Fired Up

Posted on June 9, 2009 at 8:00 am

Yes, this is a dumb little teen sex comedy that repeatedly tries to generate hilarity with a cheer involving the initials of its title. Yes, it spends a lot of camera time focusing on tight little shorts on tight little tushes. Yes, it tries for the best of both worlds by presenting us with heroes who are major playas for most of the film with some lessons learned and spiritually enlarging experiences just in time for (and during) the closing credits. Yes, the high school junior heroes are played by actors who are at least a decade older than their characters. But as dumb little teen sex comedies go, this one could have been a lot worse.
Shawn (Nicholas D’Agosto) and Nick (Eric Christian Olsen) have just one goal — to get with as many lovely young ladies as possible as frequently as possible. Very effective singly, they are all but unstoppable with each other as wingmen. When it is time to go to El Paso for football training camp, they decide that rather than go to hot, dry, girl-free Texas they will instead go where the girls are, cheerleading camp. Though the camp is three weeks long, they plan to leave early to spend time at a friend’s vacation home.

Carly (Sarah Roemer), the captain of the cheerleaders, is a very attractive girl who is unprecedentedly impervious to Nick’s charm (and also impervious to the obnoxiousness of her pretentious boyfriend). Shawn does very well with the cheerleaders but increasingly finds himself attracted to the co-cheerleader coach (Milly Sims), even though she is married to her co-coach (Michael John Higgins, born to do spirit fingers) and, in his word, “old.” While Shawn and Nick are focused on getting as much as they can from as many girls as they can, the girls are focused on competing with the champion Panthers.
No surprises along the way — except perhaps how poorly the cheerleading routines are photographed and how much you can get away with in a PG-13 movie — but D’Agosto and Olsen have an easy rhythm and the movie wisely makes their comeuppances more sweet than humiliating. Its attempts to temper its homophobic humor are weak. But it nicely makes the point that the girls who get a boy’s attention and respect are those who respect themselves enough to insist on trust and affection before they will get involved.

(more…)

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Comedy

The International

Posted on June 9, 2009 at 8:00 am

This thriller about a multi-national bank with innumerable tentacles and immeasurable power has two problems and the worst is bad timing. It’s just a little bit more difficult these days to feel pleasurably shaken up while watching a story about a couple of brave souls from law enforcement fighting a big, bad, bank when recent developments have made it clear that not only are the banks less powerful than we thought, they are not even competent enough to stay in business much less plot total world domination.

If we can put reality aside for a moment, it begins as a fairly serviceable if standard thriller, some tough talk, a murder, a determined if overmatched international investigator (Clive Owen as Louis Salinger), and that all-powerful corporation that thwarts him through a combination of muscle and corruption. There are hints and echoes of a story worth exploring about the ability of large corporations to transcend and evade the rules of any jurisdiction. But it all descends into the same old bang-bang and director, in a couple of awkwardly inserted scenes reportedly added due to lukewarm responses to an earlier version. Director Tom Twyker seems much more interested in the architecture of the various world capitols the characters chase through than he is in having anything of much interest happen there.

There is a lot of urgent rushing around from city to city, always helpfully identified with official-looking titles in the corner of the screen. And there are a lot of meaningful glances with narrowed eyes as people try to convey urgency and threats and counter-threats. And then there is a big out of nowhere shoot-out in the Guggenheim Museum that goes on forever but apparently not long enough for law enforcement to stop the survivors from walking away from it before any police cars arrive.

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Drama Thriller

Shaun the Sheep: Sheep on the Loose

Posted on June 8, 2009 at 8:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	NR
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Some comic peril
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to DVD:	June 9, 2009
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0021FP322

The latest Shaun the Sheep movie is “Sheep on the Loose” The people who created “Wallace and Gromit” are behind this wonderful new series about a sheep who does not follow the flock — but sometimes gets the flock to follow him. And you never know who and what will turn out to be animated. Witty and imaginative, these DVDs are a delight for the whole family.

The first person to send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Sheep” in the subject line will get a new Shaun DVD. Good luck!

Come ‘Home’ with a One-Time Chance to See An Amazing Documentary

Posted on June 4, 2009 at 8:00 am

Home is a gorgeous new documentary with a haunting musical score about the planet we live on. It is from internationally renowned French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand and produced by award-winning director Luc Besson. HOME is narrated in English by Glenn Close and in Spanish by Salma Hayek. Three film crews worked in more than 100 countries over 21 months to produce more than 488 hours of aerial footage.

And it is being made available worldwide at no charge to audiences by the firm PPR in the first global all-media format premier of a film on World Environment Day, June 5th. PPR’s support of HOME will make it possible to reach viewers all over the planet in more than 127 countries on June 5th to watch HOME for free on TV, in open-air theaters or on the internet in partnership with Youtube and Google, and in theaters worldwide and on DVD at a reduced rate. Please make an effort to see this beautiful, inspiring, and very important film.

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Documentary Television

Revolutionary Road

Posted on June 2, 2009 at 8:08 am

It may be, as Thoreau said, that “most men lead lives of quiet desperation,” but in the movies, desperation is much more likely to be loud. “Revolutionary Road” is another movie about unhappiness, phoniness, and corrosive dysfunction behind the manicured lawns of suburbia story from Sam Mendes of American Beauty. This time, it is set just after WWII, based on the novel by Richard Yates. It is the story of Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April Wheeler (Kate Winslet), a couple who are devastated to find themselves unable to escape the stultification of conventional middle class lives and who respond by devastating each other.

There is a moment for each of us, when we begin to see outside everything we have known and start to think of something different for ourselves, confident that we can avoid the mistakes of our parents and their generation. And then there is another moment when we learn that it is not that easy. This notion of exceptionalism, whether at the personal or national level, is the question these characters must face.

And it is that issue that gives this film its power. Yes, it is beautifully observed detail, rich images, and brilliant, fearless performances and yes, it has a scathing portrayal of the foul rot beneath the superficial suburban prettiness, with only a madman who can tell the truth. But all of that has been done before and these stories themselves tend to risk an aura of smug, we’re-in-on-the-real-story superiority that is as artificial as the lives it is dissecting. What makes this story transcend its setting is the resonance it has with the notion of America’s own sense of its exceptionalism in the world and in history.

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Based on a book Drama