After all the damage Madonna has inflicted on the world with her acting, it’s amazing anyone would allow her the chance to actually direct a motion picture. The upside of “Filth and Wisdom” is that Madonna doesn’t make an appearance onscreen. That’s a huge upside. The downside is that “Filth” is under Madonna’s complete artistic control. She might be music royalty with a striking career of pop culture achievements, but she’s just not meant for big screen glory.
While not his last feature film, the late Bernie Mac is served well by the comedy “Soul Men,” putting in a feral performance that brings out the old Mac we all fell in love with long ago. It’s a shame the movie can’t live up to his spirit, trading comedic momentum for a story nobody is going to care about. Still, the laughs are plentiful for 45 minutes, and that’s all this movie needs to please.
“Role Models” is not a product that needs much effort to be funny. Not only does the comedy troupe “The State” more or less reunite here, but there’s Paul Rudd, the world of LARP, and McLovin’ also stealing screentime. Coming dangerously close to self-parody at times, “Role Models” remains a light but heartily funny diversion, best served with a raucous audience who appreciate a masterful KISS joke when they see one.
Like any improbable sequel, “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” is a more potent creation when acting as a carefree joke blender than a believable sample of storytelling. As good-naturedly hilarious as the 2005 original film, the sequel suffers only in the freshness department, with filmmakers who really show lackluster confidence on where to take this unexpected franchise. It’s a fine family diversion, but it fails to improve on its predecessor, and there’s something mildly disappointing in that missed opportunity.
I imagine “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” will become required viewing for junior high schools just beginning to explore the history of the Holocaust. The film is an emotional experience highlighting the tragedy of innocence, using the point of view of an eight-year-old German boy to expose the raw psychological devastation of the era. It’s an unnerving film with a knockout punch for an ending, but it feels more acceptable as an educational piece than a profoundly rewarding work of drama.
“A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” is a lovely film of small intentions, yet embellished with an enormous heart. It’s a story of a father and a daughter forced to confront their mounting personal unease, yet the picture is far more interested in the mechanics of dialogue, and how interaction with fellow human beings can fill the nagging holes in the soul.
A Christian horror film? Well, I suppose every person with access to plenty of money wants in on the spooky genre these days. Unsurprisingly, “House” fails to supply a sufficient level of fright; the picture seems content to wallow in confusion and convention, removing the novelty of faith to roll around in tired terror clichés and dreadful direction.
In 1995, “Waterworld” was the film to beat…and beat up. With an extravagant production scope, a surefire leading man in Kevin Costner, and material dripping with summer popcorn thrills, box office expectations were elevated to an absurd degree. Then behind-the-scenes mishaps started to occur, entire sets (along with their subplots) sunk to the bottom of the ocean, and the budget went positively bananas. Suddenly a guaranteed summertime blockbuster turned into a cheap punchline for the media, who branded the film a disaster before it even opened – a tag that still incorrectly haunts the movie to this very day. “Waterworld” was doomed to fail no matter what type of movie showed up in theaters.
From the studio that brought the world “In the Name of the King” and “Dragon Wars” comes “The Haunting of Molly Hartley.” Perhaps Freestyle Releasing isn’t concerned with producing a competent film for their growing library of titles, which makes their latest effort quite a rousing success. A high school drama with colorless demonic overtones, “Hartley” is a last-minute Halloween stab at box office gold and a resoundingly idiotic one at that.
I suppose it was bound to happen sometime, and I guess I should be glad it took 14 years to arrive, but Kevin Smith’s “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” is a disappointment. It’s not an unpleasant film, more of a blown opportunity (no pun intended), and falls well short of the quality Smith has demonstrated with prior raunchfests. Attempting to walk precariously on a tightrope of sentimentality and smutty behavior, Smith wanders off, manufacturing a film more contrived than sincere, and with less bellylaughs than anticipated.
Contrary to popular opinion, “Changeling” doesn’t represent director Clint Eastwood fishing for Oscar gold. Instead he’s made what he usually makes: a sturdy drama with wonderful working parts, only now there’s an issue of length that’s disconcerting, and stretches the movie to a point of no return. “Changeling” is compelling and flush with outstanding period detail, yet it can’t locate the brakes, skidding from nail-biting tension into watch-checking boredom all too easily.
The experience of watching the documentary “Dear Zachary” is like trying to put together a complex puzzle inside a roaring jet engine. Eschewing a liberal, meditative approach to reverse engineer a murder, “Zachary” instead pours its heart out over the screen, piloting with unfiltered rage and tears as filmmaker Kurt Kuenne embarks on a distressing odyssey to decipher just who would want to kill his lifelong friend, Andrew.
“Splinter” has nothing novel to offer the audience, but its comfort food. Bloody, screamy, creepy crawly comfort food that cuddles B-movie horror convention without fatigue. If you like your chills served up with simplicity, “Splinter” digests easily.
Leave it to a member of the Beastie Boys to create one of the best basketball documentaries around. Picking up where “Hoop Dreams” left off, “Gunnin’ for That #1 Spot” replaces solemnity with a streetwise perspective, examining the futures of eight high school basketball phenoms as they gather at the infamous Rucker Park neighborhood court to prove their highly trained mettle in front of an unforgiving crowd.
There’s a certain part of me that’s envious of the average “Saw” fan. I truly wish I could appreciate this horror franchise on a more visceral level, screaming along with the rest of the crowd as mayhem arrives, lives are ended, and Jigsaw’s legacy is twisted further into a mind-bending puzzle only the most patient out there have kept up with. It’s criminal that I refuse entrance into the club, but, then again, when I view a “Saw” movie all I can see are bargain-basement production values, abysmal acting, and a soggy narrative that’s spun completely out of control. The only elements holding the franchise together at this point are the blind enthusiasm of horror nuts, truckloads of distraction, and the forgiving nature of the Halloween season.
Presenting a movie like “High School Musical 3: Senior Year” to film critics is a bizarre situation. Let’s be real here: nobody who wants to see the feature will care what other people think about it, and most strangers to the “HSM” franchise wouldn’t be caught dead watching it. It’s an either ya do or ya don’t proposition.
From Sweden comes “Let the Right One In,” a film of extraordinary mood and wildly inventive directorial potency. It’s a hushed, gentle story of provisional friendship, the ordeal of adolescence, and the curse of vampiric immortality. A hypnotic motion picture from beginning to end, “Right One” is a marvel: an ingenious genre film that manages to terrify and endear in the same instant, deftly erecting one of the most persuasive, haunting film experiences of the year.
“Pride and Glory” is undeniably routine, wading into murky New York police drama waters with little hesitation. However, it takes only a minute to shake off the convention and welcome what director Gavin O’Conner is constructing here: a pummeling story of corruption and relations, spread across the battlefield of the unforgiving city. “Glory” is a marvelous installment of the psychologically tortured cop genre, and whatever it lacks in innovation it makes up in emotionally searing, superbly smashmouth execution.
A whopping 19 producers had their hands in the “Tru Loved” pie, yet nobody told director Stewart Wade that his film was being swallowed whole by melodrama. The film surely means well with enormous messages of tolerance and self-esteem, but when “Tru Loved” digs in with broad caricatures of homophobia and all-purpose intolerance, the movie can be a supreme chore to sit through.
BRIAN ORNDORF 