Category: Film Review

Last winter, Tyler Perry suited up inside his Madea character and made a fortune. “Madea Goes to Jail” was a box office smash for Perry, bringing his cross-dressing, slang-heavy shtick close to the 100-million-dollar barrier required for worldwide box office legitimacy. Smelling blood in the water, Perry has hastily brought back the character for “I Can Do Bad All By Myself,” though the sassy, gun-toting, breast-swinging matriarch carries more of a cameo role here (shhh, don’t tell the Lionsgate marketing squad). Without or without Madea (ideally without), “Bad” is the same old moldy dish of melodrama and misbegotten salvation, spoon-fed to the Perry faithful without much care for appealing artistic development.

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Rock superstardom is a rare achievement, never requiring actual talent, but crack timing and blind persistence to seep into the public consciousness, along with at least one passable tune. The status of rock god is an entirely inimitable designation. These men and women showcase barnstorming creativity that’s second to none, along with a unique career longevity that’s survived the worst of artistic disasters. More often than not, they also carry a guitar, wielding it with Excalibur-sized supremacy.

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Here’s a scorching idea for the producers of the “Saw” franchise: a “Sandra Bullock Slapstick Comedy” death trap. That would surely send audiences into a full-blown panic. Too bad “All About Steve” beat the infamous horror series to the punch, erecting its own contraption of suffering with a smirking, fluttery eyed, stumbling Bullock as the main attraction. I wasn’t morally shaken by “Steve,” but it’s a mercilessly odious comedy, not to mention skating on thin ice in the taste department. There are few nightmares in the world that can rival Bullock in funny mode, but “Steve” and its liberal drizzling of witless behavior is oddly eager to match its star in the cringe department.

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Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor are the masterminds behind the “Crank” franchise of cynical, 8-bit, head-smashing entertainment. “Gamer” is the duo’s first foray outside of the suffocating Statham kingdom, but I could scarcely tell the difference. A rude, crude, deafening valentine to overkill cinema laughably passed off as muffled social commentary, “Gamer” is ideal for fans of the nauseating “Crank” series, as it traces along the same old lines of chaos, revealing that these directors, credited simply as neveldine/taylor, are two of the most inept minds working in the industry today.

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“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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