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