Rabbit Hole - DVD Review

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Starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest and Sandra Oh.
Directed by John Cameron Mitchell.

What works here are the honest moments and performances, especially Eckhart, as one of the most sympathetic characters he's been allowed to play. He and Kidman play parents grieving their death of their only child, and it's not an exercise of wallowing in misery; it's a more realistic take on the day-to-day coping of two people whose lives have been forever altered.

But whatever chemicals Kidman has injected into her forehead, she should remove them.

All Good Things - DVD Review

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Starring Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Langella, Philip Baker Hall, Diane Venora, Kristen Wiig, Lily Rabe, Trini Alvaredo, Nick Offerman and John Cullum.
Directed by Andrew Jarecki.

The first half or so of this "wealthy people behaving badly" mystery is pretty good. Dunst gives one of her more charismatic performances in years, and Gosling always brings an offbeat take to his characters. The second half is where it's clear this is based on a true story, as odd events keep happening, but somehow it isn't done with as cohesive a narrative as it was in the first half. I stopped caring before it reached its conclusion.

I was surprised to SNL's Kristen Wiig and Parks & Recreation's Nick Offerman pop up in this. Doesn't seem like their genre.

ABC cancels V, Mr. Sunshine, more

Of the ABC shows that have been cancelled, V and Mr. Sunshine were the only ones I was watching, and I can't say I'm disappointed Mr. Sunshine was cancelled. I liked most of the cast but I didn't like most of the characters, and I question the wisdom of having Matthew Perry as a guy with no friends.

V, however, had a spectacular finale, one where a few good guys die and the aliens seem poised to crush the human rebellion reveal their true selves and conquer Earth. And now it's over? Well, if they ever want to bring it back for a mini-series on ABC Family, they have quite the starting point.

As to the others, I liked Detroit 187 but stopped watching when I saw the ratings. I watched the first three or four episodes of No Ordinary Family but that was more squarely aimed at tweens and teens. Only watched a couple episodes from Season 1 of Brothers & Sisters, and one episode of Off the Map.

Casino Jack - DVD Review

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Starring Kevin Spacey, Barry Pepper, Kelly Preston, Jon Lovitz, Rachelle LeFevre, Graham Greene and Maury Chaykin.
Directed by George Hickenlooper.

There's a breezy energy that the late director George Hickenlooper beings to this movie, and it almost disguises its fatal flaw: what exactly did Jack Abramoff do?

I saw the Abramoff documentary just a few months ago and I was still lost on what was going on. The movie plays it as a dark comedy, and Kevin Spacey gives a fast and loose performance as Jack, making him an appealing scoundrel. We gather that Jack likes hobnobbing with the power-brokers in Washington, and he's good at stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.

There were scenes here and there that reminded me of better movies. One scene here felt like Wall Street, one scene there felt like Goodfellas. I was entertained throughout. There's just not a cohesive enough narrative to buoy it as a truly good movie.

Skyline - DVD Review

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Starring Eric Balfour, Donald Faison, Brittany Daniel and David Zayas.
Directed by the Brothers Strause.

From the guys that brought you Aliens vs. Predators: Requiem. I would hire them for special effects, but they don't seem to have any instinct for storytelling.

This is an alien invasion story that eliminates those cumbersome elements from other movies like motivation and Act III. Instead they take some cardboard cutouts, fill them in with C-grade TV stars (Hey, it's Eric Balfour from 24! Hey, it's Donald Faison from Scrubs! Hey, it's the weakest link from Dexter!) and trap them in a high-rise apartment building. Most of the movie is about a handful of survivors trying to cross the street.

So what are the aliens? Well, if you mix together the machines from the Matrix with the aliens from Independence Day and Starship Troopers, then push the Cronenberg button on your blender, you'll come close to what these things are.

But why are the aliens here and what are they doing? Apparently they're here to collect brains.

That's right.

The movie has this twist at the end that would normally be the beginning of a climax, but they treat it like that's the end and the credits roll.

Mars Needs Moms - Movie Review

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Starring Seth Green, Dan Fogler, Joan Cusack and Mindy Sterling. Directed by Simon Wells.

Caught this at the $1 theater. This is the next, and possibly last, installment of Robert Zemeckis's motion-capture animation experiment. We've had The Polar Express, Beowulf, A Christmas Carol, and now this, and this is the weakest effort to date.

It's based on a story by Berkeley Breathed, but without his unique animation style, what's the point? It follows a boy whose mom is kidnapped by Martians. He stows away on one of the spaceships and lands on Mars, a planet of metal tubes and trash-heaps. This naturally forces me to flashback to the far superior Wall-E.

Also, when I think about the societal structure of Mars and how it came to be, it collapses like a house of non-laminated cards.

I would say do not show this to a kid whose mother has died, as we see a different mother get vaporized in front of her son.

Thor - Movie Review

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Starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Stellan Skarsgard, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Idris Elba, Clark Gregg, Rene Russo, Jaimie Alexander and Colm Feore. Directed by Kenneth Branagh.

I was going to say I'm a sucker for superhero movies, but I realize I'm pretty much a sucker for any genre as long as the movie's good.

Managed to catch this in 2D (yay!) and Thor did not disappoint. It had the grand special effects, the clashes of titans, the character journey, the Girlfriend and many of the tropes you'd expect. But they still have to be done well, and for the most part, yeah, it worked.

I find myself wanting to address my problems first. Many of the actors aren't given anything to do. Rene Russo is barely there as Thor's mother. The Warriors Three seem like a merry band I should want to hang out with, but I never cared about them. Idris Elba was cool as the gatekeeper, to the point that I wished his part was bigger. Stellan Skarsgard just has to follow Natalie Portman and fill in exposition points. The Hawkeye cameo was poorly executed and should have been cut entirely. The New Mexico town the Earth action takes place in is clearly one giant shooting set.

But I liked that it was family-friendly. I liked Chris Hemsworth as the central character. It's not a revelation or anything, I just find myself looking forward to his Thor bouncing off Downey's Iron Man or staring down the Hulk. Coming Summer 2012 - The Avengers Part VI: They're Finally Together! (Iron Man was Avengers I, Incredible Hulk was Avengers II, Iron Man 2 was Avengers III, Thor is Avengers IV, and we have Captain America in July...) I liked the unknown Tom Hiddleston as Loki, a complex villain that has more going on than at first revealed, and we're therefore not distracted by Famous Name playing him.

I liked the Asgard stuff. Done poorly, it could've generated Chronicles of Riddick flashbacks, but it had a solid design and I liked walking down its halls and flying over its towers.

Portman's Jane Foster as written isn't more than The Girlfriend, but she was able to get a couple moments out of her, like her self-surprised reaction to when Thor kisses her hand.

Fast Five - Movie Review

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Starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Dwayne Johnson, Ludacris, Sung Kang, Matt Schulze, Gal Gidot and Joaquim de Almeida.
Directed by Justin Lin.

Funny thing about this franchise is I've seen all of them, but going in, I could barely remember anything about the first four. Why isn't Michelle Rodriguez in this one? Oh, did she die in the last one? Don't remember it. This guy Vince, who looks like Josh Brolin's lost brother, was he in any before?

But it doesn't really matter. The series has evolved and elevated. It survived giving the keys to Lucas Black and Bow Wow for a chapter (I still hope they come back somehow) and now it's established itself as a high-octane action staple.

Act I has to have a cool heist. I liken it to the rescue of Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt. We have some characters assemble, the action's high, and at the climax, with explosions and stunts (one very cool suck-in-your-breath stunt, but if you've seen the preview, you've seen it), and when it's over, we get our new plot and are propelled into the next two acts of the movie. One last heist, one big job. A team needs to be assembled. It's Ocean's 11, with Vin Diesel as Danny and Paul Walker as Rusty. I think that makes Tyrese Gibson the Linus of the crew.

BUT they also have a special agent after them, played by Dwayne Johnson, who seems to always be flexing. For the first hour or so, I thought Tommy Lee Jones could've played the part in his sleep, but naturally, the Rock and Diesel eventually have to fight.

The movie is wall-to-wall macho B.S. and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It was silly but it was entertaining. Even the climax, a 20-minute car chase with two cars dragging a ten-ton safe through the busy streets of Rio de Janeiro with no regard for civilian safety or laws of physics, still carried a visceral thrill to it.

The movie is what it is. It is exactly what it claims to be and nothing more, and that's just fine.

Rio - Movie Review

These are done by me holding my iPhone. Someday I should really put more effort into it, but let it never be said I take myself too seriously.

Wild Target - DVD Review

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Starring Bill Nighy, Emily Blunt, Rupert Grint, Rupert Everett, Eileen Atkins and Martin Freeman. Directed by Jonathan Lynn.

This wacky British comedy is buoyed here and there by its cast, but as a whole it never comes together. Seems like a movie centered on a hitman shouldn't be so light-hearted.

I like Bill Nighy, but do I believe he's a seasoned hitman here? No. Granted it's a comedy, so I should expect it to be no more realistic than Grosse Point Blank, but no, never really bought into what they were selling. And who's the scary, steely hitman who shows up later? Martin Freeman. You remember him from BBC's The Office or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Yeah, that guy.

I imagine everyone involved had fun with this little project, but I would've enjoyed more an hour documentary hanging out with the cast.

Weekend Box Office

For the weekend of April 29-May 1.

1. Fast Five - $83.63 million - 1 wk (U)
. . . 3,644 screens / $22,950 per screen
2. Rio - $14.4 ($103.63) - 3 wks (Fox) - 45.3%
. . . 3,708 / $3,883
3. Madea's Big Happy Family - $10.05 ($41.08) 2 wks (LG) -59.9%
. . . 2,288 / $4,392
4. Water for Elephants - $9.13 ($32.26) - 3 wks (Fox) - 45.8%
. . . 2,820 / $3,236
5. Prom - $5 - 1 wk (BV)
. . . 2,730 / $1,832
6. Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil - $4.14 - 1 wk (Wein)
. . . 2,505 / $1,653
7. Soul Surfer - $3.3 ($33.78) - 4 wks (TS) -39.3%
. . . 2,010 / $1,642

The other new release for the weekend was Dylan Dog: Dead of Night. It opened on 885 screens and landed at #16.

I thought Fast Five was going to be big, but two weeks ago I would've guessed $60 million. $83 million is huge. It means Fast & Furious 6 is guaranteed. It can't make Team Thor happy, but when I look at how much oxygen got sucked out of the box-office by it, maybe it won't be so bad for them after all. Theater chains are going to be anxious to get Arthur and Hop and Scream 4 (and Dylan Dog) out of there.

Prom was cheap. Disney batted for a single and they'll get it. Moviegoers are not going to get Hoodwinked again.

Random Movie Stuff

- David Koepp (Spider-Man, Jurassic Park) will be rewriting the next Jack Ryan movie, to star Chris Pine (Unstoppable, Star Trek) and to be directed by Jack Bender (Lost).

- Gavin Hood (X-men Origins: Wolverine) in talks to direct Ender's Game for Summit Entertainment. The sci-fi classic from Orson Scott Card has been in development forever, but maybe this time it'll happen. (I remember when The Phantom Menace opened, Card speculated Jake Lloyd could play Ender.)

- Quentin Tarantino has completed his next script, a spaghetti Western called Django Unleashed, and Christoph Waltz will co-star.

- Jeff Bridges is replacing Zack Galifianakis in R.I.P.D. It's a ghost comedy starring Ryan Reynolds.

- Chris Hemsworth might become a big star, so he might be happy that another one of this limbo titles has found a distributor. Lionsgate is picking up Cabin in the Woods, a horror film co-starring Richard Jenkins. That leaves the Red Dawn remake the last Hemsworth/MGM title collecting dust on the shelf.

- There are 95 sequels in the works.

The Tourist - DVD Review

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Starring Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton and Steven Berkoff.
Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

This is the kind of tale I could see Alfred Hitchcock batting out of the park with Fred MacMurray and Adila Valli in 1943. Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie seem like a dream paring, and yet their chemistry never ignites, and the movie floats along like a series of "movie star" shots on different soundstages and exotic locales.

Depp plays Frank, an American math teacher on holiday in Venice to recover from a broken heart. I never believed Depp was a math teacher, and even his being an American strained credulity. Jolie is Elise, a British spy, but she didn't seem to get much more direction than "Look marvelous, darling!" She meets up with him on a train in hopes that those spying on her will believe Frank to be her lover named Alexander, a thief who's made off with 744 million pounds. He is a decoy.

The director von Donnersmarck was behind the excellent The Lives of Others, but he is the wrong man for the job here. The pacing starts slow and never picks up. It's not funny so it can't be called a comedy. What little action there is goes through the motions. The stringed soundtrack is relentless. There were times I felt like I was watching the serious parts of a 1970s fish-out-of-water comedy starring Dean Jones.

But at least Timothy Dalton has fun.

Summer 2011 Box Office Predictions

Looking back at last year, I underestimated Karate Kid, Grown Ups, The Last Airbender, and animation (Toy Story 3, Shrek 4, and Despicable Me all doing better than I thought); overestimated Knight & Day, The A-Team, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Sex & the City 2, and Predators; and was about dead-on for Eclipse, Inception, The Other Guys, and Salt. Fairly close on titles like Prince of Persia, The Expendables, Eat Pray Love, Dinner for Schmucks. Thought Robin Hood would be a bigger bomb than it was.

So looking ahead, here's where I see this summer shaking down.


1. HARRY POTTER & THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 - $330 million - The final Harry Potter adventure will go out as maybe the biggest. Supposed to be non-stop action, plenty of characters die, and a capper's put on the WB cashcow of the past decade.

2. KUNG FU PANDA 2 - $305 million - Animation's huge, and I see this one being the biggest of the offerings. It's colorful, it's got a great voice cast, the first one's fondly remembered.

3. TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON - $280 million - I'm baffled why Transformers 2 did so well, but hey, the third one can't be worse, and I don't think it will suffer too much from the loss of Megan Fox.

4. CARS 2 - $260 million - Pixar can do no wrong, but doing a sequel to one of the weaker titles at least gives me pause. Should sell a lot of toys over it. I'm sure I'll like it; I'd just rather see The Incredibles 2, if a Pixar sequel must happen.

5. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES - $252 million - I think the overlong third installment sucked some of the winds out of the franchise sail, but I can see this getting some new life with a new director and no mopey Bloom/Knightley subplot we have to follow.

6. THOR - $172 million - Thor will benefit from launching the summer, but it will also be hurt by what I think will be a huge opening from Fast Five the week before. I can't help but notice it's the first non-sequel on my list, and yet it's going to be the fourth film where someone from S.H.I.E.L.D. shows up after the end credits.

7. COWBOYS & ALIENS - $160 million - I have faith in director Jon Favreau. I read the source material and it wasn't very good, but I can tell from the previews that Favs has changed just about everything about it beyond the basic concept. Looking forward to see James Bond and Indiana Jones fight aliens in the Wild West. (What, no zombies?)

8. THE HANGOVER PART II - $150 million - I think it'll be big, but not as big as the first one. It's pretty much the same plot of the first one but set in Thailand, and there's been more news surrounding the tattoo-artist cameo in this movie than any cameo role in history.

9. X-MEN: FIRST CLASS - $145 million - This prequel doesn't have any name stars, per se, but the marketing campaign has been ramping up nicely and it has the June 3 weekend to itself. I like that they're being set in the 1960's, when the X-Men comics actually started.

10. SUPER 8 - $135 million - This family film looks quite Spielbergian, and I'm guessing it's going to capture the family-film imagination the same way The Karate Kid did last year.

11. RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES - $130 million - James Franco's star has faded a bit, but the trailer is really well-done. I can see excitement ramping up for this as it gets closer.

12. CAPTAIN AMERICA - $128 million - The first Avenger will about break even in the US, do okay overseas, and even though I liked the trailer, I don't see this outdoing Hulk. But it's good that the Cap'n gets his own movie before joining Iron Man and company in The Avengers next year.

13. THE GREEN LANTERN - $125 million - I thought the trailer looked awful, but there are a lot of geeks still excited for this. I really don't know what to make of this.

14. THE HELP - $110 million - Where is the break-out chick flick? I guess it'll be this, as it's a beloved best-seller. So was Eat Pray Love, and it did alright despite the reviews.

15. THE ZOOKEEPER - $106 million - The umpteenth talking-animal movie, but it has Kevin James, and he's pretty reliable box-office as long as he's not co-starring with Vince Vaughn.

16. THE CHANGE-UP - $96 million - The R-rated body-switching movie looks like it'll have some legitimate laughs. I'm not sure Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds are different enough.

17. PRIEST - $82 million - I see it opening big, not huge, and then fading lightning-quick.

18. BRIDESMAIDS - $75 million - Opens same day as Priest, could be the What Happens in Vegas of 2011.

19. LARRY CROWNE - $74 million - Tom Hanks in a summer movie should do better than this, but the trailer currently plays flat.

20. MR. POPPER'S PENGUINS - $70 million - Jim Carrey in a classic comedy should do well, but not like the Jim Carrey of old.

Dark Horses:

Crazy Stupid Love - It will depend on the reviews.

Horrible Bosses - It could be that this one succeeds where The Change-Up fails.

Predicted Bombs:

Smurfs - Putting the blue guys in a live-action/CG film worked so well for Rocky & Bullwinkle.

Bad Teacher - I don't think Cameron Diaz can carry a film. Too bad drive-ins don't exist anymore; this could double-feature with Waiting for Superman.

30 Minutes or Less - Jesse Eisenberg's good karma is negated by Danny McBride's bad karma.

Other big titles this summer:
Something Borrowed
Judy Moody
Winnie-the-Pooh
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
Fright Night
Spy Kids 4
Final Destination 5
Friends with Benefits
Conan the Barbarian
Jumping the Broom
Monte Carlo
The Whistleblower
Our Idiot Brother

Love & Other Drugs - DVD Review

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Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Oliver Platt, Hank Azaria, Josh Gad, Gabriel Macht, Judy Greer, Jill Clayburgh, George Segal and Kate Jennings Grant. Directed by Edward Zwick.

This is one schitzophrenic movie.

Part of it is a biting comedy about the oversatuation of drug salesmen, pushing these neat new products like Zoloft and Viagra on to doctors. Part of it is a sex comedy about two twisted souls who run into each other at the right time, and they vow not to fall in love as they keep sleeping together. Then we also must venture into the melodramatic when we learn our heroine has Parkinson's.

So what we have all possibilites for three different movies, and maybe each would be good on its own, but meshed together, it doesn't work. Whenever Jake & Anne start to get serious and all of a sudden Josh Gad wanders through, I can practically hear the needle scratch across the record.

Hard to say which elements were strongest. How good could this movie have been if it had focussed on the Viagra stuff? Or the Parkinsons stuff? Or the "Friends with Benefits" stuff? It's like a chocolate-sushi-salsa milkshake. All fine flavors, but mixed together? Kinda gross.

Game Change casting

HBO is continuing to cast its planned adaptation of Game Change, the Heilemann/Halperin bestseller about the 2008 presidential primaries and general election. So far only people associated with the McCain campaign have been cast, including Ed Harris as John McCain and Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin.

I'm a little worried that Danny Strong is writing the adaptation. Game Change, I thought, was a pretty fair insightful look at the 2008 craziness. I'm worried he will just turn into a Democrats-are-heroes/Republicans-are-villains the same way he almost ruined Recount. About two-thirds of the book dealt with Hillary-Obama.

Best & Worst in Disney Parents

Since most Disney animated movies feature broken homes, I figured I would look at how parents actually fare in Disney movies.

Best


1. 101 DALMATIANS - Pongo & Perdita are awesome parents and the only ones where the parents are the heroes/protagonists of the story. After all of their children are kidnapped, they stop at nothing to get them back, and they rescue/adopt a bunch of orphaned puppies as well. They also both live.

2. MEET THE ROBINSONS - He may start out as an orphan, but in going to the future, he learns his friend is actually his future son and that he's going to be adopted by loving parents and make a pretty good husband/father down the road.

3. HERCULES - The Zeus/Hera team are portrayed as a positive bunch, and while helpless from Olympus, they keep track of Herc, who was adopted by another loving pair. Even though he learns he's a god, in the end he'd rather stay on Earth and live down the street from the two he calls Mom and Dad.

4. DUMBO - Mr. Jumbo is never seen (maybe sold to another circus?) but our Fantine of an elephant cared enough to name their son Jumbo Jr. She is fiercely protective of him and after suffering some injustice, she is redeemed and given the best seat on the train. Fortunately Dumbo has Timothy to look out for him while Mom's in jail.

5. PINOCCHIO - Single father desperately wants a child and gets his wish, and he does all the good-dad things he should, like sending him to school. Not his fault the Blue Fairy didn't start him off as flesh or made his conscience an external bug instead of an internal force. When his son goes missing he sets out to find him. Darn whale hinders him, but it works out in the end.

Others:
THE LADY & THE TRAMP - Darling and Jim Dear are pretty good to Lady.
LILO & STITCH - Older sister strives to be that positive parental figure for Lilo.
PETER PAN - Wendy's parents did well, judging on the way she handles Wonderland.
MULAN - Good parents, but Dad's ready to battle with one leg. She saves his life by going instead.
THE JUNGLE BOOK - Akela and his wife realize they can't keep their adoptive son Mowgli safe anymore so they sacrifice and send him to the human village.
THE LION KING - Mom and Dad have been raising him right. Too bad his uncle's evil.
THE PRINCESS & THE FROG - Mama's still there, and strong for Tiana after Daddy dies during the war. Although the single Big Daddy to his little princess feels like a parody of the patriarchal tradition of the other Disney princesses.

Worst


1. THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME - Judge Frollo semi-accidentally kills Quasi's mother and is two seconds away from killing the baby when the priest talks him out of it. So the Judge raises Quasi as his own but never grows to feel affection for him. He uses him to help him find the gypsy hiding place so he can enact genocide, and if not for an old cracked gargoyle that couldn't support his weight, Frollo would've killed Quasi as an adult.

2. SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN DWARFS - Snow's father was a poor judge of character, but we never see him. It's unclear how old Snow was when the Evil Queen became her stepmother, but as soon as Snow gets too pretty, the Queen wants her dead. When the Huntsman fails her, she sets out to murder her herself. (But why the "true love's kiss" loophole?)

3. CINDERELLA - Same story. Unseen dad marries horrible woman, and then he's MIA, so Cindy's raised as a servant. Stepmother despises her when compared to her own daughters, who aren't shaping up to be pillars of society. Rather than try ingratiating herself with Cindy once it's clear the Prince likes her, she tries to block Cindy from ever seeing him again. Good thing Cindy's friends with a bunch of smart mice and birds.

4. TANGLED - The only other Disney movie where the bad guy raises the protagonist from babyhood. Here she needs Rapunzel's hair to stay young, and there's never any hint she genuinely cares for Rapunzel; more like she memorizes her likes and keeps her placated. Her greed for youth is her downfall, and the movie is redeemed by loving parents who get to reunite with their long-lost daughter in the end.

5. THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE - However old Kuzco was when his parents died, they apparently didn't have much influence. We gather that most of his childhood he was raised by Izma, who spoiled him rotten while using him to get whatever she wants. Once he fires her, she sets out to kill him. It takes a nuclear family to open Kuzco's eyes to his selfish ways.

Others:
THE LITTLE MERMAID - If you don't obey me, I'll smash all your stuff!
BAMBI - Mom dies, and Dad's a cold figure who doesn't much believe in comforting children.
ALADDIN - If straight-to-video counted, Aladdin's bio-dad would make my worst list, but he doesn't show up til Aladdin 3. Meanwhile Jasmine's dad seems to trust everyone, including the evil guy.

Hanna - Movie Review