Paranormal Activity 3 - Movie Review

** 1/2

Starring Lauren Bittner, Chris Smith, Chloe Csengery, Jessica Tyler Brown, Katie Featherston and Sprague Grayden.
Directed by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman.

I loved the first Paranormal Activity. I found it be perfectly paced and suspenseful, with a satisfying payoff. The second one wasn't as good, but it had some good jolts and jumps.

The law of diminishing returns applies here. Yes, it still has some good scares, but the pacing isn't as tight, and I found the middle section much more effective than the somewhat anti-climactic ending.

This one's a prequel, going back to the childhood of the two grown sisters who are the subjects of PA 1 & 2. For all the events that happen in this movie, I can only assume their memories were erased.

Katie and Christy have a stepdad who edits wedding videos for a living and set up video cameras around their house when things start going bump in the night. This movie does have several effective stretches where we're glued to the screen, wondering where our eyes should focus. What might jump out?

I suppose the franchise could figure out how to do a PA 4, but at this point, Katie and Christy have been done to death. Don't turn into the Saw franchise.

Cinematically Speaking 11/8

Old Movie I Finally Saw

BADLANDS (1973) - I'd seen three Terrence Malick movies, and while I liked A New World okay, I wasn't wowed by it. Thin Red Line I found overrated, and then I found Tree of Life to be the most beautiful slideshow I'd ever seen, but it was a slideshow. Everyone loves Malick, so I decided I'd go back to the beginning and make sure I wasn't missing anything.

Well, from this movie, I can see why he's so beloved. It was really good, holds up really well. Martin Sheen is great as the young 1950's killer, polite to those he's shooting, with Sissy Spacek along as his naive, guileless girlfriend accomplice. I see where inspirations were drawn for True Romance and Kalifornia. Badlands is also Malick's most solid narrative accomplishment I've seen. Since it was his first movie, it looks like he's fallen more in love with cinematography and impressions and less so with cohesive narration. Now when I eventually rent Days of Heaven, my first Malick viewing will be complete. But yes, Badlands holds up just fine and is worth seeking out, whether you love or hate what he's putting out now.

The Academy Awards

I'm not heart-broken Brett Ratner's not producing the Awards now. I just wonder who they're going to get that Eddie Murphy's still comfortable working with. Each year I root for a good show, and last year, the gamble with James Franco and Anne Hathaway flopped when Franco worked stiff all night.

Brett Ratner out as Oscar producer

- Brett Ratner had been hired to produce the 2011 Academy Award show (held in 2012) and he'd snagged his Tower Heist star Eddie Murphy to be the host, but after an off-the-cuff "Rehearsal's for fags" remark, pressure grew for him to resign. And he did.

- Eric Bana (Funny People) will play Elvis Presley and Danny Huston (30 Days of Night) will play Richard Nixon in Elvis & Nixon, about the time the two met in the White House in December 1970. It'll be the directorial debut of actor Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride, Saw).

- Mimi Rogers (former Mrs. Tom Cruise) will play the mother of Ashton Kutcher (current Mr. Demi Moore) on CBS's Two and a Half Men. Haven't heard if A Few Good Men will be rerunning anywhere anytime soon.

HBO's Enlightened - TV Review

I watched the first four episodes. That's probably good enough. Laura Dern gives a highwire performance as a woman who's suffered a nervous breakdown, gone to a wellness center for three months, and has returned to her workplace with a new sunny attitude. But her sunniness is a forced thing, for if she runs into too many obstacles, she can crack. I recognize this character. I've felt like this character at times, trying to have a good attitude, even when life sucks. But it's one of those series where I feel like it's going to end with her committing suicide, with a big grin on her face.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - DVD Review

**

Starring Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Geoffrey Rush, Ian McShane, Kevin R. McNally, Sam Claflin, Stephen Graham and Richard Griffiths.
Directed by Rob Marshall.


I would have been just fine to never again revisit the world of Jack Sparrow after the bloated At World's End, and now that On Stranger Tides is here, even with a shorter running time, a different director, the Bloom/Knightly subplot scuttled, two interesting new castmates (Cruz, McShane), maybe new life can be breathed into this franchise...

No, not really.

The joy I felt at Depp's new spin on the pirate genre is diminished and extinguished. I still hold that the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie is a blast, the second one's fine, and the third one wore out its welcome. The fourth one is some ways might be better than Part 3, but if I never really care what's going on, that can't really be true.

The plot of this centers around several powers that be pursuing the famed Fountain of Youth. Jack's still wanted for various charges, but now Barbosa (Rush) is working for the crown in seeking to obtain the fountain before those dreaded Spanish can get there. You also have the villainous Blackbeard (McShane) looking for it.

There's a mild romantic subplot between a missionary and a mermaid. Far less screen-time than if it'd been Bloom & Knightly, and the movie's better for it.

This made a billion dollars worldwide, so a fifth Pirates movie is inevitable. I'll probably treat that one the way I've treated this one. If I see it, I'll wait for the DVD.

Puss in Boots #1 again

For the weekend of Nov. 4-6.

1. Puss in Boots - $33.04 million ($75.51) - 2 wks (DW) -3.1%
. . . 3963 screens / $8336 per screen
2. Tower Heist - $25.08 - 1 wk (U)
. . . 3367 / $7450
3. A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas - $13.07 - 1 wk (WB)
. . . 2875 / $4544
4. Paranormal Activity 3 - $8.53 ($95.31) - 3 wks (Par) -53%
. . . 3286 / $2594
5. In Time - $7.7 ($24.21) - 2 wks (Fox) -36.1%
. . . 3127 / $2462
6. Footloose - $4.55 ($44.8) - 4 wks (Par) -17.3%
. . . 2811 / $1619
7. Real Steel - $3.41 ($78.75) - 5 wks (BV) -28.8%
. . . 2438 / $1397
8. The Rum Diary - $2.99 ($10.42) - 2 wks (FD) -41.8%
. . . 2292 / $1303
9. The Ides of March - $2 ($36.8) - 5 wks (Sony) -28.7%
. . . 1391 / $1438
10. Moneyball - $1.9 ($70.33) - 7 wks (Sony) -20.4%
. . . 1278 / $1487

An incredible second-week hold for DreamWorks's Puss in Boots helped it win the weekend.

Tower Heist, meanwhile, was a surprise underperformance. Maybe the Ben Stiller-Eddie Murphy teaming would've been a bigger deal eight years ago, but Universal execs still have to be scratching their heads.

The third Harold & Kumar movie opened lower than their last one.

Opens Friday
JACK & JILL with Adam Sandler, Katie Holmes, Al Pacino and Dana Carvey.
IMMORTALS with Henry Cavill, Mickey Rourke, Stephen Dorff and Freida Pinto.

Benecio Del Toro as Star Trek villain

Word has it JJ Abrams is set to offer Benecio Del Toro (The Wolfman, Traffic) the villain role in his next Star Trek movie. Details are kept under wraps, naturally, but Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), McCoy (Karl Urban), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho) and Chekhov (Anton Yelchin) are all expected to return.

Real Steel - Movie Review

***

Starring Hugh Jackman, Dakota Goyo, Evangeline Lilly, Anthony Mackie, Kevin Durand, Hope Davis and James Rebhorn. Directed by Shawn Levy.

Take a Wallace Beery movie, mix it in with some Stallone (primarily Rocky and Over the Top), and add fighting robots, and you've got Real Steel.

This movie works better than maybe it deserves to, but there's good reason for that. While, yes, it's ultimately about fighting robots, movies needs to have characters we care about, and the center of this movie is really about a father reconnecting with the son he abandoned as a baby.

Hugh Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, a former pro-boxer who turned to robot-boxing after the human sport died off. He's a hustler though, a man at the end of his rope due to mounting debt and an inability to win. Then he learns his former girlfriend is dead, and their son, whom he hadn't seen since he was a baby, is about to get adopted by his girlfriend's sister. Charlie sees an opportunity. The uncle involved is rich, so Charlie gets a payoff. In return, he'll watch the boy for the summer while the aunt and uncle vacation in Italy for two months.

Charlie's not quick to grow sentimental, nor is the boy Max (played impressively by Dakota Goyo) willing to grant immediate forgiveness for Charlie's eleven years of absense. One day while scavenging through a junkyard they find Atom, a sparring robot that is still in decent shape. The kid believes he can fix him up to be a good fighter, and there may or may not be a little advanced A.I. in there. The movie's coy about it, and that's fine.

The father/son story shifts to an underdog story, as the little robot manages to beat better, newer models thanks to his toughness and programming. The movie carried me along and made me care, even if the third act hits all the emotional buttons like a programmer. Its old-fashioned corniness still won me over.

Elijah as Maniac, RIP Andy Rooney, etc.

- Elijah Wood (Sin City) and Nora Arnezeder (Safe House) will star in a remake of the 1980 slasher film Maniac, to be directed by Franck Khalfoun (P2). Wood will play Frank, a serial killer who feels like he get a little bit of revenge on his abusive mother every time he kills a woman.

- Casting rumors: Kit Harington and Richard Madden, both of HBO's Game of Thrones, are reading for Arthur in Arthur & Lancelot. Joel Kinnamen (AMC's The Killing) is up for Lancelot. Meanwhile Liam Hemsworth (The Hunger Games), Aaron Paul (AMC's Breaking Bad), and Ben Foster (The Mechanic) are up for the role of Bruce Willis's son in Die Hard 5.

- Longtime 60 Minutes contributor Andy Rooney has died at age 92, just five weeks after his retirement.

Jennifer Lopez as Carmen Sandiego?

- Jennifer Lopez will produce and possibly star in a big-screen live-action version of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego.

- Anthony LaPaglia, Misty Upham and RZA are the latest to join Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. They join Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz, Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dennis Christopher, Don Johnson, Laura Cayouette and Gerald McRaney.

- Everyone wants Gary Oldman. (They should; he's one of the best.) Warner Bros. wants him to play The Colonel in the live-action remake of Akira, to star Garrett Hedlund (Tron Legacy). They also want him to play Merlin in their planned Arthur & Lancelot movie. Oldman has Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opening later this year (for which he's getting Oscar buzz) and The Wettest County in the World, starring Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy, and then he'll be in The Dark Knight Rises this summer.

Super - DVD Review

**

Starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon, Gregg Henry, Michael Rooker, Linda Cardinelli and Nathan Fillion.
Directed by James Gunn.


"Shut up, crime!"

This lower-budget riff on ordinary people becoming superheroes has the misfortune of coming out the year after Kick-Ass. K.A. was slicker and more comic-booky, and while this one has its own goofy charms, and it goes to darker places, it's undone by its happy-face epilogue, and the fact that it's just not that funny.

Rainn Wilson (The Rocker) plays Frank, a loser with a hot wife (Liv Tyler) who loses her to the local drug-dealer (Kevin Bacon). When watching a superhero show on a Christian channel, Frank gets inspired to become a vigilante. This catches the eye of a local comic-book girl (Ellen Page).

Frank transforms into the Crimson Bolt. His weapon of choice - a wrench. He beats on thieves, pedophiles, and guys who butt in line.

The concept has promise, but Frank's not a very interesting protagonist. Maybe part of it is Rainn Wilson just isn't a leading man. There's also nothing believable about Ellen Page's character, who makes herself his sidekick Boltie and practically rapes him in one scene. Yes, Ellen Page forces herself on Rainn Wilson. In what bizarro universe...?!

Nathan Fillion's small role's the funniest thing in the movie.

The Tree of Life - DVD Review

Starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken and Sean Penn.
Directed by Terrence Malick.

"THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!"

There is no doubt Malick is a master of visual poetry. But 138 minutes of montages and scene fades doth not a movie make.

This very personal, ambitious work calls to mind Stanley Kubrick's 2001 as its closest comparison, but even Stanley got around to telling a story. Here we swim through a cubist flipbook of life for the three O'Brien boys in small-town 1950's Texas. Brad Pitt plays the domineering father; Jessica Chastain the angelic mother.

Malick shows his hand in the first few minutes. We gets beautiful shots of birds, wind, trees, blades of grass, shadows, children running, a woman smiling, whispered voice-overs, and it keeps going and going... I was grateful when it spins off into a 20-minute sequence of the Earth being formed, through the dinosaur age, until it all comes back to the O'Brien family. We get a couple scene of the oldest boy grown up, played by Sean Penn, but it's really more of a cameo.

I know of Malick's tendencies and I was braced for a non-linear story, ready for an artist to expose his palette. But this is from an artist who knows he's an artist, who acts and thinks like an artist, and if we don't get it, well, I guess we're too bourgeois. He knows what story he's telling, but he makes it inscrutable. There are lasting images and impressions, and yes, he is very talented. But it's not as profound as he thinks it is, and large sections of it are boring. That is its ultimate crime. I wanted it to wash over me, but after a while, when it became clear this was all Malick had up his sleeve, it was laborious. Gorgeous shot after gorgeous shot, and yet, what is the sum of these parts?

I wanted to love this movie, to get swept up by it, but would it kill the director to just let two characters have a conversation, to have something happen and then have the next scene be the reaction to what just happened? It's the longest 138-minute movie I've ever seen.

CBS's Survivor - TV Review

Every season, one tribe never seems to learn the lesson. Keep your team happy. When you have clear division, you have to expect bottom-of-the-totem-pole members to flip. Cochran's been on the block the whole game; why wouldn't they expect him to flip?
I've been impressed with Coach's play this time around vs. Ozzy. Ozzy's cockiness will be his undoing; unless of course he just wins immunity the rest of the way. When the vote was revealed, and Jim called Cochran a coward, all that did cement to Coach's tribe that yeah, Cochran had been mistreated the whole time. I'm hoping now that it's happened, Cochran brings Dawn along.

Coach is in a pretty good position. I expect Jim, Ozzy and Whitney to be the next three to go, but I can also see Jim convincing some people to go ahead and get rid of Cochran since he can't be trusted.

ABC's Man Up! - TV Review

Could barely get through one episode. It's about three "men" but I believe the title is referring to what these three neutered man-children should do. Dan Fogler is the worst offender with his obnoxious overacting.  It's from Christopher Moynihan, who tends to co-star in his shows, but I thought his 100 Questions was funnier by comparison.  In a just universe, this will die an ignominious death, and Cougar Town will return to the airwaves that much sooner.

The Perfect Host - DVD Review

**1/2
Starring David Hyde Pierce, Clayne Crawford, Nathaniel Parker and Helen Reddy.
Directed by Nick Tomnay.

I give the two leads credit for keeping this movie as interesting as long as they do. It's a twisty, turny affair, a screenplay exercise disguished as a film, but I was on board before the whole thing collapsed under its own Shyamalanness.

Clayne Crawford plays John Taylor, a man who's just robbed a bank and needs a place to hide out. He finds Warwick Wilson (David Hyde Pierce), a lonely single man about to throw a dinner party. Warwick buys John's cover story at first, that they share a mutual friend. But when his thin story falls apart, John takes Warwick hostage. Where it goes from there is a fun turn of events. For a while.

I liked Pierce doing everything he could to make Warwick surprising and yet make sense. By the end, that's impossible, but nice try.

P.S. Yes, that IS Helen Reddy ("I Am Woman") as Warwick's nosy neighbor.

New on DVD this week:

Cars 2

Water for Elephants

Random Movie Stuff - 9/1/11

- Albert Finney has joined the cast of the latest James Bond movie. Sam Mendes (American Beauty) will direct, and it stars Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem and Ralph Fiennes.

- Steve Buscemi's in talks to join Jim Carrey and Steve Carell in Burt Wonderstone. Buscemi would play Anton, partner to magician Burt Wonderstone (Carell) who decides to quit. This spins Burt into a crisis, and he must also deal with a rival magician (Carrey) out to dethrone him.

- Octavia Spencer (The Help) has joined the cast of (formerly titled) Lamb of God. It's the directorial debut for screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno), starring Julianne Hough (Footloose) as a conservative religious woman who loses her faith after a plane crash. She decides to move to las Vegas and live a life of sin, but in so doing, regains her faith. Russell Brand (arthur) co-stars.

- Ryan Gosling will star in Lawless, the next film from director Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life). It'll reunite Golsing with his Notebook co-star Rachel McAdams, as well as Cate Blanchett, Javier Bardem, Rooney Mara and Ben Affleck.

Red State - DVD Review

** 3/4

Starring Michael Parks, Michael Angarano, John Goodman, Melissa Leo, Kyle Gallner, Stephen Root, Kerry Blisse, Kevin Pollak, Kevin Alejandro and Nicholas Braun. Directed by Kevin Smith.

If only Kevin Smith hadn't lost his mind a bit there after the debacle known as Cop Out. Smith was one of those seemingly break-out writer-directors of the 1990's with Clerks, but he's never really grown up and stretched himself. Until now.

Having said that, it's an imperfect double-feature of a movie. The first half feels like a horror movie, with horny teens kindapped by bloodthirsty fanatics, but the second half turns into a siege picture, with the ATF surrounding the compound. First half in House of 1000 Corpses, second half is Waco: The Untold Story.

At the center is pastor Abin Cooper (Michael Parks), a fanatic mixed between Fred Phelps and the ghoul from Poltergeist II. He protests funerals of gays and believes the majority of Earth is going to hell, but he also believes that killing sinners is godly. Three teens answering a prostitute's ad learn this the hard way.

Parks gives an oily, serpentine performance as the mellifluous preacher. In fact, several cast members stand out. And Smith stands out. For the most part it doesn't sound like his writing or look like his directing. He's stretched himself here in new and interesting ways. It may be a flawed thriller where Smith seems to be trying to score points with certain demographics, but he has me genuinely interested in what he might try next.

ABC's Pan Am - TV Review

I watched the first two episodes, and so did many others, but like me, they bailed. Enjoyable, fizzy, not enough to crack my regular viewing rotation. Last week it had less than 6 million viewers with a 1.8 in the 18-49 demo. Considering it debuted to over 10 million viewers, that's not a good sign for its longevity. Sure its worst episode had more viewers than the best episode of AMC's Mad Men, but that's the price of network TV. It's fun to see Christina Ricci and Kelli Garner work it in period attire, and have a Sinatra tune take us out at the end of the episode. Part of me wishes the show had legs as long as some of its stewardesses, but it doesn't look like the nostalgic escapism has kept enough people.