Category: Film Review

“Big Fan” is being pushed to audiences as the sizzling dramatic debut for comedian Patton Oswalt, lovable cherubic star of “The King of Queens” and the voice of Remy in “Ratatouille.” While a forceful piece of acting sure to widen Oswalt’s horizons, “Big Fan” also strikes a devilish, queasy tone worth savoring. It’s a wicked play on professional sports and its professional, dogmatic appreciators. While shackled by a paltry budget, “Big Fan” manages to slip under the skin and play cleverly with topical issues of misguided moral fiber.

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Looking to tap into the buoyant mood as America celebrates the 40th anniversary of the music festival of music festivals, “Taking Woodstock” transports the viewer not to the center of the muddy hippie hullabaloo, but a few weeks earlier. An origin story of sorts, Ang Lee’s summery film is a hodgepodge of legendary sights and sounds, and for an hour it plays fresh and stimulating. But only for an hour.

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I’m positive there’s a finer way to showcase the nuances of Asperger’s Syndrome than anything the new film “Adam” manages to come up with. While respectful to the disorder, the picture is nonetheless disinterested in anything that would enliven the experience beyond the severely clichéd or overacted. It’s a gentle romantic dramedy, but misfires at every turn, making for a tedious motion picture that minimizes a fascinating subject.

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Heavy, boomy storms raced through the city tonight, and I counted nearly five frightening car accidents on the journey to the local movie theater, but I made the considerable effort to slog through the roadway nightmare because…well, it was “Avatar.”

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“Inglourious Basterds” isn’t a World War II movie, it’s a Quentin Tarantino World War II movie. Turning his fiendish screen alchemy to the combat genre, “Basterds” slides perfectly in line with the rest of Tarantino’s funky filmography, returning stupendous dialogue, dense plotting, anachronistic soundtrack selection, and fire-breathing performances to the screen. Perhaps not as whirlwind as the marketing suggests, “Basterds” heads elsewhere for inspiration, finding the art of intimidation and espionage even more thrilling than straightaway slaughter. It’s a patient, layered, stupefying doozy of a motion picture. Once again Tarantino has come to bend the staples of cinema, and the results are characteristically spectacular.

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Emily Hagins has loved movies for her entire life. Cinema has filled her soul, helped to form an unbreakable bond with her mother Meghan, and catapulted her artistic aspirations beyond mere passive observation. Emily Hagins is ready to make her first movie: the blood-and-guts zombie epic, “Pathogen.” It’ll take a large cast, citywide locations, endless hours of shooting, and a DeMille-like concentration on the finer points of storytelling. Emily is ready to achieve her lifelong dream. Emily is 12 years old.

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After returning home from a screening of the dramedy “Post Grad,” I was quite surprised to learn that the film wasn’t based on a book or a television series. It was just a screenplay, credited to Kelly Fremon, which makes the distracted, overstuffed narrative all the more confusing. 1/3 post-collegiate woe, 1/3 wacky family suburban comedy, and 1/3 tepid romantic yearn, “Post Grad” hopes to be many things to many different audiences. It’s a meandering mess of a motion picture, enlivened by a few performances, but ultimately, and quite aggressively, ineffectual and dreary.

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I understand that writer/director Robert Rodriguez wants to give his R-rated instincts a rest on occasion, focusing on family entertainment to delight his numerous offspring and his own inner child. With 2001’s “Spy Kids,” it appeared the new direction was going to become an artistic boon for Rodriguez, allowing the filmmaker to expand his horizons. And then “Spy Kids 2” chipped the paint job, “Spy Kids 3-D” sneezed on the cake, and “The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl” made life just a little more difficult to live. “Shorts” is the latest round of juvenile antics from Rodriguez and advances his wasteful behavior, denting a promising filmmaking career on yet another crude distraction that plays much too obnoxiously.

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Before “X Games 3D: The Movie,” I knew next to nothing about the event that brings together the stars of “action sports” to rumble in front of thousands of advertisements…I mean fans. If it’s possible, I know even less about the X Games after watching this documentary. A deadly paced, sloppy parade of egos and stunts, “Movie” plays directly to the fanbase, who will be the only ones able to hurdle the slapdash nature of the direction and savor the airborne money shots.

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Perhaps one of the lesser known features from the summer blockbuster class of 1984, “The Last Starfighter” has developed a devoted cult following over the last 25 years. A handsome sci-fi adventure with an enchanting pioneer spirit, “Starfighter” is one of the few successful Spielberg clones, administering the usual routine of aliens and mouth-agape wonder with friendly determination and a perfect, just perfect, game boy screenwriting hook.

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I’m almost ashamed to admit this, but I was expecting plenty more oomph from “Hannah Montana: The Movie.” The Disney Channel show makes it a point to be as piercing to the senses as possible, which makes the molasses pacing and muted effort from the big screen incarnation definitely strange. It’s not like I’m demanding depth here, just a hope that the sparks stay ahead of the yawns, and maybe a genuinely inspired moment of slapstick or two. For a film that’s essentially a lengthy commercial for the soundtrack, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to wonder why the adolescent electricity was dialed down for this tricky crossover attempt.

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Spending his directorial career in search of the proper script with the proper oddity to fit his established sense of humor, Bobcat Goldthwait has finally captured the secret formula with “World’s Greatest Dad.” A pitch-perfect black comedy, “Dad” drips with the sort of acidic smile that Goldthwait has built a career upon, bravely marching forward as not only one of the most uproarious films of the year, but perhaps the most accurate depiction of teen bile ever to grace the screen. It’s a double miracle: a stupendous comedy and a great argument for mass sterilization.

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Neal Brennan is perhaps best known for his work as a driving force behind the Comedy Central smash, “Chappelle’s Show.” A student of sketch comedy, Brennan brings his bite-sized mindset to the silver screen with the awkwardly titled feature, “The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard.” It seems Brennan’s instincts for comedy gold are either limited to the three-minute format or require the participation of Dave Chappelle. On his own, Brennan offers little in the way of an inner-monologue, executing a lewd comedy that has no middle speed between agreeable stillness and cringing vulgarity.

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I’ve never been the most diligent student of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, unfortunately sticking mainly to the features that have booked passage to America, dubbed and redressed by the fine folks at Disney. “Ponyo” is the latest import to hit these shores and for a Miyazaki lightweight like myself, it’s perhaps the most charming production I’ve encountered yet. Heartwarming, graciously surreal, and pure eye candy, “Ponyo” is an elevating fantasy that swims enthusiastically in delightfully unexpected directions.

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An electric brew of “Alien Nation” and “The Fly,” coated with a viscous layer of social commentary, “District 9” is a volatile action/horror picture with a stupendous visual fingerprint. A barnstorming combat film with flashy weaponry, alien mysteries, and goopy body trauma, the film is destined to become a cult classic — a largely unapologetic statement of hysteria, flanked by large deposits of geek Spanish fly. However, while there’s astounding visual reach, “District 9” is riddled with inconsistencies and a confusing point of view, reducing the heat on this ambitious film, robbing it of a lasting power it should rightfully own.

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“The Time Traveler’s Wife” is a romantic, tragic, sci-fi hodgepodge of fate. To deconstruct it with an analytical mind would be a foolish proposition, confronting material that plays with fantasy conceits to create its very own identity, free from the binding straps of realism. It’s a film that needs to be granted permission to be magical and mysterious, to take the audience to unfamiliar places of time and heart. It’s a lovely picture, but something that is best approached in a relaxed state of mind.

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As charming and energetic as “Bandslam” is capable of becoming, the feature is restrained by director Todd Graff, or perhaps the better description is smothered. Graff, who covered teen ambition in the semi-musical, mostly awful “Camp,” takes on the subject again with “Bandslam,” and while the results are more pleasurable and his directorial hand improved, there’s still oodles of melodramatic itches within Graf that he should exorcise. There’s a great movie somewhere in “Bandslam,” but Graff won’t allow its natural vitality to take flight.

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