Funny People (2009)

I'm off to a bad start. Out of three movies I've reviewed since my big return for another season of moviegoing, two of them have been complete duds. If it weren't for Robert Downey, Jr., I'd feel like a voice crying out in the wilderness.

But I'm not here to weep over my bad choices. I'm here to help you make good ones. I've sort of already played my hand here, but this weekend I had a chance to catch Funny People, Judd Apatow's latest. In short, despite being punctuated by some clever and classic Apatow moments, Funny People is anything but, overlong in some places and tragically predicatable in others, with a cast that could do - and has done - a heck of a lot better.

If you've seen the trailer for this, you've seen the whole movie and all its highlights. Adam Sandler plays dying comedian George Simmons, who hires newbie funny person Ira Wright (Seth Rogen) and gets a new lease on life when his disease goes into remission. With his second chance, George decides to pursue former flame Laura (an underused Leslie Mann), despite the fact that she's married to Aussie businessman Clark (Eric Bana). Hilarity, you'd expect, ensues.

Unfortunately, it doesn't. While the trailers - as well as the title and the track records of Apatow & Co. - suggest that the movie is a laugh riot, I didn't find my sides splitting. Instead, I found myself staring at the movie in disbelief - disbelief that I'd been so horribly duped, disbelief that the movie wasn't over yet (at two and a half hours, it's not for those with a short attention span), disbelief that so many funny people could be assembled in such a droll production. Perfect example - Aziz Ansari, who appears for a quick cameo role which consists primarily of him delivering his stand-up routine about how absurd Coldstone's size names are (particularly "Gotta Have It"). While Ansari is hilarious on his live album, in Funny People he's just not funny. I don't know why that is, but it's as though the movie is draining itself of humor in order to feed its own spiraling runtime.

I'm not quite sure what went wrong on the way to this movie. Maybe it's casting genuine funnyman Seth Rogen as the second banana to Adam Sandler, who for my money has never actually been funny (granted, I've never seen Happy Gilmore or Billy Madison, but I just can't believe the hype). Maybe it's the fact that Leslie Mann only gets one scene in which she's allowed to be funny; the rest of the time she spends playing a highly cliched "girl who got away but remains conflicted about it all." Maybe it's the fact that the movie could have been ninety minutes without sacrificing any of the story's heart; instead, the film is protracted and brutally long, especially in the decidedly not-funny first hour or so in which Adam Sandler is dying.

Part of the problem is that Funny People is two different movies: the life-and-death drama and the get-the-girl comedy. But where some films might be able to consolidate those two concepts into one distinct package, Funny People is fragmented almost precisely in half, and the fragmentation is so palpable that it's difficult to believe that the George Simmons playing CandyLand with the kids is the same George Simmons who was popping pills earlier and asking Ira to kill him. Nor is it easy to accept Laura's on-again-off-again flip-flop on her husband's philandering; one minute she's peeved that he's cheating, the next minute she doesn't even think about it, and the whole thing never really makes too much sense.

There are some lights in the film. Seth Rogen delivers a few of his trademark one-liner quips, often nonsensical and non sequitur, but it's an art he's mastered, and so bully for him that he can still throw a punch (metaphorically and, in the case of the film's climax, literally). Apatow's children Maude and Iris (last seen in Knocked Up) also appear, little bundles of spontaneous energy that light up whenever they're on screen. But the problem is that the film is so bloated that these shining moments seem like stars in the sky, exceptions to the rule. Sure, the many ways George and Ira lampoon a doctor's thick accent are hysterical, but they're buffered by twenty minutes on either end of just downright unfunny material.

At the core, the film's problem is false marketing. Perhaps, then, this review would have been better if the film had been entitled Marginally Funny People (in many less than funny situations). At least then I wouldn't feel cheated.
Funny People is rated "R for language and crude sexual humor throughout, and some sexuality." If you've seen one movie with any of the cast or crew involved, you know what's coming - F-bombs galore, sexual dialogue up the ying-yang, brief violence played for laughs, and a sex scene with fleeting nudity.

New York, I Love You (2009)

It seems that the older I get, the shorter my attention span becomes. Maybe I'm just a jaded filmgoer, maybe today's flicks have run out of pizzazz, or maybe I'm being overdramatic about the whole getting-bored-quickly thing.

At any rate, the beauty of an anthology film is that you only have to invest about ten minutes in any given story. New York, I Love You represents the second in what is apparently a franchise devoted to vignettes about love in important world cities. I was initially only aware of the first "Cities of Love" film, Paris je t'aime (which really ought to be reviewed herein), a film near and dear to the romantic in me.

Before I go any further, I should preface this review by noting that by definition an anthology of any kind is naturally going to be hit or miss. Even Paris je t'aime has a few duds in the bunch. But unfortunately New York, I Love You is primarily a batch of misses with only a few hits. In honor of the anthology format, I'm going to shake things up and review each short separately and then think globally, with the caveat that New York is much more fluid, with its untitled segments intersecting and mingling much more than in Paris.

Director Jiang Wen has the first segment, which stars Hayden Christensen as a thief who picks Andy Garcia's pocket. After being smitten by passer-by Rachel Bilson, Christensen finds out that his quick con on Garcia isn't as easy as it looks. This vignette starts off as a cliche, and the fact that Christensen can't really act doesn't help. But when Garcia and Christensen share the screen, there's something better afoot, with each trying to one-up the other in a game of wills.

Mira Nair directs a more romantic tale about two salespeople (Natalie Portman and Irrfan Khan) married to other people but who fall in love with each other regardless. This segment is unfulfilling, carried by solid acting but lacking any dramatic resolution beyond a clever use of visual language which suggests that these two will always love each other.

Shunji Iwai gets one of the most romantic parts of the film when he brings musician Orlando Bloom together with receptionist Christina Ricci by using Dostoevsky. Props on that one and on creating an ending to their story which feels neither forced nor hackneyed.

Yvan Attal directs two segments, both of which are marked by narrative twists and compelling dialogue which conceals something important beneath the surface. Both are set outside restaurants with their characters on smoke breaks; in the first of these, Ethan Hawke propositions Maggie Q about the inevitability of their romance based on one chance encounter, while in the second Robin Wright Penn plays a jilted wife looking for a change when she meets Chris Cooper and propositions him. The parallel is less pronounced than it seems.

Brett Ratner's segment is my absolute favorite in the film and really the only portion I'd consider rewatching at least once. After breaking up with Blake Lively, Anton Yelchin (one of my new favorites after Charlie Bartlett) agrees to take pharmacist James Caan's daughter to the prom. There's one catch - the daughter (Olivia Thirlby) is in a wheelchair. Don't be fooled; whimsy ensues, and Yelchin's big wish comes true. This one has a fabulous twist; if you only watch one segment, watch this one.

After appearing in a few interstitials, Bradley Cooper co-stars with Drea de Matteo in Allen Hughes's narrator-heavy story about a regrettable one-night stand. This segment flops because it doesn't quite go anywhere, and the ending is abrupt and inconsistent with all but the title of the film.

In the most puzzling segment in the film, Shekhar Kapur directs Anthony Minghella's screenplay about an opera singer (Julie Christie) who returns to a hotel in New York and has separate encounters with two bellhops (John Hurt and Shia LeBeouf). If anyone can make heads or tails of this segment, please let me know what you've decided, as I can't wrap my head around it.

Natalie Portman steps behind the camera to direct a segment about a father's (Carlos Acosta) day in the park with his daughter (Taylor Geare). This segment is cute and fluffy but ultimately forgettable. Portman does a fine job writing and directing it, to the extent that I'd be curious what she can do with longer material.

Fatih Akin directs an empty segment about a painter (Ugur Yucel) who falls for Chinese herbalist Shu Qi and then dies. Burt Young peeks his head in as Yucel's landlord. Huh? That's about all this segment amounts to.

Joshua Marston writes/directs the final full segment, in which Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman celebrate their 63rd anniversary. The dialogue in this segment is well-played and flows at a leisurely pace, but if you're looking for a conventional narrative you won't find it here. This segment feels very personal and personable, and it's a comfortable way to close the film.

Throughout, Randy Balsmeyer gives transition scenes which feature various characters entering taxicabs together; Emilie Ohana plays a videographer whose role in the film seems only to be to unite the characters. One interstitial in particular, though, is memorable, with Eva Amurri and Justin Bartha quarreling about how they never vacation together.

The DVD includes two deleted vignettes, one of them directed by Scarlett Johannson and starring Kevin Bacon as a New Yorker with a bad case of wanderlust. These deleted scenes, though, have rightfully been omitted, as they are entirely lifeless and protracted. Perhaps Ms. Johannson should stay in front of the camera looking pretty, which she's very good at doing if Iron Man 2 is any indication.

Taken separately, there is a fair amount to like about New York, I Love You, but taken together as a 103 minute film there is a lot of disappointment. The choice to more deliberately blend vignettes - Drea de Matteo visits James Caan's pharmacy, and Chris Cooper meets Maggie Q at a dry cleaner's - makes the film difficult to follow in points; it is often unclear where one story ends and another begins. This trademark of the first film is evident only in the film's most successful segments - Iwai's and especially Ratner's. On the whole, though, Ratner's segment is the only standout feature in an otherwise disappointing follow-up to Paris je t'aime.
New York, I Love You is rated "R for language and sexual content." This being a movie about New York, F-bombs pepper the dialogue; this being a movie about love, sex comes up in conversation and is depicted twice without any nudity to speak of.

Iron Man 2 (2010)

If you're expecting a negative review, turn around now. Iron Man 2 combines three of my favorite things: summer blockbusters (a sure sign that my summer review series has kicked off again), comic books (whose adaptations I review all too often) here, and Robert Downey, Jr. (whose movies aren't reviewed often enough here). And it does so successfully.

Iron Man 2 picks up literally right where the first one left off: Now that Tony Stark (Downey) has outed himself as the metal-suited superhero Iron Man, he has to face new sharks in the water. A bevy of enemies accost him, including the smarmy looter Senator Stern (Garry Shandling) and business rival Justin Hammer (the underappreciated Sam Rockwell). The real foe here is Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke, blending elements of Iron Man foes Whiplash and the Crimson Dynamo), who possesses technology similar to Iron Man - tech he plans to use against Stark. Along the way, Tony Stark is off-again with secretary/love interest Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and buddy Lt. Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard), on-again with new aide Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johannson), and on-the-fence about S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson and his eyepatch) and his Avengers-related offer.

Fans of the first movie will have plenty to smile about here. Iron Man, you'll recall, came at a time when "The darker, the better" was the order of the day in the comic book adaptation world. Enter Tony Stark, sauntering into the comic book world with a drink in one hand and a punchline in the other. Iron Man 2 continues that tradition, with the one-liners coming as fast as machine gun fire. There's only one scene that borders on over-the-top, comedically speaking, and that's Tony Stark's birthday party, which he hosts while in full Iron Man gear and while completely intoxicated. But the scene survives - and the film thrives - because of Downey's personality; he's impeccably cast here in a character who's larger than life, just like his personifier. If there are such things as roles one was born to play, this is RDJ's.

The rest of the cast is in fine form, too. Paltrow and Johannson, both of whom have been known to turn in less than stellar performances, have real chemistry with RDJ, and the action scenes with which Johannson's tasked are pulled off with Alias-style sangfroid. It's always a delight to see Sam Jackson, and Cheadle does such a solid job as "Rhodey" that you'll almost forget about Terrence Howard. While Rourke and Rockwell aren't on the level of Heath Ledger's Joker, as far as villainy goes they're as good as the best of the Marvel baddie crew (i.e., Willem Dafoe in Spider-Man and Ian McKellan in X-Men), though Rockwell is a bit campier than some may care for. Even director Jon Favreau steps in front of the camera for a fun turn as gregarious driver/bodyguard Happy Hogan, who gets a terrific action sequence of his own.

The movie, though, is rightfully Downey's, and Iron Man's by extension, and so fans will be relieved to know that - despite this film having a much larger ensemble cast than its predecessor - the focus is still very much on Tony Stark and that metal suit of his. Even shout-outs to Captain America and Thor (that is, other Marvel films in the pipeline) are done in the context of their meaning to Tony (it's not spoiling anything to say that they mean absolutely nothing to the narcissistic playboy). Action sequences revolve around him, too - and, boy, are they dazzling. The effects are top-notch, and the aerial combat scenes will have you on the edge of your seat.

But in spite of all the razzle-dazzle, Iron Man 2 is just plain fun, with as much to enjoy, if not more, as the first film offered. And that's really the best review I can offer for the movie. I could go into a lengthy "Tony Stark as John Galt" analogy, or I could spend paragraphs oohing and ahhing over how great Scarlett Johannson looks in black spandex (but seriously...), or I could even ruminate on the significance of the film's praise of a privatized military-industrial complex. But I'd be overlooking the fact that the movie makes the popcorn taste a little better. It's a summer blockbuster with a sense of humor and an intelligence beyond a high school graduation equivalent. It's well-done, made by people who know what they're doing - and, more importantly, who know how to entertain an audience.

Iron Man 2 carries an MPAA rating of "PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, and some language." Lots of robotic beings blow up, and guys in metal suits fight a lot, menacing each other along the way. Language -and the assumed innuendo - is pretty tame.

As Tony Stark says, "Oh, it's good to be back!"

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

I should begin by saying there isn't anything wrong with Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. But.

That's admittedly a strange way to begin a review, but Burton's version of the Lewis Carroll stories (equal parts remake and sequel) is admittedly a strange movie.

In this version, Alice (fresh face Mia Wasikowska) is 19, facing a less-than-exciting engagement and befuddled by recurring dreams of Wonderland in all its smiling-cat glory. After ditching her would-be fiance for a white rabbit (Michael Sheen, famous as David Frost in Frost/Nixon) in a waistcoat, Alice falls down the rabbit hole, and the classic hijinks ensue - tense confrontations with the decapitation-prone Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, replete with a digitally enhanced cranium), a zany tea party with The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), and a duel with the monstrous Jabberwocky (voiced with gusto by Christopher Lee).

I began the review as I did because I want to make it clear that the movie is as fun and enjoyable as most anything with Tim Burton's name on it. I also wanted to make clear that my disappointment with the movie doesn't hinder its capacity to be enjoyed by filmgoers. Okay, that's complicated - how can a movie's main flaw not be a flaw at all? Let's unpack that.

Beginning with the good news - the cast is vivacious and delightful as always. Johnny Depp gets his name before the title of the movie, likely because of his star power; his quirky eccentricities and a heavy dose of pathos in his backstory contribute to a fresh spin on the character, distancing him from the stereotypical nutjob as fully as Depp inhabits the character (which, like all his roles, is a complete immersion). HBC jokes that she plays in all of Burton's films because she's his wife, but the incontrovertible truth is that she's at her best when she's playing a completely disjointed person like the Red Queen; her first scene (in which she interrogates several frogs-in-waiting about her missing cranberry tarts) sets the stage for a mentally unhinged portrait, and her repeated cries of "Off with his/her/their head!" will make any filmgoer giggle with glee. As the White Queen (Red's sister), Anne Hathaway is - in Alice's parlance - "curiouser and curiouser," because I'm still not sure what to make of her; Hathaway bounds about the screen with the angelic grace of a waltz for one, but there seems to be a bit of madness ready to slip out at inopportune moments. Certainly this is an all-star cast (yes, that's Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar, here named Absolem), but keep your eyes on scene-stealer Matt Lucas, who ably juggles the dual role of eggbodied twins Tweedledum & Tweedledee (or is it the other way around?).

Screenwriter Linda Woolverton does a clever job of weaving a new through-line into the classic story; it's not spoiling anything to say that Alice is called upon to battle the Jabberwocky and dethrone the Red Queen, but there's a slyness at play that puts a new relevance on familiar occurrences. The Cheshire Cat matters more in this version; no longer is he just a grinning feline evaporating in the trees, but he's now a turncoat seeking redemption at every turn; similarly, the Mad Hatter's not mad per se, but he's getting there. Hats off (pardon the pun) to Woolverton, who also turned Hamlet into The Lion King.

So there's nothing really wrong with the movie, but here comes the bad news. The bad news is that Burton could have done much better. Again, that isn't to say that the movie's bad or missteps in any places, but there's a certain feel to the movie that doesn't quite match the Tim Burton style (wildly imaginative and visually disorienting in a Rembrandt kind of way). Maybe it's his fidelity to the source material; though the film has a smart new story arc, I have the same complaint about this one that I did about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That is, there are certain story beats that any adaptation simply must hit, and there's a fine line there between pulling it off and feeling unimaginative; Alice has its moments, but it often feels like we're moving from room to room on a predestined chocolate factory tour.

Similarly, I felt like Depp was holding back in a lot of places; his Mad Hatter could have been so much more. What we get isn't bad - the decision to speak in a Scottish accent whenever provoked to anger is new and different - but perhaps I've come to expect too much. It's classic Depp, but perhaps "classic Depp" is last year's style. The film is "Classic Burton," too, but it never quite pushes the limit of what I've come to expect from the director. I've always considered 2007's Sweeney Todd to be the movie Tim Burton had been gearing up for his entire life, so it's a tough act to follow in that respect.

I can't say that anyone did any wrong here. Perhaps Depp and Burton's creative juices are on hold after Sweeney Todd (which, no matter what one feels about the movie as a musical, has to be awarded a medal for ambition and enthusiastic execution). Perhaps Disney held the reins too tightly on Burton and Co. (a slapdash nod to the 1951 animated version feels like the kind of overt nod that Burton's usually more subtle about). Whatever the case, I remain pleased but disappointed (if one can feel those two emotions at once) with Alice in Wonderland and look forward to Burton's next pairing with Depp - an adaptation of the campy vampire soap Dark Shadows.

Alice in Wonderland has one of the strangest ratings of all time - "PG for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar." I mean, I guess that makes sense.

Zombieland (2009)

After Jennifer's Body (and after the last few posts retroactively updated the blog with reviews I'd written a while back), I needed a fresh movie to restore my faith in the cinema. It was with reservation that I slid Zombieland into my DVD player, but within moments my trepidation was assuaged.

You see, I love a zombie movie that doesn't take itself seriously - Shaun of the Dead is on my as-yet-unpublished "Best of the 2000s" list - and if the undead tongue is firmly in the decaying cheek, I'm right there. Zombieland is another entry in a long line of zombie movies with a sense of humor, and it's one of the better ones.

In an America populated primarily by zombies and where identities are subordinated to destinations (our protagonist is named Columbus, because that's where he's going), survival of the fittest is the order of the day, and the prize for those who make it is the promise of the last Twinkie on earth. Narrator Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg, who seems to be the B-list Michael Cera) meets up with Tallahassee (a fabulous Woody Harrelson), who's all about one-upsmanship and making zombie-killing an art while searching for that last Twinkie. The unlikely duo match wits several times with con artist sisters Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) before a delightful showdown at the most bitingly contagious theme park this side of Disney World.

While I'm not a big fan of Eisenberg - Adventureland (also set, curiously, at an amusement park) left me cold and I'd much rather watch Michael Cera do the same act - Harrelson rarely lets me down, and his turn as Tallahassee is iconic for all the right reason, setting a new standard for infectiously fun zombie-killers in the same way that Zac Efron redefined teeny-bopper musicals. Stone is cute in a quirky kind of way, and she's entirely believable as a sneaky survivalist. Breslin's cute, too, like a less pretentious and more talented Dakota Fanning with more appeal to a broader audience. So the cast is a lot of fun.

(Note: I think the statute of limitations on spoilers has expired, but just in case... skip this paragraph if you don't want a pleasant mid-flick surprise spoiled.) The most fun, though, comes from an entirely unpredictable and extremely kitschy cameo appearance by Bill Murray, playing himself as one of the last remaining non-infected humans. Murray plays himself, but he does it with as much dry wit as in his most acclaimed roles (Groundhog Day and Ghostbusters, which gets a name check here). There's nothing un-funny about his five or so minutes in the middle of the movie, and the rest of the film almost feels like a letdown once he exits the stage.

The second half of the film has a different feel after the dynamically rip-roaring opening hour, but it's still a lot of fun. It's hard to believe that, in the forty or so years since George Romero made zombies cool, there are still creative ways to kill the undead (again). But how about garden shears? A car door? A piano? Zombieland has all that and more, especially the unforgettable "Double Tap" rule that must be seen to be fully appreciated.

The film is gratuitously violent, but its excessive nature is not purposeless, because the film is so ludiccrously over the top that the blood-and-guts effects have to be similarly beyond the pale. So while some fans might object to the slow-mo shot of a zombie vomiting blood over the opening credits, those of us who are in on the joke know that Zombieland is intentionally dialing the genre up to eleven. Watching Tallahassee do his thing - giggling maniacally and taunting the zombies as he goes - should be proof enough that the filmmakers are having as much fun as they'd like us to have.

It's a biting good time.

Zombieland is, no surprise, rated "R for horror violence/gore and language." The gore certainly isn't for the squeamish, but the language wouldn't make Joe Pesci blush.

Shutter Island (2010)

I’ve never actually gone crazy - at least, not clinically. But Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island might be the closest I’ve come to a brush with insanity.

Scorsese’s 21st film - the latest in a long and impeccably significant history - isn’t a typical filmic descent into madness. It’s more like being thrown into the deep end of a freezing cold swimming pool, equally disorienting and inescapably gripping.

After a months-long delay in the theatrical release (a real tragedy for the film’s Oscar chances), audiences have seen the trailers for Shutter Island and so are already familiar with the basic premise: Mentally unhinged U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) goes in search of an escaped convict/patient at an island-based mental institution off the coast of Boston. While searching Ashecliffe Hospital with his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), Teddy finds himself combating a hurricane and a subversive institutional staff (led by Sir Ben Kingsley).

The real narrative, though, takes place within Teddy’s mind, as headaches and delusions begin to muddle his investigation. The line between reality and delirium becomes blurred, and it’s here that DiCaprio gets a chance to shine; indeed, this might be DiCaprio’s top performance, even besting his last outing with Scorsese in 2006’s The Departed.

Surrounded by an omnipresent cloud of smoke pluming from his pipe, Kingsley almost steals the show with his turn as the shady Dr. Cawley, continually dodging questions and requests for help in favor of his own personal agenda. And just wait until that agenda is revealed, because it’s one of the most alarming twists in recent American film history - which, I suppose, owes as much to the Dennis Lehane book on which the film is based as it does to Scorsese’s penchant for last-reel shockers.

But the true star here is Scorsese himself. No, he doesn’t appear on screen as he has in previous films (his taxicab confession is arguably the spookiest part of Taxi Driver), but what Scorsese does from behind the camera is masterful. From the opening moments of the film, Scorsese puts the viewer on edge, forcing us to orient ourselves first on a buoyant ferry and then en route to a high-security zone of an island so eerie we expect Matthew Fox to come running out of the treeline at any second.

Sorry, Lost fans: There’s no time-skipping or black smoke monsters on this island, but there is a pervading sense of imminent danger from the environment and its inhabitants, an unsettling air of mystery keeping the plot’s solution just out of reach. As Scorsese reveals Teddy’s past in a curious blend of flashback and hallucination, we get to see a master at work; Scorsese is like an expert puppeteer who knows exactly how to manipulate what he wants us to see.

A prime example of Scorsese’s skill as a filmmaker comes when Teddy and Chuck find their way into Ward C of Ashecliffe Hospital, the building in which the most dangerous patients are housed. At once claustrophobic and nerve-racking in an “I know the killer is just around the corner” kind of way, Scorsese’s direction puts the audience on edge until Teddy, relieved, escapes Ward C with his life and a fistful of questions - a literal fistful, in the case of a hospital document that becomes central to the film’s climax.

What filmgoers will be discussing most when the credits roll is exactly the film’s climax and its falling action, but to treat Shutter Island as if it were a puzzle film on the order of Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending Memento might be to do a disservice to the movie Scorsese has crafted. The psychological thriller isn’t exactly Scorsese’s trademark - he’s more at home with violent stories about the conflict between family and duty - but many other reviewers are already noting a serious debt to the canon of Alfred Hitchcock. As thrillers go, Shutter Island is certainly up there with Hitch’s Psycho and Rear Window.

Just try not to go crazy watching it.
Like every Scorsese movie, Shutter Island gets an "R for disturbing violent content, language and some nudity." There's some blood, as well as disturbing flashbacks with Holocaust overtones and a graphic suicide. A few F-bombs (also standard Scorsese fare) and a brief glimpse at naked prisoners pepper the flick.

The Informant! (2009)

Just when it seemed that the whistleblower biopic genre was getting a little too formulaic, in stumbles Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! to turn the same old storyline on its ear.

Plus, how many movies can you name with an exclamation mark in the title? While newspaper editors cringe over the repeated use of that accursed punctuation mark in The Informant! let’s see if we can’t sneak a movie review past them.

Behind a hefty weight gain, a bad hairdo and an awkward mustache, Matt Damon stars as Mark Whitacre, the titular corporate snitch who finks on his agribusiness employees Archer Daniels Midland when he realizes he can’t cover up the vast price fixing in which the company is involved. Unfortunately for the FBI, Whitacre turns out to be even dumber than he looks, calling entirely too much attention to himself and unwittingly concealing key pieces of evidence.

We’ve seen Damon go undercover in Soderbergh’s “Oceans” trilogy, but Mark Whitacre is a far cry from pickpocket Linus Caldwell as far as covert operations go. Nevertheless, Damon slides into character easily, with narration and subtle facial gestures that let us know Whitacre is one of the dullest crayons in the box.

By contrast, the FBI agents in the film are sharp and quick on their feet. Scott Bakula plays senior agent Brian Shepard, slowly simmering with patient frustration at Whitacre’s dim-bulb antics. Joel McHale, recognizable to comedy fans as host of E! Network’s The Soup and star of NBC’s new comedy Community, puts in a fine turn as Agent Bob Herndon, but the film doesn’t give him much to do beyond being exasperated.

The Informant! is unquestionably Damon’s film. His is the open-mouthed mug on all the promotional material for the film, but there’s a great ensemble cast, each of whom get about five minutes to shine, mostly as lawyers. Comedian Patton Oswalt appears as a federal prosecutor, Clancy Brown (the prison guard from The Shawshank Redemption and the voice of SpongeBob’s Mr. Krabs) plays a deep-throated lawyer and Tony Hale (Buster from Arrested Development) shows up as a wide-eyed defense attorney in leagues over his head.

The beefiest supporting role comes from veteran supporting actress Melanie Lynskey, who plays Whitacre’s conflicted wife. If only she were given a little more screen time, this might be a performance to consider for Best Supporting Actress when the Oscars roll around.

That’s another thing about The Informant! Though it’s opening in limited release - a cinematic gimmick I like to call give-us-an-Oscar release - the film doesn’t seem like it’ll be up for any golden statues come early 2010. It’s not that the performances aren’t great: They’re outstanding. But the film doesn’t seem to take itself very seriously at all. Then again, Soderbergh hasn’t taken himself entirely seriously, it seems, since 2000’s Traffic.

The script, though, is solid. Adapted from Kurt Eichenwald’s nonfiction book of the same name, The Informant! is at once hilarious and heart-wrenching, enthusiastically clever and startlingly dramatic. In between side-splitting scenes of bungled espionage, the heart of the film paints a very real portrait of a man suddenly forced to live two lives, a man who isn’t even close to up to the task.

Fortunately, Damon is more than up to the task, and Soderbergh’s not afraid to tell us a story about such profound conflict. We hoot and holler at Whitacre’s mistakes (such as adjusting a concealed tape recorder during a key price fixing meeting), but we’re heart-broken by the time the film ends. You see, we want to see Whitacre become the hero he thinks he is.

But the reality is that sometimes stupid people just do stupid things. It takes a smart film to show us that, to keep us laughing while delivering a message that doesn’t feel forced. After the four-hour commercial flop Che, it’s good to see that Soderbergh is back in form.
The Informant! is rated, mundanely enough, "R for language," warning us of a few F-bombs in store.

Paranormal Activity (2009)

Alfred Hitchcock once opined, “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” The latest in the shaky-cam horror genre, Paranormal Activity, consists of a lot of anticipation with a feeble but well-intentioned bang at the end.


We have 1999’s The Blair Witch Project to thank for this new subgenre of horror flicks, in which the camerawork is as much of a character as the actual people in the film. This is the genre that brought us Cloverfield (good), Quarantine (bad) and of course Blair Witch (ugly despite its inventiveness). Paranormal Activity falls somewhere between good and ugly, sadly falling short of its “scariest movie ever” hype (nice try, Time magazine).

New faces Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat play fictionalized versions of themselves in a seemingly haunted house. We quickly learn that Katie has been haunted since the age of eight, and the house is just the latest dwelling for something more demonic than a mere ghost.


The star of the film isn’t Featherston, who does a more than serviceable job being frightened out of her wits. It’s not Sloat, who brings a fun and slightly cynical attitude to a genre that sometimes takes itself too seriously. The real star is the camera that Micah purchases to document the titular paranormal activity that’s running rampant in the house.


Consequently, the nighttime scenes punctuated only by a timestamp are the most compelling in the 90-some minutes of the film. Katie and Micah prop a camera by their bedside before turning in for the night, and the ensuing footage forms the emotional backbone of the movie. The special effects shine (to reveal these effects would be to spoil some of the film’s more terrifying surprises), and you’ll never again look at those things that go bump in the night the same way.


If the film put more of an emphasis on these nocturnal hauntings, it might very well have been the scariest movie of the year (and heck, it might be anyway, when we consider that horror flicks tend to put more of an emphasis on chests over deaths).


But Paranormal Activity suffers from the same tendencies that irreparably hurt Blair Witch - namely, scenes in which characters recover from hauntings and try to explain what’s happening to them dominate the picture. Katie and Micah spend far too much time being afraid and not enough time being frightened; there’s a semantic but important distinction, and it makes all the difference as to whether the audience is bored or terrified.


For comparative purposes, look to 2008’s The Strangers, in which masked murderers stalked Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman in their cabin retreat. There the protagonists spent the entire movie terrified, and so did the audience. Where Paranormal Activity lets us breathe between frights, The Strangers never let up, with its omnipresent killers crouching in every shadow. The ghost/demon/whatever-it-is haunting Katie and Micah only comes out at night.


But it’s not all boring. The film hits a few great bangs, sometimes literally. Footfalls, creaks and tricks of the light (especially an ominous blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shadow) are more terrifying than anything you’ll see in the Saw series, in which the only thing left that’s still frightening is that the franchise hasn’t been euthanized.


But if Paranormal Activity marks the death knell of the shaky cam genre, it’s an appropriate bookend. Blair Witch wasn’t scary at all, but it showed some potential. Paranormal Activity, on the other hand, cashes in on that potential but still leaves something to be desired as far as quantitative scares go.


At least, that’s what I’ll tell myself until the next time I hear a creaky floorboard in the middle of the night.



Paranormal Activity gets a spooky "R for language," which includes a few heat-of-the-moment F-bombs but does not include the bangs and jump moments for which the film is infamous.

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)

It’s refreshing to see an Army movie that isn’t politically charged. There’s no hidden agenda at work in The Men Who Stare at Goats” - just hippies, psychic powers and goats. Lots of goats.

Grant Heslov (co-writer of the Murrow biopic Good Night, and Good Luck) directs Jon Ronson’s book of the same name, profiling reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) as he begins to investigate and uncover a top-secret military research program on psychic abilities.

If it sounds like an intrigue-laden espionage thriller, it’s not. Bob’s top contact is Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a dishonorably discharged serviceman who still insists that he’s a Jedi warrior but who can’t seem to drive a car for more than two scenes without horribly wrecking it. Lyn’s mentor, Bill Django, is even more ridiculous; Jeff Bridges is perfectly cast as the innovator of the Army’s new program, more Jeffrey Lebowski than Sgt. Hartman.

That Clooney and Bridges cut their comedy teeth in films directed by Joel and Ethan Coen is a fascinating coincidence, because if there’s one word I’d use to describe The Men Who Stare at Goats, it’s Coen-esque. Heslov is borrowing more than a page from the Coen book here, playing up the absurdity and playing down conventional techniques of cinema (like character development or chronology). It doesn’t matter that the characters don’t really grow or that the storyline oscillates back and forth in time like an episode of Lost on LSD.

What matters is the ridiculous nature of the story unfolding before our eyes. This is a movie driven more by personality than by plot, more by narration than by narrative. The personalities in the film - McGregor as the piece’s Doubting Thomas, Clooney playing dead-on deadpan and Bridges as a doped-up hippie holdout, with Kevin Spacey as a smarmy mentalist - successfully carry the picture from its low-key opener to its unabashedly hokey high-note ending.

What’s even more fun than the Star Wars metafictional subtext (McGregor, lest we forget, played Obi-Wan Kenobi from 1999 to 2005) is that the film keeps pretending to take itself seriously. Even though the narrative throughline is grounded in Bob’s quest for an identity, let’s not forget that isn’t the opening scene of the film. The first scene finds Gen. Hopgood (Stephen Lang) running headfirst into a wall he thinks he can pass through.

Similarly, The Men Who Stare at Goats never really tells us if the Army has developed psychic weaponry. For every bent spoon, there’s something like the death touch - the dim mok - that doesn’t kill you right away but could take effect at any time years later. For every cloud that Lyn Cassady disperses with his mind, there’s a giant rock he rear-ends with the car he’s driving.

But none of that matters. The film’s much more of a throwback to the old Bob Hope and Bing Crosby buddies-on-the-road pictures of the mid-20th century. As such, then, the film doesn’t break a lot of new ground; the laughs are more than amusing, but they aren’t anything we haven’t seen before. There’s nothing new, for example, about Major General Holtz’s (Glenn Morshower, TV’s Aaron Pierce on 24) exclamation of “Holy (you-know-what)” upon seeing Lyn kill a goat with his mind, but the Southern drawl delivery, not the uniqueness of the moment, is what elicits the biggest laugh in the scene.

But what The Men Who Stare at Goats lacks in ingenuity, it makes up in execution. The cast have spent years climbing to the top of the Hollywood ladder, but it’s pictures like these that prove they’re not too good to make us chuckle.

With Oscar season right around the bend, The Men Who Stare at Goats isn’t cerebral drama or even brainy comedy, but it’s just right for (to paraphrase a line from Cyndi Lauper) girls - and boys - who just want to have fun.

These goats are rated "R for language, some drug content, and brief nudity." Language is run of the mill F-bombs, but the drug content is heavy although played for laughs. As for nudity, there's a fleeting glimpse of two rear ends from a distance.

Jennifer's Body (2009)

It's been a while since I posted a review on here (sorry, loyal fans), and it's been even longer since I posted a bad review. But Jennifer's Body, Diablo Cody's latest and far-from-greatest, was so bad that I just had to get back in the saddle for this very special occasion.

The movie's success banks largely on two factors: Juno-level snarkiness from screenwriter Cody's second big screen attempt, and Megan Fox being downright gorgeous (which, don't mistake me, she is). But a movie can't really rely on tradition and star power to succeed; nine times out of ten, a movie needs a little bit more to go on, like a substantive plot or a solid cast. Unfortunately for Cody, Fox, and director Karyn Kusama, Jennifer's Body is a dismal and tragic flop.

For a movie like this, why bother with the plot summary? You've seen the trailers a million times, and it's not like it's anything new in this movie - but here goes: after a close encounter with a Satan-worshipping emo band, Jennifer Check (Fox) suffers a demonic possession which compels her to devour her male classmates in order to preserve her alpha-female good looks. Best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried) takes notice and starts to worry; prominent soundtrack, innuendo, and copious gore ensue.

One can't help but draw a comparison to Evil Dead (reviewed elsewhere on this site), although the comparison is bound to be an unflattering one for Jennifer's Body. Where Evil Dead relied on many of the same sight gags (vomiting technicolor bile, for one) and overt campiness, there was something endearing with the Sam Raimi horror flick, and I'm not referring to Bruce Campbell's oversized chin. Jennifer's Body, conversely, feels tired and uninspired, as though the filmmakers are trying to leap over the obligatory waiting period before a film's labeled a "cult classic." If Jennifer's Body ever does become such a beast, it'll likely be of the "Mystery Science Theater" variety rather than a much-loved (and deservedly so) Lebowski.

Fans of Cody (which seems an odd category, since she only has one other film to her Hollywood credits) will be looking for a smashing soundtrack and over-the-top dialogue. I suppose you'll find both in Jennifer's Body, but there's something decidedly underwhelming about the execution of each. The soundtrack is riddled with bands like Fall Out Boy and Death Cab for Cutie, bands whose names I know but whose "top" songs I'd be hard-pressed to identify. If you like that sort of thing, go for it; I for one found myself bored with it and longed instead for a Rolling Stones track to appear (which, it doesn't). As for the dialogue, it's obvious the same writer penned Juno, but the delivery leaves something to be desired; Ellen Page could have pulled off a line like "I am going to eat your soul and s--t it out," but Fox just can't do it.

Speaking of acting chops, this cast almost had it. Almost. Never mind the fact that the movie was marketed on Fox's good looks and nude scenes (which, disappointingly for some, never actually deliver); the simple fact of the matter is that Megan Fox is a terrible actress and needs to be removed from the Hollywood scene in fairly short order. She looks great, I'll admit, but if a film is asked to be put on shoulders like those - well, even Atlas would shrug. The supporting cast tries, it really does; Seyfried is charming and cutesy as the unfortunately-nicknamed Needy Lesnicky, but I have a hard time buying her as a "plain Jane." Juno vet J.K. Simmons pops in every once in a while as the high school science teacher with 1970s Donald Sutherland hair and a hook for a hand, but while Simmons is a delight as always, his presence in the film is a continual reminder of Cody's failed attempts to one-up herself from the teen pregnancy dramedy that earned her an Oscar.

I've been describing this movie to my family and friends as "trainwreck bad," a phrase I could imagine one of the characters uttering in a Cody screenplay; this movie is flat-out terrible, but it's impossible to turn away. Even though the ending is wholly predictable right from the start (the first shot of the film tells us that Needy ends up in an asylum at the end of the story - gee, wonder why?), there's something tragically watchable in front of me, and I couldn't for the life of me turn away. But don't mistake slack-jawed disbelief for rapt interest: even though Jennifer's Body may be smokin' hot, there's no fire here. "Hell yes"? Hell, no.

The MPAA slapped Jennifer's Body with a hard "R for sexuality, bloody violence, language, and brief drug use." The movie relies heavily on skimpy outfits, implied moments of undress, and more cleavage than an X-Men comic at its most exploitative; violence is fairly standard and won't shock long-time horror fans with its moments of dismemberment by cannibalism. Language is typical Cody fare, with F-bombs and sexual epithets at every turn, and drug use crops up periodically to remind us that this is a movie about high schoolers.