Action Archives - Page 26 of 50 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Natural Born Killers (1994) – Blu-ray Disc (Digibook) + Natural Born Killers: The Director’s Cut [Original Uncut Version] – Blu-ray Disc

October 18, 2009****/****, 1990s, 2009, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Romance

****/****
R-RATED Image B+ Sound A Extras B+
NC-17 Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr., Tommy Lee Jones
screenplay by David Veloz & Richard Rutowski & Oliver Stone
directed by Oliver Stone

by Walter Chaw Lodged in there like the apple in Gregor Samsa's back next to the spine of the American character is this corrupt speck of frontier spirit, transmogrified in the heat of late-'50s cynicism and irony by heartland bogies Ed Gein and Charles Starkweather–the veneration of them in our collective heart of darkness stoked by a long tradition of outlaw worship from Jesse James to Bonnie and Clyde. The cinematic children of Gein and Starkweather, erupting from the Eisenhower Eden of rocket ships and Cadillacs, range from epoch-shaking pictures like Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to New American Cinema masterpieces like Badlands and Take the Money and Run. The heartbeat of the zeitgeist can be kenned in this finger to this pulse, in the individualism we celebrate and the establishment against which we secretly nurse these little serpentine malignancies. Enter Oliver Stone, not so much the provocateur as a perverse, self-indulgent chronicler of that American disease–and why not Stone, who's only ever good when he's talking about the United States and only ever talking about the United States when he's talking about anything else. He takes the Starkweather case and fashions it, from a story by Quentin Tarantino, into a work of extreme, fanatical patriotism: Natural Born Killers.

9 (2009)

September 9, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

**/****
screenplay by Pamela Pettler
directed by Shane Acker

by Walter Chaw There's something missing from Shane Acker's 9, and I'm having a hard time putting my finger on it. I think it's that for as much as I like my nihilism, there's a flavour to this year's variety of Apocalypse that suggests to me the only thing left to win is the Wasteland. There's no moral stake in scrambling for scraps, just this Pyrrhic duty to compete, lust fast-cooling on the proverbial sheets, damp and rumpled as they are from a lot of impotent thrusting. So 9 exists in an Industrial Revolution Steamboy alternate universe, ended when an evil fascist dictator creates, with the help of a scientist (Alan Oppenheimer–weird, non?), a sentient machine capable of building other machines to do its bidding. Imagined as a weapon of peace, no surprise that it turns on Man and apparently kills all living creatures, blots out the sun, and spends its time hunting down little burlap rag dolls animated with the scientist's–wait for it–soul. It's the second Terminator film of the summer, in other words, as well as the second to mention the idea of horcruxes after Harry Potter 6. Accordingly, it's a pretty empty, if visually startling, picture. Based on a celebrated, Oscar-nominated short, 9 hasn't made the transition to feature-length with much of an emotional, or intellectual, payload to justify its extended runtime. The best comparison is to Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings, alas: the seed of something left fallow.

G-Force (2009)

July 23, 20092009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Disney, Family, Nicolas Cage, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

**/****
starring Bill Nighy, Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Kelli Garner
screenplay by The Wibberleys and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio and Tim Firth
directed by Hoyt Yeatman

by Ian Pugh It’s no small wonder, I suppose, that Disney’s 3-D contraption G-Force isn’t nearly as bad as it could–and by all rights should–be. Certainly, there are people at the Mouse House still convinced that an overload of genre clichés (here the conventions of the spy movie) are made instantly clever when applied to talking, farting animals (here guinea pigs), and that the company’s morality factory hasn’t already exhausted the virtues of makeshift families and believing in yourself. But encoded in the formula this time around is an odd, unspoken thesis about facing the hitherto-ignored consequences of cruelty towards those who can’t defend themselves. Most intriguing to that end, the big-name actors roped into lending their voices to this mess are appropriately cast, their live-action personae transferred to a sticky CGI concoction of animal nature and human spite. Steve Buscemi cuts loose as an insane, sadistic hamster (his paranoid tendencies–he jealously guards his territory while mumbling to himself–born of “the psych ward at UCLA”), for instance, while Nicolas Cage, as an orphaned, star-nosed mole named “Speckles,” improbably gives his best performance in years. Utilizing his weirdo inflections from Peggy Sue Got Married, Cage manages to channel his familiar space-case into an unlikely outlet and pump it with quiet desperation–dare I say pathos–without even the smallest hint of the self-parody that’s plagued him of late. More than what the film deserves? Most definitely, although the high points of G-Force suggest that, at some stage of production, in some alternate universe, it may have actually deserved it.

Watchmen: Director’s Cut (2009) [Digital Copy Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

July 22, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Superhero

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Carla Gugino
screenplay by David Hayter and Alex Tse, based on the graphic novel by ALAN MOORE and Dave Gibbons
directed by Zack Snyder

by Walter Chaw It knows the notes but doesn’t hear the music. Watchmen, Zach Snyder’s long-awaited, over-hyped adaptation of Alan Moore’s venerated graphic novel, is technically proficient and occasionally beautiful-looking but also flat and nerveless. It has no heart and, more damning, no real understanding of the irony of itself, save for a title sequence set to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin'” that’s bound to be the best five minutes I’m going to see in any movie this year. In this stirring montage, a travelogue through the three ages of comics against the backdrop of American history, Snyder captures the idea that what Moore accomplished in casting a conversation about idol-making through the most populist medium of pop culture is in fact translatable through film, this other most populist medium of pop culture. Where the picture missteps is in restoring the superhero group Watchmen to the heavens, resurrecting pop icons in impossible, perfect, virtual tableaux: the character designs are impeccable, the suits are clean, and the violence is obscene, yes, but glossy enough that when things stop for a moment to delve into one character’s appalling creation story, it feels unearned and exploitive–so much so that the question that fast follows of why the rest of it feels removed and inhuman almost derails the entire enterprise. Coming from a guy who more admires the Moore source than loves it, it occurs to me that Watchmen is a movie made by Dr. Manhattan; it should’ve been made by Rorschach.

Blue Thunder (1983) [Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

July 20, 20091980s, 2009, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound A Extras A-
BD – Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Roy Scheider, Warren Oates, Candy Clark, Daniel Stern
screenplay by Dan O'Bannon & Don Jakoby
directed by John Badham

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover When I was in university, the off-campus students always had a cast-off '80s couch in their shared houses and apartments–you would go to a party and without fail encounter something upholstered in what looked like tan burlap with a collection of thick and thin brown or rust stripes close to the centre. I honestly couldn't remember seeing anything so horrid in anyone's house I knew during the '80s, but now that it was there in front of me, it brought back all the uncool childhood memories that the decade's official style story lives to deny. Blue Thunder is exactly like that couch: it's a ridiculous farrago of clichés intended to turn the cop movie into Star Wars (and The Parallax View into both) that winds up roping in a variety of cheesy tropes most people would rather forget they once responded to–though I dare say anyone of a certain generation will grin at least a little at what once passed for entertainment.

Air Force One (1997) + Gran Torino (2008) – Blu-ray Discs

July 16, 2009****/****, 1990s, 2000s, 2008, 2009, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Germany, Thriller

AIR FORCE ONE
**/**** Image B+ Sound A Commentary B-
starring Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Wendy Crewson, Paul Guilfoyle
screenplay by Andrew W. Marlowe
directed by Wolfgang Petersen

GRAN TORINO
****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Clint Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang, Ahney Her
screenplay by Nick Schenk
directed by Clint Eastwood

by Ian Pugh In Wolfgang Petersen’s Air Force One, a band of Soviet ex-soldiers (whose leader is played by Gary Oldman, in full Boris Badenov mode) hijacks the President’s personal aircraft and in the process facilitates a double-dose of old-fashioned, flag-waving cinematic convention for the good old U.S. of A., just a few short years before 9/11 would fuck up that whole dynamic. The film is nothing more than a dying gasp of Cold War good-versus-evil nostalgia, complete with a no-nonsense Commander-in-Chief impossible to dislike or defy. Harrison Ford is cast as the beloved President/Vietnam vet/all-around ass-kicker, who establishes a stern anti-terrorism decree shortly before literally becoming the one to see his policies through. (He was easily American cinema’s most ridiculous angelic-politician fantasy until Petersen outdid himself with Poseidon‘s New York mayor/firefighter/super-patriot.) Nothing really matters in this scenario, and nothing really has to matter: not the reasons for the hijacking (something to do with commie dictator Jürgen Prochnow and Kazakhstan–almost ten years before Borat established that country as the former Soviet territory no one in the West knows anything about), nor the White House staffers executed during the hijack. It’s all pretext for Ford saving his family and the proverbial day.

Public Enemies (2009)

June 30, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Crime, Directors: Michael Mann, Drama, Gangster, Japan, Theatrical

**/****
starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup
screenplay by Ronan Bennett and Michael Mann & Ann Biderman
directed by Michael Mann

by Walter Chaw It’s possible that Johnny Depp in a zoot suit, firing a Tommy gun from the running board of a vintage Ford, is so distractingly perfect an image that all other considerations are shunted to the soft shoulder–possible for the audience to only realize afterwards that there was nothing much of substance revealed about John Dillinger in Michael Mann’s gorgeous Public Enemies. (Possible for Mann, too, who in the process of creating another of his odes to masculinity and bloodshed, accidentally crafted this pedestal upon which to worship the cult of iconic stardom.) Maybe no accident at all, as the movie closest to this one is Terrence Malick’s Badlands–right down to a scene amongst law-enforcement officials in which our Johnny is treated like a Hollywood demiurge of a street-thug bank robber. And if Mann is trying to craft a film along similarly fetishistic, Americana-informed lines, then the media is the massage as they say. Aside from that, somewhere down the road from today, we may look back and wonder about the sudden proliferation late in this decade of films centred on Robin Hoods literal and allegorical, robbing from a broken system of fiscal governance to give to (or, at least, not directly take from) the common guy. From our current vantage, though, what we see is the biggest movie star on the planet playing the most famous and admired “public enemy” of the outlaw era, 1931-1935 edition. While there are intimations now and again of darker contextual rumblings, they don’t feel convicted; and in the end, there’s left just a collection of beautiful pictures as inert as a coffee-table book.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

June 24, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Michael Bay, Jordan, Revenge, Spielberg, Theatrical, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro
screenplay by Ehren Kruger & Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
directed by Michael Bay

by Walter Chaw The worst summer in recent memory continues as Michael Bay brings his slow push-ins and Lazy Susan dolly shots back to the cineplex with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (hereafter Transformers 2), the ugliest, most hateful, most simple-minded and incomprehensible assault on art and decency since the last Michael Bay movie. It’s bad (that goes without saying), and it’s possible that even its fans will have the brute sense to recognize that it’s bad–but it’s bad in such a way that defies easy description. It’s so bad, it’s exasperating. The action, as you’d expect, is impossible to follow, with long stretches cascading in on one another without the slightest notion of who’s winning, where, and to what end. But that’s not why it’s bad. It suggests that the evil robots have perfected Terminator technology in the manufacture of a gorgeous slut-bot (Isabel Lucas), who, before trying to kill the returning Sam (Shia LaBeouf) with her go-go-gadget tongue, is humiliated by having heroic Autobot Bumblebee money-shot robot semen all over her face. But that’s not why it’s bad, either. Ridiculously poor filmmaking and Bay’s wearying misogyny aren’t “bad,” per se, so much as they’re the tools of his auteur canon, of his absolute gold-standard grasp of what it is that prepubescent boys are into and his desire to, as fast as he can, create undercover hardcore porn to gratify those desires. What else to make of the weird girl issues–the entire co-ed Michael Bay U campus populated with hot bimbo chattel, Bay’s camera leering obligingly? It’s tough to make someone feel sorry for Megan Fox, yet the extent to which she’s objectified in this flick has you looking for track marks, smeared mascara, and other evidence of bus-stop porn-star exploitation.

Taken (2008) [2-Disc Extended Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

June 21, 20092000s, 2008, 2009, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, France, Thriller, UK

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Leland Orser, Famke Janssen
screenplay by Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen
directed by Pierre Morel

by Ian Pugh Director Pierre Morel’s last film was that cookie-cutter nonsense District B13, while co-writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen have in recent times mainly presided over the Transporter series. So what surprises most about the trio’s Taken is that, given its pedigree of orgiastic excess, every single one of its attributes is delivered in quantities that are just enough. All of its action sequences are just tightly edited enough to be exciting without becoming hyperactive; all of its characters are just developed enough to warrant analysis without interfering with the thrills; and its screaming misanthropy is just equal-opportunity enough not to feel like xenophobia. There’s certainly a pathetic loneliness to ex-Black Ops agent Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), still taking ersatz family photos with a disposable camera and struggling to direct the attention of his teenaged daughter Kim (25-year-old Maggie Grace, in a borderline grotesque woman-child performance) away from the rich asshole (Xander Berkeley) now married to his ex-wife (Famke Janssen). But when Kim is kidnapped by sex traffickers in Paris, it’s a chance to utilize his training and indulge in wish-fulfilment of the most literal variety. Blowing past government procedure and busting up prostitution rings run by the upper class, Bryan’s search eventually culminates in a violent showdown with a Middle Eastern sheikh.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) [2-Disc DVD Collector’s Set – Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

June 18, 20091960s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, DVD, Italy, Spain, West Germany, Western

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (Extended English-language Version)
***/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras A
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras A
starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, Aldo Giuffrè
screenplay by Age & Scarpelli & Luciano Vincenzoni & Sergio Leone
directed by Sergio Leone

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Perhaps it had been too long between screenings, or perhaps my mind had been playing tricks on me, but my most recent viewing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly wasn’t as good as the others. There was still much to admire: the wild structure, which doesn’t properly introduce its MacGuffin until about half an hour in; the hilariously cavalier attitude towards human decency; the raw-meat attitude towards bodies and faces; and, of course, the idea of Eli Wallach playing a Mexican, which is always appealing. But all of this seems somehow only fitfully successful now, the film’s conceptual high points surrounded by the same arid desert that nearly finishes off two out of three of the protagonists. Perhaps I should chalk it up to the distance of memory–even downgraded, the experience has something bizarre for just about everybody, whether their memories will be kind to it or not.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) [Extended Version] – Blu-ray Disc + Waterworld (1995) [2-Disc Extended Edition] – DVD

June 15, 20091990s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, Romance, Sci-Fi, UK

ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES
½*/**** Image C Sound B Extras B
starring Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
screenplay by Pen Densham & John Watson
directed by Kevin Reynolds

WATERWORLD
***/**** Image B Sound B
starring Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tina Majorino
screenplay by Peter Rader and David Twohy
directed by Kevin Reynolds

by Walter Chaw In the “careful what you wish for” sweepstakes, here’s Kevin Costner, fresh off an Oscar victory for his naïve idyll Dances with Wolves, spending his hard-won Hollywood currency indulging best buddy Kevin Reynolds in a trilogy of pictures (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Rapa Nui, Waterworld) he produced for the express purpose of giving Reynolds more than enough rope. If you’re in the sport of charting the positively Greek decline of the late-’80s box-office king, mark 1991 as Exhibit A, as his sad attempt at an English accent for Robin of Loxley was notoriously overdubbed in post-production after being deemed the stuff of legend in initial cuts. Aside from providing schadenfreudians endless fodder, it was the first real evidence that the Golden Boy’s tragic flaw was the belief that his charm was based on something other than Gary Cooper’s mantle of Everybody’s All-American Doofus.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)

June 12, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Directors: Tony Scott, Theatrical, Thriller, UK, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Denzel Washington, John Travolta, John Turturro, James Gandolfini
screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on the novel by John Godey
directed by Tony Scott

by Walter Chaw It’s amazing that a film that takes place on a metal tube in a dank tunnel should have no trace of come in it. Less amazing when one considers that it’s Tony Scott at the helm of this redux–the same Tony Scott who arguably reached the zenith of his potential with his vampire-erotica cult debut The Hunger, whose best film is the result of a superior screenplay by Quentin Tarantino (True Romance), and whose main claim to fame may be that he’s behind one of the most homoerotic sequences ever captured on film in his gay amusement park Top Gun. Scott’s The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (hereafter Pelham) is packed to the gills with meaningless, hyperactive visual gawping every bit as bad here as it is in his unwatchable Domino, so frantic that it has the opposite effect on the audience by rendering itself static and boring. (There’s a lot going on in a screen full of snow, too, but all it does is put you to sleep.) The picture reunites Scott with his go-to leading man Denzel Washington, whose Garber, an MTA operator fallen under suspicion of taking a bribe, replaces Walter Matthau’s weary, hangdog transit cop from the Joseph Sargent original. When ridiculous goon Ryder (John Travolta) hijacks the titular subway car with a pack of the usual suspects (including Luis Guzmán, of course), it’s up to smooth-talking every-dude Garber to cover up the deficiencies of hostage negotiator Camonetti (John Turturro), the gasbag Mayor (James Gandolfini), and all the bumblefuck NYPD who manage to accidentally snipe one of the bad guys, crash a car racing through Manhattan, and decorate a couple of baddies with a good twenty clips of ammunition in the middle of Uptown. It also, as a way to give the film a contemporary slant against which the terminally un-hip Scott is well over-matched, demonizes Wall Street by having its chief baddie be a former securities trader who hatches a plan to fuck the stock market by making New Yorkers afraid that his plot is a terrorist attack. Pelham is, in other words, rather tasteless in addition to being awful.

Land of the Lost (2009) + The Hangover (2009)

June 5, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

LAND OF THE LOST
½*/****
starring Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride, Jorma Taccone
screenplay by Chris Henchy & Dennis McNicholas, based on the television series by Sid & Marty Krofft
directed by Brad Silberling

THE HANGOVER
**/****
starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Jeffrey Tambor
screenplay by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
directed by Todd Phillips

by Ian Pugh I’d estimate there are around a hundred reasons why Brad Silberling’s big-screen adaptation of Sid & Marty Krofft’s “Land of the Lost” is awful, but none of them are more infuriating than the fact that it panders to its core hipster audience by being a great big nostalgic turd with an ironic bow on top. Have you watched the series recently and cracked self-satisfied jokes about how drugs were its primary influence? If so, then this film is for you. Do you like movies that try as hard as possible to resemble shitty episodic television from yesteryear? Then you’ve probably seen Land of the Lost twice already and rationalized it as something that won’t win awards but at least manages to pass the time. That’s certainly the mentality driving this unfortunate theme-park ride: the film would prefer that you look to the old series’ theme song to fill in the necessary plot details, jamming the lyrics of same into its dialogue with a heavy-handed wink. Rick (Will Ferrell), Will (Danny McBride), and Holly (Anna Friel) are on “a routine expedition,” and despite much ensuing sound and fury, that’s all you need to know. But hey, dude, do you remember the Sleestaks? ‘Cause this film totally remembers them, too–and while they’ve been injected with some CGI gloss, the costumes are just crappy enough to keep your childhood memories intact! It’s worth noting that this is the second film in as many weeks to use an old-school Universal logo in its opening credits–but unlike Drag Me to Hell, Land of the Lost has nothing to distinguish it from what came before, no special insight into why the TV show that inspired it is a cultural touchstone. Frankly, it’s impossible to see how any of it could be considered an improvement on renting the original series and jerking off.

Seattle International Film Festival ’09: Black Dynamite

June 3, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Comedy, Film Festivals

***/****starring Michael Jai White, Byron Minns, Salli Richardson-Whitfieldscreenplay by Michael Jai White, Byron Minns, Scott Sandersdirected by Scott Sanders by Jefferson Robbins When last we saw Michael Jai White, it was in the biggest movie of 2008, getting a shiv in the uvula from Heath Ledger. The veteran action performer (Spawn, Universal Soldier) wants to shrug that one off with a joke of his own. The pre-credits scenes in Scott Sanders's Black Dynamite, a vehicle created specifically for White, make you fear another I'm Gonna Git You Sucka or Undercover Brother--a satire on '70s blaxploitation tropes that uses actual, professional camera setups, editing,…

Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

May 28, 20092000s, 2008, 2009, Action, Animation, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Japan, Sci-Fi, Zombie

バイオハザードディジェネレーション
*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
animated; screenplay by Shotaro Suga
directed by Makoto Kamiya

by Bryant Frazer One of the more obnoxious trends in current filmmaking and distribution is the move towards cheapjack fansploitation movies. Masquerading as original, feature-film content, these low-budget theatrical and home-video releases are little more than expansive knock-offs of an existing, lucrative property that function as extended promos for yet another upcoming instalment of said franchise. In other words, they’re commercials, bought and paid for by the very fanbase to which they’re marketed. Not so long ago, we saw the theatrical bow of a decidedly sub-par feature animation, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, whose only reason for existence was its function as a come-on for the already-in-production Cartoon Network series. Then there’s Resident Evil: Degeneration (henceforth Degeneration), an extended videogame cut-scene created to flog the upcoming release of AAA console title “Resident Evil 5”. Taking place in the Capcom videogame’s universe and filling in the narrative gap between “Resident Evil”s 4 and 5, it has nothing to do with the popular live-action film series starring Milla Jovovich.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009) – Blu-ray Disc + Bedtime Stories (2008) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

May 26, 20092000s, 2008, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance, Sci-Fi, ZERO STARS

PAUL BLART: MALL COP
*/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C
starring Kevin James, Jayma Mays, Keir O’Donnell, Shirley Knight
screenplay by Kevin James & Nick Bakay
directed by Steve Carr

BEDTIME STORIES
ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Adam Sandler, Keri Russell, Guy Pearce, Russell Brand
screenplay by Matt Lopez and Tim Herlihy
directed by Adam Shankman

by Ian Pugh For Kevin James and his co-writer, the talking cat from “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”, it’s not enough that Paul Blart (James) is a fat moron prone to knocking things over with the sheer force of his girth–he must also be completely oblivious, fully convinced that he possesses more power and responsibilities as a mall cop than any reasonable person would believe. So, what to do when Paul’s newest trainee (Keir O’Donnell) turns out to be a Hans Gruber wannabe who takes over the mall with his hip young gang in a bid to clean it out? A feature-length parody of Die Hard has long stopped being an enticing prospect, given that Die Hard itself has been deconstructed to death by the fact of its enormous influence on the action genre (to the degree that the “Die Hard in an X” template actually became the dominant model for action movies in the 1990s), with the proverbial final nail driven in by a third sequel, Live Free or Die Hard, that concluded there was no point in still pretending our everyman hero was anything but invincible. As Paul Blart: Mall Cop sees it, the only way to endue the John McClane archetype with any tension is to make him fat and stupid. The first time we see Paul, he’s shovelling food into his mouth, his sweater stained with perspiration from beneath his man-boobs, shortly before his hypoglycaemia kicks in and sidelines him from joining the police academy. But he’s got a big heart or something, and that’s what counts, right?

Anaconda (1997) – Blu-ray Disc

May 25, 20091990s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Brazil, Horror, Peru, Thriller

**½/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz
screenplay by Hans Bauer and Jim Cash & Jack Epps, Jr.
directed by Luis Llosa

by Walter Chaw Almost worth it just for Jon Voight's post-regurgitation wink, Luis Llosa's B-movie creature-feature Anaconda is a deadpan riff on the nature-amuck flicks of the mid-Seventies in general and Steven Spielberg's Jaws in particular. (Cinematographer Bill Butler shot both films.) It borrows the Moby Dick conceit of a mad hunter forcing a hapless crew to take a personal vision quest against an aquatic foe and post-modernizes it with a passel of genre in-references, an unusually dry script, and a supporting cast of accomplished character actors. The only real failure of the film in respect to its modest aspirations, in fact, is the snake itself, a frankly awful CGI phantom that destroys the tension with its every appearance. It's hard to be afraid of a glorified screen-saver.

Angels & Demons (2009)

May 14, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Italy, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Armin Mueller-Stahl
screenplay by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Dan Brown
directed by Ron Howard

by Ian Pugh The preferiti are the cardinals most likely to be elected Pope following the death of the previous one. So I learned from Ron Howard’s Angels & Demons–twice. It’s a point that is adequately explained in a news report serving as the film’s prologue, then superfluously explained in one of hero-cum-tour guide Robert Langdon’s information-dense lines of dialogue. From there, it appears as if Angels & Demons will take a willing leap off the same cliff The Da Vinci Code did, annotating each excruciating historical detail for no other reason than to play WIKIPEDIA while spelling everything out in the most condescending way possible. Yet a strange thing happens around the movie’s halfway mark: everyone stops defining and redefining the arcana–indeed, exposition practically ceases altogether as the characters are dragged between libraries and churches, spirited from one set-piece to the next, arriving just in the nick of time to face off against the killers or help save some poor bastard from getting burned alive. The shift in tone is sudden and dramatic–you could probably draw a fat line through the middle of Angels & Demons to delineate where the hand-holding lectures end and the linear procession of action sequences begins. How did that happen? As Opie will always be his unsubtle middlebrow self and co-screenwriter Akiva Goldsman will always be the guy who wrote Batman & Robin, I have no choice but to assume that the responsibility for this schism lies with the man whose name appears for the first time on this franchise: David Koepp.

Never Say Never Again (1983) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

May 12, 20091980s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Bahamas, Blu-ray Disc, Espionage, France, James Bond, Thriller, UK, West Germany

*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Sean Connery, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Max Von Sydow, Edward Fox
screenplay by Lorenzo Semple, Jr.
directed by Irvin Kershner

by Ian Pugh After decades of legal wrangling, producer Kevin McClory had finally won the right to make an autonomous James Bond flick out of Ian Fleming’s Thunderball, and 1983 seemed like the perfect time to capitalize on it, what with resident Bond Roger Moore’s age catching up with him and the original series running out of steam as a consequence. A household name, the character of Bond has enough cultural heft and influence that he warrants interpretations from independent sources besides, and given that Sean Connery was lured out of a twelve-year retirement from the character–hence the title, Never Say Never Again–as well as the room for improvement left by the original Thunderball, the film had the potential to be more than just a cynical cash-in.

Star Trek (2009)

May 8, 20092000s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Germany, Sci-Fi, Star Trek, Theatrical

***½/****
starring John Cho, Ben Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy
screenplay by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
directed by J.J. Abrams

by Walter Chaw My long-held suspicion of J.J. Abrams as a no-trick pony has thawed completely now that after producing the exceptional Cloverfield, he has directed a reboot of Gene Roddenberry’s beloved “Star Trek” that walks the fine line between absolute seriousness and absolute cheese and does so in about the exact same, smart, swashbuckling way as the ’60s TV show, to which this movie serves not as a prequel, but as a delicious alternate possibility. Abrams’s Star Trek is faithful to Roddenberry’s vision in every way, including a restoration of the sexiness and spunk that’s been largely lost to decades of syndication. It’s easy to forget that the first interracial kiss on television belongs to the original series–not to mention all those ripped-shirt fights, tumbles with green girls, and “Bizarro-version” facial hair. The picture is faithful simultaneously to the spirit of this time, joining what looks to be a spate of films with apocalyptic visions of entire planets destroyed by unimaginable calamity. Spry and well-written, Star Trek plays up the idea of individual heroism for the collective good in high Trek fashion and, fascinatingly, works in the clay of deep-set parental issues to give its young characters the psychological framework for evolution in this new reality. If this James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is more of a brawler and a rake than Shatner’s rakish brawler, blame it on the premature loss of daddy; if this Spock (Zachary Quinto) has his humanity closer to the skin than the other Spock (Leonard Nimoy, who has a sizeable role), blame it on mommy (Winona Ryder). Yet for all its weighted subtext, it avoids the self-seriousness of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films and Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, finding in its material the spirit of discovery and bonhomie that made the franchise in its heyday one of the most affecting bits of popular relational drama on television.