Tyler Perry is a wildly successful actor, director, producer and all round mogul whose movies make oodles of money but so far have received very little love from the award gods. His latest film, “For Colored Girls”—an adaptation of the Tony Award nominated Broadway play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf”—is his most ambitious film to date but will it be enough to elevate Perry from the ranks of money maker to award winner?
Directing a sprawling ensemble cast Perry (who adapted Ntozake Shange’s original script) weaves together the stories of eight African-American women as they deal with personal issues like the search for love, rape, emotional abandonment, infidelity, sexual repression and abortion. Perry retains the play’s poetic approach, mixing naturalistic dialogue and stark real-life drama with free, impressionistic verse.
“For Colored Girls” is Perry’s most accomplished and ambitious movie to date. It’s risky material, from the dire situations most of these women find themselves in (may I suggest group therapy for the cast?) to the style of language, which is likely to confound and confuse many viewers, and while he has stayed true to the tone of the play, I couldn’t help but think that this type of material would work better on stage. Much of the poetic language is beautiful or evocative—a car is described as “smelling of alcohol and ladies in heat”—but despite good performances from the cast the writing often seems too delicate to be blown up for the big screen.
Couple that with Perry’s melodramatic touch and “For Colored Girls” loses much of its importance of message to overwrought scenes and clichés. The play was a series of monologues and the movie does not improve on the form by intertwining them or creating worlds for the characters to exist in. The choppy segues from character to character feel contrived and as a result, so do the situations that frame the monologues. Individually the stories may have power but as hard as it may be to believe after a while the viewer gets immune to the endless and continuous misery inflicted on these characters.
“For Colored Girls” earns points for ambition and good performances from the cast, particularly Thandie Newton as a troubled sex addict, Macy Gray as the movie’s Acid Queen and Phylicia Rashad as the wise Gilda, but as bold a step as this may be in Perry’s career it isn’t nuanced or interesting enough to gather much steam come awards time.
You probably went to school with some of them. Or maybe when you see them on the street you cross to the other side. They are headbangers, also known affectionately as ‘bangers. You know the type, long greasy hair with heavy metal t-shirts, who can usually be seen shot-gunning beer and yelling “just giver!” at the top of their lungs. “Fubar 2,” the long awaited follow-up to the fabulous 2002 uber-low budget mockumentary of almost the same name, reintroduces us to two ‘bangers, Dean (Paul Spence) and Terry (David Lawrence), who put a western twist on “Goin’ Down the Road” and leave their old Calgary stomping grounds for the promise of jobs in Fort McMurray. Let’s face it, these guys are easy targets for ridicule, and in the first film director Michael Dowse didn’t go for the easy jokes. He let us get involved with the characters and get to like them before dropping some very heavy plot developments on us. Unfortunately the second time around feels a bit more mean spirited, as though we’re laughing at Terry and Dean instead of with them. It’s still amusing, just not as poignant as the first film.
In 1986 Rob Reiner made one of the all time great movies about being a kid. “Stand By Me” was an exercise in dark edged nostalgia. Twenty years later he’s revisiting the Eisenhower and Kennedy years but leaves the dark stuff behind. “Flipped” is coming-of-age “Rashômon” filtered through “Leave it to Beaver” with a dash of “The Wonder Years” thrown in for good measure.
Set in 1960 the story begins when Bryce and his upwardly mobile family move in across the street from the Bakers and their daughter Juli (Madeline Carroll). It’s love at first sight for six-year-old Julie, who flips for Bryce’s “dazzling eyes.” Of course Bryce wants nothing to do with her; she is, after all, a girl. Juli won’t give up, however, pursuing—some might say stalking—him straight through till grade seven. Bryce does everything he can to dissuade her, until she finally gets the hint, and then, of course he develops a big time crush on her.
Told in a he-said-she-said structure, Juli and Bryce detail the day-to-day developments in their lives from their very different points of view. Much of the film’s humor comes from the discrepancies in the way each of them perceive the way their relationship is going. The back-and-forth is a trick that should get old but somehow, because of the writing but more than that, because of the charm of the young cast.
Reiner has cast extremely well, particularly in the case of Madeline Carroll who plays Juli. It’s a tough role, one that requires the audience to believe that she is wise and articulate beyond her years. We’ve all seen precocious kids on screen before, but the thing that separates her performance from other annoying kid’s performances is the work she does behind her eyes. You can see her working through the complexities of life, trying to figure out relationships and the way the world works. It’s a remarkable and endearing performance that carries much of the movie.
The rest of the cast—Anthony Edwards, Penelope Ann Miller, John Mahoney, Aidan Quinn and Rebecca De Mornay—are effective but none feel irreplaceable in the way that Carroll does.
The he-said-she-said format won’t be for everyone, but the characters, the gentle humor of the script, the performances and the soft nostalgic glow that Reiner dabs on every frame is very appealing.
We are gathered here today to mourn the death of the career of Brendan Fraser. In the early 1990s Mr. Fraser’s career appeared vibrant and healthy in films like “Gods and Monsters” and “Mrs. Winterbourne,” but following a career high with box office champs like “The Mummy” his career began a long, painful battle with bad material and began to look as green as the green screens it often performed in front of. With the release of “Furry Vengeance,” the battle is lost. A career, who once shared the screen with Oscar winners like Shirley MacLaine and legends like Ian McKellan, is now content work opposite angry raccoons. R.I.P. the career of Brendan Fraser.
In “Furry Vengeance” Fraser plays Dan Saunders a well meaning real estate developer who has moved his family from Chicago to the middle of nowhere to oversee the building of a subdivision. His contract is for one year, but his supposedly eco friendly, “green” boss has a different idea. He wants to clear cut the surrounding forest and build a new suburb. To prevent the destruction of their homeland the forest’s animals, led by a raccoon who fancies himself a fuzzy William Wallace, leads a campaign of psychological warfare on Saunders.
“Furry Vengeance” is as direct-to-DVD worthy a movie as will be released theatrically this year. Ten minutes in I was wishing the movie would take a sudden turn from flaccid family friendly fare into more “When Animals Attack” mode. Nothing would have pleased me more than to see the animals rise up against the filmmakers, hijack this movie and make it a true revenge film. Twenty minutes in I was wishing I had claws, like the little furry creatures in the film, so I could claw my own eyes out.
I know “Furry Vengeance” is meant for little kids, but kids deserve better than this. In a twelve month period that has given us “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Where the Wild Things Are,” movies that raised the bar for children’s entertainment, a return to this mush-headed-slapstick is taking a giant step backward. With the Laugh-O-Meter™ set somewhere between the hit-in-the-crotch gags of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and a “Knock Knock” joke, it aims to amuse developing brains but it telegraphs every joke and by the time Fraser shows up in a pink track suit with the words Yum Yum on the bum, all hope is lost.
The cast is uniformly bad, but it is Fraser who makes the biggest impression. He’s acting at a level that, I’m sure, The Three Stooges would consider over-the-top. Watching this it’s hard to imagine that this is the same actor who once dazzled in “Gods and Monsters.” Perhaps my reports of his career death are, as Mark Twain once said, “greatly exaggerated,” but he has to try harder if he wants to keep his career off the critical list.
Go see (if you must) “Furry Vengeance” with low expectations, but be warned, it’s worse even than you think it is.
Last year French cinematographer-turned-director Pierre Morel brought us “Taken” a violent little Euro-centric thriller about a father who would do anything—and I mean anything—to retrieve his daughter from some very bad men. It was a down-and-dirty little flick, classed up somewhat by the presence of Liam Neeson in the lead role, and it became an unexpected lightening-in-a-bottle hit. Morel is back behind the camera with a new actioner called “From Paris With Love.” Unfortunately lightening has not struck twice.
Like “Taken” the story is simple and leaves the action to be the real selling point. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is James Reece an aide to the US Ambassador in Paris who moonlights on the side for the FBI. He is given the biggest assignment of his secret agent career when he is partnered with Charlie Wax (John Travolta), the typical unorthodox but effective undercover movie spy. Together they go on a rampage across the streets and embassies of Paris to put a stop to a terrorist attack. Carnage ensues.
“Taken” worked not just because the action sequences were out of control, but because audiences had some empathy for Liam Neeson’s character as he was kicking butt across Europe. It was a personal mission; he was trying to get his daughter back. Here, however, Meyers and Travolta are a shadowy part of the war on terror and seem to enjoy the bloodshed a little too much. This time it’s not personal, it’s psychotic and even the inclusion of a couple of “Royale with Cheese” “Pulp Fiction” call backs won’t make us identify with these two.
“From Paris with Love” has some cool action scenes—a killing spree in a stairwell is tense and exciting—but the paper thin story, cardboard characters and silly red herrings suck much of the fun from the movie.
John Travolta is bordering on Nicolas Cage territory here. He seems to be trying his hand at Cage’s extreme acting style, working some over-the-top theatrics into his performance, but overall he’s simply not that convincing as a devil-may-care secret agent. He can do menacing. We saw it in “Pulp Fiction”, “Blowout” and more recently in “The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3” but here he seems to be trying a too hard.
But at least he’s trying, which is more than can be said for Jonathan Rhys Meyers who hands in one of the more wooden performances seen on film so far this year. My advice to him: Beware of woodpeckers.
This is only Morel’s third film as a director and already he has established a set of trademarks, for better and for worse. On the plus side, he knows how to stage an action sequence and has clearly watched more than a few John Woo movies. He also has an eye for shooting in urban spaces, but compared to “Taken” with its beauty shots of Paris, “From Paris with Love” looks like it could have been made almost anywhere. With the exception of the odd Eiffel Tower shot, location wise it’s rather generic, which it shouldn’t be when you are shooting in one of the most beautiful and interesting cities in the world.
On the minus side he’s already becoming somewhat predictable. In his movies the dinner scene always seems to end poorly for the hostess.
Despite a huge body count and a screen littered with empty shell casings “From Paris with Love” isn’t as exciting or as interesting as “Taken.”
The most surprising thing about “Frozen” a new horror film from “Hatchet” director Adam Green, is that it isn’t a Canadian movie. With its vast vistas of snow, wolf attacks, two Canadian leading men and body parts getting stuck to cold steel poles, “Frozen” has Great White North written all over it.
Set on a remote ski hill in Massachusetts “Frozen’s” story is very simple. Three snowboarders—Parker (Emma Bell), her boyfriend Dan (Kevin Zegers), and his best friend Lynch (Shawn Ashmore)—get stranded on a ski lift fifty feet in the air after the hill has shut down. The resort, only open on the weekends, won’t reopen for another five days and unless they can find a way to safely get off the lift they will freeze to death.
This is situational horror. There are no monsters, just bad timing and bad decisions that force the unlucky trio to face their darkest fears—the dark, the cold, heights and the worst foe of all, Mother Nature. Director Green subtly ups the ante every minute of the film’s running time, believably building horror, both physical and psychological. Not that much happens and the action is at a minimum but “Frozen” is an extremely tense movie.
Green makes good use of the stark surroundings and sound design. I’m not sure what they used to create the squishy sound that dominates one grisly scene, but it proves conclusively that sometimes what you hear is scarier than what you see.
On the downside, the barebones story doesn’t demand the full feature length treatment. In the early moments of the film, once the lift stops suddenly, it feels like the movie will movie along quickly. Once the action starts—or, more accurately stops—the fear and tension build a little too rapidly. The three friends fall apart in seconds, panicking too soon. Green let that bit of pacing get away from him, but soon has the real horror start and gives them a reason to be on edge.
Still, at ninety minutes “Frozen” feels padded, particularly during the, occasionally interminable small talk the friends makes to take their minds off their predicament. Too often it feels like filler and worse, frequently sounds like acting school monologues. The prattling gets tiresome as the movie nears its final moments and a bit of trimming here and there could have brought this down to a lean and mean eighty minutes.
Green has pulled good performances out of the actors, particularly from newcomer Emma Bell, who avoids the usual pitfalls of being the only female presence in a horror film.
“Frozen’s” tense story of survival will, at the very least, make you think twice about that trip to Whistler next year. Maybe Myrtle Beach would be a better choice…
It’s quite a year to be a talking fox in Hollywood. After a long absence these carnivorous mammals are coming back strong with a surreal cameo in “Antichrist” (“Chaos Reigns!”) and now a starring role in a charming new stop-motion animation from director Wes Anderson, “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”
Loosely based on a Roald “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Dahl story of the same name, the story involves Mr. Fox (George Clooney) a smooth talking chicken thief who is part Danny Ocean, part John Robie (look it up!). When a chicken run goes wrong and he and Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) get busted he tries to go straight, but after buying a tree house he can’t afford he decides to return to a life of crime for one last big job. He sets his sights on the area’s three biggest and baddest farmers: Boggis (Robin Hurlstone), Bunce (Hugo Guinness) and Bean (Michael Gambon).
This has been an extraordinary year for kid’s filmed entertainment. “Up,” “Where the Wild Things Are” and “Coraline” are about as good as it gets when it comes to family films. They are movies that don’t talk down to their young audience; treat them with respect and give them a rollicking good time. You can add “Fantastic Mr. Fox” to that list.
Wes Anderson’s mix of deliberately old-school stop motion animation—you can see the fur moving where the animators have touched the puppet characters—gentle humor and action is unlike any other movie this year. In its pacing and style it is decidedly old fashioned, a throw back to the colorful Rankin and Bass animated Christmas specials, but without the schmaltz. I doubt you’d find an existential line like, “Now he’s just another dead rat in a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant” in any other vintage stop motion film for kids and it is that edge that sets “Fantastic Mr. Fox” apart from the pap, like the recent “Astro Boy,” that passes for kid flicks.
You can tell it’s a Wes Anderson film because it’s loaded with his trademark subjects—sibling rivalry and unusual parental figures abound—and it has his quirky sensibility stamped all over it—there’s a transcendentally meditating fox!—but it is the vocal performances that really bring it to life.
George Clooney brings charm, wit and warmth to Mr. Fox. He’s an unpredictable character, smooth one minute, a wild animal the next, and Clooney gives him a nice sense of mischievousness. Meryl Streep doesn’t have as much to do, but it’s worth the price of admission to hear this celebrated actress (15 Oscar nominations and 2 wins) say, “Am I being flirted with by a psychotic rat?” The deliberate, naturalistic dialogue also comes easily to supporting cast members Bill Murray, Michael Gambon and Eric Anderson (brother of Wes) who makes his debut as Kristofferson, the athletic cousin.
Its stylish looks, engaging story and over-all wonky feel made me very happy. There are few kid’s films as fantastic as “Mr. Fox.”
There’s a lot of hooey in “The Fourth Kind.” Alien abductions and junk science but the biggest nose stretcher occurs just under a minute into the film. Milla Jovovich intros the movie calling herself “actress Milla Jovovich.” She’s a lot of things—beautiful woman, check, talented model, check, nice to hang out with, probably—but after seeing “The Fourth Kind” I have a hard time understanding how she and, let’s say Meryl Streep, can lay claim to the same job description.
Like “Paranormal Activity,” and “The Blair Witch Project” “The Fourth Kind” is a fictional story that uses alleged documentary footage as the basis for the story. In this case it is a therapist’s session tapes, police surveillance video and interview footage with psychotherapist Dr. Emily Taylor, that forms the backbone of the film’s case for the existence of alien abductions.
Set in modern-day Nome, Alaska, the movie stars Jovovich as Dr. Taylor, whose husband was murdered in their bed as she lay helplessly nearby. Despite her emotional trauma she elects to continue her practice, which involves hypnotherapy and repeatedly telling people to “Take a deep breath and calm down.” When one of her patients kills his family and then himself, and others complain of insomnia and seeing an evil owl—How do we know its evil? Why, ominous music plays whenever it is onscreen, that’s how!—she comes to the only conclusion a trained medical professional could reach—they’ve all been abducted by aliens and then returned to earth!
It seems Nome has a bit of a reputation as a hotbed of alleged ET activity, with dozens of people going missing there each year, never to be heard of again. Apparently even the FBI, after multiple investigations into the disappearances, hasn’t been able to pinpoint why so many people vanish from the area. I don’t know either, but I would guess Sarah Palin has something to do with it.
If “The Fourth Kind” was made in the 1950s by Roger Corman it would have been called “Aliens in Alaska” (or maybe the punchier “Alaskan Aliens”) and it might not have taken itself so seriously. Also, Corman would have known that you can’t make an alien picture and NOT SHOW ANY ALIENS! It’s an unbreakable movie rule, like the one that says the first person to die in a slasher flick will always be the trashy prom queen. Also Corman might have been able to draw a performance out of Jovovich, who is completely out of her emotional depth here. If I was her agent I’d suggest sticking to the action flicks.
In its favor “The Fourth Kind” (which is an even closer encounter than the third kind) has some nice structural work, inventively blending the “real” footage in with the dramatized scenes, but since the director never met a dolly or hand held shot he didn’t love, much of the film’s style gets lost in hectic camerawork.
“The Fourth Kind” isn’t as successful as its other “real life” cousins, “Paranormal Activity” and “The Blair Witch Project.” It does, however, take an inventive idea and push it toward camp by taking itself WAY too seriously.
If you don’t know who Channing Tatum is you’re probably older than sixteen. If you’re curious go look in your daughter’s bedroom right now. To the left of the Zac Efron shrine is very likely a poster of the buff young actor. Compared to Johnny Depp and Efron Tatum is a minor deity, a good looking guy whose main claim to fame has been a couple of teen dance movies and a guest spot on CSI: Miami. At twenty-nine-years-old the chiseled actor is now straddling the line between teen fare and adults roles. He’s had a couple of stabs at adult fame in films that failed, but his new one, Fighting, co-starring Terence Howard, is a good transitional movie for him; a film with enough action for the kids and enough grit for the adults.
Story wise Fighting doesn’t break any new ground. It’s a classic underdog story. It’s Billy Elliot with choke holds or Rocky without the gloves. Tatum is Shawn MacArthur a scrappy New York City street kid with a troubled past. When he crosses paths with small time hustler Harvey Boarden (Terrence Howard) the two go into bare knuckle fight business—Harvey has the contacts, Shawn has the fists of fury. Shawn becomes a street fighting champion but his success and money don’t ease his troubled mind.
Set in the down-and-dirty NYC unseen since movies like Across 110th Street, Fighting is the New York Rudy Giuliani tried so hard to sanitize. Hustlers are everywhere, underground fighting is big business and nothing good ever happens after 10 pm. It’s a nice, unsentimental backdrop to the story, and with handheld camera in hand director Dito Montiel takes pains to use the cityscape to create a volatile and exciting atmosphere.
In terms of volatile Fighting certainly lives up to its name. The ouch-inducing fight scenes are brutal in their realism, with every smack and punch lovingly recorded in bone splitting surround sound. They are the film’s center pieces, but the fight scenes don’t get in the way of the story or vice versa. There’s a nice balance between the action and narrative, although a love story slows the momentum in the second half.
The film is jam packed with naturalistic performances. Nicely cast supporting roles like Roger Guenveur Smith who seems to be channeling Christopher Walken as the sleazy bookie Jack Dancing and the scene stealing Alba Guzmán as the nosy grandmother are complimented by effective background actors (like Loud Club Wannabe and Flawless Woman Number 1) who effectively add to the film’s realistic mood.
Tatum isn’t likely to win any trophies for his work unless the Elliptical Trainers of America bring back their Buff Awards this year but he brings his character to life, even giving him a few unexpected dimensions. Who knew street fighters were so polite?
The one to watch is Terrence Howard, who after a disappointing run of average work in films like August Rush and even Iron Man, hands in an edgy performance that mixes street smarts with some effeminate mannerisms to create his most memorable character since Hustle and Flow.
Fighting is a better than expected drama, that, while somewhat predictable, hooks the viewer with interesting characters and UFC-style flying fists.
