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Archive for the tag “2012”

12 May 2013
2 Comments

Parental Guidance

Review No. 471

“Parental Guidance” not suggested.

parental_guidance

DIRECTED BY ANDY FICKMAN. WRITTEN BY LISA ADDARIO AND JOE SYRACUSE. STARRING BILLY CRYSTAL (ARTIE DECKER), BETTE MIDLER (DIANE DECKER), MARISA TOMEI (ALICE SIMMONS), TOM EVERETT SCOTT (PHIL SIMMONS), BAILEE MADISON (HARPER SIMMONS), KYLE HARRISON BREITKOPF (BARKER SIMMONS), AND JOSHUA RUSH (TURNER SIMMONS). ALSO STARRING GEDDE WATANABE, CADE JONES, MAVRICK MORENO, MADISON LINTZ, AND KARAN KENDRICK. FEATURING CAMEOS FROM TONY HAWK AND STEVE LEVY. DISTRIBUTED BY 20TH CENTURY FOX ON DECEMBER 25, 2012. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 1 HOUR, 45 MINUTES. RATED PG BY THE MPAA, FOR SOME RUDE HUMOR.

PARENTAL GUIDANCE WAS WATCHED ON MAY 3, 2013.

“My granddaughter’s birth has made me want to create things she will love.” –Billy Crystal

It’s amazing that I could predict how Parental Guidance would end as soon as it had begun.  Actually, scratch that.  If this were a movie that showed a modicum of decency toward a genuine movie lover, then to predict the ending would be impressive.  But it’s just common knowledge here.  Parental Guidance isn’t as far as you can get from original, but aside from a few minor touches, it recycles gags that seem to have gotten old fast.  The film is only as unpredictable as the sight of birds in the early morning.

I’ve been accused of being too generous to movies, but perhaps to Parental Guidance, I just need to be a bit more generous.  Movies like this don’t care about plot or pacing.  They don’t care how suddenly their characters change, because we won’t notice.  Maybe we will, but we won’t care.  Movies like this are the PG equivalent of a standup routine.  You try and “make ‘em laugh.”  Nothing else.  Just a joke.  Another joke.  And another joke.  Maybe a quick gross-out scene right when the under-eight audience is about to fall asleep.  Don’t want the comedy to be too boring.

And that’s exactly the problem with Parental Guidance.  It can’t make us laugh very easily.  You can see where it’s going, for sure.  You know what jokes it’s trying to tell; they just don’t come out right in delivery.  Sure, kids will laugh at this, but there’s several other movies that would treat them to much harder laughs.  The juvenile humor is evened out rather noticeably with Billy Crystal’s “adult humor.”  Fortunately, he steals the better half of his scenes (mind you, he features in a main role).  As for the other half, unfortunately, the writing of Lisa Addario and Joe Syracuse (no, I hadn’t heard of them either) manages to fail even an old-school genius like Crystal.  And unfortunately, there’s no kid who will get his jokes.

Parental Guidance is a substandard family comedy.  You take two parents that don’t look to us like they’d be strict, and apparently they’re Household Hitlers.  They don’t let their kids do anything but what is (hypothetically) good for them.  That includes not meeting their grandparents.  And it’s not until they do meet their grandparents that they realize that they’ve been brainwashed into the rule of their parents, and that their parents realize how totalitarian their rule is.  Seeing from how the movie plays out, you can stop questioning my level of exaggeration.  The movie adopts a great deal of caricature into its namesake.  As you would expect, results are both to success and failure.  But this story is so common.  You could do a two-minute Google search for something that takes the caricature to hilarious extremes.  And I guarantee, you’d find not one, but at least ten to your satisfaction.

C

Posted in Comedy, Family, [Film Reviews] and tagged
09 May 2013
6 Comments

Amour

Review No. 468

It’s difficult not to love “Amour”.

amour

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY MICHAEL HANEKE. STARRING JEAN-LOUIS TRINTIGNANT (GEORGES LAURENT), EMMANUELLE RIVA (ANNE LAURENT), AND ISABELLE HUPPERT (EVA LAURENT). ALSO STARRING ALEXANDRE THARAUD, CAROLE FRANCK, DAMIEN JOUILLEROT, DINARA DROUKAROVA, JEAN-MICHEL MONROC, LAURENT CAPELLUTO, RAMÓN AGIRRE, RITA BLANCO, SUZANNE SCHMIDT, WALID AFKIR, AND WILLIAM SHIMELL. DISTRIBUTED BY SONY PICTURES CLASSICS ON DECEMBER 19, 2012. PRODUCED IN FRENCH BY AUSTRIA, FRANCE, AND GERMANY. RUNS 2 HOURS, 7 MINUTES. RATED PG-13 BY THE MPAA, FOR MATURE THEMATIC MATERIAL INCLUDING A DISTURBING ACT, AND FOR BRIEF LANGUAGE.

AMOUR WAS WATCHED ON APRIL 27, 2013.

“Things will go on as they have done up until now. They’ll go from bad to worse. Things will go on, and then one day it will all be over.” –Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant)

Georges and Anne Laurent are an octogenarian couple living in a Parisian apartment. Both are retired music teachers, and their daughter is abroad. It comes to Georges by surprise one morning when his wife has a silent stroke during breakfast. He tries to live a normal life with her, particularly because she has a fear of being hospitalized, but upon returning from a funeral one night, he discovers that Anne has suffered yet another stroke and is now paralyzed down her right side. Georges is now devoting every moment of his life to taking care of his wife at all costs, but it’s not at all easy. His life has taken a sharp turn from nothing but joy, into a world full of concern, stress, and fear.

Similar to many other films from Austrian director Michael Haneke, it has both visual and audial simplicity as a core technique, and more often than not, it’s used to shocking, suspenseful effect. Simplicity is a beautiful quality. Amour tells a simple story and handles it even more simply: Cinematography is often limited to a few basic shots per scene. Dialogue seems as harmlessly unedited as a casual conversation. A quiet atmosphere is maintained, and as the story progresses, it dissolves from serenity to pure horror.

What’s best rendered in all this is the irony that this is a film about music teachers, yet the closest thing we experience to a soundtrack is a few appearances of “Bagatelles in G minor”. We hear it in the beginning to illustrate the film’s mood, and several times afterward for the same, unsettling effect.

Amour is a film that feels authentic because more than 90% of it is set within the confines of the apartment. Even in a movie theater, it’s difficult not to feel claustrophobic at times. Often times, I would wince as the camera depicted the tiny apartment’s narrow halls or the short distance between the kitchen table and the sink. At other times, you’re as scared as the loving Georges is. There’s a perfect example directly at the midpoint: a nightmare sequence. At the cinema, the scene evoked the sorts of screams you’d expect from a horror movie.

I have to say, I enjoyed the tense build-up that was created in this uneasy atmosphere, even if the “payoff” for the suspense was underworked. Granted, the climactic shock factor was appreciated by many audiences, but to the eyes of this critic, you couldn’t be any more impulsive in trying to subvert an audience’s expectations. But these are merely the climactic scenes, and perhaps the only apparent misstep the film takes. Those moments are redeemed entirely in the ending. The final ten minutes conclude the film with mesmerizing depth and a few creative twists on traditional symbolism. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say it’s one of the most thought-provoking conclusions since Citizen Kane.

A

TOMORROW, ON CINEMANIAC REVIEWS…

Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

Posted in Drama, Romance, [Film Reviews] and tagged ,
09 May 2013
6 Comments

The Intouchables

Review No. 467

The memories, the smiles “The Intouchables” left me with are “intouchable.”

intouchables

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY OLIVIER NAKACHE AND ÉRIC TOLEDANO. STARRING FRANÇOIS CLUZET (PHILIPPE) AND OMAR SY (DRISS). ALSO STARRING ABSA DIALOU TOURE, ALBA GAÏA KRAGHEDE BELLUGI, ANNE LE NY, AUDREY FLEUROT, CHRISTIAN AMERI, CLOTILDE MOLLET, CYRIL MENDY, GRÉGOIRE OESTERMANN, MARIE-LAURE DESCOUREAUX, AND SALIMATA KAMATE. DISTRIBUTED BY THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY ON MAY 25, 2012. PRODUCED IN FRENCH BY FRANCE. RUNS 1 HOUR, 53 MINUTES. RATED R BY THE MPAA, FOR LANGUAGE AND SOME DRUG USE.

THE INTOUCHABLES WAS WATCHED ON APRIL 27, 2013.

“This is not just a job anymore.” –Driss (Omar Sy)

As I try and think back to a better time I’ve had at the movies, I feel like I’m subjecting myself to a mental whipping. I watched France’s The Intouchables at a local film festival in late April; one of the festival’s producers prefaced the film by noting that this was one of several films that ended up under the radar last year. Prior to watching the film, this seemed like an indifferent statement. It happens to so many foreign films, for better or for worse, that I just couldn’t help but feel otherwise. But now, I’m curious what dramatic comedy any American would desire to watch instead.

The Intouchables centers on two characters: Driss (Omar Sy) and Philippe (François Cluzet). Driss is a young, African-American male living in a downtown area of France. His family has always hated him, and one day, his involvement in a robbery loses any respect they had for him and exiles him from his household. He needs a job, and he finds himself on a trial period as a caretaker for the middle-aged Philippe (François Cluzet).

Most would think Philippe couldn’t have chosen anybody worse for the job: others interviewed didn’t exactly care for the job, but at least they could sit through an interview without being utterly rude. It’s barely moments after Driss walks into the mansion that he is basking in the upper-class glory; introducing Philippe to the joys of smoking marijuana; taking vigilante action on neighbors who illegally park in front of the mansion; and insisting that the orchestra stop playing Vivaldi so that he can tune his iPod to Earth, Wind & Fire. And yet what Philippe sees in all of this is a heart that no other caretaker could possibly have.

We’ve met the characters in The Intouchables before. This is an “odd couple” movie that doesn’t break any new ground, except for that in sophistication and charm. It feels genuine when the “odd couple” movies we’re used to aren’t the most lavishly told. The Intouchables relies on light, amusing conversations to tell a story about how two polar opposite men can build an unbreakable (and unpredictable) bond with each other. It’s a rather touching story, yet at the same time, a hilarious one. Yes, it’s formulaic; yes, its characters are slight caricatures; and yes, those are both, in all technicality, “flaws.” But I hate to smack that word down on this film. It doesn’t aim for perfection, but it does aim to be a memorable artwork. And it is, no matter how many “odd couple” flicks you’ve seen.

A MINUS

STAY TUNED FOR MY “AMOUR” REVIEW @4:30!

Posted in Biography, Comedy, Drama, [Film Reviews] and tagged ,
05 May 2013
12 Comments

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Review No. 464

Filthy hobbitses, it tricked us into believing we would not enjoy “The Hobbit”! *gollum, gollum*

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DIRECTED BY PETER JACKSON. SCREENPLAY BY FRAN WALSH, PHILIPPA BOYENS, JACKSON, AND GUILLERMO DEL TORO. BASED ON “THE HOBBIT, OR THERE AND BACK AGAIN” BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN. STARRING IAN MCKELLEN (GANDALF THE GREY), MARTIN FREEMAN (BILBO BAGGINS), RICHARD ARMITAGE (THORIN OAKENSHIELD), ANDY SERKIS (GOLLUM), AND BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH (THE NECROMANCER). ALSO STARRING BARRY HUMPHRIES, CATE BLANCHETT, CHRISTOPHER LEE, ELIJAH WOOD, GRAHAM MCTAVISH, HUGO WEAVING, IAN HOLM, JAMES NESBITT, KEN STOTT, LEE PACE, MANU BENNETT, AND SYLVESTER MCCOY. DISTRIBUTED BY WARNER BROS. PICTURES ON DECEMBER 14, 2012. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY NEW ZEALAND, THE UNITED KINGDOM, AND THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 2 HOURS, 49 MINUTES. RATED PG-13 BY THE MPAA, FOR EXTENDED SEQUENCES OF INTENSE FANTASY ACTION VIOLENCE, AND FRIGHTENING IMAGES.

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY WAS WATCHED ON APRIL 20, 2013.

“Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail never clinking.”

I am not a Lord of the Rings fan. Yes, I’ve read the Tolkien works and seen each of Peter Jackson’s film transformations. Although I absolutely love the classic world J.R.R. Tolkien created in print, I must say that I find the initial film trilogy overrated. And if there’s one movie that transforms Tolkien’s upbeat magic to the silver screen with majestic attitude, it’s this prequel. You’d have to be blind to deny the grandeur that skyrockets to unbelievable heights. I wish I hadn’t so strongly refused to see it in theaters, come to think of it.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is for The Lord of the Rings, what The Phantom Menace was for Star Wars, what TV’s Bates Motel is for Psycho, et cetera. It’s more childlike than the original story, much less stern, much more colorful. The story is as simple as pitching the original in a past generation. In The Fellowship of the Ring–2001′s opening act to the LOTR trilogy–Frodo Baggins set out on a quest for the One Ring. In An Unexpected Journey, Bilbo Baggins sets out on a quest where he discovers the One Ring.

The movie entertains, but it also drags. Each of the three Lord of the Rings films was based on a book longer than J.R.R. Tolkien’s prelude installment–The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. An Unexpected Journey is based on merely the first third of this work, and it runs almost three hours. You can forget what I said about wishing I’d seen it at the cinema. The tale is exquisite, but it can be overly elaborate. It’s just too easy to get distracted from the story so that you can start wondering when you won’t have to feel so numb in the ass. Whereas long epics such as Titanic completely numbed away my ass at the theater, but I was too involved to notice.

I must applaud the cast for their excellence. The Lord of the Rings has always been cheesy, but in a way that takes a purist approach to high fantasy. We hear an elongated “No!” in these movies and it’s different than hearing Daniel Day-Lewis say it. The vast majority of the cast doesn’t see a limit to having fun with such clichés. Specifically, I applaud Andy Serkis for his vocal work as Gollum. The Hobbit is a mostly forgettable experience, but I don’t think I’ll ever tear away from the famous “riddles” scene. Serkis nailed it in the rare, outstanding role that makes one wish the Oscars honored voice acting.

So here’s a riddle for you:

It minuses but does not subtract.
It is yellow but it does not shine on the act.
It does not speak strictly to one pole,
The many words above it make it whole.

[The answer to the riddle is the letter grade below.]

B MINUS

TOMORROW, ON CINEMANIAC REVIEWS…

The Fugitive

Posted in Epic, Family, Fantasy, [Film Reviews] and tagged
09 Apr 2013
4 Comments

Paranormal Activity 4

Review No. 453

By now, it’s so predictable, they may as well start calling it “Normal Activity”.


Directed by: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
Screenplay by: Christopher Landon
Story by: Chad Feehan
Alex Nelson: Kathryn Newton
Ben: Matt Shively
Wyatt Nelson: Aiden Lovekamp
Robbie: Brady Allen
Doug Nelson: Stephen Dunham
Holly Nelson: Alexondra Lee
Katie: Katie Featherston

Distributed by Paramount Pictures on October 19, 2012. Produced in English by the United States. Runs 88 mins. Rated R by the MPAA–profanity, infrequent violence.

Paranormal Activity 4 was watched on March 24, 2013.

“Please don’t hurt me!” –Alex (Kathryn Newton)

As I remember it, the first in the Paranormal Activity series was creative. Oren Peli, who traced fear of even tame movies such as Ghostbusters back to his childhood, directed and photographed the film in his own home on a $15,000 budget, most of which was toward the camera and household refurbishment. The cinematography was used uniquely–and, for many, effectively–to suggest that you are the target of terror as you sleep in your own house. Most impressively, the entire script was ad libbed, and it all feels more real that way.

By the fourth in the series, this innovative layout has become a structure. I had to wonder if these people were ad libbing now, and if so, I’m scared. Funny how that’s all that scared me, that in a $5 million budget, no one could set a penny aside for acting lessons. Wait a moment. Time for your daily mind-blower: There was a writer. So there was a screenplay. It’s so formulaic, uninspired, and effortless that if you’ve seen any horror movie, you’ll be too bored to scream, or to laugh at the gimmicks (unfortunately, there’s more of the latter).

We’re shown a montage of the last few entries during the opening sequences. And guess what? It ends with a black and white title card that says something like, “Katie and Hunter’s whereabouts remain unknown.” You’ve all seen this card since the second movie, and in the first movie, you saw it with just Katie’s name. Not being able to expect it is like being surprised when John McClane repeats his one-liner in a Die Hard movie; or when Obi-Wan Kenobi says, “May the Force be with you,” in a Star Wars movie; or when Arnold Schwarzenegger foreshadows his return in…well, any movie.

And that’s not all. The film opens as if nothing is wrong. Then, a strange little boy comes over every day to play with Katie’s neighbors (remember, her whereabouts remain unknown, and we are to assume that the police gave up on the investigation after they found her boyfriend lying dead in his own house). And coincidences start happen. But these characters are stupid, as is usual for a horror movie with an equal IQ. They get perpetually paranoid when they hear even a thump. It doesn’t need to be loud; they could be in the front hall, hear a thump and scream, not caring to check and see if they’ve gotten a package from UPS or something of that utterly common nature. Come on. Are you not human? Or are you just plain stupid?

It’s mainly the adolescent girl, Alex. The garage door opens and she hyperventilates. You’re home alone, kid. Ever consider that, uhh, it’s your parents? And not a demon? She’s constantly paranoid, and it’s not until the last few minutes that we can’t really say this “demon” stuff is in her head. Sometimes it’s funny, and sometimes it’s just downright annoying. But this is a horror movie, which should imply “scary.” Most parents would notice their daughter going crazy and schedule an appointment with doctor. They would not tell her time and again that she’s delusional. Most people would notice the faucet’s running and go to turn it off, not wake up and move to a different sleeping position. But god, was water wasted. You know, children are starving in Africa. They could use that water. And a movie has gone to waste, too. When this takes over the box office while better movies (Argo, anyone? Looper?) are also out, you’re being starved of your entertainment.

Anyway, back to the story. Forgot it was there.

Of course, these aren’t coincidences after all. Objects start floating. Wow I’m so scared. A girl starts floating over top her bed. Yes, that was in The Exorcist, as well, just shot at a different angle. And a little boy finds an imaginary friend named Toby, just as Danny did in The Shining (that one was Tony with an ‘n’ though). Make no mistake, this little boy rides around the kitchen in his tricycle. Sound familiar?

My biggest confusion with PA4 was that we’re supposed to believe this is “found footage,” perhaps by dismissing the clear notion that these home video cameras have been placed where they wouldn’t stand on their own, and nobody seems to know or really care that they’re on. Did you really leave the Kinect camera on all night, just because you turned it on and thought it had cool quality, not notice it in the morning, and repeat that same thing for about two weeks? Damn you’re stupid. Did you really forget to log your computer off…of a video chat? Every night? I don’t think so.

I’m glad that at the very least, I could laugh at PA4 for some time. “Some time” being up until the lame climactic moments. Come on now. I thought I would have been saying this with regard to the previous effort, but I ended up enjoying that thin, somewhat cheating story for what it was. One lazy effort like this, something that fails all my “horror movie reflexes,” and my cup runneth over.

D

TOMORROW, ON CINEMANIAC REVIEWS…

Bottle Rocket

Posted in Horror, [Film Reviews] and tagged
28 Mar 2013
4 Comments

Undefeated

Review No. 443

“Undefeated”–and yet not victorious, either.

undefeated_xxlg

Directed & Edited by: Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin

Distributed by the Weinstein Company on February 17, 2012. Produced in English by the United States. Runs 113 mins. Rated PG-13 by the MPAA–infrequent language.

Undefeated was watched on March 4, 2013.

“Football doesn’t build character, it reveals character!” –Marv Levy

There’s a scene in the setup of Undefeated that represents the entire rest of the film. A roomful of lower class football players is asked two questions: Whose parents have gone to college? Not one hand is raised. Who has a relative that has been or is currently incarcerated? Almost every hand goes up. The scene is very moving and presents the sad mood of the documentary. But I couldn’t help but wonder how many movies I’d seen with similar moments.

Undefeated is the story of several seniors at Manassas High School. For their entire lives, these students have been some of the most unruly, impoverished, uneducated, undisciplined, and aggressive youngsters in all of Tennessee. For six years, they’ve been training under perhaps the most volatile coach imaginable, in order to become the first class in the school’s existence that will win a football championship.

I know this is a documentary, but I felt it was entirely predictable. The film’s biggest mistake parallels that of most sports dramas. It’s pretty much inevitable that the Manassas Tigers will win, despite their huge underdog status. However, the underdog status is what keeps our attention.

Another huge misstep I can’t help but whine about is that I felt as though I had come to know the coach more than the team. The coach is starlit in Undefeated, perhaps because of his aggression that motivates the team, but nonetheless, the team deserves recognition and spotlighting for their outrageously prosperous efforts. Some scenes feature them in an unforgettable light. I’m not sure I’ll ever let go of the scene in which humans are compared to turtles, for they try and act tough on the outside when really, they’re only weaklings. I just wish there were more scenes that powerful.

I can’t say Undefeated was a true victory. It’s very flawed and it could have turned out much better. How it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, I’ll never understand. But it’s difficult not to feel intrigued or inspired. Quite frankly, I think that’s all it wanted to achieve.

B MINUS

TOMORROW, ON CINEMANIAC REVIEWS…

Stardust Memories

Posted in Documentary, [Film Reviews] and tagged ,
27 Mar 2013
7 Comments

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2

Review No. 442

Good news: It’s over. Bad news: See below.

twilight_saga_breaking_dawn__part_two_ver7_xlg-690x1024

Directed by: Bill Condon
Screenplay by: Melissa Rosenberg and Stephenie Meyer
Based on: “Breaking Dawn” by Stephenie Meyer
Bella Swan: Kristen Stewart
Edward Cullen: Robert Pattinson
Jacob Black: Taylor Lautner
Also Starring: Ashley Greene, Billy Burke, Christopher Heyerdahl, Dakota Fanning, Elizabeth Reaser, Jackson Rathbone, Jamie Campbell Bower, Kellan Lutz, Mackenzie Foy, Maggie Grace, Michael Sheen, Nikki Reed, Peter Facinelli

Distributed by Summit Entertainment on November 16, 2012. Produced in English by the United States. Runs 115 mins. Rated PG-13 by the MPAA–violence, infrequent sexual situations, infrequent/brief nudity.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 was watched on March 3, 2013.

“About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him-and I didn’t know how potent that part might be-that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.” –Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

The good news: the Twilight saga has earned its stars enough dough to retire right now. That means, perhaps these ex-vampires and ex-werewolves can stop lazily bleeding/drooling over Hollywood. That means, maybe the solitude of their own mansions would delight them just as much as their absence from the silver screen would delight us. The bad news: they won’t retire. Sorry to burst your bubble.

The idea of splitting Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn into two separate films seemed like a cash grab upon my viewing of Part 1, back in 2011. It’s interesting, for lack of a better word, to think that no one in the film industry would pick up the novel itself and realize how uneventfully everything plays out. It’s just an egregious soap opera with three back-to-back narrations. Whereas the first three books were huge elaborations on love, this one has three events, which can be labelled just as shallowly as they are explained/rambled about: marriage, pregnancy, protecting the offspring. The entire novel, as I recall it, could fit well into a ninety-minute feature film. But these producers, they just figure, it’s over seven-hundred pages, so why not split it in two? And now the book marks a total of almost four hours onscreen. Bad acting abounds to try and keep you awake, as does a screenwriter who rusts in so much cornball dialogue, it’s almost certain she hates the series.

Part 1 found Edward and Bella newlywed and unable to take their hands off each other. The interspecies mating (that is, vampire-to-human) causes Bella to become pregnant with a half-human-half-vampire breed. And now he must save her from some sort of strange, possessive, vampiric STD she has acquired. And that’s all there really is to any sort of plot.

In Part 2, Bella is a “newborn,” or a being who has recently endured a transformation from human to vampire. That’s all I can really say of the story, if there was one. Oh yeah, and Bella watches her baby Renesmée mature rapidly, as the Volturi try and kidnap the child.

Breaking Dawn – Part 2 is, under my impression, one of the most elongated ways to say “Life goes on.” Part 1 came so close to reaching the two-hour mark, which all of its predecessors had significantly succeeded.

Just on the way to getting there, Part 2 dies hard. The movie ends up with 115 minutes to use against its innocent audience. A disambiguation of this record short length brings several useless bits that makes the movie feel twice as long. A two-minute CGI opening credits sequence (which wasn’t that bad, but could have been spared). At least nine minutes of closing credits. A grotesquely extended finale that features a montage for the Twihards (still, I’d estimate about 60-70% of them would still be awake by this point). A routine, twenty-minute battle scene featuring the offings of several characters, if you can follow the hyperkinetic camerawork. And to top it all off, one of the most absurdly angled love scenes since the dreamlike one in Fight Club (which was computer generated, for that matter).

I’m not sure how well this follows the novel, since that has left my memory as well, but from what I’ve heard, there are several additives and alterations. All this delivered by “actors” and “actresses” who, although clearly stupid, know how to carry out one common but unpunished crime: that a typical Hollywood audience is the easiest bank to rob.

Proof: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 warranted the eighth largest opening weekend. During its 101 days plaguing the cinema, it managed to roll in nearly $850 million. That’s a lot of people begging for their money back. Worse, Lincoln opened the same day, and I’m not sure how many of those had time and money to fit in a viewing of that dozen-Oscar nominee.

Visuals aside (why is it that this is Hollywood’s easiest means of waking us all up, yet it’s so damn time-consuming a process?), there are two upsides to this production. One: it’s instantly forgettable. It’s so boring that you often forget you were watching it, and the easiest sequences to think back to are those that evoke laughter. For those who have not acquainted with the saga, there are quite a few.

Two (and this one’s slight!): the film’s producers can finally call themselves award-winners. In fact, I’m not sure why “MOVIE OF THE YEAR” hasn’t been branded across the Blu-Ray design. Probably because it hit home video before winning the Golden Raspberry for Worst Picture. Some films that garner that recognition are truly awful but easy to enjoy for their guilty pleasure. Not here. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, like its title, is long, plodding, and a waste of time to try and finish.

D MINUS

TOMORROW, ON CINEMANIAC REVIEWS…

Undefeated

Posted in Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Romance, [Film Reviews] and tagged
22 Mar 2013
8 Comments

One for the Money

Day Twelve of the Two-Week Torturefest

Ermahgerd. “One for the Money” was, like, totes awful.

one_for_the_money

Directed by: Julie Anne Robinson
Screenplay by: Liz Brixius and Stacy Sherman & Karen Ray and Karen McCullah Lutz
Based on: “One for the Money” by Janet Evanovich
Stephanie Plum: Katherine Heigl
Joe Morelli: Jason O’Mara
Ricardo “Ranger” Carlos Manoso: Daniel Sunjata
Jimmy Alpha: John Leguizamo
Lula: Sherri Shepherd
Grandma Mazur: Debbie Reynolds
Also Starring: Adam Paul, Ana Reeder, Annie Parisse, Danny Mastrogiorgio, Debra Monk, Fisher Stevens, Gavin-Keith Umeh, Leonardo Nam, Louis Mustillo, Nate Mooney, Patrick Fischler, Ryan Michelle Bathe

Distributed by Lionsgate on January 27, 2012. Produced in English by the United States. Runs 91 mins. Rated PG-13 by the MPAA–violence, sexual situations, mild language, infrequent drug use, infrequent/brief nudity.

One for the Money was watched on February 22, 2013.

“An obnoxious way to say ‘Oh, My God’ with strong emphasis on the R sounds. Typically followed by other words with emphasis on the R sounds.”
–definition of “ermahgerd” from urbandictionary.com

What I’ve felt…what I’ve known…never shined through in what I’ve shown. Never free…never me…so I dub thee unforgiven. Wait a moment, I’m done watching? It’s about time I can stop painfully choking out Metallica at the sight of Katherine Heigl in a post-lobotomy outfit.

I mean, ermahgerd. So the title sequence, ya know, it was, like, fab. Absolutelay fantabulous, if ya know what I’m sayin’, and kinda like a James Bond movie, right? But after that…(scoff)…ya know, this movie was just, ya know, crap! It sucked! Ya know what I’m sayin’?

I’ve always believed in a firm and rather direct correlation between the qualities of films and their respective characters. Let me give you an example. John Hurt is so memorable in The Elephant Man, yet all we really know about his character is that he’s constantly chastised for his malformations. It’s sad, but essentially, so is the common anti-joke about the little kid who dropped his ice cream because he got hit by a bus. In other words, it’s because of David’s Lynch’s direction, off an equally moving script, that the film manages to remain one of the saddest movies ever made.

Now let’s go to the opposite pole. Why not an Adam Sandler flick, perhaps Just Go with It? The movie is only watchable for its shallow sense of humor. The main character is a doctor looking for romance, and that’s about it. We hear and visualize his emotions as superficial thoughts (and aptly enough, they’re a bit illegible).

Notice that I’m reviewing a film called One for the Money. If you haven’t heard of it, I’d love to be living in your shoes, but unfortunately, I went as far as watching it. It sounds like someone with a speech impediment saying “run for the money,” and quite honestly, that’s the best I can grab from it, because otherwise it fails to make sense of itself. Wait, that one doesn’t even make sense either, because the movie failed to break even at the box office.

Ermahgerd. We’ve finally got smart moviegoers, and they were willing to give up a collective $36 million for somethin’ else.

My theory, again, is of a “firm and rather direct correlation between the qualities of films and their respective characters.” I think One for the Money rehashes a new term that the two leads in The Producers came oh-so-close to: “success from failure.” It succeeds in one area, which is disproving my theory, but that’s only because “quality” is an irrelevant term here.

If you look at the poster, you’d think this is “one of those stupid, predictable chick flicks,” and what have you. Stupid, indeed, but predictable, no. The plot is so insanely bipolar, it’s almost scary. How it will end is painfully unpredictable (not that anyone with a sense of decency would want to take a guess in the first place), let alone its next action. Stephanie Plum (Katherine Heigl) sits down at dinner one night. She’s failed, among several other things, to trust men ever since she filed for divorce, and she wouldn’t know how to resist an elongated, telenovela-esque, spit-swapping session, regardless if it’s with Bradley Cooper or Jeffrey Dahmer.

Ermahgerd. Just go with Bradley Cooper. For the love of God.

And now, Stephanie decides to tell her mother that she’s unemployed, and has been for six months. She realizes that she needs a job, so she becomes a bounty hunter. Guess who she hunts down? You may be thinking “her husband,” (who else would she truly want to kill?) but, you know, she isn’t thinking, at all. She decides to go after the “hot guy on the block” who wouldn’t commit to a relationship with they made out with each other as seventeen-year-olds at a drunken party.

Now this is supposed to be comedy, and it took five months, but I can suggest true comedy in a matter of five seconds. The woman clearly has no brain, and those unfortunate words are coming from a bleeding-heart feminist. I’d love to see her reflexes go to town with a good old-fashioned face-slapping. We all know it’s a huge movie cliché, so for just a single laugh, I wouldn’t mind bumping my thoughts up a full letter grade per that sudden gag.

Anyway, I digress. Stephanie goes after the one-night stand guy who, despite all the gallons of alcohol, she manages to remember. Realize that “goes after” can be noted with a double meaning. The question throughout the entire film is, Does she want to find him so she can bring him to justice, or so that she can make out with him? Somehow, the plot ends on one of the two (could you guess which one?), but the route to get there is abusively broken. And I’m sure that sometime within the first minute of our long-awaited credits experience, she changes her mind completely and goes with her other option. We just aren’t told, and we shouldn’t have been told any of it.

Ermahgerd. I’d rather take a bath in propane surrounded by a buncha tiki torches, ya know?

F

Alone in the Dark – Uwe Boll, finally!

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Posted in Action, Comedy, Crime, Romance, [Film Reviews] and tagged
27 Feb 2013
5 Comments

Flight

Review No. 419

flight_ver3

The Bottom Line: Cancel it.

Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Written by: John Gatins
William “Whip” Whitaker: Denzel Washington
Hugh Lang: Don Cheadle
Ellen Block: Melissa Leo
Nicole Maggen: Kelly Reilly
Harling Mays: John Goodman
Charlie Anderson: Bruce Greenwood
Also Starring: Brian Geraghty, James Badge Dale, Nadine Velazquez, Peter Gerety, Tamara Tunie

Distributed by Paramount Pictures on November 2, 2012. Poduced in English by the United States. Runs 138 mins. Rated R by the MPAA for drug and alcohol abuse, language, sexuality/nudity and an intense action sequence.

“I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you’re prepared for it.” –Denzel Washington

Flight was watched on February 16, 2013.

Flight went in with an excess of cash and a huge plate to fill; instead, it starved itself. Okay, I mustn’t start off making the film seem so emaciated. It does have two substantial nutrients. One, of course, is Denzel Washington. I’m very pleased and not at all surprised to see that the Academy has nominated him, but let’s not state the obvious. The other nutrient of the film is something I’m quite surprised I hadn’t come across at all since Flight’s November 2012 release. These were the film’s last lines (yes, as in they don’t show until the very end). I’d love to quote them right now, but as I’m at the very beginning of this analysis, to do so is to run the risk of misleading you, dare I say to make you curious.

The look on my face as I watched.

If I shall be straightforward, Flight is a stillborn drama, often times exhaustingly so. I’m fine with protagonists who we’re clearly supposed to hate. Fact: I developed a chronic Facebook aversion after watching The Social Network, and at the same time, the film happens to be one of my favorites of 2010.

My problem with Whip Whitaker, the supposed “hero” in Flight, is that he’s as flat as a pancake. That is until the final moments, when a few contrived moments redemption are forced in ever so suddenly, and in a way that couldn’t be very much less convincing. That Washington portrays Whitaker flawlessly—let alone keeps an audience awake—is about as miraculous as the happenings on which the film centers.

Please allow me to give some constructive criticism to Flight. It’s my theory that what was intended to show through in this overlong profile could be far more successfully channeled in merely the first thirty minutes. It takes significantly more than two hours for Whip Whitaker to have the same epiphany we’d had at the thirty-minute mark. Is this supposed to suggest that alcohol slows your reaction time? Seems so to me, but I digress.

The first thirty minutes are really all we need. We find Whip, a divorced man, waking up in his room with a depressed heroin addict. He no longer has a family because of his cocaine addiction and alcoholism. Whip receives a phone call, reminding him that he is to pilot a plane in the morning. He’s already had two glasses of wine, and when he reports the next morning, there’s severe turbulence. Whip pours himself more alcohol to calm himself.

And then, before he knows it, the plane is falling apart and cannot be taken out of a nosedive. Ultimately, Whip is confirmed a “hero” for his deeds. He and the crew were willing to endure comas from the massive impact upon crashing, so long as the passengers remained safe. Unfortunately, he’s also on trial for manslaughter, given that six lives were lost; it’s not likely that, if and when he makes it to court, the passengers will be so swift to support him, since those who lived were no less than mentally scarred by the barrel roll Whip put the plane into.

This is where Flight should have landed, once and for all. The moral is that alcohol can destroy you right before your eyes; no matter how quickly you recover from your physical wounds, that one mistake you made will always be there to tear you apart. Strangely enough, the rest of the film finds Whip so depressed, so isolated from every possible community that he’s drinking straight from the bottle all the time—exactly the reason for all the catastrophe in his life. At several points throughout the film, Whip denies that the accident was due to his drunkenness, and that it was because the plane was malfunctioning. Though true the claim may be, we just can’t believe him, not because he’s inebriated, but because he’s been almost begging for us to hate him for the entire picture’s length.

Flight is based on a true story. I’m sure many nominal bits were diced here and there, but if the real-world Mr. Whitaker was ever considered a “hero,” this film has done a huge disservice to him. I’m sure Mr. Whitaker was something more than an ordinary, depressed alcoholic, particularly since he has an entire film to his name. It becomes clear early on that the end could be one of two things. To put it shallowly, either Whip is arrested, or he’s proven innocent. Sometimes it’s a good thing when I don’t care how a film will end. That’s not the case with Flight.

The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis, and I know some of his characters by heart. If the real-world Whip Whitaker was hoping to be Hollywoodized as the new Forrest Gump or Marty McFly, chances are he deserved better.

C MINUS

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Posted in Drama, Mystery, Thriller, [Film Reviews] and tagged
26 Feb 2013
4 Comments

Pitch Perfect

Review No. 418

pitch_perfect_xlg

The Bottom Line: Here goes the tiresome pun: a-ca-could not stand this movie!

Directed by: Jason Moore
Screenplay by: Kay Cannon
Based on: “Pitch Perfect” by Mickey Rapkin
Beca Mitchell: Anna Kendrick
Jesse Swanson: Skylar Astin
Aubrey Posen: Anna Camp
Chloe Beale: Brittany Snow
Fat Amy: Rebel Wilson
Benji Applebaum: Ben Platt
Lily Onakuramara: Hana Mae Lee
Cynthia-Rose: Ester Dean
Bumper Allen: Adam DeVine
Stacie Conrad: Alexis Knapp
Luke: Freddie Stroma
Also Starring: Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Elizabeth Banks, Jinhee Joung, John Benjamin Hickey, John Michael Higgins, Utkarsh Ambudkar

Distributed by Universal Pictures on September 28, 2012. Produced in English by the United States. Runs 112 mins. Rated PG-13 by the MPAA for sexual material, language and drug references.

Pitch Perfect was watched on February 13, 2013.

“A cappella with sock puppets? Genius!” –Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson)

Pitch Perfect wants to accumulate any slight notion of its sheer lack of originality—and lock it all up in a straitjacket. It sounds harsh, but I, quite frankly, would easily choose a straitjacket over revisiting this film.

Although the formula is all too obvious for those who know formula by the dictionary definition, this barely manages to evade a “have I seen that before?” (chances are, you have!) from a generic audience.

Pitch Perfect alludes to John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club so many times. It’s only obvious that’s what it’s emulating. We are told from a film geek in the movie something you’ve likely heard already: that classic holds one of the most unforgettable endings ever seen on film. Yet even when the main character, Beca (Anna Kendrick), finally gives in and decides to watch the entire thing on her computer, all we see are the final shots, moving into the credits sequence.

Why? It’s easy, if you’ve seen the movie: if you show just about anything that leads into those shots, you’ll have an audience that realizes the climactic scenes in The Breakfast Club are an exact match with those in the far inferior Pitch Perfect.

The look of horror on your face when you discover you chose this over something like...I don't know, maybe The Breakfast Club?

The look of horror on your face when you discover you chose this over something like…I don’t know, maybe The Breakfast Club?

I could come up with dozens of adjectives for Pitch Perfect right off the top of my head. It’s unoriginal, trite, obnoxious, corny, stultifying…the list doesn’t stop for quite a while.

But let’s say all that just like one of the several overacted drama queens in the film: it’s a-ca-unoriginal, a-ca-trite, a-ca-obnoxious, a-ca-corny, and a-ca-stultifying. It’s just not that easy to pun on the term “a cappella,” and once you’ve brought it to the table once or twice, it’s already extremely tiresome. Could somebody please say, “a-ca-unfunny”?

While watching Pitch Perfect, I found myself groaning quite a bit. This is okay in certain cases. I groaned during the scenes in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore whenever the chatterbox kid went on his meaningless, utterly annoying ramblings. But that one’s a great movie, and at least the kid had a personality that was exaggerated for a decent reason.

It’s entirely different in a bomb like Pitch Perfect, which fits its title as well as Steven Tyler fits the title “handsome.” It’s apparent that I was supposed to be laughing. The film is a comedy, or so it thinks. I’ve seen just about every “comedy” permutation from the screwball comedy to the black comedy, and I must say, Pitch Perfect has a sparse sense of humor.

Pitch Perfect isn’t entirely unendurable. I must say, I do enjoy Anna Kendrick’s voice. It’s quite dynamic, in my humble opinion, despite her proven subpar acting abilities. I have a feeling she may have been lip-syncing, but if so, I’d rather not know.

The problem is, she’s given the worst selections to sing. It’s not that I’m not a fan of modern music (though I do prefer the classics), so much as the a cappella arrangements for these songs are hideous. Lily Allen’s “F— You” and La Roux’s “Bulletproof” just don’t have the same effect when they’re butchered so mindlessly; I dare say the instrumentals in such songs are just as important as the vocals.

I’m cutting the film slack with a D-plus. Again, parts were tolerable, but none memorable. In the words of Dr. Seuss—a much more engaging writer than the practically unknown one behind this, might I add—“I do not like it, not one little bit.”

D PLUS

Flight

Posted in Comedy, Music/Musical, Romance, [Film Reviews] and tagged

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