American Pie 2

American Pie 2 is, for all intents and purposes, a collection of gags that might have ended up on the cutting room floor of American Pie. Yes, the characters are all a year older, they’ve put a year of college behind them, and they’ve all had sex. But they’ve remained so exactly the same that it’s hard to imagine a creative team actually wanted to make this film. It’s no secret that successful movies spawn sequels, or that sequels are spawned for economic reasons over artistic integrity. Still, one would hope that when push came to shove, an effort would be made to live up to the magic formula that was the original. Especially when the original was as cool as American Pie.

Not to say that American Pie 2 fails on every front. It’s just that it didn’t take the best of American Pie, opting instead to put its funniest moments on loop. The best of the first film were its hilarious gags, but only because they were approached via developed characters (or at least types), and a black, edgy wit. Its premise – four virgin guys want to have sex before high school ends – was fodder for many a mishap and gag, and it was a damn good idea. The story’s been told before, no doubt, but it had been awhile, allowing the filmmakers to bring a new, updated sensibility to it. And so despite its clichés – including the nerdy, backwards, well-meaning dad, the suburban setting, the out-of-reach object of the main character, Jim’s, lust – it also took audiences for a ride. Nice guy next door doesn’t learn a moral lesson and find the right girl. Instead he gave up on his dream girl and slept with a closet sex fiend who disguises herself as a band camp geek. And in between, he ejaculates prematurely on the internet, garnering an enormous amount of audience sympathy along the way. In short, the gags worked because the story was right.

The second installment focuses on the slapstick/gag aspect of the film for its inspiration. Presumably, we know the characters well enough (all of them returned for this film), so that we don’t need to learn anything new about them, including how the first year of college changed their lives or goals. Instead, the easy route was chosen. Minus Oz, who is still with Heather (Mena Suvari), their sex lives have pretty much stayed the same, and it remains their goal to expand the bounds of their sexual prowess.

The main difference between their current goals and their initial ones is that in the first film, they were still in high school and their social group had been locked for years. Here, they have to look for a way to stick together, college having driven an unexplained and unfelt wedge between them. The solution: spend the summer at a house by the lake. The amended goal: throw a big party at the end of the summer so that they could hook up with the same medley of girls who populated the first film. For Jim, this means nailing Russian goddess Nadia, who is still (unfathomably) interested in him; for Kevin, girl-next-door turned hottie Vicki, and for Finch, it’s still … yes, sexaholic Stifler’s mom.

It was a smart decision to keep the cast virtually identical. Wit in tone aside, they were the best part of the first movie, and are immediately engaging as the second one begins. But a good cast doesn’t excuse a storyline that is next to non-existent. If it was the first film’s edginess that put it a step above the other teen flicks, and propelled it into the realm of cult classic, than the lack of this same edge brings American Pie 2 back a few decades to the era of Porky’s and Animal House. Many of the scenes are completely useless, serving as gaps between gags.

Some of these are hilarious, although they will be more effective if you haven’t seen the trailer, which is essentially a “Best of American Pie 2” reel, so I won’t further ruin them for you here. Eugene Levy is once again hysterical as Kevin’s hopelessly geeky dad, who in this installment even more successfully blends overprotective parent and son’s most ardent cheerleader in his quest to get laid. Too much father-son interaction, of course, would have brought the film closer to having an emotional core and developed characters, so savor the character during the precious few screen minutes you have him.

American Gangster

Directed by the legendary Ridley Scott, “American Gangster”, featuring the dynamic duo of powerhouse lead actors Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, is a blistering biopic that creates a celebratory filth in allusion to crime, capitalism and the corruptible spirit of the crooked consciousness. The ruthless storytelling method behind this gritty crime actioner is quite appealing in its slick and stylized excessive excess but the film vacillate s on occasionally being bloated in search for its consistent hedonistic pulse. Nevertheless, the rambling “American Gangster” wears its badge of wickedness and struts caustically as a dynamic drug-dealing situation from which extrication is very difficult, for little-minded lost souls looking for that big score. To suggest that, Scott endlessly indulges his love of visual textures and layers, placing his actors half in darkness, shooting through frosted glass or metal grilles, and filling backgrounds with crowds and foregrounds with smoke.

Scott and screenwriter Steven Zaillian, with skill and careful attention to detail, have conceived the thrilling theatrics by nostalgically turning the regional ribaldry of The Big Apple into a personal playground for the perverse and the privileged. In a nutshell, that would describe the ambitious agenda of real-life “black Godfather” Frank Lucas, an anarchistic businessman that made his unspeakable fortune out of catering his overseas Vietnamese-grown junk and peddling his lecherous stash to his Harlem hometown in the seventies. Lucas’s empire, built on the backs of the city’s irresolute and avaricious, is an astounding testament to the vulnerable condition of the indestructible human sense of decency and dignity.

Masterfully, The film provides an astute and sharp commentary on the dubious scope of the “American Dream” where seizing the moment translates into stepping on the toes of the desperate and devious in order to succeed in a so-called prosperous country that’s bombarded by a false sense of conviction and entitlement. It is basically to control how you selectively walk in life or be walked on as a permanent faceless casualty and, as a result, “American Gangster” may probably be viewed as the epitome of the sharp-minded influences of mobster/drug-induced ditties from yesteryear.

As a crime kingpin Bumpy Johnson Bumpy’s (Clarence Williams III) protégé, personal driver, and bodyguard, for 15 years up until his death, Lucas takes advantage of his inside know-how soon after his boss died and comes into prominence in the late 60’s. Lucas, resembling Machiavelli, goes right to the source and deals with his suppliers without getting stuck in the middle man mode. In this case, the unscrupulous and cunning Lucas makes contact with an astute Vietnamese contact that instructs him how to smuggle his “product” into the States thus providing a “natural high” for his corrosive clientele, and completely monopolizes the Heroin business. This routine helps Lucas accomplish what the mafia couldn’t do in a hundred years and eventually makes him the envy of all his cocky competitors as he rises from the ranks of Bumpy Johnson’s shadow to become the multi-millionaire of the Harlem drug “trade”.

Lucas, low-key and soft-spoken, further takes his cue from hiding his high risk activities from the authorities and bases his behind-the-scenes operation in the form of using his family as a smoke screen. This inspiration is indispensable for how it provided the Italian mob to construct their morally ignoble affairs by investing in the surrounding of relatives as a misleading front. Lucas’s “family” circle consisted of a glowingly pretty Miss Puerto Rico trophy wife Julie (Lymari Nadal), a mother he worships unconditionally (Ruby Dee) and his kid brother (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

In contrast to Lucas’ brush with fortune and a spirited family, praiseworthy and righteous cop Ritchie Roberts (Crowe) is good at what he does professionally but, ironically, gets a very bad reputation in the department as a slovenly character and a loose canon. He finds $1 million in drug money, but instead of sharing it with the boys, he turns it in. Personally, his domestic life, on the contrary, is in shambles because his ex-wife (Carla Gugino) is giving him a mess of trouble regarding their son and other related strife concerning their split, so his personal life, by comparison, seems to be less together than the hyper-organized Lucas. Although he has to deal with an assorted bunch of on-the-take police officers that see his nobility as a liability to them, the only thing that drives Roberts is his initiative, courage, and common sense to bust the polished pusher Lucas and link him to the city’s rapid-fire drug infestation. He’s honest as the day is long, and incorruptible. He’s a real bulldog when it comes to his pursuit of the target, which is why his superior makes him the man in charge of the task force appointed to get the goods on Lucas and destroy his cash cow.

Divided in parallel storylines, “American Gangster” works hard to balance its two stories, shifting in and out of each while also exploring broader themes of race, urban decay, the drug trade, black capitalism and police corruption against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. While Lucas’s brothers are called up from North Carolina and trained in the new family business, Roberts recruits a team to open one of the early federal drug agency offices in New York and when Lucas marries a beautiful beauty queen from Puerto Rico, Roberts is mired in a custody case following his divorce. Lucas is refined and fits in easily in an attractive mansion he purchases while Roberts is a street smart cop. Some may miss the point of the film when they pinpoint that the side trips into the personal lives of Roberts and Lucas are more distracting than interesting because they fail see that “American Gangster” is one of those juxtaposition exercises, in which we note the irony of the reversal of traditional roles. Regarded as a whole, the comparable difference between Lucas and Roberts is uncanny and parallel in forethought as Scott implies that these men, one troubled saint, one textured sinner, may be on the same page when all is said and done from clearing out the heavy-handed anguish. While Lucas enjoys the fruit of his success and grabs the gusto at the expense of societal weaklings willing to sell their empty psyches to make his pockets burst at the seams, Roberts has the pious platitudes to cure the deteriorating world around him though can’t muster up the same enthusiasm for saving his personal universe for familial bliss.

Ingeniously, Scott has rounded up two of the cinema’s finest leading men in the Oscar-winning pair of Crowe and Washington because both actors are adrenalizing in tense conflict and contempt and elevate this crime-ridden harebrained escapade beyond its authentic, intense boundaries.

Washington portrays Lucas, a cutthroat criminal who nevertheless lives by a usually strict moral code. As an overachiever and a smooth operator, affable and smooth on the outside, yet ruthless enough to set an enemy on fire, he demands discipline, both from himself and from those who work for him, almost exclusively family members from his childhood home in North Carolina. It’s easy to see how natural it was for this high-priced hoodlum to amass such a wealthy existence over the likes of the unsuspecting wounded, mainly his own perishing people. Washington in particular, continues, in an artistic manner, to shine as one of America’s finest performers in terms of his adventurous take on characterizations which leaves audiences spellbound, proving that being charismatic and creepy at the same time is an effortless gesture. He gives a concrete form to the dapper and distinguished Frank Lucas with an indescribable sophistication that’s very scary underneath the surface. Washington’s Lucas is so charming for the ladies and compelling to the guys you never really see how sinister his characterization is behind the Fortune 500 façade.

As for Crowe, he eases into the role like fish to water, underplaying his part in just the right amounts, chewing up much scenery in comparison and you do feel for how ragged he is based on his own percolating predicament. He gets into the skin of the character and will surely get applauded for it. Crowe, obviously no slouch as an actor, brings a ’70s-era shabbiness to Roberts. He’s too cool to be desperate, but he’s smart enough to know that he needs to get his life together. Roberts, is a cop who, while on the job, is the straightest arrow imaginable. He’s even working his way through law school. When off the clock, he is not such the straight arrow, eying for the ladies, which explains the ugly divorce he’s going through. The one man in a corrupt system that has more enemies than allies on both sides of the law, he is not to be messed with and can not be bought. He is a straight cop that has a passion for what his job is supposed to be - justice. Needless to say, a man of such passion has a terrible family life.

The two leads mesh and complement each other and Lucas is as dynamic and dominant as Roberts. Crowe seems a little bit more contained, restricted, as a character, which is probably how Scott wanted him to be. Washington has more room to move as a character and he has more screen time because he’s the focus of the story and the one who propels the action. Both Lucas and Roberts share a rigorous ethical code that sets them apart from their own colleagues, making them lone figures on opposite sides of the law. The destinies of these two men will become intertwined as they approach a confrontation where only one of them can come out on top. Washington and Crowe don’t meet for most of the movie and their parallel tales are told separately but eventually the two come face-to-face, sitting down in an office outside a courtroom, where Lucas tests Roberts’ mettle in a way no one else could, or would. Roberts, meanwhile, gives as good as he gets. There is a further ironic dimension. Once Richie places Lucas under arrest, they realize they like each other. Apparently, they are two sides of the same coin, only on different sides of the law. After Roberts becomes a defense attorney, he becomes Lucas’s lawyer. Because of Frank’s cooperation, and his naming names in a corrupt police force, he gets off relatively light and is out of prison today and lives in New York. He is in his seventies.

The screen also burns with talent here and many of the supporting performances are so well-written and impressive. With a powerful supporting cast that includes the aforementioned Dee (she shares a scene with Washington that’s authentic and memorable), Ejiofor, Nadal, Gooding Jr., and Brolin the story is padded decently with off-kilter personalities that made up the wasted worlds of Lucas and Roberts. Armand Assante is on board as the main “token” Italian mafioso to contrast with Washington’s GQ mean-tempered Lucas.

Alvin and the Chipmunks

What do chipmunks and Styrofoam snowball have in common? They are both harmless, cute and very light. Don’t believe what I just said until you watch “Alvin and the Chipmunks”. It’s nothing more than a mix of tedious live action and uninspiring computer animation based upon the so-called originality music-and-cartoons franchise that Ross Bagdasarian started in 1958.

Dave Seville (Jason Lee) is a struggling songwriter in Los Angeles. After Dave’s latest rejection at Jett Records, three chipmunks that were hiding in the company’s Christmas tree follow him home. When Dave discovers he’s got a pest problem, he becomes bewildered. But when he learns that Simon, Alvin and Theodore (mischievous Alvin, brainy Simon and dozy Theodore, voiced by Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler and Jesse McCartney) can talk, Dave becomes inspired. He writes a Christmas song for the chipmunks to sing, and he offers the act to Ian (David Cross), an old friend who’s become a mean and sleazy record-company mogul.

Soon enough, Alvin and the Chipmunks are touring arenas around the country and climbing up the charts with a sound that’s like hip-hop on helium. Dave strongly urges his little friends to squirrel away their savings, but the toy-crazed friends would rather go nuts. Ian wants to take the chipmunks away from Dave, and put them on a grueling tour schedule such young creatures are not cut out for. So greedy is Ian that he pushes them to exhaustion, and out of Dave’s life.

The storyline is astoundingly predictable. I know it’s a film for kids, but there needs to be something for parents too and there just isn’t. Of course we get the message: Commercialism will consume what really matters to your life. The practices, methods, aims, and spirit of commerce or business are so awful and crass. (”They’re chipmunks who talk,” says David Cross. “People will come.” I’ve never heard a movie express the fervent hopes of its producers with such disarming directness). We all get it but there should be something inventive to say about fame or family, let alone about the weirdness of talking animals. The script simply relies on slapstick gags about rodents running amok. I do not find the movie funny in the slightest; unless you consider fart jokes that seem to have no end hilarious. Director Tim Hill still integrates the computer-generated imagery with the live action no better than he did in “Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties.” Even though I’m greatly thankful to see that there’s less than the usual amount of rude humor in the movie, director Tim Hill, with his inability to inject life into proceedings, is just frustrating. The chipmunks don’t actually look particularly good, either. Too often they seem rather flat, and they tend to blur a lot when they move. Even worse, the voice effects absolutely backfire because they all sound the same and it’s occasionally impossible to work out what they’re saying.

“Alvin and the Chipmunks”, however, remains watchable thanks to the talented comic actor Jason Lee and the cuteness of the Chipmunks. Jason Lee is a very likeable actor and he makes a fine comic foil for the Chipmunks, even if his facial expressions are stretched to breaking point. But like the critters in the title, “Alvin and the Chipmunks” has just got a peanut-size brain, so the grown-ups in the audience won’t find much here. This is an enjoyable family film that offers nothing new. Walking out of the cinema, I was trying to figure out how people can enjoy this mess on screen and the only think I can think of is get the DVD, sit your kids in front of it with a babysitter, and go out for the evening. That’s the only way you will find “Alvin and the Chipmunks” pleasant.

Along Came Polly

Along Came Polly is a flat, formulaic romantic comedy, sporadically punctuated with entertaining moments – and one hysterical salsa-dancing set-piece. Having co-written Meet the Parents and Zoolander, director John Hamburg knows how to play to the strengths of his star, and he’s penned another bizarrely named character – a risk assessor with Irritable Bowel Syndrome – directly up Ben Stiller’s perpetually clenched alley. But the movie fails to provide any reason why a sexy, free-wheeling girl-next-door, played by Jennifer Aniston, would give the likes of Reuben Feffer a second glance.

Reuben’s job is finding stable, secure, risk-free clients for insurance firms. He’s so anal about statistics he makes personal choices based on the number-crunching software on his laptop, and endures years of presumably enforced bachelorhood, until he finally marries Lisa (Debra Messing). But his talent for sniffing out risky prospects fails him when he catches his wife bunking-up with the hunky French diving instructor (an especially buffed Hank Azaria) on the first day of their honeymoon. Returning to New York dejected and alone, his grotesque best friend, failed child actor Sandy Lyle (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), cajoles him into re-entering the social fray, and he meets a flaky, spicy food-loving bohemian called Polly, who never met a risk she wasn’t up for, and may be able to help him forget his calamitous marriage sooner than he thought.

This is obviously a vehicle for the endearing Stiller, whose bony, oversized head protrudes from a torso seemingly eternally knotted in a tense bodybuilder’s crunch, leaving the impression of a startled turtle peering anxiously from its shell. His hilarious reactions and expressive physicality lend themselves perfectly to physical gags where, inevitably, he ends up being the punchline. One involves a basketball court and a topless man with a sodden back rug. And the riotous scene where Stiller hilariously unveils his secretly acquired salsa-dancing skills, hurling himself around like a spastic John Travolta, is the comedy highlight. These intuitively written sequences – and Reuben’s lecture on the dangers lurking within a bar’s communal nut bowl – are classic Stiller.

Talented character actors like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, as the louche, graceless Sandy, and Alec Baldwin, as a New York Jewish cliché, complete with “dese-dem-dose” accent and oversized glasses, provide flashes of humor, but both are stranded frustratingly in one-note roles. Interestingly, the Thai audience loved Hank Azaria’s nude beach bum, stifling fits of giggles whenever he sauntered into view flouting his deliberately hammy parody of a French accent.

The lack of chemistry between Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston seriously undermines proceedings. Aniston’s bosomy cheer and neat comic timing could have worked well – although her harebrained character seems to have co-opted Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe from Friends. Effort has been put in to giving the nascent relationship some kind of organic quality, but it’s always a losing battle: the characters joust with polar-opposite personalities, lacking common ground and shared interests. Jen and Ben could transcend these setbacks all right with a single, intangible spark of romantic credibility; but their awkward, forced pairing is consistently about as sexy as Woody Allen in Speedos.

Indeed, all Reuben’s associations are similarly implausible. It’s a stretch to accept an uptight germophobe would ever be friends with a louche, unhygenic slob like Sandy – let alone elect him best man at his wedding. The unconvincing script contrivances are distracting: we keep doubting that this person would be acting that way in this situation. Soon enough, you withdraw the thinking part of your brain and just try to enjoy the performances, while wishing they came in a more convincing movie.

Along Came Polly aims to develop the same kind of charming, sweet, crudely funny mélange that made There’s Something About Mary so wildly popular. But this film mostly misses the mark with its clumsy approach to comedy, overstating the obvious and running cheap gags into the ground. Throw in tired reoccurring jokes about gastro-intestinal distress and its associated noises, and a shortsighted ferret that constantly hurtles headfirst into furniture, and you’ve got a movie that sets its comedy bar too low for the talents involved. The needless spectacle of two talented actors desperately grovelling on the toilet floor for laughs is quite pathetic.

Every truly successful romantic comedy has at its heart a couple worth rooting for. This one doesn’t and it never transcends that central miscasting. Consequently, the ultimate payoff of any romantic movie – the inescapable “happily ever after” reunion – falls flat, and by that time we don’t care anyway. Perhaps the filmmakers should’ve concerned themselves a little more with chemistry and less with biology.

Along Came a Spider

Associated Press (April 05, 2001)
Consider Little Miss Muffet. She’s sitting on her tuffet, minding her own business, eating her curds and whey. Spider comes along, sits down beside her, scares her away. Miss Muffet was lucky - she had plot, motive, and character development. The same cannot be said for Along Came a Spider, first-time screenwriter Marc Moss’ adaptation of another James Patterson novel that takes its title from a Mother Goose nursery rhyme.

The film, a prequel to 1997’s Kiss the Girls, stars Morgan Freeman, again slumming as criminal profiler Dr. Alex Cross.

Last time, Cross chased a serial killer who called himself Casanova and targeted perfect women. This time, he’s looking for a man who teaches at a private school for the children of Washington lawmakers and diplomats.

The teacher, Gary Soneji (Michael Wincott), has kidnapped one of his young students, Megan Rose (Mika Boorem), the daughter of a U.S. senator.

Why does he kidnap her? Good question. It may have something to do with Charles Lindbergh; it may have something to do with his own lousy childhood.

Or maybe he’s just using Megan to get to her classmate Dmitri, the son of the Russian president, whom he really wants to kidnap. Why does the son of the Russian president go to school in the United States? Another good question.

Cross gets help tracking Soneji from the Secret Service agent assigned to protect Megan, Jezzie Flanagan (Monica Potter). Jezzie gets to hold a gun and say such things as “I was trained to shoot first and think later.” Sandra Bullock was more convincing as an FBI agent-turned-pageant queen in Miss Congeniality.

Soneji drags Cross on a cat-and-mouse chase, playing a game of pay phone tag through the streets of D.C. that’s straight out of Die Hard With a Vengeance. Meanwhile, the other cops from various departments stand around in trench coats, eyeing each other suspiciously.

There are all kinds of double and triple crosses as the film staggers toward its end - twists that would be interesting if we knew anything at all about the characters. It’s hard to have an “aha!” moment when you don’t care who the “a-ha” is happening to.

Wincott’s Soneji is less than the average bad guy. He’s not fleshed out enough or crazy enough to inspire any real fear.

And besides, the twists make so little sense and are thrown together with such inconsistency, they’ll make your brain hurt if you bother trying to sort them all out.

Besides the audience, the real victims here are the actors. Freeman, doing double duty as executive producer, deserves a movie where his presence and weight as an actor belong.

Supporting players equally are wasted, including Michael Moriarty, who has received repeated Emmy nominations for TV’s “Law & Order;” Dylan Baker, who was so good as Robert McNamara in last year’s Thirteen Days; and Penelope Ann Miller, who got a Golden Globe nod for 1993’s Carlito’s Way but simply whimpers and stomps as Megan’s mother.

But feel really bad for the kid. Boorem is so strong and smart as Megan, and she was heart-rending last year as Mel Gibson’s daughter in The Patriot. She deserves better than the Miss Muffet role in this silly nursery rhyme movie.

Almost Famous

Writer-director Cameron Crowe’s reputation has evolved into an odd hybrid of bankable studio hitmaker and semi-reluctant zeitgeist guru. Creating movies at a semi-Kubrick rate of once every five years or so, Crowe is often credited with being selective about the stories he tells, which more often than not tend to strike a chord with the sensibility of the times while refining the genres in which they’re told. Just as Fast Times At Ridgemont High was arguably the most insightful of the screwball ‘80s high school comedies, Say Anything was probably the most thoughtful of the cheesy ‘80s teen romances. Despite the high-brow critics still labeling him a pop filmmaker, Crowe has earned his way to cult-lite status by consistently making movies that struggle for their optimism.

With Almost Famous Crowe has turned inward and backwards, to autobiography and ‘70s period epic, and true to paradox both turn out to be big steps forward. Despite failing to reach the commercial success of Jerry Maguire, Crowe’s new film about the lure and perils of being a professional rock music lover is his most fully realized work, and to those who open themselves to its charms, his most rewarding.

Based loosely on Crowe’s own real-life experience writing a Rolling Stone article on Led Zeppelin at the age of fifteen, Almost Famous follows the teen William Miller (newcomer Patrick Fugit) as he tours with the fictional band Stillwater as a writer. Ever the wide-eyed innocent, William is warned by both his hippie-professor single mother (a soulful Frances Mcdormand) and Creem editor Lester Bangs (the always perfect Phillip Seymour Hoffman)–for whom William has written several articles–to resist the seduction of the rock and roll lifestyle. Their motives are different, of course, his mother fearing for William’s virginity and bloodstream and Lester fearing for William’s journalistic integrity, but both share a protective instinct for his innocence as it sets off into the least innocent place in America.

It’s no small thing that William’s point of view is carefully crafted for us before he hits the road. His introduction to the music that will eventually become his life comes through his sister, who leaves home on the stroke of eighteen to escape the mother and wills her records to William, telling him prophetically that they will set him free. So seamlessly are we adhered to his good-natured wonderment that when Lester affectionately tells him that “there’s nothing controversial about you,” it’s we who blush. More importantly, it’s we who stand forlornly outside an impassable backstage door and encounter Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), a self-described “Band-Aid,” an evolved species of groupie that’s “all about the music.”

Penny Lane operates as William’s love interest, muse, and universal counterpoint, simultaneously pulling him into the semi-toxic embrace of rock glamour while falling into a maternal love for his innocence. Plotwise, Penny Lane is playfully, passionately involved with Stillwater’s lead guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup), an emerging rock giant whose following threatens the band’s unity and whose on-record comments must anchor the article William is writing. The dynamic, overlapping relationships between the three of them form the movie’s heart, while the expectedly precise, almost perfect period-rock soundtrack form its soul.

Crowe, who has always superseded genre labels with uncommon protagonists and refreshingly messy but neatly wrapped story arcs, has added a new dimension of emotional depth to his clean technical skills. The pacing and editing are subtly impactive, guiding our shifts in perspective through the main and secondary characters with efficiently framed moments. In a lesser movie this would be manipulative, but having earned our trust–reset our innocence, practically–early on, Almost Famous stakes out a place deep in us, perhaps mirroring William’s clean love of music with our own pre-cynical love of movies. It’s not a conscious draw, but the speculation of it fairly describes the power of this movie, and the attitude with which best to appreciate it.

Much praise has been given to the acting too, and deservedly so. As the sunken-chested William, Fugit has the face of a sponge, sopping in the golden glow of Hudson, who plays the line between remorse and exuberance gracefully, and nails a crucial scene (look for her single tear). Crudup’s role as Russell may be the first one worthy of his cool intelligence since the underrated Without Limits, and Hoffman riffs the perfect crusty sage, redeeming the pits of uncoolness with a single statement that resonates as the film’s bittersweet thesis. It was Crowe, of course, who wrote that line, and his restraint in using few such aphorisms in favor of lots of true talk further shows that his talent for showing us the best and worst of ourselves is aging quite nicely.

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem

I should have been more suspicious. If my colleague Greg gave 1 star to Aliens vs Predator first volume – then perhaps I should lash out and leave this one bare.

I guess everybody agrees that Paul Andersons’ Aliens vs Predator was not good. Including the guys in charge of the new opus (Visual effects specialists Strause Brothers) who claimed their major influence for this new movie were: Rambo and ALIENS.

But then again, there is paying homage and then there is playing copycat. In this case, I guess copycatting those 2 movies actually made me realize how good both movies were compared to how shamelessly bad Aliens vs Predator Requiem is. Though I try to be fair, the Strause Brothers have just massacred this flick front, back, right, left and center … and the worthless script didn’t help either.

We start the movie right after Aliens vs Predator were a « Predalien » forces the Predator scouting ship that just left Antartica to crash land in Colorado. (Yeah– the small geezer just got real big in less than 10 minutes!) While the Predalien and a small colony of face-huggers start colonizing the small town, the crash-landed ship sends a distress beacon back to the Predators home planet.

Now in any normal movie, this is more or less the part where; while the cavalry is on the way; we are introduced to characters we can identify with – a.k.a. the heroes. Especially since we’re in a small town lost in the forests of Colorado where everybody knows each other etc… this narrative process would have been ideal for this kind of situation.

Instead, we’re introduced to a covenant of Serial Losers: An introverted pizzaboy, his ex-con elder brother, some blond chick, a soldier freshly back from Irak (Reiko Aylesworth from the 24h series) and a town sheriff who has the acumen of a koala bear. Now bear in mind that calling them second rate actors is an insult to any support cast member. TV series actors should stay in TV series and never bother with motion pictures.

To top it, we also have the insufferable dialogs… screenwriters might have gone on strike. But when a script dialogue as bad as that, I wouldn’t be surprised if 20th Century FOX would actually ask them for reparations for the damage caused to 2 of the best SCI-FI horror franchises that existed in the last decades.

ALIENS had excellent quotes:
Hudson: hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?
Vasquez (to Hudson) No! Have you?

Ripley: These people are here to protect you. They’re soldiers.
Newt: It won’t make any difference.

Ripley: Get away from her you B!tc# !

Anyway – back to this amalgam of amateur filming Don’ts - the various scenes are while waiting for the cavalry are not worth being mentioned, the worst perhaps being the “Predalien” chasing a bunch of students in the local swimming pool …Oh! Wait! I forgot the incubation scene with the pregnant woman! Guess what?! She dies !

And when at last the soldiers arrive - remember this is the famous ALIENS inspiration of the Strause brothers – they are barely a dozen soldiers and all dispatched within less than a minute. What a joke! I can still remember the names of the soldiers in ALIENS: Hicks, Vasquez, Hudson, Apone, Frost, Drake, Wierzbowski, Ferro, Spunkmeyer … I even remember that spineless Lieutenant Gorman. I saw Aliens vs Predator Requiem yesterday, I can’t remember the names of anybody – and worse I didn’t even care about their names.

Anyway, that homage for you, a long wait for a cheap let down. But lo and behold, I had forgotten about the Predator cavalry, one guy! Alone! Against a ton of mean lean ugly bugs.

But then again, a waste, the photography – trying to look dark and foreboding – is soo dark we can’t see anything. A complete failure for Daniel Pearl (who also did the “lighting” in Pathfinder). We can hear the screams, we can distinguish some things happening about but we never see anything.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but an Alien has sharp fingers, an even sharper tail, a double jaw where the second series of teeth shoot out and can break through bones and everything, without forgetting the acid for blood!

Predator, on his side, has retractable blades, a discus that can cut though virtually anything, a spear, a shoulder mounted laser and an atom bomb on his forearm … now these 2 beings can generate quite a bit of carnage on their own, so imagine what could happen if they pit against each other : Monster Mayhem ! I see more blood and guts in any Tarantino movie.

There is gore, violence and blood … but it’s filmed so poorly we can’t distinguish anything …

And the End! Oh lord! Typical stupid teenage horror flick split up.
We’ll go that way ‘coz that’s where helps coming from.
We’ll go this way ‘coz help will never arrive. (What is this? the Poseidon adventure!?)

And a grand finale … Give me a break. Did IQs just suddenly drop in Colorado?

Aliens vs Predator Requiem is an insult to the fans, the franchise and the movie potential. Unforgivable.

After Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, J.P. Jeunet, John Mc Tiernan and Stephen Hopkins, the Strause Brothers look like amateurs who freshly graduated from some back-water film school.

Congratulations ! You just ruined 2 of the best franchises Hollywood ever had.

My only conclusion is this: Visual Effects should restrain completely and permanently from taking the Directors seat.

The only good thing about this movie is the trailer for Hellboy 2. And that was before the movie starts. I’m not giving this movie a star.

Alien vs. Predator

Technically, I guess you could say that I’ve been waiting for this movie since 1990, when the unmistakable shape of an Alien skull could be seen displayed as a trophy inside the Predator spaceship in Predator 2. Suddenly, the stage was set for a series of comics, playing cards, video games, internet chat room wars (“Picard vs. Kirk, Alien vs. Predator, Chewbacca vs. Bigfoot!”) and the inevitable talk of a movie. Hoping against hope, I desperately wanted this film to be awesome, but apparently, 14 years of scripts, planning and plot re-writes isn’t long enough to craft a decent amalgam of two of the most effective movie monsters of 20th Century pop culture. Boring, preposterous and ignorant of the finely crafted universe that it draws from, Alien vs. Predator is mildly entertaining for the average moviegoer, but a laughably bad and disappointing train wreck of a film for fans of either series.

The movie opens with the discovery of a huge pyramid under the ice of Antarctica by one of the satellites owned by Charles Weyland (Lance Henriksen). A team of characters is quickly assembled to race down to the site and find out the basics – who, why and most importantly, when. Once the team arrives at the marked co-ordinates, they find a massive hole drilled into the ice, perfectly circular and leading directly to the base of the pyramid. Apparently not deterred by the fact that it wasn’t there the day before and that “no drilling team on Earth could have done this,” they decide to descend into the passage and see what’s at the bottom. Up until this point, the movie had me. Well paced and dealing with an interesting mystery, the tension slowly built as the explorers tentatively entered the massive pyramid.

Finding it deserted and covered in strange Aztec writing that talked of ‘chosen ones’ and carvings of strange creatures, they find their way to a central chamber where they manage to open a locked compartment. This is where the movie is supposed to get interesting; instead, it’s where it begins to fall apart.

About this point, the Predators show up and head downstairs to meet and greet the puny humans, who have unfortunately decided to take some of the shoulder mounted cannons they found as mementos, which the Predators want back. Why does an intergalactic race of hunters keep their weapons in a cold storage safe in the dungeon of a freezing Aztec pyramid? Don’t know, it’s never explained. At any rate, this is where the Alien queen is awakened (from cold storage in a bath of liquid nitrogen, of all things), and starts to lay eggs.

From this point on, there really isn’t too much to talk about. Nearly every character is dead by the halfway point, which isn’t a big shame as none of them are even remotely interesting. There are a few requisite fight scenes but for the most part, they’re between humans and Aliens or humans and Predators. The one kind of good fight scene between the two title creatures is poorly shot and lasts about 30 seconds. After a while, all this tomfoolery leaves only the heroine Alexa (Sanaa Lathan), one surviving Predator and a pyramid full of Aliens. Now, I won’t be giving away a major plot point here, but what happens next is where I literally groaned out loud at how bad this movie had gotten.

After muttering the mantra “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” to herself, Alexa helps the lone Predator fight off and kill an Alien – for which she’s rewarded with a makeshift spear and shield, made from body parts of the now dead creature. The sight of a 9 foot tall Predator running in slow motion beside a 5 foot tall human clutching a shield and spear like a Roman warrior is just a preposterous sight to see, one which made most in the audience laugh out loud. Believe it or not, the two characters nearly develop a ‘relationship’ (which negates the entire marketing campaign of “Whoever wins… we lose”). I half expected them to kiss at some point; I would have been horrified, but not surprised.

At any rate, by this point you’ll most likely not care either way how things turn out. The obligatory ending pops up which won’t be at all a surprise even if you’ve only ever seen one or two monster movies your whole life.

In trying to think of what’s good about the movie, I can only come up with several points. The special effects are pretty good but really, what movie these days doesn’t have great effects? The designs of the Aliens and Predators stay mostly true to the original Stan Winston brilliance (the Aliens from a design by H.R Giger), which is nice, but didn’t take much effort by anyone; kind of like getting compliments for photocopying the Mona Lisa.

The bad points are nearly too numerous to mention; the script is hacked together and crammed full of terrible dialogue and just makes absolutely no sense, even when it’s painfully trying to give exposition. Rules from both the Alien and Predator series of films have been tossed aside – for instance, it’s been well established that both creatures thrive only in warm environments. Why they’d choose the coldest place on the planet to set up shop is beyond me. The chestburster alien that has traditionally taken about a day to gestate and ‘escape’ from its human hosts (thus, adding to the tension after they wake up), now apparently takes about 20 minutes. The acid blood that makes the Aliens so dangerous is supposed to neutralize after their dead – that’s out the window too. And on top of all that, Alexa spends the last 10 minutes of the movie outside in snow pants and a t-shirt – in Antarctica!

This movie is getting ripped apart by fans, and rightly so. Director Paul W.S Anderson (Mortal Kombat) has taken two of the most fantastic, scary, balls-to-the-wall bad-ass monster franchises in cinema history and glommed them together into a sloppy, un-scary, laughably bad PG film. If you’ve never seen any of the previous films in either series, you might think this is okay; otherwise, stay away at all costs and watch any of the forbearers to this mess.

Ali

Michael Mann’s film about legendary heavyweight boxing champ Muhammad Ali equals the grace, wit and charisma of its main character. More subtly constructed and understated then Mann’s previous work, the film has an energy and integrity that leave the director’s ostensibly shocking, actually ho-hum thriller The Insider in the dust. The formidable Ali’s exhilarating portrait of the man behind the myth surpasses most American releases of the past year.

The film’s bold extended opening sequence intercuts a high-octane night club performance by Sam Cooke in front of awestruck female fans with staccato clips of sombre Ali (Will Smith) training with mute intensity. Among the first scenes is one of Ali jogging down a cold pre-dawn street while being tailed by two patrolmen in a car. One of them asks, “What you running from son?” The scene, throughout which Ali remains silent, is an apt introduction to the fighter, whose life outside the ring became a microcosm of the social and political issues confronting African Americans in the post-Kennedy era. Ali stays silent right up until a press event prior to his first title shot in February 1964 against Sonny Liston, at which Ali comes out swinging, exploding with lazy rapid fire delivery of his trademark rhyming couplets: “Sonny Liston, you ain’t no champ! You a chump! Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! You want to lose your money, bet on Sonny! Rumble, young man, rumble!” The man’s often-brooding presence is at odds with these frequent, playful and hilarious performances for a media that fawned over the indomitable fighter’s wit, yet doesn’t seem contrived or ill-executed. Will Smith et al succeed in depicting the boxer as a complex blend of conviction and indifference, doubt and courageousness.

Ali begins with the fight against Liston and ends ten years later with the famous “Rumble in the Jungle,” considered to be one of the greatest sports events of all time by those sho take satisfaction is assessing such things - Ali’s fight in Zaire against defending heavyweight champ George Foreman. The film is made up of episodic vignettes of his life between these two poles, including scenes from Ali’s turbulent personal life and relationships with three successive women, and legal battles against the US government. Part of the film’s success derives from its loose attention to narrative structure and shying away from building dramatic conflict, resulting in dynamic montages that don’t bore with excessively strained reliance on plot. Because of this, Mann manages to convey the inspiring story of Ali with a flair and originality that becomes its subject.

To a certain extent, Mann, and Will Smith, faced insurmountable odds in trying to bring to life an account of the mythic boxer’s journey through the world’s psyche - no, not competition from the armada of war films currently invading multiplexes everywhere. The competition comes from the man himself, a larger than life figure who charmed the press and the people and whose actions, religion and politics were part of a wider struggle against the US government. Ali became a legend in the ring, but the battles he fought outside it, with beguiling wit, charm, and – Mann’s film makes clear – righteous conviction, made him an irresistible symbol of defiance and triumph. Tough indeed to top both the artistry that Ali himself exuded in his ongoing media encounters and boxing outings and the drama his life engendered.

Born Cassius Clay, upon becoming heavyweight champ Ali promptly became Muslim and refused to use what he referred to as a slave’s name, taking on the Muslim name he became known by. Ali openly associated with radical black militants, the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X (Mario van Peebles). In the film, when asked if he’s “the people’s champ,” Ali uncomfortably replies that he wants to be the people’s champ “his way.” His relationship with Nation of Islam and Malcolm X is complex, and he seems to be at various junctures torn between his friendship for the latter and loyalty to the mission of the former. When Ali refuses to accept being drafted for the Vietnam war, publicly uttering strong opinions about his reluctance to lose his life for a government that remains oblivious to the needs of black America, he is threatened with a jail term and commences a five year long battle with the authorities. The film indicates that he was not exempt from the FBI’s policy of wiretapping figures they perceived to be potential instigators of unrest in the inner cities and ghettos of the US. In 1974, when Ali is looking to reclaim his title from mean Texan pugilist George Foreman, Don King arranges the first all-black promoted boxing match in the newly formed country of Zaire, headed by dictatorial Mobutu, who puts up $5 million dollars per fighter.

Ali is greeted in Zaire with a roaring chorus of “Ali, bumaye!” (Kill him, Ali!). The scene in which he jogs among a worshipping throng of children and ducks into the back lanes of an African community is extraordinary. Ali is humbled and overwhelmed by the greeting, and mesmerized by graffiti of him raising gloved fists to airplanes and bombs above him. The scene could have been ruined by a heart-wringing monologue or even a few subsequent contrived words, but is carried off instead by Will Smith’s expression alone.

The currently relevant political overtones in Ali’s life and struggle won’t be lost on many of today’s viewers. The final images of triumphant Ali, arms raised in a victorious salute, provide a much needed counter to mainstream representation and discussion of Africans, African Americans, and Muslims. More than an entertaining portrait of a fascinating individual, the film serves as a potent reminder of the bloody battles fought during an historic era; further, it is a rousing story of hope that attests to the fact that resistance in the face of systemic injustice is not futile.

Aeon Flux

Begun as a series of anime-inspired shorts that aired on MTV in 1991 (and a subsequent regular series and graphic novel), Aeon Flux was a violent, sexual, kinetically charged series that pushed all kinds of boundaries and gained quite a large cult following. Unfortunately, the film adaptation is a busy, schizophrenic film that suffers from a messy script, bad directing and little resemblance to the source material. In a trend that’s all-too common of late, they went and pulled the Hollywood magic trick of turning an R into a PG. Butt-in-seat numbers go up, quality goes down and I’m left sitting in my chair wondering when they’re going to ignore the stupid kids and get back to making bad-ass sci-fi/action movies for adults.

In 2011, a plague wipes out 99% of the world’s population. The remaining survivors build themselves a walled city called Bregna, protected from the outside world that, according to the powers that be, is a dangerous and unfamiliar place that’s been reclaimed by nature. For four hundred years, the city has been controlled by the Goodchild dynasty, heirs of Trevor Goodchild, the man who developed the vaccine that saved the last sliver of the human race from extinction. But there are problems. People have strange dreams and memories of things that never happened. Disappearances are common and conspiracies abound, which has led to the formation of a rebellion, who call themselves the Monicans.

Their top agent is Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron), who is dispatched to assassinate the current Goodchild leader, also named Trevor (Marton Csokas). Sneaking into his fortress at night (wearing a skintight white leotard, for some reason), she comes face to face with him and, due to an unexpected ‘feeling,’ hesitates, leading to her capture. Of course she escapes and stumbles onto a cover-up that causes her to rethink her mission and alliances. Running and explosions ensue.

The biggest problem with Aeon Flux is the script, which lacks punch and weaves all over the place like a drunk driver on the Autobahn. It’s a shame, because the stories for the original cartoon were so wildly inventive and ‘out there.’ The main structure is there, as are character names and a few wispy plot elements from the series, but that’s about it. The dialogue isn’t terrible or anything, but it’s full of so many inconsistencies and plot holes that it soon becomes distracting. Characters appear out of nowhere just when they’re needed in the most random of places, assassins walk in and out of heavily guarded compounds at will, Batman-size leaps in logic are made… it’s all very tiring. When the dirty secret behind the cover-up is revealed, my brain started whirring with ‘but if… then why…’ scenarios, which are too numerous to count. “If that’s true, then why doesn’t he do this?” “If he did that, why can’t he just do this?” Pretty soon I had to force myself to stop thinking and watch the rest of the movie.

Director Karyn Kusama (who’s only credits on imdb.com are director of Girlfight and an office manager for Lone Star) showed talent with her previous film but I don’t think she’s up to the task of taking on a major studio movie. The fights are poorly covered and suffer from distracting, overblown sound effects (similar to Tom Yum Goong), the action scenes are anemic and there is a real lack of logic to many of them. When one character jumps off of an aircraft that’s 50 feet in the air and traveling at about 100 MPH, they hit the ground as if they had just tripped on a poodle. Perplexing.

Beyond that though, the movie does have some saving graces. The special effects are well done for the most part and the design of Bregna City is impressive. Theron resembles the character of Aeon as closely as any human can, I guess (although her wardrobe here isn’t as S & M as it was in the cartoon), and does a nice job in the lead. Csokas is a talented actor but here plays his part with a surprising lack of authority for a guy at the head of a dynasty that’s ruled for 400 years. Other characters that are supposed to play a major part – Oren Goodchild (Johnny Lee Miller), Sithandra (Sophie Okonedo) and even Pete Postlethwaite (in a bizarre role) – are underwritten and uninteresting.

Bottom line – an action movie without much action based on a violent, sexy cartoon that jettisoned the violence and sex – I had to wonder… what’s the point?

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