Fools, gangsters, and a suitcase filled with money. Now there’s a recipe for an exhilarating cinematic adventure, filled with thrills, chills, and the quivering lure of greed. The caper “Ca$h” (the production’s spelling, not mine) offers inept cinematography, stiff performances, and Sean Bean using a kitchen sink sprayer to mimic urination. The picture doesn’t exactly live up to the sizzling potential of the genre.
Craving a gooey shot of pure shameless geekery, I motored over to Orlando’s MegaCon last weekend to drink in the spandex sights and fill my ears with the din of plastic lightsabers. This was my second visit to the area’s most popular sci-fi/comic convention, which was granted a spacious hall to fill for 2010, filling the room with all types of dealers, artists, and celebrities. Excitement was in the air, along with an eye-crossing brew of musty body funk.
“Repo Men” is a gonzo, head-smashing, organ-tearing delight…at least 50% of the time. The rest of the film meanders about, searching to assume some form of significance. It’s a solid ground-rule double from director Miguel Sapochnik, but the picture is not nearly as deranged as it should’ve been, trying urgently to stay friendly when a nice shiny set of Verhoeven-sharp fangs would’ve done the premise more justice.
Within the first five minutes of “The Bounty Hunter,” two different male characters find themselves on the receiving end of a swift jab to the testicles. It’s an achy, sickening feeling sure to be shared by most moviegoers who spend their hard-earned cash on this comatose, exceedingly unfunny caper. More remarkable for the glistening sex appeal of the leading actors than anything found in the excruciatingly labored script, “Bounty Hunter” is an empty calorie, brain dead waste of time.
“Diary of a Wimpy Kid” is an adaptation of the 2007 illustrated bestseller from author Jeff Kinney, and a vociferous motion picture that feels like an endless sugar high. Aggressively irreverent and disappointingly insistent on toilet humor, the picture should’ve remained in book form. Committing it to film only encourages a strident tone I’m sure the source material never intended to produce.
The first installment in a trilogy of Swedish mysteries based on the novels by Stieg Larsson, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is a touch on the lengthy side, but remains a corker of a whodunit. Imposingly violent, tightly plotted, and the superbly acted, the picture is an intriguing introduction to these acidic characters and world of abuse, taking viewers on quite a ride as it establishes an arresting tone of alarm and budding intimacy.
In approaching the sordid history of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, director Marco Bellocchio has selected an enthralling operatic method to tell his tale. With deception, animalistic sexuality, mental illness, and teary passions, it makes sense to twirl this intimate tale of tainted love into a visual shotgun blast of history and surrealism. “Vincere” drives aggressively and confidently as it builds a case against the ruthlessness of Mussolini, molding a motion picture of threadbare reality, but convincing dynamism.
Most features opt for grand statements of suspense to get by, positioning villains, weapons, and natural disasters to keep audiences glued to their seats. The Italian comedy “Mid-August Lunch” favors a more relatable route, communicating the intensity of time alone with four elderly women. A modest slice of life comedy, “Mid-August Lunch” is loaded with charm, embracing the observational opportunities that appear with a mature cast wedged inside a restrictive condo setting.
It took 15 producers to bring “City Island” to the screen, which seems an enormous effort to breathe life into a fairly routine set of domestic troubles and idiosyncratic characters swimming around for emotional enlightenment. Fortunately, there’s a cast here that molds something passably meaningful out of a flat screenplay, instilling the material with a sense of dimension and longing that helps to swallow 90 minutes of exaggerated foibles.
“The Red Baron” hopelessly desires to be accepted as the German equivalent of a Bay/Bruckheimer production, taking a glossy, rudimentary path toward wartime reverence. It’s a “Pearl Harbor” riff that might satisfy some curious WWI aficionados (perhaps Snoopy fans too), but offers nothing in the way of excitement or a compelling psychological shakedown of the feared pilot that ruled European airspace, eventually immortalized in the history books and on frozen pizza boxes.
“The Princess and the Frog” represents Disney’s big comeback to feature-length, traditionally animated filmmaking. Granted, it’s only been away for five years, but a comeback is a comeback, and I’ll take any renewed interest in 2-D storytelling I can get. Playing it safe to rekindle the animated magic that once defined the Disney name, “Princess and the Frog” is a joyful lap around familiar Mouse House artistic elements, looking to help rebuild the kingdom brand name with a cushy tale of a princess, smooch-happy amphibians, and the grandeur of turn-of-the-century New Orleans.
Lest I come across like a curmudgeon who despises all things slapstick, I’ll state that “Old Dogs” is poor slapstick. A spastic, noxious comedy, “Old Dogs” is scattershot and out of control, bludgeoning the audience with all sorts of eye-bulging mugging and dire cliché. It’s insufferable and lazily directed, trusting sheer frontal force will be enough to supply laughs. Shot two years ago, the picture has the feel of a movie that’s been reordered and reworked a few dozen times, shaved down to a pure goof-and-sentiment experience that fails both goals. It’s dreadful, but at least Disney’s been kind enough to suggest as much through their disheartening marketing efforts.
Released during the same week “The Hurt Locker” swept up major Academy Awards for its harsh depiction of life on the Iraq War frontlines, “Green Zone” elects to take the opposite route of dramatization. While coarse and unquestionably whirlwind, “Green Zone” should be viewed in the vein of a graphic novel adaptation, with its sniveling villains and primary colored view of wartime ethics. It’s entertainment first and foremost, with ham-fisted politics popping the mood far too often, sucking away a desired tempo of defiance to play a crude game of Middle East Stratego.
A charmer from the school of Apatow, “She’s Out of My League” takes a fantasy dating situation and tries to tilt it toward a sense of realism while retaining all the required silly business. Without reinventing the wheel or resisting the lure of lazy gross-out jokes, the picture gets by on a funky, winning cast and the occasional, ever-so-faint, squint-to-see-it moment of emotional truth the genre typically treats like a nasty infection. As goofball as it is, “She’s Out of My League” shows a surprising conscience to go along with its frat-house humor.
To describe “Our Family Wedding” as an offshoot of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” is undoubtedly an insult to the 1967 Stanley Kramer film. Perhaps my memory isn’t as sharp as it once was, but I fail to recall the original picture containing a scene in which a goat, jacked up on a spilled bottle of Viagra, endeavors to dry-hump an understandably confused leading character. Again, perhaps that’s my mind playing tricks on me.
Poetic, romantic, and tied together by a crippling event of violence, “Remember Me” aches to be absorbed as a drama of substance and lasting impact. However, it’s dour, hysterical sudser that never lifts off the ground, no matter how hard it flaps its wings with sequences of nicotine-stained rebellion, cycles of abuse, and bootleg turns of fate. Compassionate but never assured, “Remember Me” is perhaps best appreciated for Robert Pattinson, who steps away from the ghostly make-up, dead air bother, and diamond skin (the hair remains) to portray a plausibly disturbed young man on his way to an emotional breakdown.
BRIAN ORNDORF 