Quarantine

For some of you, Quarantine's final half-hour is going to work so well that you'll be telling your friends it's one of the scariest movies you've seen in ages.  I wish I was you; I honestly do.  I just couldn't really get into it; not in a way that put me on the edge of my seat.  Horror, like comedy, is a more subjective genre than most, but I could completely see how and why someone would find Quarantine terrifying.  It frustrates me that I didn't get that nail-biting, heart-stopping thrill that some of you will get from this movie.

Despite my lack of participation in all the suspenseful goings-on, I still give Quarantine a recommend.  Famed horror director Stuart Gordon once said every movie should show you at least one thing you haven't seen before.  I suspect my disconnect with Quarantine is because of its lack of originality.  There's literally nothing on display here that you haven't seen in other films.  I could synopsize the film as Blair Witch Project meets 28 Days Later, and you can probably figure out the entire plot of the film on your own with just that little equation.

Quarantine is a remake of the Spanish-language film Rec, and to those that moan on imdb.com about the Americanization of every foreign film, I've heard that Quarantine is almost exactly the same film as the original, which means that Rec isn't some untouchable masterpiece–it's way too derivative of way too many movies that have come before it.  It's handi-cam horror once again, not even a year removed from Cloverfield, which attempted an injection of cinema verite into a Japanese Kaiju film.  This movie trumps Cloverfield for sure, but can't entirely escape Cloverfield's high-profile shadow.  Quarantine is also a damn sight better than George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, which was the most disappointing post-Blair Witch attempt I've seen at the pseudo-doc horror flick, and a film that shares more in common with Quarantine than Cloverfield does.

Diary of the Dead was supposed to be a more realistic approach to a zombie outbreak, but it was hampered by unrealistic performances, bad dialogue, and a preoccupation with gimmicky zombie deaths.  Quarantine treads the same ground, but deftly sidesteps the problems that made Diary so weak.  The performances are strong and feel realistic.  The dialogue is natural and serves the story; nobody here is trying to say something meaningful about society–the characters just want to live.  The focus here is strictly on survival, not who gets the coolest death scene.  However, there's not an original bone in Quarantine's body.

I liked Quarantine, but I didn't love Quarantine.  The good news here is that you just might.  If you feel yourself gripping that arm rest in uncontrolled terror, wide-eyed in panic because of the events transpiring on screen, then God bless ya.  I envy you.

6.5 on a 1 to 10 scale

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Eagle Eye

It looks like a good movie.  It's got the sheen of a polished, expensive Hollywood techno-thriller, complete with movie stars, and Steven Spielberg's name up there in the opening credits.  Make no mistake, however, when I tell you that Eagle Eye is dumber than dumb; an exercise in the ludicrous that asks us to believe so many moments of pure and utter bull crap that it's amazing no one stopped along the production to question anything.

You don't have to be a technological genius to despise this movie.  Just a basic working knowledge of technology will make this film absolutely unwatchable, leaving the Amish and cavemen as director D.J. Caruso's apparent target audience.  In it, Shia Labeouf plays a copy boy that is pulled into a vast governmental conspiracy after his twin brother (who may or may not have been a terrorist) dies.  He, along with Michelle Monaghan, playing nothing more than The Girl here, are commanded by cell phone to run, run, run, run, run, and run (and also go to Circuit City and listen to the ad for their new Firedog computer repair service).

This is a movie with an all-powerful, all-seeing villain, one that can make powerlines fall off a grid and chase someone down the street like a snake, one that can control junkyard equipment through remote networking, one that can change x-rays on the fly, and, in one of its most ridiculous offenses, keeps talking to the heroes, and they keep responding, despite the fact that the voice, which was once talking to them via phone, now has no source.  Yes, they end up talking to a disembodied voice with no apparent source.  I guess they thought we'd just forget about the cell phones at some point.

Here's a small (but important) example of why this movie doesn't work.  Shia is behind the wheel of an SUV, taking driving orders from the voice on the phone ("Turn left here", "Accelerate to 70 mph". etc).  During this high speed chase, Shia refuses to drive anymore, fed-up with the commands, and scared out of his wits.  The voice takes over the SUV and drives it to where it needs to go.  Why, then, did Shia drive it in the first place?  Why didnt he just hop in, and the thing start driving itself on its own right away?  Taken as one scene, this might be fine, but the whole movie hinges on Shia's importance in the voice's grand plan.  Once you find out just what that plan is (which is a dumb plan, of course, in keeping with the whole movie), and just how all-powerful the voice is, you'll wonder why the voice didn't prevent the FBI (represented by Billy Bob Thornton) and Air Force (represented by Rosario Dawson) from tracking Shia down in the first place, ot why the voice didn't carry out it's own damned plan, if it can do everything anyways.

Eagle Eye is ridiculous and implausible, asking us to believe things about technology we already know the truth about, and flying directly into the face of logic because of it.  Logic then opens its hungry mouth, chews Eagle Eye into a wad of slick mush, and spits it out into a trash can filled with expenive, crappy movies that insult the audience's intelligence.  Gimme back my two hours, D.J. Caruso.

4 on a 1 to 10 scale

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City of Ember

For roughly forty minutes of running time, City of Ember looks to be the film that succeeds where the other potential kids' fantasy franchises have failed.  Right out of the gate, City of Ember shows a maturity of filmmaking not wholly evident in The Golden Compass, Eragon, The Seeker, or a host of other contenders to the Harry Potter crown.  Then, things get convoluted.  Character motivations are ignored.  Plot points are thrown wholesale out of the window.  Suspension of disbelief is eroded.  What City of Ember ends up being is a middling kid's adventure, not particularly better or worse than anything else, but the sting of its failure hurts a little more, since it offers so much promise initially.

Ember is an underground community, ran by an uscrupulous, lazy mayor (played by an apathetic Bill Murray), whose source of power is going out after providing its citizens with 200 years worth of electricity.  The founders of Ember, back when they were originally forced underground by an underexplained catastrophe, created a falisafe in such an event–a detailed, puzzle-like plan to get the citizens above ground once the surface world returned to normal.  As the film begins, the plans have been lost through time, but rediscovered by a young girl named Lina (Atonement's Saoirse Ronan) who finds an ally in Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway), a hard-working dissident who believes that Ember has a real energy crisis on its hands, long before anyone else does.

It's a great set-up, a great cast, great sets and production design, but not a great movie.  What went wrong here?  Most of the fault lies in the script from Caroline Thompson, a script that never gives motivation to key conflicts that the protagonists face.  It's never fully explained why they are underground to begin with, what happened to the other humans, or why something as important as a government-established suitcase full of escape plans was completely forgotten about after roughly four generations.  It's never explained why there are giant animals, why sometimes they appear to our characters to be mysterious deviations of nature and, at other times, simply the way all animals are now.  Why does Ember's government try to prevent anyone from finding out there's an answer to their energy problem?  What do they have to gain?  These are issues that come up as plot points in the film, but with no rhyme or reason.

About halfway through City of Ember, I realized I pretty much had no idea WHY anything was happening.  I knew WHAT was happening–the kids were running from the bad guys, trying to get to the surface–but I didn't know why the bad guys were bad guys, or why no adults would help them, or why the council would originally turn every action to get to the surface into a series of complicated puzzles.  I was confused, and, honestly, City of Ember made me feel stupid.  I thought I wasn't paying attention, that I had missed some key elements along the way.  Nuh-uh.  They just simply are not there.

Can I recommend a movie that is one-half fantastic and one-half undercooked?  Director Gil Kenan (Monster House)  still proves to be a talent to follow.  He knows that adventure works best when the protagonists are in danger, no matter how young those protagonists might be.  He knows that a little imagination goes a long way, and, in City of Ember's case a lot of imagination might be just enough to make you overlook the canyon-sized plot holes.  The truth is that I want to love the second half of City of Ember as much as the first half, and I just can't.

6.5 on a 1 to 10 scale

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Role Models

Paul Rudd can finally lay claim to being a comedic leading man.  Managing to avoid mugging or schtick, Rudd brings a distinct kind of sarcasm to his comedy, one that comes from a place an audience can relate to, instead of through cynicism or a mean spiritedness.  I can't quite think of anyone else like Rudd, and with the new David Wain film, Role Models, hopefully, he'll become an A-list comedic force.

I say "hopefully" because Role Models feels a little like a movie from a different time and place–namely the last turn of the century.  Sean William Scott brings a decidedly Year 2000 aura with him, seemingly stuck to forever play the Stifler role, no matter how long it's been since audiences seem to have lost interest in Scott's schtick.  Jokes about energy drinks, Ben Affleck movies, Starbucks, and KISS nostalgia all feel like things that were written seven or eight years ago (Some folks might remember the KISS merchandise boom of the late 90's/early 00's, with toys, comics, and various knick-knacks crowding the shelves at the mall).  According to Wain's own admission, the script had been around for a while with Scott attached to star.  I can believe it.  The Affleck jokes and Scott's hornball persona are especially dusty.

Scott and Rudd are two co-workers, promoters for an energy drink called Minotaur, that end up wrecking their company car after a particularly bad day.  They're sentenced by a judge to participate at Sturdy Wings (run by the always funny Jane Lynch), a "big brother" program where they are each assigned a problem child to look after for the duration of their sentence.  Scott ends up with Ronnie (Bobb'e J. Thompson), a foul-mouthed brat with sex on the brain.  Rudd gets Augie (Superbad's Christopher Mintz-Plasse), an awkard teen with a love for LARP (live-action role-playing).  Of course, life lessons are learned by all.  Role Models is formulaic stuff, especially for Wain who made his career on the fringes of alternative comedy.

However, as far as the mainstream comedy formula goes, Role Models works.  It's actually kind of a sweet movie, yet firmly committed to its R rating, which makes it something that I haven't quite seen before–the R-rated family film.  I admit the movie is downright crass at times, but the story of these guys becoming very real friends with these kids is almost (but not quite) warm and fuzzy.  The lines come sharp and quick, keeping the audience laughing hard enough to overlook the movie's complete lack of ambition.  It's perfectly happy being a dirty little studio comedy, one that will (hopefully) be remembered as Rudd's breakout starring role.

7 on a 1 to 10 scale

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Appaloosa

"Old-fashioned" is the first word that comes to mind when describing Ed Harris's sophomore directing effort, the new Western Appaloosa.  There's no post-modern spin, no personal drama pretending to be a Western, or an action film disguised as a Western.  This is a plain and simple Hollywood Western, and it would feel like the product of a bygone era if it weren't for a smattering of raw language.

After Appaloosa's marshall and his men are killed by the villainous Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), the town hires two new guns to keep the peace, Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen).  The private lives of the new marshall and his deputy are anything but peaceful after the arrival of Allison French (Renee Zellweger), an attention-starved widow with a wandering eye, who quickly chooses Virgil as her man.  A former ranch hand of Bragg's turns him in for the murders, but Virgil and Everett are not prepared for Bragg's power as they try to bring him to justice, nor are they prepared for how Allison's sketchy commitment to Virgil will affect their lives.

Harris obviously has a love for Westerns from half a century ago, and this has the earmarks of a project in which everyone is as pleased as punch to be running around with six-shooters and cowboy hats and riding on horseback.  It's an unexpectedly funny movie as well, which adds to the old-fashioned vibe.  The good-natured humor reminded me of television Westerns in particular, and I think it's probably intentional.  Harris shoots his film a little flat, but its serviceable, and he never tries to re-invent the wheel here.

Zellweger and Irons are the weak links of the film.  Irons isn't given enough of a character to make it his own, instead opting for Generic Western Villain, but affecting some kind of strange accent that is neither country twang nor British.  Zellweger doesn't seem to fully understand her character, and is content to fall back on Zellwegerisms–the squinty smile for light moments, the pouty face for dramatic ones.  Allison is a difficult, complex role; one that requires a complete understanding of who she is, where she came from, and why she does what she does.  I don't get the impression that Zellweger knows the answer to any of those questions.  Now, is that Zellweger's fault or the fault of a rookie director who may have been too busy starring in his own film to step outside of the situation and work with Zellweger to perfect Allison as a character?

If Appaloosa were a restaurant instead of a movie, there is no doubt in my mind it would be a Cracker Barrel–a reliable place to find diversion with your grandparents, while taking in a suprisingly comforting, intentionally retro atmosphere.  That may be the stupidest analogy I've ever used, but it's apt.  Appaloosa has all the dust, clip-clopping horses, and shootouts you'd expect from a Western, and delivers it with two pretty great lead actors and some hard-boiled dialogue.

7 on a 1 to 10 scale

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The Brothers Bloom

Rian Johnson almost does for romantic comedies what he did with the noir thriller in Brick, creating a labor of love that pays tribute while also turning conventions askew.  The Brothers Bloom is a con man movie, that, for an extended period of time, acts as a pretty loveable romantic comedy.  It does this so successfully that you hope it doesn't slip into the conventions of the con man film, where every action until the credits roll is calculated as part of the grift.

Rachel Weisz is a revelation as Penelope Stamp, a lonely heiress with an encyclopedic skill set and a desire to experience new adventures.  She's the mark for the Brothers Bloom, played by Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo, and their silent partner Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi).  The brothers subscribe to the ideal that no con is worth pulling off unless every party gets what they want.  They're after Penelope's cash, fulfilling her desire for storybook adventure in the process, but the younger Bloom (Brody) wants more than that.  He's smitten by Penelope, fighting back guilt, but also fighting with his identity.  Is he destined to keep chasing the next grift, or will he ever be able to truly connect to another human being besides his brother Steven?

In spirit and in execution, The Brothers Bloom has the feel of Wes Anderson's best work.  It's easy to picture Luke Wilson as Steven and Owen as the younger Bloom, with the same script and locales, replacing Johnson's name above the credits with Anderson's.  That's no knock on Johnson at all, just an observation.  I like Anderson's voice, and I'm going to like any film that could exist in the same universe as Rushmore and The Royal Tennenbaums.  It walks the same fine line as Anderson, cute while never cuddly, with characters that peer over the edge at cartoony, without ever taking the plunge.

Weisz is absolutely the most charming thing about The Brothers Bloom, which is saying a lot in a movie filled with this much charm.  The scene in which Penelope experiences her first kiss is wonderful, and she's given a handful of moments like this.  The romantic parts of the film, where Penelope and Bloom fall for each other, is the real meat and potatoes of the movie.  It's just too bad Johnson loses sight of that.

The film ends up climaxing about a half hour too early, as the romantic threads tie up, and then the con takes precedence over anything else.  The truth is, no one in the audience at this point can really care all that much about the con, because all we care about, all we were told to care about, is the relationship between Bloom and Penelope.  Once that reaches its resolution, the story is over, like it or not, and the confidence game starts to feel like a chore.  For one thing, the grift itself is never made 100% clear, and it simply doesn't matter after a certain point.

I loved most of this movie, though, and it feels nice to love something, if only for a while.  As a romantic comedy, The Brothers Bloom works quite well, but as a con man movie, it's only okay.  Johnson doesn't quite find the balance, instead shifting priorities wholesale to the detriment of the overall film.  I'll hold on to the parts that I like, and forgive the parts I don't, and look forward to the next attempt from Rian Johnson's growing talent.

7.5 on a 1 to 10 scale

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Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading certainly feels like a film from the Coen Brothers.  With its oddball characters, meticulous cinematography, and stirring Carter Burwell score, there's little to complain about if you're seeking the singular experience of a Joel and Ethan Coen comedy.  However, if you're seeking a comedy that provides consistent laughs or greater emotional truths at its core, you've come to the wrong place.  Burn After Reading is more of a curio than a comedy.

The truth about the Coens as a creative force, especially when it comes to comedy, is that they seem to make projects that amuse themselves first and foremost, audience be damned.  (The only time it's apparent that they weren't doing that is Intolerable Cruelty, which is a fine mainstream piece of screwball fluff, but doesn't fit into the Coen "universe" at all.)  Even with an ill-received film like The Ladykillers, I still get the impression that they found it funny, even if audiences didn't.  The gags are abstract and conecptual; the characters walk a fine line between truth and cartoon and speak in a way that reflects the trademark Coen fascination (obsession?) with dialgoue and the rhythm of words.

I have no doubt that Joel and Ethan Coen found Burn after Reading hilarious, but the reality is that the movie lacks a character to serve as an audience entry point into their quirky story.  The casting tries to make up for that–it's easy to be interested in watching any one member of this celebrity ensemble at work, let alone all of them together in one movie–but just because I'm watching Frances McDormand because I like her as an actress, isn't the same thing as sharing something with her character that allows me to become fully absorbed into the story.

McDormand is Linda Litzke, a lonely, body-obsessed employee at a Hardbodies gym, who wants to use a disc found on a locker room floor containing the memoirs and financial info of former government agent Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) as leverage to pay for extensive plastic surgery.  George Clooney is over-sexed federal marshall Harry Pfarrer, who is sleeping with Cox's ice queen wife (Tilda Swinton), and accidentally ends up dating Litzke as well when Litzke mistakes him for a blind date at a public park and he plays along.  The plot threads weave together and run on with an almost non-existent payoff, the very nature of the non-payoff being all part of what the Coens themselves consider funny.

Are they saying something about our new post-9/11 paranoia?  Have we moved away from the Cold War only to find that we are now suspicious of everything government-related, that every action must have some greater conspiratorial meaning?  I think the subtext is here, and certainly that argument could be made.  It's just a shame they wasted those thoughts on a movie so mild.

There's a reason people don't consider The Ladykillers and The Hudsucker Proxy with the same reverance as The Big Lebowski or Raising Arizona, and it all comes down to the characters.  You can root for The Dude or H.I. McDunnough as heroes, there are elements of their personality that are noble, and parts of their struggle that are easy to relate to, despite ridiculous circumstances.  Tom Hanks in Ladykillers is a sniveling schemer; Tim Robbins in Hudsucker is a simpleton and a patsy.

Here, in Burn After Reading, Linda Litzke is shallow and idiotic.  That's not to say I didn't enjoy her character, but it holds back the film, keeping it in the category of lesser Coen films, which leads me to my next point, that even the lesser films of the Coen Brothers are worth watching.  They're artists.  They challenge me as an audience member, and they tell interesting stories.  They're visionary film craftsmen and most likely always will be, and as long as they are, I'll be there, watching.  While Burn After Reading might be a slight disappointment as a Coen Brothers film, it's still something I'll re-visit, and certainly a more worthwhile cinematic endeavor than most of the films that have seen release this year.

7.5 on a 1 to 10 scale

4:30 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Disaster Movie

Let me save you the money.  The following is a complete list of all of the references that Disaster Movie makes.  The film does not attach any meaning or jokes to the references, so I won't either, in keeping with the spirit of the film.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Cloverfield, Amy Winehouse, High School Musical, A Night at the Museum, Hannah Montana, Alvin & the Chipmunks, Justin Timberlake, Speed Racer, Kung Fu Panda, Iron Man, Hellboy, Twister, Head On (Apply directly to the forehead), AT&T, Juno, Beowulf, Michael Jackson, Enchanted, Step Up, Step Up 2:  The Streets, Jimmy Kimmel's Matt Damon song, Jessica Simpson, No Country for Old Men, Dr. Phil, The Love Guru, Flava Flav, Sex in the City, You Don't Mess With the Zohan, Hancock, Superbad, Incredible Hulk, The Dark Knight, Prince Caspian, and Jumper.

I think that's it.  I can't remember if I skipped any.

Here is an example from the trailer for this film of the kind of jokes you can expect:

Iron Man shows up and says "I AM IRON MAN!".  Then, a cow falls on him.

Here is another example, not shown in the trailers:

Prince Caspian is standing the forest, sword aloft, when Hayden Christiansen's character from Jumper teleports onto Caspian's sword, prompting Prince Caspian to say, "Hey, it's that guy from Star Wars!"

All of the dialogue in this movie consists of actors announcing who they are dressed up as and then leaving, or other characters pointing out who the other characters are and running away from them.  It's not a movie; it's a costume catalog.

Still doubtful?  I went from "I don't like this one bit" to "I hate this and I want to stab this movie" with the pre-ending credits musical number, wherein the entire cast sings a song that allows them all to come back and say what character they are supposed to be.  Yes, after watching a film that conisted entirely of announcements ("I'm Batman!", "It's Hannah Montana!", ad naseum), I was punished with a song made up of characters singing who they are dressed as.

This avoids a 1-point rating because it was shot with actual cameras and lights, and because I thought Nicole Parker's Enchanted parody might've been amusing in a different movie.  She plays the princess as a drug-addled homeless sewer dweller, and it is quite literally this movie's only actual joke.  It's a bit of a tough call to give it that one extra point, esepcially in light of how willing this movie is to get extremely ugly with women to try for a laugh.  It's a vile exercise in junk culture worship, a humorless, misogynistic, dull revolving door of unnecessary reminders of every movie that has been released in the past year.

2 on a 1 to 10 scale

5:24 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment