There’s a lot that’s right and there’s a lot that’s wrong about this third try in translating Richard Matheson’s sensational 1954 novel for the big screen, but one of the masterstrokes of this version was casting Will Smith in the lead role of Robert Neville. He overcomes a lot of the script problems to make this work fairly well for the first two-thirds of the running time. The movie gets away from him in the last half-hour or so with an ending that doesn’t really satisfy. Aall the material with just Robert and his dog walking around desolate New York City is sensational. But when the movie resorts to CGI monsters and special effects, the enjoyment level just drains away.

The premise is chilling and honestly feels like something that could happen in the near future if we aren’t careful. A cure for cancer has apparently been found, but the formula backfires, killing most of New York City’s residents and zombie-fying (is that a word?) the undead into creepy creatures that lurk in the darkness. Robert Neville is apparently the only one in the state to be immune to the disease, yet he searches every day for others (more…)

These National Treasure movies are pure fun. I remember I walked into the first one back in 2004 expecting another dull unimaginative Disney-Bruckheimer flick but was pleasantly surprised. The original became one of my favorite mainstream popcorn flicks of the year. While the sequel isn’t quite up to par with the first one, especially in the tired third act, National Treasure: Book of Secrets still has enough entertainment value to fill two movies. For my money, these two movies are better than most of the summer blockbusters that studios are churning out these days. They’re adventure movies for the whole family, and they are stupid and ridiculous movies that set out to do exactly what they’re supposed to do. Entertain.

The whole thing starts not with a Disney logo, but with a Disney cartoon. Part of the fun of seeing this in the theatre was being treated to a new Goofy cartoon! Huh?? What?? I haven’t seen a cartoon before a movie since I was, oh, 5 or 6. This was a practice used in the 20’s and 30’s when audience members would get a couple shorts and a couple cartoons before the feature film. I figured we wouldn’t really see anything like this again. At least we still get some movie trailers, right? Well, I really enjoyed (more…)

This is it. This is the one. The mother of all Christmas movies. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation comes close, It’s a Wonderful Life is absolutely wonderful, and all those claymation movies, like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, from the 60’s are a lot of fun. Hell, even Chris Columbus’s 1990 Christmas-themed Home Alone has held up really well, too. But the 1966 26-minute animated short based on the Dr. Seuss book is the cream of the crop in my eyes. It does so much in so few minutes. It features timeless animation. It has a really sweet message that never tires. It features one of the most memorable villains in movie histories. The songs are perfect. The narration is terrific. And it gets in and out in under a half-hour. It’s about as close to a perfect film as they come.

There was great controversy in the year 2000 when Ron Howard’s live-action feature-length version of the story was released to theatres (more…)

I saw a movie this week that’s worse than Alvin and the Chipmunks. And it stars three Oscar winners and is directed by an Oscar winner. What movie is this? The shockingly dull Charlie Wilson’s War. I haven’t struggled so much to get through a movie since M. Night Shymalan’s Lady in the Water, which came out way back in July of 2006. This is an awful, tired, bore of a movie. Thankfully it has a running time of about 90 minutes. If this movie had been Lord of the Rings length, I would’ve tried to hang myself from the theatre balcony.

I could try to explain the plot of the movie, but honestly, it will put you to sleep. I spent the first half hour watching this movie trying to figure out what was happening and also trying to find something to care about up there on the screen. It’s all based on a true story and it’s set in the 1980’s. Tom Hanks, who hits his third strike here after 2004’s creepy The Polar Express and 2006’s godawful The Da Vinci Code, is well-respected congressmen Charlie Wilson (more…)

Yeah, it’s pretty much as bad as you’d expect. I came across a four-star review of this movie a few days ago and thought that maybe there could be an element of this movie that could work, that it could be surprisingly entertaining and fun. There’s one 20-minute section toward the beginning of the movie that is surprisingly tolerable, and I thought that it was possible the movie could redeem itself from months of astonishingly horrible, bang-your-head-against-the-door-until-you-die kind of advertising that only a blind man and his deaf younger sister could love. Alas, a stupid “crisis” occurs and the movie becomes as headache-inducing as the ads promised. This movie made me ache with pain by the final half-hour.

So we learn in the beginning that the three chipmunks spend their days in a forest singing contemporary tunes like Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day,” and stuffing acorns in tall trees.One of the trees they’re dancing around in gets cut down suddenly and sent into downtown L.A. to be put up as a Christmas tree. The three chipmunks escape and find themselves in the bag (or muffin basket, don’t ask) of Dave (Jason Lee), whose newest demo track has been turned down yet again by a millionaire producer (a really annoying David Cross). Lo and behold, the chipmunks can sing! Yay! They can help Dave make it big. But first, of course, Dave has to discover that these three chipmunks talk, which surprisingly doesn’t weird him out as much as you might think (more…)

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS 

I’ve wanted to do one for a long, long time and here it finally is! Starring Nicholas Stanton and Lauren Robinson, from my 2005 thriller Virgin State of Mind, this new holiday movie also features an intro by my friend and roommate Katie Bode! Enjoy!

The Coen Brothers’ incredible new movie No Country for Old Men is one of the most memorable films of the year. It has lingered in mind each and every day since seeing it two weeks ago. It is a purely entertaining class act of drama, action, and suspense, and it features the most dynamic performance of the year by Javiar Bardem, playing one of the most ruthless, scary, and believable villains I’ve ever seen in a movie. This guy is terrifying. There is one major character and subplot of the movie, unfortunately, that didn’t really work for me, that seemed appropriate for a different kind of film but not for this movie. Maybe I expected too much. This film is so good on so many levels that my minor problems with it shouldn’t be taken too seriously. This is, in essence, a movie not to be missed.

The less you know about the movie, the better it is. I avoided all the reviews, all the plot summaries, all the trailers. I think all I had seen before I saw the film were some TV spots, most of which featured that amazing shot of Javiar Bardem walking away from an exploding car. All you need to know going into this film is that it is about one man named Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) and his botched attempt to steal some cash in Texas, 1980. There’s a killer Anton (Bardem) hot on his trail, who is willing to murder anyone his path to get between him and the retrieval of the money. And then there’s the old town Sherrif Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) who is investigating the trail that Anton has set for himself. That’s it. That’s all you need to know. The delight of the movie is in the not knowing where it’s going to go next. The Coen Brothers always keep the audience guessing from beginning to end. I was shocked a lot at certain developments, and I was never spoon-fed a single plot twist. This is a real-deal thriller.

And that’s all I want to say for those of you who haven’t seen the movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, go. Don’t walk. Run. The rest of my review is only for those who have seen it, because I want to talk about the problems I had with the third act of the film, as well as moments that I loved. Go see it. I’ll be talking with you soon.
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It’s always a really awesome moviegoing experience when you get to see a star-making performance right before your eyes. It happens once, maybe twice a year. We are so inundated in most mainstream movies with stars we know and love (or hate), but there’s no magic. When we go see The Brave One, we know to expect from Jodie Foster. We’ve been there before. It can be really fun, therefore, to experience something fresh and new, even in a movie that’s a little bit rough around the edges. The new live-action family film Enchanted, certainly the best Disney has made in the last few years, features a wonderful performance from its main star Amy Adams. She’s the big reason to go check out the movie.

The premise is a cute one. The movie opens in animated form, in a kind of land that incorporates seemingly every classic Disney environment and character ever (more…)

Since the movie Awake keeps it short (and I mean really short) at a staggering 77 minutes, I am going to keep this review short. Really short. A paragraph in fact. Since the studio behind this didn’t bother releasing what I’m sure is a longer and better director’s cut, I’ll bring it to the studio’s attention that a generally putrid editing job, advertisement campaign, and release pattern does not a good movie make. The most surprising aspect of Awake is just how tolerable it is. It stars Hayden Christenson, who can be really good in films outside of the Star Wars saga (Life as a House and especially Shattered Glass), is OK here as Clay Beresford, who undergoes a heart surgery transplant and experiences anesthetic awareness, where a person finds himself alert and awake during surgery, but physically paralyzed. The premise of the film bodes for a potentially terrifying thriller. The movie isn’t really about this dilemma so much as it is about a group of people’s plan to make a lot of money and do everything in their power to get it. A plot twist occurs about half-way through that most anyone can see coming concerning one of the film’s major character. There is another plot twist, however, that occurs well into the third act, that I didn’t see coming, that actually worked pretty well. One out of two ain’t bad. Jessica Alba (more…)

How many film versions have there been of this story? 10? 20? When I think of this story, the first image that pops into my head is the lovable but mad-as-hell Scrooge McDuck in Mickey’s Christmas Carol. I have such a fondness for that version of the story that I recently went on Amazon and shelled out the money for a collection of animated shorts that houses that very film (which has a running time of less than 30 minutes!). The second film I think of is the Muppet Christmas Carol, with the terrific Michael Caine in the leading role, and the large muppet ensemble cast lending support. The purely live-action versions of the story I don’t have much of a memory of. I remember as a kid seeing a black-and-white version of the story, maybe the one made in 1951? And then there’s been a new Christmas Carol movie announced for 2009 starring Jim Carrey and directed by Robert Zemeckis. The story never dies, and neither do the movies. Here’s another up for review: The 1938 version. I had no recollection of having seen any images from this film, and I must say, even though the story is so familiar you can practically recite the lines of dialogue in each new version you see, I enjoyed this one immensely.  

Reginald Owen plays Ebenezer Scrooge (looking as if he had make-up done to make himself look older), and he gives one of the best performances I’ve seen as the dour pitiful curmudgeon. It’s hard to really be affected by the cruelty of the guy when you know what’s coming (more…)