PHOTOS
Jeff Boam
Opening This Weekend
Michael Jackson’s This is It
Michael Jackson, Kenny Ortega
Back in June, with the unexpected passing of music icon Michael Jackson, a collective hush seemed to fall over popular culture and, frankly, the entire world. The MTV Generation had lost its biggest star, a man who lived much of his recent controversial life (sexual abuse allegations, financial problems) as far away from the public eye as humanly possible — save for some concert rehearsal footage from his then-forthcoming sold-out London arena comeback tour. Director Kenny Ortega, who had choreographed music videos and tours for Jackson, Billy Joel, Madonna and Diana Ross (among others), was in the process of orchestrating this tour when tragedy struck. When Sony acquired the rights to the footage, Ortega seemed like the obvious choice to piece together a feature film (he had, after all, directed Hocus Pocus and the High School Musicals) … in just four months. This PG-rated documentary, which was compiled from over 80 hours of behind-the-scenes footage, gives moviegoers a rare glimpse into the final hours and days of The King of Pop. The Plus: The talent. In this accelerated media age, Jackson’s name and likeness were more widely known than Elvis was when he died in 1977 (and Presley became a top-earning celebrity AFTER he passed away). Sales for anything Jackson-related have broken records (Amazon.com sold out of every Jackson album within one day of his death and his songbook dominated the Billboard chart for weeks afterward). This trend should extend to the box office where some estimates put the movie’s potential worldwide earnings at more than $400 million … even in a limited release. And, of course, there is the matter of Sony’s soundtrack that accompanies this release. The Minus: The integrity. Four months and 80 hours of footage? There is no doubt that Sony is cashing in, but how good could this movie be with such a limited window of time in which to pull it all together?
Now Playing
Saw VI
Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor
Your reviewer has heard of whack-a-doodles who get their jollies by watching car accidents. He has also heard of Sasquatch roaming the big woods of Montana; he just hasn’t met the hairy fellow yet. Saw, a franchise as believable as the Legend of Bigfoot as realized by the Jack Links commercials, frustratingly and head-scratchingly tries to get John Q. Moviegoer’s rocks off on torture porn. In the last entry, the minds behind this surly honey pot had forsaken T.P., the one thing that drew their audience out in the first place, for long exposition,. Somehow, someway, somebody-help-your-reviewer, they made up for lost time by giving masochistic viewers violence so gob-smackingly brutal that the MPAA should be tortured for not giving Saw VI an NC-17 rating.
This God-awful R-rated horror flick finds homicidal maniac Jigsaw (Bell) being succeeded by a rogue cop (Mandylor) who inflicts more grizzly life-or-death puzzles on victims with the FBI hot on his trail.
Having fudged their way through the phony baloney story of a serial killer who concocts agonizing Chinese puzzle boxes for unsuspecting victims to “choose” their way out of for four films, these writers now find themselves selling through some knee-slapping bullshit involving a copycat killer conscripted by Jigsaw before he died … for the last two films. It’s all phooey simply meant to frame a story around a series of torturous deaths, of course. They ran out of new torture devices, however, so they have taken some old favorites and simply ramped up the puerile violence to a nauseating degree. Bottom line: See. Saw. Soused.
Amelia
Hilary Swank, Richard Gere
No-frills flying. Such a term best describes Amelia, a film that is neither an economy class popcorn flick nor first class critical darling. No, this high-flying biopic is more business class, calculatingly and slickly designed to bait Oscar … if filmgoers were still living in the 1990s. Every scene looks picture postcard pristine. Every player hits their marks and remembers their lines. Nearly every scene is ripped from a historical footnote. But the days of bloated dramas that win Oscars because they tick off all of the right boxes went down with the Titanic. Now, such award baiting pictures need more than just heart — they need a soul full of depth, emotion and authenticity. Despite good intentions, Amelia seems better suited as a pay cable Movie of the Week.
From director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake) comes this PG-rated biopic of larger-than-life aviatrix Amelia Earhart (Swank), whose flights and loves (Gere, Ewan McGregor) made her a global phenomenon.
Swank and Gere embody their roles splendidly, but never generate the sparks necessary for an on-screen romance that spans the breadth of the movie. In the hands of director Nair, they’re never at a loss for beautiful trappings. Perhaps, Amelia’s greatest strengths lie in the few Oscar boxes that it doesn’t check off. Coming in under two hours, this breezy biopic feels anything but epic. Also, all involved managed to render Earhart’s life with a family-friendly PG rating and NOT make it feel cloyingly unreal. Still, perhaps because of this, it comes off more as a filmstrip than hard-hitting biography. Bottom line: Plane average.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Voices of Bill Hader, Anna Faris
In this PG-rated 3-D animated adaptation (also available in 2-D), an inventor (Hader) tries to solve a food shortage and inadvertently causes food to fall from the sky in abundance. It tries to pull a Pixar, making a smart cartoon that both kids and adults can enjoy, but misses the mark on both. The smart-alecky zingers are above kids’ heads, but below the standards of their parents, meaning many of the jokes end up in the ether. The blame falls on a half-baked script. The screenwriters put together gags that hold promise but never fully deliver. For example, a monkey wears a device that audibly voices his simple thoughts, but — aside from saying his name, Steve — the punch line never comes. The end product is occasionally fun but never out-and-out funtastic. Bottom line: Bad weather report.
Couples Retreat
Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau
In this PG-13-rated comedy, four couples (Vaughn, Malin Akerman; Favreau, Kristin Davis; Jason Bateman, Kristen Bell; Faizon Love, Kali Hawk) embark on a journey to a tropical island resort only to find that their group-rate vacation comes at the high cost of therapy. While hungry younger actors, Vaughn and Favreau once wowed your reviewer as a modern-day Matthau and Lemmon in Swingers and (to a lesser degree) Made. Together again with less to prove, these now-established H’wood players give audiences a comedy that’s more Ritz Brothers than Marx Brothers … humorous, but far from their personal best. They stand and deliver standard fluff (she loves me, she loves me not) with tired gags (hi-jinks in a tropical paradise) and a tidy ending, coloring-by-numbers where once they colored outside of the lines. Bottom line: Beat a hasty retreat.
Halloween II
Tyler Mane, Malcolm McDowell
In this R-rated sequel masquerading as murder porn, Michael Myers’ (Mane) murderous rampage continues with his sister (Scout Taylor-Compton) seemingly dead in his sights. If John Carpenter directed Twin Peaks or David Lynch directed Halloween, it would probably look a lot like this indulgent mess. With Halloween II, moviegoers are left with a flick so laughably drenched in Karo syrup that it becomes downright silly, not scary. Worse, it puts viewers through dime store armchair psychology involving visions of the serial killer’s inner child, the director’s wife and an unfortunate white horse that must have wandered into the shot. This is not psycho-babble, this is psycho-bubblegum, and it plays out about as well as the first craptastic Halloween sequels did back in the day. Bottom line: Tainted trick-or-treat candy.
Paranormal Activity
Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
In this R-rated doc-style thriller made for less than $15,000, a suburban couple (Featherston, Sloat) becomes increasingly disturbed by a presence that comes in the middle of the night, so they try to catch it on video as they sleep. Brimming with scary good material that matches the inventiveness of the gimmick, Paranormal Activity gives so many thrills with such little popcorn extravagance that it would scare the Bejesus out of The Blair Witch. Writer/director Oren Peli more than just comes up with a winning premise — he truly sells it through. Thanks to a slow build-up, an ample investment in the characters (and authentic performances), and a damn frightening payoff, the audience buys every frame crook, line and sinker. Moviegoers become every bloody bit as terrorized as those on-screen. Bottom line: Too cool for ghoul school.
Where the Wild Things Are
Catherine Keener, Max Records
In this PG-rated adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book, a rambunctious and sensitive boy named Max (Records) escapes to a mysterious island full of strange creatures (voices of James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker) where he becomes king. Director Spike Jonze delivers a film so organically rich and ferociously imaginative that it feels like it could have been made in the ’70s when maverick filmmakers were given creative control from the studios with a keys-to-the-asylum kind of wild abandon. Your reviewer can’t remember a film in recent memory that better illustrated the thrills and pills of being a kid — and he means illustrated. From the frenetic opening shot, Jonze gives filmgoers a kids-eye-view of the high emotions and feral energy that boils down to adolescence. Bottom line: Makes your heart sing.
Zombieland
Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg
In this R-rated horror comedy, a ragtag group (Harrelson, Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, Emma Stone) joins forces to survive a worldwide zombie outbreak. Writer/director Ruben Fleischer drums a helluva lot of belly laughs out of this niche in the wake of other zombie comedies (even George Romero himself used a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor in his work). His piss and vinegar take comes off less pointedly farcical than Shaun of the Dead, however. As the title suggests, he just embraces horror comedy with an amusement park abandon — fun, wild and damn well worth the price of admission. With relish, Harrelson scarily wears undead-clobbering masochism like a glove. The rest of the performances work well, but mostly due to the Roman Circus decadence of the side-splitting script (three words: Bill Murray cameo). Bottom line: Bring on your dead.