REVIEW: Mission: Impossible 3

Can we please knock it off with the breathless commentary about whether or not the public revelation that Tom Cruise is apparently a blithering lunatic is going to hurt the man's career? Let's be honest about this: Being unlikable won't have much effect here because this actor was NEVER "likable." That's not to say that he was UN-likable, but rather that being likable was never the big selling-point to this particular star's boxoffice appeal. Tom Hanks is "likable," Tom Cruise on the other hand has made his fortune being recognizable; so it probably doesn't matter what he's recognizable "as." This is especially true for his "Mission: Impossible" franchise, which now in it's third installment continues to exist as NOTHING more than delivery on the promise of one of the most recognizable stars on the planet performing various action-movie stunts.

But, for whatever reason, the four-word premise of "Tom Cruise shooting stuff" has been enough to propell audiences to theaters in droves twice before, and will likely do so again this time. This new one, written and directed by TV wunderkind JJ Abrams, is the best of the set so far but, honestly, what kind of praise is that? The first film is best remembered for being needlessly complex, the second for being stunningly empty even for a Tom Cruise paycheck-peice, so is it really some miracle that this one is better? I guess... but the series STILL has yet to produce a full-blown classic.

But let the good be counted where it is: The plot makes no bones about being unimportant; Cruise's Ethan Hunt and his sidekicks are hunting around for a McGuffin literally called "The Rabbit's Foot," the actual USE of which no one ever stops to explain. Philip Seymour Hoffman has a fun bad guy turn as an arms dealer who is demonstrably so good at getting away with murder that he's bored with it. The plot hands Hunt a brand new wife to get kidnapped and rescued, a humanizing touch that plays out as such a bald-faced cliche it's kind of marvelous to see it actually trotted out in an actual movie; but she's played with conviction by "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang's" Michelle Monaghan, so there's that.

So the movie is decent, it's action scenes work, and yet... is this REALLY the best they can do? The SOLE requirement for the boxoffice topper-status of these is that Cruise shows up onscreen firing some kind of weapon and this is STILL all they can come up with? It took a few solid decades for the James Bond films to grow timid of doing anything risky or special... this series was already there before it started.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

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REVIEW: RV

Not that I think it's likely that he gives a damn, but I feel sort of bad for Robin Williams. The reviews for "RV" have been appropriately dismissive, but nearly all of them make reference to all of the other less-than-wonderful "family" movies Williams has made. Yes, fine, the man WAS the king of treacly family-friendly pablum several years back, but let's have a LITTLE acknowledgement of all the interesting, offbeat work he's done in dramas like "One Hour Photo" and "Final Cut" in between then and now.

But to the movie-at-hand. Williams plays the mandatory well-meaning-but-buffoonish upscale suburban dad with eyes on a Hawaiin vacation with the family. Said family is, per the genre, largely imperfect, the au-courant twist being to blame the family non-togetherness on Wireless Age detachment. The teenaged daughter recoils from the attentions of the father who used to be her hero, while the pre-teen son grouses about his height and seems to have accepted Vin Diesel as his personal savior, and BOTH vanish-in-plain-sight into the cocoon of earbud headphones: It's "them kids're growin' up TOO fast": The iPod Edition.

And so comes the story: Dad is a put-upon advertising executive with a creepy, germophobic boss to please and a young turk gunning for his job. So when boss-man orders dad to postpone Hawaii (planned as the only chance for family togetherness before the kids take off for camp and college-prep) to attend an important McGuffin... I mean meeting... in Colorado, he hatches the kind of desperate plan people only hatch in these movies: He pulls a massive, rented mobile-home up in front of the house and announces to the fam that they're going on a Colorado camping trip instead.

The rest you already know. Anyone who's seen ONE family-vacation movie can plot the bulk of the film easily: The titular vehicle WILL prove to malfunction in amusing ways. Campgrounds and trailer parks WILL come stocked with ultra-colorful supporting characters. A second family of "full-time" vacationers, captained by Jeff Daniels, WILL be caricatured middle-American oddballs. There WILL be extended jokes about septic-tanks, ornery raccoons and unfriendly weather. The looming threat of "the meeting" WILL only come up when it advances the plot and, certainly, the 3rd act WILL primarily involve bigger and bigger chases, pratfalls and stunts on Williams' part.

The "family vacation" movie has been around as long as family vacations, but the genre reached it's high water mark in "National Lampoon's Vacation," which every entry since has more or less tried to follow. The difference is, what set "Vacation" apart was it's lack of mercy: It set Chevy Chase off on an honest-to-goodness vaction from HELL, an unrelentingly cynical exercise in bad-to-worse situations made hysterical by it's lead character's unflappable delusions of old-school American Family good times. The country-cousins REALLY ARE annoying as hell, infidelity REALLY IS tempting, Wally World REALLY IS closed, the old lady and the dog REALLY DO die.

There's one point where the film seems to arrive at a moment of twisted, self-acknowledging genius that would be transcendant if it didn't seem so likely it's occured totally by accident: As the film laboriously set's up it's obligatory scene of scatological slapstick involving the attempt to empty a septic tank, a crowd of beer'd-up yahoos gathers to watch the "show." The film lingers on this group, dolled-up like "Deliverance" extras, and it dawns on me: The film is inviting an audience of moviegoers who've eagerly lined up to watch a "poop joke" to laugh derisively AT THE IDEA OF AN AUDIENCE EAGERLY LINING UP TO WATCH A "POOP JOKE"! I was reminded of "A.I." when, right around the time that audiences might've been wondering where the "action" was in their Steven Spielberg robot movie, the film dives into a harrowing sequence where friendly mechanical-people are tortured to "death" to he delight of an explicitly "redneck" crowd who cheer on the mindless destruction Nascar-style... except I think Spielberg did that on purpose.

"RV" is not a "bad" movie. It's funny, not too long, and achieves what it sets out to achieve. Most of the laughs are genuinely earned, and the innevitable "family reconnects" scenes feel more organic than is typical of the genre. Incredibly, at the expected moment where "the truth comes out" and the family attacks Dad for lying to them, he doesn't immediately concede and repent his workaholic ways... instead, he does what an actual PERSON might do: He throws it back at them, reminding them that it's his hard work that provides jewelry, fancy clothes, cars, MP3 players and hopes of attending Stanford.

You've already seen this movie before you've seen it, so trust you're gut on this one: If you like the version of "RV" immediately conjured in your mind after seeing the trailer (or even the poster,) then you're going to like the actual movie. If not, you won't. That's really the bottom line on this one.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

Footnote: Memo to comedy screenwriters: EVERYONE is already sick to death of trendy jokes about characters not being able to get a WiFi, cellular or Blackberry connection. Yes, we all know it's an amusing fact of 21st Century living right now, but IN A MOVIE long scenes of people holding little devices up in the air waiting for the "right beep" IS NEVER, EVER, EVER FUNNY.

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REVIEW: United 93

Soon enough, we'll be able to talk about "9-11 movies." The protective airtight do-not-touch seal on the subject comes off, for movies anyway, this year. "Too soon" or "not soon enough" are irrelevant. Get used to it. Sooner than you think, we'll be having conversations about "9-11 movies." Which ones are better, which ones are less so, protrayals and repeat characters and so on and so forth.

But not yet. Right now, it's only the beginning. Right now, Paul Greengrass' "United 93" is not "a 9-11 movie." It's THE 9-11 movie. It's patient-zero: The first big screen film to recreate events of that day in detail. So, right now, any attempt to simply "review" it is going to seem somehow insubstantial. What else can it be compared to? From what do we draw reference? Even the IDEA of holding it up against other "disaster" movies... or even calling it a "thriller"... seems somehow small and almost vulgar.

Relating the facts (along with some studiously-careful conjecture) of United 93, the fourth plane hijacked on 9-11 that crashed in Pennsylvania following an (apparently) successful attempt by it's passengers to overwhelm the terrorists and stop them from hitting their target (believed to have been Washington, D.C.), Greengrass pushes his now-famous semi-documentary style of quivering cameras to it's logical extreme: The film plays from the perspective of a fly on the wall. There's no "manipulative" music, no visible story-structure, no "money shots" or "applause lines." We don't learn most of the characters names, nor do we glean but slivers of backstory. It exists entirely in the moment, NOTHING before and only a series of explainatory title cards after. This isn't just adaptation, it's re-creation.

This is probably the only way that "THE 9-11 movie" could have been made and worked as well as it does, (the time for more story-driven, conventional-narrative versions is later) but I'd hazard a guess that a (near) universally-experienced event like this is the only way audiences would ever willingly endure a film in this style. Contrary to the preachings of militant-realists like Robert Altman, characterization, visual markers and musical-nudging aren't just cheats for cheap manipulation: Most films require such simply to engage the audience, to give them a frame of basic reference to "anchor" themselves within the film. "United 93", however, requires no such anchor: From the moment a waiting-hijacker glances out one of the plane's windows and casually spies the Twin Towers still standing, the film has you're attention by the throat. You remember where you were, what you saw, and what you must now prepare to see again...

...except for one thing. The film promises you that this time, at least, you will see something different. The outcome will be what you remember, but if you can endure it this time... this time... you'll recieve a moment of catharsis. You'll see one or more of the terrorists thrown to the ground, overwhelmed and (dare you hope) pounded mercilessly by one of his intended victims. That this eventually feels heroic is without question, whether or not it is truly cathartic remains in the eye of the individual.

The cast is largely unfamiliar faces, and much of the air-traffic and military-command personnel play themselves, so trying to talk about performance because nearly impossible. Suffice it to say that no one ever betrays the movie-ness of the situation.

In the end, there are no pauses for applause or instructions on how we're supposed to feel; and that's possibly what's most remarkable: No traditional tropes of the heroic film are on-display, but the real-enough actions of it's heroes provoke the gut-reaction of hope and support anyway. A more fitting tribute I cannot fathom.

FINAL RATING: 10/10

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REVIEW: American Dreamz

Now HERE is one weird, fascinating odd-duck of a movie. I'm not sure how to describe it other than to call it a drama that's somehow been cast with SNL-issue caricatures in all of the lead roles.

It's story reads like some kind of cross pop-cultural fan-fiction: President Stanton (Dennis Quaid doing an affectionately dead-on George W. Bush riff) wakes up the day after re-election and decides he should try reading a newspaper in lieu of his usual briefing. Stanton, a well-meaning but not-brilliant man, becomes overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things in the world he doesn't know and vanishes from public life, locked in the White House surrounded by growing stacks of books and newspapers. The Chief of Staff, (Willem Dafoe as sooo-totally-not-Dick-Cheney,) who fancies himself the "power behind the throne," sees this newfound intellectual curiosity on the president's behalf as a threat to his control; so he uses a regimen of mind-altering medication and earpiece-microphones to manipulate Stanton onto a media-fluff P.R. blitz, culminating in the president guest-judging the finale of "American Dreamz."

"Dreamz" is, of course, a stand-in for "American Idol" and, like it's real-world cousin, is a worthless but incredibly-popular televised talent show overseen by an unctuous, amoral Brit (Hugh Grant.) Named Martin Tweed, he puppeteers the winners and losers to keep the most ratings-friendly contestants in the running. His big hook this season is to split the frontrunners between a blonde all-American girl, a Hasidic Jew and... wait for it... an Arab! The songstress is Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore) a soulless fame-obsessed harpy playing at all-American sweetness. The Arab, through a series of coincidences, is Omer (Sam Golzari.) A would-be terrorist (really!) kicked out of Al Qaida for being too sensitive (he'd rather sing showtunes than murder-bomb people,) Omer lucks into the contest and is suddenly re-united with his "brothers": They know that President Stanton will be on the finale, and they want Omer to get that far so that he can blow him up!

This is a DENSE plot, even for a broad satire, and all of these characters and storylines strain to fit into a single film when most of them are crying out for a feature of their own. There's more, too: Whole subplots focusing on Stanton's genuinely loving relationship with his wife (Marcia Gay Harden,) Sally's heartless treatment of her "boyfriend," (Chris Klein) a wounded Iraq War vet who genuinely adores her but whom she only strings along because dating him makes her look patriotic, and Omer's non-terrorist relatives: A happily-assimilated Arab American family. And there's the matter of Tweed and Sally's creepy growing-attraction to one-another: Both are immensely in love with their mutual awfulness of character.

With this much going on in a stylistic structure that's remarkably offbeat to begin with, it's understandable that "Dreamz" winds up being kind of a mess. It's characters are sketch-comedy archetypes, either broad caricatures or sharp celebrity parodies, but the storyline eventually wants us to take them and their arcs seriously. Even Tweed and Sally Kendoo, ostensibly two of the villians of the peice, are afforded moments of reflection and depth (though Dafoe's psuedo-Cheney is a baddie to the core.)

I can't say that this is a film that really "works" as a whole, but as a unique creature unto itself it's endlessly engaging and kind of brilliant in spots. Most surprising is Quaid's turn as the Bush-like president: You're expecting a scathing satire but instead it's closer to affection and wishful thinking. Stanton is a good man, trying to be better, far from the anti-Bush "attack" many would be anticipating.

Director Paul Weitz, late of "American Pie" and "About a Boy," has MUCH more venom, apparently, for "American Idol" and the popular culture that rewards such idiocy with huge ratings than he does for America's oft-maligned commander in chief. There's a scene in the 1st act where Stanton is meeting the Premier of China and tries to discuss the fact that his research into North Korea is giving him (literal) nightmares rather than exchange state-visit platitudes, only to be undercut by Dafoe's scheming that's kind of heartbreaking in an odd, affecting way. And there's something... horrible... about a later scene where the Chief of Staff "handles" his president like some kind of literal object as he fine-tunes a hidden earpiece. Weitz even gives his would-be Bush a speech at the end which is at once an act of attempted heroism, a signal of Stanton's coming into his own as a REAL leader and, it can be surmised, a talk-to-the-audience statement of the writer/director's intended message about America in the age of reality TV.

Also problematic but frequently gutsy is the way the story veers without warning into moments of real darkness: You keep waiting for Tweed and Kendoo to reveal some level of human decency, but instead they only get more and more loathsome as the story goes on; leading inexorably to a pitch-black finale wherein the film's dueling representatives of pure-evil and too-good-for-ones-own-good reach a disturbing mutual fate. And even then, the focus dives back and forth from that darkness to the sugary hopefulness of Omer's rejection of terrorism, and to the touching realization of where (and whom) Stanton needs to turn in order to find his redemption and strength.

This movie is messy, sloppy, full of big dreams and grand ambitions. It doesn't "hold together" as well as lesser works of lesser ambition, but it's trying it's ASS off to be something unique and capture a moment in time in the context of a comic-drama. It's worth you're time to see it for yourself.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

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REVIEW: Silent Hill

SPOILERS herein. Warned, you have been.

You're the adoptive parent of a young child, who is suffering from reccurring nightmares. During these nightmares, you discover, she often sleepwalks into life-threatening situations and randomly screams the name of a small, isolated coal-mining town in Virginia. You Google this place, and discover that it is an infamous "ghost town," abandonned and in decay, imperiled by stilll-burning underground fires, the site of some horrible unspoken tragedy.

Do you:
A.) Research the matter further, so as to discover exactly what is going on?
B.) Contact professionals and experts in such matters?
C.) Take the kid, get in your car and drive there in the middle of the night, even if you have to crash through a gate and outrun a police officer to do so because you're just that curious?

As "Silent Hill" is a horror film of the supernatural variety, and such films can rarely function under the strictures of hard logic, you'll probably be unsurprised to learn that Rose DaSilva (Rhada Mitchell) promptly opts for "C" when her adopted daughter Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) nearly sleepwalks herself off a cliff while babbling about the titular burg. Such seeming lapses in basic human logic would be the death knell for film's concerned with the realm of reality... fortunately, for itself and for it's audience; "Silent Hill" is concerned with no such thing. Resting comfortably at the intersection of H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, this is a film that takes possibilities that it's events may (or may not) be occuring at the behest of a semi-omnipotent demonic force as a license to hitch the bulk of it's narrative to dream logic. Nightmare logic, really...

This openly-acknowledged break with the constraints of the real are helpful to a film which aims to unsettle with warped rythyms of time and space, and horrify with the images revealed therein. There are sights and sounds in "Silent Hill" so fearsome that the fact that many of them can't possibly be real offers no sense of reassurance: Since the whole film is fixed in unreality, that makes them possibly as real as anything else going on... I can't quite explain why "Pyramid Head" is so scary, he just is. (That'll make more sense once you see it)

It also, it has to be said, allows for ample wiggle room as the film works to reconcile it's present as a narrative film with it's origins as an interactive video game. For awhile, it's principal players spend an intriguing amount of time (for a horror film) digging through drawers, memorizing maps, piecing together clues and negoiating mazes, corridors and awkward platforms invariably set above deep chasms. In tandem, director Christophe Gans (late of his masterpeice "Brotherhood of The Wolf,") works himself raw recreating the game's unique camera angles and visual scheme. To fans of the game, these will be knowing nods ("ha! they got the flashlight!") while to the casual audience they aim to alternately serve as further moments of disorientation and overall weirdness.

Not that it's DEVOID of story: Following a near-miss car crash, Rose wakes up in Silent Hill to find Sharon missing, and takes off after her into the seemingly-deserted town. She's soon backed-up by a tough lady cop (a butched-up Laurie Holden), who at first plans to leave but finds that rather impractical: The roads into and out-of town have been blocked by huge, bottomless canyons that... ulp... weren't there a minute ago...

This isn't good for them, as Silent Hill is somewhere you don't want to be stuck for any period of time: It's trapped in perpetual fog, and eerie ashes constantly fall from the sky. Periodically, an air-raid siren blows, and the whole place turns into an even worse version of itself; one made out of flame, barbed-wire and rust... and crawling with horrible monsters of all shapes and sizes. Meanwhile, Rose's husband Christopher (Sean Bean) also searches Silent Hill for her in yet another version. Uh-oh...

This all has something to do with vengeance from beyond the grave, alternate realities, religious fanatacism and the reccurring nugget about Silent Hill's founders being self-appointed Witch Hunters in addition to miners and, truth be told, it eventually makes a decent amount of sense at least in terms of the rules it writes for itself. In practical terms, it's successful in creating solid rationale for it's heroes to continually find themselves trapped in dark, hopeless situations and threatened by snarling beasties, which is about the most you can reasonably ask of it. That it's visually gorgeous, mentally engaging and glued together by some pretty powerful themes and interesting ideas (once "everything" is revealed, at least.)

Most importantly, it's the first horror film in awhile that understands how to be both gory AND genuinely scary: Scenes during "The Darkness," wherein the monster creeping up behind you is only slightly more ghastly than the one standing in front of you, are nerve-shreddingly scary; while in other scenes Gans piles on the viscera and vomit as though hoping to out-gun "The Story of Ricky" as the bloodiest movie of all time. At least two "kills" are instant Fangoria photo-spread classics, and the prolonged "all hell breaks loose" climax is reminiscient of legendary horror finales found in the likes of "Dead Alive" or "Society."

If you're any kind of horror fan, "Silent Hill" DEMANDS your attention. Reccomended.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

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REVIEW: Scary Movie 4

That the "Scary Movie" franchise has actually reached a fourth installment is at once surprising and innevitable. It's original Wayans Bros.-created film was a more amusing-than-expected lowbrow spoof of then-recent slasher films, notable exclusively for the sheer R-rated audacity of it's gross-out sex gags. A throwaway sequel followed quickly, doing so-so boxoffice but providing inspiration to it's studio: Done at proper efficiently, quickie "spoofs" both summarizing and making broad "hey! that's from ______" jokes at the expense of the notable movies of the past year could provide a profitable franchise with an inexhaustible supply of reference material. Enter David Zucker, who helped invent this genre with "Airplane," who took over from the Wayans to deliver a newer, broader, PG-13 hit with "Scary Movie 3." Zucker returns for #4, alongside the impossible adorable series-mainstay Anna Faris.

This time around the gags are less rapid-fire than previously, zeroing in on "War of The Worlds," "The Grudge," "Saw" and "The Village," with brief side digs at "Million Dollar Baby" and, of course, "Brokeback Mountain." The "War" riff takes up the majority of the story, so Faris finds herself sharing screentime with Craig Beirko doing a scary-good goof on the public and onscreen faces of Tom Cruise. Charlie Sheen cameos from the previous installment for a scene while spoof-specialist Leslie Neilsen reprises his turn as a dimwitted President who's big scene MAY be a riff on "Fahrenheit 911" but, since it's goofing on actual footage, could possibly be called the first "9/11 joke" in a mainstream comedy. Shaquille O'Neil and Dr. Phil re-enact the goings on of "Saw;" but the most "meta" gags come from Bill Pullman, relating to his being the only main actor appearing from one of the films BEING spoofed.

Most of it's funny, some of it's not, none of it's classic. Overall, the cleverness the film shows in making a (mostly) cohesive story out of recreations of disparate other movies is usually funnier than the jokes themselves. Zucker is a pro, and the production manages to be damn good at making their parodies look and feel like the genuine article. The "WOTW" bits are both the funniest and the most faithfully-adapted.

There are some missteps: The obligatory "Brokeback" swipe is funny, but shoehorned awkwardly into the narrative as a flashback and really isn't any more clever than the thousands of spoofs the ubiquitous "gay cowboy movie" has already inspired for over a year now. And while I'm laughing at the spot-on "Village" shredding... how many people really remember that much about "The Village" other than it sucking so terribly?

This is the cute diversion it wants to be, Bierko is starting to look like a real character-talent... as a time-waster, I'd say reccomended.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

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REVIEW: Take The Lead

The great unspoken quirk of the documentary "Mad Hot Ballroom" was that it's story of an idealistic teacher who won the hearts of ghetto problem-children through unconventional means (he taught them competitive ballroom dancing) sounded so much like that of a cheezy feel-good movie... but was actually true. In simply making a cheezy movie out of it, that quirk is lost and we're left with the latest "wacky teacher makes good" garbage for the woodpile. Aspiring screenwriter's take note: If your movie can be accurately described as a crappier chick-flick version of "Only The Strong," your movie is going to SUCK.

Antonio Banderas plays Pierre DuLaine, a ballroom dancing instructor with a genius-level acumen for social graces and the ability to speak six languages ("all of them with a Spanish accent, of course." ha ha!) but a total lack of backstory, any kind of characterization or even a logical thought-process. Upon witnessing a local high schooler vandalizing his principal's car, DuLaine is apparently is siezed by the call of Civic Duty: He marches into said principal's office and offers to rescue the "school rejects" through the healing magic of ballroom dance instruction.

DuLaine is provided with the usual Baskin Robbins flavor-assortment of racial/gender/lifestyle types in the form of an extended detention class, and... oh, screw it. Does ANYONE really need this summarized? Kid's with comical problems solve them humorously, seriously problems are addressed and left to hang, "tough choices" are made, Knute Rockne speeches are given, lessons are learned, etc.

Yup, DuLaine is forced to face down an angry room of disgruntled parents with the gall to insist that his methods may be foolish. Yup, everything comes down to a big competition showdown between DuLaine's free-spirited squad of street-hipsters and lily-white vanguards of tradition. Through all of this, Banderas works his ASS off in a valiant effort to carry a film entirely devoid of merit with only the strength of his own "coolest man on earth" charisma to aid him.

There is no way to parse it: This movie is COMPLETELY worthless.

FINAL RATING: Zero.

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