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.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

Though accusations and worries fly in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as to whether or not Albus Dumbledore is "asking too much" of those around him, it seems the film isn't; rather, it seems to be doing just right.

Director David Yates [who joined the series with Film #5] continues his streak of adapting J.K. Rowling's wildly popular Harry Potter series with the sixth (and penultimate, taking Deathly Hallows as one entity, though it's being split in two for 2010-11) entry in the franchise. Here, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his maturing buds Ron and Hermione (Rupert Grint & Emma Watson) find themselves embroiled once more in the conflict between the wizarding world and its mortal enemy, Lord Voldemort (an unseen Ralph Fiennes, who appears elsewhere in the series). New potions master Horace Slughorn (an always-effervescent Jim Broadbent) takes up a post at Hogwarts as suspicions loom about shifty Professor Snape (Alan Rickman, effortlessly ominous). But Harry's main focus is taken up by Headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) and his quest to learn Voldemort's past in order to finally defeat him.

I won't bother with comparisons to the book - other online commentators have nobly taken up that gauntlet (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Half-Blood_Prince_(film)#Differences_from_the_book for a fairly comprehensive overview) - mostly because the book was so long ago I can recall only the most significant plot details. Suffice it to say that Yates's adaptation seems to stand on its own as a creative work, indebted to the source material but not slavishly so. Instead, the globe-like burden of carrying the film rests on the Atlas-shoulders of the cast, particularly our three young'uns, who all do an able job of growing into the roles and comfortably becoming the characters. (Watch out for typecasting, kids.) Radcliffe is fine as the lead, oscillating comfortably between dramatic moodiness and comic levity. Grint is a sight as the goofy one of the bunch, looking lovelorn like nobody's business, and Watson might as well be a young Keira Knightley (props to my grandmother for spotting that one) for all the talent she's got. Perhaps the standout in the youth cast - already getting plenty of media attention - is Tom Felton, who as Draco Malfoy is charged with converting his character from a prototypical schoolyard bully into a real potential menace with more demons than Dementors hiding in his closet. He does more brooding in an hour than Christian Bale does on a good day, and he does it well, keeping a terrific air of mystery surrounding his character (for the novel's novices, that is). The adult cast isn't slouching, either; Broadbent is a fantastic pick for favoritism-prone Slughorn, Rickman is glorious as always, and Gambon continues to create his own weighty Dumbledore as distinct from the late Richard Harris's more aloof and endearing one. (It's a shame, though, that the filmmakers didn't choose Peter O'Toole as Harris's replacement.)

That said, the film is, simply put, a little long. At 2.5+ hours, the film can afford to take its time with the mythology surrounding a Horcrux or the backstories of characters like Voldemort or the mysterious "Half-Blood Prince" (whose potions book falls into Harry's hands), but the movie also gets bogged down in a lot of angsty teenage romance, humorously awkward but somewhat gregarious in its omnipresence. It's as if we want to grab the characters by the school-spirit scarves and give them a good shaking until they finally agree to snog [British for "kiss"] the lad or lass of their fancy. (Oh, yes, there's a great deal of snogging and preparing to snog.) Everyone does a fine job eliciting laughs with the awkward situations of teenage adulation - particularly Grint, whose sloppy grin only gets more uneven when he's duped into taking a potent love potion - but there is such a thing as "too much of a good thing."


But the film does fine work with the unspoken. Yates is a master of my favorite cinematic technique: visual language - that is, letting the film speak for itself without clumsy narration or heavyhanded dialogue addressing what's being depicted. Watch carefully as Yates directs Felton into the Room of Requirement and toward a mysterious cabinet; take note of how Yates uses cuts between Felton's expression and the apples and birds he puts into the cabinet, and be sure to pay attention when Yates cuts away from Hogwarts and into a shop in Diagon [or is it Knockturn? I myself can't keep all the mythology straight.] Alley. Without saying a word, the film masterfully tells us everything we need to know. I for one am glad Yates is staying on to finish out the franchise with a two-part adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, since he's proven here that he can handle weighty source material while still churning out a film that's fun for newcomers.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is rated "PG for scary images, some violence, language and mild sensuality." Spells and their occasionally bloody after-effects, as well as a few creepy creatures and a looming sense of peril at every turn (including one spectacular jump moment near the film's climax), could be objectionable as far as "scary images [and] some violence" are concerned. The snogging in this film ("mild sensuality") isn't much to write home about, though it dominates a lot of the main characters' focus.

Watchmen (2009) [Director's Cut]

Cinema King's journal - July 21, 2009. Tonight a comedian died on Blu-Ray. And Zack Snyder's ambitious adaptation of Alan Moore's sacred graphic novel has never looked - or downright been - this good before.

If there's one thing comics fans can agree on, it's that Moore's 1985-6 classic (illustrated lovingly by Dave Gibbons) is almost gospel as far as funny books are concerned. If there's a second thing we (because I'm one of you) can all agree on, it's that the film adaptation - from the "visionary" director of 3oo (itself a filmed version of Frank Miller's Spartan text) is highly divisive; you love it, or you hate it, but there's no middle ground. Of all the people I know who saw the film and read the book, I'm the only one who liked it. (Uninitiated folk who hadn't read the book, like my father, liked the film, too.) With the director's cut released on DVD now, I'm pleased to say that I like Watchmen a little bit more now.

For those who haven't read Moore's seminal book (and, really, you should), Watchmen takes place in a dystopian 1985 where Nixon is still president, where America won the Vietnam War, and where superheroes existed but have been forced to retire. The film begins with the murder of one of those retired masked avengers, The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, pitch-perfect at laughing in the face of life's absurd joke). Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley, who I'd like to see get an Oscar nod for his spectacular performance), the last vigilante, believes there's a conspiracy afoot and tries to warn Night Owl (Patrick Wilson), Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman), and Dr. Manhattan (a CGI'd Billy Crudup, who keeps his Mastercard voice), who initially doubt his theory. An assassination attempt on Adrian "Ozymandias" Veidt (Matthew Goode) and worsening tensions at home and in the heating-up Cold War quickly change the heroes' perspectives, forcing some out of retirement and to a cataclysmic, now-classic climax.

It's impossible to talk about the film as if the director's cut didn't exist, because this is the Watchmen you should see. Though it runs three hours long, the director's cut patches up the flaws of the theatrical release - wooden acting, poor pacing, and a streamlined yet loosey-goosily-loyal treatment of the source material - even if it doesn't restore Moore's fishy ending (it's a pun, not a knock on the man from Northampton). Akerman didn't strike me as particularly solid in the theatrical cut, but she's at worst serviceable and at best complex in the new version. Crudup brings plenty of emotional depth to the seemingly withdrawn Manhattan, Wilson is his standard schleppy self (a perfect fit for Dan Dreiberg, the ultimate schmuck), and Goode - though he's not given much in the film to work with - does a more than decent job of wrestling with his great powers and his greater responsibility to the planet.

The stand-out in the cast - Morgan aside - is Haley, who is so far 2009's Heath Ledger as far as outstanding performances go. Haley completely becomes Rorschach, inhabiting everything from his posture to his gravelly voiceover - and, after Adaptation., anyone who can make me enjoy narration and isn't named Morgan Freeman is doing a lot of heavy lifting. (Of course, to remove the iconic narration from the source material would here be criminal, especially when it contains such fanboy-giddy lines like, "The city screams like an abbatoir full of retarded children.") Haley does a great job with the mask on, but once the inkblot face is removed he unleashes a range of facial twitches and verbal tics that will probably get snubbed by the snooty Academy.

The director's cut is a more loyal adaptation of Moore's work (again, ending notwithstanding), reintegrating a lot of the book's smaller moments and taking the time to build an entirely new world. Extended scenes with Nixon (though the actor portraying Tricky Dick isn't as talented as Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon) as well as amped-up flashbacks (especially Akerman's) and extended conversations (as with Dr. Malcolm Long) create the sense that this three hour epic is just that - a huge-in-scope undertaking. What's most welcome in the 24 new minutes of footage is some more material with Stephen McHattie's Hollis "Nite Owl I" Mason, whose life - and death - are finally given the sadly nostalgic treatment the book afforded him; with this comes more Carla Gugino, too, as Silk Spectre's fame-crazed dramatic stage mom, who is less compelling and perhaps a bit too showy. At three hours, the film can now relax and breathe for a second (the theatrical cut suffered a bit from over-exposition - a necessary evil with such weighty material - while the original climax seemed rushed and frenetic), giving fanboys and newcomers alike the chance to really watch the Watchmen.

And by the end, you'll forget all about that dang squid, anyway.



Watchmen is rated "R for strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language." The director's cut is slightly grittier, but both edits feature gory close-ups of extreme violence, including vaporizations of people, street fights, and the hacking and sawing of several gory body parts. While Dr. Manhattan is almost exclusively naked (and blue - we see everything), other sexual content includes one sex scene with nudity and one abortive one without, as well as discussion of adultery, rape (an attempted rape is shown), erectile dysfunction (treated humorously), and sex as placation. Language consists of several F-bombs tossed around lightly.

Note: the director's cut includes neither Tales of the Black Freighter nor Under the Hood. These are still available separately, though a flyer inside the DVD case teases of an "Ultimate Collector's Edition" 5-disc set coming in December, which will contain both side-features. For my money, though, the film is stronger with these as separate bonus features than as part of the film proper, and so I recommend eschewing the 5-disc splurge set and sticking with two separate discs.

Toy Story 2 (1999)

Cinema King to Star Command - come in, Star Command. I've uncovered evidence of a sequel being better than its antecedent, something I haven't said since The Dark Knight (okay, High School Musical 3 can count).

On my way to reviewing all the Pixar films, a head cold and a lack of enthusiasm led me to skip over A Bug's Life (coming soon, I promise) and hop right on over to Toy Story 2, which I fondly remembered as a fantastic film but hadn't seen since its theatrical release. Fortunately, the film is still as shiny as Buzz Lightyear's laser beam and genuinely touching, to boot.

Where the first film dealt with the basic rules of the Toy Story world (toys animating when their owners aren't looking) and Buzz Lightyear's identity crisis, the second film puts the dramatic onus on Sheriff Woody (Tom Hanks), who finds out he's a rare collectible toy with an exhibit in Tokyo just waiting for his presence. Buzz (Tim Allen, delightfully bombastic as ever) leads the rest of the toys on a rescue mission to save Woody from the thieving clutches of collector Al (a wonderfully skeevy Wayne "Newman" Knight) before it's too late.

The script here is positively brilliant, lifting visual cues and plot points from the first Toy Story and turning them on their respective heads. If Buzz did something in Toy Story, Woody does it in Toy Story 2. Now if that sounds like lazy writing, it very well could have been were it not for the clever and fun way in which the modestly familiar plot is delivered. In addition to revisiting territory covered in Toy Story, Toy Story 2 adds a great deal to the franchise's mythology, including a supporting cast for Woody - featuring Joan Cusack as yodeling cowgirl Jessie and an adorably Harpo Marxist trusty steed named Bullseye - as well as the introduction of the Evil Emperor Zurg, around whom are centered some of my favorite scenes of the film. (The film's opener, pittting Buzz against Zurg in the latter's stronghold, is spectacular but takes a backseat to Zurg's superb revelation: "No, Buzz, I am your father!")

With all of the same voice cast returning from the first film, there's little to cover that hasn't already been said in my previous review. Hanks and Allen are still fine choices (Allen still coming out on top, especially when drawing subtle distinctions between Buzz and Utility Belt Buzz), and the supporting cast - especially Don Rickles as Mr. Potato Head and Wallace Shawn as Rex - shines. I've praised Knight, and Cusack's all right (though Jessie tugs at every heartstring when Sarah McLachlan sings "When Somebody Loved Me," a moving piece about being forgotten by someone who loved you), but Kelsey Grammer and his gravitas-laden voice is solid as Stinky Pete the Prospector. And let's not forget a charming cameo by Robert Goulet, who sings "You've Got a Friend in Me."

But what makes the film positively glitter is the fact that the filmmakers love making movies - and it shows. Between loving allusions (Star Wars sounds pepper the effects library) and downright good filmmaking, the whole movie carries with it an atmosphere of self-enjoyment and nostalgic appreciation for "the good ole days." That, I suppose, is what makes the film most abundantly rewatchable - if you want to remember the good ole days, the best way to do that is with a film that does exactly that.

Ride like the wind, Bullseye! On to Toy Story 3 with no reservations!


Toy Story 2 is still rated G.