Chi McBride and Will Arnett in "Let’s Go to Prison."

© Universal Pictures

No shock here: Let’s Go to Prison is
not the next Borat. But you gotta laugh at anyone – convict or
otherwise – who says with complete sincerity, “I go apeshit over
Chuck Mangione.”

Mr. Show’s Bob Odenkirk helms this passable
comedy, which was co-written by Reno 911! scribes Robert Ben Garant,
Thomas Lennon, and Michael Patrick Jann. Their script, a bit
disturbingly, is based on Jim Hogshire’s quite serious survival
guide, “You Are Going to Prison,” but the movie’s intention isn’t
to scare anyone straight: John Lyshitski (Dax Shepard) has been in
and out of the slammer since he was a kid, always convicted by the
same judge. When John finishes his latest sentence, he sets out to
seek revenge on the guy, only to discover that hizzoner had been
promoted to that great bench in the sky only three days prior. So
instead John decides to frame Nelson, the judge’s spoiled, anxious
son (Will Arnett), and get tossed back in jail so he can personally
torment him.

The cliches, from corrupt guards to cigarette currency,
are as frequent as a Cops arrestee’s proclamations of innocence, and
a few funny gags had to be stretched to stupidity to fill the movie’s
slight 84 minutes. Shepard’s dry narration and the cocky-but-dim act
that Arnett perfected on Arrested Development are the best parts of
this foe/buddy flick, along with Chi McBride’s physically
intimidating character, who doesn’t declare Nelson his bitch but
instead warns him to “prepare to be woo-ed” by his smooth-jazz
come-ons.

Odenkirk’s direction, too, helps strengthen the script,
most ingeniously by frequently zooming in on Arnett’s looks of either
1) childlike terror or 2) stunned resignation, both somehow made
funnier by his purty blue-green eyes. (Giving him lines such as
“Crying takes the sad out of you” doesn’t hurt, either.) When
Let’s Go to Prison really tanks, it does so suddenly and
significantly. Its forced third chapter, however, is arguably worth
enduring, considering joys such as a montage of Nelson’s initiation
– set to the nearly literal “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head.”

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

Chi McBride and Will Arnett in "Let’s Go to Prison."

© Universal Pictures

No shock here: Let’s Go to Prison is
not the next Borat. But you gotta laugh at anyone – convict or
otherwise – who says with complete sincerity, “I go apeshit over
Chuck Mangione.”

Mr. Show’s Bob Odenkirk helms this passable
comedy, which was co-written by Reno 911! scribes Robert Ben Garant,
Thomas Lennon, and Michael Patrick Jann. Their script, a bit
disturbingly, is based on Jim Hogshire’s quite serious survival
guide, “You Are Going to Prison,” but the movie’s intention isn’t
to scare anyone straight: John Lyshitski (Dax Shepard) has been in
and out of the slammer since he was a kid, always convicted by the
same judge. When John finishes his latest sentence, he sets out to
seek revenge on the guy, only to discover that hizzoner had been
promoted to that great bench in the sky only three days prior. So
instead John decides to frame Nelson, the judge’s spoiled, anxious
son (Will Arnett), and get tossed back in jail so he can personally
torment him.

The cliches, from corrupt guards to cigarette currency,
are as frequent as a Cops arrestee’s proclamations of innocence, and
a few funny gags had to be stretched to stupidity to fill the movie’s
slight 84 minutes. Shepard’s dry narration and the cocky-but-dim act
that Arnett perfected on Arrested Development are the best parts of
this foe/buddy flick, along with Chi McBride’s physically
intimidating character, who doesn’t declare Nelson his bitch but
instead warns him to “prepare to be woo-ed” by his smooth-jazz
come-ons.

Odenkirk’s direction, too, helps strengthen the script,
most ingeniously by frequently zooming in on Arnett’s looks of either
1) childlike terror or 2) stunned resignation, both somehow made
funnier by his purty blue-green eyes. (Giving him lines such as
“Crying takes the sad out of you” doesn’t hurt, either.) When
Let’s Go to Prison really tanks, it does so suddenly and
significantly. Its forced third chapter, however, is arguably worth
enduring, considering joys such as a montage of Nelson’s initiation
– set to the nearly literal “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head.”

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

Jane Lynch, Fred Willard

After exposing the silly sides of
small-town theater, dog shows, and has-been folkies, Christopher
Guest has now targeted Hollywood – which is kind of like a class
bully picking on the headgear-wearing kid with asthma. But just
because its concept is easy doesn’t mean For Your Consideration isn’t
funny. This mockumentary takes place on the set of Home for Purim, a
World War II-era piece about a Southern Jewish family getting
together to celebrate its dying matriarch’s favorite holiday. After
the camera’s been rolling for a few days, word trickles out that
somehow, somewhere on “the thing with email” known as the
Internet, a gossip site has mentioned that Marilyn Hack (Catherine
O’Hara), the actress who plays the sick mother, is turning in an
Oscar-worthy performance. (It does take a certain something to
deliver lines that include both magnolia similes and Yiddishisms like
meshuggah.)  And so the skyrocketing media exposure that can result
from a bit of buzz, especially the forest-for-the-trees kind over an
actually terrible film, begins.

Consideration is crafted in Guest’s
usual style — the story’s broadly penned by the director and Eugene
Levy, but the dialogue is largely improvised. Ricky Gervais joins
Guest’s  sizable go-to ensemble (which most notably includes Jennifer
Coolidge, Parker Posey, Fred Willard, John Michael Higgins, and
Michael McKean) and unleashes one of the best lines when his studio
suit is trying to persuade the writers (Bob Balaban and McKean) to
tone down the movie’s “Jewishness.” But nearly everyone enjoys a
moment of perfection: Jane Lynch nails the posture and set-in-stone
expression as the Leeza-like host of an entertainment show called
Hollywood Now, Coolidge injects absurdity into her portrayal of an
airheaded producer who once “fell over the side of an escalator,”
and Carrie Aizley throws the worst softballs as a dippy celebrity
journalist.

Willard and Guest are funny enough as sight gags –
Guest, as Purim’s helmer, sports long shorts, a potbelly, and a
Jewfro while Willard rocks a fauxhawk as Hollywood Now’s co-host –
though Willard runs away with Consideration’s end as his TV
personality tackles a segment of cringe-inducing interviews. Guest’s
mark might be huge, but his characters remain distinctly and expertly
oblivious.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

John Roberts 

Cocaine Cowboys, a documentary about
cocaine’s Category 5 hit on Southern Florida a few decades’ ago,
offers flash, cat-and-mouse suspense, and the vicarious thrill of
watching schlubs score big money with seemingly little effort — much
like its obvious fictional counterpart, Miami Vice. The TV series.
But with a nearly two-hour running time that includes its share of
blowhards, repetition, and cheesy attempts to heighten drama, Cocaine
Cowboys also brings to mind a more unfortunate comparison:  Miami
Vice. The movie.

Taking his documentary from a time when
Miami was a “very very quiet, pleasant place to live” to its
present state as a cosmopolitan party town, director Billy Corben
interviews the crooks, the cops, and the natives who witnessed the
explosion of violence and wealth that accompanied the heydey of the
coke trade in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Miami – which is
described here by defense attorney Samuel I. Burstyn as an area
“where law and order was never championed” — was a ripe portal
for Colombians to move their increasingly clamored-for product
northward: Its borders were unpatrolled, and DEA officials admit that
the government back then paid as much attention to the cocaine
industry as it did to pre-Katrina warnings of levee weakness in New
Orleans.

“It was wide open,” John Roberts
and Mickey Mundy, two of the film’s main commentators, agree.
Roberts, a New York nightclub owner who moved to Florida in 1970
after his business partner was killed, began distributing cocaine not
long after his arrival. But when his Cuban supplier could no longer
keep up with Roberts’ growing clientele, he partnered with Mundy, a
local pilot he met through a girlfriend. They didn’t care for each
other – Mundy says Roberts’ black Mercedes “had drug dealer
written all over it” — but any differences were forgotten when
they began working directly for big-time Colombians, specifically
Pablo Escobar and the rest of the Medellin Cartel. Soon the pair had
more money than they literally knew what to do with, burying some
while using more to buy land and  spread out operations, to better
evade what little law enforcement may have been on to them. As Mundy
puts it, “It was too easy.”

So easy that Miami was quickly defined
by blow and the consequences of its trafficking. Not all of which was
bad: Yes, violence escalated to the point where the media required
“four or five murders” before it considered a particular crime
newsworthy. Fidel Castro had “flushed the toilets of Cuba into the
United States,” in his words, increasing the area’s rampant
lawlessness to such a degree that when its police force decided to
beef up its enrollment, it had to keep relaxing its drug-use policy
until it pretty much became, “If you’re not high now, you’re in.”
(Surprise: That year’s class didn’t quite work out.) Meanwhile,
however, the economy flourished. Nearly everyone and his neighbor
became small-time dealers back before things got ugly, and Miami saw
an unprecedented growth of banks in particular and business overall.

Cocaine Cowboys delves deeply into the
muck, eventually switching focus from Roberts and Mundy to Jorge
“Rivi” Avala, a hit man still in custody, and his
car-crash-fascinating boss, Griselda Blanco, the relentlessly
bloodthirsty ringleader of the Medellins known as “The Godmother.”
Corben interviews Avala, like he does Roberts and Mundy, extensively.
Blanco, however, as are other players, is represented only by a
rotation of images that slowly zoomed in and out, or positioned on
different backgrounds as if she were a stock graduate in a Sears
Portrait catalogue. Corben, a second-time documentarian, emulates his
subjects by  not knowing when enough is enough with either approach:
The cut-outs are always tacky. (Often they’re even accompanied by
floating bags of coke.) And although the film’s main participants and
the history they share are transfixing, say, 50 percent of the time –
Roberts is motormouthed and weaselly; Mundy looks and speaks like
Donald Trump, albeit with a strawberry blond ponytail down his back;
and Avala is boyishly handsome and engaging – Corben lets their
testimonies to stretch into one-man pissing contests about how much,
how many, how often. These are the men you regret striking up a
conversation with at a bar. Combined with editing that won’t let you
forget this is a movie about coke – and makes you feel as if you’re
surrounded by braggarts talking over one another – it’s a relief
when Corben allows a comedown.

None too subtle, either, is the use of
composer Jan Hammer, who contributes what’s really his own Miami Vice
theme with a country-western tweak. But such flagrancy is perhaps
fitting. After endless  tales of bloodletting, gory news footage, and
the disclosure of these characters’ fates – but also a reminder of
how the city is now — Corben includes this opinion from defense
lawyer Burstyn: “The drug trade saved Miami in a lot of ways.” 

Visuals and poetics are championed over
substance in Iraq in Fragments, director James Longley’s follow-up to
his 2002 doc, Gaza Strip. Shot in crisp digital video from February
2003 until April 2005, the movie stitches perspectives from the
Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, each representing parts of one nation
that’s fractioned into three. “But Iraq is a country,” a Kurdish
boy points out in voiceover. “And how can you cut a country into
pieces? With a saw?”

OK, so maybe not all of it’s poetic.
The answer Longley’s using the kid’s apparent naivete to get to, of
course, is the war. Instead of political analysis, however, the
director offers slice-of-life storytelling: Part I is from the
perspective of 11-year-old Mohammed, who works as a mechanic in
Baghdad and occasionally goes to school. Part II is entitled “Sadr’s
South,” intimate footage of a violent, anti-American Shiite
organization. Part III returns to a children’s viewpoint, documenting
the friendship of two boys and their fathers in a northern farming
community, its fields blanketed by the black smoke of nearby brick
ovens.

The effect of the American occupation
is spoken of only in an offhand manner in each of these sections.
While playing games outside the shop, for example, Mohammed’s boss
and his friends talk of how the situation is all about the oil and
gripe over the  lack of aid that was supposedly sent them. One
Shiite, while Sadr’s faction was organizing elections it hoped would
trump those organized by the U.S.,  claims that Americans were
“shaking our hands and stabbing us in the back.” Others looked to
these militants, who are shown attacking merchants selling alcohol,
and proclaimed that our country removed one Saddam only to have him
be replaced with 100 more.

None of it, unfortunately, is very
compelling. Iraq in Fragments is meatiest, politically speaking, in
its center, yet Longley merely points and shoots instead of providing
much context about Sadr’s organization and power. And the
documentary’s bookends are eye-rolling: The friends in the third act
roll around in cornfields and hold hands as they walk to school,
proclaiming that they’ll remain friends even after they’re grown.
Visually, the director’s flair is impressive, with stark,
monochromatic images of a country in ruins, close-ups of his
subjects’ eyes, and touches such as the rotor of a helicopter
morphing into the blades of a ceiling fan. But Longley’s clear
intention of putting human faces – children’s faces, to better tug
at the heart – from the other side of the war would be more
admirable if it didn’t feel a shamelessly staged. How many
11-year-olds, for instance, will reminisce in a quavering voice that
his country was “beautiful…the bridges, the river, there were
fish. Now there’s nothing.” Or repeat like a battered spouse that
his boss loves him, really he does, even though the camera shows him
as verbally and physically abusive? Oh, here it is: On the Web site
for Iraq in Fragments, Longley says that he “gradually worked
through [Mohammed's] shyness,” spending a year working on his
narration until the boy was speaking in “clear, complete” — and
gosh-darn purty — sentences. The documentarian should know that
stylization works better on images than subjects.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

Maybe before bizarrely boasting in the
New York Times that its country is home to, among other good stuff,
“the planet’s largest population of wolves,” the Foreign Ministry
of Kazakhstan should have realized this: The intolerant,
misogynistic, and backwoods Kazakhstani journalist and the
documentary-style film the government is unofficially responding to is fictional. The United States, however, doesn’t have any excuses
for some of the very real citizens depicted in Borat: Cultural
Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

Borat Sagdiyev is the creation of
British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen of Da Ali G Show, whose sketches
involve Cohen inhabiting one of three ridiculous characters
(including Borat) around unsuspecting audiences. The concept is a
little Candid Camera, a bit more of Punk’d, and most closely
resembles the non-crotch-crunching skits of Jackass. But Cohen’s
Borat is a departure: His victims never find out it’s a joke, he
blames his offensive statements and behavior on his unsophisticated
birthplace, and, at least in the film, it’s the people he deals with
who often end up showing their ignorance. Do you laugh or gasp, for
example, when a rodeo cowboy tells Borat that “we’re” trying to
get the U.S. to hang homosexuals like they allegedly do in
Kazakhstan? Or when a gun supplier has an instant recommendation when
the foreigner requests the best weapon for killing a Jew? (Cohen is
Jewish himself.) Women, too, get a verbal bitches-and-ho’s treatment,
courtesy of chest-thumping college kids.

For the most part, though, Cohen isn’t
hellbent on easily eliciting the discrimination of a few Americans,
and viewers who aren’t afraid of a little scatological humor or a lot
of what the MPAA would call “adult situations” will have a blast.
(Fans of The Aristocrats, I’m talking to you.) Directed by Larry
Charles, a Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm contributor, and
co-written by Cohen and a trio of others (Old School’s Todd Phillips
also gets a story credit), Borat is centered on the journalist’s
attempt to make a documentary about life in the U.S. Borat and his
assistant, Azamat Bagatov (Ken Davitian), initially intend to film
only in New York, but Borat insists on traveling the country to get
to California after he discovers “the beautiful C.J.,” aka Pamela
Anderson, on Baywatch.

This leads to other scenes of much
funnier regional stereotypes, such as the New Yorkers who almost
universally tell the affectionate Borat to fuck off when he tries to
greet them and the considerably warmer reception he gets when his
Washington, D.C., visit (not the recent publicity stunt) coincides
with a popular annual event. Black teens hanging out on Martin Luther
King Boulevard, a feminist group, Southern conservatives, and
Pentecostal Christians all get Borat’s innocent-seeming teach-me
treatment. (“Hazmat!” he cries at the latter’s church when
speaking in tongues.) Some, entertainingly, take a liking to him.
Others are appalled – though sometimes it even takes a while for
the outrage to set in because, well, he’s so gosh-darn nice. Pam,
whom Borat wants to marry, seems to be the only person who must be in
on the joke.

The “movie-film,” as Borat likes to
say, isn’t 82 minutes of nonstop hilarity, as there expectedly are a
few scenes in which a gag is taken too far or the story just lags.
The details of Borat, however, are consistently brilliant: The
credits are in Kazakh – assumably
–  on a grainy and faded background. “Everybody’s Talking”
plays when Borat arrives in New York. And if you’ve seen the trailer,
you’ve seen the bathing suit. But the most impressive ingredient is
Cohen, whose inflection and timing are dead-on as he negotiates a
vague accent, a native language composed of gibberish and a
sprinkling of Polish, and a way of making tired American jokes funny
again. The fact that he is able to use this vehicle to expose the
open hate that still exists here is just a surprising bonus.

Driving
Lessons, on the other hand, is as dull as its title. A coming-of-age story –-
nodding off yet? — about a British boy from a strict Christian
family, Jeremy Brock’s directorial debut is most notable for
featuring Rupert Grint, the first of the Harry Potter’s three young
stars to film outside the series. In that regard, the film is
comparable to a television series that tries, and usually fails, to
reinvent a former cast member of a popular, long-running sitcom.
Grint gives it a respectable go; it’s Brock’s material – he’s also
the writer, an area in which he’s more experienced — that falls
short.

Grint
plays Ben, a 17-year-old who spends one summer in bible classes and
helping out old people. His suffocating mum (Laura Linney) is also
teaching him how to drive, refusing to let him get “proper lessons”
though he keeps failing the test. For some reason, Ben gets a job as
an assistant to Evie (Julie Walters), an eccentric (naturally) former
actress who tries to drink away her loneliness when Ben’s not around.
They become instant friends all too quickly, especially considering
his eye-contact-avoiding reticence. And soon the boy goes wild,
rebelling against his mother by going camping with Evie and taking
her to a literary festival in Scotland.

Yes,
it’s all very English. Except it’s got the development of an empty
Hollywood blockbuster. It’s never really clear what Ben, who also
fancies himself a poet, does for Evie except offer companionship –
though, symbolic-title warning, he does end up driving when she
essentially kidnaps him to go sleep under the stars and only later
reveals that she doesn’t know how to operate her motorcar, either.
Ben’s mother, and seldom-seen vicar father (Nicholas Farrell), are
one-note: She’s uptight, and he’s weary of her stranglehold on the
family. A mom’s reluctance to set her baby free is understandable,
but it feels as if there’s a particular, too-elusive reason at play
here. Their faith, too, seems more like Brock’s shrugging method of
shading his characters instead of beliefs Ben’s parents hold sacred.

Brock’s
dialogue is mostly forgettable, occasionally dipping into treacle
(“Don’t hurry your heart!”) or offering a laugh (Evie says to Ben
on their camping trip, “I can tell God I forced you!”). Besides
their characters having little to do or motivation to do it, the
actors are fine. Linney, with a subtle accent, is heartbreakingly
desperate when she reprimands her son with, “You left God’s house.
You will not leave it again!” Walters has a fluid physicality
that allows her to simultaneously be elegant and funny, and she
nibbles what she can of her scenes – especially her teary breakdown
when Evie thinks she’s been abandoned by Ben, which is a moment so
freighted with emotion that the events prior might as well have been
pre-show ads.

Grint
spends most of the movie wearing a dopey, open-mouthed expression,
which is occasionally suitable as an entertaining look of terror when
Ben, say, is behind the wheel or watching Evie resort to a
terrifically unexpected move to prevent him from leaving the
campsite. And perhaps courtesy of his  Ron Weasely, Grint’s got his
deadpan at the ready. Even if he wants to break out of his big-role
typecast, Grint may take from this experience a newfound appreciation
for the heaven-sent Potter  scripts with which he’s been working. His
risk in taking on this project, however disappointing, should not
count against him. Consider Driving Lessons Grint’s practice.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com

Shawnee Smith and Bahar Soomekh in "Saw III."  (Photo: Lionsgate Films)

It’s not often that the worst part of a
horror film is too much dialogue. But Saw III nearly ruins its
improbable superiority over the franchise’s predecessors with a
stupefying amount of denouement gab. The theme of III is generally
the same as the others’: Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), the villain whose
public face is a ridiculous apple-cheeked puppet, has made it his
mission to kidnap those who are wasting their time aboveground and
persuade them to live as if they were dying – that is, if the
victims actually survive his death traps, which they ostensibly
should be able to if they truly value their lives.

This installment,
directed by the returning Darren Lynn Bousman and written by Leigh
Whannell, one of the original’s creators (along with James Wan),
doesn’t exactly begin well. The first’s cut-off-your-limbs gambit is
repeated, and then the popular jittery-camera copout obscures a few
immediate and unpleasant passings. Whannell, however, then smartly
pares the sadism that bulldozed the original and focuses the bulk of
this movie on the psychology – i.e., the alleged crux – of these
slashers. Jigsaw, with inoperable brain cancer, is about to kick the
bucket in his spacious torture chamber, but he guides his protege,
Amanda (a survivor from the previous films played by Shawnee Smith),
through new “games” with fresh players: Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) is a
surgeon who’s cheating on her husband and, it’s noted with a frown,
taking antidepressants. (Who knew Jigsaw was a Scientologist?) Jeff
(Angus Macfadyen) is a bereaved dad obsessed with taking vengeance on
his son’s murderer, a drunk driver who got a mere knuckle-rapping for
the crime. Lynn gets the prize for the most transfixing, squirmiest
test here, but Jeff’s predicament is more interesting because you
don’t have to be in a thriller to take a stroll in his shoes. What
would you do if came face-to-face with your kid’s killer? How elastic
is your ability to forgive?

Don’t worry, fanboys, Saw III is far from
a thinker. There are blood, guts, and what can best be described as a
vat of pig-carcass smoothies. There’s an acceptable amount of cliches
and illogic, even as Whannell flashes back to explain the previous
movies’ gaps. But then the writer never stops.  The tortured finally
meet their puppet master, and the result is worse than they could
have imagined: As Jigsaw delineates his plans for them, he turns from
Evil Genius to Blathering Grandpa.

copyright 2006 themoviebabe.com