Monday, June 28, 2010

The Lovely Bones...DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM!




The Lovely Bones

Director – Peter Jackson

Starring – Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Stanley Tucci, and Susan Sarandon

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language.


The Lovely Bones is Peter Jackson’s foray into the non-epic film genre. Instead of portraying epic battles and giant monsters, we get kind of a murder mystery thriller that blends the artistic green screen aspects of “The Fountain” and “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” with films of high tension and mystery like “Frequency” and “Changeling”. The wild imagination of Peter Jackson heavily influences this film, but the major bugs are not all Jackson’s fault. We can also blame is screenwriters, the same ones who collaborated on his past 4 epics.

What could have been a great film mixing the thrills of a murder mystery with the drama in a victim’s surviving household, instead became a film tripping out on an acid-high version of heaven combined with an overreaching message teaching us that a first kiss is so important that even if a person dies, he or she can’t go to heaven until that person processes the body of another to get that first kiss. Screw catching your killer, forget reassuring your grieving family, NO, possess your old boyfriend’s new girl friend, and get your dang first kiss, then you can move on!
The first three quarters of the movie are fairly well put together. Aside from the weird “in between place” that out lead character is stuck in while her family grieves for her murder, the plot is pretty interesting, well thought out and gripping. I wanted to go into the film and just cut out the dead narrator and focus on the family, and Stanley Tucci’s brilliant villain character.



The unassuming Stanley Tucci performs in a role so different from his charming Paul Child in “Julia and Julia”, it is hard to tell it is the same actor. No wonder he got an Oscar nomination for the movie. In fact his performance was one of the only redeeming qualities in the film. Had it been just the living people in the movie without a dead girl running around a Tim Burton-esque heaven landscape trying to let go of life so her family could move on it would have been a pretty good film. And throwing in Stanley Tucci’s performance of the creepy neighborhood serial killer the movie might have bordered on brilliant.

What we got instead was a movie that was half interesting, half a psychotic drug trip, and complete with the worst last 20 minutes ever. In fact the ending is so horrible it makes the whole film unwatchable. I am sure there are a few Peter Jackson film-lovers who sat through this garbage ending loving each slow motion second… They probably also liked the fact that this film had more endings than “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King”, though we are spared from the 3 hours of tedium.

The plot starts us off with the happy Salmon family fathered by the soft spoken Mark Wahlberg and mothered by Rachel Weisz. The fashionable grandmother is Susan Sarandon, who is also a hoot in this film, as much fun to watch as Stanley Tucci, but obviously not as creepy, is a heavy influence on the little starlet who narrates. The 14 year-old Susie Salmon (a pretty decent acting job by Saorise Ronan) is killed by Stanley Tucci, who plays the kind, gentle, almost un-noticed, unmarried, neighborhood recluse, and she goes to a place between life and death where she has to learn how to let go of life and move on while running across landscapes more bizarre than Dr. Parnassuses Imaginarium, but a little more tame than Tim Burton’s Wonderland.



Instead of solely dealing with the finding and catching of Stanley Tucci’s character the film also deals with the concept for letting go and moving on after a traumatic death. We see the unique though not all that interesting perspective of a the murdered girl and her struggle to accept her death and move on while simultaneously seeing her parent’s struggles to cope with the death of their oldest child. The in between world of Susie’s and ours is somehow connected through the actions of the killer, the victim, and the victim’s family. It is an interesting idea, but mostly serves to confuse the audience, muddle the ideas of an afterlife, and let Peter Jackson show us all he knows how to use a green screen too.



In short “The Lovely Bones” forces the audience to sit through an artsy take on life and death and then leaves everyone in a disappointed rage with the worst endings ever. I will give this film a 5 out of 10 because it was not a terrible film as far as film making goes, but it is a frustrating and weird piece that is ultimately unsatisfying and mostly a waste of time.

Sex/Nudity – 4 out of 10 – A husband and wife passionately kiss on a bed, we assume they have sex. A teen boy and girl kiss. A teen couple go into a corn field and we assume they are engaged in sexual activities. A teen girl is blamed for arousing a boy because of her nude drawing, we see the naked woman sketched in pencil. We see a man naked in a bath tub, the camera is looking straight down, but the water is murky and hides his mid section, we see bare legs and a bare chest.

Violence/Gore – 6 out of 10 - A man is badly beaten with a flashlight and baseball bat. We see some blood and multiple bruises. A man imprisons a teen girl she kicks him in the face as she struggles to get free. He throws her to the ground. Later we see him in a bath tub, there is mud and blood on the sink and tile floor. We see the corpses of a man’s murder victims. A man falls from a cliff and we see his body hit many different rocks, we hear crunching sounds as he hits.

Profanity – 4 out of 10 – Kids In Mind says the is 1 “F” word, but I don't remember it at all... there were only maybe 6 other exclamations, including one or two religious obscenities.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

A Wannabe Epic



Robin Hood (2010)

Director – Ridley Scott

Starring – Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, and William hurt,

MPAA – Rated PG-13 for violence including intense sequences of warfare, and some sexual content.

Picture these scriptwriters pitching story ideas to each other while walking down the hall at Universal Studios. They have this decent idea for a mid-evil film that deals with the close of Richard the Lionheart’s crusade and his return to England.
The problem is that they don’t really know how to make it marketable. Then these scriptwriters bump into Ridley Scott who is in the mood for making a period piece and he likes this story idea. To market the film they start thinking it might be a good idea to make the film a sequel to Kingdom of Heaven. But Scott is too good a director to sequel a movie that wasn’t all that great to begin with, so they pitch around some more ideas and someone says, “Hey let’s make it a prequel to Robin Hood!” Obviously they had never read any of the Robin Hood legends but they knew some of the character’s names and went with it.



For those die hard Robin Hood fans, if there are any… This film kind of reworks the whole beginning of the Robin Hood stories. Russell Crowe’s Robin Hood is not the clever, charming, jesting Robin Hood of the legend I grew up with as a child. Instead he is a sly, serious man with a troubled past. He is essentially the beefy and loyalty inspiring Maximus from “Gladiator”. It works for the film, but I always pictured Robin Hood as a much happier and more light-hearted guy, and anyone who has read the old legends would agree.

Setting this prequel business aside there are some really good aspects to this film. The plot is pretty creative. Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) is a brave and beloved archer in the army of King Richard. Richard’s army has completed its bloody crusade and is storming across France plundering the country for money to pay for the expensive crusade. Through a bit of bad luck Robin and his comrades, Little John, Will Scarlett, and Allan A’Dayle, desert the army and cut across France trying to return to England. They stumble on an ambush of the King’s knights and Robin Longstride meets a dying Robert Loxley (the original surname of Robin Hood from the old stories). Longstride promises Loxley he will return a sacred sword to Loxley’s father at Nottingham.



The band of merry men, mostly merry because these ruffians drink and sing like modern rock stars, then dress in the garb of the ambushed knights and take their boat to England. Of course in the wake of a missing King Richard, the younger brother John has screwed up the country. Longstride assumes the name of Loxley with the consent of the elder Loxley and begins a romance with Marianne, who was married to the dead knight Loxley. Robin unearths his past, helps save England from the invading French, kicks a lot of butt, and in the end somehow becomes an outlaw in Sherwood Forest. Like I said, it was supposed to be a different film, but to get us to the theater they decided to make it a prequel, and it is true I might not have seen it had there not been a Robin Hood angle.

The plot though was entertaining. In fact the whole buildup of the film and the character developments was very strong. The script needed a little fine tuning to make it sound a little more middle age-ish, but it still told an interesting story, that might have stood on its own a little better than trying to mash it in with the old Robin Hood tales. In fact there was a lot of unmet potential here that the film just didn’t quite pull off. And now we all want to see the next film, so we can find out what happens. What was really disappointing was the Invasion-of –Normandy style attack the French make on England. It was like Ridley Scott just copy and pasted a bunch of shots from the opening scenes of “Saving Private Ryan” and meshed them with some battles from “Braveheart”, it was not a very plausible or convincing battle. The French even had the same kind of boats the Allies had in Spielberg’s epic.

Some of the pacing throughout the film also felt a little jumbled. The story was trying to do a political thriller in med-evil England while also keeping up a mistaken identity (or hidden identity)/ romance, and the cutting back and forth made the movie feel a little choppy and made it difficult to fully develop either story, and when they tried to make the two subplots in the middle it all kind of jumbled up and got lost. Truly this film would have been a much better if the makers had not tried to do what Antoine Fuqua did with King Arthur, a much more cohesive and well put together “How the Man Became the Legend” movie.




The action and violence was relatively gore-free. As opposed to Gladiator, which was stunning, one of the best films ever made, but very gory, Robin Hood is heavy on the action, light on gore. There is a lot of war violence, people getting hit by arrows, slashed with swords, dying right and left; and all of it is pretty realistic, but we are spared the spraying blood that hits the camera lens just so, and the severed body parts rolling around the battlefield. It is still a gritty action film, with lots of great battle scenes, but the violence is very PG-13, not even bordering R.

Robin Hood earns a 7 out of 10. It was a disappointing prequel, but standing alone, it was an interesting and exciting film that just didn’t get fully developed. If the story and the script had been ironed out a little bit before the crew got to production then all in all Ridley Scott could have had a real winner on his hands. Instead it is an average movie, pulled down even further by the Hollywood prequel/ sequel craze so abundant in the summer list of flicks.

Sex/Nudity – 6 out of 10 – an older woman finds her son engaged in sexual intercourse with a woman who is not his wife, we see them under a blanket clearly having sex, the mother pulls down the blanket to reveal the man’s bare back and the bare arms and shoulder and most of the bare breast of a woman, the man stands and we see his bare chest and part of his bare buttocks. We see women in cleavage revealing outfits, a few men pursue these women and we see the men shirtless the next morning and we assume they have had intercourse. A man attempts to rape a woman, we see part of her bare leg. A women helps a men out of his armor and we see his bare chest, this is a non sexual scene.

Violence Gore – 7 out of 10 – Refer to the second to last paragraph.

Profanity – 2 out of 10 - three or four religious exclamations, some name calling and 7 obscenities.

Friday, June 25, 2010



Valentine’s Day

Director – Gary Marshall

Starring – Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Ashton
Kutcher, and Queen Latifah, (AMONG MANY OTHERS)

MPAA - Rated PG-13 for some sexual material and brief partial nudity

Here is another charming if not trite comedy about adults, well mostly, and a comedy that actually tries to make a distinction between love and sex, well mostly. I think this is a comedy that actually manages to bridge the gap between pre-teens fawning over the hottest actors, and adults looking for some decent entertainment. Usually mainstream films like this are so geared towards a teenage crowd that it is impossible for an adult to do anything but cringe. And while Valentine’s Day has its pubescent appeal in the face of the ever present Ashton Kutcher, there is still plenty for the older audiences.



What works well in this quaint, but charming film is the development of the characters. It seems the filmmakers wanted to do what was so masterfully accomplished in "Love Actually", and while coming up a bit short still managed to piece together a film with fun characters and decent development. While the acting is nothing to be impressed by, mostly because all the actors are just playing themselves in pretty standard situations – Kutcher as the goofy lover, Jamie Foxx as an egotistical sports anchor and so on – we still get to see a little bit of real acting with Julia Roberts, who is a stony career military woman on a long flight home (though I won’t ruin her story).



I also liked how we didn’t have to sit through an hour and a half of the same old cookie cutter love story with two ridiculously attractive actors who can’t keep their pants on. Instead we see a whole bunch of little love stories mixed with witty dialogue and all the little formulaic scenes are so much shorter and seem a little more interesting because we only see little bits and pieces of everyone’s story instead of long segments of over used plot.



Valentine’s Day is a simple and fun film. I still find Hollywood so frustrating in the prevailing perception that sex comes before love, and that message is far to prevalent in this film. Surprisingly enough the two sexiest teen stars of the film, Taylor Lawton and Taylor Swift, both their characters profess to have a relationship that is not sexual, though their prolific use of their tongues make you question that a little. I am saddened by the message of promiscuous behavior that is constantly sent to teenagers through films like this and others.

This isn’t a great movie, but it is a fun date flick that will have you laughing and holding the one you live tightly. For you singles… avoid it until you have someone… or don’t, not my problem. I will give this a 6 out of 10. It is indeed a lot of fun, but overall, not a movie to take for any artistic value.



Sex/Nudity - 6 out of 10 – A teen boy is seen naked in his girlfriend’s bedroom, he has a guitar covering hit midsection, and we see the side of his buttocks. The mother comes into the room and he is seen running out and down the street covering his body with the guitar and loose clothing. Quite a few couples are seen in varying degrees of undress in the morning after spending the night together. A woman operates a phone sex business and she is often on her cell phone talking to client in different accents and making whipping sounds. A man caresses another man’s face and hair. Quite a few women are seen in cleavage revealing out fits. A teenage couple talks about having sex. There are also other bits of sexual dialogue and innuendos.

Violence/Gore – 1 out of 10 – there is a comical domestic squabble on a news broadcast. A woman hits a man a few times.

Profanity – 4 out of 10 – 20 or so mild obscenities and name callings.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Alice in BLUNDERland



Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland

Director – Tim Burton

Starring – Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, and Alan Rickman

MPAA - Rated PG for fantasy action/violence involving scary images and situations, and for a smoking caterpillar



The more movies I see made by Tim Burton the more convinced I am of his twisted brilliance. He is either seriously on acid or a film genius. That doesn’t mean that Alice in Wonderland was brilliant, but if it had been made by any other director the film would have been as lifeless and dull as its script.
Burton took a shoddy screenplay packed with bad dialogue and a plot more twisting and curving than any set piece and turned it into a visually entertaining and exciting trip. If anything this film will be great for wild and thrilling amusement park ride. I am wondering why the people in charge of Harry Potter didn’t snag Tim Burton for their films. Then at least they would have had visual interest.



And that was all Alice in Wonderland was, a visual experience. Its convoluted plot that jumped around more times that Hulk did in his first disastrous film, is saved only by the mastermind Tim Burton. Alice is 20 and has been plagued by dreams of Wonderland since she was a little girl; I am guessing that was what the original animated Disney Film is supposed to be. So we pick up with this sequel where Alice returns to Wonderland to help the devastated fantasy land and save them from the clutches of The Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter). She is aided by a muttering mad hatter, who is clearly off his rocker...in a nice , but ever so creepy, way. Johnny Depp plays his part well, though at anytime we expect him to rip off his CGI eyes and say, "I'm Captain Jack Sparrow love, savvy?"

In this adventure we get a feeling of The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe meets Sleepy Hallow, although this film lacks the writing that Narnia had, and therefore makes us completely u interested in the characters. Yes there were plenty of little things to laugh about, but we didn’t really like Alice or care about her predicament, in fact we didn’t really care about anyone in the film, there was just no emotional connection to them.



Alice in Wonderland is probably a 6.5 out of 10. Yes I enjoyed the brilliant colors and the interesting cinematography. It was a visual gem. There were also funny moments and a little bit of action, and the little quirky characters were fun. But there was very little writing and a disjointed plot that really kept the film from being too engaging. It was interesting, but not a film of any lasting value.

Sex/Nudity - 2 out of 10– A girl grows tall and small and her clothes don’t change with her. One scene she stands behind a bush and she is bare from the shoulders up. There is also a little cleavage. A married man is caught kissing another woman. A man makes advances on a young woman.

Violence/Gore – The whole film is kind of creepy. There are a lot of scary images. One animal gets its eye speared out by a mouse, then gets the eye back later. A dragon gets its tounge cut off and later its head, it rolls around and bounces a lot, The head is left bleeding on the ground. A girl is cut on the arm by a monster; the cut gets infected and looks pretty nasty later on. There is a most full of decapitated heads; they look like porcelain mannequin’s heads. A lady makes potions from chopped up fingers. In other wards it is a fairly grisly picture and should have been PG-13 because of fantasy violence and disturbing images.

Profanity – 1 out of 10 – There is some name calling.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

17 Again, I'd see it again



17 Again

Director - Burr Steers

Starring – Zac Efron, Leslie Mann, Thomas Lennon, Melora Hardin, and Mathew Perry

I am a big Mathew Perry fan, and that is the only reason I allowed my wife to convince me to watch this movie. He is just such a funny guy that I figured I could give this movie a shot. Well it was worth it, 17 Again does what a lot of stupid teen romance comedies fail to do, and that is be funny. Usually these movies are good for a snicker and they make my wife laugh but I am usually left unsatisfied and bored. However 17 Again has enough adults in it, and is more about adults than other teen comedies, that I could actually laugh at the jokes.

I like comedies about adults and adult relationships. I don’t like comedies that make high schoolers look like a bunch of horny, boozing, morons. I’ll admit there are high schoolers out there that are horny, boozing, morons, but for the most part Hollywood capitalizes on this mentality and makes kids think that this is the only way to get through high school. Unfortunately 17 Again still follows this general prescription for stock movie high schools but it actually tries 9kind of) to promote responsible sexuality and abstinence for a change.

What works in this overused plot is the hilarious actors and the straight faced comedy. Zac Efron plays Mathew Perry. It is like he sat down one weekend and watched every episode of friends. Everything he does it was like watching a young Mathew Perry, and his interaction with adults of the film made it interesting and funny.



The movie opens with high school senior Mike O’Donnell (Mathew Perry – adult version – and Zac Efron – teen version) the basketball star who leaves the dreams of college ball for a life with his impregnated high school sweet heart. Flash forward 30 years and he is now a moaning and groaning has been who wishes he could do it over again. He is getting a divorce (his wife is sick of him always using her as his excuse for not being successful), his kids don’t really like him, and he loses his job. So through unexplained magic with a Santa Clause looking janitor Mathew Perry becomes Zac Efron who takes on high school again and gets a chance to grow closer to his kids then he thought possible.

I liked this movie because it was an adult in high school trying to fix the problems he had to deal with himself. It was an adult comedy with kids in it… kind of. It is true this is more of a kids movie (barely, with the amount of sexuality in it I wouldn’t let my kids watch it, though a teenager could see it), when I say kids I mean like high school age kids.



What I am trying to say is that the fun characters and the witty dialogue and banter are what make this film so funny. The humor is very enjoyable, especially to Mathew Perry fans. I think after Zac Efron gets over being a teen idol he has a decent career ahead of him. I also have to add that the side kick best friend in this movie Ned Gold (Thomas Lennon) is absolutely hilarious. He is probably one of my favorite side characters in a romantic comedy and the movie is worth it just to see this funny little guy.

Overall I’ll give 17 Again a 7.5 out of 10. It is an above average romantic comedy that delivers serious laughs. It was well scripted and perfectly casted. And while I hate high school comedies in general this one is one of the better ones of its class. You want a good date flick? Get 17 Again, it’ll make you laugh.



Sex/Nudity – 5 out of 10 – There is a lot of sexual dialogue in this movie, almost all of it involving teenagers. One boy is pursued constantly by three different girls all who make suggestive comments to him. One girl is alone in a bedroom with a boy and she tries to have sex with him, but he talks to her about him being in love with another girl, she is very sexually aggressive. There is a lot of heavy kissing an petting between a teen couple. A man works at a pharmaceutical ad company and they discuss Viagra giving you users a 4-hour erection. There is one scene in a teen part where a nude boy with a large shield covering his privates runs through the scene.

Violence/Gore - 4 out of 10 – There are a couple of fist-a-cuffs and scuffles, one boy is hit repeatedly in the face, but there is no blood or even bruising. There is some high school bullying, one kid is duct tapped to the toilet.

Profanity – 5 out of 10 – 2 mouthed or not completed “f” words, some sexual references and about 20 other mild obscenities and religious exclamations.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Armored, bad, but not that bad...



Armored

Director – Nimrod Antal

Staring - Matt Dillon, Lawrence Fishburne, Jean Reno, and Columbus Short

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense violence, some disturbing images and brief strong language.

Armored is an easy to watch, formulaic, action/heist film that somehow still manages to have a few twists and turns that make up for shoddy dialogue, and a formulaic plot. Armored is a basic film with average action, a decent plot, and a marginal climax. I would give it a 6 out of 10. It was gracefully short, and so was not intolerable.

My brother, my wife, and I all sat down to what we figured would be a decent little action film. And while we were not blown away by the films set up, we were pleasantly surprised to find that there were enough twists to make the film an enjoyable, if not below average, action/heist film.



Stomp the Yard’s lead, Columbus Short, takes his place next to action stars Laurence Fishburne and Jean Reno as the hero of Armored. He is a war veteran of Iraq and it is implied he was well decorated. He is now home in the ghetto taking care of his little brother working with his godfather Matt Dillon as a security guard driving armored trucks. Behind his back the old-timers, Dillon, Reno and Fishburne, conspire to steal $42 million dollars, by stashing the cash and covering their track, from their own armored car. Columbus Short goes along with the plan until things go disastrously wrong and Short holds half the cash and himself barricaded in an armored truck looking for a way out.

From there we see a series of deaths, a few car chases and the other necessities to a “B” average action flick, or in this case “C” average. I do enjoy a good heist film, and this one was not disappointing at that angle. What didn’t really work was the fact that the script was pretty poorly written and the makers of the film didn’t bother to do anything terribly interesting in the film. All the characters were pretty standard. Columbus was the hero who made a bad choice. Dillon is the mastermind who didn’t figure in all the angles. Fishburne just wants to kill something. Reno say like two words the whole film. Frankly the movie makers could have canned the 2nd string “Big names” and hired two or three writers to put together a more emotionally gripping film. But I guess they got what they paid for, I paid to see Laurence Fishburne, who was not interesting at all in this film.



In all this is probably a film you could skip and not have missed a thing. It is dry and not very exciting. It does have a twist or two that keep you wondering, but you are not sure you care enough about the characters to bother with being interested. Again this is a 6 out of 10, not an epic failure, but certainly not much of a winner either. In the end we learn that there are always bad guys and there is no such thing as the perfect heist, especially in a B movie where $42 million dollars are at stake.

Sex/Nudity - 3 out of 10 – we see a shirtless man once, and a man’s butt crack once. There is some discussion over the size of a man’s gentiles in a brief joke.

Violence/ Gore – 7 out of 10 - A man gets shot in the hip and we see his wound quite a few times, although it is usually in shadow or covered by a hand so we mostly see the pooling blood. 2 men are burned in an explosion, one man is stabbed, and we see his killer washing off the blood in a puddle. The violence is moderate, a little more than you would see in CSI or 24, and a little bit more blood.

Profanity -6 out of 10 - 1 audible “f: word and 4 more noticeable only with subtitles on. The other profanities are scattered throughout maybe 15 in total.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010



Edge of Darkness

Director – Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, The Mask of Zorro, Golden Eye)

Starring – Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, and Bojana Novakovic

MPAA - Rated R for strong bloody violence and language

The director of the gritty, fast paced, action blockbuster, Casino Royale, brings us a tale of revenge, packed with brutal violence, and top notch suspense; Edge of Darkness. Martin Campbell has directed a very good film, filled with suspense, action, and a little bit of hope. This is one of the better action/thrillers to have hit theaters in a while.

Mel Gibson managed to do what Harrison Ford failed to do with Firewall, make a comeback and still entertain the audience. I use this comparison because both Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson were mega stars of the 80s. They continued in stardom through the early 90s but in the last decade there has been very little from either actor. Gibson of course made The Passion and Apocalyptic, but hasn’t starred in anything for a while. Then Ford tries a little bit of a comeback with the marginally entertaining thriller, Firewall. It was an okay film, but felt very 1989 and was a critical disaster. Gibson’s comeback film is very modern and makes full use of today’s recourses to stand as a tense thriller that is very entertaining, and while not a masterpiece in the industry it holds its own over many of its action/thriller counterparts.



Mel Gibson stars as the father of a murdered daughter. She is shot on his front porch as their last name “Craven” is shouted across the street and a shotgun toting bad guy blow the young woman through the door and across the hall. The cops assume Gibson was the target, but he takes a different approach assuming she was the target. His revenge is aided by the clever government fixer Ray Winstone, whose thick British accent and cold mannerisms were enough to chill my blood.



This is a fairly formulaic revenge thriller, and it is packed with gory violence. But it was well put together. It had a plot with good twists that really kept me on the edge of my seat. It was also heart rending to see Gibson’s flash back with his little girl. There is one really cute scene where he is shaving and his daughter comes into the room and he puts some gel on her face and she shaves with his comb while he talks with her and continues his own shaving. Then we blink and she is gone and he is left alone in the empty house.



I would give Edge of Darkness a healthy 7.6 out of 10. While we have seen many films with similar plots, similar twists, and some with even better action than this, Edge of Darkness is still a tense thriller that will keep its viewers biting their nails. This is a lot better than most films of a similar genre, one that is sure to thrill.

Sex/Nudity – 2 out of 10 - one sexual reference and a reference to a woman’s relationship with her boyfriend, that she might be pregnant. A woman wears a cleavage revealing shirt.

Violence/Gore – 8 out of 10 – There are a lot of bloody gun fights and there are a lot of bloody dead bodies. One man is seen with most of his head shot off, blood and brain matter on a couch. A woman is hit by a car and we see her broken body fly quite a few feet. A woman is shot by a double barreled shot gun and we see her fly through a door backwards. It is a violent film but not gory like dead zombies or torture or anything like that.

Profanity – 8 out of 10 – 50 “F” words, and a small smattering of other profanities, name calling, and a few religious exclamations.

Monday, June 7, 2010



Gigi (1958)

Director: Vincente Minnelli

Starring – Leslie Caron, Louis Jourdan, and Maurice Chevalier

MPAA - G

Gigi as a beautiful film about love and lust in 1900 Paris, that makes you laugh and cry, and smile about the way films used to be. It is a classic movie, made in the style of My Fair lady and Cinderella. It is a fun musical comedy that also managed to sweep the 1959 Academy Awards taking home 9 wins including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography (color).

The problem is, I really hate musicals and this is, without a doubt, a musical. The songs are not super catchy, and after finishing the film a viewer may only be able to hum a few bars of one or two songs, but some of them are classics, off repeated today. Like ‘Thank Heaven For little Girls’ or ‘I Remember it Well’, both done by Maurice Chevalier, a handsome though aging man, who somehow missed and Oscar nod himself for this film, though he was nominate in ‘59 for contribution to cinema.



The film centers on high society in Paris in the year 1900. The Gentleman look for the latest and greatest in fashionable women and trade they off a few months later for a new model. Gigi (Leslie Caron), a spunky and vivacious 16-year-old girl, is being raised by a grandmother, a woman who played the game for many years and now lives relatively poorly.

Weekly Gigi goes to her aunt’s home to be instructed in the ways of a lady. Gaston (Louis Jourdan), a wealthy gentleman in his late twenties is a long time friend of the family, and often stops by to be among the poor. He and his uncle (the ever charismatic and witty aging playboy Maurice Chevalier) are wealthy playboys, romping around the city of Paris, trying out the beautiful women. Gaston, ever so staunch and rigid, find solace in the home of Gig and her grandmother. Inevitably a romance blossoms surrounded by the absurd social ideals of Paris’ high society.



I enjoyed Gigi, it was a funny movie, and the script reminds me of the vicious wit of Oscar Wilde, and it is a film I am sure he would have enjoyed as well. I don’t like musicals mush, and this film does have an awful lot of singing, but the songs are short and simple, and I could stomach them while cuddling with my wife on the couch. We watched it in blu-ray, and the picture was incredibly clear. It was a beautiful film to see, and we loved the crisp colors.



I would give Gigi a 7 out of 10. That is judging it against more modern films. It is a of first rate quality for its time, but I am always more entertained by modern films. Gigi is a little silly, the acting s very mellow dramatic (of course all movies from that era are that way) and the songs ever present. But the charm and good natured remarks from Maurice Chevalier, along with a fun, and witty script make up for the “oldness” of the film. For lovers of old cinema Gigi is a classic that should not be missed, and for those who don’t find old films very enjoyable, well Gig will not be your cup of tea.

Sex/Nudity – Without saying anything outright there is a lot of infidelity between relationships. The movie makes fun of those who make fun of cheating on lovers and wives, but it also focuses on a society that is accepting of premarital relations and there is some dialogue to that effect.

There is no violence or profanity.

Friday, June 4, 2010


Surf’s Up

Director: Ash Brannon and Chris Buck

Voice Actors – Shia LaBeouf, Jeff Bridges, Zooey Dechanel, Jon Heder, and James Woods

MPAA - PG for mild language and some rude humor

Surf’s Up is a witty and entertaining flick proving Disney/Pixar does not hold the monopoly on fun kid’s flicks. It is a little cruder than its Mousey counterparts, but still very suitable for a young audience. I wouldn’t feel bad letting any child watch this film, it is enjoyable, non violent, and supports good attitudes. Some children’s movies are just not suited for youngsters but this is one film that a 30-year- old father could sit down and watch with his 3-year-old, and both of them will find amusing scenes to keep them entertained.



One thing that is phenomenal about Surf’s Up is its attention to detail. It was like the animators at Columbia Pictures got royally sick of being one step behind Dreamworks and ten steps behind the Mouse/Lamp and decided to get their computering butts to work. I could see this movie as an easy competitor to its competitor Ratatouille (losing in 2008 to the aforementioned for Best Animated Feature Film). Each leaf came fully equipped, every wave was a masterpiece in digital art, and every grain of sand seemed life like. If for no other reason Surf’ Up is a must see for its visual brilliance.

The plot was a basic underdog story. Cody Maverick (LaBoeouf) is a young, small for his age, surfing penguin following in the footsteps of the great surfer penguin, Big Z (Jeff Bridges). He enters a surfing competition as the mega underdog, but is taken under the wing of an old surfer, and makes his way to the championship, learning on his way to live life to the fullest, and love the surfing, not the competition. A simple plot but packed with laughs, goof characters, and beautiful surfing sequences that are truly magnificent works of art.



What is interesting about this story is that it is a mocumentary style film. Like The Office, this film is made to look like a documentary, it is all made to look like it is filmed by a sports documenter and there are cuts, retakes, and random boom mics swinging into the shots. The story is told through interviews with different characters and has a lot of regular shots too that keep the movie moving. It is an interesting concept to have an animated movumentary, and it is a fun twist.

Surf’s Up is a lighthearted film, not to be taken too seriously, but one that still makes you feel happy about in the end. It is basic and tells a story that we seem to have seen in hundreds of kids movies before, but is still a lot of fun. A 7.5 out of 10, not amazing, but a visual treat that still made me laugh.



Sex/Nudity – A penguin urinates on another penguin’s foot as an antidote to the poison from a sea urchin. An otter gets out of a hot tub and there is fake digital blurring where genitalia might be.
Violence/Gore – there are a few frightening moments with large waves and surfers wiping out and possibly being harmed.

Profanity – One penguin starts to say something tastes like sh… but is then cut off. There is some name calling.