Category: Film Review

Celebrating their 15th year stomping around the globe, Michael Flatley’s “Lord of the Dance” troupe finally makes their way to the multiplex, an ideal venue to display their flying feet and pearly white smiles. Taking the spectacle further, the feature is presented in 3D, permitting Flatley and the gang screen depth that accurately communicates the dimensions of the stage show, offering fans a front row seat to a celebration of all things Flatley. Sequins shimmy! Dances are lorded! And Flatley magically repairs a broken flute with his rear end! What’s not to like here?

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Well, it’s officially here. Instead of Hollywood rabidly chasing the success of “Harry Potter” by turning every semi-known kid-lit book into a potential big screen franchise, the powers that be are now consumed with rebuilding the extraordinarily profitable “Twilight” phenomenon. “Red Riding Hood” is the first full-bodied, unabashed rip-off of the sparkly vampire series, doing whatever it can to mirror the romantic fantasy powerhouse, even hiring the director of the original “Twilight” picture, Catherine Hardwicke, to reheat the “magic,” only this time using the forgiving fairy tale milieu to obscure the absurdly obvious trace lines.

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“Mars Needs Moms” is a peculiar moviegoing experience where its least effective element boils down to a single obnoxious performance. Lively, richly animated with intriguing motion capture fluidity, and pleasingly designed with special attention to sprawling Martian environments, the film is nearly sunk by the efforts of co-star Dan Fogler, who’s biologically incapable of delivering funny business, squirting his spastic funk all over this nifty CG-animated chase film.

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“Battle: Los Angeles” isn’t an alien invasion film, it’s a military picture with the occasional alien appearance. The marketing trumpets a global perspective on trespassing extraterrestrials, but the picture actually takes place almost entirely in Santa Monica, boiling down a sense of massive widescreen scope to a few city miles, placing the audience into the driver’s seat as a besieged platoon attempts to defend themselves against an unknown enemy. “Independence Day” this picture is most certainly not.

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In the grand tradition of “Critters 4” and “Hellraiser 7” comes “Elektra Luxx,” a sequel to a motion picture few actually saw. It’s a ballsy move, but writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez doesn’t seem fazed by the challenge, again assembling a crisscrossing tale of Los Angeles love in ruins, surveying the urges and woes of those permanently stuck inside their own heads. It’s an overly talky and scattered feature, but so was 2009’s “Women in Trouble,” leaving any true appreciation of Gutierrez’s latest effort to those who’ve already sampled the previous film.

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I’m honestly baffled by “Beastly” and I’m not sure if it’s just my personal reaction to this brain-dead feature or if there’s something genuinely crooked about its assembly. I walked away from the film with a host of questions, as far away from the state of swoon the producers intended as possible. It’s a cold, often unbearably illogical film, but I almost need to recommend it just for the opportunity to read varied reactions from moviegoers. Surely, I’m not crazy, yet “Beastly” made me feel disconnected from reality, and not in an enchantingly escapist manner.

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“happythankyoumoreplease” is a film that’s easy to hate. Embodying the worst qualities of indie cinema, the picture is a shrill drill of cliché and emotional exasperation, viewed through the prism of New York City neuroses, where the young congregate to ruminate on the trials of life and love while standing in the shadow of the big 3-0. Still, there’s a tenor of performance here that claws at sincerity, making the picture’s tedious nature palatable for a few stretches, but hardly dispatches the brutal film fest-baiting atmosphere.

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“Take Me Home Tonight” has endured a bumpy ride on its way to theatrical distribution. Shot nearly four years ago, this comedy has been shoved around the release schedule, handled gingerly by studios that didn’t exactly know what to do with a comedy aimed at twentysomethings about the 1980s. Their hesitance is understandable, with the feature trapped between traditional coming-of-age sympathy and brazen nostalgia, presumably aimed at a generation that’s stopped going to the movies.

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I don’t even know where to begin with this largely odd and plodding motion picture. “Rango” is an animated spaghetti western slapstick comedy with heavy hallucinatory asides and a taste for film references. Born from the screenwriter of “Gladiator” and directed by the man who launched and promptly sank the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, “Rango” is a tricky film to summarize, but a fairly easy picture to ignore.

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The struggle to retain free will takes a strangely spiritual turn in “The Adjustment Bureau,” a generally lively film that plays with questions of self while sprinting through a Philip K. Dick theme park of the unreal and the intimidating. Think of it as “Love Story” meets “Total Recall” and “Dark City,” which doesn’t quite do justice to the moviegoing experience at hand, but comes close to describing the idiosyncratic, highly cinematic world writer/director George Nolfi generates here for his filmmaking debut.

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“Dear Lemon Lima” is a delightful expedition into the drive of adolescence. It’s a film basted in eccentricity, yet successfully navigates the pictorial troubles of the teenaged mind, submitting a meticulously constructed, organic comedy that passes along some enchanting flights of fancy, using its exquisite Alaskan settings to mold a unique personality that further enhances the viewing experience.

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I’ll freely admit that I have a sensitivity to movies set in the Midwest, a place that I called home for the majority of my life. To most Hollywood productions, the Midwest is an alien landscape for hopelessly naïve folk going about their naïve business while the coasts take care of the culture and style for America. That’s not the Midwest I know. I shouldn’t take “Cedar Rapids” seriously as an incisive take on “flyover” country ethics, but the least this tepid comedy could do is provide a vibrant sense of humor. Instead, it’s a riff-heavy, wildly formulaic modern comedy that uses stereotypes and improvisations in a gentle, but tedious manner to bring the laughs.

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Movies that pursue a campy tone always walk a thin line of execution. Play the absurdity just right, and there’s a mess of good times to be had. Play silliness too aggressively, and the insincerity burns, making the jesting intolerable. “Drive Angry” belly flops into the latter category, pitching its winky tone to the rafters, making certain everyone in the audience is aware that the filmmaker is in on the joke. For a picture that aims to please, “Drive Angry” is far more proficient at summoning aggravation.

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To explain “Rubber” in full virtually guarantees turning off potential audiences to this bizarre French comedy. It’s a furious run of absurdity that toys with perspective and convention, exploring the relationship between spectators and entertainment while staging an adventure rooted in the film’s strict “no reason” policy, as explained in the opening moments. Oh, and it features a tire that comes to life, rolling around the American southwest on a killing spree using its telekinetic powers. Have I already written too much?

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I used to believe the 1998 smash, “There’s Something About Mary,” was the best thing that could’ve happened to the filmmaking duo, Peter and Bobby Farrelly. I now realize I was wrong. The boys have been chasing that success for over a decade, deploying the once enchantingly comfy Farrelly Formula time and again, looking for that elusive box office champion that could restore luster to their tarnished brand name. “Hall Pass” is quite possibly their least organic offering to date, coldly calculating shock value and emotional connection to piece together yet another feature film that’ll make the audience shift from uncomfortable laughter to tender appreciation.

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When “Big Momma’s House” was released in 2000, I can’t imagine there was any honest expectation of a sequel. An undemanding drag comedy merging action and antics from star Martin Lawrence, the original picture fulfilled whatever need there was to see the comedian rock an enormous fat suit and channel the child-rearing sass of his grandmother. Well, there actually was a sequel in 2006, straining the concept to a breaking point. And now, 11 years later, we’re faced with a third installment, providing Lawrence an opportunity to flex his atrophying box office muscle and reinvent the “Big Momma” brand, bringing in rising star Brandon T. Jackson to carry on the glorious cross-dressing cause.

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Devouring a steady diet of horror pictures and charged thrillers over the course of the moviegoing year, a film critic becomes unavoidably accustomed to witnessing random acts of violence. That’s not to say bloodshed doesn’t retain its frightening qualities, but after a while, a certain numbness sets in with anarchy that is more artless. The medieval saga, “Black Death,” honestly scared the stuffing out of me, in a way I haven’t felt from a movie in a very long time. Brutal, austere, and ultimately an effective educational tool, the picture is an unflinching, haunting dissection of fundamentalism, translating the rigors of faith into a grotesque poetry of pain and suffering.

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“Brotherhood” is more of a slick directorial exercise than a substantial feature film. Packed with shaky-cam tension, screaming performances, and near-comical turns of plot, the picture doesn’t make much of an impression past a few visceral flashes of conflict, with the majority of the film a frustrating sit that seems to drag on far longer than its 70-minute-long running time.

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It was bound to happen sooner or later. With “I Am Number Four,” Hollywood attempts to branch out to other genres to find a new “Twilight” — something with heavy romantic and superhuman overtones that could be massaged into a brand new franchise to take over the hearts and wallets of teens when the sparkly vampires take a bow in 2012. Though dealing with intergalactic invasion, corporeal powers, and laser guns, “I Am Number Four” is a relatively tame creation, lacking a thunderous, textured cinematic quality that would separate it from the average ABC Family movie.

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“Unknown” doesn’t know when to quit. Traditionally, relentlessness is a positive attribute for any thriller, but “Unknown” kicks off with an inert concept for suspense and proceeds to hog pile on the plot with total abandon, slapping on the whoppers and clichés like a maniac. In fact, the only thing missing from this Liam Neeson thriller is a cameo by Liam Neeson. Everything else is pretty much accounted for.

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