make this incredible situation credible enough to keep us engaged.

Jolie is just dynamite here, reportedly performing most of her own numerous stunts (from an elaborate freeway chase on top of semis to a freewheeling swing through the White House), and she still manages to give dimension to this intriguing character; intriguing also is the fact the character was originally written for a man and converted when Jolie became interested in the project. Schreiber is perfectly cast as her devoted colleague who's slowly convinced he's been duped, while Chiwetel Ejiofor is also a welcome presence as a straight-laced CIA officer looking to bring Salt in at all costs. Olbrychski is excellent as the defector whose initial interrogation kicks off the mayhem.

Noyce, whose varied body of work ranges from the Tom Clancy thriller Patriot Games to the searing Michael Caine drama The Quiet American, is a strong director who knows how to do it all. Here, he's crafted the perfect summer blockbuster; it's exciting and full of smarts and style. Plus it's got Jolie. This thing rocks.

by Pete Hammond

Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Obrychski, Andre Braugher and Olek Krupa
Director: Philip Noyce
Screenwriter: Kurt Wimmer
Producers: Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Sunil Perkash
Genre: Action Thriller
Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action.
Running time: 100 min.
Release date: July 23, 2010

Box Office: Iron Man 2 OutHeroes Robin Hood

They’re both righters of wrongs, fighters of evil, and basically do-gooders, but the debut of Russell Crowe’s period outlaw “Robin Hood” couldn’t take down Robert Downey Jr.’s costumed superhero “Iron Man 2″ at the box office, according to studio estimates. Actually, Robin Hood didn’t even come close, despite “Iron Man 2″ being in its second week. The Marvel superhero sequel easily outdistanced itself from Crowe and Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood”, which opened in second place over the weekend with $37 million, falling well short of “Iron Man 2′s” $53 million second-week take.

A re-teaming of Crowe and Scott, “Robin Hood” has been marketed as a return to “Gladiator” glory for the duo, but American moviegoers apparently weren’t convinced. Made for a mega Hollywood budget of $200 million, the film did much better overseas, taking in $74 million for a worldwide total of $111 million, which bodes well for the film’s overall box office returns in the long run. “Iron Man 2″, meanwhile, has grossed $428 million worldwide, well on its way to surpassing the original’s $585 total.

Besides “Robin Hood”, there were two new openings, both romantic dramas “Letters to Juliet” and “Just Wright”. The Amanda Seyfried movie came in third with $13 million, besting Queen Latifah’s basketball romance, which came in fourth place with $8.5 million.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1) - Trailer

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

The final instalment of the Harry Potter series is almost upon us! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will bring the much loved set of films to a close.

If you're familiar with J.K.Rowling's books you will know the story of Harry's battle with evil Lord Voldemort; for those who are not, the seventh part to the tale once again sees best friends Harry, Ron and Hermione reunite. The friends know that to save the wizarding and muggle worlds they must find a way to destroy Voldemort's immortality.

Finding themselves removed from the safety of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the three teenagers must rely on their friendship and skills they've developed at school more than ever. There's no where safe for Harry to turn, Voldemort has tasked the Death Eaters to hunt down his sworn enemy and return him alive.

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Robbie Coltrane, Tom Felton, Michael Gambon, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Wright, Julie Walters, John Hurt, Brendan Gleeson, Richard Griffiths, Jason Isaacs, Helen McCrory, Bill Nighy, Miranda Richardson, Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall, Imelda Staunton, David Thewlis, Evanna Lynch, Jamie Campbell Bower, Ciaran Hinds, Rhys Ifans, Clemence Poesy, Warwick Davis, Nick Moran, Dave Legeno, David O'Hara, Rade Serbedzija, Natalia Tena, Fiona Shaw, Toby Jones, Simon McBurney, Sophie Thompson, Mark Williams, David Bradley, Carolyn Pickles, David Ryall and Toby Regbo.

Directed by: David Yates

Produced by: David Heyman and David Barron, with Lionel Wigram executive producing. Screenplay by: Steve Kloves

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland review : I would only recommend my friends to watch it when it comes out on Blu-ray or if they can get tickets cheap (Orange Wednesday perhaps). I am not a huge fan of Tim Burton as I feel he churns out the same oddity in each of his films, crazy curly trees, same old music from Danny "hah hah" Elfman and predictably starring Johnny Depp and his wife, Helena Bonham Carter. Enough already.

So onto the film itself. Alice in Wonderland looks good, the 3D is pretty but not as stunning as Avatar and the characters have imaginative outfits, well all but the White Queen. On which point I cannot understand why Anne Hathaway was cast in the role, she pranced around the screen as if she only had just enough breath in her body to stay awake. Back to the film. The story started out well but then disappeared somewhere between tedium and going through the paces. If more time had been spent developing a nice coherent narrative and less on the floaty bits to make the 3D pop perhaps I would have enjoyed it more.

Some good turns from Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman but not enough to wow me.
My advice really is to stick to the original Disney cartoon.