Mother and Child review

Taking a slight detour from the usual summer fair is "Mother and Child", a film that hit Sundance earlier this year and was picked up by the king of picking up great smaller works Sony Pictures Classic. The film is basically three stories that could equally warrant three films about three sets of women; all involving either the children they've had, don't want to have or desperately want to have. Annette Benning plays Karen, a physical therapist who lives a bitter life taking care of her dying mother. She has dreams of the child she gave away at birth and it seems that it has had a strongly profound effect on the rest of her life. She cannot get close to anyone and demands far too much from anyone else thus making it where no one wants to get close to her. Kerry Washington's Lucy character cannot get pregnant and with her husband they attempt to adopt. However the girl giving her baby up has turned down several couples before them and insists on knowing as much as possible at their life, but mainly Lucy's. Finally there's Elizabeth played by Naomi Watts. Elizabeth lives alone, is a workaholic lawyer and very good at it and is great and seeing what she wants and taking it. Which is a nice way of saying if she wants to bang you and you want to bang her... then it's going down. Her independence in work, life and sexuality was great until... well you know.

Each woman in this film shines brightly and performs at their best. Not a moment passed where I wasn't convinced by these characters. It's a highly emotional and dramatic film, but still with a nice amount of human realism like humor. Nothing to make you laugh out loud, but the type of human comedy that happens everyday. Lucy (who gets a slightly less screen time than the other woman) is the kind of woman you hear and read about from time to time. The one whom you question if she's ready to be a mother just because she says she is. The relationship between her and her husband is also something of note as it seems like from the first time we see them together he doesn't appear happy. Her mother (played perfectly by S. Epatha Merkerson) has a lot of love and concern for the situation at hand, but Lucy rarely seems willing to accept it. Some of their conversations are the most difficult things to watch in the film, possibly because you start picking a side and you constantly have this feeling of dread surrounding them.

Karen is just a sad person all around. As the story progress you begin to understand that much of her grief is caused by herself. When that change occurs in her (which involves meeting Paco, a nice co-worker played my Jimmy Smitts) it's refreshing and wonderful to see unfold. Elizabeth's story on the other hand could get as difficult to watch as Lucy's at times. Her boss (played by Samuel L. Jackson) and her begin a slight romance that appears to be a simply fling. He's an intelligent and caring man, not sex crazed or wanting to get with everything that moves as a film like 'Sex and the City' would portray him as. Later when she learns she's pregnant we see the different degrees of her come out. Elizabeth can be calm and professional, but also hot headed. Watts plays it all off perfectly and takes a character that could've simply felt conniving and foolish and makes her real. Hell all these ladies pretty much do.

On the surface none of them seem like nice people, but writer-director Rodrigo Garcia ends up displaying fantastically the ability for change. They are human and weak and often the weakest of people need something to pull themselves up. I'm not saying "Mother and Child" is all tears or all smiles by the end, but it's real. Executive produced by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (writer-director of 'Babel' and 'Amores Perros') means that there is some of his way of connected storytelling here, however not quite as strong as in his own pictures. That said "Mother and Child" is still a great film that's packed with emotional and bold performances; and is a film that shouldn't be missed.

The Karate Kid review

Nothing kills the taste of a horrible movie than a movie that not horrible. Scientific fact. When the movie is actually pretty good then you're doing gangbusters. The new "Karate Kid" is a very nice pallet cleanser. It's no amazing piece of work, but it's well made and is just as rousing as the original.

Did you ever see the original film? Yeah? Well it's pretty much the same thing with a different cast and crew (sans producer Jerry Weintraub). Sometimes making a beat for beat remake is a bad thing, like what Gus Van Sant did with "Psycho". However "The Karate Kid" ain't no and will never be "Psycho" and with something like this just about anything can work. This movie is a rousing crowd pleaser about a Dre (Jaden Smith) who moves to China with his mother and meets a cut girl. However said girl seems to be a magnet for this group of little doucebag Chinese kids that like to fight and therefore she is a magnet for public ass kickings.

Enter Jackie Chan's Mr. Han. He's a janitor at Dre's new apartment complex and helps him out one day by fending off the group of bullies. After that... well you know, training and more training. Dre learns to world of kung-fu (not karate) and how it can apply to ones everyday existence. He gets to know the girl a lot better and starts to really enjoy his time in China, despite the fact that it's all leading up to him fighting publicly and possibly getting his beat down on a larger platform. No matter... fore Mr. Han is a good teacher that turns pissy and lonely Dre into an ass kicking machine that never says quit.

Smith plays this like a mini version of his dad really. Here he does a stand up job and doesn't feel flimsy or fake. In the fight scenes it's apparent that he worked damn hard to prepare for those pieces and the end result pays off. Chan is somebody who honestly with every shitty kids movie he makes I just try and remember the good days. I try and remember that "Police Story" is one of the best action films I've ever seen and that his fight scenes are among the best in film. Getting to see him showing his age and being grizzled is exactly what I want from him. I've yet to see his film from earlier this year "Shinjuku Incident", but I've heard nothing but good things and more surprising is that much of it is about his performance. Like Jean Claude Van-Damme in "JCVD", Chan just needs the right material to shine and I think his work this year (sans "The Spy Next Door") is a step in the right direction.

Overall "The Karate Kid" remake is entertaining and highly watchable. Sure it's got cheese and it's flow is off from time to time, but it's fun and gratifying to see punk ass kids get kicked in the head. Now given the amount of cash this film has taken in so far the early world is of course sequel; might I make a suggestion? Now that he's an awesome ass kicker, why not explore a true blue kung-fu picture with Jaden leading the way. There are forces at work attempting to bring back the kung-fu genre so why not be at the forefront? Just a thought though.

Grown Ups review

So I thought back in late May/early June that I'd probably found the worst movie 2010 with "Sex and the City 2". I figured while I might find some stuff that is so powerfully unfunny and rancid that NOTHING else I would see this year could possibly compare. And then I sat through 102 minutes of "Grown Ups" and found a worthy opponent for the two and half hour epic of incomprehensible sewer gunk.

"Grown Ups" is just what it's advertised as. It's Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade and Rob Schneider acting like they think kids are supposed to act when around one another. What's worst is they bring in smarter people like Salma Hayek, Maria Bello and Maya Rudolph and make them act they way they think kids think women should act. And before I fucking deliver this piece of crap the knee in the groin it deserves lets go through some of the less painful portion of the movie. If there's one thing they get right it's eye candy. If you blank out the words some of these women have to say and just sit back and look at them then hallelujah, you've just seen this movie best way possible. Most of these women have had killer roles where they were convincingly smart, sexy, crazy, FUNNY... and all that is lost in this picture by reducing them to the lamest of the lame jokes involving farting, role reversal and breast milk. One day I hope to see these women in a film again together and God willing doing the work they deserve to be doing.

Ok with that said everything else in this entire movie is utter shit. It's like a shit sundae with extra peanuts. None of the jokes or sight gags or anything works on even the basic, making you smile level. Sandler pulls the hat trick by starring, co-writing and producing this utter trash and given his really impressive and really self-deprecating work in Judd Apatow's "Funny People" you might think he would've used just a single shred of that to make something in "Grown Ups" likable. Furthermore his character has nothing to do, but attempt to not get made fun of because he's a super successful Hollywood agent with his fashion designer wife and nanny. Kevin James is basically here to be made fun off because he's fat. So they run through the book of fat guy jokes and then when they're done they run it through again just in case you missed one. Because remember everybody... Kevin James=FAT. Then we have Rob Schneider who's been married three times, has two humorously beautiful daughters that look nothing like him and one ugly one that does. HAHA... he's ugly and so is she. FUNNY! Oh and he's now married to a woman around the age of 60. HAHA... he's fuckin' an old lady. FUNNY! And last, but not least David Spade and Chris Rock. You know... these two kind of get a pass because they barely have any lines. Spade is a lonely horn dog and Rock is Mr. Mom, but only a few jokes get thrown their way so it's almost like they were called in to fill out the poster.

There's no point to "Grown Ups". The movie is undeniably an excuse for these guys to hang out and make some money. Okay, I'm cool with that. But what they've actually managed to make other shit comedies they've been in ('I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry', 'Pootie Tang', 'Benchwarmers', 'Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star', 'Click', any movie that Schneider was the main character in) pale in comparison. Why make something so apologetically stupid?! Granted I don't walk into 95% of Adam Sandler movies looking for something great, but at the least sometimes he's funny. In no way shape or form is any of this movie even close to being funny. But hey that doesn't matter because the audience for this will eat it up and think it's great. They'll repeat it's God awful, disjointed one liners till they're blue in the face and there's nothing anyone can say to stop it.

But with all this out in the open... is it worst than "Sex and the City 2"? As for viewing experiences I can say they're both unwatchable and soul crushing, but surely one most be more distasteful. I'm getting close to thinking it's worst than "Macgruber"... but Satc2 is another monster entirely. There was a movie that fully embraced ignorance and intolerance for other peoples religion and customs because they just didn't like it. I guess "Grown Ups" was too busy smashing David Spade's face in a large pile of poop to think about being offensive AND being unfunny. That's a lot to take on in a helium headed picture, right?

Knight and Day review

James Mangold's "Knight and Day" suffers from one big fat problem; it doesn't know what movie it wants to be. What's worst is when it kind of decides, it's a weaker choice and ends up killing any fun hoped to be had from the film.

Before I jump into this I wanna say that I'm not a bandwagon hater of Cruise. He's more a showman than an actor, but then again most big names are. He gets flack from people saying he plays the same characters and the same people and yet isn't that something most actors and actress end up doing at some point? As great as Sean Penn is he has played watchable scumbags a dozen times with fairly the same look, movements and voice. Samuel L. Jackson is usually playing Samuel L. Jackson in either scream mode or soft spoken, but intelligent mode. Johnny Depp plays the creep or weirdo more than anybody else. And really when's the last time Christopher Walken DIDN'T play himself in a film? Like everyone else Cruise has taken easy street and looked for better things; however I really feel that a heavy percentage of the backlash comes from the 'he's crazy' sector. And yet we all seems to have forgotten drunken Mel Gibson screaming about jews, John Mayer using the term nigger (twice and not in a tolerable way) or Christian Bale tearing a DP a new one for moving a light. The point is leave the bullshit TMZ stuff at the door or just stay at home all together because tabloid B.S. rarely has anything to do with ones final work.

The set up is this, Roy Miller (Cruise) is a spy running from the CIA and a group of Spanish arms dealers. June (Diaz) is his somewhat unwilling accomplice after they meet in the airport and he saves her by landing the plane that he killed everybody on. Don't worry they were all bad guys. The next day June comes face to face with agents telling her the same thing Miller told her they'd tell her right before they take her away and kill her. This leads to some high flying stunts, CGI action sequences and lots of dead people. Normally this description from me would amount to a meh, but something about the first thirty to forty minutes is actually kind of fun. And the biggest reason is because of Cruise and Diaz's chemistry. Their banter can sometimes be eye rolling, but other times quite charming and funny. For example during the big freeway chase/shoot out scene, Cruise's reactions and handling of June is really funny just because of how happy he is to see her. It's one of those stupid juxtapositions that's just goofy enough to work.

On the other end are these pieces of the movie that just feel way too hokey and completely take you out. But there is a straight forward point in the movie where it finally decides what to become. It's comparable to Mel Gibson's "Edge of Darkness" from January. The beginning had stuff I liked and stuff I didn't, but then came a point where I was completely on board and loving every second of it. "Knight and Day" however takes another path and turns what was an up and down movie and just heads straight down by delving further into lame cliches and ridiculous action sequences that kind of work followed by ones that really have no place in this movie.

A great way to fix this all would have been to not aim at being this summer action, comedy; but aim at what it's material probably began as. "Knight and Day" sounds and at times feels like a real throwback to the 60's spy films. Handsome spies and the foolish women that strangely fall in love with them faster then you can say Ian Flemming. Seriously watch some of those movies from back then; it doesn't matter what country made it the chick always ends up lovin' on Mr. Spy within one to two meetings. Had this film tried more to be a romance with action bits things could have worked out. Or at the very least NOT taken itself quite so seriously so when those crazed action sequences arrive you don't feel like they're from another movie.

Furthermore I think director James Mangold ('Walk the Line' and '3:10 to Yuma') could have passed on making this one. While I think he's very skilled and love that he doesn't stick to one genre, this needed a type of style he doesn't have. Mangold is more a person for drama and less for humor or stylized action of this caliber. I think poking around for an action director looking for something with more character and less action, but work really hard on the little there is would have really helped things out. Pierre Morrel, Joe Carnahan, even Edgar Wright or Tony Scott might have turned out a real first class piece of entertainment. Instead a safer and ultimately weaker hand was played.

All that said my first thought on "Knight and Day" was that this wasn't a movie Cruise or Diaz needed to make. The "Romancing the Stone" styled action, romantic comedy is great for performers looking to boost up their viewership and get their name out there some more. James Franco or Colin Farrell would've been pretty damn cool to see as Cruise's charming and collected spy on the run Roy Miller. For an actress this would have been a nice role for someone like... oh hell I'll say it... Kristen Bell, who NEEDS something out of left field to take her out of this shitty, shit, SHIT rom-coms she's doing. However I can understand FOX's thought process on getting big names to sell this movie. I can see them sandwiching the quite impressive throwback poster between "True Lies" and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and thinking... we've done it again.

Unfortunately I don't this will get the bucks they might be hoping for. As one critic said, 'if Knight and Day doesn't find it's audience this weekend, then it never will' and that's the truth. As it stands Cruise/Diaz is fighting off an Adam Sandler movie (which I'll be reviewing soon...) and next week will lose to both "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" and M. Night Shyamalan's "The Last Airbender". So any success it's going to have must happen now or it will be forgotten in the pile of junky summer movies out right now. Actually... that's where this one belongs anyway.

Marmaduke review

"Marmaduke" is something that was probably set up to be made somewhere within the 90's and got lost in the shuffle of bland ideas with lamer than lame jokes. With a host of bizarre things in this movie however the biggest oddity is the quite talented cast involved.

After watching the film in it's entirety it's hard to imagine most of these people reading this script beforehand and thinking 'yeah... this is a great movie to be a part of'. My guess is that a nice sized pay check came paper clipped on top and that was all these people really looked at.

Basically the story of "Marmaduke" is that of an 80's high school movie... wait... no. It's like a 90's high school movie that thinks those movies from the 80's high school movies were so super cool that it wants to have that same vibe. Only with dogs. Owen Wilson voices Marmaduke, a two hundred pound teenage dog who moves from Kansas with his family to Orange County California. Basically it's everything you've ever seen with human teens and high school cliches, bullies and set ups... but with dogs. There is dog romance, dog dancing, dog DDR, dog partying, dog surfing even dog white water rafting without rafts. All done with creepy and fairly annoying CGI mouth work.

Now lets talk some more about this cast, shall we? In addition to Wilson, we have Emma Stone ('Zombieland'), Sam Elliot ('The Big Lebowski'), Fergie (singer... you know who I'm talking about), Keifer Sutherland ('24'), Damon and Marlon Waynes, Lee Pace ('Pushing Up Daisies'), Judy Greer ('Arrested Development'), Steve Coogan ('Tropic Thunder'), Christopher Mintz-Plasse ('Superbad') and William H. Macy (far too many fantastic films to name). Oh and George Lopez, which is the only non-surprising name in the bunch. He probably offers up the biggest reason to never (even for the sake of laughing AT the film) watch this. He voices Carlos, Marmaduke's cat friend. What the writers or Lopez himself have done is made sure that everybody and their mama knows the character is Latino, by stereotyping the hell out of everything he says. His character alone dances on the line of annoying stereotype and being out and out racist.

Also there's a sequence in which basically Marmaduke pretends to be racist against cats so the 'cool' dogs will like him. And yes I'm aware of what they were aiming for with that segment, but at the end of the days that's what it is. Moving on from that though is just tons and tons of awful things to look at and really weird things to think about. Like how can dogs string up lights and hook up DJ equipment in a house? And why after the house is trashed to almost cartoonish fashion do the owners not think that they had a break in and someone wrecked the place? OH NO it's just our giant retarded dog! That's why there's random ass turntables and what not crunches on the Ikea rug. What happens after the doggy date in the junkyard with the girl dog Jezebel? And why is William H. Macy so freaking creepy in this film? So much to ponder.

I do seriously wonder though why any execs thought this movie was a great idea. Then again while watching the trailers for "Smurfs" and "Gulliver's Travels" with Jack Black I wondered the same thing. Unless both films hide some great, lovable magic that comes through only while watching the film (not impossible, but I highly doubt it). But why create this movie? As crappy as all this was at least as a full ANIMATED movie I could have seen some of this junk maybe... SORT OF working a little better or at least not being so weird. I could live with Lee Pace's character fucking falling every time he ran in the animated world because perhaps it would be some sort reoccurring joke that he mentions later. Actually... scratch that; that would imply that the writers would have had some idea of what humor is. It probably wouldn't matter what medium "Marmaduke" was in because it'll still be unfunny, witless and annoying.

Jonah Hex review

I did a bit of research before I sat down to write this. See I've been following the production of "Jonah Hex" for quite some time now. First off I'm a fan of Josh Brolin and the idea that the dude was going to attempt to dive into being an action hero struck me as cool. Second was that "Crank" and "Crank 2" creators Neveldine & Taylor were writing and directing the film. And third because of the previous reasons and knowing that the world would have a hard R-rated action piece with a nice sized budget about a disfigured gunslinger fighting supernatural evils. Sorry art world, but that shit will win my bucks any day. Unfortunately as time passed a lot changed. Neveldine & Taylor were out as directors and in was Jimmy Hayward; director of "Horton Hears a Who!".... I'll let everything I've told you sink in. So I wanted to know what happened, but we'll get to that later.

Now I'm all for giving people a chance to try something new, but that's considering if the material works for that person. For Hayward... ehhhhh I'm gonna go with no. All that R-rated shit... out the door. Time for some good ole' fashioned PG-13ing which is apparently what Warner Brothers was looking for. Now in addition to Brolin let's bring in John Malkovich cause he sell anything... Megan Fox for all those horny men out there and then toss in some other familiar faces for good measure. Yeah... now we have a movie that someone will buy to see right? Right?!

Apparently wrong goop for brains. The story of Jimmy Hayward's "Jonah Hex" is basically this... Hex was a soldier whose family was killed by Quentin Turnbull (Malkovich) for killing his son and Hex's best friend (reasons are pretty paper thin). He's now a supernatural fighting, disfigured bounty hunter that's been hired by the government to hunt down Turnbull who is going for destroy Washington D.C. with a super weapon (aka a big ass cannon on boat) for some reason. Oh and he apparently likes Lilah, a hooker played in a couple scenes by Megan Fox. I don't know... call me crazy, but there could be some holes in this story.

As it turns out Malkovich can't sell everything. For example being a ex-southern general who wants to destroy the capital. I guess we're supposed to believe that since he was a confederate that he's just hell bent on destroying the U.S. or something of that sort. But as little sense as he's whole dastardly scheme makes, still it'd be nice if he could sound like a southerner. Instead he does this odd vocal changing that makes him sound more like slack-jawed northerner than anything else. Equally Megan Fox's accent is flimsy, but sometimes works. I'm not a Fox hater and I think she's far from being a horrible actress. Mainly because she's never tired to be anything out of the norm character wise that would make me think that. It doesn't take Kate Winslet to read Fox's lines in "Transformers" and most of the Fox haters I've discovered are simply people who dislike her media attention. I could care less. The thing of it is she can work and with someone like her in your film you can use what she has (ala' some skill, but lots of looks) to your advantage. Instead she has about four or five scenes, is loosely connected as a "love" interest for Hex and really has no reason to be in the story except to be there and get people to see the movie.

Rounding out the casting fuck ups is the under using of great talents like Will Arnet, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Michael Fassbender and worst of all Michael Shannon who has ONE LINE. A man who is one of the very best working actors today... has one fucking line in this film. He had more lines in "Bad Boys II"! He had more lines in "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans"! What in the living shit is going on?! At least that was what I was asking myself for the latter half of the movie. The first twenty or so minutes isn't terrible. The introduction to Hex is alright; as is the following train sequence. But after that it's all downhill, with the only saving grace being Brolin.

I can honestly say that despite all the fuck ups in the film, Josh Brolin is a great looking and acting Hex. He'd be even better if he wasn't neutered and was allowed to be the ultimate badass he could be. As far as spouting quirky one-liners and the dispensing of bad guys however he's pretty darn good. I should also mention that with all the killings and what not that we don't see a drop of blood or anything. In fact one thing that kills the pretty nice train scene is the fact that when the cart with all the people in it blows to kingdom come, the aftermath simply shows a couple of fully intact, semi blackened bodies near the rails. The final battle between Hex and Turnbull is also strange. It's short, shot through awkward close ups and honestly the most forgettable thing about the movie. Oh and there's this completely ridiculous and pointless "dream fight" where the two battle in the red clay desert type arena that keeps getting cut to in the sequence.

So who's to blame? Neveldine & Taylor are still credited as the screenwriters however their script is VASTLY different from what they ended up doing. How different? Well being a fan I did some digging and discovered this great article going through what they intended to happen versus what was made. Also on Neveldine & Taylor's website you can actually purchase their scripts including their original one for "Jonah Hex"; something I might do the next time I've got some extra cash. From what I've read and heard their version would have been without a doubt superior and could've really delivered that kick in the pants the summer season has yet to really get.

I would love to think that someone, somewhere is reading that article or their screenplay and is realizing how much Warner Brothers screwed up. I'd love to think that they're going to wait it down for a while and try to figure out a way to use this character from something worth while. Of course that MIGHT have been the case if they hadn't released the film against "Toy Story 3"; one of the biggest movies of the year. You see if you have a shit movie and you know it's a shit movie and you just want to release something to grab some cash and be done with it all... then perhaps picking a proper release date would be wise. The film opened at #8 so it's my guess that it won't be making back it's $65 million dollar budget (by the way... I'd LOVE to know where that money went). However their is a silver lining to all this. As it turns out someone did love what Neveldine & Taylor wanted to do for "Jonah Hex" and apparently wants them to do that for another back-burner comic book character, Ghost Rider. And while co-writer/ director Mark Steven Johnson ("Daredevil" and "When In Rome"... yes the one with Kristen Bell) did make the first awful damn movie, it seems the "Crank" boys will sweep in to actually turn it into something fresh, exciting and I'm sure quite ballsy. Everything "Jonah Hex" was not.

Toy Story 3 review

I've waited since Thursday night to write this up. It's taken so long simply because I wasn't FULLY sure how I felt about the film. Granted to did really like it, in fact if anyone didn't like it then I'd think they lacked a heart. However I wasn't 100% sure how I felt about the film as a whole. I looked at different pieces as something all their own, but the big picture wasn't quite visible to me. After much thought and re-watching key sequences (including the ending with nearly "Terminator 2" level intensity) I've concluded that this is A: the best film of the summer thus far, B: one of the best films of the year and C: the best film in the trilogy.

As for the Pixar lineup I'd say it's somewhere under "Wall-E" and "The Incredibles". On a technically level this is beautiful and from a storytelling perspective it's smart, somewhat tipsy in the middle but has a final act packed with intensity and emotion. You all know the story, Andy getting ready to head off to college and his toy's getting donated to Sunnyside Daycare only to discover that their new home isn't as friendly as they thought. So the crew must go all 'Great Escape' on these goons and get back home. However it won't be easy. Woody's dead set on everyone simply returning home and being there for Andy no matter what, whereas Buzz and the others truly believe that it's time to move on and have new owners. These differing mind sets is where 90% of the emotion with the rest coming from that last bit of hardcore peril the toys must face.

We gets lots of great new characters including Ken and Barbie, the evil Lotso and the creepy Big Baby. Despite it's G-rating 'Toy Story 3' plays in the darker side of things quite a bit. Sure there's that frolicking good, bright fun we see in all their films, but there's also a heavy amount of darker toned sequences, jokes and general style. Those things really make the film stand out and adds something fresh.

It's funny seeing how fantastic a picture "Toy Story 3" is compared to the dozens of animated films that have come out this year already and were simply cookie cutter tales with rehashed jokes that don't work. Here is a well written conclusion to a story began in 1995, that's still funny and charming and witty. Here's a film that doesn't need bottom feeder jokes to get you laughing. Really there's not a lot else to say about "Toy Story 3". I was surprised at how good it was and how strong it gets, but not surprised that Pixar could pull off something this impressive for their only real franchise piece. I can't swear that we'll NEVER see Woody or Andy again. I don't really think it's something necessary, but I wouldn't be against it either. Let's just say out of everything in theaters now THIS is the best you can see.