Where's Richard Donner when a kid from the 80s needs him?

One would think that the ability to have one actor play twins would have improved with technology. But Freddie Highmore seems pretty much incapable of playing anything believably, with or without technology. Where'd the boy from Finding Neverland go? Slap an American accent on a kid and boom, he's washed up. Sad really.

Seriously, I have to stop seeing these kind of movies. Most who know me know I have a weakness for kids movies of the sort that offer some adventurous plot, with the preteen outsiders being the only ones who can understand what's really going on (until the inevitable denouement where the adults can no longer deny the truth). I pine away hoping for a new Goonies, Explorers, D.A.R.Y.L., or Flight of the Navigator. While The Last Mimzy came pretty damn close to that implacable magic from the 1980s, most of the modern CGI-laden backpack sellers are way off the mark. Spiderwick Chronicles seems to be no exception. These movie-makers don't even know how to pace or get good performances, let alone get an audience to buy in to the fantasy adventure.

Even in the 21st century, people like Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro have set the bar pretty high. But movies like this or say, Stardust, don't even seem to be trying.

Rampage: The Movie

I just got through this thing and I'm reeling like a roller coaster ride just blasted my skin off over the course of an hour. It's fitting because this ain't really a movie, it really is more like a glorified Star Tours (just like Lost?). No real beginning, no end, just steep terrifying drops. The way he pulls a story line that's relatively tradish in monster flicks is suprising, intelligent, and suprisingly intelligent.

They go to great lengths to match The Blair Witch Project's docu-realism, and though we've all had enough of it this decade, I can still be down. But while I can get over the fact that there's a monster tearing apart New York, it's really all the little unrealistic things that bug me. The running for hours in high heels the quick recoveries from injury and mourning, the convenient "plot" moves. But I'm all like "fine" because I can't wait for them to never stop tearing down the biggest sandcastle in the country just like I saw on TV in 2001. Should we feel a little violated that JJ Abrams squeezes lemon juice on our American scab for no good reason? Maybe so, but I can't help feeling like Cloverfield is still a thriller like they used ta make 'em.

Oh and if you're gonna see it, see it in a movie theater.

The Ten (Divided by The Two)

So 2007 has come and gone and nothing has floored me. I have a few left to catch, and maybe I truly just don't make the effort to find the many brilliant underdistributed foreign films that are always the unsung heroes. But I saw a lot of movies this year, and I only have one 5 star movie to show for it: David Wain's The Ten. Most people haven't heard of it.

I haven't seen anything ultra-pertinent since There Will be Bloodsport, but Netflix has just released The Ten through their Watch Instantly feature, and since it was a predictable bomb in the theater, I figured I'd commemorate the occasion with a nod.

It's Paul Rudd hosting 10 skits by my generation's comedic geniuses who refuse to let the Kentucky Fried Movie audience down. Are there hits and misses here? Yes, but the hits are some serious hits. It takes a special someone to like this movie. Did you like Wet Hot American Summer? Did you watch MTV's The State? Did you like Mr. Show? Did you like Stella? Do you like palpability of discomfort in the theater or your living room (vis. Curb Your Enthusiasm, Freaks and Geeks, BBC's The Office)? If the majority of your answers were yes, catch The Ten while you're waiting for the promised The State DVD collection.

Daniel Day-Lewis does Mr. Smith

Robert has said that my commentaries have been too one-sided. My defense was that I try to limit what I write to only what might be original thoughts. I'm not a reviewer. But I'll start by saying that Daniel Day is definitely fantastic. He's the slickest chameleon out there - I've always said so, incidentally. Paul Dano sucked, but let's keep this positive. The production work is roundly great, and as a work, it's more than well-realized. But one thing is for sure: Upton Sinclair would have hated this.

That's not necessarily the film's sentencing since, after all, PTA has said that it's not an adaptation. Then again, the fact that narrative has strayed so far from works like those of Mr. Sinclair might give us pause. Leaving out the studios for a moment, why does a screenwriter and director make a movie like this, and why do we as an audience enjoy it? Like The Aviator, There Will Be Blood is about a tough-as-nails robber-baron who stops at nothing to demolish his enemies and achieve success of American mythic proportions. But respected filmmakers can't get away with transparent bourgeois propaganda, not that I think they would ever consciously intend to. So we get the inevitable moral ambiguities and ultimately even condemnation of the central character - by the end of the film, we hate Plainview for his cruelty. In other words, we're not permitted to identify.

But here's the thing. Despite all that, can't we still see a kind of reverence for Plainview, for Howard Hughes, for William Randolph Hearst? A sense that now there's a real man! That's the part of these movies that makes me a little ill: the capitalist master as anti-hero. In the case of both The Aviator and this movie, the introspective is at the expense of even the briefest glimpse of class struggle. So despite the films internal strengths, for which there are many, for me it fails the test of greatness for everything it chooses not to see.

How many soundtracks will this film sell?

Hitting the ground running, Juno, seems a dark yet screwball comedy. With the sort of ambiguous humor and extra-teen sensibility of Election or Ghost World. There's some uneasiness to confronting something like teen pregnancy with the callous laugh and a shrug the writing seems to call for. The script could easily slide by as jaded and/or irresponsible. Much like the main character.

Instead what happens is a kind of unraveling: Juno, expertly played by this new Ellen Page person, is continuously forced to take her situation more and more seriously. To match this development, the whole tone of the movie sheds its surreality, and suddenly we're not laughing from the outside at a farce. By unorthodox means we've come to care deeply about the characters and the world they inhabit.

Many movies try to snatch a serious message from the jaws of comedy. Few can do it without tacking it on or oblivious melodrama. Juno does it with care and grace. And from today's all-stars of comedy, who woulda thunk it?

The Fresh Prince of Legend

I left the theater with three letters in my head: W-T-F.

Here's the new idea to solve the third act dilemma: Don't have one. Just as the plot got problematized the movie was wrapped and handed to you like a Christmas gift as thoughtless as it was last-minute. Will Smith never uttered any catch phrases such as "don't make me put my foot up yo' zombie ass!" so I was wrong about that, and some credit is due, but in the instances where he doesn't get the luxury of having no other actors present (he is, after all, the last man on earth), his middle-aged pleas to be taken seriously are pretty pathetic. Let's see what else sucked...oh yeah, how about the cookie-cutter Gumby-looking zombie cartoons who all looked 100% identical? I know what happened, something like this. Director: "Well, I'm two thirds done, fellas. Now I need just $70M to do the last bit." Producers: "Are you kidding, that money is all gone. We used it in our hemmorage-assests-into-billboard-splashes-to-saturate-lowest-possible-
denominator-public-consciousness campaign!" Writers: "Well what little integrity we may have once had is long gone, so we could finish it up right now by shitting all over the original novel's intricate twist finale, which was way too much of a frown fest anyway. In the post-post 9/11 cinema, we need let America smile again, right? We'll have the rewrites for you in the morning."

Even brown-bagging this movie, I came out sober. And I resent that.

...

In the TV Realm, I'm deep into Heroes: Season 1. My first thought was "stooooopid" after I'd gotten through the first episode. We decided to give it a couple more and now I'm hooked. Good lord the writing/directing is bad, it's politically vapid, and totally escapist, but sucks, it's neat, and TV like this is a better alternative than opium, right?

My theory goes like this: some comic fans were so let down by the third X-Men movie that they decided to just reimagine the X-Men (yet again), therby keeping Bryan Singer's dream of X-perfection alive. I mean, it's hardly even concealed: Wolverine, Rogue, Sabertooth, Prof. X, the boy who cancels the mutant gene, The Human Torch and Invisible Woman (oops), Kitty Pride/Shadowcat, plus a few other bonuses from Back to the Future and The Incredibles - they're all there in different forms. Season 1 reads like an extended narrative of the first X-Men film's opening 30 minutes. It's just as dumb as Lost (and it has to be the same producers, right??? I mean the non-credits opening splash gimmick...), but it doesn't take itself quite so seriously, and we don't have to deal with the onion-peeling narration that never ends. In Heroes answers come quick. The question is: will they be able to keep it interesting after the first arc? I doubt it, but here's to the ride.

The Denzel you know is at least as bad as the Denzel you don't.

I suppose that's a few too few posts and a few to many years to even call this a revival. But here goes.

What kind of deal with the devil did Denzel Washington make in order to get the rights to play every famous black man in history?

Shall we verify this?

Steve Biko
Malcolm X
The Hurricane
Mel Tolson (coming soon)

and here, the infamous Frank Lucas, who had the dubious honor of being the first American black man to rise to the level of the Cosa Nostra.

I swear to dog if I hear the words "based on a true story..." and "starring Denzel Washington" in the same trailer again, it will be reason enough to never see another one of his movies again. Don't get me wrong, he's pretty good (not great), but I can't help hating him, since he falls into that ever expanding sphere of actors who whose narcissism infects their entire performance, home to such critical darlings as Pierce Brosnan, George Clooney, and as luck would have it Russel Crowe.

So yeah I'm stuck with the latter and big D for this ridiculously overlong death rattle from the once-great Ridley Scott. The movie goes several different directions in the first act, and confuses the audience by leaving all kinds of loose threads, but it's not even good enough to care much. We get the exceedingly tiresome Russel Crowe droopy-dog-eyed-I'm-just-a-big-lovably-lumbering-benevolent-man routine beside the main character who's about as one-dimensional as they come. Ooh wow, how ruthless! As an audience we can't help coming away with nothing except that lingering feeling of: gee whiz the 1970s really did blow, no pun intended.

If you're a fan of HBO, this is like The Wire lite, a show that not only tops this film weekly, but also could have lent even more talented black actors to play the lead roles instead of merely the sacrificial pimp.

...

Elsewhere I am destined for a late showing of I, Legend, err, I am Robot, or whatever it's called, this weekend. I heard it's not a zombie movie, but a zombie-vampires movie. Maybe there's hope after all, but how can Will Smith not ruin it? If you were wondering, yes, I do consider him in the above category as well. Squarely.

Via Sam I have just heard that we can expect a Ghostbusters 3, with the entire original cast and helmed by the original director, Ivan Reitman. Not enough to excite you? Ghostbusters 3 is a video game!

On the 'Flix front: thumbs down for:

The Island (I'm starting to feel sorry for Sean Bean, whose talent now seems to always be wasted.)
The Da Vinci Code

Thumbs up for:

The Lives of Others
Transformers (Michael Bay straddles the fence today, this shit was awesome.)
The Last Mimzy (We are closer to the spirit of the 80s kids films, but not there yet)