'Step Brothers': A Suburban Nightmare

by Brett Parker

Step Brothers, the new comedy starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, is a film that can be called many things: vulgar, hostile, gross, juvenile, insane. I like to refer to it as a scary cautionary tale. Sure, on the surface it appears to be just another reckless and goofy comedy from Ferrell & Co. Yet if you dig deep into the film’s content, you can actually find unsettling predictions for the future of the YouTube generation. If you were to observe today’s average family and the behavioral patterns of it’s teenage offspring, you’ll realize that middle-aged men still living at home-with parents who don’t seem troubled by this-may not be as far-fetched as you think.

The film opens with a doctor named Robert Dobach (Richard Jenkins) hooking up with a woman named Nancy Huff (Mary Steenburgen) at a work convention. As they have a passionate fling, they both discover that they have one unique thing in common: they both have sons in their 40s who still live at home! Nancy’s son, Brennan (Will Ferrell), just got fired from PetSmart and spends his days parked in front of the TV with nachos. Robert’s son, Dale (John C. Reilly), plays video games all day and occasionally composes songs on his drum set. Robert and Nancy soon fall in love and decide to get married. This forces Brennan and Dale to now live under the same roof. This proves to be a dangerous move, considering how these men-children both have the maturity level of a 13-year-old. Like bickering adolescents, they fight, they hurl schoolyard insults, they set ground rules (Dale: “Don’t ever touch my drum set! DON’T TOUCH IT!”), and they even hold an elaborate death match on their front lawn.

Dale and Brennan pretty much hate each other, until the one night Dale wins Brennan’s respect by punching his arrogant jerk of a younger brother, Derek (Adam Scott), right in the face. Brennan hates Derek even more than Dale, so he appreciates this violent gesture. Pretty soon, the deranged duo starts bonding. They watch Steven Segal movies, they break things in the garage, and they unsuccessfully try to turn their beds into makeshift bunk-beds. Pretty soon, Robert gets fed up with the pair’s childish behavior and demands that they find jobs before they are kicked out of the house. This proves to be a difficult task, for Dale and Brennan have zero clue how to act like grown-ups. This is made clear when they wear tuxedos to interview for a janitorial position and end up telling the interviewer to shut her mouth.

So what we have here are two overgrown brats, lacking maturity, character, and manners, who live with parents that refuse to face their problems and continue showering them with money and encouragement. I’d be lying if I said this concept sounded off-the-rails and unrealistic. In today’s America, it seems like the sacred traditions of family life are almost extinct. It’s almost become commonplace for kids to shout, swear, and wine at their parents, all while shamelessly spending their money. The scariest part is how passive-aggressive today’s parents are towards this behavior. They don’t even attempt to teach their kids proper manners and instead keep on rewarding them for nothing. Step Brothers is like a grotesque vision of what teenagers of this generation could one day become, and it isn’t pretty. If a kid is clueless about kindness, respect, and family values, then what’s to stop them from becoming a live-at-home slob like Dale and Brennan? While most people will look at these two as bizarre comic caricatures, I unfortunately know several people who could one day become such disturbing adults.

I know I’m making Step Brothers sound like a suburban meditation in the league of The Graduate and I can assure you it’s the furthest thing from it! It’s just that this deeper angle is the best way I could enjoy the film. At face value, Step Brothers is no better or no worse than your typical Will Ferrell flick. It’s one of those mediocre comedies where every once in a while a giant laugh will come out of left field and surprise you. While Ferrell’s films are strangely enjoyable, he doesn’t pull consistently great laughs from an audience the way Ben Stiller or Vince Vaughn does. He does provide a lot of awkward smiles though. I never thought Chewbacca masks, a Billy Joel cover band, a rap song about “boats and hoes,” and a lumberjack bit could save an entire film, but alas, Step Brothers is proof of that. And be warned, this is the most profane movie Will Ferrell has ever unleashed on an audience. The F-Bombs and sex jokes don’t let up for one second in this movie. I remember knocking Semi-Pro, Ferrell’s last film, for not being vulgar enough. Be careful what you wish for. You might get John C. Reilly liking vintage porn to “masturbating on a time machine!” Were you offended by what I just wrote? Then this definitely isn’t the movie for you!

I’ll tell you one thing that scares me: the future content of Will Ferrell’s movies. His movies keep getting crazier and crazier while the ticket sales keep growing higher and higher. The high grosses are just pushing Ferrell deeper into a comic abyss, one that could cause his movies to snap from reality and descend fully into madness. If today we’re seeing him rub his private parts on a drum set, what could tomorrow bring?

A Waste of a Blank DVD: Steel Trap

by Andrew Jupin

My fellow film-savvy friends and I like to get together on Friday every now and again for an evening of what most people would consider to be a 'waste of time'. We purposely go out to the video store and flip through our own collections and try to find a candidate for what we have so lovingly come to call, "Shitty Movie Friday." However, the new release from Dimension Extreme is a movie so bad, so lazily hashed out, so poorly executed that, well, it's barely a movie at all. This is Steel Trap.

Dimension Extreme has been fairly reliable in the past putting out such great titles as Inside and the restored version of Night of the Living Dead. Steel Trap has a very simple premise. A premise that when propositioned to do this disc review, I gladly agreed. A group of people attending a New Year's party are all invited (via text message) to a VIP party on one of the floors below. (Before I forget, the steel trap of Steel Trap is the gigantic, abandoned, office building that the film takes place in.) Once everyone has gathered at the party, they find that they are all part of an elaborate treasure hunt game. As to be expected, once the game starts off, the players are slowly picked off one by one until the killer is revealed and the 'shocking' ending happens.

Honestly, more of a write-up just isn't fair to you. It isn't fair to anyone who reads this. The script if filled with some of the most empty-headed dialogue I've ever heard. Listening to the actors spit out these lines, it sounds like they're reading off cue cards, poorly written cue cards at that. The film itself is very low budget. Not that there is anything wrong with low budget, but as far as the production design goes, it begs the question whether any of the budget was spent on the look at all. For example, the look of the killer is extremely unoriginal. His weapon is taken from I Know What You Did Last Summer and his outfit makes him look like a member of the Blue Man Group. No joke. The actors all do what they can with what they're given, but each one of the characters is a cookie-cutter, stereotyped, two-dimensional waste of space.

The disc comes with a commentary from the co-writer/director, Luis Camara where he more or less sounds like he'd rather be doing anything else. The same goes for the embarrassing making-of featurette where all of the participating crew members all talk about how the production was rushed and how they didn't really have a complete script and that it was written in a week or something and this and that. It's painfully long, this featurette, and I could barely get through it. Especially after sitting through the entire film.

This is unfortunately a major, disastrous flop for Dimension Extreme. The cover for the DVD is even horrible. The girl pictured on the front isn't even in the movie. Honestly, save yourself the waste of time at Blockbuster and just go and rent Inside instead. The most appealing part of Steel Trap was when I took it out of my DVD player.

Steel Trap is out on DVD July 15th.

Smith to the Rescue in 'Hancock'

by Brett Parker

He drinks. He sleeps on benches. He curses. He lives in a trailer park. He has several lawsuits pending against him. He dresses like the Big Lebowski. His name is John Hancock and he’s a superhero. Along with all these other things, he can fly, deflect bullets, and hurl heavy objects. This doesn’t sound like a typical superhero, does it? That’s precisely what makes Hancock so interesting. We’ve seen countless movies about people who discover they have superpowers and find great purpose in using them to help people. Here’s a movie where a guy discovers he has superpowers and finds helping people isn’t all what its cracked up to be.

From reading this description, it’s not hard to see the comic potential in this premise. We can easily imagine Judd Apatow turning this into a goofball vehicle with Seth Rogan flying around skyscrapers. Yet Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom) decides to get his Michael Mann on once again and bring out the dramatic potential in this comedic premise. Here he is helped by none other than Will Smith, the highly-liked movie stud who convincingly plays the highly-despised super bum. I don’t know if this was the best way to bring Hancock to the big screen, but it’s certainly very effective as it rolls along. That is until a surprise plot twist reveals itself in the third act. To be sure, it’s a very compelling and creative twist, yet it’s too complicated and rushed to work properly.

We first see John Hancock passed out on a park bench with two empty bottles of Bourbon lying nearby. A little kid wakes him to announce that a carload of bank robbers are involved in a high-speed chase with police. As Hancock groggily flies to the rescue, we can see why he’s so despised by the public: he wrecks highway signs, crashes cars, and does considerable damage to the Capital Records building by placing the robber’s car right on top of it. We learn that this is a pattern in Hancock’s crime fighting career: he has a reckless attitude that causes massive property damage and huge headaches for the people around him. It doesn’t help his reputation that he hurls profanity and insults at concerned citizens (WOMAN: “I can smell that liquor on your breath!” HANCOCK: “Cause I’ve been drinkin’, b---h!”).

One day, Hancock rescues a businessman from being hit by an oncoming train (wrecking the entire train line in the process). This businessman turns out to be a PR man named Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) who finds a strange sympathy for the misunderstood and disgruntled superhero. Ray decides to pay Hancock back by giving him a PR makeover, turning him into an adored and proper superhero ala Superman. Part of Ray’s strategy is to put Hancock in jail for all his property damage so the public can miss him. While in jail, Ray visits to teach him manners, give him a new suit, and help him to realize the depth of his calling. Hancock goes along with his plan and things do indeed look up for the reluctant hero, until secrets from Hancock’s past are revealed by Mary Embrey (Charlize Theron), Ray’s wife, which brings everything to a head.

Hancock is a movie that glimpses what a great superhero dramedy would look like without ever becoming one itself. It’s funny, dramatic, and deep, but we truly wish it was way more funny, dramatic, and deep. We never feel the film is completely at ease with all of its different tones. Like Hancock himself, the film can be sharply funny one minute and deeply sad the next. The film has an undeniable edge in its execution and I applaud the filmmakers for not making apologies for Hancock’s behavior. I only wish the gags were more drop dead hilarious and the dramatic payoffs more shattering.

Hancock demonstrates once again that Will Smith is a true movie star whose very presence can elevate a film. It seems risky to have one of the nicest celebrities on the planet play one of the most cynical and hardened superheroes to ever grace the silver screen, but Smith fully immerses himself into the role and hits all the right notes. His star image serves the role well, for it helps us to find sympathy for this disillusioned and depressed man. Sure, he’s funny and entertaining in his super exploits, yet it’s the sadness in his eyes that makes our hearts follow him every step of the way. There’s a small yet important scene where members of a prison anger management group encourage Hancock to talk a little about himself. “I’m John…and I drink and stuff” is all he says, yet the way the prisoners react and the look Hancock shoots them speaks oceans about the character’s defensiveness and conflict with humans. Smith is able to find sad complexities within the role that feels a lot more effective than having Hancock be a buffoonish goofball.

Of course the film’s direction changes dramatically when Mary reveals to Hancock big secrets about his past. Hancock suffers from amnesia. All he knows is that he woke up in a hospital bed 80 years ago in Miami and knows nothing about what happened before that night (I found a small amusement in the story of how he got his name). Mary happens to know everything that happened to him before that night. Everything she knows and how she knows it is one of the wildest plot developments we could’ve dreamed up for this film and I’m still kind of hung up on whether or not it works right for this material. I will try not to reveal too much, only to say it’s a worthy and interesting way to explain Hancock’s story, yet it doesn’t seem entirely thought through or explained very well. We find ourselves asking more questions than Hancock is, when it should be the other way around. At first, I realized this twist gives Hancock a very important choice to make, but before he has any chance to make it, a noisy action development takes place that diminishes any credibility this twist could possibly have (If any of this sounds confusing, it will all be cleared up once you finally see the film. Or maybe it won’t…that’s my point!).

Despite all the confusion and tonal shifts, Hancock is still worth checking out. Its worth seeing Smith’s thoughtful and hilarious performance. Its worth seeing Berg try to stage a superhero comedy like his mentor, Michael Mann (who has a nice cameo in a boardroom scene). It’s worth seeing Charlize Theron having something a thousand times cooler to do than just being an ordinary housewife. It’s worth hearing the wonderful musical score by John Powell that wonderfully reflects the intimate sadness of the Hancock character. It’s worth seeing the talented character actor Eddie Marsan (Miami Vice, The New World) play Hancock’s quirky nemesis. And when all is said and done, its worth knowing that even superheroes can feel lonely and depressed sometimes.

'WALL-E': Intergalactic Gem & Animation Triumph

by Brett Parker

When it comes to family-friendly animated movies, I’m usually not the guy to talk to. I think the last time I actually paid to see one in theatres was when I took my Mother to see Shrek 2 for her birthday. Don’t get me wrong, I have great admiration for the technical skill that goes into the craft (especially from the Pixar folks) and I think most animated flicks of today’s era are full of wit and smarts, making kids of today look awfully lucky. I know plenty of grown-ups who still pay to see these family films in theatres, yet somewhere along the line, I truly lost the urge to go. I guess I like my entertainment grown up and my heart doesn’t respond to cartoon characters like it used to. What can I say? This lost boy grew up.

Yet there was something about WALL-E that made me want to check it out on opening weekend. This one looked considerably different from all the rest. Maybe it was the fact that the Outer Space imagery looked mystical and captivating. Maybe it looked as if it could touch my soft spot for goofy robots. Maybe it was the film’s promise that there would be a minimum of dialogue, eliminating potential for a buffoonish script. Or maybe it was just because the character of WALL-E looked like such a fun-loving little guy that you’d want to spend an entire movie with him. I was very excited to discover that WALL-E delivers on all these promises from the previews and that it will stand the test of time to become an animated classic. This one’s the real deal.

The film opens 700 years into the future. Planet Earth is covered in excessive amounts of garbage, leading humans to abandon the planet and live in a luxury starship at the edge of the galaxy. Earth’s clean-up is left in charge of WALL-E Units (Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth class), little robots designed to gather and compact trash into small cubes. A malfunction occurs causing all the WALL-E units to break down, except for one who happens to be the liveliest of the whole bunch. This WALL-E robot spends his days single handedly carrying out his clean-up mission, all while gathering small pieces of garbage treasure that he cheerfully collects in a small cooler (these treasures include a rubix cube, bubble paper, a jewelry box, etc.).

WALL-E appears to be a robot with a soul, capable of such emotions as fascination, curiosity, and as we come to learn, loneliness. Being the sole occupant of Earth is starting to affect WALL-E’s personal state. As he watches an old VHS copy of Hello Dolly!, WALL-E begins to yearn for a romantic loved one to complete him. He finds a candidate one day when a giant spaceship arrives on Earth to drop off EVE (Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), an advanced robot with noticeably feminine features. Its love at first sight for WALL-E and the little guy is able to strike up a friendship with the female robot, hoping it will turn into something more. But then things grow complicated when EVE discovers a sign of plant life in WALL-E’s treasures. She takes the plant and is retrieved by the spaceship that brought her to Earth in the first place. Not wanting to give up his only love, WALL-E hitches a ride on the spaceship and is soon whisked away through the galaxy towards the mother ship where all human life now exists. It is on this ship where WALL-E will discover how unhealthy and lazy humans have become, what his plant means for the future of the human race, and whether or not EVE truly loves him back.

In a lesser movie, the robots would have goofy character voices that strain for laughs and the plot would cater to the intellect of a five year old. WALL-E is way too smart for that. It has the charms of a silent comedy and the ideals of complex science fiction. There is virtually no dialogue for the first half-hour, we simply sit back and observe WALL-E taking simple pleasure in finding junk and trying to convey his feelings toward EVE. Only electronic clicks and squeaks are used to give these robots some kind of voice and it feels a thousand times more effective then if cartoon dialogue was written for their scenes. Buster Keaton would’ve been proud. WALL-E also works as a fascinating science fiction film thanks in no small part to the wonderful outer space imagery that surrounds the film’s second and third acts. So awesome are these scenes of stars and spaceships that we feel a child-like sense of wonderment and awe towards space we haven’t felt in a very long time. Sci-Fi nowadays has grown very bleak and uninspired, so watching WALL-E is like feeling a burst of imagination and whimsy that made us love Sci-Fi in the first place. This is especially felt in a beautiful scene where WALL-E uses a fire extinguisher to fly around the stars with EVE outside of a starship. It’s a dazzling scene that not only would’ve made Kubrick proud, but shows us why we see movies on the big screen in the first place.

Of course the film would probably not work quite as well if it weren’t WALL-E himself. Not since E.T. has a little screen creature had such a likeable cuteness about him with a muted curiosity that is wonderfully amusing. People have noted that WALL-E bears a strong resemblance to Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, yet I think WALL-E outdoes the former in both screen presence and heart. It’s fascinating how WALL-E can convey so many complex emotions in such a limited metal body. A pair of binocular eyes and robotic claws is really all there is to WALL-E, but he is still one of the most colorful and compelling animated characters ever created. The way his hollow binocular eyes strongly resembles human eyes is astonishing. It’s also fascinating to note how even though WALL-E and EVE essentially resemble advanced robotic parts, the animators are still able to highlight that they are both male and female beings.

It’s almost getting to be a tired phrase by saying “Pixar has done it again,” but what else can you say when after churning out picture after picture of supreme animation and creativity, they now have created a sci-fi wonderment for the ages? The film has the crisp and slick attention to detail their animation always has all while approaching a fountain of ideas. Almost all animated movies convey general moral messages that are meant to influence younger viewers and remind older ones. Pixar is always able to do this with a subtle finesse as opposed to countless other pictures that cheaply shove it in the audience’s face. What really impressed me about WALL-E is the richness and depth of the film’s message. The humans on the starship are portrayed as overweight and lazy consumers who are like zombie slaves to technology and advertising. It isn’t until signs of plant life turn up that the humans are intrigued by the simple pleasures of Earth and living. I applaud the filmmakers for highlighting to viewers that they should rise above our technological and consumer cultures to get back to the simple pleasures of our planet. How brilliant it is that the filmmakers have taken our anxieties and issues over the abuse of the environment and have brought insightful depths to it in an animated medium. This could be the most lighthearted post-apocalyptic film ever made.

What’s even more redundant than saying “Pixar has done it again” is to exclaim that an animated film is “fun for all ages.” But let me tell you something: at any other time, I wouldn’t be caught dead in a theatre playing an animated family movie. I went to WALL-E out of a peculiar curiosity and the film exceeded all of my expectations. Forget animated conventions: if you love dazzling visuals, sci-fi spectacles with heart, and even old school cinematic romance, buy a ticket for WALL-E. This is not only destined to be the best animated film of the year, but probably one of the best overall films of the year.

New to DVD: My Blueberry Nights

by Andrew Jupin

Way back in March, our very own Sean Weiner was able to review Wong Kar Wai's first stab at an American feature, My Blueberry Nights, and just like his review's title proclaimed, the film got a little lost in translation. Sean wrote,

"Wong’s Americana holiday emerges a bit touristy. Signature characters of past films turn stereotypical when reborn Yankee. And as subtitles are removed from the WKW experience dialogue falters, posing a debasing question, 'Were the subtitles a fundamental part of the magic?'"

It is true, in fact. There is something to be said about the poetic coma one finds themselves in when diving headfirst into one of Wong's masterful, seductive tales all the while reading subtitle after gentle subtitle. The unfortunate thing here is that his dialogue more or less makes the actors-- who do just about the best they can with the material-- come off as cold and robotic.

The story is fairly simple: Norah Jones plays Elizabeth, a broken-hearted New Yorker who sets off on a road trip to forget her dastardly boyfriend who has dared to share dessert with another woman. Throughout her travels, her mind is fixated on heartthrob restaurant owner, Jeremy, played by Jude Law. She travels from this place to that, searching for herself and trying to forget her past, all while encountering a broken-hearted policeman (David Strathairn), a newly-widowed woman (Rachel Weisz) and a troubled gambler (Natalie Portman).

Does she solve her problems? Does she straighten her life out? Does she wind up back in New York with Jeremy? The truth is, it doesn't matter. As Sean put it,

"Wong’s ninth full-length feature references his previous, particularly this time, 1996’s cult romance Chungking Express. The relinquished keys of broken lovers still wait to be claimed at local eateries. Lovely, lonely damsels once again misshape their doos while snoozing on tabletops. And, perhaps the paramount WKW recurrence, tunes continue to echo through their storyline as time-diluting sets of leitmotifs; this time most notably is Cat Power’s recent title track The Greatest."

The fact of the matter is, it's the same Wong Kar Wai that we all know and love; accept this time, it's in English and the truth is: we don't really want to fully understand what they're saying. We just want them to wander aimlessly, stare at themselves in reflections and speak out loud as if it doesn't matter whether or not anyone is there to listen to them.

The DVD out Tuesday from Genius Products is relatively bare-boned. It comes with a behind-the-scenes featurette, a conversation with Wong himself and the most thrilling of all DVD features: the still gallery and the...wait for it...theatrical trailer! At most this is a rental and even at that, you can find better.

My Blueberry Nights is available on DVD as of July 1st

I 'Wanted' A Fun Action Flick, and I Got One!

by Brett Parker

Picture a wild action picture that plays on the inventive grandeur of The Matrix, the twisted philosophies of Fight Club, and the relentless testosterone of 300 and you’d probably get Wanted, a fast and furious burst of action creativity that goes so far over the top, it can touch the rings of Saturn. Forget such silly things like plausibility and patience, Wanted is too busy with flying cars, curving bullets, crashing trains, blowing up rats, and teaching a sensitive young actor to be a tough guy, to slow down. It brings your suspension of disbelief to its absolute pressure point, and you’ll love every minute of it!

James McAvoy stars as Wesley Gibson, a depressed office drone who is growing restless with his humdrum existence. His obnoxious boss (Lorna Scott) chews him out in his cubicle, his girlfriend (Kristen Hager) is sleeping with his best friend (Chris Pratt), and his medication doesn’t seem to be helping too much with his intense anxiety attacks. Things change dramatically for Wesley when he is approached by the mysterious Fox (Angelina Jolie) in a pharmacy. Fox informs Wesley that the father he never knew was in fact a super assassin who was killed earlier in the week. Wesley finds that information preposterous until an assassin named Cross (Thomas Kretschmann) opens fire on both of them in the pharmacy. Fox helps Wesley escape this hail of gunfire in one of the most manic car chases you’ll find on the screen this summer.

Fox takes Wesley to the headquarters of the Fraternity, a secret society of assassins headed by Sloan (Morgan Freeman). Sloan explains that the Fraternity exterminates bad men who will do evil things in the future, altering the course of history for the worse. How do they know who these bad people are? They in fact receive premonitions from an age old secret code that can be found in weaving fabrics (yeah…I’m serious). Sloan claims that Wesley has the instincts of a super killer locked in his DNA and he offers him the chance to join the Fraternity. Dreading a return to his boring office life, Wesley agrees to join and set his sights on taking out Cross, who he believes murdered his father.

What is first and foremost impressive about Wanted is the creativity and technical skill of its action sequences. Director Timur Bekmambetov (the Night Watch films) pushes the envelope and tries for action that has never been seen before. This includes bullets that can zip and curve around corners, an assassin that can crash through a skyscraper window and leap over to another skyscraper unharmed, cars that can leap and do flips while landing safely, and assassins that can run on top of speeding subways while shooting to dead accuracy. Of course, these scenes completely stretch plausibility and could never ever (ever) happen in the real world. Yet we’re so dazzled by the action’s audacity and special effects wizardry that we have zero problem letting a lack of realism slide.

I’ve begun realizing lately that a lot of great action films usually have an illogical preposterousness about them, yet if the technical skill and levels of melodrama are up to par, the audience won’t mind investing in the material. To be sure, Wanted is completely preposterous, but it has a wild creativity that feels rare in today’s action pictures. The film is so caught up in its own ideas and universe that we can’t help but buy what they’re selling. Take for example the concept of the Fates, the method in which the Fraternity decides who to kill. If you apply logical thought to it, you’d find holes all over the place. Yet you can’t help but admit what a cool idea that is. The film takes it so seriously that it at least feels plausible. You can accuse Wanted of being ridiculous, but you certainly can’t accuse it of being by-the-numbers.

It helps that the actors labor away like true professionals, giving their characters an undeniable edge and coolness. Angelina Jolie finds a role that fits perfectly with her action bad-girl image. She knows how to rock a role like this, internalizing emotions and being ferociously immersed in the action scenes. It also helps that she displays what could be the sexiest use of body tattoos to ever grace the silver screen. Of course Morgan Freeman can play wise and slick like no other, and he probably has in this film what could be the line of his career (it’s in the final library scene). Common and Terrance Stamp are cooler than hell in supporting roles, yet the award for coolest character surprisingly goes to McAvoy for his portrayal of Wesley. He masterfully handles Wesley’s transition from white-collared wussy to cooler-than-ice assassin. A scene where he tries on a leather jacket and a shotgun in front of a mirror will have you cheering. If you look at the heroes of this summer’s blockbusters, which include Robert Downey, JR. in Iron Man, Shia LeBeouf in Indiana Jones, and now McAvoy, you’ll find that skilled character actors who used to take on soft, sensitive roles are now cooler-than-hell tough guys showing us what big-screen heroes should look like. How awesome is that?

Of course, Wanted isn’t exactly an action masterpiece. I wish the film had taken more time with its pacing so it could develop its ideas a bit more, especially considering the wonderful twist the plot dishes out halfway through the film. Plus I had the same issue with Wanted I had with 300, its over-the-top creativity can feel too cartoonish at times to be taken seriously. I’ve come to realize that a great action movie is one that gets crazy and excessive, yet pretends that it’s grounded in realism. However, these are only minor complaints. Wanted is an action thrill ride that doesn’t quit, doesn’t disappoint, and blows so many current action vehicles right out of the water. Wesley’s final line to the audience almost seems to be directed at all the second-rate action directors making mundane movies: “what the f—k have you done lately?”

Carolla's 'Hammer' Hits Lots of Laughs

by Andrew Jupin

There is a lot to be said about seeing the “Underdog Story” on film. Mainly that it’s been done to death. Why do we see it so many times? Well because people love to root for the underdog. We love knowing that there is always a chance for the little guy to rise up and take it all. We’ve seen it in Rudy, we’ve seen it in Rocky and yes, we’ve even seen it in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. That one even has ‘underdog’ in the title. Well thankfully, Adam Carolla has decided to keep the underdog spirit alive with his new film, The Hammer.

Carolla stars as Jerry Ferro, a down-and-out construction worker (and one time amateur boxer) who finds himself out of work on his fortieth birthday. On top of getting fired, his girlfriend, Nicole (Constance Zimmer), is fed up with his string of employment failures and she also decides to give their relationship the ole’ pink slip. Left with no one but his best friend, Oswaldo (Oswaldo Castillo), Jerry starts picking up a few shifts a week teaching a boxing class at his friend’s gym. Eventually his own skills get noticed by Coach Bell (Tom Quinn), a legendary boxing trainer, who offers Jerry a shot at competing on the Olympic Boxing team.

The story pretty much plays out the way you’d expect the classic underdog story to go: Jerry gets good at boxing again; he meets a younger, stronger competitor that he’ll inevitably have to battle in the end; he gets the girl through one means or another, and yes, everything works out in the end. However, I think the thing that sets aside The Hammer from other underdog comedies—like Dodgeball for example—is that there is a certain sincerity to Carolla’s character that is really appealing.

Through all the challenges that lay in his way, he’s still always looking out for Oswaldo—a Nicaraguan immigrant—by making sure he can always have some sort of odd job around. Before Jerry makes most of his career decisions, he first makes sure that he’ll be able to take Oswaldo along so he can pick up some extra money. His relationship that blossoms with one of his boxing students, Lindsay (Heather Juergensen), also feels very sweet and real. When she reveals she has a chance to take a job in another city far away (of course) Carolla’s performance is very believable when he has to seem legitimately hurt and disappointed. What Jerry does to try and make her stay is also very noble and believable.

There is never a moment when the film resorts to ridiculous tactics to win a laugh; no one mocks any major religion—Mike Meyers—and no one relieves themselves in their pants—thank you very much, the Sex and the City movie. All the laughs are very natural and nothing is over the top. Carolla pulls off this performance with flying colors and proves that he can take on more leading man material.

Unfortunately the film only received a brief run in New York in March and a small post-release ‘premiere’ at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. Not even the insistence of The Soup’s Joel McHale could raise a buzz about the film. However hopefully with this new DVD release from Weinstein Company and Genius Products will do something to gather some fans. The disc itself comes along with some extras including the usual outtakes and deleted scenes and trailer. But there is also a great commentary featuring Carolla and writer/co-producer, Kevin Hench. There is even an amusing feature where you can hear Carolla coaching actor Oswaldo Castillo on toning down his thick accent. This isn’t a disc to pick up for the features, but I strongly urge everyone to get out there and pick up this disc for the feature itself. It’s a great, small movie that is really funny and that I honestly think deserves a large, dedicated following. I guess you could say the film is a real ‘knock-out.’

I’m sorry. I apologize for that. I couldn’t stop myself.

The Hammer is out on DVD tomorrow, June 24^th.

The Top 5 Break-Up Films of All Time

by Brett Parker

Good break-up movies are hard to find in Hollywood. If Hollywood usually favors silly and attractive romantic comedies, then break-up movies by contrast appear just as goofy and shallow. There are usually two persistent reasons for this: (1) filmmakers usually favor durable clichés and formulas over real life emotions or (2) they create situations so close to their own real life experiences that they end up lacking the outsider’s perspective the audience needs. It’s because of this that most break-up movies usually come across as too silly (The Break-Up), too sappy (For Love of the Game), or too clueless (The Hottest State).

Yet as specific films have wonderfully demonstrated, there are certainly ways to make a wonderful break-up movie. One key is to make the film’s emotions as realistic as possible. Breaking-up is a subject that has universal appeal because almost everyone from any race, color, or walk-of-life has experienced a serious heartbreak at one point in their life. It’s a part of life that everyone has dealt with and knows about. To make a break-up movie that lacks authenticity and depth would turn off way too many people and make your film more transparent then you had hoped for. Why watch a phony and clueless break-up situation when the real life version feels so much more dramatic and meaningful?

It’s also not enough to just make a realistic film, but a hopeful one as well. A good break-up movie should not only be represented with honesty, but should also offer a wise and helpful observation on the subject as well. Breaking-up may be hard, but it’s not the end of the world. Even if you have a romantic relationship that falls apart, you still have family, friends, a career, and a whole lot of living to fall back on. There’s more to life than romantic heartbreaks and the best films are the ones that understand this and try to convey it into the plot.

So since these great films are so hard to find, I’ve decided to pay tribute to the top five best films that deal with romantic break-ups. Some of these choices may seem strange, yet if you dig deep into the movie’s ideology, you will find a movie that presents heartbreak and shines light on how to deal with it:

1) Casablanca (1942)
There’s a reason why this film has held-up over the years to become one of America’s most beloved classics, one more so than the war-time drama. Casablanca finds two of classic Hollywood’s most beloved stars, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, dealing with the heartbreaking aftermath of a loving relationship gone terribly wrong. As war-torn lovers reuniting in Casablanca, Bogart and Bergman are sensational as heartbroken souls struggling to work out their bruised emotions. They dig so deep into their characters’ complexities that even by today’s standards their acting seems modern and authentic.

There are other films on this list that deal more directly with the subject of breaking-up, yet I place Casablanca at the top because it not only nails the roller-coaster emotions of breaking-up, but it shows our romantic hero realizing that there’s more to life than his own relationship and that things would work out better if they went their separate ways. How deep it is for Bogart to realize that his relationship “don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world” and that his lover is better off with her freedom fighter husband, Victor Lazlo (Paul Henreid). Even though Casablanca owes more to classic Hollywood than modern romance, the characters have a depth and wisdom about their relationship that allows audiences of today to identify more strongly with this film than most contemporary romances.

2) High Fidelity (2000)
It’s always hard to watch a movie about a pathetic slacker who cries over losing his girlfriend. What’s great about High Fidelity, is that Rob Gordon (John Cusack) realizes he’s a pathetic slacker and wants to truly understand why his girlfriend left him and how he can improve that. As Rob embarks on a quest to examine his romantic skills by revisiting all of his former girlfriends, he begins to learn huge revelations as to why his past relationships failed and the audience begins to realize their watching one of the most insightful movies about relationships ever made. From high school hook-ups to high maintenance hotties, High Fidelity wonderfully paints a portrait of the murky romantic waters most men have to endure in this modern age.

What makes the film so refreshing is not just the insight the audience gains, but the insight Rob gains as well. By the end of the film, he has learned to grow up and be more of a man. He wins back his ex-girlfriend (Iben Hjeje) not with money or an elaborate scheme, but because he has shown maturity and tenderness. The scene in which Rob tells her why she’s the one is among the best-written scenes in modern romance (credit is also due to the wonderful British author Nick Hornby, who wrote the novel on which the film is based).

3) Swingers (1996)
Mike (Jon Favreau) left behind a loving girlfriend in New York to pursue an acting career in Los Angeles. He struggles to find work in L.A. and grows very love sick over his girl, who appears to be moving on from their relationship. What’s a guy to do? Why hang out with his buddies of course! One phone call to best pal Trent (Vince Vaughn) and Mike is out on the town hanging out at the coolest bars and meeting all sorts of new people. Who needs a girlfriend when you got great friends, swing music, and a whole ocean of attractive girls!

Swingers may be mostly about being a struggling actor in L.A. and partying on the west coast, but I call it a great break-up film because it offers wonderful alternatives from wrestling with heartbreak. As Mike has wacky social adventures with Trent and his army of swingers, we realize that spending time with friends and searching for good times just might be more fulfilling than hanging out with a girlfriend. It certainly is authentic in its convictions. Favreau also wrote the screenplay for the film and the story is largely based on his own experiences while moving out to L.A. Throw in then-indie director Doug Liman and you have an honest and hilarious look at living it up that triumphantly avoids commercial phoniness.

4) Boomerang (1992)
If most break-up movies follow pathetic whiners, then the nice thing about Boomerang is how it shows that even smooth operators get it wrong sometimes. That’s exactly what Marcus Graham (Eddie Murphy) is. He’s a cocky yet likeable advertising executive who goes through women like candy. That is until he meets Jacqueline (Robin Givens) a gorgeous business woman who has Marcus convinced that he’s found his match. Yet as Marcus tries to get serious with Jacqueline, she treats him as carelessly as he treated other women. Rejected and embarrassed, Marcus feels depressed and has no idea how to deal with heartbreak. With the help of some loyal buddies (Martin Lawrence & David Alan Grier) and a sweet new love (Halle Berry), Marcus learns some important matters of the heart and realizes what’s truly important when it comes to relationships.

Of course things are more complicated than this. Tensions flare, friendships get tested, and Marcus doesn’t have the easiest time abandoning his old ways. It is those very complications that make Boomerang so unique. On the surface, it has the appearance of your typical Eddie Murphy or office-romance comedy. While the film is very funny, it digs unexpectedly deep into the characters and we get the feeling that we’re watching real people with real life relationships. There are certain sections that seem formulaic, but there is a genuine heart beating beneath this insightful comedy.

5) Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Not a break-up film you say? Ocean’s Eleven is nothing but a slick heist film? That may be the popular opinion, yet if you were to peel away the heist conventions, the Hollywood glamour, and the old school coolness, you would find that this movie tells the story of a heartbroken guy who plots to win back his ex-wife the best way he knows how!

As Danny Ocean (George Clooney) assembles an eleven-man crew to rob three Las Vegas casinos, he also plans to win back ex-wife Tess (Julia Roberts) who also happens to be dating the owner of those very three casinos (Andy Garcia). It proves to be a difficult task, for Tess is furious with Danny, but all goes according to plan and Tess realizes that any man who would go to such great lengths for her must be worth another try.

I realize this sounds like a bit of a stretch. But when all is said and done, you realize that the film teaches a very important lesson in breaking-up: if you truly care about someone and you sincerely put forth your all your intelligence and confidence, you just might be able to make the romantic impossible become possible! That's honestly more wisdom than can be found in a more straight-forward romantic film nowadays. If nothing else, who better to take break-up counseling from than George Clooney?

Shyamalan Isn't As 'Happening' As He Used To Be

by Brett Parker

If M. Night Shyamalan had never directed The Happening, I’d probably label the film as being a “second-rate Shyamalan knockoff.” The film has the director’s look and feel, yet it lacks the magic that made his best films so special. To be sure, it has a concept that’s just as fascinating as his previous works, yet it lacks the patience, nuances, and production values we’d expect from him. This film proves that Shyamalan on a lesser day can still make an entertaining film, but where’s the skilled horror of The Sixth Sense? Where’s the emotional impact of Signs?

The film opens on a fall day in Central Park, NY. Two girls sit on a park bench while one of them notices that everyone in the park has stopped moving dead in their tracks. Everyone surrounding them is as still as statues. The one girl turns and realizes that the other girl has stabbed herself in the neck with a hair pin. This is a morbid pattern that begins happening throughout the northeast. Countless people find themselves frozen in their tracks and seeking gruesome ways to kill themselves. It is realized that a deadly toxin is flowing through the air and causing this deadly epidemic at a rapid rate.

News of the outbreak reaches a high school in New York. This causes Science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) and his colleague Julian (John Leguizamo) to flee the state and head towards Pennsylvania. Elliot grabs his conflicted wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel), while Julian gets his introverted daughter, Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez), as they flee the state by train. Yet halfway on the trip, everyone on the train is abandoned in the small town of Filbert, PA after a railway employee informs Elliot that the train lost contact with “everyone.” The survivors begin to realize that the deadly toxins will soon catch up with them and they struggle not only to survive, but to figure out what is possibly causing this deadly plague. Is it a terrorist threat? An act of God? Elliot soon realizes that it just might be a disturbing mechanism of nature.

Before I list off descriptions of the film’s flaws, don’t think I’m one of those skeptical critics out to see Shyamalan fail. It’s very much the opposite: I’m a huge fan of his work. Shyamalan, along with Cameron Crowe and Michael Mann, is a director I secretly root for and consider to be one of my favorites for these times. Unbreakable and Signs are two of my favorite movies ever and The Village was on my list of the ten best films of 2004. And while I admit Lady in the Water was Shyamalan’s weakest film, I enjoyed it and found many positive things within the material. What I like about his films is the way he takes concepts that would’ve thrilled me as a 12-year-old and brings a dramatic maturity to them that satisfies both the child and the intellectual in me at the same time, a feat very few directors can pull off. He always achieves this with a minimalist skill that packs a giant cinematic punch. Of course, many critics are out to nail Shyamalan due to his ego and commercial values, yet it would be wiser to let the films speak for themselves, for as I see it, they speak wonderfully.

If any other director had made The Happening, I probably would’ve been easier on it. Obviously, I hold Shyamalan’s work to an exceptional standard and it’s hard to buy this film outright when I know he’s capable of so much more. Yet the film’s hopes for greatness weren’t completely out of reach. It’s the technical aspects that hold the film back from being more powerful. This is strange, considering the perfectionist Shyamalan can be behind the camera. Usually, he has a unique visual scheme behind his films that make even throwaway shots look extremely relevant to the film’s atmosphere. His framing of shots helped strengthen the comic book scheme of Unbreakable and the menacing vastness of the woods in The Village, all with a pacing that takes its time to build suspense. Here, things move in a lazier manner. There are too many tight and unremarkable shots that move along at a pace that’s too quick for its own good. We never get the strong sense of emptiness and tension that the characters are experiencing. It also doesn’t help that James Newton Howard’s musical work, which reached sublime heights in Shyamalan’s past films, underscores nearly every scene here, diminishing the haunting silence that almost serves as the director’s trademark.

Consider the film’s most unforgettable scene, in which Elliot, Alma, and Jess join two pre-teen boys they meet in asking gun-toting locals for food. What proceeds to happen in that scene is undoubtedly the most viscous thing Shyamalan has ever unleashed on an audience. Yet the scene contains a laughable slow-motion shot, a line of bad dialogue, and an extreme close-up of emotional overkill that immediately harms the overall effect of the scene. More thoughtful and subtle staging could’ve retained a more harrowing sting. Mistakes like this can be found all throughout the film. A scene where a man gets attacked by an animal demonstrates Shyamalan’s defeated confession that he’s not the best with CGI. Then there’s the curious case of Mrs. Jones (Betty Buckley), an eccentric recluse the main trio meets on their journey for safety. Hers is a subplot of, shall I say, anticlimactic lunacy. Her behavior is so bizarre and counter-productive to the plot that you immediately question its reason for existing in the first place. Perhaps she is meant to represent the startling alternative to the everyday society that harms the environment? Maybe she demonstrates to Elliot and Alma what a life without love looks like? Either way, her meaning is never highlighted in an effective way and we’re left scratching our heads and laughing unintentionally.

Despite its flaws, The Happening is still a competent film with big ideas and likeable characters. It’s on par with an entertaining B-Movie, and it’s truly better than half the horror thrillers Hollywood churns out eat year (thinking of Dark Water and the Ring series makes me realize how much more inane this film could’ve been). I loved the film’s ideas about the environment taking revenge on mankind and Shyamalan brings a hushed realism and unforgiving hostility to it that makes it truly scary. Only a filmmaker like Shyamalan could make plants seem scary and I can’t remember a film where they came across more threatening (sorry Little Shop of Horrors). And while the actors wrestle with bad dialogue and underwritten characters, they are all competent and convincing. Wahlberg and Deschanel bring a likeable spirit to their characters; it’s especially fun watching the minimalist action star Wahlberg play a quirky science teacher. I liked their characters so much that I wish there were more scenes highlighting the marital stress between them. The film’s climax is meant to be a major romantic triumph (Shyamalan tries to capture the emotional impact of the Signs climax) and while I appreciated the effort, we know too little about this couple to get that worked up.

So we can basically chalk this up as a minor Shyamalan work. It’s likeable and entertaining, but it’s destined to be a more obscure mark in his filmography. Even Hitchcock had films like those. But after Lady in the Water, this film, and the fact that his next project is an adaptation of a Nickelodeon cartoon, I hope he’s able to recapture that popcorn magic he had so strongly in the past. Like a good Shyamalan film, I hope a big twist is coming real soon.

Two 'Dead' Films Find Life on DVD

by Andrew Jupin

There is no doubt that George A. Romero's 1968 classic, Night of the Living Dead, is one of the most important contemporary, American horror films ever made. The film was the start of a terrifying new direction for the horror genre and at the same time was a biting critique of contemporary, American life and some of the more popular ideologies at that time. The film was able to criticize things like race relations and contemporary familial structure, while at the same time scaring the pants off of audiences all over the world. It was also a great achievement in the realm of independent, American filmmaking.

Forty years later, Romero is still chugging along with films in his 'Dead' series after most recently releasing the critical overkill (no pun intended) Diary of the Dead. Here, Romero is attempting to stomp on things like television news media and the affects of You Tube on today's society. The problem (as you can read in greater detail in my review of the film) is that all the subtlety that Romero was once the master of is now replaced with endless amounts of obvious remarks from characters that don't belong in a Romero film to begin with. One of the great aspects of Romero's casting over the years as been his ability to select average, believable looking people to play his characters. The opposite is true for Diary which is filled with pretty girls and chiseled guys, none of whom seem at home in a George A. Romero production.

Well as of today, Dimension Films is granting you, the consumer, the chance to purchase both the good and the bad. Both Diary of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead are finding new homes on DVD. While the Diary disc seems pretty standard--special features include the usual rambling Romero commentary, and behind-the-scenes featurettes--there is one unique feature available which is a series of five short films made by fans and selected by Romero himself. Yes, the films are all about zombies and yes, MySpace is responsible. But nonetheless, they are certainly worth checking out.

But the real gem to come out of this Dimension Films zombie DVD release party is the Night of the Living Dead disc. The film itself became public domain years ago and because of this the DVD community has seen at least a dozen different releases of the film, all even worse than the last. You sadly even find the film crammed onto a DVD with at least six other films in one of those 'Great Horror Movie 50-Pak' things which is something so sad considering the upper echelon of horror that the film falls into. Well the great thing about the Night DVD is that it is fully remastered. This transfer looks absolutely incredible. The picture is crystal clear and the audio just crackles with every bone-chomping sound effect in the film. This special 40th Anniversary Edition also comes complete with two audio commentaries (one from Romero himself and one from select cast and crew members), an entire feature-length documentary called One for the Fire which chronicles the production and importance of the film, a separate Night of the Living Dead-centric Q&A with Romero himself as well as the final interview with Duane Jones, the African-American lead of the film who, along with Romero's casting insistence, helped break down race barriers in the motion picture industry.

In all honesty, if you're going to go out there and purchase either of these DVD's, make sure you pick up Night before you consider buying Diary. If anything, Diary is a rental. I think it's important to see all of Romero's films, but only necessary to own a select few. Keeping track of his body of work as a whole is important because the lows in his career, like Diary of the Dead, certainly give a whole new importance to the highs of his career, like Night of the Living Dead. And there honestly isn't a better edition of Night out there than the one being released today.