Breaking Dawn, Breaking Down

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

“Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn” – Breaking Down

The latest and next to last installment of the “Twilight Saga” is like Thanksgiving without a turkey. If you’re a distant couple back in your hometown for a traditional holiday dinner, you get all the melodrama of the two unlikeable families you only try to see once a year– without the excuse to take a long, tryptophan induced nap when it’s all over, so you can avoid the family bickering.

But you’ll come back next year anyway to see another battle and the “Twilight” finale – because like the heroes here, Bella, Edward and Jacob, you love the concept of undying love so, so much, you’re a glutton for punishment. Let’s all hope and pray, therefore, that the filmmakers decide to give us the respect we deserve and put some meat on the plate next time.

Lest we forget: this is a movie about an unhappy high school senior torn between a vampire and a werewolf. These usually disreputable dates are distinguished in the “Twilight” universe as better than mere humans — because these beasts mate for life. Given that, you’re supposed to embrace the fact they suck blood and ravage strangers.

The last installment of the saga left us on the edge of our seats with Bella agreeing to marry Edward, the vampire. The beginning of this film delivers the actual wedding which comes bedecked with a canopy of white flowers like a shroud over a corpse. It’s the most upbeat moment in the film.

Edward and Bella try to enjoy themselves, but they are of course breaking the laws of this universe: humans and vampires are not supposed to mate. The human guests don’t know Edward and his family are vampires, so everyone else has a good time and pretends not to notice the other vampires oddly bleached hair and Louis XIV skin. Jacob, the werewolf, shows up late and proves yet again to be a better choice for Bella. Like Jacob at the wedding, the issue of Bella’s wisdom has long worn out its welcome.

Then the honeymooners are off to an island to consummate what must be the most extended foreplay in the history of the movies. “Gone With the Wind” has nothing on this romantic melodrama.  Then our lovers play chess: yes, chess. Edward is fearful of the consequences of their lovemaking. His dread is well placed: Bella immediately gets pregnant. The baby tries to kill her from the inside out – in a minor key of the “Alien” franchise. Then we take a final twist into even more forbidden love – because the moviemakers had to do something nasty with Jacob.

All of this could have been accomplished in forty-five minutes or less – with a nifty, spellbinding wrap up. As it is, everything here is drawn out in soft pornographic slow motion for Part Two. The ending here is the most joyless birth in film history – that one fears must set up the baby’s own franchise. She after all is twilight. We dutifully await that climax, bloodlessly.

A woman caught between a love for two men is one of our most reliable plot setups. The love triangle works here because of the stars: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner. The audience has gone so far as to break into “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob.” The odd thing is that there is no “Team Bella” who makes this all believable. If you’re a fan, go see this. If you’re not a fan, go see this. Turkey or no turkey, this is at least something worthy to argue about over Thanksgiving dinner.

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A Dragon Without Teeth

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

 

An odd thing happened in translation to the new film “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.” From the original Swedish novel to the original Swedish adaptation, this American adaptation somehow lost the dragon’s t teeth.

That outcome might be the perfect Hollywood response to the lurid and some might say outlandish original book – in a writing adventure that travels from modern novel to post-modernist crime movie. However, for those who have traveled with the girl before, you’ll probably be disappointed and relieved.

 Here, under the always watchful eye of the usually outlandish director David Fincher who brought us the unforgettable “Seven,” we get the sense of a movie watching a movie watching a book. The film to film adaptation is just that sterile, that uninvolved in the original material’s intent. The edges have been sanded off that robs the movie of its punch.

Then again, it has now become acceptable grandma material — for all those grandmas out there who love the crime procedurals that over populate TV. Watching “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo” might actually watching CBS – with two especially brutal rape scenes thrown in. You could always just close your eyes, then open them again as detectives unwrap the layers of a forty year old mystery.

Here, Daniel Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading Swedish investigative reporter just convicted of libeling a suspect industrialist. Mikael believes in truth. Oh, Oh. It will be no surprise when it turns out that he was framed. Since he needs to take time off from his now failing magazine, Mikael is hired by Christopher Plummer to investigate the decades old mystery of the disappearance of his niece.

Sweden’s premier industrialist, Plummer’s family, the Vangers, lives on an island near the North Pole, but no one here is Santa Claus. While the family is spread out in mansions across the frosty island, almost none of them talk to one another. The family matriarch likes it that way. Mikael, of course, eventually runs into an investigative dead end. There’s a game of cat and mouse afoot, and the film does a nice job of giving you clues to the ultimate villain – just like on TV.

Meanwhile, we have been travelling along with Rooney Mara playing a twenty-three year with the infamous dragon tattoo and piercings, Lisabeth Salander. She is out on parole for a dastardly act of revenge as a ten year old girl.  She has a pervert for a parole officer. But she has also done the research on Mikael Blomkvist for Christopher Plummer before he would hire Blomkvist.

Blomkvist learns about this and finds the fact that Lisabeth knows more about him than anyone else intriguing. He also hopes to gain insight from her about his young daughter. Lisabeth can research anything with a computer in her knapsack as she rides her motorbike through blizzards.

In the end, this is a taut thriller about perversity at all levels of society – which makes it strangely enough like watching cable TV. In the years since the original, renowned Steig Larrson novels and their successful Swedish  film adaptations, our culture seems to have caught up with them. If you’re a crime story enthusiast, go see this – knowing it’s possibly a too entertaining take to have any teeth. 

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Where Has the Mystery Gone?

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

The Sherlock Holmes franchise has always been based on intricate mysteries and the witty banter of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. Here, in the second installment of the newest movie take on these venerable characters, “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” we get thrilling banter between the entertaining stars Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, and less than thrilling action sequences amid some lush period but down and dirty London and Paris locations.

The banter between Holmes and Watson is good enough for the price of a ticket anytime and anywhere, just don’t expect the thrill ride of the first film with these two actors. The director Guy Ritchie has thereby now proven for the second time in his career that he is a one hit wonder.  His first film, “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” was never followed up by anything worthwhile for over ten years. And, now, after the white hot excitement of his first Holmes’ film, Ritchie turns in a lackluster directing performance that once again might stop his career in its tracks.

His lackadaisical attitude here almost stops this film dead in its tracks — after the best sequence in the film on a train hurtling through the British countryside. We can be grateful that Robert Downey Jr. has such fun playing the weirdo Holmes in drag here, and that Jude Law has such fun playing the straight man to this nonsense.  This is a buddy picture, after all, which more than once pushes that concept to the border of bad taste. But that’s the fun part, isn’t it?

In the beginning, the plot revolves around Watson getting married, and Holmes doing almost everything he can to make sure Watson doesn’t get to the church on time. This is preceded by the murder of Holmes’s double crossing girlfriend, Irene Adler, by the ever nefarious but always respectable Dr. Moriarty. Never has a love interest been dispatched with less angst – until of course Watson’s new wife is pushed out of a train by Holmes – for her own safety, of course.

There is no real crime here to investigate – beyond standard issue military industrial complex issues. This is by and large a cat and mouse game between Holmes and Moriarty played out in the dismal European sunshine that preceded the First World War. With Irene Adler gone, we are treated to a gypsy fortune teller  -as Holme’s brother takes care of Watson’s new wife by parading plumply naked before her. An Archduke gets murdered in the middle of the film, but by that point, the plot hardly even matters.

Somehow but not soon enough, we end up in the heart of the German Kaiser’s pre-war industrial war machine, and then in a castle plastered on the side of a Swiss Mountain. With a waterfall running like a river just below the parapets, the castle is the site of a peace conference. Dr. Moriarty wants to start a war because he’s cornered the market on munitions. Gee, where have we seen that before?

If you like Holmes and Watson, if you like Downey Jr. and Jude Law, go see this and lose track of time for a couple hours. Blame Guy Ritchie for the lackluster moments, because the characters and actors are first rate. And who can follow a real Sherlock Holmes’ plot anyhow?

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All Jacked Up

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

“Real Steel” () like real life, actual steel takes a long time to take shape. And if you’ve ever been to a steel foundry, you’ll know that they are noisy, brutal places that deliver a product essential to our way of life. The same goes for this movie – that in the end pays off with a father / son story where they defeat the odds by standing tall and not forgetting who they are. We need that message today more than ever, so you’ll forgive this movie many flaws and cheer and tear up in the end.

Unfortunately, this movie – like its steel robots — almost teeters over and falls on its face time and time again. The fight scenes between the battling robots are spectacular; the fight scenes between the father and son are almost too much to bear – and not in a good way.

Set in the near future, Hugh Jackman plays “Charlie Kenton” as perhaps an obnoxious, insufferable Texan who believes his killer smile allows him to cheat and swindle everyone in his path — because he just can’t stop shooting himself in the foot. He could have been a boxing contender, but men have been replaced by robots in the ring. If one might speculate as to the reason for this, it would undoubtedly be to get Charlie to shut up before he became the next Muhamed Ali.

Charlie’s latest failures are interrupted by the news that his ex has died and left him in line to have custody of his son — whose birth he can’t quite remember. That son “Max” is played by newcomer Dakota Goyo — as an eleven year old with an attitude as bad as his dad’s.  The kid rightly takes offense at Charlie’s efforts to sell him to his aunt. But the kid snarls so much you would think the aunt would sell him to Charlie. If there’s a remake of “The Bad Seed” in the works, the kid’s perfect casting. Unfortunately, we’re supposed to like him here.

To make us feel that both father and son must have some redeeming value, Evangeline Lilly plays “Bailey Tallet” as a woman Charlie puts upon – due to the fact that he can live at her father’s gym for free while she fixes the robots he recklessly destroys. This is more bromance than romance oddly enough – but she gives the only really believable knockout performance in the film.

The villains are an Olga Fonda as an evil Russian promoter of a super robot named “Zeus” and his creator, a taciturn Japanese genius, “Tak Mashido” played by Karl Yune. The seeming fakeness of their stage names mirrors their performances which seem to be going for an evocation of the Red Scare and the Yellow Menace in an attempt to make green – as in money. They pout and stare a lot. You’re supposed to be afraid for the robots.

Lay most of this near disaster at the feat of the director Shawn Levy – who bathes the film in a warm glow that always seems out of place. It’s like a “Rocky” movie shot to resemble “The Wizard of Oz.” Shawn’s spent most of his career in television and seems to have forgotten that obnoxious TV characters and set ups don’t translate well to the big screen.

Nevertheless, in the end, this critic had tears in his eyes. There’s just something about a fight movie against the odds. And after the first hour, the characters pretty much shut up and let the star robot, “Atom,” steal the show. He neither speaks nor smiles, but his eyes tell you he thinks he deserves Hugh Jackman’s salary. And he does. Go see this for well meaning action – just know you’ll have to more forgiving as film fans that either Charlie or Max are as characters.  

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It’s a Cat’s World

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

“Puss and Boots” () is an early Christmas present that purrs well for the Holiday Season – because if an animated movie this good is released on Halloween Weekend, for pete’s sake. when kids should have better things to do, then the Hollywood cat-nip trail must have a great line of kitty treats in store for all of us.

“Puss and Boots” is sweet and mischievous like a good cat, a good cat movie and a good Hollywood  treat should be. It’s also stealthy in a way that mimics the manner of your favorite cat. With nary a dog in sight, this film has a full cast of children’s book characters to avoid clichéd dog vs. cat fights. And, in that vein, this movie isn’t afraid, like a good cat, to demand to be taken on its own terms – in this supposedly “true” prequel to the “Shrek” movies where Puss in Boots is a secondary character.

 And we all must acknowledge that our cats are thinking wily, sarcastic thoughts about us, aren’t they? So the sly humor is appropriate — as well as the fact that all the humans here are fools of one sort or another. Jack and Jill are monstrously effective as bag men for the magical beans at the center of the story. These glowing legume seeds s take us of course into Jack and the Beanstalk territory – without Jack but with Humpty Dumpty.  And it’s good the movie moves on stealthy cat paws at times – as you try to swallow all these takes on fractured fairy tales — as a cat might try to slurp a swirling bowl of milk.

We meet Puss in Boots as a loner on the lam — with a price on his head as an outlaw. How that exactly that happened is the crux of the storyline. It turns out that Puss in Boots is an abandoned kitty who hooked up with Humpty Dumpty at the orphanage. Too smart for his own good as an egg head, of course, Humpty Dumpty befriends Puss and Boots as a sidekick in Humpty’s hoped for life of crime

This buddy picture angle becomes the emotional substance of the film But in a delightfully strange twist. When Puss and Boots saves the Sheriff’s mother and thereby becomes a local hero, Humpty Dumpty sets up a bank robbery to save Puss and Boots from being a good guy.This lands Humpty Dumpty in jail and out for revenge – as Puss and Boots hits the dusty trail of this fairy tale take on the Western.

The love interest is provided by Kitty Soft Paws. She and Puss in Boots fandango some terrific tangos both before and after we head to the clouds in the Jack and the Beanstalk section of the film. In a brilliant move, the terror in the skies is a mother goose; and the golden eggs are laid by one of her chicks. This somehow never makes sense, but like your favorite cat, you’re supposed to love it on its own terms. And you will.

Antonio Banderas is great as the voice of Puss and Boots; Zach Galklifianakas doesn’t get in the way of his character, Humpty Dumpty; and Salyma Hayek could use more screen time as Kitty Softpaws. If the film doesn’t land on its feet all the time, blame that on the director Chris Miller, who could have given the film a greater sense of mystery. Also blame the five writers who get in the way of each other’s jokes.

All in all, though, this is a sweet, funny movie with enough scratch and with less bark of too blood y, too loud animated films.

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The Numbers Racket

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

“Moneyball” () is a sports film about juggling statistics to make money out of baseball, hence, “moneyball” — which in an odd way shows how unfulfilling both making money and playing professional baseball really are. And as with statistics and making money, there’s a coldness here that’s perfectly matched to the “coolness” of Brad Pitt. And in fact as well, many stretches of the film play “cold” without musical score – in an odd evocation of the ending.

Brad Pitt seems destined to get an Oscar nomination out of his role as Billy Beane – though like the film’s true life hero, you have to wonder whether the point is that success is not really worth the price you have to pay. Now Brad produced this film as well – so it makes for an intriguing life statement from many angles that seems to undermine the value of both stardom and career. And, as in another movie where he played a character with the initials “B.B.,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” this film has both a young and an old Brad Pitt. 

In this heavily adapted true story, Billy Beane’s the general manager of the Oakland Athletics —  during the epic season where they rose from the ashes and set an almost insurmountable record with baseball’s longest winning streak, twenty games. They had made the playoffs the previous year but lost before the World Series. The owners, nevertheless, told Billy that they can no longer foot the bill for high priced superstars, and Billy must cut his player costs and still win.

In one of the film’s true strengths, Billy’s no stranger to making success out of failure. Recruited out of high school by the New York Mets, Billy couldn’t cut it in the big leagues and quit the field to be a scout. He rose to manager on his innate smarts, and when he needed to win big without paying big, he reinvented baseball by making performance and not stardom the criteria for being hired, concentrating on those players who got on base, not those who got on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and it worked.

The real, real life Billy Beane studied economics at the University of California during the off season. The film’s Billy just graduated from high school. The film’s statistical genius thereby becomes the character Peter Brand played “cool” as well by Jonah Hill — who is Hollywood’s opposite of cool. Brand is what’s known as a composite character – one who combines the attributes of many real life people.

Billy becomes Brand’s sports business mentor; Brand becomes Billy’s sports business mentor. This mix doesn’t quite work because they’re acting styles are so contrary, and the Brand character always just seems fake. This buddy aspect thereby becomes the weakest part of the film – in part because Hill never finds his composite character’s soul. And the fact that Billy feels like he sold his soul by going to the Mets and not Stanford – seems oddly out of place as well.

But the truth be told, the smart young guys against the old pros of the clubhouse angle fills in the film’s computer programmed heart in spades. Billy, the manager, becomes the underdog against the establishment, championing talented players who haven’t hit their stride – just like the real life Billy Beane in real life.

In the end, Billy’s offered baseball’s dream job: managing the Boston Red Sox before they began winning the World Series – in a way that’s anti-climactic and really devalues the value of success and making money. You’ll tear up if you don’t have a heart of stone. And you’ll admire the fact the Brad Pitt is finally playing mature men with a sense of conviction – who can win even when they lose.

The A-list script written by Steve Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin and Stan Chervin knows how to fill in the gaps with often contrived but effective emotion. The director Bennet Miller doesn’t miss a moment and producer Scott Rudin as always must have brought his bag of magic tricks. It’s not a film to love – though it certainly is a film to respect. Expect to see it in the running at Oscar time.

  

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Lovers and Other Aliens

Posted on February 20, 2012 by tomfortuna

 

Two movies premiered at the end of July that play on memory tricks. “Cowboys and Aliens” (PG13) plays on the idea that aliens can put us in a state of denial regarding being tortured — while “Crazy, Stupid, Love” (PG13) plays on the idea that some people can never deny the truth of their first loves. They thereby torture themselves over love at first sight – till the lights go out.

A lot of movie fans looked forward to “Cowboys and Aliens.” It’s the kind of high concept that somehow seemed to spell gold in “them thar hills” — with Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard attached as producers.  And interestingly enough, the movie is about gold.

The aliens have come to earth for a mineral that is as precious on their own planet as it is here.  This could have lead to an interesting clash of symbiotic cultures set during 1800’s in the desert Southwest — with its John Ford vistas and whiskey saloon shoot outs.  Instead we’re offered gruesome monsters that we can only hope are not the filmmakers representatives of our greed.  

The movie starts with another trick — as Daniel Craig of several James Bond fame lands in a parched landscape — with some kind of supergun attached as a wrist bracelet. It seems at as if he’s an alien. He’s disoriented and walks into a cattle town with a silent but deadly sense of justice. Then the wrist bracelet laser gun inexplicably comes in handy when the real aliens’ attack, lasooing a number of the locals from spacecraft and taking them away possibly never to be seen again. 

Of course, this means Craig can’t himself be an alien, and is just another sullen tough guy cowboy. Craig then leads a posse to get the hostages back – while remembering that he was once just a love struck cowboy who’d gone bandit– in order to save the ranch and revenge his pretty wife’s death.

Craig is now paired off with Harrison Ford – as the local cattle baron with a son who shoots up the town apparently because he hates his father. Ford’s a tough guy – with a heart of gold his son can’t see of course. But Harrison Ford could never really play a villain – and doesn’t really bother to do too much at all her besides collect a paycheck. It’s all about the gold, remember. At his age, moreover, stunt work is out of the question, and the script’s not up to giving him a tough but wizened tone — like the one John Wayne always shot from his hip in his late Westerns.   

Far too long after Craig and Ford team up, we finally get to see one of the aliens – that actually resembles the aliens of the “Alien” franchise. They drool, not talk, and can hardly be considered scary after thirty years. His spacecraft lands with a double thud in the theater – one part crash, one part the sound of the audience realizing this is going to be one predictable, dispiriting mess.

Director Jon Favreau seems to have forgotten that Westerns always had haunted landscapes that somehow spoke of hope – and the whole movie looks as flat as the characterizations. This is a good point of departure, then, for a look at “Crazy, Stupid, Love” which might just be the most unforgettable comedy of the summer.

It oddly enough has two credited directors, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, the team who brought us “Bad Santa.” The writer, Dan Forgelman, previously brought us “Fred Claus.” The memory trick here is that Steve Carrell can’t forget his first love and long time wife played by Julianne Moore. They fell in love in high school and had a daughter at seventeen. Now, ask yourself: can you remember the last time a movie celebrated an enduring love that resulted from a teenage pregnancy?

Besides the adult daughter that resulted from that mishap, Carrell and Moore have two grammar school aged kids now — as the movie opens with Moore asking for a divorce. More out of boredom than anything else, she’s had an office affair with a smug, hapless Kevin Bacon. Steve Carrell of course has made a career of playing hapless, smug “nice” guys who are really not very nice. You’ll immediately understand why Moore wants to divorce Carrell and replace him with Bacon – as both of them always manage to make every situation about them. Unrepentant narcissists must be Julianne’s type.

 But Carrell is a master of this character – which is but a mirror image of so many other narcissistic men in Hollywood movies. To make Carrell seem more reasonable as the prototype of both the crazy and the stupid, his thirteen year old son – who at times seems like a serial killer in training — is desperately in love with his babysitter who’s desperately in love with Carrell. This is all audience manipulation of course, but it works. And since it is all in the supposed service of romantic love and soul mates, you’ll go along unless you have a heart of stone.

The movie is really saved from all this self-absorption by Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone – who light up the screen as a couple that never is supposed to happen. Ryan plays a “lady’s man” who adopts Carrell as his wing man – while teaching him to dress and act the part of an upscale lounge lizard. Now Carrell’s perfect for this part as well: he’s always a manipulator after all. Emma plays a “daddy’s girl” who needs to find a real man – who unlike her father isn’t afraid to actually be an adult – in the end.

Much of this is funny, all of it is too, too human, and there’s a classic moment of romantic farce that will still surprise you. The writer, actors and directors are so good here they actually know how to involve you in the story to the point — that you forget to add up where all this is going. Steve Carrell might actually get an Oscar nomination for playing his type so well – let’s just hope they kill him off for the sequel so Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone get a chance to shine as an unforgettable couple.   

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SpyHeroes of Fright or Flight

Posted on August 23, 2011 by tomfortuna

A horror of a kids’ movie and a horror movie that knows how to kid around opened last weekend. Both have clueless parents of course, but together they pose an interesting question: is a bad movie about children as spies more dangerous for a child — than a movie where blood and gore have been tastefully handled?

“Fright Night” is rated “R,” but as a sexy vampire movie, it hardly breaks any records in either the sexy or violent categories, and it could be shown with few if any cuts on cable TV. But the fact that it really is a good and entertaining horror film makes it very scary without a lot of gore – quality filmmaking upping the fear factor in oh so many subtle ways.

“Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D” is rated “PG,” and it might lower the fear factor to sheer invisibility by being neither interesting nor playful. And while the factor in question in “Fright Night” is blood, “Spy Kids” fills almost every available moment in the first half hour with some sort of projectile slimy stuff such as baby food and similar goos. And that’s the best part of the film, sad to say.

Both films feature young heroes, pre-teens in “Spy Kids” and late teens in “Fright Night.” And both feature swarthy villains: Colin Farrell in a game changing character role as a vampire; and Jeremy Piven in a hapless, feature film career ending role as a genius in numerous disguises, none of which is funny. But scarier still, if somehow, he thinks he’s the next Peter Sellars.

“Fright Night” is a remake of course of a 1985 hit that had a sequel, a member of that long Hollywood tradition of movies where the realization is “there’s a killer next door.” “Spy Kids” is a reboot of a 2001 hit that had a couple of sequels. It’s a member of that long Hollywood tradition where the realization is “my parents are not who they seem to be.”

In the later case, the mom played by Jessica Alba is a super-spy in retirement. She opens the movie fully pregnant while on her supposedly last case – as she hunts down the movie’s villain while on the way to the delivery room. This is the highlight of a film where no one apparently was apparently asked to actually act – because the premise was thought to be so clever. The premise is that the evil genius played by Jeremy Piven has found a way to steal time and thereby bring the world to an end. His purpose in this regard is never clear – in a movie that treats “Armageddon” as a kids’ video game.

Jessica Alba is married to Joel McCale who seems to have forgotten he’s not on cable making fun of someone else’s show — as he does on “The Soup.” He has two kids by a previous marriage who hate their step-mom Jessica – especially when her own new baby steals all the attention.

These three kids are apparently intended to be the new stars of a series of “Spy Kid” movies. The young girl pouts and plays practical jokes; the young boy smirks and has a disability meant apparently to make him more likeable; and the baby poops all the time – when she’s not farting. There are about as many farts as there are plot holes here – so this makes for one lumpy ride.

“Fright Night,” however, is as smooth as silk with only minor bumps in the road as it purrs across the screen. Colin Ferrell as the vampire next door, “Jerry,” mixes this up just right — as a smooth talker with real sex appeal who certainly is evil, but knows well enough not to enjoy it too much. He thereby anchors the film in a reality that you’ll find beguiling. David Tennant as the star of a Vegas act that hams up the vampire genre for fun and profit — pulls off a sour Svengali role that would have been destroyed by Hollywood’s creep of the week, Russell Brand.

The teenager with the neighbor problem is played by Anton Yelchin – who’s a bit old for the role and probably the film’s weakest link. But he does a credible job as a nerd whose life is interrupted just as he’s gotten a hot girlfriend and cool friends. Imogen Poots as his girlfriend is quite effective as the not very dumb blonde — as is Anton’s mother played by Toni Collette.

The script by Marti Noxon shows in spades she previously wrote and produced for “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.” She keeps the story moving in an adroit fashion as one twist after another keeps you fearful – while the teenage romance gives you the courage to go on. And a number of well placed laughs regularly get you ready to be scared again.

The director Craig Gillespie previously directed Ryan Gosling in the weird but delightful “Lars and the Real Girl.” Gillespie has a real talent for bringing out the best in actors who give quiet performances and he’s given Collin Ferrell a real shot in the arm here for what might have been a fumbling career.

So back to the original question: is a bad PG kids’ movie scarier than a very good R rated scary movie? “Spy Kids” somehow takes all the joy out of childhood – while “Fright Night” is a truly enjoyable vampire movie. For adults, go see “Fright Night.” For adults with impressionable kids, flee both of them.

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Helping out those who serve, maids and pizza guys

Posted on August 23, 2011 by tomfortuna

Two late August films ask us to care about their protagonists in a socially conscious way. In the high brow “The Help,” we’re asked to empathize with black maids who suffer under early 1960’s racial prejudice in Mississippi. In the low brow “30 Minutes or Less,” we’re asked to care for a northern pizza delivery guy whose heart pounds under a bomb laden vest — attached to him by a low life out to kill his father for his lottery winnings.

Now an interesting question is this: why would Hollywood all of a sudden turn its attention towards those who serve us food — given the recent glut of superheroes who never bother to actually eat. Are popcorn sales down? Or have the suits found a sense of social conscience given our current hard times?

And while that hardly sounds like entertainment given the mindless fare offered us recently, these are both entertaining, though imperfect, films. “The Help” is by far the better one, but it’s aimed at a mature demographic not often seen at the rope lines; while “30 Minutes or Less” misfires more than fires as it wobbles the entertainment tightrope while scoring many genuine, if adolescent, laughs.

The black maids in “The Help” are hardworking women helping to support their families – whereas the pizza delivery guy is a slacker caught between a bromance with his best friend and a romance with his sister. The heroes in both films, however, find happiness by standing up for themselves – despite the odds against them. You can make up your own mind if there’s a message in that.

In “The Help,” we’re in the Deep South just before the Civil Rights’ movement begins. And while slavery has long ago been abolished, the black maids of the white upper classes are still “owned” by their employers — for whom they not only cook and clean but also raise children. One particularly hateful white woman, Hilly Holbrook, isn’t satisfied by “separate but equal” public restrooms, however; she insists that the maids of her friends never use the white bathrooms at home as well.

The maids may resent this system with good humor when possible, but they feel powerless to change it. Enter a spunky young white woman, “Skeeter,” who’s just graduated from “Old Miss” and who wants to be a writer. Back in town, Skeeter can’t believe how obsessed Hilly and her married girlfriends are with their bridge parties – and she also smells a rat regarding how her mother got rid of the maid who raised her.

The black heroine of the film, “Abilene,” is a loving surrogate mother for the little girl of a particularly feckless young white woman. Skeeter has known Abilene since she was a child, and Skeeter soon has the inspiration to jumpstart her own career by writing about the oppression of the black women. Abilene at first resists, but eventually all the black maids volunteer to be interviewed — when evil Hilly sends her maid to jail for wanting to send her own two sons to college.

Oddly enough, we never really meet any of the maids’ children, but do spend a lot of time with Skeeter and her mom, and Skeeter and her love life. Emma Stone as “Skeeter” seems to know her role is more than a bit patronizing and seems oddly out of tune here in her performance. The movie is saved, however, by Viola Davis as “Abilene” who brings her character’s real life alive despite the slights of the screenplay – which at times makes a Hallmark movie seem subtle.

Abilene’s best friend, “Minny” played by Octavia Spencer, is also a delight as she finally gets her revenge against Hilly. You will be forgiven if you actually lose track of Abilene and Minny amid the movie’s multiple white subplots – and one misdirected moment after another. Nevertheless, the film’s heart is in the right place and that’s a rarity these days.

Your heart should be pounding during “30 Minutes or Less” as well – though like “The Help” it can’t really decide between being an obvious comedy or a subtle melodrama. And like “The Help” as well, “30 Minutes or Less” suffers from over the top bad guys who rob the good guys from delivering a movie of well earned emotion.

Jesse Eisenberg as pizza delivery guy “Nick” gives a lovable loser edge to his role and his best friend “Chet” played by Aziz Ansari almost steals every scene — as a loyal friend who’s just getting his life together. However, the movie is thrown off kilter time and again by “bad guys” Danny McBride and Nick Swardson as “Dwayne” and “Travis.” They’re idiots with guns and explosives who hatch a plot to kill McBride’s dad that can only make sense to no one but themselves; it’s funny, however.

Nevertheless, Nick’s hit over the head on a pizza run by Dwayne and Travis and wakes up the next morning with a bomb vest strapped around his chest. Nick then moves from being a loser to a winner – with a tour of strip joints, bank robbers and hit men along the way. Nick and Chet also jealously argue about Chet’s sister – who has to become a hostage first in order for Nick to realize his love.

To describe the plot is pointless – because the whole point of it is to prove how stupid Dwayne and Travis are. A better way to have handled this would have been to show them as evil geniuses. Nevertheless, all of this is so dispiriting that it makes for laughing at idiots – but in a late Three Stooges and not an early Marx Brothers way. The antics here will be unfortunately paired off with your wanting to either laugh or cry at the spot Nick is in. Will he or won’t he explode? This is an almost impossible balancing act, and the movie doesn’t really pull it off.

A focused story and a genuine tone are what are really lacking in both these films. The story of black maids shouldn’t seem to be really about the white writer; the story of a seemingly doomed pizza delivery guy shouldn’t really remind you how implausible the bad guys are. Or maybe Hollywood has just lost the ability to really care about the little guys in whatever situation they find themselves in.

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Will the Real Ape Please Step Forward?

Posted on August 9, 2011 by tomfortuna

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (PG13) plays the Frankenstein myth to its ultimate conclusion with its theme that “evolution becomes revolution.” That being said, don’t miss this film as it might become the blockbuster of the summer – next to “Harry Potter” of course. And truth be told, the magic here is almost as real.

With a hero whose nose is oddly like Voldemort’s, here we meet the monster not as a corpse in a Transylvanian graveyard, but as a new born chimp — in the arms of the chump scientist whose miracle cure will supposedly save mankind from Alzheimers – a cure that will of course run amuck here as a potential recipe to create superheroes.

Unnecessarily tacking on the Armageddon myth in the end credits, the film introduces us to a genetically altered chimp who only wants to live free – because he was born and raised in a humane and respectful captivity. When he’s then subjected to a regime of animal cruelty, of course, he wants his human rights. And this by the way is a prequel to all the other “Planets of the Apes,” making this a reboot going in a very interesting direction.

Add to that all too human storyline the miracle that the movie chimp, Caesar, is a milestone in CGI animation – and you have one human monkey business of a movie. Caesar brings alive the human inside the ape – who under the fur in this case is actor Andy Serkis – the one who stole every scene as Gollum from Frodo in “The Lord of the Rings.” And just like you oddly cared for Gollum more than you should have in those films, you’ll root for Caesar and his fellow apes – and against the humans representing us.

Now remember, of course, that all this mayhem stems from the best of intentions. The human hero here is “Will Rodman” played by James Franco with a pitch perfect sense that while this is all somewhat absurd, the emotions need to be real. Franco, as noted before, plays a young genetic scientist developing a drug to cure Alzheimers, not create a super-chimp. The financier for the research is a cold as steel corporation known as Gen-Sys – for genetic systems no doubt.

The genetic manipulator played by Franco’s not quite Dr. Frankenstein because he’s trying to save his father from the disease. That father is played remarkably well by John Lithgow – who maneuvers brilliantly between the extremes of incomprehensibility and genius. The movie is thereby grounded to good effect by three excellent actors: Serkis, Franco, and Lithgow. This helps of course when you have a film that asks the question about whether or not apes can conquer San Francisco.

Watching Caesar grow up with Franco and Lithgow, you might yourself want to become a carefree monkey for a while. And as Caesar watches Franco experiment on Lithgow in a way that breaks all the rules of medical protocol, you’ll want along with Caesar to experiment yourself on the cutting edge of science.

And when Caesar the teenager starts to exhibit all too human attributes of anger and revenge and is incarcerated in a virtual animal asylum, you’ll go along with him and his fellow inmate monkeys who suffer far too much under the lash. This then becomes the creepiest prison movie in a long time – oddly enough because we can empathize with moneys far more easily than human criminals.

And that’s what really works in this movie: we care about Caesar, the chimp: we care about John Lithgow, the Alzheimer’s sufferer; we care about James Franco, the well meaning scientist. Movies these days often forget about that empathy factor that is deeply rooted in our DNA, both monkey and human, and just move us through one mechanical action sequence after another.

Comic book movies usually just slap down the fact that the hero is an orphan and just run with the special effects. And by the time they really arrive in a monkey rampage through the streets of San Francisco, you’ll most probably be thoroughly involved in the film and not care about some glaring plot hole big enough to run an orangutan through.

Never mind those pot holes. Buy into the concept and feel your heart pounding in sympathy for almost two well spent hours – with a monkey that turns into a real man, whether we like it or not.

Posted in Action Movies | Leave a comment