Fast & Furious

Posted on July 28, 2009 at 8:00 am

How fast? How furious? Well, this fourth in the series is so zippy it doesn’t even have time for “the” or “and.” And how necessary? Is there any more fastness or furiousness not fully covered by the original The Fast and the Furious, the terminally vapid 2 Fast 2 Furious and the let’s-drive-around-Japan “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.” Do you think it tells us something that they expect the fans’ attention spans are so limited that they have to give every movie in the series pretty much exactly the same name? And the imagination of the almost-identical title matches the imagination of the almost-identical script, which primarily consists of racing cars, squealing brakes, crashing cars, tough-guy stares, shifting gears, exploding cars, meaningful pauses, big muscles, and girls with long, long legs and tiny little shorts.It’s something of a bromance, with Brian (Paul Walker) still conflicted about why he let Dom (co-producer Vin Diesel) go back in the first movie when he was a undercover cop investigating a car-theft ring and ended up romancing Dom’s sister (Jordana Brewster). As is almost inevitable in series sequels, this time it’s personal, with Dom seeking revenge for the murder of someone he loved, but the real issues that need to be resolved are who drives faster and how much Brian and Dom really like each other. The only thing glistening more beautifully in the sunlight than the paint jobs on the sleek contours of the cars as they hug tight corners are the muscles on the sleek contours of Diesel’s arms, hugged by tight t-shirts.There’s a bad guy who picks his drivers by having them race each other, so we are soon, well, off to the races, and director Justin Lin has some fun with close-ups of shifting gears and smashing steel. But the fourth time out is kind of a drag, and not in a good way. (more…)

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G-Force

Posted on July 23, 2009 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for some mild action and rude humor
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Characters in peril, violence, scary dog with big teeth, scary robot, reference to parental abandonment
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	July 24, 2009

Top voice talent and good 3D computer graphics cannot make up for the fact that this film is utterly synthetic as well as crass, loud, and vulgar. Even at a brief running time of under 90 minutes, it overstays its welcome.

A team of super-agent guinea pigs, assisted by a reconnaissance fly and a computer whiz mole (Nicolas Cage), fail in a mission to find out what weapons-dealer-turned-consumer-electronics mogul Saber (Bill Nighy) is up to. So, over the protests of their human leader, Ben (Zach Galifianakis), the program is shut down by the FBI’s Kip Killian (Will Arnett). The guinea pigs and mole have to escape from a pet shop — and from children who abuse them — to prevent Saber’s diabolical plot from being executed.

The script is predictable and derivative. References to other movies like “Die Hard” and “Scarface” may amuse parents and potty jokes may amuse children but they contribute to a crass and lazy feel to the film. The 3D effects are mostly used to make the audience duck flying glass shards and spraying water. If they’re smart, they’ll just duck the movie.

Inkheart

Posted on June 16, 2009 at 8:00 am

Inkheart is a best-selling novel by Cornelia Funke about the power of reading. There is something truly meta-magical about reading a book about reading a book, with a character who brings book characters to life. And no matter how creative the visuals, it is inevitably less magical when it leaves the world of words and imagination for the world of pixels and screens.

Brendan Fraser plays Mortimer, who is not just a book doctor (restorer of old tomes) but something of a book whisperer. At least, books seem to whisper to him. And he is a “silvertongue,” which means that when he reads a book aloud he has the power to call its characters into being. But he has no control of this power. He is as likely to bring to life a wicked character as a good one. And in order to maintain balance, when he brings a character out of a book, a real-life character gets swooshed into the book. When he was reading a book called Inkheart, characters named Dustfinger (Paul Bettany) and Capricorn (Andy Serkis) came out and Mortimer’s wife Resa (Sienna Guillory) went in. Now she is stuck there until he can find the book again and try to bring her back. So, he and his daughter Maggie (Eliza Hope Bennett) are constantly on the road, searching bookstores and trying to stay away from Dustfinger, who wants to be read back into his book so he can be with his family, and Capricorn, who wants more characters read out of the book so they can help him to enjoy life in our world (he is very fond of duct tape) and create all kinds of misery and oppression (he was written as a bad guy, after all).

The story shimmers with imaginative details. A stuttering silvertongue produces incomplete real-world characters with book text on their faces. Mortimer’s aunt Elinor (Oscar-winner Helen Mirren) has a fabulous library and vastly prefers books to people. She has a sign with “Don’t Even Think of Wasting My Time!” in three languages on her front gate. And when it is time to search for the author of the book “Inkheart” (played by James Broadbent), there are some lovely and subtle variations on the theme of reality vs. fantasy. Fraser is as always an appealing leading man and the trio of British stars bring wit and conviction to their off-beat characters — so much conviction, in fact, that they throw things a little out of balance. The story itself makes an uneasy transition to screen, the very books-and-words premise of the story in effect undercutting its translation to film. The story’s silvertongue may bring books to life but the director and screenwriter are less effective.

Fighting

Posted on April 23, 2009 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense fight sequences, some sexuality and brief strong language
Profanity:	Brief stong language including a racial epithet
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Very intense, brutal, and graphic street-fighting scenes with bare-knuckle, no-rules brawls
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	April 27, 2009

Terrence Howard’s performance in “Fighting” is so bizarrely strange and awful that it occurred to me he might be hoping we didn’t realize it was him. Howard plays Harvey, a street hustler who discovers Shawn, a gifted young boxer (Channing Tatum) and sets up a series of underground, all-or-nothing, no-rules street fights. All Tatum has to do is punch, take punches, and mumble inarticulately whenever he sees the lovely Zulay (Zulay Valez). Howard has to pontificate, hide his money, confess to having been badly treated by his former partners, and ask Shawn to take a dive. Neither one manages to pull it off.

The film does have two things going for it. First is its conceit of multi-million dollar underground organizations that promote illegal street boxing (and the betting thereon) from behind hidden doors under the baseball hat racks in tiny little souvenir stores. That is the only logical explanation I have ever seen for the persistence of those shops, which never seem to have any customers. The second is the marvelous Altagracia Guzman as Zulay’s grandmother. As she did in the superb “Raising Victor Vargas,” Guzman is at once hilarious, endearing, and completely authentic. She provides moments of pure poetry. A small nod to the Foley artist, as well. The sound effects for all the whams and bashes may be cartoony — you almost expect Wile E. Coyote to show up with a package from Acme — but they are entertaining.

But the rest of the film is just dumb and dull. I think the screenplay is punchdrunk. Shawn needs money. He likes to fight. So, fight #1 he surprises everyone. Shawn is hiding something. Fight #2 is against a really big guy. He surprises everyone again, except for the audience. Then there are a few more fights, some old scores to settle, some revelations, some reactions to the revelations (I understand and sympathize! I am disappointed and betrayed! Both!) and everyone goes home. Kidding! The big, big fight is yet to come and as they like to say in movie tag lines, this time it’s personal.

It takes some serious effort to de-star and de-actor Howard and Tatum, but director-co-author Dito Montiel manages. This fight film needs to stay down for the count.

Quantum of Solace

Posted on March 24, 2009 at 8:00 am

More like “The Bond Ultimatum,” this is the Bournization of Bond. He may still spend some time in a dinner jacket, but this Bond is not the cool, debonair spy who seldom misses and never questions. This Bond is almost feral. He is seldom sure but he never, ever stops.

For the first time, there is no “Bond, James Bond” introduction and no dry flirtation with the ever-reliable Miss Moneypenny. Past Bonds have seemed like infomercials because they were so overstuffed with product placement, but this version is so stripped down to essence that there is not even time for Q to demonstrate an array of new gadgets so that we can have the pleasure of anticipating each of them in action.

This is the first Bond film to be an explicit sequel, beginning where Casino Royale left off. And so, in addition to non-stop action, brilliantly staged, we get to see Bond in the process of becoming Bond. Craig’s Bond is still near-feral, rough around the edges, his fury not yet under control. In the last film, he showed himself to be damaged but capable of being vulnerable until the death and apparent betrayal of Vesper (Eva Green) left him furious and equally determined to exact revenge and to protect his heart, if not his body or his soul, from any further trauma. Yes, this time it’s personal.

The issue of betrayal arises at all levels in this movie, right from the beginning, when even allies like the Americans and the inside circle of British spies can no longer be trusted. M (Judi Dench, as tart as a Granny Smith apple) has to rely on Bond, who may be rough, edgy, furious, even brutal, but who is not conventionally corruptible.

Every era gets the Bond it deserves. Every Bond is a reflection of his times. The Cold War Bond was the last of the unabashed pre-feminism alpha males. In the run-up to the Reagan era we had the Bond of excess — overstuffed with product placement and plots so literally out of this world that Bond ended up in outer space. And now we have the Bond of the era of compromised morals and unclear alliances. This is a rebooted Bond, building to some future time when gadgets and girls and martinis may re-enter the story.

Some things are unchangeable. No “Bond, James Bond,” Miss Moneypenny, or Q, but Bond does wear a dinner jacket (beautifully) and globe-hop to an array of glamorous locations. All the better for chasing around them and blowing them up. The girl (there must always be a girl) is as bent as Bond is, also driven for revenge and willing to do or destroy anything to get it. But don’t spend any time trying to figure out what the title refers to — basically, nothing. It is the title of a James Bond short story that has no other connection to this movie.

The film is not just tough on Americans; it portrays the world as a bleak and inherently compromised place. The bad guy insists on being paid in Euros, not dollars, and the CIA is willing to sell out just about anyone for oil. But it is another, even more precious liquid that is at risk here. Bad guy Mathieu Amalric (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) glowers effectively and Gemma Arterton is refreshing as Ms. (Strawberry) Fields. Her departure from the story is, as in Casino Royale, a quick visual homage to an iconic Bond image, reminding us that if our era requires a Bond more gritty and less glamorous, Craig, Dench, & Co., have delivered him.

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