August 19th 2008 · Read More · No Comments
XXX: State of the Union (not to be confused with God’s Army: States of Grace) breaks new ground in cinematic ridiculousness. There is so much to attack this movie for that it almost seems pointless to go into it well-nigh!
In this sequel to the 2002 hit, Vin Diesel is nowhere to be base. Instead, pelvic girdle hopster Ice Cube appears as Darius Stone, the latest tough ass to take piece in the top secret XXX programme. The ex-convict is now the ultimate warrior for the governance, and in for the ride of his aliveness as he attempts to solve the apparent mangle of his boss Agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), all while nerve-wracking to put a diaphragm to a fiendish plot of land that would allow the villainous George Deckert (Willem Dafoe) to become Prexy of the United States.
I a great deal talk about my preferring dumb action at law films that at least appear to know they’re dumb as opposed to the action at law films of the Interior Treasure variety. XXX: State of the Union is a bad exception to this cardinal rule. Thither is such thing as too slow, and this sequel certainly falls into that category.
I wasn’t a winnow of the first Thirty, but it was a godsend compared to this big, messy beast of action meaninglessness. Firstly, I like Water ice Cube. He has a certain way about him, and I quite often enjoy him in movies. In 30 however, I didn’t like him at all. He’s smug, and not intimately engaging sufficiency to indorse up that smugness. His Darius Stone is supposititious to be some kind of hip, urban King James Bond, just Ice Square block doesn’t sell it at all. It takes more than than a face of steel to sell this kind of tripe. You have to be tranquil, and Third power is scarcely smooth here. I suppose he looks good in the action scenes from afar merely when he’s engaging in any sort of word play, the movie is dumb kind of than pelvis. And Cube’s flirtatious moments with the various female characters in the moving-picture show, are…well….let’s simply say Regular hexahedron doesn’t trade those moments either.
The real guilty party here however (in addition to the alleged screenwriters) is director Lee Tamahori (Die Another Day). What the hell happened to this guy. Music guru Kyle England and I were just talk about him the former day. Tamahori started his career with the intimate and annihilating Maori reference study Once Were Warriors and has gone on to do very small worthwhile since. For the most part, he’s gone on to do forgettable thrillers like Along Came A Spider. He moves XXX: Province of the Union on at a quick clip, but the movie is so freakish, that I found myself shaking my head when I wasn’t laughing at the ludicrous goings-on.
The action sequences are sloppy and fantastically muddled, none more so than the climax in which Darius pursues a bullet train while hurrying along in his high powered sports car. Where this succession goes defies description. It is exactly unbelievably unintelligent, and has nothing on a similar climax in the infinitely more entertaining Mission Impossible.
XXX: State of the Union has done what I mentation impossible. It’s actually worse than it’s predecessor. It’s big and loud, dazed and dull, and wouldn’t you know it? The ending is sequel ready and features a setting in which Samuel L. Jackson proclaims he has the perfect new XXX candidate. I’m hoping for Ron Jeremy.
you’re legend here is a piece misleading, as the critics of the world experience been a lot more than forgiving of this film than Mr Mast. Looks like you missed the boat on this one
The winds of political change are rumble through the halls of the Capitol as a popular President is being targeted for assassination by a radical splinter chemical group of dissenters deep inside the United States governing. Only two people sales booth between lawlessness and exemption: One of them, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), has but survived a hit on the Home Security Agency’s top-secret home office and is on the run. The other, a decorated Extra Ops soldier, Darius Stone (Ice Cube), sits under close guard in a military prison. Gibbons in one case again finds himself in need of an outsider and Harlan Stone is his man. The new Thirty agent must uncover the insurgents from within. It is the nation’s only hope to stop the first coup d’état in American history.
The moving-picture show can be described easily with just two speech: cookie carver. The picture is so formulaic it’s almost a crime, the movie strives to do nothing new or original rather only pushing out a very familiar and overdone formula. The motion picture does ingest great activeness sequences and can be quite exciting at times but the lulls between the military action are nearly antagonizing. I wonder when producers will learn that you cannot make a movie with no taradiddle and relying solely on the military action to carry the picture show, it leaves a very mediocre movie in the end. We know the story it was introduced to us in the first moving-picture show which in itself is kind of weak taradiddle wise all we have done is switch the characters and throw them into a new scenario, almost ala James Bond but at least with Bond the movie has a style it has a panache this moving picture lacks both. You could call this movie the poor mans version of a James Bond photographic film marketing itself for the Gen X crowd
I actually liked Icing Cube more as xXX which is simply because I have come to hate Vin Diesel. Diesel motor has become this self-important money grubbing super ego that just rubs me the wrong way. I understand that was character in the first picture but ICE Cube’s more down to earth approach was a lot more enjoyable. Because of Diesel’s departure from the films they receive decided to cast a new xXX in each sequel which is a little bit of a shame as Ice Cube did a good job with the weak material he was given. The starring role isn’t the problem with the moving-picture show, the write up is the problem and that is what they should be worrying about. I liked the moving-picture show for what it was a brain dead zea mays everta flick I just wish they could have through more with it.
absolute garbage from top to bottom - what a waste sentence, money and acting gift - there should be a practice of law against sequels.
August 16th 2008 · Read More · No Comments
Beyond the Sea is a rather old fashioned bio-pic and serves as the ultimate vanity design for the multi talented Kevin Spacy. This film, based on the living of crooner Bobby Darin (his most famous tunes were "Mack the Knife" and the title track), has been a huge task of erotic love for the American Beauty star.
Beyond the Sea delves into the life of Darin from his days as a brainsick child, to his reputable tenure as a whizz, to his later years as an anti-war anthem singer. Through it all, the film also gives us a glimpse into Darin’s high profile marriage to actress Sandra Dee and even touches on a long kept secret involving his mother. And of line, we make the music, most of which is performed by Spacey himself.
I liked parts of Beyond the Sea. In particular, I enjoyed the smaller moments, including unitary in which Darin is insistent on singing standards rather than performing stone n’ roll numbers to appease the masses (although he is responsible for writing the rock staple "Splish Splash"). As I declared, this pic is very old fashioned, and will mostly appeal to those who grew up on Darin’s music.
Spacey serves as director and star, and patch Beyond the Sea is a valiant effort, it doesn’t constantly succeed in it’s endeavor at sprawling, epic storytelling. The photographic film runs a tad over two hours, and covers a lot of run aground, but somehow I still felt on that point was something missing.
Spacey never in truth becomes Darin. He sounds and looks the function, but I always felt as if I was watching Spacey do an impersonation. That’s where late musical bio-pics Ray and De-Lovely got it correct. Jamie Foxx’s uncanny portrayal of Ray Charles elevated that pic above conventional melodrama, patch Kevin Kline’s effortless exercise as Borecole Porter in De-Lovely perfectly complimented theater director Irwin Winkle’s attention to detail. Spacy can spill the beans and dance, there’s no doubt about that, but his public presentation seems mechanical, and the film never really finds a rut.
The supporting work in Beyond the Sea is solid. In particular, I really enjoyed Bob Hoskins as the loving Charlie and precious Kate Bosworth as the not-so-pure and innocent Sandra Dee. Spacey clearly has much trust in his actors and in some cases, a bit excessively much. Caroline Aaron wildly overplays some of her scenes as Darin’s attention-seeking sister. Aaron does shine occasionally here, but as well often, she’s overly melodramatic. During i emotionally pivotal moment, she’s so over the top that I actually felt embarrassed for her.
Spacey the conductor reportedly fatigued years development this project and truth be told, the film doesn’t very pack whatsoever sort of emotional wallop. I recognise that Beyond The Sea endeavors to define an era that I didn’t grow up in, just other films have as well, and more efficaciously I power add. A great flick puts you there, and Beyond the Sea never really transported me.
Beyond the Sea really comes alive in the last ten minutes. And in fact, a stunning song and dance number featuring Kevin Spacy and whitney Young William Ullrich, encouraged me to award a slimly higher grade to this otherwise hero par picture. I wish well there were more scenes like this throughout the picture. In the end, Spacey’s doL of honey may take in been too much for him to handle. This guy is a gifted performer, only as of late, he appears to have lost his foothold a snatch (see The Shipping News). I suppose Beyond the Sea is a venial step in the right direction, merely I’d hoped for more.
August 14th 2008 · Read More · No Comments
Swimming Pool is a movie I’d been intrigued to consider since beholding the laggard a few months agone. First of all the film features a rare sighting of the gripping Charlotte Rampling who is wonderful in the role of a famous crime/fiction novelist named Sarah Jelly Roll Morton. The film starts sour with a promising little premise, Rampling’s publisher and long-time friend suggests to her that she spend some time at his French Villa (a fiddling R and R and perhaps a chance to recharge her creative batteries for some other of her lucrative murder mysteries.
She is at first loath but erst there, she succumbs at once to the spell of the gorgeous home and the quaint country setting. In fact it isn’t long before she plugs in the laptop computer and begins pecking away at the keys, so inspired is she by the tranquility and atmosphere she finds herself immersed in. Now from the trailer and the showbill for the film we know that her solitude is leaving to be short-lived. And not more than a night or two afterward her arrival there is a dislodge in the night that prompts Rampling to take up a table-lamp as a manque weapon in case of danger and set almost investigating.
Not to care, as it turns out to be the adorable young girl of her host the publisher (played by Charles II Dance). Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), shows up at the house unheralded, and both are surprised by their unexpected (and at first base) unwelcome company. Julie is a blond, beautiful and free-spirited thomas Young woman, in spades promiscuous (as we ar to come up out) and at number one not a terribly gracious host to her celebrated houseguest. Presently, however, they manage to strike up a grudging friendship with just sufficiency mystery and portent to suggest some rather exciting things that might develop.
After all, the film is billed and has been heralded as a suspenseful thriller and so, as a veteran film viewer, I was on my toes and on the look out for clues to possible intrigue and/or unsporting play that might come about as Julie makes herself more than and more at home. Soon she is dragging home drunken young manpower as playthings, which spell a distraction for Rampling, certainly a source of fascination. So much so that she scraps her initial story outline and begins a new history that she begins throb the keyboard over, that she saves in a file titled Julie on her estimator desktop.
In fact one afternoon Rampling is sour to the market and Julie snoops into the lap-top and manages to read a good bit of this new familiar fiction before she is forced to quickly exchange the reckoner as the author returns. Julie keeps her find a secret and the two grow closer and upon an evening when Julie has brought home a human that is also a casual acquaintanceship of Rampling’s (he’s a waiter at the only local eatery) the trio indulge in wine, joint and when some saltation music is put on the stereophonic system Rampling (in all probability pushing 60 - but still aphrodisiacal as netherworld) is coaxed into dancing with the couple and as Julie drifts back to the couch we see in her eyes something blood-related to jealousy or something not altogether sane going on behind them. Regrettably the plot thickens.
Up until this point manager François Ozon’s first English language feature is well constructed, what takes place beyond this percentage point is selfsame poorly managed and rather surprisingly second-rate in practically every sense of the word. Non once is there a moment in this film where in that respect is even the remotest trace of suspense - and the event that transpires is completely inexplicable regardless of whether it really happens or whether we are witness to events that Rampling invents for her new novel.
There is no explanation for this mundane offence, it is all covered-up with a matter-of-factness that leaves no reason to fear reprisal or God forbid whatever suspenseful thrills and the ending, grasps at some sort of Fellini like filial bond between the two women that is so far fetched and underdeveloped that it’s beyond ridiculous. I’ve read much praise roughly how this movie is executed in it’s third act, but I am baffled that anyone would be taken in so easily by such nonsensical mediocrity. This film held out a world of promise and delivered absolutely nothing. Not by whatsoever standard of any film genre.
The inexplicably facile ending withal, the performances here by the deuce lead actresses are selfsame well rendered, and they managed an edgy alchemy that kept you guesswork and intrigued, but both are disgracefully wasted like the finest French wine on an 17 year old American punk-rock drummer. This is no mistake on the part of this referee, I made a point of poring over it so as to be absolutely certain when I recommend that you pass on this celluloid altogether - Swimming Syndicate is the worst conceivable tease that will leave you cold.
Wow, I couldn’t agree more, I kept waiting for something scary or even interesting to befall between these two women - simply you’re abosolutely right. What does materialize is just stupid, absurd and confusing. I say this pool should be closed for remodeling.
Jeremy L.
Just caught this film on cable, and I truly enjoyed the ending. It leaves so much to the viewer, and truly got my dusty wheels turning. This movie is definitely Non a suspensful murder whodunit, and I don’t believe it was ever intended to be, despite any the prevue might propose.
August 11th 2008 · Read More · No Comments
Friends With Money is a wizardly and extremely funny look at the various ways in which money (or the want thereof) personal effects our lives and in particular our relationships with loved ones and Friends. Writer/Director Nicole Holofcener has also given us such fetching fare as Walking and Talking and Lovely and Amazing, and the fact that this keenly observant ensemble firearm was elect as the premiere cinema for the opening night gala of Sundance 2006 is testimony to the fact that Holofcener has arrived as not only a vibrant voice, merely a standard-bearer in the changing landscape of American cinema.
In it’s candor and vena jugularis jousting way of keeping the laughs coming fast and furious, Friends With Money compares favorably to the best work of both Woody Allen and Steven Soderberg. Her shaping comedic M.O. is to service up the punchline as the first-class honours degree words verbalised after slip away to a new scene. A devise that she doesn’t abuse, but uses to marvelously shady affect. Her writing also plays to the strengths of her cast in a way that is beyond preternatural. Part of this comes of having worked with certain couch members in the past, but it is no less awing to watch Frances MacDormand’s un-self-conscious loose cannon personae hardly go sour like runaway shopping cart full of dog doodey and dynamite.
As a director she just has that bent for knowing how to set her actors up so they’re swinging sure-footed wood in their wheelhouse and the characterizations ar so genuine that if you don’t know citizenry like these you surely have no doubt that they be. Conversely it could be argued that anyone could direct a cast of this calibre - Joan Cusack, Catherine II Keener and Jennifer Aniston join MacDormand as the female lens nucleus of this ensemble. A group non brought in concert by circumstance and conjunction (Ala. Henry M. Robert Altman) sort of a radical of friends who sustain remained close from high gear school and college well into early middle eld.
Though she’s never been a fibber, Holofcener has a edgar Lee Masters eye for this tolerant of group dynamic and dives into it’s many quirky dysfunctions with a fiendish joy that borders on the sadistic. Financially, the gals are all set well enough (Cusack’s character organism the obscenely wealthy one courtesy of family inheritance) with the exception of Aniston world Health Organization washed out as a high school teacher and now cleans people’s houses for a living. She is the poster child of the groups changeless concern, jocose and gossipmonger - she smokes potful, wallows in her low self-esteem and is in love (or at least still preoccupied) with a married gentleman’s gentleman with whom she carried on a short-lived flirting. Kind of a grown city version of her character in The Good Girl with a screw-it attitude and a bevy of rich friends to watch over and pass judgment her.
MacDormand, God love her, gobbles up the scenery as a successful designer of her own line of women’s heights fashion, whose own frowzy appearance has been exacerbated of late due to her ontogenesis aversion to shampoo. Her marriage is not a close and passionate one, but she loves her husband (St. Simon McBurney a Roman Polansky look-alike) whose effeminate manner is the fodder for gay jokes among the gals as well as wrongful assumptions regarding his sexual preference from brave men. MacDormand is uproarious in a running heave where she is all but unheeded by waiters who can’t help merely dote on her husband, "stool I receive another cup of coffee for the love of God - or has the man fallen off the face of the earth?"
It is Keener’s marriage that is in hassle. She and her husband are a screenwriting team in the midst of a base renovation that has caused them to become the pariahs of the neighborhood. Her married man (Jason Isaacs) isn’t the least morsel troubled by the fact that their neighbors, wHO had always been friends or at least favorable, are all of a sudden firing annihilating glares crosswise the street or through the hedges. Little things like this as comfortably as professional disagreements ar now speedily eroding the respective shores of the gulf that exists betwixt them.
The title of the photographic film is a bit shoddy in that money issues or more often used as subtext and don’t really amount to all that much in the plot. The issue of money as it relates to the film is best summed up by the idle musings of Cusack’s theatrical role. There is a setting where she asks Keener, "hypothetically" if she thought that they’d be interested in Aniston’s fibre as a friend if they hadn’t known each other for years and they happened to meet today for example. Woefully they both agree that the answer would credibly be no. Happily, Aniston’s character enjoys the last-place laugh in that respect.
Fortunately Friends with Money doesn’t inhabit on a lot of pathos, Holofcener had the good sense to agnise that with an opportunity like this, where laughs seem to come out of the woodwork, that she should capitalize. And that she does. They come by way of knee-slappers, medium-size chuckles all the way down to quick snickers, but Friends With Money will stimulate you smile throughout. Best of all the laughs arise by nature from the situations and with women this maven at risible timing the humor flows effortlessly, like a master composing for four talented performers, Friends With Money comes across much like comedic chamber music.
I saw this one at Showest and to be honest I think it was the best motion-picture show I proverb at the whole event - study that Cars. It even out Altmaned Altman’s loving tribute to Garrison Keillor - Prairie Home Fellow traveller, though I do take a soft spot in my warmheartedness for that film.
Loved it loved it loved it - can’t hold back til it comes out so I can go see it again.
I pretty a great deal liked this film, but I scorned the bits with Scott Caan, he’s just such a pecker in general, which is well discernible in his writing and directing debut Dallas 364. The scenes where he followed Aniston around hardly made no sense and I just wanted to boo every time he was on screen. Personally I can’t believe you gave this an A- I could see a B is Caan’s division was edited out, only he just ruined it for me. "Anyone who can play such a convincing scumbag, must be pretty adept at it in real life - Him and Josh Lucas were cut from the same cheap cloth and I wish they would both just exit. Trust me as harsh as this sounds the world would be better for it. Lousy tossers.
August 10th 2008 · Read More · No Comments
"The Good German" is based on a novel by Joseph Kanon with a script by Paul Attanasio. I’ll try out to dope out a bare lineation for you: War pressman Jake Geismer (George Clooney) returns to Berlin right after the end of World War ll. While running a news office in German capital years earlier, he had a lover named Lena River Brandt (Cate Blanchett). Reverting to cover up the victorious Allies’ Potsdam Conference (with Joseph Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, Winston Duke of Marlborough and Molest S. Harry Truman meeting to carve up Germany and Poland) he is disposed an officer’s uniform, a driver Incarnate Tully (Tobey Maguire), and a fake car. Is it but a coincidence that Cicero is Lena’s pimp?
Lena is biting, cold, and emotionally a fog. She and Jake might bear been lovers, but they never talked. Jake is shocked to find out that Lena has a husband wHO is treasured by both the U.S. and Soviet governments. Why does Lena hold back telling everyone her married man Emil is dead? The U.S. has chop-chop developed an appetite for sneaking German language rocket scientists out of Germany and Lena’s mathematician husband assisted one of their principal scientists. Emil and Lena know some dirty secrets about this world-renowned scientist’s experiments.
All Lena wants to do is arrest out of Berlin. Number one Tully, then Jake, will do anything to obtain the right papers and the money for this to befall. Is Lena grateful? Non by her attitude. Careless of her aloofness towards Jake, he gets beat up a few times and badgered bloody trying to help her. He will not give up! Lena is "soul-dead" because of what she had to do to survive in Nazi Federal Republic of Germany. Nothing matters to Jake except getting Lena out of Berlin. When Lena River finally tells him her dark secret, his terminal remark to Lena should have been:
"You *****."
So the morality of "The Good German" collapses with our hero of Alexandria Jake beingness duped. What is it about Lena that had poor Jake so plastered? Shouldn’t Lena River have been arrested alternatively of given the fortunate ticket out of town? Jake never really knew the woman he is risking his life for. As before long as you find out what Lena River did to survive, sympathy for Lena evaporates. Jake is a silly wild-eyed who, after helping Lena River, goes back to coating the Potsdam Conference.
Clooney and Soderbergh have a strong career-marriage (and a production company). Is this Soderbergh’s Valentine to George V, who fancies himself a 40s-style picture show star? The over-produced music score is terrible. The lousy, fuzzy photography only highlights the weakness of the story. There is no moral center. If Jake is so wild about Lena, why didn’t he maintain tabs on her? The archival footage and studio back lot sets give the film a slapped-together feeling. Some scenes look fake.
Maguire, grateful non to be playing a comic book character, overacts. Instead of being forceful, he screeches. Who believes he could be a bully and a procurer? Does his face telegraphy a humanity who would slug a woman in the belly?
Once over again Soderbergh is doing his "experimental" work – when has this of all time worked for him? Soderbergh does it all: the cinematography (victimisation an actual ‘40s lenses and exactly one camera!) and the editing, just he should have left hand those chores to others more skilled in black and edward D. White work and concentrated on directing.
The end scene homage to "Casablanca" made people laugh. Could this have been Soderbergh’s intention? In any case the Good German isn’t worth a hill of beans, much less the price of a theatre of operations ticket.
(We at zboneman.com are excited to welcome the fertile and multi-talented writer Victoria Alexander to our stave. Critic for http://www.filmsinreview.com/ and pundit and humorist responsible for for the candid and fearlessly singular "The Devil’s Hammer," her column appears every Monday on http://fromthebalcony.com. Start sour your week with a good hard laugh. It’s a thrill to have her on board. Victoria Alexander answers every email and bathroom be contacted directly at masauu@aol.com.)
August 7th 2008 · Read More · No Comments
Friday became quite the surprise hit a few years game and served as a spring board for theatre director F. Gary Gray (The Negotiator). It also showcased the considerable talent of Chris Tucker, as well as the likable charm of actor/writer/rapper Ice Cube. I infer a sequel was inevitable.
This prison term out, our hero Craig (Cube) moves to the suburbs when he finds out that his arch nemesis (played by the colossal Diminutive Lister Jr.) has loose from prison and is out to get him. While staying with some wealthy relatives, Craig discovers that the burbs can be simply as softheaded and unpredictable as the ghetto.
Next Friday starts off quite funny and slowly degenerates into an uneven hole. Although there are many bright moments, Next Fri seems to slip into the unfunny world of potty wittiness. Not that I’m deadened set against potty humor, but here, it scarce isn’t comical.
Cube remains a magnetic screen presence and his soundtrack provides all the attitude that his fans come to expect. Next Friday suffers from a few major problems. The screenplay lacks the thaumaturgy and astonishingly sweet tone of the original. Unluckily this pleasure trip also lacks the free energy of Chris Tucker and the sure hand guiding of F. Gary Grey.
Cube has proven ahead that he is a major talent (check out Three Kings). Next Fri, however seems to be a rush step backward with some very funny moments, just not about enough for a recommendation.
August 6th 2008 · Read More · No Comments
Only a few films based on Saturday Night Live skits have managed to successfully cross over to the big screen–the two best examples existence The Blues Brothers and Wayne’s World. Those films, as well as the skits upon which they were based, offered in full developed characters that were charismatic.
Enter A Night At The Roxbury, a flash-in-the-pan clowning starring Chris Kattan and Will Farrell. The films’ biggest job is that it’s based on a sketch that isn’t all that rummy to begin with. Kattan and Ferrell play the Butabi brothers, a brace of goosy club hoppers whose superlative aspiration is to open their possess nightclub. This tedious flick runs out of steam in no time, offering very few funny moments worthy of either actor. The scenes that do work spoof much better films such as Enounce Anything and Jerry Maguire.
Kattan delivers a ane note performance and is completely vexation. Ferrell is surprisingly likable but isn’t given anything worthwhile to do. Both actors expose great zip and laughable timing on SNL, but are altogether wasted in this picture show.
Alas, Roxbury will join It’s Pat as one of those skits turned feature film that precisely doesn’t edit out it. Hopefully this will serve as a moral to the folks at SNL. Mayhap they’ll stoppage taking a sketch that’s funny for all of five seconds and nerve-wracking to sustain it for ninety minutes. They’re sending people to the exits!
mira black esto te lo mado yo , the pipi butaby
A NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY IS THE MOST Astonishing MOVIE Always!!
I AM OBSESSED!
Kind of a Lame film, like lacing a deadened horse for two hours, still Farrell carries the thing, and it’s a bit of a shamed pleasure.
August 4th 2008 · Read More · No Comments
David Cronenberg is one of those filmmakers that makes films you either love or hate. With films like The Fly, Naked Lunch, Dead Ringers, and Break up (one of my favorites), there is usually no in-between with his style of storytelling.
His up-to-the-minute effort is a cyber-thriller that’s role Matrix, part Total Recall, and character The Game. All of this combines for a film that works because of pure imagination and a touch of originality.
Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a computer game designer in the near future who tests her new game, called Existenz, on a more-than-willing group of cyber-junkies. She soon finds herself as the mark of an assassination attempt.
Existenz is very flaky, but what gives the film its real kick is trying to figure out what is part of the game and what is reality. Cronenberg is forever criticized for being extraordinary, but that’s what sets him apart from former filmmakers.
You can either love or hate him, but this film proves that Cronenberg is anything but dull.
August 2nd 2008 · Read More · No Comments
Being the father of precocious pre-tween daughters wHO have memorized the lines from every tween-tastic show up on the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, it was fait accompli (French for screwed) that I’d be taking in the a la mode fish-out-of-daughter mermaid tale Aquamarine. Having become something of an authority on midsection school scheduling, I am a good judge of the quality of such fare and thus matte up duly compelled to be the unitary to accept this hummer for the team. My wish for this unitary to be some marvelous cross ‘tween Splash and Sponge Bob, did not come to pass, only all in all, it wasn’t all that atrocious.
In a clamshell the story takes place on some classy Florida beach club, where two inseparable 13 year old girls Claire (Emma Roberts) Hailey (Joanna JoJo Levesque) have just learned the nearly heinous news imaginable. Turns out that Hailey’s mother has accepted a job in Australia, and as the iI friends have no intentions of expectoration up (together they’ve managed to outlast the endless mocking disdainfulness meted out with witchy delight by the senior and more developed girls around this Barbie Playhouse of a pink and aquamarine earth.) But how? Play Determination Nemo in reverse? Naa too tap, been through to death. As the two moon about about reeling from this coup de grace of a tropical punch, the gods of fate step in. The resort is unexpectedly? hit by a Hurricane (the friendly, politically correct kind that don’t cause bolt down stars to go on television and declare that the President doesn’t care about black people) The kind that blow over harmlessly and deposit a mermaid in the swimming pool. Yo Snap!
I think the overriding lesson I took away from Aquamarine is that now I know that if you aid a mermaid in distress it entitles you to one wish (just so long as it doesn’t violate the laws of nature) There’s always a catch with fish. As Hailey and Claire ar the first-class honours degree to find the modern girl in the pool (her name is Cobalt blue - Sara Paxton) they are quick to make her conversancy and listen to her heartrending taradiddle. (They enunciate the best way to forget your own problems is to help somebody out with theirs - and Cobalt blue has a doozy) It seems that when the Hurricane hit, Aqua was in the middle of running away from home. As we learn, in Mer-world there is no such thing as passion, or at least this is what her mer-oldman has been trying to run up on her, to mollify her heartbreak at existence foresworn to wed a mer-fella for which she has no feelings. Alas, she is betrothed to some cosh of a sea-dweeb, so far she is the only when one unhappy about it as the coupling represents an advantageous circumstance for the parents involved - a good family amalgamation. Still Turquoise knew there was something missing - something she’s heard whispered across the waves. A crazy little thing called love.
So convinced was her Father that love was nothing more than some doughy old myth, he agrees to allow Aqua to choose her own Mer-mate if she can prove to him in the three years left earlier her marriage that indeed love exists. Something like that in any case. As a bonus for anyone uncoerced to serve her in her bay for flak, should they succeed they will be granted one wish, with the aforesaid fine print restrictions. It’s not like you throne just turn a pea into a bean. ( As the legend goes the reviewer wHO dares to use the most dated reference in a film made for 12 year olds gets a wish too - something like all the obscurity they want - yo snap).
Taking this material from an Alice Hoffman novel, screenwriters Jessica Bendinger (Bring It On) and John Quaintance (TV’s Good First light Miami) aren’t above a little titillation to get a joke, or to up the ante on the disquietude of Tween-fare - for example when the gals learn of the wish deal Claire casually inquires "if Aqua can buoy make boobs come out of hiding?" This got a laugh out of my 8 and 7 year olds respectively so I guess it was risible, but more than being risqué it is an accurate estimate of the self conscious inadequacy that girls (and boys) for that topic go through during this miserable transitional period in life. It was moments like this that made you translate that Bendinger and Quaintance worked hard to make this moving-picture show a keeper.
By way of introducing Aqua to the concept of love they single out an 18 year old lifesaver who has long been the subject of their pre-pub ponderings. Incidentally Aquamarine grows legs when she dries off her poop and so they assign their heads together all over some adolescent magazines and bat around the finer points of attracting this smoldering specimen of human hunkitude, though he’s a bit out Claire and Haileys bracket, he’s mer-made to order for the nicely developed Aqua. Boilers suit the elements of such teen phantasy are easily in order. Claire and Hailey are the model of wholesome all-American loyalty, and Turquoise the prototype princess for their vicarious passage into these rites that wait them in the not too remote future. How does it all move around out in the jubilantly ever subsequently department? Interestingly enough it is just original and inspired sufficiency for me to keep open my old lips sealed. Because Aquamarine didn’t subscribe itself in the least bit in earnest while at the same time delivering the goods for the target audience - complete with a nice little life moral about the true substance of dedication, I’m going to push my fries in.. The film knew exactly what it was about and never strayed from those boundaries. Y’know for a movie about a mermaid. Ergo Cobalt blue gets a true blue thumbs up. I got my wish, and I think my boobs regular grew a little bit.
Hilarious miraculous awesome, did I result anything extinct? Best pic I’ve seen since Sky High, Makes you believe in people. that’s something special, luvved it luvved it luvved it luvved it li li li li li
I took my girls toddler his one expecting it to be pure frivolity, but i actually became drawn into it, I guess there’s a 13 year older girl in all of us. Strange coming from a 34 year old man.
Aqua was so totally amazing I’m leaving to image it again today with some other friends I can’t wait to find the look on their faces, My favorite flick for ages,
The mean you sad about this film that struck me as so true, is the fact that it sendds a message around the rightful nature of loyalty - something kids this eld really receive a rugged time grasping and this film truly points out the realities of life - for a mermaid movie
Your brainsick dude, B- try D-, this was nothing more than than Disney channel slobber, which is where it will end up before long. You must take been in an frightfully good mode is all I can say
Matt
I wasa just on a different site around this show up and they called it shallow and stupid, and that it was for girls between 7-15. comfortably I’m in college and I possess a picayune girl world Health Organization wanted to see this movie she loved it and so did i and a bunch of friends. the only individual who is shallow and stupid is who ever wrote that. I loved it and i would recomened it.
July 29th 2008 · Read More · No Comments
The Libertine finally makes it to the heavy screen, having sat on the ledge for over a year (never a good sign - in particular when Reb Depp is topping the bill). Stephen Jeffrey’s adapts his own play - wherein Depp, stars in what I suppose could be considered a biopic about the life and decadent times of John Lackland Wilmot the second earl of Rochester. Wilmot was a hedonistic, bourgeoisie poet and playwright who exploited his social station in order to indulge his every erotic whim. Mayhap the original progenitor of the "if it feels good do it" ethos, he treats seventeenth century England as his own carnal playground, cavorting and fornicating with just about any creature willing.
John Malkovich is King Charles II, a friend and fan of the earls work world Health Organization employs him for playwright skills. Their relationship is often rocky as Wilmot’s reckless plume offends virtually everyone about him - insulting royalty as well as testing the boundaries of human decency.
The earl seeks pleasure all over and in every class, regularly insults his mate royals and their wives with impunity - smooth as hang as he is on doing and writing whatever he pleases, he understands the necessity of staying in the good favour of those whose influence is greater than his own.
There are moments where Wilmot’s exploits are somewhat entertaining, but there is a gloominess, both in the look of the film and the direction of the to a fault talky narrative that mires the film in ways that ar not knowing. The movie comes off so flat that regular the scenes of sexual debauchery lack anything resembling eroticism. In fact as Wilmot’s genital disease progresses if the film kit and caboodle at all, it’s as a cautionary argument for abstinence and monogamy.
Right before we see the ultimate decline of Wilmot he meets Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe Morton) whom the earl admits is rightfully bewitching because of her sheer intelligence. Though his relationship with her english hawthorn have been his only hope at halting his spiraling tailspin, Wilmot seems somehow thwarted by her and takes solace in retreating to whores and drink - even as his body deteriorates from disease and excess.
Again there is some amusive wit and humor establish here and there amid all the talk and debauchery. Depp however, seems uncharacteristically unable to get inside this character and shine whatever light on what makes him tick. Which is both disappointing and surprising given his penchant for taking damaged souls and dismantling the demons at their magnetic core. Ordinarily this is the sort of character that allows Depp to really sing as an actor, and I’d have to say that this is among his worst performances.
The set and costume design is good, some of the dialogue is sharp, simply the pacing is weak and the direction is as unfocused and sloppy as Depp’s performance. The earl does not desire you to like him, yet insists you hear his mean spirited commentary and views of his world. In that respect is sure enough a voyeuristical quality to watching the self-loathing hedonism of Wilmot, the job however, that the flick ultimately fails to address is wherefore on ground we should care.
