Cantankerous Critic Reviews On The Move

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Clash Of The Titans

The remake of "Clash of the Titans" takes a film that wasn't really all that good to begin with and manages to make it considerably worse. This big budget remake manages to suffer by comparison not only with the original, but even with the recent teen adventure series "Percy Jackson."

He's the son of zeus, but when we first meet him as a baby, he rises up from the depths of sea in a wooden box.
Which made me wonder, isn't this really poseideon's territory?
he grows up the son of a human fisherman until the soldiers of argos anger the gods, and hades (an embarassed looking ralph fieness who speaks like he's got a cough drop stuck in his throat) smashes the family boat and kills his entire family.
Liam neeson manages to look sillier and even more ashamed of his participation in what is clearly brainless schlock than sir laurence olivier famously felt about his role in the original. and ralph fiennes doesn't fare any better as hades.

Sam Worthington takes on the role of persius. Only instead of harry hamlin's bewildered pretty boy, worthington plays him as a petulent brat. he spends most of the movie denying the gifts the gods have given him, only delaying the inevitible because we all know he's going to use that magic sword and pegaseus eventually.

The script is a cliche o'matic that seems like it could have written by a computer. everyone speaks as though their next line could be a cathphrase. But the film is essentially a trip through the special effects department. but they don't add up to much either. Most of the monsters are just a big nebulous blob of scales and noise that are hard to really make out and don't have much personality and there's nothing to really dazzle or frighten us. The kraken's big finale manages to be a success almost by default because it's not quite as ineptly staged and directed as the others.

this film fails in almost every way. it doesn't work as a loving tribute to the original because the film makers don't bother to get the details right. For example, in the original the scorpions appear after calibous pierces a bag with the head of medusa inside and her blood spills on the ground. Here calibous' own blood causes the scorpions to go nuts. but in the next scene they've inexplicably been tamed into playful pachyderms.

Repo Men D+

Repo Men is what happens when you take a pretty dumb idea to begin with and simply repeat it over and over and over again over the course of nearly two hours. The setting is the near future, and the old organ donor lists are a thing of the past. Instead developments in technology have led to a private company supplying sick people with artificial hearts, lungs, kidneys, ears and whatever other body part that might go on the fritz. But if you fall behind on the payments, then you'll see a Repo Man like Jude Law come to your house to reclaim the company's property.

So we get a lot of scenes with Jude Law and his partner Forest Whitaker breaking into people's homes so they can cut out their livers right there on the spot while the victim screams in agony and blood spatters everywhere. Whitaker even does a quickie in a taxi in the middle of a family barbeque.

Sprinkled throughout are some flashes of dark humor that suggest the movie that might have been. The organ company has a retail store in the mall with a guy in a dancing lung costume. But the film never finds a second beat beyond the initial monty python esque "excuse me can we have your liver" scenes. Instead it degenerates into a ridiculous series of chases that culminates in a bizarre misguided sex/surgery scene where Law and his lover on the run perform open heart surgery on each other to wipe their names out of the company's system. Lots of far more interesting threads are left dangling or just dropped altogether in favor of the more conventional action scenes. Jude Law won some goodwill back with his fine work with Robert Downey Jr. in Sherlock Holmes. But this film suggests he's back to his old ways of forgettable mediocrities.

Our Family Wedding D-

Our Family Wedding could easily be titled "My Big Fat Dysfunctional Interracial Wedding." And it's one of the most racist, laugh free experiences I've had in quite some time. The film has lines like "love doesn't know how to tell time" that seem like they were rejects from the "Valentine's Day" script. And that's paired with a non-stop barage of ugly racist stereotypes.
Apparently in this movie's world, racist jokes are o-k as long as it's one minority telling jokes about another minority. No mexican stereotype is too old or two outdated to come into play here. I half expected the frito bandito and speedy gonzalez be part of the horn section of the mariachi band. But I guess what else do you expect from Carlos Mencia.
Only "ugly betty's America Ferrara emerges with some of her dignity intact, while poor Forest Whitaker gets stuck being humped by a viagra crazed goat. What a shame.

Remember Me F

Remember Me promises to be a thoughtful drama full of interesting characters, real relationships, and genuine human emotions but instead what we get is robbert pattinson acting like an insenstive jerk. Pattinson stars as a mopey college student full of disdain, contempt, and cynicism about the world. I have to say I felt exactly the same way about this movie. Pattinson is insufferable to be around for more than 5 mintues, but the film treats him like a prophet imparted with wisdom from on high. and then it commits the unforgivable sin of making him into a martyr by putting him in the twin towers on september 11th. this is one of the most cynical, manipulative, and despicable films I've seen in a long time. I hated hated hated hated this one.

Alice In Wonderland B-

Tim Burton's "Alice In Wonderland" is pretty much what you would expect from the master of the macabre humor. Burton has eschewed the candy colored Disney animated vision of the past and highlighted the off putting cragginess of the Wonderland of the original books. This is a dark and legitimately scary place full of things that don't work the way you think they're supposed to.

Burton has turned Alice into a late teen, and given her a message of girl power. Once she's down the rabbit hole she soon runs into Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter. Depp certainly highlights the insanity of the character. So instead of a delightful eccentric we get someone who seems genuinely off his rocker with a shock of bright red hair, and almost as much makeup as his willy wonka. Helena Bonham Carter seems to be having a grand old time as the queen of hearts with her digitally enlarged head and a fondness for beheading.

The effects are fun to watch, and what the story lacks in surprises it largely makes up for in the sheer look of the picture. If you already have a beloved adaptation of the classic book, this won't do anything to dislodge it from your hearts and memories. But It's a unique vision that deserves to be judged on its own terms.

Alice In Wonderland: B-

Greenberg A-

Greenberg takes some getting used to. But once you get on its peculiar wavelength it comes alive without all that mawkish sentimentality that might fell less talented filmmakers. Giving one of the best performances he has in years, Ben Stiller recalls a bygone somewhat edgier era before he was in pandering tripe like Night At The Museum 2 and Meet the Fockers. He stars as Roger Greenberg, a former rock musician fresh from a nervous breakdown who comes out to his brother's house in L.A. to housesit and get his proverbial shit together. Greta Gerwig is his brother's personal assistant Caroline. They both share something elementary in common, they both feel deep down they're too screwed up inside to be legitimately loved by anyone else. This manifests itself in self sabatoging behavior- immature and insensitive freak outs for him- random one night stands for her.

Maybe it speaks to the movie geek in me, but the film really started to win me over when Stiller meets up with an old friend and they go to a party. Someone asks him how he's doing and he says fair to middling, leonard maltin would give me about two and a half stars. As someone who used to pour over Leonard Maltin's movie guide each and every year to pour over his opinions, this peculiar line highlighted a fun kitchy level of detail that I hadn't expected.

Stiller keeps his stiller-isms in check and in support of the character. There are many many funny laugh out loud moments in "Greenberg." But it's also full of pain, disappointment, loss, and legitimate longing that give it a better more complex and real element. As far as writer director Noah Baumbach's films go, it doesn't quite top "The Squid and the Whale," but it's a whole lot better than Margot at the Wedding.

Greenberg A-

Brooklyn's Finest C

Brooklyn's Finest is a well crafted drama that feels all too familiar.
At this state of the game, the three interlocking story lines gimmick has become as familiar as an episode of Law And Order. Richard Gere is an old cop just counting the minutes until his retirement. He's saddled with the lazy man's training day scenario when he's stuck showing a rookie the ropes. But on his beat, the ropes include picking up a fishing pole, exploiting rules to allow you to keep the peace, and taking a really long lunch.

Ethan Hawke, looking uncomfortably gaunt, is a family man who has made a new house and the pursuit of money an idol he's willing to kill for in the name of providing for his family. He's Catholic and has what seems like a dozen children, with two more on the way and a moldy old overcrowded house that he desperately wants to move out of. So he only goes on cases where there's a high probability of stealing drug money.

Finally Don Cheadle is an undercover officer in the brooklyn projects who desperately wants a promotion, a desk job, and all the boring regularity that entails. But to get what he wants he's asked to betray his old cellmate and friend, a drug kingpin played by recent direct to dvd veteran Wesley Snipes.

Cheadle fares best taking a familiar story and doing his best to make the audience feel and care about the problems he's going through. Gere however acts too much like Richard Gere. He's on autopilot staring blankly into space while downing a shot of whiskey and watching the clock. So his inevitable conclusion feels a little forced because it doesn't really speak to the character and speaks more to Richard Gere having to end up as some kind of reluctant hero. Ethan Hawke is somewhere in the middle.

The problem is these three storylines don't really all add up to much. It's a fairly conventional story that leads up to a fairly conventional ending that pretty much ends like you expect. There's nothing here to surprise you and nothing to elevate it above just another mediocre run of the mill picture that you'll have trouble remembering the next day. It's a gentleman's C. But it's still a C.

Brooklyn's Finest: C

Cantankerous Critic Webcast

Watch my reviews of "Cop Out," Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer," and "The Crazies."

http://cbs2chicago.com/video/?id=68491@wbbm.dayport.com

Shutter Island B

Shutter Island is one hell of a mind bender where you and the characters never seem to know exactly what's real and what isn't. Sometimes this comes off as a legitimately interesting idea, other times it just feels like the filmmakers are fucking with you. Leonardo DiCaprio reteams with director Martin Scorsese again for this tale of a federal marshall investigating an escaped prisoner at the most imposing looking mental hospital on an island in the boston harbor.

This images in this movie exploit an inherent fear of psychology, and the impression that anyone could be declared crazy and tagged with that label for good.

The Wolfman B+

I must say the sight of a werewolf in tattered pants and a button down shirt is as exciting to me today as it must have been when Lon Chaney Jr. first burst on the scene almost 60 years ago. The new version of the classic "Wolfman" certainly has its problems, but I found it to be a real howler (in a good way.)

The story gives us our first dose of gore galore right away when we see a man ripped to pieces before our very eyes while walking alone in the woods. When are characters in horror films going to learn it's never a good idea to walk alone, even if you're the hero. But that's beside the point. We soon find out our first victim was the brother of famous actor Lawrence Talbot, played by Benecio Del Toro. He comes back to his family's rural and imposing country estate presided over by a paunchy looking and cheerfully aging Anthony Hopkins.

Del Toro vows to get to the bottom of his brother's death, and follows the chatter from the local pub down to a camp of gypsies in the woods during a full moon. The townsfolk blame the gypsies circus bear for the recent deaths, but soon the meeting is broken up by our old pal the werewolf. Del Toro fights with it and is bitten. The gypsies stitch him up, and when the next full moon comes around he's howling for blood and displaying an aversion to silver bullets.

The werewolf transformations are this film's bread and butter and they do not disappoint. I for one don't want to see an instantaneous transformation. I want to hear those bones creek and see the arms, feet and face transform inch by inch.
And these are the best ones I've seen on screen since An American Werewolf in London.

The acting here is somewhat lazy though. Del Toro never really digs into the emotional turmoil behind his wolf bitten character preferring to coast by on his dark look and brooding eyebrows. Hopkins is on autopilot as the same old authority figure who may know more about the werewolves than he's letting on. And Emily Blunt has little to do as the love interest except look concerned and be a shoulder to cry on and fantasize about devouring.

That said, director Joe Johnston keeps things moving at a swift pace, and he knows how to make all the creaky doors, candlelight and moonlit chases by carriage and horseback seem thrilling again. This is how a re-imagining should be done.

Valentine's Day D

Valentine's Day is like the "According To Jim" of Romantic Comedies- a film so witless and insipid you wonder how it got made in the first place. The film functions more as a stimulus package for actors in hollywood since the cast seems to feature half the working actors today (at least those who have graced a magazine cover in the past few years.) No one character develops beyond a one line sketch. Ashton Kutcher is the florist who still believes in love, Jennifer Garner is a perky elementary school teacher and his best friend, Jessica Biel is a harried lonely P.R. Flack, Julia Roberts is an army soldier trying to get home for Valentine's Day and so on and so on and so on. We even get geezer love in the form of Shirley McClaine and Hector Elizando.

The film takes place in some hackneyed greeting card netherworld where the whole world revolves around Valentine's Day and every single character mentions it in just about every conversation they have. At one point early in the film, Kutcher actually says "Love is the last shocking thing in the world today." From there, we get an endless stream of relationship bon mots that would have to improve to be sitcom level insights. Sure, there are relationship entanglements and disappointments and betrayals but they're the kind that be easily wrapped up with a little shoddy writing and yet another race to the airport.

Going into this movie I didn't expect believability, and I didn't expect it to be a great love story for all time. But I did expect professionalism and enough charm and wit to make the familiar situations go down easy. Instead this Valentine's Day confection just gave me indigestion like an off brand chocolate sampler you picked up at a dollar store.

From Paris With Love C+

John Travolta has left so many cinematic stink bombs in theaters for unsuspecting audiences in recent years that his name on the marque doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
So when I saw what looked from the trailers like a pretty generic looking action film staring Travota sporting his fu man chu badass goatee and a shaved head I did not have high hopes. The best I can say about From Paris With Love is that Travolta is actually the best part of the movie. It's a sublimely ridiculous film, and Travolta seems to understand this because he's clearly having a ball and getting both intentional and unintentional laughs in the process.

Travolta stars as Charlie Wax, another in a long line of secret agents who play by their own set of rules. Travolta seems to be about 20 to 30 pounds too heavy for the role, but the film asks him to dispatch half a dozen Asian thugs on the streets of Paris in hand to hand combat without breaking a sweat. I haven't seen a hero quite this indestructible since Bruce Willis in "Live Free Or Die Hard." And Travolta shares the same self aware smirk through the whole proceedings. I particularly liked one scene that has him chasing someone over the rooftops of Paris, rolling down inclines and jumping 50 foot gorges with the greatest of ease while looking like he could barely get up a flight of stairs without wheezing.

Travolta is paired with Reiss (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) an assistant in the U.S. Embassy trying to break into the spy game. Meyers, sporting a dodgy American accent, is there mostly to play straight man to Travolta's clowning while on the trail of drug dealers and terrorists.

But unfortunately the rest of the movie can't quite match Travolta's zany intensity. The action scenes are pretty generic, the shaky cam cinematography is a little old hat by now, and the filmmakers never really stage any great ludicrous set pieces other than a freeway chase involving a car bomb and Travolta trying to shoot it with a bazooka from a moving car. The time went by faster than I thought it would during its trim 90 minute running time. It's worth watching at 2am on HBO but it not quite special enough to spend actual money on.

From Paris With Love: C+

Dear John: C-

In the spirit of fairness and glass-half-full optimism let's talk about the good parts of "Dear John" first. Hard working character actor Richard Jenkins does a good job as John's autistic father. His performance is touching without being to actor-y, and even though he says very little, his eyes speak volumes that are only amplified by his shrugs and discomfort outside the home base of his own house and his coin collection. I wish they'd made the movie about him instead.

Amanda Seyfried is pleasant to look at. Her doe eyed innocence a shimmering beacon of true love. And the Charleston, South Carolina locales are beautiful especially when viewed from the frigid cold of Chicago.

But sadly the love story here falls flat. Channing Tatum is surely going to be a welcome piece of eye candy for the ladies in the audience. But he's pretty much a big dumb lunkhead here as a soldier named John on a two week break back home from his duties overseas. And in what seems like milliseconds he falls in love with Seyfried, a young college student home on spring break.

Over the course of two weeks on the beach they are supposed to have forged a love that will last a lifetime. But this chemistry free couple has about as much passion as two sleepy bank clerks in a teller window.

When time comes for them to go their separate ways, they promise to write each other faithfully. Which leads us to another problem. For a movie that relies on the beauty and prose of love letters, its letters are remarkably pedestrian. They lack prose, poetry or any passion of any kind.

These impossible love stories are supposed to carry you away and sweep you off your feet. If they're particularly good, fans might be tempted to read them or see them over and over again to cherish those moments. But it all rings hollow here. And the filmmakers seem to be particularly proud of their coin metaphors, because they use the same one twice as a metaphor for war.
Believe me, it doesn't get any better.
And I don't think this one would benefit from repetition either.

Dear John: C-

Edge Of Darkness: B-

Edge of Darkness could essentially be titled "Mel Gets Mad V." We've seen Mel as the righteously pissed off warrior out for justice and out for blood more times than we can count. But he always brings just enough of a hard edged some might say masochistic twist to the proceedings as it seems the only way to get this guy fired up is to let him wallow in agony.

Here Mel is a Boston police officer who sees his only child gunned down on his front porch right in front of him. Now his daughter may or may not be invovled in some shady dealings involving a powerful defense contractor and government corruption.

And after a little staring at the wall with his dead daughter's blood still all over him, Mel decides to act. Now Director Martin Campbell is able to put together a very tightly constructed thriller. There's lots of dark alleys, underground meetings, and Mel beating people up to get them to talk. But to be honest Mel doesn't kick as much ass here as the trailers make him out to.
Most of the time its a flash of violence that shocks you out of your seat, and then its over and Mel's back looking for more clues. The big bloody climax is appropriately action packed, but it tended to drag a little in between Mel's encounters.

And on a side note, Danny Huston needs to get himself a new agent. He's played the shadowy government type one too many times, and his very presence lets the whole audience know that he's up to something and he's gonna get his ass kicked by mel by the end.

Edge of Darkness: B-

Youth In Revolt

"Youth in Revolt" is a collection of half baked, yet interesting, ideas in search of a movie. Based on a well known cult novel, the film casts Michael Cera as a horny yet shy teenager who wants nothing more than to have sex, but has absolutely no idea how to go about it.

But he seems to meet his soulmate at a trailer park in young Portia Doubleday. She's just as literate and nerdy as he is, but she longs for someone with a little more of an edge. She wants the rebel who will simultaneously fulfill her fantasies of freedom, and help her rebel and form a clean break from her domineering fundamentalist parents.

To win her heart, Cera concocts a rebelious alter ego for himself that seems tailor made to win her heart.
Cera is such a poster boy for shy awkward nice guys that it's inherently a little amusing to watch him try to be bad. And his particular vision of a bad boy is a french white loafer wearing playboy with an inspector clouseu like moustache who smokes incessently and cares little for the inconsistent rules imposed by his divorced dysfunctional parents played by Jean Smart and Steve Buschemi.

But unfortunately the idea sounds a lot more fun on paper than it actually is up there on the screen. In the task of trying to condense the 400 page novel down to feature length, they've unfortunately lost the spirit in the shuffle. So subsequently scenes that should have built up to a fulfilling climax are left to kind live or die on their own in a vaccum. And they don't add up to much in the end. It's just a story that kind of meanders along jumping from one misguided exercise in revolt to another.


Youth In Revolt: C