Paintball is a fascinating game, permitting average domesticated folk an opportunity to immerse themselves in a world of heated combat and precise military strategy, with the only possible downside being a few welts and stained clothing. “Paintball” is a low-budget thriller that twists purist enthusiasm for the sport in a rather macabre way, attaching life or death stakes to a pastime often associated with genial weekend warrior escapism.
1978’s “Ice Castles” was a minor hit, but it struck a particular chord with teenage audiences, who ate up the treacly figure skating melodrama. The picture is a distant memory now, which leaves a sizable opportunity for a remake; something soft and sentimental to appeal to a whole new generation of young romantics. Stripped of its apple-cheeked Midwestern identity, grainy cinematography, and amusing histrionics, “Ice Castles” doesn’t make much of an impression the second time around. Forgoing nostalgia to play shamelessly to the Radio Disney generation, the upgrade is a gawky misfire, criminally monotonous from start to finish.
“The Boys Are Back” had every possible invitation to fully submerge itself in the comforting folds of teeth-grinding melodrama. A story of parental misconduct, the picture is swarming with opportunities for grandstanding performances, domestic tragedy, and teary acts of forgiveness. Thank heavens for writer Allan Cubitt and director Scott Hicks, for they attack the material with an aim toward emotional realism, for better and for worse. A convincing drama helped along by a refreshingly vulnerable turn from star Clive Owen, “The Boys Are Back” shows unexpected resolve to approach the central conflict with sincerity, and that small effort takes something with the potential for dispiriting routine and makes it a truly responsive motion picture.
Director Jonathan Mostow has never offended me as a filmgoer. His pictures have been routinely well-constructed and visually interesting (“Terminator 3,” “U-571,” “Breakdown”), even in the face of underwhelming plots and misguided performances. “Surrogates” is undoubtedly a misfire for the filmmaker, but it’s an interesting failure, peppered with a few memorable sequences and an appropriate, timely message highlighting the acceleration of social disconnect. While ambitious, the rhythm is off on this limping picture, with hints of severe studio interference derailing the movie from the moment it starts.
Coming just a week after the holy roll of “The Book of Eli” is “Legion,” a film decidedly more literal about its heavenly intentions, pitting angels versus humans in a war for the future of civilization. Sounds pretty cool, right? Well, “Legion” is quite the opposite; it’s a labored, darkly photographed, cringingly acted hodgepodge of fanciful geek-bait genre ideas and hideous connect-the-dots scripting. Who knew the end of the world could be such a screaming bore.
I’ve attempted to be kind to Dwayne Johnson in the past, trying to find some mythical sense of upside to dreck like “The Rundown,” “Doom,” and “The Game Plan.” Well, the honeymoon is officially over if “Tooth Fairy” is any indication of Johnson’s career ambition. Though I suppose it’s harmless in the long run, “Tooth Fairy” is profoundly unfunny and infuriatingly conventional, forgettable the very minute it commences. I’ve always hoped Johnson would find a proper footing in Hollywood, but if he’s going to waste his affability on nonsense nosepicker entertainment, there’s little motive to remain interested in his future cinematic activities.
“Extraordinary Measures” is the inaugural motion picture for CBS Films, which is an apt studio home, considering the feature plays much like a broad television production, with a soft trickling of sentimentality and a structure that pauses for commercial breaks. It’s a frivolous disease-of-the-week picture, but sufficiently intriguing, even taking on a startling perspective in the war of do-gooder science vs. vampiric pharmaceutical industry profit.
It has been said that Charles Darwin was the man who killed God. “Creation” is not a picture that reloads the gun, sharpens the nails, or freshens the noose; it’s a sensitive portrait of a controversial figure, meant to strip away over a century of accusation and condemnation, returning Darwin’s essence back to its original home of trembling doubt. It’s a film open for easy dismissal, but “Creation” is not an anti-religion screed, only an intimate drama of a man who found himself at a crossroads between the answers of science and the comfort of faith. There’s no show of teeth, no hateful agenda. “Creation” returns Charles Darwin to his humble origins in the vessel of art-house cinema, allowing the cast and crew to interpret the man through careful thematic consideration and often compelling domestic drama.
If there’s anything tremendously positive to write about “The Last Station,” it would be how the picture casts an interesting light on celebrated author Leo Tolstoy and the wrath of his final years, in which he morphed into a deity to some of his more ardent Russian followers. It’s a convincing portrait of intelligence assuming a greater purpose, though it’s trapped in an uneven feature film that starts with a bang and ends with whimper. “The Last Station” deserves accolades for its unusual subject matter, but consistency is a problem for director Michael Hoffman, who’s trying to balance a year in the life of a literary legend, but only encourages indifference.
The first motion picture from Peter Jackson that didn’t involve monsters and a colossal special effects effort turns out to be…a film about monsters with a colossal special effects effort! Well, monsters in the serial killer sense, as Jackson unfurls a cinematic interpretation of author Alice Sebold’s best-selling novel, “The Lovely Bones.” It’s a glum tale of mourning and heavenly observance, perhaps playing too close to Jackson’s voracious directorial appetites. Giving the material a thick coating of gloss to maintain and portion out its innate horrors, Jackson encourages “Bones” to radiate more artifice than emotion, condensing a frightful story of loss into something balanced precariously between a Hitchcockian thriller and an Enya music video.
What exactly can be written about “The Book of Eli” without giving away critical parts of the story is a source of personal frustration. Releasing studio Warner Brothers has politely asked film critics to refrain from spoiling the ending of the movie, a request I will happily honor. However, there’s much to “Book of Eli” that requires potential killjoy description, so I beg your patience, dear reader. I apologize in advance if this review seems uncharacteristically vague and protective of the actual filmgoing experience. I’m under orders and frankly, the mysteries here are interesting enough to preserve.
There was a time around a decade ago when it seemed Jackie Chan would’ve done anything for a blockbuster career in America. The paychecks for the “Rush Hour” films were sweet, but “The Tuxedo” arrived in 2002 and knocked the wind out of Chan’s goofball sails. “The Spy Next Door” feels like the long aborted next step to his once excitable career plan, furthering him down a path of dreary, by-the-numbers action entertainment that merely requires Chan to stand in front of the camera, smile, flip, and mangle the English language.
The writers behind the volcanic crime film “Sexy Beast” have returned, dukes up, with “44 Inch Chest,” a blistering script sponsored primarily by the letters F, U, K, and C (but not necessarily in that order). Marvelously cast and beguilingly barking mad, the picture is a salt-stained, merrily profane plunge into the abyssal depths of jealousy and confusion. It’s a razor-sharp bear trap of a movie, but I suppose it’s to be expected from the slang-lovin’, tongue-chewin’ “Sexy Beast” duo.
A fantastic symphony of characters making poor decisions, “Fish Tank” is a depiction of innocence lost, set against a common backdrop of working-class England, with its claustrophobic habitats and perpetual ambiance of hostility. It’s a dynamite film, but I was caught watching with eyes-through-fingers a few times, fearful moments of exquisite tension would devolve into a Catherine Breillat-style shock-value spectacle. Thankfully, director Andrea Arnold has better taste, making her feature not a depressive cage, but a maze of behavioral patterns and damage with some form of light at the end of the tunnel.
The “Universal Soldier” franchise has endured its fair share of hard knocks since the release of the original 1992 film — 1999’s “Universal Soldier: The Return” being a prime example of unimaginative producers and subpar filmmakers squashing the potential out of a rather bizarre premise. Nearly 20 years later, someone, somewhere convinced Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren to reteam (I assume using a sweet paycheck as bait) for “Universal Soldier: Regeneration,” a DTV sequel that’s disturbingly competent and utterly entertaining. The picture doesn’t retain the sweaty, cartoonish attitude of Roland Emmerich’s original picture, but as superfluous sequels aimed at the bottom-shelf market go, “Regeneration” is startlingly well-crafted.
I’m genuinely flummoxed by “Smokin’ Aces 2: Assassins’ Ball.” A no-budget DTV prequel, the picture is purely a rehash of Joe Carnahan’s 2007 action fiesta, only this gratuitous do-over has been stripped of star power, peppered with rotten special effects, and gifted a moldy Bush Jr.-era storyline that falls below whatever potential was there for a return to the “Smokin’ Aces” universe. Co-hatched and executive produced by Carnahan himself, the filmmaker should hang his head in shame over this cut-rate, slapdash cash-in. It’s a ghastly, embarrassing motion picture.
Let’s play “You Make the Call: Hollywood Version.” It’s 1992, and you’re the president of Columbia Pictures. You have the power. The juice. The stuff. In your hands is a red-hot, wink-happy screenplay that successfully pins down and tickles the stone-faced action genre that’s launched a horde of blockbusters to the top of the box office chart during the previous decade. The screenplay polish was co-executed by the writer behind “Lethal Weapon.” Your attached lead is Arnold Schwarzenegger, coming off “Total Recall,” “Kindergarten Cop,” and the world-shaking megasuccess of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” And your director is responsible for “Die Hard,” inarguably the finest action picture ever produced.
Before vampire fatigue sets in at the multiplex, leaving anything fanged and out for blood immediately dismissed due to an overextended trend, please permit “Daybreakers” a few moments of your time. While assembled with conventional visual elements and pushing a foreign oil allegory with a decided lack of subtlety, “Daybreakers” is a genre fun house worth the return trip to the fatigued war zone of vampiredom. Smartly constructed and lively all around, the gloom and doom submitted by filmmaking duo The Spierig Brothers is wildly entertaining and appropriately gushy with gore. Against all odds, “Daybreakers” is a blast.
Those expecting a seamy, Vaseline-uncorked ride through exploitation cinema heaven with “Bitch Slap” might be well advised to skip this picture entirely. More of an “Austin Powers” carnival of camp with YouTube production polish, “Bitch Slap” opens with a Joseph Conrad quote and ends in a hail of bullets, leaving the midsection fairly anticlimactic and insistently silly. It’s criminal to dismiss something so utterly consumed with ample feminine assets and cross-eyed ultraviolence, but the goofball pitch of this fluff grows tiresome early in the first round, rendering the picture a splendid 10-minute short film idea stretched intolerably to 100 minutes.
The trials and tribulations of a sexless marriage are comedically noogied in “Made for Each Other,” the latest riff on bro-centered neuroses. Enthusiastically arranged and flecked with moments of amusing comic inspiration, “Made for Each Other” nevertheless plays like a failed sitcom pilot, a foul stench director Daryl Goldberg can’t scrub away no matter how hard he tries (that is, if he did actually try). Low-budget and oddly fixated on DOA jokes, the picture certainly deserves a gold star for showing up, but the bellylaughs are few and far between.
BRIAN ORNDORF 