Hoodweekend:Movie review

***/*****
Everyone has heard the story of Little Red Riding Hood (Anne Hathaway) – sweet innocent kid with fashion sense, the big bad wolf (Patrick Warburton) - a cross-dressing carnivore, the unsuspecting feeble old granny (Glenn Close), and the mighty woodsman (James Belushi). It’s a classic tale of good vs. evil with good triumphing in the end. Or so we have been led to believe all this time. Detective Nicky Flippers (David Ogden Steirs) doesn’t think this is such an open and shut case and he thinks this “domestic disturbance” may be linked to the “Goody Bandit” who has been stealing recipes for all the sweats and yummies in the forest. He and Chief Grizzly (Xzibit) question all the suspects starting with Red.

It turns out that everyone has a different version of what happened and each account reveals some secrets about the storyteller (some more interesting than others). When all the pieces of the puzzle are revealed, are they any closer to the truth about the Goody Bandit? Or do they need to review the stories to see the common threads?

They have done a marvelous job spinning a fairy tale classic into a modern crime drama with lots of humor. The writing is clever, funny and once you get past the first song it zips along at a pace only cartoons could keep up with. The supporting characters are very entertaining from Twitchy (Cory Edwards) the squirrelly side-kick with way too much energy, to Boingo (Andy Dick) the fuzzy long-eared bunny, Japeth the Goat (Benjy Gaither) who sings instead of speaking, and Woolworth the Sheep (Chazz Palminteri) an informant in sheep’s clothing. Plus you get a gaggle of police creatures, foreign bad guys and woodland inhabitants - they all add humor and visual interest.

This is definitely designed to hold up to multiple kid viewings because there is so much going on that you would notice something different each time. It does have a lot of adult humor that may go over the heads of little children but not so much that it’ll lose their attention.

Last Holiday:movie review

***/*****
If you were given only three weeks to live, would you A) hightail it to Venice and spend the remaining 21 days in the Presidential Suite of Il Palazzo, sipping Chianti and gorging on Linguini Vongole, all while gazing on the majestic Grand Canal, B) throw yourself a pity party and hand out parting gifts to friends and family with the requisite question, "Why me?" written all over them, or C) speed up the inevitable and jump off the nearest bridge? How you answer the aforementioned question will not only reveal whether you're a cynic or an optimist, but how well you'll respond to the new romantic comedy, Last Holiday, starring Queen Latifah.

Like Fun with Dick and Jane, The Producers and Yours, Mine and Ours, Last Holiday is Hollywood's fourth consecutive remake to hit theatres in nearly a month. Based on the 1950 British comedy of the same name, starring the venerated Alec Guinness, Last Holiday reexamines the classic what if theory, only this time with a female character in the lead role.

Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah) has never been lucky in love, nor in her professional life. In fact, Georgia's one of those rare women who's so sweet and unassuming that every night she dines with a motherless neighbor kid (Jascha Washington, Antwone Fisher), preparing him a multitude of gourmet treats while watching the Emeril Lagasse Show, without even tasting the fruits of her labor. So, when a bump on the head midway through a conversation with a gorgeous appliance salesman named Sean (LL Cool J) leads to the grim diagnosis of a potentially life-threatening brain tumor, Georgia's life seems like it could be over even before it's begun.

Of course, when Georgia's health insurance won't cover the operation to remove her brain tumor, and her vile boss ignores her as she tries to tell him she's dying, Georgia decides to cut her losses and cashes in her savings for the vacation of a lifetime. Arriving in style via helicopter to the posh Grand Hotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, a picturesque resort in the Czech Republic, Georgia immediately strikes up a friendship with the gregarious staff, including an acclaimed French chef named Didier (Gérard Depardieu), who takes a liking to the New Orleans native when she orders an entire night's worth of specials just for dinner. But all this adoration doesn't sit well with Matthew Kragen (Timothy Hutton), a wealthy retail magnate, who thinks Georgia's nothing more than a corporate spy posing as a fun loving socialite, in order to expose an unauthorized business deal for a new group of Kragen department stores.

Although the film's premise leaves much to the imagination, in order for a romantic comedy like Last Holiday to truly succeed the following criteria is expressly required: a witty script filled with humor, insight and poignancy, a talented cast well versed at juggling comedy and drama, and an experienced director who's shrewd enough to trust his instincts without going overboard and draining the life out of an otherwise good-humored film. Despite the fact that Last Holiday never quite fulfills the aforementioned list, milking laughs from nearly half a dozen one-liners that are neither fresh nor snappy, its heart remains in the right place, even when it fails to generate little more than sympathetic giggles from its target audience.

Fans of the original Last Holiday will likely be disappointed by the way in which screenwriters Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman (Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas) have taken J.B. Priestley's clever script and turned it into a modern-day fairytale, complete with a designer makeover montage and cameo appearances by Emeril Lagasse and Smokey Robinson. Of course, anytime Hollywood remakes a film that is considered a classic, there are always those skeptics who are so hell-bent on labeling it a fraud that they spend the entire movie comparing it to the original without even appreciating what it gets right. The whole point of a movie like Last Holiday is to inspire viewers to lighten up, seize the moment and embrace life's monumental ups and downs with courage, grace and an unwavering sense of humor. And that's exactly what Last Holiday does, thanks to director Wayne Wang (Maid in Manhattan), who keeps the film moving without it becoming too sentimental.

Still, much of the film's heart comes from its stellar international cast, who infuse Last Holiday with a palpable sense of joy. In one of his last performances before retiring (Please say it ain't so), French superstar Gérard Depardieu proves once again why there's no role he can't conquer, elevating his character from a haughty, temperamental chef to someone the audience can actually relate to. While Ranjit Chowdhry (Mississippi Masala) scores big laughs, delivering a memorable performance as Georgia's high-strung neurologist. As for Last Holiday's star, Queen Latifah, not only does she up the film's status from genre fluff to heartwarming romantic comedy with merely the power of her presence, but she creates such a fun, irresistible character that viewers are happy to follow her even on a slightly turbulent Last Holiday.

The chronicles of Narnia:Movie review

****/*****

Wow, this has got to be one of the longest damned titles ever for a movie. It’s good that they’re pushing the Narnia part as it’d never succeed with people trying to remember the title of it, that’s for sure. Welcome to the Next Big Franchise, well, so the studio hopes. I have my doubts though, to be honest. I think this is a great film, I think it’s an amazing book series, but I can’t see the fervor for this series that kid’s have for the Harry Potter films and books. Which will be a shame as this is a great series, but, if nothing else, maybe some new people will get into reading the entire series from this film. As adaptations go, you can’t get much closer than this does, which is a blessing, but can also be a curse.

It’s World War II and the Nazis have targeted London. The city isn’t safe and so the children are shipped out to the country for safety’s sake while the parents remain and watch the skies. Four young children are sent off by their mother to stay with a reclusive professor and his housekeeper far away from the falling bombs, though to the children, this is far worse than the world they are leaving. The mansion they arrive at is enormous, and full of wonderful places for children to hide, and the grounds are expansive and waiting for adventure but as soon as they arrive they are given a very strict list of guidelines to follow, setting the tone for their stay and sending them a clear message – they are not wanted there. The children make do as best they can and, upon the first rainy day, manage to find good use for the great house they find themselves within – a rousing game of hide and go seek. Three of the children take their places as the eldest boy counts. When she can’t find a hiding place of her own, the youngest, Lucy, finds an open room that is empty save for a large wardrobe full of the professor’s fur coats. She slips into the room to hide and, while moving to the back of the wardrobe finds that there is no back, that in fact it leads to a veritable winter wonderland. Shocked and excited she explores a bit and comes upon a strange man with cloven hoofs who calls himself Tumnus and who invites her to tea. Alas, tea is not the only thing on the mind of Mr. Tumnus as a decree has been issued by the self-appointed queen of Narnia that any humans that find themselves in the lands must be brought before her majesty, and those who do not abide by this command will suffer her wrath. Tumnus cannot bring himself to turn in his innocent new friend so he smuggles her out of Narnia before she is seen. When the girl returns to her own world and tells her siblings where she’s been no one believes her, much to her dismay, but it won’t be long until they more than believe, but find themselves in this very dangerous world. Narnia is a world perched on the edge of war, the tyranny of the queen, known by many as the White Witch, has doomed the world to ice but the real king, a great lion named Aslan, is prepared to return, but needs the assistance of four human children to do it. So these four children, who have been sheltered from the war by their mother, must now actively take part in the greatest battle another world has ever seen in order to redeem a sin one of them has committed there, and to restore peace and happiness to this world. But battle has its costs, and they have yet to fully understand that, but shall soon enough.

It’s a shame that so many big Hollywood movies are forced into the same release dates during the year as this is a film that really deserves an audience. It’s a terrific fantasy and is a good film for children. Sadly it has to battle Harry Potter and a big ape and it’s not going to be a great thing for any of the three films. This is a very fine film though. The special effects, save for some awkward blue screens in the background once in a while, are great. The children are fine actors. They got a fantastic voice for Aslan in Liam Neeson. I love the way the filmmakers mimic the film’s opening, the bombing of London by the Nazis, during the beginning of the great war at the end of the film. This is about as true and fine an adaptation as you can ask for. I loved that they let the movie be what it is. Yes, it’s a religious film, and book, if you are looking, but these are not things that get in the way of, or become a focal point for the film. So if you are looking for it, it’s there, if not, then you miss nothing.

Though being a perfectly true adaptation can be a problem in and of itself. The thing that made Lord of the Rings so great was that they fleshed the books out in the adaptation. They added a lot more depth to the characters. The same needed to be done here. There is so much going on that C.S. Lewis didn’t take a lot of time to really flesh the characters out, at least not to me. They were outlines with shading. The film does the same thing. You meet a lot of great characters but none of them, save for Tumnus and the children, do you feel really connected to, which harms the film during the battle when characters are falling to their deaths and you can’t really get too upset for them as you don’t know them as more than a face. The power of the Harry Potter films is that you really know these kids through the films and so you care about them. You don’t quite get that in Narnia. Some have been put off by the appearance of a character in the film, who I won’t name, but this is a classic character in literature and yes, he’s in the book, check it out.

The thing we forget these days is how generally bad fantasy films were in the past. Not all, no, no, but a lot of them were very bad. And while we were spoiled by the LOTR films, there are some damned good fantasy films being made these days, as well as some very good book adaptations being done. I hope that this will become a film that finds a second life on DVD and on the television so people can get a better feel for how good this film is. I wouldn’t say it’s an instant classic, but it’s a solid film that some day may well be seen as a near miss classic.

Glory Road:Movie Review

***1/2/*****
Glory Road has its share of clichés and is fairly one dimensional character-wise, but nonetheless surprises as an absorbing film. It’s the story of how the 1966 Texas Western Miners won the NCAA Basketball Championship with an all-black team. Led by an upstart coach, Don Haskins (Josh Lucas), the team faced extreme intolerance throughout their championship run. Derek Luke co-stars as star point guard and team leader Bobby Joe Hill. Glory Road does an excellent job recreating the racial injustice of that era. Similar films have addressed this issue, but failed to illustrate what those times were really like for black athletes. This film delivers the message and is entertaining to boot. It has some of the best editing I’ve ever seen in a sports film. Director James Gartner really captures the frenetic pace and excitement of the games.

The chemistry between the lead actors is also very good. While the film focuses primarily on racial themes, the players are seen facing these obstacles together. It reinforces their bonds and contributes to their success on the court. The white players on the team do get some screen time. And the film does not gloss over the antagonism between the different races as they come together. What it could have done better was define these characters. After a while, the white players become just faces in the crowd. They are seen, but heard and are given nothing to do. While Glory Road is primarily the story of the black players, it would have been more interesting to have the white characters explored as well.

Racism is front and center in the film. Director James Gartner does not shy away from the bigotry the team faced. It’s in this sense that Glory Road really succeeds. It depicts a time that most people have no concept of. Racial slurs are constantly hurled at the players, along with food, fists, and death threats. Those were ugly times and the film dramatically captures it.

The pace of the film drags at points, but pick up with the excellent shooting of the basketball games. Ever game gets progressively better and incorporates a myriad of camera angles. Gartner and his editing team do a great job here. They get creative with their shot choices and it adds real style to the film.

Glory Road is not on par with the great sports films, but is a worthwhile attempt to match them. It has the right ingredients but comes up a little short. That said, it’s definitely worth seeing and is easily the best choice of new releases this weekend.

Brokeback Mountain :Movie Review

***1/2/*****

Ennis tells Jack about something he saw as a boy. "There were two old guys shacked up together. They were the joke of the town, even though they were pretty tough old birds." One day they were found beaten to death. Ennis says: "My dad, he made sure me and my brother saw it. For all I know, he did it."

This childhood memory is always there, the ghost in the room, in Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain." When he was taught by his father to hate homosexuals, Ennis was taught to hate his own feelings. Years after he first makes love with Jack on a Wyoming mountainside, after his marriage has failed, after his world has compressed to a mobile home, the laundromat, the TV, he still feels the same pain: "Why don't you let me be? It's because of you, Jack, that I'm like this -- nothing, and nobody."

But it's not because of Jack. It's because Ennis and Jack love each other and can find no way to deal with that. "Brokeback Mountain" has been described as "a gay cowboy movie," which is a cruel simplification. It is the story of a time and place where two men are forced to deny the only great passion either one will ever feel. Their tragedy is universal. It could be about two women, or lovers from different religious or ethnic groups -- any "forbidden" love.

The movie wisely never steps back to look at the larger picture, or deliver the "message." It is specifically the story of these men, this love. It stays in closeup. That's how Jack and Ennis see it. "You know I ain't queer," Ennis tells Jack after their first night together. "Me, neither," says Jack.

Their story begins in Wyoming in 1963, when Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) are about 19 years old and get a job tending sheep on a mountainside. Ennis is a boy of so few words he can barely open his mouth to release them; he learned to be guarded and fearful long before he knew what he feared. Jack, who has done some rodeo riding, is a little more outgoing. After some days have passed on the mountain and some whiskey has been drunk, they suddenly and almost violently have sex.

"This is a one-shot thing we got going on here," Ennis says the next day. Jack agrees. But it's not. When the summer is over, they part laconically: “I guess I’ll see ya around, huh?”Their boss (Randy Quaid) tells Jack he doesn't want him back next summer: "You guys sure found a way to make the time pass up there. You weren't getting paid to let the dogs guard the sheep while you stemmed the rose."

Some years pass. Both men get married. Then Jack goes to visit Ennis in Wyoming, and the undiminished urgency of their passion stuns them. Their lives settle down into a routine, punctuated less often than Jack would like by "fishing trips." Ennis' wife, who has seen them kissing, says nothing about it for a long time. But she notices there are never any fish.

The movie is based on a short story by E. Annie Proulx. The screenplay is by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. This summer I read McMurtry's Lonesome Dove trilogy, and as I saw the movie I was reminded of Gus and Woodrow, the two cowboys who spend a lifetime together. They aren't gay; one of them is a womanizer and the other spends his whole life regretting the loss of the one woman he loved. They're straight, but just as crippled by a society that tells them how a man must behave and what he must feel.

"Brokeback Mountain" could tell its story and not necessarily be a great movie. It could be a melodrama. It could be a "gay cowboy movie." But the filmmakers have focused so intently and with such feeling on Jack and Ennis that the movie is as observant as work by Bergman. Strange but true: The more specific a film is, the more universal, because the more it understands individual characters, the more it applies to everyone. I can imagine someone weeping at this film, identifying with it, because he always wanted to stay in the Marines, or be an artist or a cabinetmaker.

Jack is able to accept a little more willingly that he is inescapably gay. In frustration and need, he goes to Mexico one night and finds a male prostitute. Prostitution is a calling with many hazards, sadness and tragedy, but it accepts human nature. It knows what some people need, and perhaps that is why every society has found a way to accommodate it. Jack thinks he and Ennis might someday buy themselves a ranch and settle down. Ennis who remembers what he saw as a boy: "This thing gets hold of us at the wrong time and wrong place and we're dead." Well, wasn't Matthew Shepard murdered in Wyoming in 1998? And Teena Brandon in Nebraska in 1993? Haven't brothers killed their sisters in the Muslim world to defend "family honor"?

There are gentle and nuanced portraits of Ennis' wife Alma (Michelle Williams) and Jack's wife Lureen (Anne Hathaway), who are important characters, seen as victims, too. Williams has a powerful scene where she finally calls Ennis on his "fishing trips," but she takes a long time to do that, because nothing in her background prepares her for what she has found out about her husband. In their own way, programs like "Jerry Springer" provide a service by focusing on people, however pathetic, who are prepared to defend what they feel. In 1963 there was nothing like that on TV. And in 2005, the situation has not entirely changed. One of the Oscar campaign ads for "Brokeback Mountain" shows Ledger and Williams together, although the movie's posters are certainly honest.

Ang Lee is a director whose films are set in many nations and many times. What they have in common is an instinctive sympathy for the characters. Born in Taiwan, he makes movies about Americans, British, Chinese, straights, gays; his sci-fi movie "Hulk" was about a misunderstood outsider. Here Lee respects the entire arc of his story, right down to the lonely conclusion.

A closing scene involving a visit by Ennis to Jack's parents is heartbreaking in what is said, and not said, about their world. A look around Jack's childhood bedroom suggests what he overcame to make room for his feelings. What we cannot be sure is this: In the flashback, are we witnessing what really happened, or how Ennis sees it in his imagination? Ennis, whose father "made sure me and my brother saw it."

Munich Movie Review

****/*****

History is a funny thing; it isn’t just that the victors write the history books but that after a while, certain events lose their immediacy and impact as the years pass and are eventually relegated to textbooks where they may die silent deaths. The great things about movies are that events like the Olympic hostage crisis and eventual tragedy in Munich in ’72 can be remembered and brought back to us so we don’t forget them so easily yet, a movie isn’t always the best place to start for the truth. Movies aren’t made to teach us history, they are made to tell us stories, and as such, this is a hell of a story, but whether or not this is true, well, it’s for books, teachers, and talking heads to say, not me.

Munich begins with the 1972 Olympics where eleven Israeli athletes and trainers were taken hostage by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September in the hopes of bringing the attention of the world to the struggle for a Palestinian state. When the hostage crisis ends in the worst of ways the Israeli government decides it’s time to fight back and to send the world a message that the Jews will not be targets any longer. A married man on the verge of fatherhood is pulled away from his job in an elite police arm and is given a devil’s bargain – will you leave family, country, and safety to pursue the men that perpetrated this horror on Israel? He will leave his career, his pension, and his security behind and will be essentially dead to the government until the mission is completed. He will be paid, yes, but only after the mission is complete. This mission consists of eleven names and eleven lives that must be taken by this man and a team of four that shall be assembled for him. The man, the son of a hero, feels compelled to take the mission as this is not simply revenge but is a warning to the world that such crimes will not go unpunished. The man, a simple policeman on the verge of a family, takes this mission, and in many ways sells his soul to his nation. What he and the men chosen to be his team, all of them men with businesses and lives but who serve Israel as it asks and all of them bound to become friends, is that the path of vengeance is one wrought with peril and terror, and one upon which it is easy to lose one’s mind. Things begin easy enough, the men responsible for the terrorist strike not taking care to hide from the world, but as each body falls the stakes rise higher, the danger grows, and the risks increase tenfold. For these five men though, the real monster is not stalking them from the shadows, but from within, as they slowly realize what this mission is making them into.

The unfortunate thing about Munich is that it will be seen by far too many as a reflection on the truth of what really happened, and I can see that. When you present a factual event – the Munich massacre – but then surround it by hyperbole it’s hard to know where the truth ends and the story begins, but never once does Spielberg present this as utter fact. The film states clearly as it begins that this was ‘inspired by real events’. What I would hope is that this film would spark resurgence in the discussion of this event and how it relates to the world today, and perhaps shed new light on what may have happened. More than that though I’d like us to look long and hard at the notion of revenge presented, a notion that stands today, that revenge can eventually lead to peace. Perhaps it can, but perhaps it cannot, and this is not a question the film dares to answer, but asks of us quite clearly.

Eric Bana is superb in the lead role and truly shines here. I have known of him since Chopper and knew then he was a talent but hopefully this film and an Oscar nod will show the world what many of us already knew. This is filmed in a similarly gritty style as Saving Private Ryan but doesn’t have that film’s horror, where moments of peace would be shattered with death and loss. In Munich there is never a sense of peace, never a sense of safety or rest. These men have walked into Hell and shall not return until they are allowed to return, if at all. The brilliance in the filmmaking is that we never even quite see what happens to the hostages, though we are told of their fate, until the end of the film. Just like the men in the film we are asked to believe what happened before we are shown it because that’s how these thing work. You do what you are asked and are told what you need. Another great point is that Spielberg makes it a point not to show anyone as a pure monster. The terrorists are family men, men with hobbies, men who were like anyone else save for their blind love of an ideal. The men sent to hunt them are the same. There is even an assassin that looks like anything but one, and who doesn’t seem necessarily better for their trade, but who is in it nonetheless. This is not a world of black and white but of degrees of gray where no one is innocent and truth is in the eye of the beholder.

This is a departure in some ways for Spielberg in that there is fairly graphic sex and some very graphic violence in it, and I applaud him for both. He is portraying a world that is as close to reality as he can get and as such you can’t always close the blinds. Sex in the film is as much about healing as it is about passion just as violence is as much about revenge as it is about duty. These men do what they have to because they believe in it, yes, but when their belief begins to waver they do it then out of a sense that it is what they must do to get home. There are tremendous performances throughout the film and it’s a testament to the quality of the production that you believe each actor is their character. You believe in this film, and in your belief you find horror.

This will never make a lot of money for Spielberg but this is easily one of his greatest films. In the top three, if not top two. It is not as emotionally resonant as Private Ryan but it’s a better film. The great thing about this filmmaker is that he’s learned how to balance his desire to make big, popular ‘blockbusters’ but also has found a way to tell these harder, darker stories that need to be told. I would never say that this is the truth, but there is truth in this film, and for that reason alone it earns a viewing. A tremendous work of art and film.