“The Soloist” strikes me as a very special film handicapped by unfortunate marketing. Dreamworks seems unfairly bound to promote the feature as a feel-good snapshot of redemption, spotlighting the road-tested appeal of the privileged white man taking a handicapped black soul under his wing, guiding him to unimaginable greatness. “The Soloist” is not that film. Under no circumstances is this picture a perverse “Radio 2.”
“Orphan” is a seriously tasteless motion picture, but it’s equally as spineless. A suspense piece with numerous acts of violence and torment involving children, “Orphan” endeavors to unnerve the audience by hitting below the belt, taking on the taboo concept of kids in peril to come across as provocative and unsettling. Instead, the film mostly bores with its repetition; the little originality it clings to dearly is neutered and slowly drained of shock value by the film’s end.
The screenplay for “G-Force” seems to fumble the joy of the concept, hunting for a more impactful way to tell a very silly story. This might be the reason there’s a frantic, suffocating thinking that ends up marring the picture. This is a team of super spy guinea pigs getting into all sorts of hijinks, there’s little need to add pathos or rigid character arcs. “G-Force” feels the urge to present audiences with a sympathetic portrayal of talking animals, when it’s clear that potential viewers, both young and old, would rather see these heroes in all stages of miniature combat and furry teamwork instead.
A political farce with wonderful ricochet timing and stellar acting, “In the Loop” reaches for both the brazen and the bizarre to manufacture a hopping comedy. If only all bureaucratic adventures could share this type of spirit; “Loop” establishes itself as an acidic force of nature, confident with brutal exchanges of opinion, yet retains a cutting satirical curve that buttresses the film’s undeniable pull toward outright silliness.
“A little sexist. It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys. It exaggerated the characters, and I had a hard time with it, on some days. I’m playing such a bitch; why is she being such a killjoy? Why is this how you’re portraying women?” – Katherine Heigl on “Knocked Up,” Vanity Fair, January 2008.
Comparing “(500) Days of Summer” to Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” might be marvelous shorthand to describe the acidic romantic comedy intentions of this new film, but quality wise, the pictures are miles apart. Using the tenets of alternative hipsterdom to blanket screen clichés of all shapes and sizes, “Days” aims to be a carefree, collar-unbuttoned pass on love and other disasters. Mostly the picture grates with its faux-indie-film affectations and unimaginative craftsmanship. It grazes on the fields of Gen-Y trends and ‘80’s nostalgia to fatten itself to such a degree, it would be impossible to notice the material is only a few menopausal jokes away from your average Nora Ephron film.
With all the grief Hollywood receives (however justified) for reimagining their horror classics, it appears those bad habits are spreading across the globe. The clumsily titled “Nature’s Grave” (wow) is a remake of the 1978 Australian shocker “Long Weekend,” brought back to the screen through Aussie funding and local director Jamie Blanks. It goes without saying that an update here is completely unnecessary, but Blanks, while curiously slavish to the original picture, insists on recapturing B-movie lightning in a bottle, minus the powerhouse thespian effort and directorial stillness that marked filmmaker Colin Eggleston’s initial take on this bruising material.
The last time we saw Harry Potter in action, he was engaged in war, suffering a great personal loss that would forever rob him of innocence and compassion toward his enemies. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth film of this long-standing franchise, replaces combat with the electrical storm of teen hormones. It’s not as breakneck a change of pace as it sounds, but the new direction helps to further develop the Hogwarts gang past wands and wonder, finding fertile dramatic ground yet again to raise the stakes as Harry takes his first leap toward the ultimate showdown with his nemesis, Voldemort.
It appears the trilogy is now complete. After creating starring vehicles for his characters Ali G (2002’s “Ali G Indahouse”) and Borat Sagdiyev (2006’s smash “Borat”), the time has come for Sacha Baron Cohen to allow Bruno an opportunity to carry his own picture. “Bruno” will likely be welcomed by an adoring audience fully equipped to endure the traditional blast of Cohen-approved smut and merciless social commentary, especially after “Borat” turned his obscure antics into box office gold. However, don’t hold sudden international success against Cohen’s superb modus operandi, who once again tears into a clueless world seeking to mock, celebrate, and disgust anyone who will welcome him.
Full disclosure: I think Chris Columbus is a wonderful mainstream filmmaker. Perhaps not the most dignified director in the business, but his blockbuster instincts are sharp and his résumé contains some of Hollywood’s most beloved features. Granted, Columbus took a hit with the underrated Broadway adaptation “Rent” four years ago, but who could’ve expected that risky change of pace would lead him to “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” by far the most repellent film Columbus has ever been associated with, not to mention a shoo-in for multiple 2009 worst-of lists. Perhaps Columbus was involved in a hideous car accident recently that left him partially brain damaged, or maybe tragic senility is creeping up on the 51-year-old filmmaker. I simply refuse to believe Columbus willingly created something as monstrously unfunny and schizophrenic as “Cooper.”
Yes, it’s worse than “Bicentennial Man.”
Burning through a film career in the same time it takes some people to shop for car insurance, Lindsay Lohan suffered a major blow two years back when she agreed to star in the laughable thriller, “I Know Who Killed Me.” It was then and there that Ms. Lohan went from a praiseworthy ingénue to a bad actress statistic, effectively killing her screen career through a series of poor artistic and personal choices. “Labor Pains” symbolizes Lohan’s attempt to climb the Hollywood rope all over again, forgoing an interesting, cunning rebirth to make a dreadful sitcom-style film that merely asks her to show up and stand in front of a camera. “Pains” is aptly titled, placing the visibly exhausted star in the center of a motherhood farce that’s miles above her skill level.
The documentary “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” is tender, affectionate, and exceptionally educational. And when I write educational, I mean it: not being a student of classic radio or television, I’d never heard of Gertrude Berg before this film. After watching the documentary on her life, I never want to forget her.
Ahh, yes, there’s no better time of year to issue a film titled “I Hate Valentine’s Day” than the weekend celebrating the Fourth of July holiday. I suppose you could label it clever counterprogramming, but I’m more inclined to consider the release date as the latest in a long series of bad ideas when it comes to this bland, winded motion picture.
It started with “Ali.” There, revered director Michael Mann cautiously backed away from the stiff mechanics of traditional storytelling to form his own cinematic language, armed with a marathon script and liberating HD cameras. The John Dillinger gangster tale “Public Enemies” represents the implosion of Mann’s balloon of progress. In chasing his own insufferable visual punctuation and distancing performance needs, Mann swings and misses hard with “Enemies,” gathering an enviable platter of cold stares, blasting Tommy Guns, and lustful smirks, but losing himself in the deafening filmmaking affectation. Rarely has a wonderland of hardened gangsters, flighty dames, and widescreen bank robbing been rendered this lifeless.
“Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” isn’t an ambitious, event movie sequel in the same fashion as perhaps “Ice Age: The Meltdown” was softly gunning for. It’s more of an agreeable installment of television than a magnificent animated effort. This is not a criticism. In fact, it’s perhaps the reason why “Dawn” is such a charming film. With a relaxed mood, a playful cast, and a plot that doesn’t sweat itself into a pointless sense of importance, “Dawn” is mild sauce but tremendously entertaining, with an easy-peasy celebratory attitude that extends to the picture’s lively 3-D visual scheme.
The prospect of another laborious Iraq War film is perhaps about as welcome as a sharp stick in the eye. While a vital subject for discussion, Hollywood has managed to homogenize the lengthy Middle East affair, expelling too much effort to register as concerned rather than determined. Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” looks to amp up the Iraq experience through a foot-long, rusty-edged needle shot of adrenaline, assuming a vigorous action movie mentality to cover global affairs. “Hurt Locker” is a superb achievement that not only constructs some of the finest suspense set pieces of the year, but manages to find compelling, innovative wartime psychological threads to pull at as well.
I think “My Sister’s Keeper” has been robotically engineered to makes audiences weep uncontrollably. It’s a tear-jerking Terminator, an unstoppable force that beats the screen with tragedies of all shapes and sizes, looking to wear down the viewer until they’re a puddle of tears and snotty tissue. It’s a hostile approach to storytelling that director Nick Cassavetes manipulated to finely tuned results with the 2004 sleeper smash, “The Notebook.” For “Keeper,” the effort is much more transparent, and for every instant of genuine tragic ache within this dubious feature, there are two served up right behind it that drip with obnoxious manipulation and creaky execution.
In 1988, director Stephen Frears, writer Christopher Hampton, and actress Michelle Pfeiffer teamed up to run through a myriad of period games of deception and lust in the classic picture, “Dangerous Liaisons.” Two decades later, the trio has reformed to plunge further into the bleak heart of obsession in the acidic dramedy “Cheri,” adapted from the novel (and its sequel) by celebrated French author Colette. It’s sexy, pithy, and enchantingly cutting, making the best use of Pfeiffer in a long time.
Remember 1993’s “Boxing Helena?” Unless you happen to be Kim Basinger’s accountant, I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t. The new thriller “Surveillance” marks the return of Jennifer Lynch to the director’s chair, and the extended break from the industry hasn’t quite tempered the filmmaker’s sweet tooth for performance oddity, but it has simplified her storytelling ambition. A cool, creepy chiller, “Surveillance” doesn’t exactly leap off the screen as a diamond example of procedural crime busting cinema, but taken as the next professional step for Lynch, it’s an efficient mood piece, setting out to unnerve and baffle, and achieving most of its goals.
A searing indictment of Islamic “Sharia” laws and rural Middle Eastern barbarism, “The Stoning of Soraya M.” is a surefire sock-in-the-gut motion picture that’s grueling to watch, yet perhaps impossible to ignore. I’m sure the prospect of sitting down with a movie concerning the painstaking ritual of stoning comes across as a gigantic NEGATORY on the average “Movies to See” list of multiplex adventures, yet this picture is worth a viewing, if only to be allowed entrance into the darker nuances of unspoken Islamic law.
BRIAN ORNDORF 
