Obsessed
The screenplay by David Loughery (Lakeview Terrace) is cut from the same cloth as similar domestic psycho thrillers like Fatal Attraction, Single White Female, Swimfan, and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Just like those films, it starts with a person who seemingly has it all. The person this time is Derek (Idris Elba). He's a high ranking person at the company he works for (we never learn what his company does or makes, it's just one of those generic movie office buildings), he's got a beautiful wife named Sharon (Beyonce Knowles), a cute toddler son, and a new house. It doesn't take long for "the other woman" to show up. As is the case with these films, this character is supposed to seem innocent enough at first, but slowly become mentally unhinged and show their true psychotic colors. The "other woman" is Lisa (Ali Larter), a temp filling in for Derek's assistant who's sick with the flu. Lisa seems harmless enough at first, but we've seen the trailers, so we know what's coming. All we need is for Derek to make that fateful mistake that will send the "other woman" spiraling into scene-chewing madness.
Derek makes that mistake when he comforts Lisa over a recent break up, telling her that if he were single, he would date her. This causes Lisa to throw herself upon him in the restroom during the office Christmas party. He rejects her, but the girl just won't take the hint. She follows him to his car in the parking garage, wearing nothing but her undergarments underneath a trenchcoat, she sends sexy photos of herself to Derek's computer over e-mail, she drugs his drink so she can force herself upon him while he's unconscious, she even goes so far as to break into his house. The movie keeps on coming up with contrived reasons for Derek to keep his mouth shut, so his wife won't know what's going on. She finally does find out eventually, and we get a domestic drama with Derek being kicked out of his own house and trying to patch things back up with Sharon. This plot takes up too much time and brings the movie to a near stand-still, since the psycho stalker temp all but disappears from the movie while this is going on.
If you've seen the trailer for Obsessed, then you've already seen the movie, since it literally shows every major thing that happens. It even shows the ending. In a way, I guess it saves the average theater patron some money and a lot of time. But what about us poor schmucks who review these movies? All we get is some popcorn, maybe some soda, and something that takes almost two hours to tell the exact same story that the trailer told in under three minutes. The movie doesn't really try to stand out, so it never really rises to being good or lowers itself to being truly awful. Maybe this is due to the fact that this is director Steve Shill's first theatrical effort, after working entirely in television for over 10 years. The movie needed the hand of someone who specializes in these kind of exploitive sex thrillers and knows how to make them fun. This movie takes itself too seriously, and never goes far enough.
When it does decide to finally throw caution to the wind and give us what we want, it arrives too late to make a true impact. The audience at my screening seemed to be getting a huge kick out of the heavily hyped catfight, yelling at the screen and cheering, but I was left feeling disappointed. Not just because I had already seen most of it in the trailer, but also because it comes across as being manipulative instead of rewarding. That the movie had been fairly mundane up to that point, then it suddenly decides to give us this all-out no-holds-barred craziness, felt like a cheap gimmick on the part of the filmmakers. It would have been more fitting if the rest of the movie had been just as insane. Anyone who tells you they didn't mind sitting through the domestic family squabbles before getting to this moment is lying to you and themselves.
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The film's hero is Shawn McArthur (Channing Tatum). While selling bootleg iPods and Harry Potter books on a street corner in the opening scene, he comes across two people who will change his life. The first is a woman named Zulay (Zulay Henao), who buys one of the bootleg books from him and will later become his love interest. The other is a fellow street hustler named Harvey Boarden (Terrance Howard). Harvey witnesses Shawn's fighting skills, and ends up introducing him to the world of underground street fighting, where a great sum of money can be made. With Harvey acting as his manager, Shawn quickly rises through the ranks of the fighting circuit. Perhaps a compelling narrative could have been crafted from such a bare bones premise, but director and co-writer Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints) has crafted such a plodding and inert film that it's impossible to care about anything. We don't even care about Shawn, since all we ever learn about him is he once beat up his dad back in college. This is used to fuel a rivalry with a fellow fighter who knows about Shawn's past, but it just doesn't work because the rival fighter barely has anything to do with the movie in the first place other than to get beat up at the end.
It would be one thing if Fighting came across as cliched or if it just seemed to be going through the paces. This movie doesn't have a pace. Or seemingly a pulse. It treats everything and everyone who enters the movie with the same level of indifference. The plot isn't there, the characters are largely interchangeable, and we learn so little about everything that's happening that nothing ever seems to matter. You'd think the movie would have the decency to tell us a little bit about the world of underground street fighting. How did these things get started? Why are there so many people involved? And how can they have these things in public (including inside convenience stores) without having the entire New York police force on their asses in a matter of seconds? The movie simply uses the world of these fights as a backdrop for a string of action sequences that could be counted on one hand total, and seem to be over in less than three minutes. The fact that Shawn never seems to be in any real danger of losing any fight he participates in certainly kills any tension these sequences might have tried to create.
Wright, you'll recall, is best known for British period films like Atonement and Pride and Prejudice. He switches gears here, telling the story of real life Los Angeles Times columnist, Steve Lopez, and the strange relationship he struck up with a homeless Julliard drop out named Nathaniel Ayers. The film is based on Lopez's autobiographical novel, and although a few details have been changed (in the movie, he's divorced, but he's married in real life), the movie more or less follows what happened. Lopez is played in the movie by Robert Downey Jr, and he brings the right note to the character. He does not portray Steve as a saint, even though he is helping out this homeless man who is suffering from a mental illness that has prevented him from truly using his musical gifts to the success he used to dream of as a young man. Steve Lopez seems to be the kind of guy who specializes in destroying his closest personal relationships. He still talks to his ex-wife (Catherine Keener), but we get the sense it's mainly because they both work at the same paper. As his relationship with Nathaniel deepens, and he begins to realize that he is all Nathaniel has, he doesn't seem to know what to do. He played the Good Samaritan, hoping to get some articles out of the guy, but he didn't seem to expect an actual friendship.
Steve first meets Nathaniel when he sees him playing a violin with only two strings underneath a statue of Beethoven in a park. As played by Jamie Foxx, Nathaniel is a man suffering from schizophrenia. His mind seems to move at a mile a second, his mouth barely managing to keep up with the thoughts entering his head, so much of his speech comes out as a jumbled collection of statements, observations, and random musings that fly one after another. He mentions to Steve that he once studied at Julliard until his mental illness completely overtook his talents and destroyed his life. After doing some digging to see if the story checks out, Steve writes a column about Nathaniel, which becomes an instant hit with readers. One reader even mails a new instrument to Steve's office for Nathaniel to play. As the two spend more time together, Steve truly starts to understand the world Nathaniel comes from. He sees the world of the homeless first hand, and also sees just how far detached from reality Nathaniel can be. Sometimes, he comes across as intelligent and intellectual as a scholar, but often, he is as scared and confused about the world around him as a young child.
If Downey's performance as Steve is gritty and uncompromising, then it is Foxx's performance that truly resonates. This is a natural portrayal, never once coming across as scripted or calculated. He does not play up Nathaniel's quirks, nor does he try to make him "loveable". He is a man ravaged by disembodied voices that only he can hear, and by his own mental shutdown. In flashbacks, we witness the young Nathaniel's mental fall, and his performance here is truly terrifying, as he can't seem to explain to himself what is happening. We witness his confusion, his fear, and it allows him to sympathize with him without sugarcoating his condition or simplifying it like in some movies dealing with characters suffering from mental illness. (A Beautiful Mind springs to memory.) It is the performances of Downey and Foxx, and the chemistry they share, that gives The Soloist its effortless charm while we watch it. They are both realistic individuals, and we can sense the uneasy bond that grows between them. Usually when actors do dramas about illness, there is a tendency to get mawkish or overly sentimental. Both of the actors here never let this happen, and it helps add to the realism of the film.
Another plus is the film's sense to steer away from cheap sentiment or manipulation. The movie is frequently gritty and very real. So real, in fact, that the people inhabiting the scenes set in the homeless shelters and slum neighborhoods are not actors. They are real people of the street, and when they tell their stories, it hits home. Director Wright also throws in some stylized touches, such as a beautiful sequence when Nathaniel is listening to a live concert, closes his eyes, and we see flashes of bold colors representing the music against a black background. It's equally a touching and stunning moment. Its moments like this that hint at the greatness the movie strives for, but the screenplay by Susanah Grant (Erin Brokovich, Catch and Release) never quite keeps its momentum going when it steps away from the two lead characters. The supporting characters are well performed, but not as strong as they should be. There's a subplot concerning Nathaniel's sister (who has no idea what's become of her brother until Steve gets in touch with her) that never resonates as strong as it should. Likewise, Catherine Keener as Lopez' ex-wife never seems to come into her own. Also, for all the movie's realism, it can't help but throw in a couple sentimental moments that ring false. A scene that tracks birds taking flight while Nathaniel plays a lovely classical piece seems forced in its imagery, and the closing sequence depicting the characters dancing to music for no reason seems tacked on and pointless.
Let it be known that Earth the movie is no substitution for Planet Earth the series. The film is a much simplified take (most likely to appeal to young children), and has been censored. Whenever a predator attacks, we see the stalking and the initial pounce and attack, but then the movie cuts away. The best nature films always show both the beauty and cruelty of the wild, and the fact that the movie sidesteps the simple fact that life is a struggle for many animals makes the movie seem curiously uneven. We therefore often find ourselves marveling at the footage, but not as engaged as we should be. It also doesn't help that the narration by Jones is often cartoonish, and tries to humanize the animals. When we see a rainforest bird doing a mating dance for another bird, we hear Jones chime in on the soundtrack with "Time to get down!", which kind of takes us out of the experience. The movie is at its best when its letting us enjoy the footage without the voice over walking us through.
And yet, I cannot deny the power of the scenes on display. Though clearly edited to follow a loose narrative, Earth is a visual wonder, and never once feels like a TV show that's been blown up on the big screen. (A worry I initially had walking in.) The film takes us to different corners of the world, following various "families" as they try to survive in an ever-changing world. In the arctic, a mother polar bear takes her two cubs out into the world for the first time, while their father treks across the harsh land, looking for food. A herd of elephants make their way across the dry desert lands seeking water, while avoiding lions and the threat of exhaustion and dehydration. Finally, a pair of humpback whales make their way across the seas to Antarctica. We witness the struggles of their survival, with the story of the polar bear father and his quest for food being the most memorable and poignant, as he must overcome prematurely melting ice. The ultimate outcome of his story is also the film's most effectively emotional moment.
There is plenty of footage unrelated to the three central stories, and this is when the film is at its best. When the narrator goes silent, and the movie just lets us marvel at the footage, we're captivated. We feel like we're actually watching the intended footage, instead of something that's been spliced and edited together to create a narrative. The music score by George Fenton compliments the footage beautifully, and we can enjoy the movie for what it is. There are a wide variety of animals on display during these scenes, some of them far too brief. I guess this is understandable given the circumstances, but I still found myself wanting more. To its credit, the film's environmental message is obvious, yet subtle. While I was not a fan of Jones' narration, he at least does not hit us over the head with environmental guilt.
If you'll recall, 2006's Crank told the story of a hitman named Chev Chelios (Jason Statham), who woke up one morning to find that he had been injected with a toxic poison, and was going to die unless he found a way to keep himself going. That film followed Chev as he raced around the city, trying to keep himself moving, and taking out his enemies in the process. He found his revenge, but the movie also ended with him dying as he fell from a helicopter, smashed into a car, bounced off of it, and crashed on the pavement. In High Voltage, Chev somehow survived, and as soon as he hit the street, he was literally scraped off the pavement by some Asian criminals with a giant spatula. He wakes up in a seedy hospital, and discovers his heart's been removed from his body and replaced with an artificial one that needs to be constantly charged up with a battery box. Before the criminals can harvest any more of his organs and sell them on the Black Market, Chev escapes, and goes on another madcap, blood-soaked romp through the city, trying to find different ways to keep his artificial heart charged up and pumping until he can find the person who has his real one.
That's pretty much all you need to know, and all you get here. Chev meets some new faces, like an obnoxious Asian prostitute (Bai Ling) who sees him as her hero after he saves her from an unsavory customer, and refuses to leave him alone during his search. He also encounters some old ones, like his girlfriend from the first film (Amy Smart), who is now working as a stripper and is surprised to see Chev alive. The plot is the last thing on this movie's mind, however. It's a literal assault on the senses as images flash across the screen, different film styles are thrown in (everything from video game animation to an out of the blue tribute to cheesy Japanese monster movies), random flashbacks that either tie into the first movie or seem to just be thrown in on a lark, and the movie just keeps on piling on as many ideas as it can. Even the cameos this movie throws at us seem to be completely off the wall. Can you think of any other mainstream movie that features porn star Ron Jeremy and former 80s icon Corey Haim in minor roles?
It's useless to talk about the performances here. Everybody just goes with it, which is the way it really should be in a movie like this. It's admirable that the cast go into some of the more off the wall scenes (such as when Chev and his girlfriend must have sex in public on a horse race track in order to keep his heart going) head on, and seemingly without any hesitation. The movie's random and frantic pace is matched only by its surprisingly sly sense of humor. There are some truly funny moments, such as a series of newscasts that pop up now and then detailing Chev's destructive dash through the city. If the movie gets to be a little much as it goes on, I think that was the idea the filmmakers had in mind. They got the chance to do a sequel (something that probably wasn't planned), so they tried to top themselves in every way, not caring about coherency or structure. The method works most of the time, but it gets a little tiresome eventually.
Surprisingly, their relationship remains entirely professional during the course of State of Play. The screenplay does not see the need for an unnecessary romantic subplot, which is a good thing, since there's already enough plot in the movie as is. There's also a lot of twists and turns, but never so many that we become frustrated or feel like we're being jerked around. Right off the bat, the movie grabs our attention as we witness a double murder by a shadowy figure in the film's opening scene, followed by a young woman supposedly killing herself by jumping into the path of an oncoming subway train. The woman was working for a Washington Senator named Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck), an old college friend of Cal's, whom he turns to when the press start swarming his house. He's forced to confess that he was having an affair with the young woman, which not only puts his political career in question, but obviously also that with his wife (Robin Wright Penn). Is it all some part of corporate conspiracy out to discredit Collins and allow a shady corporation to do whatever it wants without anything standing in the way?
Naturally, things are not what they seem. State of Play holds our attention with a complex web of revelations to the point that we want to know where it's all leading to as much as the characters of Cal and Della do. The film itself is an adaptation of a 5 hour British TV mini-series, and it must have been a taxing chore for screenwriters Matthew Michael Carnahan (Lions for Lambs), Tony Gilroy (Duplicity), and Billy Ray (Breach) to squeeze all of the material from the original into a film that runs just a little over two hours. They've managed to do just that, with an engrossing plotline that never once slows down or stalls. Yes, some of the characters and their relationships suffer because of this (Cal has had a relationship with Stephen's wife, which is not touched on as much as it probably should have been.), but the movie is so tightly edited, paced, and plotted that it feels like you're watching a constant juggling act as the movie tries to keep all of its plot threads and characters up in the air.
I was also intrigued with how the movie becomes topical, working the decline of print newspapers into the plot. Cal finds himself in the race against the clock to get to the bottom of the story, because his editor is demanding an article. In this electronic information age, misinformation is unfortunately rampant, and Cal is of the firm belief that the facts come first. His editor is not unsympathetic, but at the same time, she needs those sales if she wants the paper to stay alive. And in order to get those sales, she has to have an article as quick as possible. As someone who still believes highly in the value of print, I was intrigued with how this was handled, with both Cal and Della representing both sides of the war in gathering information. It also adds another layer of tension, not that the story needed it. There are plenty of expertly crafted suspense/action sequences, such as when Cal finds himself on the run from a gunman in an abandoned parking garage, or when Della becomes a witness to an assassination attempt at a local hospital. Director Kevin McDonald (The Last King of Scotland) has a real eye for suspense scenes.
Since the plot is constantly in motion, we never get very close to the characters, but the fine cast still manage to find ways to deliver with their performances. Russell Crowe brings a sort of mischief to his portrayal, like he's weary of the world and the business he's in, but he's still able to hold onto the spark that got him into reporting in the first place. He has an easy chemistry with both Rachel McAdams and especially Helen Mirren, who completely nails the role of the understanding yet hard-nosed editor, and who I wish could have had more screen time. As for Ben Affleck, I had forgotten how good of an actor he can be with the right role. He's very vulnerable here, and brings out the various shades of his complex character quite well. The backlash he took a few years ago for his personal overexposure and his questionable film choices has resulted in a very strong reboot for his career, and I hope this continues.
He brings a certain quiet charm and low key humor to the role of Mike O'Donnell, whom we first meet as a rising young high school basketball star in 1989. It's the night of the big game, talent scouts are in the audience keeping an eye on his performance, and he gives it all up when his girlfriend announces right before the game that she's pregnant. Flash forward 20 years later to the present, and the now 37-year-old Mike O'Donnell (now played by Matthew Perry) is your typical comic loser. Before I dig too deep into Mike's problems, let's do a little experiment. Look up a photo of both Zac Efron and Matthew Perry. Do these two even look like they could be the same person? It's a hurdle the movie never quite recovers from. We never buy the movie's suggestion, so it's fortunate that Perry's screentime is limited, and this is mainly a star vehicle for Efron. But still, you'd think the casting department could have done a little bit better of a job.
Back to the plot: We learn that Mike married his pregnant girlfriend Scarlet (played in the present by Leslie Mann) after high school, and things have been going downhill since then. It's bad enough that his relationship with his wife has soured so bad that she's not only seeking a divorce, but has kicked him out of their home, forcing Mike to live with his nerdy best friend, Ned (Thomas Lennon). As if that weren't enough, his two teenage kids Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg) and Alex (Sterling Knight) barely acknowledge his existence. All this, and the poor guy got passed over for the promotion at his job he was certain to get. Is it any wonder Mike wonders if his life would be any different and possibly better if he had finished that fateful high school basketball game? His question is heard by a mysterious and mystical high school janitor (Brian Doyle-Murray), who kind of resembles Santa Claus and apparently lives for letting people relive their glory days. Through a magical occurence, Mike is transformed into his former 17-year-old self.
Even though Mike has gotten younger, he remains in the present. So, Ned has to pass as his father, and Mike now finds himself in the same classes as his two kids, where he finds out more about them than he ever did as a real father to them, making him realize how little he was there for them when they needed him. He's also horrified to learn that his son is the frequent target of bullies, and that his daughter is also dating the head of the bullies and is considering giving up her college dreams to go live with him after high school is over. It's all stuff we've seen before, but the light comic screenplay by Jason Filardi (Bringing Down the House) makes it all go down easy enough. Yet, the screenplay still feels somewhat undercooked, as if the ideas weren't fleshed out as much as they should be. We know that Mike's son, Alex, will become friends with the teenage Mike, not realizing who he is, and take him home to see his mom. Scarlet notices how much her son's new friend resembles her ex-husband as a teenager, and the two build a very shy and strained relationship, but not enough is done with it. We don't get enough of what Mike must be feeling every time he's around the woman he was once married to and still loves, but obviously can't say or do anything. Likewise, a Back to the Future-like subplot where Mike's own daughter develops a crush on the teenage Mike seems to come out of nowhere, and isn't given enough time to reach its potential.
What helps carry the film is an appropriately breezy tone (the movie is about 100 minutes, but felt shorter than some 80 minute movies I've seen), and a bright and energetic cast that give the material more life than it probably deserves. Efron proves here he's got some charisma and screen presence behind those looks that are currently driving "tween" girls wild. (The fact that he's not wearing a shirt the first time we see him proves that the movie at least knows its audience.) He displays a quiet and sincere comic tone here that could benefit him in more adult roles. The other main stand out is Thomas Lennon, who gets the biggest laughs as Mike's best friend. His character, Ned, is a grown up nerd who uses his wealth from writing computer software to fill his house top-to-bottom with sci-fi, comic book, and fantasy memorabilia. His character could have easily been annoying, especially when he starts awkwardly trying to romance the high school principal (Melora Hardin), but it all pays off with a very funny dinner date scene, and Lennon knows how to reign his character in enough so that he remains funny instead of obnoxious.
Despite having never seen a single episode of the show, I have a feeling that the movie is more or less an extended version of one, as it often feels like a made for TV movie that's been blown up on the screen. Just like on the series, the movie deals with the double life of Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus), who is an ordinary teenage girl at school, but is also secretly the most successful young pop singer in the world, Hannah Montana. There's a certain Clark Kent/Superman thing going on, as her "Hannah" disguise consists of nothing but her wearing flashier clothes and a blonde wig. And no, the movie never addresses why no one can tell that Miley and Hannah are one and the same. Her family, her best friend at school Lilly (Emily Osment), and her publicist Vita (Vanessa Williams) are the only ones aware of her double life, and try their hardest to keep it hidden from the public and nosey tabloid journalists, like the one who's always following her around in this movie (Peter Gunn), and exists simply to be humiliated in a series of slapstick gag pieces.
As the movie opens, the fame of being Hannah is starting to go to Miley's head a little. She upstages her best friend at Lilly's own extravagant 16th birthday party (which by my estimate, must have cost in the 4 or 5-digit range) and has been caught in some bad behavior, such as when she gets in a comical slapstick catfight with Tyra Banks over a pair of designer shoes. Miley's father (Cyrus' real-life father, Billy Ray) has had enough, and decides an intervention is in order. He takes her back to her small Tennessee hometown, Crowley Corners, to celebrate Grandma Ruby's (Margo Martindale) birthday. Miley resists at first, but soon she catches the eye of a handsomely bland young cowboy named Travis Brody (Lucas Till) who works on grandma's farm. There's also some nonsense about the town being threatened by some greedy land developers who want to build a massive shopping mall in the sleepy little town, but none of it matters. All that matters is that the movie gives the series' fans what they want with plenty of bubblegum pop and country music, cute teens, and incessantly perky energy.
As for the rest of us? Well, Hannah Montana wasn't made for the rest of us. And that's too bad, because its young star does show quite a bit of potential. I wouldn't quite put Miley Cyrus in the same league as other young heavyweights like Dakota Fanning, but she does have a certain charm to her. I can't tell if she has more potential than that, because the movie itself is pretty aimless. I didn't think it was possible, but this movie makes High School Musical 3 seem pretty complex in comparison. We get some set-up to explain why Miley and her family are going to Tennessee, and then the entire middle section seems to be made up entirely out of music montages where Miley and her boyfriend ride around on horses and swing on ropes, or scenes where the characters themselves are singing. There's literally a 15 or 20 minute stretch in the film where the characters sing one song after another, and I started to feel like I was watching an extended and expensive commercial for the film's soundtrack CD (which I most likely was).
When the movie does decide to throw a bit of plot our way, it usually degenerates into slapstick gags that are set up in a way that you can't miss them coming. See that collection of celebrity plates Grandma Ruby is so proud of? How much you want to bet they're all going to be smashed and broken before the scene is over? One of Miley's cousins is introduced as a guy who keeps a pet ferret in his pocket, then disappears from the movie completely until it's time for a fancy dinner party with the town's Mayor, so the ferret can escape and wreak havoc on the guests. Miley helps out on the farm, and puts some eggs in her back pockets, almost as if she knows she's going to fall down on her butt in a matter of seconds. You see that ladder leaning up against Grandma Ruby's house, so a character can spy in on a bedroom window? Did I mention that if said character fell from said ladder, he would wind up crushing Grandma Ruby's prized garden? These are people who have never come across a mud puddle they haven't fallen in face-first.
Yes, Observe and Report is a comedy, but it's an uncomfortable one. Writer-director Jody Hill (last year's indie comedy The Foot-Fist Way) seems to delight in shoving these unsavory characters in our faces, and making us laugh at them, even if we occasionally squirm in our seats at the things we see them doing or doing to each other. As a comedy, it's easily the funniest I've seen so far this year. For Ronnie (who is played by Seth Rogen, giving a hilarious performance here), there are two women in his life. There's his alcoholic mother whom he lives with (Celia Weston), who likes to remind him that it was his fault his father walked out on them. And then there's Brandi (Anna Faris), the woman who works at a make up counter in a department store at the mall. Brandi generally views Ronnie and his affections with disgust and appalled rage, but Ronnie's delusional mind still sees a chance for them to be together. That's why he's quick to take advantage of the situation when Brandi needs his help, after she has a run-in with a pervert who has been terrorizing female mall patrons and employees in the parking lot.
Observe and Report is a biting satire, and surprisingly dark and twisted for a comedy released by a mainstream studio. The closest comparison to this movie would be Bad Santa, as they both feature anti-heroes whose behavior and lack of common decency drive the plot. Even when the movie follows convention, such as when Ronnie slowly starts to develop a relationship with a nice girl who works at the coffee shop and gives him free coffee every morning (Collette Wolfe), it still manages to surprise us in little ways. It's a comedy that's not afraid to show us the worst in human nature, and make us laugh at it. It also poses some interesting ethical questions for the audience, such as why are people so offended by the nudity of the pervert, but when Ronnie violently beats some punk kids or nearly kills a man, he is treated as a hero? I am reminded of the old Hollywood joke - If your movie features a scene where a guy stabs a woman's breast with a knife, you'll get an R-rating. If your movie features a scene where a guy kisses a woman's breast, you'll get an NC-17.
This is a very funny movie, though. Probably the funniest I've seen since Tropic Thunder. It's not the kind of comedy the ads make it out to be, though. The commercials seem to be leading audiences to think this is another raunchy, screwball-fest. There is a lot of sadness behind the laughs, particularly with the character of Ronnie and how he constantly seems to be on the edge of breaking down, or maybe just snapping and killing someone. This is a movie that sometimes crosses the line, but never so much so that we become offended or lose interest in the characters. Hill's screenplay seems to be on a constant balancing act, as well as the performances. Anna Faris plays against type as the boozing and manipulative Brandi. It's a nice change of pace from her usually ditzy characters, and proves she can be quite a challenging comic actress. As for Ray Liotta, he's finally found a role where his tendency to overact actually seems to suit him.
Dragonball Evolution is the most incomprehensible experience I've had at the movies this year, and for once, it's not due to lack of familiarity with the original source material. My memory on the details may be a little fuzzy, but I was a fan of the original Japanese cartoon series and comic by Akira Toriyama when I was younger. The movie is a conceptual nightmare that has to be seen to be believed. The movie itself is constantly switching tones, the performances are all over the map as if everyone thought they were doing a different movie, even when they're in the same scene together, and the whole thing feels like it's been hacked and edited to pieces in order to fit a slim 80 minute run time. Nothing in those 80 minutes made me want to see what wound up on the cutting room floor. The movie can't even seem to decide where the story is supposed to be taking place. Sometimes it seems to be set in Japan, sometimes a high-tech high school, sometimes a third rate knock off of the futuristic landscape from Blade Runner, sometimes a volcano world that looks like something out of a Godzilla movie, sometimes a desert wasteland...The characters jump from one location to the next with little rhyme, reason, or explanation.
Our hero is Goku (Justin Chatwin), a teenage martial artist whose main ambition in life seems to be a clone of Peter Parker from the Spider-Man films. In fact, the film's opening 30 minutes seem to be so heavily inspired by the opening half of the original Spider-Man movie, I felt like I was watching Chatwin's lost audition tape for the role at times. Instead of Uncle Ben, Goku has Grandpa Gohan (Randall Duk Kim), who comes across as a bundle of "old mentor" cliches looking for direction. And instead of Mary Jane, Goku has Chi Chi (Jamie Chung), the most popular girl in school who originally hangs out with the bullies who torment Goku (They call him "Geek-o". )but takes a shine to him when she finds out he can use his martial arts energy to open stuck locker doors. Before our hero gets a chance with the girl, an evil alien being named Piccolo (James Marsters) descends from his airship and kills Grandpa Gohan. Piccolo was looking for a Dragonball, which is a mystical object that, when joined with six other Dragonballs can grant a "perfect wish". (Not just a wish, mind you, but a "perfect wish".) When Piccolo arrives, the Dragonball has been taken by Goku, who took it before he left for a party at Chi Chi's house. Why did Goku take it with him? Why, indeed.
Goku returns home, finds gramps is dead, and sets out for vengeance. He's quickly joined by a feisty, gun-toting tomboy scientist named (I kid you not) Bulma Briefs (Emmy Rossum). She's after the Dragonballs as well, and even has a device to track them down. They're also joined by Master Roshi (Chow Yun-Fat), a slightly perverted martial arts master that Gohan told Goku to seek out before he died. The last character to join the team is a desert bandit named Yamcha (Joon Park), who wasn't really needed in the movie at all. They have a brief encounter with some ooze monsters that Piccolo sends after them, but most of the time, they're harassed by his sole henchman, a woman named Mai (Japanese pop artist Eriko Tamura), who dresses like a cheesy 80s backup dancer most of the time, and sometimes disguises herself as other people in order to fool Goku and steal his Dragonballs. It all leads up to an anticlimactic final scene with some of the cheesiest special effects I've seen in a mainstream movie, and a hint at sequels to come which, given the quality on display here means that the filmmakers are entirely too optimistic about their own effort.
For the entire length it runs, Dragonball Evolution is as banal and as inept as any movie to limp onto the screen this year. The performances run a broad range of over the top to the point of total cheese (Chow Yun-Fat often seems to act like he's starring in a parody of martial arts films), to just plain disinterest. (Justin Chatwin as Goku either puts no emotion in his line readings, or his readings are so off, they literally got unintentional laughs from the audience. His plea to save a friend's life near the end of the film had the audience at my screening roaring.) However, the basic problem lies at the screenplay by Ben Ramsey. The characters he writes have foggy motivations at best, and are completely indecipherable at worst. The relationship between Goku and Chi Chi never builds, nor does it seem to be built out of anything except they both know martial arts. A romantic subplot between Bulma and Yamcha is even less developed. And why are we supposed to feel a sense of urgency when the two villains spend most of their screen time standing on the deck of their airship, looking down at the ground below with disgust? The fact that head villain Piccolo looks kind of like the Jolly Green Giant after Slim Fast doesn't help matters.
And then there's the budget, which here seems to have been spent mainly on the rubber boulders that fall around the actors during the climax, and some sub-par CG work that's not convincing in the least. The original cartoons were known for their colorful visuals, so why does everything look so drab and dull here? I fear this is becoming a regular thing for the Fox studio. Just two months ago, they brought us Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, which turned the video game's famed visuals into a dreary and "edgy" nightmare. Just like that movie, everything here is so completely devoid of life that there's nothing to care about or admire. This is such a soulless and cynical enterprise, you're left grasping for some sign of inspiration. As the realization dawned on me that there was none, I sunk into my seat and waited for it to end.
The movie's big selling point is the return of the full original cast from the 2001 film that started it all. This would be exciting, unless you consider the fact that most of these actors never really went anywhere with their careers after the 2001 film. Vin Diesel never quite took off the way Hollywood was gearing him up to, and I don't think anyone had high hopes for Paul Walker to begin with. They return as underground racer Dominic Toretto and renegade FBI agent Brian O'Conner, respectively, but bring nothing to their roles. Diesel seems determined to show as little emotion as possible, and actually seems to be competing with Pro Wrestler John Cena in 12 Rounds for giving the most stonefaced performance in an action film in 2009. (Diesel wins by a mile.) Walker, on the other hand, is about as charismatic as wet cardboard, and has the personality to match. When your heroes have the personality of stone and cardboard respectively, it's kind of hard to find someone to root for. Nonetheless, the movie blindly trudges on.
The two are reunited when Dominic's girlfriend from the first movie, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), is murdered by a drug cartel. Dominic comes back to the U.S. to seek revenge (he's been hiding out in the Dominican Republic), even though he's a wanted man and is risking his freedom. O'Conner is after the head of the cartel as well, and the two are forced to join forces since they're both after the same man for different reasons. Dominic's sister, Mia (Jordanna Brewster), is back as well to lend support, but spends a lot of her scenes standing in the background while the men glare at each other and exchange macho dialogue. The movie spends a lot of time on these two guys trying to get inside the cartel as drivers/transporters, but the screenplay by Chris Morgan (Wanted) never gives us a reason to care about anything that's going on. The strength of the franchise has always been about the cars and the action, and this movie mysteriously drowns itself in a simple and underdeveloped revenge plot that never goes anywhere.
At least when the characters get behind the wheel of a car, the pace and action pick up. Many of the sequences are done well, with a race through the streets of L.A. being the sole highlight after the film's opening sequence. Mostly, though, I found myself indifferent to everything that was going on. There's not enough action to offset the dull plot. The movie is total vapor. My screening got out less than two hours ago, and I'm already struggling to find things to write about as it rapidly leaves my mind. I guess I could talk about director Justin Lin, and how he burst onto the scene with the smart crime drama, Better Luck Tomorrow, and now seems content to throw his talent away on stuff like this. (He directed the last entry in The Fast and the Furious franchise, Tokyo Drift, as well.) But that would turn this review into a novel.
It's fitting I saw this movie immediately after I saw Bart Got a Room. Both films are semi-autobiographical looks at the writer-director's own youth. They are also both perfect examples of the right and wrong way to go about it. With Bart, filmmaker Brian Hecker seemed to rely entirely on personal nostalgia, while forgetting to give us characters and a storyline we could care about. With Adventureland, writer-director Greg Mottola (Superbad) gives us a number of wonderful characters who come to life not only because they act and talk like real people, but because the performances are so down to Earth and real. Yes, the plot is old hat and holds absolutely no surprises for anyone who has seen a coming of age film. It is the style and the care that went into the film that makes it special. The characters, the dialogue, the humor, the emotion, and the fitting soundtrack (filled with both popular and long-forgotten songs from the era) that almost becomes a character itself...There's so much about this movie that it gets right.
When James (Jesse Eisenberg) graduates from college, he has dreams of traveling across Europe for the summer before going on to graduate school in New York. His parents, in a rather cruel move, wait until his graduation day to tell him that they won't be able to pay for those things anymore due to the fact his father's job has hit hard times. James, having never held a job in his life, now finds all doors in life slammed shut and he must begin a search for any job that will hire him. The only place willing to do so is Adventureland, a third rate theme park where the rides look like antiques even in the film's late 80s setting, the games are rigged, and the only adventure to be found is wether or not you'll get a disease from eating one of the corn dogs that have not been properly stored and refrigerated before being cooked. James' new boss (Bill Hader) puts him on "Games" duty, where he must hand out stuffed animal prizes to those who actually do win one of the park's many carnival games. The only rule James must follow is that nobody wins the really big animal prizes, such as the infamous "big ass panda" toy.
Depression over the tedium of the job and being forced to listen to "Rock Me, Amadeus" 20 times a day on the park's speaker system quickly sets in, but James is at least able to make a few close friends along the way with his other employees. Chief amongst them are Joel (Martin Starr), whose goal in life is to save up enough to put a CD player in his car, and Em (Kristen Stewart), who has a sweet smile to hide a lot of pain that goes on at home between her father and new stepmother, and the conflicted personal feelings she feels for both James and Mike Connell (Ryan Reynolds), an older married man who works maintenance at the park. There's also Lisa P (Margarita Levieva), the park sexpot that all the guys lust after. Yes, we've seen all these characters before, but Mottola's screenplay treats them as people, not caricatures or cliches. We expect Lisa P to be the "bad girl", as she starts to become interested in James, pulling him away from Em. Funny thing, she does actually seem to care about him. All of the characters in the film start out as being predictable and we think we know where they will end up, but the movie keeps on digging deeper than we expect, and we find ourselves caring a lot more than we initially thought.
I was impressed not only with how Mottola handles his characters, but also how he settles the era it's set in. When a filmmaker does a retro piece, it's easy to get caught up in the vibe of the times and have it constantly be in the center of the gags, especially when you're dealing with a decade as infamously flamboyant and excessive as the 80s. Fortunately, this is not the case here. The references to the 80s are subtle, and it never hangs over the story the film is trying to tell. The story could work in any time, it's simply set in the time of the director's own youth. I also admired the use of songs from the era. They underscore the scenes perfectly, and some of the song choices are of songs I personally have not heard in years. Music is important in setting up the mood of a certain time and place, and Adventureland understands this.
I've mentioned that the characters are more honest and deeper than I expected, but I haven't said much about the two main characters at the center of the story, James and Em. As James, Jesse Eisenberg gives us a different kind of "nerd" type than we're used to. He's confident, he's witty, and he has a certain kind of deadpan sarcasm to him that seems to get him through his life and certainly this dead-end job. But the real stand out is Em, who gets our attachment not only because she is written as a smart young woman being pulled in different directions in her personal and romantic life, but also because of the wonderful performance from Kristen Stewart. After being disappointed by her turn in Twilight, here she reminds me once again what a promising young actress she is, and hopefully she can continue to find work outside of shallow, fluffy vampire romances. Her performance here shows a lot of range and promise.
Before the movie begins, we're shown a newsreel film that talks about how differences between the studio and the film's star in 1957 prevented Alien Trespass (rumored to be the greatest sci-fi movie ever made) from ever being released. We're then given the opportunity to view this "lost classic", and we're immediately put off by the film's opening image - A computer rendered UFO flying toward a video game-quality CG effect of the planet Earth. Talk about killing the nostalgic vibe right off the bat. I was also disappointed with how polished and shiny the film looks. Would it have killed director R.W. Goodwin (TV's The X-Files) to shoot the thing in black and white? It would have at least helped the mood. Maybe I'm nitpicking here, but when I'm promised a lost relic from the late 50s, I don't want to see computer aided images, no matter how low budget they look. The movie also contains some inappropriate dialogue for its film time period, with characters flinging insults like "you really bite" that took me out of the mood the movie was trying to create.
Nonetheless, the plot at least seems to get it right. A stuffy and pipe smoking scientist named Ted Lewis (Eric McCormack) leaves his beautiful sexpot wife behind to investigate a bright light that fell from the sky and crashed in the mountains nearby. When he returns home from the crash site, he's a completely different man, because his body is now being inhabited by an intergalactic being who goes by the name of Urp. Urp has come to Earth to save us from the Ghota, a strange one-eyed squid-like creature that feeds upon humans, the remains of its victims nothing more than a puddle of muddy goo, and will eventually multiply and spread to conquer the world. Urp's only aid in his battle against the Ghota is a plucky young waitress from the local diner named Tammy (Jenni Baird), who's a lot more confident and stronger than I remember female leads being in these kind of movies. There are also a couple of teenage kids who get wrapped into the plot when they discover Urp's spaceship, and a few police officers (Dan Lauria as the grizzled and worn police chief only two days from retirement, Robert Patrick as a gung-ho officer who doesn't believe the kids' stories about the UFO) who are trying to figure out why the respectable scientist Ted is now zapping people with ray guns and stealing cars.
Alien Trespass certainly has more than enough material to work with to be fun in a campy way, but it remains grounded throughout. The storytelling is flaccid and nowhere near fast-paced enough to hold our attention. Likewise, the jokes are obvious and often downright painful. This movie's idea of a comic highlight is a scene where Tammy encounters the alien-controlled Dr. Lewis. When he tells her his name is Urp, she responds with "Would you like some Rolaids"? Unfortunately, this is about as good as the jokes get here. The movie could have benefitted from a much more knowing and sly humor, maybe along the lines of Mel Brooks' classic parodies Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles. Those movies not only understood the look and tone of the films they were making fun of, they dug deep into them and examined their very structure and cliches with a sharp wit. The fun of Alien Trespass is merely at the surface level. We smile or nod a little out of recognition, then we grow depressed when we realize that's as far as the movie is going to go. All the elements are there, but it refuses to do anything with them.
It also begs the question just who is this movie made for? The idea behind the movie will obviously appeal to fans of the classic genre, but they are likely to be disappointed. There's a lot more sophistication and thought in a lot of the movies this one satires (such as The Blob or the original The Day the Earth Stood Still) than here. They'll also probably be put off by the technical inaccuracies more than I was. So, who's left? Is there really an audience for this sort of thing outside of cult film addicts? My guess is no, and there probably still won't be after this movie's limited run in theaters. This is a movie that made for very few and speaks to no one. The fact that it comes across as being even lamer than the movies it's referencing makes the whole thing even more pointless. Despite a running time of only 88 minutes, the movie feels endless thanks to its sluggish tone, and it stops being fun and just turns into a chore to sit through.
The film kicks off with an office administrator named Ryuhei (Teruyuki Kagawa) being fired when his company is forced to downsize and seek outsourcing help from China. He's always been the main supporter and provider of his family, so he has no idea how to tell his trusting wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) when he comes home that night. (He even tries to sneak inside the house without her knowing.) Each day, he dresses up in his business clothes, and pretends to go off to work, as he desperately searches various employment companies, only to discover that not only are there not many administrative jobs available anymore, but that he's a relic of the past, and unable to fill the needs of most employers. His two sons, 18-year-old Takashi (Yu Kyoanagi) and youngest son Kenji (Kai Inowaki) have problems of their own in parallel subplots. Takashi wishes to join to military and aid the US in the war overseas, while Kenji is secretly using the monthly lunch money his mother gives him for piano lessons, which his father has forbidden for financial reasons.
Tokyo Sonata deals with the struggles the family faces as they are drawn deeper into their individual secrets. Ryuhei's depression over losing his job and fear of having his secret found out takes its toll on him to the point that he becomes physically violent with his youngest son when he finds out about the secret piano lessons. He is angry over his son keeping the secret from him, not even noticing the irony of the situation. Ryuhei is the central focus of the film itself, so he becomes the character we most identify with. We feel his pain throughout as he tries to lead a normal life, while slowly realizing that things will most likely never be the same. Early in his job hunt, he comes across a former friend from high school who is also looking for work, and has gone to great lengths to trick his family into thinking everything's the same. (He's set up his cell phone to go off every couple minutes, so people will think he's taking business calls on it.) The movie is quiet, and never plays up the melodrama of the situation. It also expertly jumps back and forth between each family member and their individual storyline.
And that's what makes the movie so involving to watch. For a majority of the film, Kurosawa tells the story in such a subtle way that we feel like we are watching real life up on the screen. Each of the parallel storylines are given proper time to evolve, so that we become attached to the individual members. Of special note is Kyoko Koizumi, who gives a very heartfelt and honest portrayal of the housewife and mother trying to hold the family together even when everything is flying apart around her. It's very fitting that the very first image we see in the movie is of an open door in the family's house as a storm begins to rage outside, blowing water into the home. The wife enters the frame, and quickly shuts the door, locking the storm out. As the film goes on, her house is invaded by a different kind of storm, one she cannot block out, and she doesn't know how to handle it. The two sons also grow on us through their plots, although I did feel Takashi's storyline was the weakest, only because the character is not present as much as the others.
That's why it's unfortunate that the film decides to sell itself short in the final half. What had been an extremely subtle and simply effective family drama turns somewhat broad and almost comical when an incompetent burglar breaks into the house, and takes the mother hostage. From that point on, the movie almost starts to betray itself. These characters that we've become so attached to become contrivances in a series of coincidences and lazy plotting that just doesn't match what had come before it. It's maddening to watch, though it fortunately restrains itself from going so far off the rails that we stop caring. It simply turns what could have been a great movie, one of the best of the year, into a very good movie. At least we never stop caring about the characters, and the film's conclusion returns to the successfully quiet atmosphere.
There's a lot more to the film's appeal, fortunately. The movie is funny, smart, quirky (but not annoyingly so), and filled with two bright performances by the stars, Amy Adams and Emily Blunt. Adams' character, Rose Lorkowski, is the one who gets them into the business of cleaning up crime scenes. Rose is a faded beauty, still living off her past glory days as the most popular girl in high school and head cheerleader. Now she's a single mother to a bright but troubled young boy named Oscar (Jason Spevack), and has to repeat to herself inspirational quotes and phrases that she keeps taped to her bathroom mirror just to get out of bed in the morning. Rose gets the idea of the business venture from a police officer named Mac (Steve Zahn), whom she used to date back in school when he was the team quarterback and is now having an affair with, even though he's married to another woman. Rose needs the money to send her son to a different school, and enlists the aid of her sister Norah (Blunt), an aimless slacker who still lives with their father (Alan Arkin) and can't seem to hold down a job, as her business partner in the crime scene cleaning industry.
Sunshine Cleaning is sweet and kind of light in tone, but there's a lot of darkness under the surface that begins to show itself as the film progresses. The various murder and suicide scenes that they are called in to clean up slowly brings up a lot of painful memories for the two sisters of when their mother killed herself when they were children. They deal with their personal pain in different ways. Rose tries to hold onto the happy memories of her high school days, hoping that maybe Mac will leave his current wife, and come back to her. She knows she is probably fooling herself, but it's all she has to hold onto to convince herself she's not a complete failure in life. As for Norah, she helps her own pain by trying to help others. At one of the crime scenes, she finds the photo of an adult daughter of the victim. She tracks the person down, and strikes up a relationship with them that eventually becomes deeper and stronger than she could have imagined. This subplot could have been a little more focused, and seems to be dropped quite quickly when it's concluded, but the performance by Mary Lynn Rajskub as the daughter makes it worthwhile. Rose helps others along the way also, such as the sweet scene where she comforts an elderly woman whose husband has killed himself.
Credit must be given to first-time screenwriter Megan Holley, who not only manages to successfully combine light, quirky comedy with more serious ideas, but also manages to create honest and realistic characters that we can care about. Rose and Norah are charismatic women that we instantly find ourselves attached to, and become even more so as the film explores their personalities and their pasts with greater detail. It also helps that Adams and Blunt have great chemistry together, and come across believably as sisters in the way they talk and act around each other. There's also a great supporting character, a one-armed man named Winston (Clifton Collins Jr) who runs the hardware store, and helps the sisters get into their business, as well as in their personal lives. While more could have been done with the character, Collins still steals every scene he's in. As for Alan Arkin, he's enjoyable as the father (who is always coming up with get rich quick schemes that never pan out), but he seems to be giving the same performance he gave three years ago in Little Miss Sunshine.
I enjoyed the movie greatly, and yet while I was watching it, I kept on thinking to myself that I should be enjoying it even more. As I look over this review, I see I keep on using phrases like "unfocused" and "more could have been done". The script has all the ingredients for a memorable movie, but doesn't follow through completely with some of them. It doesn't hurt the film, but it did leave me wanting more, or maybe wishing it was a little longer. (It's about 100 minutes as is.) And yet, the narrative never slows down or gets jumbled in too many ideas. What is there on the screen is developed enough for me to be satisfied. For all its faults, Sunshine Cleaning is worth tracking down as the film slowly expands across the country.
