The plot of Adam & Steve ultimately
turns on, um, the Hershey squirts. If you can get past the
affliction’s first mention – and demonstration –  however, this
gay comedy by star, writer, and director Craig Chester is a rather
funny and nearly cliche-free depiction of a couple’s disastrous first
date and their accidental reunion 17 years later.

Neither Adam
(Chester) nor Steve (Malcolm Gets) recognize each other from their
coke-fueled tryst in the ’80s, and therefore develop their chance
meeting into a blissful relationship despite the scars that both bear
from the experience. Adam, originally a goth who’d never done drugs
before, is now living an eyeliner-free life that includes AA meetings
and his relationships with his dog and longtime best friend, Rhonda
(Parker Posey). Steve, originally a feather-haired dancer, is now a
germaphobe psychiatrist who lives with a straight roommate, Michael
(Chris Kattan), and prefers an anonymous gym-shower rendezvous to a
boyfriend (yeah, it seems contradictory, but he scrubs ‘em up before
the action begins).

OK, so there *are* some cliches here – and the
presence of Kattan probably isn’t any more of an incentive to buy a
ticket. But Chester, a deft comedian himself, knows his way around a
joke: Posey and Kattan each do their best work in a while with
characters that are quirky but  not obnoxious, and running gags such
as evidence to Adam’s early claim that public affection has only
gotten him yelled at and assaulted with beer bottles add touches of
physical comedy without descending into sitcom-wackiness. (Though
poor Julie Hagerty, late of She’s the Man and Just Friends, plays
another humiliating character here as Adam’s “cursed” mom.) The
dialogue in general is often (old)-Simpsons-esque — “You’re an
asshole! And a baby! You’re an asshole  that’s also a baby!” And
the love story itself is sweet and pretty universal – unless you
count the break-up dance-off at a country-western bar, a Sound of
Music-aided peace offering, and, well, that diarrhea thing.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

Sidney Lumet may have a reputation as
being an actor’s director, but in his latest courtroom drama, Find Me
Guilty, there’s a thought that may keep nagging the audience –
something about putting lipstick on a pig. And that hanging the
entire movie, which involves a huge cast we really don’t get to know,
on said pig was probably not the best idea.

Vin Diesel gets the aforementioned
makeover here, though he does manage to just barely elude slaughter.
With plugs on his usually smooth pate and some significant tubbiness
around his usually taut waistline, Diesel plays Giacomo “Jackie
Dee” DiNorscio, a real-life mobster who was involved in the longest
trial in history – 21 months – in the late ’80s to bring his
Mafia family down under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations) Act. Jackie was already serving 30 years for a drug
bust when the case, which involved 19 other defendants, got under
way. Of course, Jackie was offered a deal if he’d testify against the
others. Of course, he turns it down. And then the self-proclaimed
“gagster, not gangster” with a sixth-grade education decides to
become his own lawyer.

Lumet also co-wrote the script, which
is based on actual court transcripts, with freshman screenwriters
T.J. Mancini and Robert J. McCrea. And if the well-regarded 12 Angry
Men and Serpico director meant to make Find Me Guilty feel as drawn
out and claustrophobic as the mind-boggling real trial, he most
certainly succeeded. Besides the opening scenes in which Jackie gets
shot and later arrested, nearly all of the film’s 125 minutes takes
place either in Jackie’s cell or in the stuffed-to-capacity courtroom
(besides Jackie, each defendant had his own lawyer). The days of the
trial that are represented here are ticked off as Sean Kierney (Linus
Roache), the never-lost-a-case prosecuting attorney, trots out his
seemingly endless parade of witnesses and evidence before a patient
judge (Ron Silver). Lumet’s tight shots during cross-examinations
only increase the sense of smother, and when the film moves outside
in the final chapters, it’s literally like a breath of fresh air.

And during that entire time, the focus
is mainly on Jackie, who’s portrayed not only as a thug with a heart
of gold, but quite the jokester as well. (When the judge, trying to
dissuade him from defending himself, asks Jackie if he’s had any
legal experience, Jackie replies, “I’ve been in prison half my
life. Sometimes I think I had too much legal experience!”) Diesel,
who more often than not has been rather laughable in his typical
tough-guy roles, is simply doofy tossing off one-liners here. Jackie
is meant to be charming, turning the trial into a comedy act as those
in the courtroom collectively busts their guts with the guy’s every
joke. Combined with his character’s bad suits and worse hair, though,
Diesel’s gravelly voice, slow delivery, and ear-to-ear smiles make
Jackie seem more like a corny uncle than an ingratiating
smooth-talker. (When told that a “lady juror” was overheard
saying she thought Jackie was cute, Kierney understandably cries out,
“What the fuck is wrong with these people?”) Even when a punch
line does hit – and, to be fair, quite a few of them do –  it’s
hard not to imagine how much funnier it would be coming from someone
else.

And if Jackie fails to win you over,
Find Me Guilty makes for a long sit. We meet – or rather don’t meet
– his cronies only after they’ve already been herded into the
courtroom, so it’s difficult to care about the trial’s outcome with
no investment in the majority of the other characters. There are,
however, superb supporting performances, notably Peter Dinklage as a
skilled defense attorney, Annabella Sciorra in a brief but passionate
appearance as Jackie’s ex-wife, and Alex
Rocco as the family’s don. In one of the movie’s best scenes, Rocco’s
kingpin – with whom Jackie is out of favor – needs only a few
words to fill a giant, fully occupied lunchroom with gut-wrenching
tension.

Mercifully, Diesel isn’t made to play
the clown the entire time, and he does make a few of Jackie’s
cross-examinations fiery and compelling. But these scenes only add to
Lumet’s perplexing attempt to balance comedy and drama  – he uses
an extended version Louis Prima’s jazzy “When You’re Smiling (The
Whole World Smiles With You)” here and there to lend a lighthearted
tone, yet these are a bunch of murderous felons we’re supposed to be
cheering on. Ultimately, the remarkable length of the trial and a few
spot-on performances are the only interesting components of the
81-year-old director’s return to the courtroom – and like Diesel’s
makeover, it’s just not enough.

Mona, the young Israeli woman at the
center of The Syrian Bride, is no rat, either, but she is turning her
back on her family. The film takes place on her wedding day, but
there’s little sense of celebration: Mona’s  relatives are at each
other’s throats. She’s seen her fiance on his television show but has
never met him. And once the nuptials take place, Mona will cross the
Syrian border with her husband and will never be allowed to return
home. As Mona confides to her sister, “Perhaps I’m going from one
jail to another.”

The story seems simple, but
writer-director Eran Riklis, an Israeli, and co-writer (and
first-time scripter) Suha Arraf, a Palestinian feminist, deftly
inject the 98-minute movie with all the political, religious, and
sociological tensions of the area while it’s being told. The family
lives in Majdal Shams, a Druze village whose residents’ official
nationality is “undefined.” The wedding is set on the date Bashar
al-Assad became president of Syria, and pro-Syrian Hammed (Makram
Khoury), the father of the bride (Clara Khoury) — in both the film
and real life – insists on spending part of the day demonstrating.
He then comes home to find his son Hattem (Eyad Sheety), whom he
exiled from the family when Hattem married a Russian woman eight
years ago and still refuses to acknowledge him. Moreover, because
Hammed is on parole, he isn’t allowed to be present at Mona’s border
wedding and is being carefully watched. Even Mona’s modern sister,
Amal (Hiam Abbass), is fighting with her old-fashioned husband, Amin
(Adnan Trabshi), over “gossip” that she commits atrocities such
as wearing pants – and when a letter arrives accepting Amal to a
university, Amin’s reaction naturally isn’t good.

Through it all, Mona wanders around in
her glowing white dress, her face as dour as if she were attending a
funeral. The majority of the film takes place at the Israel-Syria
border, with the entire family now behaving and gathered to wait for
the arrival of Tellel (Derar Sliman), the groom. What ensues after he
and his family show up reflects the prejudices and hostilities in the
area – red tape brought on by stubborn officials on both sides
regarding passports suspends the wedding in a frustrating purgatory.
Meanwhile, the dusty no-man’s land between Syria and Israel – which
Riklis photographs in deep, stretching shots — is short enough for
parties to communicate by bullhorn.

With the ridiculously detained wedding
and the fractures within Mona’s clan, The Syrian Bride becomes an
allegory about the arrogance and lack of communication between both
sides of the border and the dismal odds of reaching peace because of
these roadblocks. The script also focuses on the plights of its
women, who unhappily live with the expectations of their patriarchal
society. In the film’s open-ended finale, though, both Mona and Amal
are seen literally taking steps toward a world in which, one
supposes, they will insist on making their own decisions. Their
different paths continue The Syrian Bride’s sense of melancholy, but
there’s an unmistakable note of triumph as well.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

V for Vendetta is set in a futuristic
Great Britain, but make no mistake: The themes of lies, loss of
liberties, and spin control that dominate this adaptation of Alan
Moore and David Lloyd’s DC graphic novel are all about red-statism
run amok. The antihero of this story, a former prisoner simply named
V,  is out to change the U.K.’s now-fascist government, where
television scripts must be preapproved by the administration and a
“vault of objectionable materials” exists. Signs around London
read, “Strength through unity, unity through faith.” The citizens
are even denied butter, likely because it’s for their own good. So
you root for this radical, especially because he’s first introduced
saving a young miss who’s out after curfew from a team of horny
patrolmen.

But then V says, “Blowing up a
building can change the world,” and suddenly you don’t know whose
side you’re on.

Perhaps that’s why Moore wanted his
name taken off the credits.  (Either that, or because the big-screen
versions of two of his other comics, From Hell and The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen, were butchered.) Moore published Vendetta in
1989 as an attack on the Thatcher administration. In the hands of
scripters and The Matrix creators Andy and Larry Wachowski, Thatcher
has quite obviously been changed to Bush. Bioterror, wiretapping,
discrimination against homosexuals (though this goes into Nazi
territory) and even avian flu are thrown in the government-gone-wild
pot. (And, incredulously, there are more.) When Evey (Natalie
Portman), the aforementioned curfew-breaker, tells V (Hugo Weaving)
about the demise of her activist parents, she recalls her mother
wanting to leave the country and her father insisting, “If we ran
away, they would win!”

So the Wachowskis aren’t subtle. And as
the Matrix trilogy has proved, they also won’t use one word when 10
will do. V, caped and sporting a Jack White bob and top hat while his
face is covered with creepy Guy Fawkes mask, introduces himself to
Evey in a cascade of alliteration (“v,” naturally, being his
favorite letter) and incomprehensible blather. Your mind strains to
keep up, but thankfully, that’s   the only bit of Revolutions in V’s
revolution. At the end of V’s speech, a frightened but intrigued Evey
logically asks, “Are you, like, a crazy person?” Intelligible
English takes over from there.

The two meet on the eve of November 5,
the day in which the English remember Fawkes, a Roman Catholic
conspirator who was hanged in 1606 for attempting to blow up
Parliament the year before. Fireworks are set off and effigies are
burned on that night to celebrate his capture, but V starts a day
early. Asking Evey if she likes music, V takes her to the roof of a
nearby building and starts conducting an invisible orchestra, with
Evey still looking at him as if he’s nuts. At midnight, though,
Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture begins to blare out of
street speakers, and fireworks go off as London’s Old Bailey
courthouse is blown up.

V
and Evey, who works at a television station, run into each other
again the next day, as V takes over the airwaves and says, “The
truth is there’s something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t
there?” He threatens that he will carry out Fawkes’ plot if changes
aren’t made within a year. Police storm the building, and when one of
them finally captures V – he’s outfitted several people with his
getup — Evey finds herself helping him get away. She’s knocked out,
and wakes up in V’s cultivated underground lair, filled with art,
sculpture, books, and even a 14^th century copy of the
Koran: “I don’t have to be Muslim to appreciate its beauty,” he
says.

Vendetta
then follows the pair as they cycle through bonds and separations for
the next year, though first-time director James McTeigue gives little
indication of the time passed. And it’s not quite the action movie
the trailers make it out to be: For a big-screen version of a graphic
novel, there’s not much flash, and though V proves to be rather
adroit with knives when facing a group of authority figures and has a
list of pro-government people that he systematically murders –
leaving a red rose on each corpse – there’s not much blood. Only
flashbacks get real color (with one scene reminiscent of Christo’s
The Gates), while present-day London is dark and gloomy, apparently
indicative of the pall cast over its straitjacketed citizenry.

The Wachowskis throw a few jokes into
their manifesto, such as when the residents of an old-folks home
start banging on their TV when V turns the regular programming into
static. Except for Portman’s creditably accented Evey and Stephen
Rea’s unexpressive investigator who begins to discover how corrupt
the government really is, most of the characters are outsize:
Weaving, Matrix’s Agent Smith, remarkably conveys emotion and outrage
while hidden behind the mask, there’s a loudmouth Bill O’Reilly-ish
host of a news program (Roger Allam), and fighting to maintain
control of his people is the chancellor (John Hurt), who’s always
shown bellowing to his minions in giant-screen video conferences.

Overall, Vendetta ends up alternating
between mesmerizing ideology and repetitive lulls, mostly when each
of V’s murders are investigated with little variation. There are a
few cheesy moments – V, for example, doesn’t exactly seem like the
type of person who would throw his mask into a mirror over love. The
avalanche of issues are, for the most part, superficially dealt with,
though they do leave you with the notion that a too-involved
government is bad, bad, bad. But what about V’s strategy of blowing
up buildings? Vendetta’s messages may clash, but considering who
shaped them, at least they are understandable.

It’s Big Tobacco, not Big Brother,
that’s indicted in Thank You for Smoking, a satire based on a novel
by Christopher Buckley about a spokesperson/spin doctor for the
cigarette industry – or, as the character puts it, one of the few
people in the world who “know what it’s like to be truly despised.”

Despite the vitriol this subject can
inspire, writer-director Jason Reitman’s feature debut is nothing but
fun. With jaunty music, freeze-frames on just-introduced characters,
and even a cartoon or two (of, for example, a couple of airplanes
when stats about various causes of death are trotted out), there’s
little danger of taking Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart)
or his job too seriously. Not that he doesn’t: When Nick goes to a
school – St. Euthanasius — to give a talk about what he does, he
answers a little girl’s questions about her mother’s assertion that
cigarettes are bad by throwing questions back at her about whether
her mother is a doctor or scientist. “Well she doesn’t sound like a
credible expert, does she?” Nick then cheers on the students to not
take anyone else’s word on a subject: “Challenge authority! Find
out for yourselves!” Even the teacher seems momentarily convinced.

Nick
is so chipper and oily that he even triumphs on an Oprah episode
featuring a 15-year-old lung cancer patient. His son, Joey (Cameron
Bright), asks questions about his dubious propaganda, but Nick
answers simply, “If you argue correctly, you’re never wrong.”
Still, Nick’s tantrum-throwing boss, BR (J.K. Simmons), gets his
people together to come up with a new strategy to sell smokes,
because the numbers are going down. Everyone’s silent. “We sell
cigarettes!” BR bellows. “And they’re cool, and available, and
addictive. The job is almost done for us!” Nick finally suggests
campaigning Hollywood to get actors smoking onscreen again, and he’s
off to L.A. to get a cigarette-swarmed movie  made.

The
tobacco industry isn’t the only target here. The press, particularly
how a “Washington Probe” reporter (Katie Holmes) obtains
information, takes a punch, as well as the two friends Nick has
regular steakhouse drinking sessions with: The spokespeople for the
alcohol and firearms industries (Maria Bello and David Koechner). The
three refer to themselves as the MOD Squad – as in, Merchants of
Death. Each of them discuss who’s in the most difficult position to
spin the uproar-du-jour in their respective fields.

Reitman
gets the dialogue and tone of Thank You for Smoking just right, but
the performances are spot-on, too. Eckhart’s Nick is too personable
and logical to hate, Simmons is a terrific hardass, and even Robert
Duvall gives his first unembarrassing turn in quite a while as
tobacco’s Southern patriarch. William H. Macy also makes an
appearance as a flustered senator who’s out to hang Nick, but never
quite succeeds, especially when the tobacco lobbyist argues that the
senator’s territory dishes out unhealthy fare, too: “The great
state of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese!” Macy’s
official stammers. Eckhart and Bright also play their characters’
sometimes ridiculous bonding scenes – one occurs on a road trip in
which both of them agree that they would take a bribe if it were
large enough — with
an assured wink. 

It’s
all in fun, but obviously there is a relevant and disheartening
message here that you can’t trust anything or anybody, because even
the worst situations can be spun to look like gold. There’s even a
doctor referenced here who can back up Nick’s slick sell with data,
and Nick’s comment on the guy says it all: “This man could disprove
gravity.”

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com 

I never thought I’d say this, but thank
God for Terry Bradshaw’s ass. When a movie’s two main characters are
a smug, stunted 35-year-old who lives with his parents and a, um,
professional girlfriend who heartlessly makes men fall for her so
they’ll be more motivated to leave Mommy’s basement, you’d be
surprised at how entertaining an old jock’s completely gratuitous
cheeks can be.

Everything that’s funny about the unfortunately titled
Failure to Launch, in fact, has little to do with the central plot,
in which spoiled nest-lover Tripp (Matthew McConaughey) has
overstayed his welcome living with his folks (Bradshaw and Kathy
Bates), who are too nervous to confront him. So they hire a perky
blonde named Paula (Sarah Jessica Parker) to flirt with and coo at
their boy with the cold calculation of a Rules girl, who guarantees
that Tripp will soon be empowered to go out on his own. Watching the
two meet cute and grin their perfect pearly whites at each other is
pretty gag-worthy, so be grateful that scripters Tom J. Astle and
Matt Ember (both former television writers) added some vinegar with
Paula’s sullen, antisocial roommate, Kit (Zooey Deschanel), who moves
further away from the Miss Sunshine title when she’s driven crazy by
a mockingbird that’s continually parked outside her window. (Yes, she
wants to kill it.) Kit also sniffs out that, predictably, Paula
begins crossing her professional boundaries and becomes “a dirty
little fun-haver,” despite the fact that her Porsche-driving,
boat-broker client is basically still a frat boy who hangs with his
buddies every day and uses his living situation to send
relationship-minded women fleeing.

Parker is effervescent in her
now-effortless Carrie kind of way. And McConaughey – well, if
you’re one of the people who agree with People’s crowning him 2005’s
Sexiest Men Alive, you’ll probably enjoy his dimpled smarm here. (And
if anyone thinks it’s implausible that a guy like Tripp would still
be living at home and acting like a kid, you obviously don’t date
very much.) The plot is padded with paintball, biking, surfing scenes
as it limps toward its inevitable conclusion, though the writers at
least throw a sympathy-fishing curveball late in the game. At this
point, it doesn’t matter – the movie’s end is still less amusing
than Bradshaw’s.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

When the subject of Following Sean is
asked, “Do you turn on?” he replies, “No. I smoke grass.”
Sean then goes on to say that he eats grass, too – which he prefers
– that other drugs are scary, and that you can tell a speed freak
by how skinny he is. He knows that people get busted for weed but
doesn’t believe it will happen to him. It’s not because Sean thinks
he’s impervious, as those who break the law often do. Rather, it’s
because he’s “too little.” See, when this interview took place,
in 1969, Sean was 4.

Following Sean is writer-director Ralph
Arlyck’s second movie about Sean Farrell. Arlyck, a New York native,
was living in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury neighborhood as a
graduate film student in the late 60s when he decided to turn the
sharp, chatty son of the hippies who lived upstairs into a school
project.  He used a skateboard to track the restless kid as he ran
around the neighborhood, and eventually sat him down for a quick talk
about his life, from why he doesn’t wear shoes (“They’re sweaty”)
to having him explain parts of the body (“You need bones so you
don’t…squash”). Sean, rocking an overgrown Prince Valiant
haircut, also says that his family has a dog because the cops bother
them, then thinks a second and asks, “Why are the police around so
much? Huh?”

Arlyck’s resulting short, named Sean,
became a minor sensation, winning festival awards and even a White
House screening. What was stirring up audiences the most, of course,
was Sean’s drug use, and for this Arlyck felt some guilt: “This boy
and his family have become a symbol, and it was my fault.” Sean
wasn’t the only thing Arlyck turned his camera toward while in the
midst of counterculture’s most famous corner, even admitting that he
felt he wasn’t so much living in the Haight as watching it. This
footage has been integrated into Arlyck’s full-length follow-up to
Sean, most of which he filmed from 1994-2003 after tracking down the
former kiddie stoner and his parents.

Following Sean ultimately became much
more than a whatever-happened-to-that-kid story. Arlyck, who
subsequently made a few other documentary shorts after his student
project and has taught film production, found parallels in his and
Sean’s histories: Sean’s West Coast grandparents were active
communists, and Arlyck’s East Coast parents dabbled in but never
committed to the Reds. Both of the  men had married expatriates;
Arlyck’s relationship with a Frenchwoman began when he still lived in
the Haight, while Sean meets a Russian woman during Following’s
filming. The similarities led Arlyck to turn the documentary into a
delicately woven examination of family and marriage and nurture
versus nature, spanning three generations of both clans.

Arlyck’s craftsmanship makes Following
Sean a mesmerizing 87 minutes. Combining still photos and  film both
with and without audio, some black and white and some in color, the
movie captures a remarkable history: the police riots, civil rights
demonstrations, and job-as-shackles layabouts in 60s  Haight;
Arlyck’s own home movies as he and his wife move out of the
neighborhood and into a more responsible lifestyle; and then nearly
10 years of the grown Sean’s life – which became the opposite of
his father’s, who divorced Sean’s mother, married another woman, and
then left her and renounced his share of  their possessions in favor
a broke,  nothing-left-to-lose existence. Arlyck interviews Sean’s
charismatic, still-hippie dad as well as his mother, sister, and a
half-brother he’s very close to. Arlyck, too, gets together his
elderly parents and some extended family to talk about their
experiences with the underground, which they relate with giggles. And
when no one is sharing a story, Arlyck’s contemplative narration
takes over as 30+ years of images move back and forth in time.
Following Sean may continue Arlyck’s depiction of Farrell as a
symbol, but the movie’s greater story about fate and the
unpredictable paths one’s life can take should leave the filmmaker
feeling no guilt at all.

Nearly 30 years have also passed
between Alexandre Aja’s remake of The Hills Have Eyes and Wes
Craven’s 1977 original, but the update is less surprising than Sean’s
tale. Aja, who made his American debut with last year’s grisly High
Tension, has elaborated on Craven’s classic – which means a better
story for the more discerning and plenty of blood for the gore
whores. Its quality as a, um, fleshed-out film in itself is
undeniable; as for any remaining sense of fun that should arguably
accompany a slasher flick, well, I guess that’s what the Scream and
Scary Movie franchises are now for.

With Craven on board as a producer, Aja
and High Tension collaborator Gregory Levasseur adapted the horror master’s old script. After
getting a quick scare/bloodletting out of the way – some poor dude
with a Geiger counter ends up joining a few other bodies, hanging
from the back of a car like  Just Married decorations – Aja follows
Craven’s story pretty faithfully: Ethel and Bob (Kathleen Quinlan and
Ted Levine) are celebrating their anniversary with a road trip to
California, and they insist their less-than-enthusiastic children
come with them. Eldest daughter Lynne (Vinessa Shaw) needs to placate
both her newborn and her husband, Doug (Aaron Stanford), who doesn’t
get along his father-in-law; and teenagers Bobby and Brenda (Dan Byrd
and Emilie de Ravin) pretty much do nothing but take care of their
two dogs and complain.

Especially
when the shortcut a creepy gas station owner  (Tom Bower) advises the
family to take – which he follows with “Have a safe trip!” and
a greasy grin – leaves them stranded in the middle of the desert
when a couple of their tires blow. “This is so fucked,” Brenda
keeps repeating. Of course, at this point she has no idea how right
she is.

Aja
ever so gradually reveals to the audience who’s lurking in the hills,
with a grunt here or a malformed hand or foot there as the residents
at first case their new guests. Meanwhile, the scripters’ spin on the
original is also slowly developed – a sign reading “No
Trespassing, United States Government Department of Energy” hangs
on a fenced-off area, and newspaper clippings hanging in the gas
station speak of considerable nuclear testing and miners who were
left unprotected from its aftereffects. As is typical, a few fake
jumps are thrown in to put the audience on edge. (Though really, does
anybody actually jump up outside windows like horror movies seem to
think?) It’s a good half-hour into the movie’s 107-minute running
time before the Deliverance-type mutants resulting from the radiation
make themselves fully known.

The
sensitive may want to shield their eyes after this, because here’s
where Aja lets loose. As in High Tension, guts, brains, and buckets
of blood are spilled as the hill dwellers hunt down their juicy human
prey. There’s still some subtle creepiness accompanying the carnage,
mostly in the form of the mannequins and happy-household setups that
remain from the testing, which the freaks now call home. But mostly,
the attacks and murders are stomach-turningly graphic – and worse,
the sexual assault merely hinted at in Craven’s film is also made
clearer here. (The only sorta-laughable part of this sickening scene
is the pillow fight that ensues, but it’s hardly enough to relieve
the vileness.) And this, it seems, is the new face of fright – no
more camp, no more suggestion, no more edge-of-your-seat fun, but
realistic bloodshed that’s unapologetically nasty. There’s no doubt
that Aja is a gifted craftsman, but his vision of the genre may leave
some newly appreciating the never-ending releases of parody-ripe
horror hackery.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

Vampires, hemophages, whatever: It
doesn’t take long for the comic-book-based Ultraviolet to fill you
with dread. That monotone female voiceover, that ridiculously long
backstory before the movie actually begins…uh oh, looks like we
have another Underworld to snooze through. And when the latest
girl-with-guns, Violet (Milla Jovovich), begins the explanation by
intoning, “I was born into a world you may not understand,” well,
at least the movie got one thing right.

Anyone expecting no more than
another piece of Xbox cinema may be satisfied with writer-director
Kurt Wimmer’s futuristic and flashy ultraworld, whose brilliant
colors and sped-up action are given a surreal sheen via HD video. As
for the story, um, Violet is one of the hemophages who are no longer
considered human because of a virus pandemic, she’s pretty good at
karate, and she can impressively make weapons appear out of her arms.
Her hair changes color for no apparent reason though her midriff is
consistently exposed, and she claims to hate humans. Until, that is,
she peeks into a package that about 20 people warned her not to open
and finds a kid named Six (Cameron Bright, late of Running Scared,
who regardless of his salary is making way too much to stare blankly
through all of his movies). Six is the son of Daxus (Nick Chinlund),
some evildoer who wears metal filters in his nostrils, and the
child’s blood has an antigen that might be able to cure Violet. So
she becomes his mommy, protecting him from people, including Daxus,
who want to kill him. Naturally, this involves never-ending scenes of
Matrix-like moves and a whole lot of bullets.

Unfortunately, the
action is also accompanied by terrible, horrible, no good, very bad
acting and even worse dialogue, courtesy of the man who also somehow
scripted The Recruit and The Thomas Crown Affair. Lines include the
predictable – frequent challenges in the form of “But you’ll
never do [blank]!” whose responses are “Watch me!” — and then
there are the laughable: “It is ON!” and “Are you mental?”
are especial howlers, along with a late-chapter, out-of-nowhere “Why
won’t you let anyone in?” which is Wimmer’s only attempt to give
Violet a personality other than pissed-off droner. Ultraviolet’s 85
minutes feel like an eternity, but if that makes you think there’s
not a sequel suggested at the end of it all, you’re mental.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

Too many of the wrong people/films got them! The best I can say is Jon Stewart was pretty funny (at times) and that I’m glad King Kong got some love, because for me that was one of 2005’s best pictures. All of the movies that got the big nod should have been categorized under Rather Good Picture: Munich, I think, was the least flawed; Brokeback Mountain didn’t have enough of a setup to the affair; Capote and Good Night, and Good Luck were solid but neither blew me away. And Crash — once all the contrivances and not-terribly-believable character changes started kicking in, it also lost my vote.

(For the record, my favorite movie from last year is Sin City. Original, beautiful, well-written and -acted…the first movie that truly excited me in a few years. As I mentioned above, Kong did it for me, too — the sheer thrills and artistry in both turned me back into a fangirl instead of a cynical, increasingly unimpressed critic, and for that I’m quite grateful!)

Love Ang Lee, love Philip Seymour Hoffman, but I thought there were more deserving. Also in the supporting categories — c’mon, did George Clooney wow the Academy voters just because he made himself slightly less attractive? And as far as Reese Witherspoon, well, I know I’m in the minority on this, but she just never became June Carter to me.

Man, this post is boring…maybe I should just stick to using the site for my reviews! Speaking of which, time to start working…

For anyone still unfamiliar with Tyler
Perry’s Madea franchise, there’s one important thing to know: Madea
may be a big momma, but she’s  no Big Momma. One look at Perry’s
fat-suited old lady, and there it is — the traumatic image of Martin
Lawrence’s own similarly enlarged but painfully unfunny female alter
ego. What a surprise, then, to find genuine humor in Madea’s Family
Reunion, the sequel to Perry’s surprise 2005 hit, Diary of a Mad
Black Woman. Written and directed by Perry, Family Reunion emphasizes
the same themes that also run through his stage works: the importance
of family, self-respect, and generally behaving in an upstanding
Christian manner.

There’s a tangle of plots before  the reunion,
though. The most significant storylines follow Madea’s nieces, Lisa
(Rochelle Aytes) and her half-sister, Vanessa (Lisa
Arrindell Anderson). Lisa’s engaged to an outwardly perfect
investment banker (Blair Underwood) – except he hits her. Vanessa
has two children and no longer trusts men – but here comes the
sent-from-heaven good guy (Boris Kodjoe) who persistently pursues
her. There’s also an angry-at-the-world foster child (Keke Palmer)
whom Madea is court-ordered to take in, and who naturally transforms
into a polite, hardworking youngster through Madea’s tough love.
Obviously, there’s plenty of heavy-handedness here: The sister’s
mother, Victoria (Lynn Whitfield), is too ridiculously callous about
her daughters’ well-being to be believable. And when the reunion
finally takes place, it’s capped by an I Have a Dream-esque speech
given by a random family member (Cicely Tyson) that, although
eloquent, pretty much has nothing to do with the subjects previously
dealt with.

One of Perry’s worst missteps involves a character
getting back at someone by dousing him with hot grits: Not only is
this not terribly Christian, the scene is made even more appalling by
being accompanied by “Love and Happiness” — by Al Green, who
years ago was attacked the very same way. Excepting this conflicting
message, however, Family Reunion is filled with too much heart and
good old-fashioned values to dismiss. And for every Lesson that slaps
you in the face, there’s Perry.  His Madea is all fresh one-liners
and forever-threatened thuggery (“I shot Tupac!”). And the
filmmaker  also plays Madea’s brother, Joe, who seems to exist only
to add some Sanford and Son-ish wisecracking: You may have never
before found flatulence funny, but try not to laugh when Joe
ruminates on the subject with the conclusion “Let go and let God.”

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

For anyone still unfamiliar with Tyler
Perry’s Madea franchise, there’s one important thing to know: Madea
may be a big momma, but she’s  no Big Momma. One look at Perry’s
fat-suited old lady, and there it is — the traumatic image of Martin
Lawrence’s own similarly enlarged but painfully unfunny female alter
ego. What a surprise, then, to find genuine humor in Madea’s Family
Reunion, the sequel to Perry’s surprise 2005 hit, Diary of a Mad
Black Woman. Written and directed by Perry, Family Reunion emphasizes
the same themes that also run through his stage works: the importance
of family, self-respect, and generally behaving in an upstanding
Christian manner.

There’s a tangle of plots before  the reunion,
though. The most significant storylines follow Madea’s nieces, Lisa
(Rochelle Aytes) and her half-sister, Vanessa (Lisa
Arrindell Anderson). Lisa’s engaged to an outwardly perfect
investment banker (Blair Underwood) – except he hits her. Vanessa
has two children and no longer trusts men – but here comes the
sent-from-heaven good guy (Boris Kodjoe) who persistently pursues
her. There’s also an angry-at-the-world foster child (Keke Palmer)
whom Madea is court-ordered to take in, and who naturally transforms
into a polite, hardworking youngster through Madea’s tough love.
Obviously, there’s plenty of heavy-handedness here: The sister’s
mother, Victoria (Lynn Whitfield), is too ridiculously callous about
her daughters’ well-being to be believable. And when the reunion
finally takes place, it’s capped by an I Have a Dream-esque speech
given by a random family member (Cicely Tyson) that, although
eloquent, pretty much has nothing to do with the subjects previously
dealt with.

One of Perry’s worst missteps involves a character
getting back at someone by dousing him with hot grits: Not only is
this not terribly Christian, the scene is made even more appalling by
being accompanied by “Love and Happiness” — by Al Green, who
years ago was attacked the very same way. Excepting this conflicting
message, however, Family Reunion is filled with too much heart and
good old-fashioned values to dismiss. And for every Lesson that slaps
you in the face, there’s Perry.  His Madea is all fresh one-liners
and forever-threatened thuggery (“I shot Tupac!”). And the
filmmaker  also plays Madea’s brother, Joe, who seems to exist only
to add some Sanford and Son-ish wisecracking: You may have never
before found flatulence funny, but try not to laugh when Joe
ruminates on the subject with the conclusion “Let go and let God.”

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com