Dinner for Schmucks - movie review

Some comedies are like a finely crafted watch, dozens of perfectly placed pieces all ticking away to create the desired hilarity. Others get the same result just from letting Steve Carell pull faces. So be warned: the following review is based largely on the premise that you find Carell at the very least a halfway decent comedy performer, and being someone who enjoys Paul Rudd’s exasperated nice guy act wouldn’t hurt either.

More than any mainstream US comedy since Step Brothers, Dinner For Schmucks relies on the audience being willing to laugh at two guys just messing around, and if Carell and Rudd aren’t the guys for you then this isn’t the film for you either. Which is your loss: for a film with a premise lifted from a French film (Le Dinner de Cons) and based around a dinner that doesn’t even happen until three quarters of the way into the movie, Schmucks turns out to be surprisingly well paced and consistently hilarious showcase for a lot of very funny guys.

Tim Conrad (Rudd) is a sixth floor executive with a financial company, and his scheme to take advantage of a rich Swiss idiot (Little Britain’s David Walliams) seems a surefire way to move up to the executive seventh floor. But to seal the deal, he needs to find someone to take to the firms’ “dinner for winners”: a competition where, as Tim puts it, “you invite idiots to dinner and make fun of them”. He isn’t all that keen, his girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak) is even less so, and it looks like he’s going to back out of the deal until he literally runs into Barry (Carell), an IRS employee whose hobby is making insanely detailed dioramas using dead mice.

Barry is also a bit of a social klutz, and with him around it’s not long before Julie is gone, Tim’s much feared stalker is in his apartment, his car is a wreck, he’s breaking into the apartment of the deadpan pretentious / oversexed artist Kieran (an unforgettable Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords) and watching Barry’s boss (an equally memorable Zach Galifianakis) perform terrifying acts of mind control.

As you might have guessed it’s a bit of a grab-bag, but there’s enough variety in the scenes to keep the comedy fresh and pretty much all the supporting characters hit their roles out of the park. Rudd and Carell turn out to be a near-perfect double act, with Rudd’s exasperated, manic nice guy act a perfect foil for Carell, who gives the kind of broad, nutty, idiot man-child performance we haven’t seen from him since his Anchorman days.

There are a few moments where director Jay Roach (Meet the Fockers, the Austin Powers films) lets the sap rise and things threaten to get sentimental, but mostly it's kept in check; this is a film that wants you to laugh, and on the rare occasions it wants you to feel it’s only so you’ll feel okay about laughing. After all, if we didn’t feel something for Barry and his ilk, we’d be as bad as the evil executives – though even in the depths of their evil they realise that seeing the invention of the BLT sandwich re-enacted by dead mice playing The Earl of Sandwich and Sir Francis Bacon is something truly special.

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Movie Review: Enter The Void

If, like me, you’re a fan of a) television, b) sitting on your arse c) ghost stories, you may well have stumbled upon a late night TV show on some anonymous digital station that involves guttural D-list media idiot Paul Ross sat by a log fire reading ghost stories from a big black book. There have been occasions in my life where I’ve thought I’ve imagined said TV show, maybe I was ill, drank too much Lemsip or something...I haven’t. I just Googled it. It’s called Paul Ross and his Big Black Book Of Horror.

That anecdote has almost nothing to do with Enter The Void but I’ve included it in this review because I thought it might make you laugh. No, don’t thank me, it’s fine, god knows there are precious few japes to be had in Gaspar Noé’s new film (which is a ghost story in a sense, but only in the way that 2001: A Space Odyssey is a film about monkeys). To say that its viewing is a visceral, violent often deranged experience is merely stating the facts – this story of an orphaned brother and sister trying not to drown in the sludge of Tokyo’s underbelly has around four emotional jolts per frame. But you won’t appreciate the true chaos of what you’ll have watched until you’ve let the films psychotropic insanity into your brain and allowed it to swill around for a few days.

When that’s happened, you’ll realize you’ve experienced a film that’s unlike anything you’ve ever watched.

I never subscribed to the giddy fanclub that surrounded Noé’s previous feature, 2002’s Irréversible. I thought the story-being-told-in-reverse-thing was a neat narrative trick, but the rape scene sickened (which was undoubtedly its intention, well done to all concerned) and I finished the film thinking the Argentinian had filed a work that suggested he was a talented and obviously innovative film maker who would one day make a masterpiece rather than someone who just had.

You can probably see where I’m going with this...

I haven’t seen a film better than Enter The Void this year. In its scope, in its ambition (almost every camera shot used in its 97 minutes breaks the conventions of anything I knew about filmmaking), in it’s writing, it’s narrative. But such praise is too rigid and formulaic for a film that is rarely either of those things. I think the best way to describe it’s brilliance is by explaining exactly how I felt upon leaving the cinema - which was: lost, frightened, disorientated, pleasure, confused and probably a little bit like I wanted to hug my mum. Which is an experience you can get from drinking a litre of bleach, yes, but then you probably won’t die from watching Enter The Void.

Probably.

Okay, so I didn’t really understand the point Noé was trying to make. I think it’s some sort of mediation on love, sex and the deep, complicated bond between siblings, with a love letter to psychedelic drugs and Japanese nightlife thrown in there too. But I just watched a film that took me from the ground, into an airplane, through the back of a pimp’s head, down a plughole and into a vagina – upon which the screen I was watching was sprayed with CGI spunk – before settling in the serene hum of the afterlife. As far as trips go, I’ll not only forgive it for not making much sense, but I’ll suggest that whoever builds the rollercoasters at Alton Towers really needs to raise their game.

One more time for those not paying attention at the back: I haven’t seen a film better than Enter The Void this year. It is a masterpiece.

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Eat Pray Love - movie review

A little while ago, lets say about 6 months ago, I started to notice French macarons everywhere I looked. There were pictures of macarons in magazines, on the covers of books, and in every blog of every girl on the internet; accompanied by some fanciful quote about gathering ye rosebuds while ye may or some such nonsense. It culminated in the colourful macaron being celebrated on Masterchef and various other cooking shows. Every single direction I looked these colourful, chic, French biscuits of whimsy where stacked atop one another, taunting me.

“Here” they seemed to say “Here we are. We are the thing that you want. We represent the lifestyle you aspire to. We are light. We are colourful. We are sweet. Take some time. Eat us in the sun with boutique tea out of a delicate china cup. Eat us while wearing a frilly dress. Eat us while sitting outside a trendy café with your attractive friends and their novelty breeds of dogs. Eat us while listening to a sexy French chanteuse you have never heard of. Eat us. Indulge in us, because that is what life is about. It’s easy. There are so many of us to chose from. Oui, stop and smell the macarons, Vera”.

“Whateva”, I would scowl as I ate jam on Weetbix. Whateva.

Eat Pray Love is like the film equivalent of a colourful tray of French macarons. You can’t really fault it. It tastes good, delicious even, it looks good, it’s stylish and it’s in style, it’s foreign and familiar at once, you can’t fault a macaron – or this film, but like macarons, there is something that makes me uneasy about this attractive, bite-size representation of philosophical dilemmas and first world problems.

Based on the extremely popular memoir of Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love is the story of a woman’s journey through divorce and emotional uncertainty; through various relationships; and through Italy, India and Bali. After realising her unhappiness in her marriage, Liz (Julia Roberts), a travel writer by profession, decides she needs to take a year out of her life to find herself. She travels to Italy where she learns to enjoy her independence, and about ‘il dolce far niente’ – the sweetness of doing nothing. In India she stays at an ashram and learns about praying and scrubbing floors. Here ‘Richard from Texas’ (Richard Jenkins) manages ready her for her spiritual awakening by basically goading and teasing her – a Texan tough-love style of self-awareness, apparently. After leaving India, Liz heads to Bali to further self-improve with a medicine man, and eventually finds her ‘inner strength’ and ‘balance’.

Eat Pray Love looks good. It’s crammed with shots of gourmet food, flowers, Indian silks and sunsets, and an awful lot of shots of Julia Roberts’s backlit, halo-like, blonde hair. (In fact, someone obviously really liked lighting Roberts this way, which wore slightly thin for me – I got it the first time). It sounds good, with some good carefully placed pop songs in the soundtrack. Roberts is warm and engaging as always, although a friend of mine mentioned the phrase “mouth like a torn slipper” before I went into the cinema and I did find that a little hard to shake. Other lead cast members James Franco, Richard Jenkins and Javier Bardem give equally good performances, with the occasional very real and touching moment from each of them. I should also note here that Javier Bardem, most famous for being the world’s creepiest dude in No Country For Old Men, transforms in Eat Pray Love into a completely charming romantic lead, but you may have to see this to believe it. My praise for this movie would lie in the aptitude director Ryan Murphy has shown in giving the right amount of space to the performers at the times that it counts. Lengthy shots at emotional moments allow us to connect with the male leads during some raw performances, but the clarity with which this connection is made is, unfortunately, incongruous with the bulk of the film.

Eat Pray Love is heavy in gloss and heavy in glitter. For a film about finding true spiritual satisfaction and balance I found the message a little hard to swallow when it was served on a bed of whipped fashion, hairdos, money, interior design and one infuriating conversation about calories and jean-sizes between the lead females. I find it hard to be inspired by characters that talk about calories.

Many movies, particularly those of the chick flick orientation*, operate on a basis of aspiration and escapism, and these will always have a place in Hollywood filmmaking, but when the premise of such a movie is supposed to be about the opposite the message seems a little trite, to put it mildly. It is a perfectly competently constructed movie, and an enjoyable one too, but Eat Pray Love presents philosophy in colourful, sugary, bite-sized treats, lined up neatly for sale, at a price only a few of us can afford.

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Wall Street Movie Review

Wall Street Movie Review – In the original “Wall Street,” Michael Douglas played the master of the financial world, able to buy companies and sell them off without a second thought. The first movie ends with Charlie Sheen’s character wearing a wire and essentially turning on the man that made him rich. “Greed is good,” Gordon Gekko had famously declared in the original film.

Wall Street Movie Review – In the original “Wall Street,” Michael Douglas played the master of the financial world, able to buy companies and sell them off without a second thought. The first movie ends with Charlie Sheen’s character wearing a wire and essentially turning on the man that made him rich. “Greed is good,” Gordon Gekko had famously declared in the original film.

Wall Street Movie Review

Now, Oliver Stone returns as the director, and Michael Douglas reprises his role as Gordon Gekko. If there was ever a time to revamp he original it is now. “Wall Street,” was great, but it is so outdated that now it can be a bit hard to watch.In the updated sequel, Gordon Gekko is out of prison and is not sure what to do with himself. He is no longer the powerhouse that he once was. The new blood on Wall Street is represented by Jake Moore, who is played by Shia LaBeouf, who is dating the daughter of Gordon Gekko.

The movie suffers because it is less about Wall Street, and is more about Gekko’s attempts to reconnect with his daughter and Moore’s attempts to make the reconciliation happen for his own purposes. LaBeouf does a great job with the part. For the first time in his career he looks like a grown up playing an adult part instead of a child playing an adult role of vice versa.

The film never decides what it wants to do with Gordon Gekko’s character. He never seems sure about whether he wants to get back into Wall Street or reconnect with his daughter to become a family man, and ultimately the film suffers because of that.

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Movie Reviews by Reel People: 'The Town'

If an intelligent crime drama depends on Ben Affleck to be an acceptable writer, credible actor and incredible director, that’s three very good reasons to fail. The way gentle Ben’s career has been going, strike three was inevitable. But astonishingly, Affleck delivers an urban thriller on par with the highly acclaimed, “Mystic River” and “The Departed.”

Nobody’s ready to mention Affleck’s name in the same breath as Scorsese and Eastwood (think we just did). But, these icons are expected to consistently create great works of art. And, the other guy is Ben Affleck. But let’s think about it. Ben shared an Academy Award with Matt Damon for writing “Good Will Hunting,” won critical acclaim for directing “Gone Baby Gone,” and his acting has occasionally shown signs of life.

So, it should not be impossible for the guy to put it all together – just improbable. After all, he’s Ben Affleck. Okay, suffice it to say we were pleasantly surprised. Even if this dark, gritty pulp drama is not for everyone, this character-driven heist flick is well crafted, stylish and compelling. In a way, it’s an old-fashioned gangster film for today’s audience.

Affleck portrays family, friendship and loyalty as learned from his beloved Boston roots. His character, Doug, leads a gang in Charlestown (near Bunker Hill), bank robbery capital of the world. This highly skilled band of brothers is thick as thieves as they execute well-developed plans, use creative disguises and are armed with automatic weapons.

In this neighborhood of dysfunctional families, thugs and losers, Doug had potential for a bright future, but threw it all away in fits of anger and violence. His mother was of questionable character and left home during his childhood. And, his father, played by veteran actor Chris Cooper, is a bitter, unrepentant resident of the state penitentiary.

Doug’s best friend James (Jeremy Renner, “Hurt Locker”) borders on psychotic and couldn’t pass a psychological eye test. You know, a sociopath’s eyes have a crazed look about them. They should be arrested for this “look” alone. We think it could easily cut crime in half. Now, if he’s crazed, stupid and a jerk, is that called an “ignoranus?”

Anyway, while in process of robbing their latest bank, a hostage. Claire (Rebecca Hall) is taken. She is terrified, but released physically unharmed. The FBI, led by special agent Frawley (Jon Hamm, “Mad Men”) try to extract any clues whatsoever from this victim. Concurrently, Doug tries to learn how much she knows about the Fed’s investigation.

Doug finds himself falling in love with Claire, who doesn’t know the criminal he is. When James discovers this relationship, this psycho is less than thrilled with the situation. James envisions Doug eventually tying the knot with his sister, Krista, played by Blake Lively (“Gossip Girl”) who transforms herself into a believably drug-infested street girl.

Affleck is impressive in his role, but the ensemble cast gets its chance to display its vast talents throughout.
The stories collide when Doug decides he wants a life outside of Charlestown, Claire is discovering who he really is, the FBI is hot on Doug’s trail and Krista and James don’t appreciate the change in the air. Meanwhile, the mob who calls all the shots has its own idea how this story should read. The final heist will be at baseball’s Fenway “Pawk” where they all have one last chance to hit it out of the “yawd.”

“The Town” is rated R for strong violence, pervasive language, some sexuality and drug use. There is plenty of realistic action, but the gunfights are secondary to the depth of characters, challenging moral dilemmas and conflicted love story. In this world, there are no good and bad guys. Each character displays relative degrees of good and evil.

The story breaks down somewhat when Doug announces his “retirement.” We’re not “Townies” but even we know thugs don’t give two weeks notice to the mob and then expect drinks at Cheers. But, no matter how much you enjoy this dark violent pulp genre, Affleck has proven worthy of rejoining buddy Matt Damon once again.

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'Easy A' Movie Review

Philosophically provocative and achingly sad, "Never Let Me Go" manages to touch the mind and the heart at once, and with equal measure. Longtime video director Mark Romanek, whose last feature was the haunting "One Hour Photo" from 2002, has made a film that's sumptuously gorgeous and filled with sterling performances. The textures, the lighting - everything is carefully crafted but never stuffy, and, at times, even a little gritty in an appealing way.

But, based on the novel by acclaimed "Remains of the Day" author Kazuo Ishiguro, "Never LetMe Go" also raises intriguing questions about medical ethics and the nature of humanity itself. Some may find its tone suffocatingly heavy, and the score can feel a bit melodramatic and intrusive here and there. But if you give into it, you'll find yourself sucked into this melancholy alternate world, an ambitious hybrid of sci-fi drama and coming-of-age romance set in a British boarding school. That's where the tale begins in the late '70s, at the exclusive Hailsham, where headmistress Miss Emily (Charlotte Rampling) reminds the children they're special in a tone that's so stern and full of conviction, it almost sounds as if she's scolding rather than encouraging them. Prime among the students are Kathy, Tommy and Ruth, whose tentative love triangle at age 11 will form the film's dramatic arc (as adults, they're played by Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley). In adapting Ishiguro's book, screenwriter Alex Garland ("28 Days Later") reveals the mystery of the children's unusual existence slowly and suspense fully, through details and gestures that are small and spare.

We know something's different about them: their fear of leaving the school grounds, the daily pills and bottles of milk lined up for them to consume, the bracelets that monitor their comings and goings. But only after a new teacher arrives, played with subtlety and sympathy by Sally Hawkins, do we (and they) learn their true purpose.

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Movie Review: Alpha & Omega

Cute and fuzzy is the best way to describe this 88-minute, PG-rated animated feature length film. It’s much like one of the Walt Disney animated films that made that movie company famous. It’s about life in a wolf pack. One fun-loving wolf named Humphrey whose voice isprovided by Justin Long, enjoys life and spends most of his time with his buddies playing and sliding down the mountain sides in a hollowed out tree trunk. They get very good at that sport and could probably give human Bobsled racers a run for their money.

Humphrey has his eye on a young female wolf named Kate whose voice is provided by Hayden Panettiere. Kate is one of the daughters of the leader of the pack. As a member of the leadership class she is an Alpha Wolf. Humphrey is an Omega class member. They are allowed to be friends, but cannot mate or howl at the moon together.

Circumstances work out that both Humphrey and Kate are tranquilized by park rangers and packed up and sent north in order to repopulate the wolf population in that Canadian location. Their struggle to return to their home territory and the characters they meet along the way are what constitutes the story. In the meantime, Kate’s sister wolf Lily, voiced by Christina Ricci falls in love with Garth, voiced by Christ Carmack, the Alpha son of the Eastern Wolves leader. Their marriage allows Kate to avoid marrying Garth for political reasons and instead Kate can howl at the moon and make music with Humphrey.

Basically, this is the story of two members of different social classes finding love in spite of the pressures of society. The film is suited for all kids despite its PG-Rating. It’s a musical /comedy/ family/adventure/animated feature.

The movie is dedicated to the late actor Dennis Hopper who was the voice of Tony in the story. Danny Glover provided the voice for Winston and Larry Miller was the voice of Marcel. The entire voice-over cast does a good job under the direction of Anthony Bell and Ben Gluck with the screenplay provided by Chris Denk and Steve Moore.

The screen credits at the movie’s end were very enlightening. The film was a joint production of Lion’s Gate and Crest Animation Productions. Half the individual credits seemed to be English or American names and half seemed to be Indian or Chinese names from Mumbai, India. While the two totally different cultures working on the film is not at all evident, it appears that Hollywood is also outsourcing jobs and work on American films to the much larger film producing center of Bollywood. Economic pressures will probably accelerate that trend.

All that is irrelevant because all of this film takes place in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains of North America. It’s decent and clean-cut family entertainment.

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Movie Reviews Devil

Devil , which was not screened for critics, was ignored by most of the major ones over the weekend, many of whom were winding up their coverage of the Toronto Film Festival. Those in the major markets who did take it in were split fairly equally, with the naysayers having a slight edge.

The movie takes place on a crowded elevator on which the passengers are murdered one by one by ... the devil. Tirdad Derakhshani in the Philadelphia Inquirer , called it a "tight, imaginative little flick," that was "conceived" and produced by M. Night Shyamalan. " Devil is guaranteed to keep you on tenterhooks from beginning to end -- and without much gore," Derakhshani observed.

Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel took a halfway position between those critics who praised the film and those who hated it.

"For all its preaching about guilt, redemption, punishment and salvation, Devil delivers its chills in a compact, efficient package of extreme close-ups, decently-timed surprises and the terror of dread-anticipation," Moor wrote. "It's not great, but it's not bad, and the fellow who foisted the The Happening, Lady in the Water and The Last Airbender on the faithful would take that praise any day." But Robert Abele in the Los Angeles Times concluded that the first two-thirds of the movie fails to produce "any kind of gathering, white-knuckle dread." And by the time Shyamalan's third-act twist ending arrives, "being asked to care about fate, redemption and forgiveness when a satan-in-an-elevator gimmick hasn't delivered is like getting medicinal aftertaste from what should have been a box of delectably fiery Red Hots."

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The Town Movie Reviews

The overall Rating of The movie The Town is generally getting a lot of favorable reviews, so far as early reviews come in. Plot of the movie: Ben Affleck stars as a professional thief whose love affair with a bank manager takes them down a dangerous and deadly path. Starring: Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall.

Here are some favorable reviews, as the ones you’ll find below: The Town lacks Gone’s operatic ambitions. And the irony is that that lack of a grand or even grandiose plan keeps this very good film from being a truly great one. -Movieline.

Affleck is the center of the film. His Doug is, in some respects, rather like Affleck – the director of the elaborate heists, as well as a performer in them. -Arizona Republic The Mixed but favorable reviews in the media. An autopsy for The Town would list multiple causes of death. -Slate

There’s more than a few things off in this tale of a disillusioned professional thief (Affleck, dull), his unlikely inamorata (Hall, wasted) and the determined FBI agent (Hamm, solid) out to apprehend him. “-Time Out New York

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Jothegaara - Movie Review

Producer Ashwini Ram Prasad has finally released his much-awaited movie Jothegaara after long delay for two years. Jothe Jotheyali combo Prem and Ramya have made their comeback to screen with his film. Despite having a thin storyline, director Sigamani is successful in making it a good family entertainer.Jothegaara is a love story and the misunderstandings between the hero and heroine lead to lots confusions. Although the film has a simple storyline, the director has tried to make it an interesting watch with lots of twists and turns in the story. But it seems that too many twists drag the story and test the patience of the audience.

The highlights of the film are Prem-Ramya’s onscreen chemistry, Sujith Shetty's music, Doddanna and Sadhu Kokila’s comedy sequences, N Raghav’s cinematography. The weakness of the film is stretched narration. The beginning of the film is quiet interesting, but very soon it turns to be dragging. However, the second half makes the audience tighten their seat belts.

Vishwas (Prem Kumar) falls in love with Priya (Ramya), who is the daughter of police officer Veerabhadra (Ashish Vidyarthi). Priya’s father wants his daughter to marry his sister’s son. So he tries to dissuade her when he comes to know about her love affair with Vishwas. What kind of tricks Vishwas plays to win the heart of her father will form the interesting story of the film.

Actor Prem Kumar has delivered wonderful performance. Especially in the sentimental sequences, he carries away the mind and heart of the audience. As Priya, Ramya has done a good job and she appears very glamorous in the song sequences. Doddanna and Sadhu Kokila’s comedy is an interesting part of the film. As a police officer, Ashish Vidyarthi has also done well.

Sujith Shetty’s music is one among the main highlights of the film. He has composed six songs
and all of them are beautiful. Songs like 'Jotheyalli Nee Baaro...' and 'Sona Kannalle Koltaale...' have already become popular. N Raghav has done well as a cameraman. But the movie could have been even better, if little more editing work was done.

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Movie Review: Resident Evil: Afterlife

Alice, played by Milla Jovovich, is still on her quest to find and save the few bands of survivors from a world ravaged by a virus infection developed by The Umbrella Corporation headquartered in Tokyo. This is the fourth film in this series of at least five—because this one has a cliffhanger, temporary, disappointing ending. There will be no resolution of this chapter of the never-ending,depressing series about the end of the world and the rise of the flesh eating Zombie nightmares.

While the first three movies of this series were interesting enough viewed on television, this IMAX 3D promised to be more dramatic. Wrong! This segment really seemed like a weekly installment of so-so SyFy television. It was nowhere as interesting as the first three movies that preceded it.

The directing, acting and special effects were good enough, but the story wandered. In fact it wandered all over the planet starting in Tokyo and ending in the City of Angels, which seemed to need a new name to replace the ruined Hollywood Sign on the hillside overlooking the smoldering remains of L.A.—ZombieVille would be true to life, or true to death.

The extra cost of the IMAX 3D showings aren’t really worth the extra money except for maybe the most rabid “Resident Evil” fans. Ali Larter as Clair Redfield, Spencer Locke as K-Mart, Sienna Guillory as Jill Valentine and Kacey Barnfield as Crystal all add much eye candy to the cast. Boris Kodjoe as Luther West, Sergio Peris-Mencheta as Angel Ortiz, Wentworth Miller as Chris Redfield, Fulvio Cecere as Wendell and Norman Yeung as Kim Young make up most of the band of trapped humans that Alice attempted to rescue. Milla Jovovich also plays each member of her troop of Special Forces clones.

Shawn Roberts as Albert Wesker and Kim Coates as Bennett do a good job as the film’s very bad and corrupt villains. Bennett is a former Hollywood film producer. Slap, slap, take that Hollywood.

This R-Rated, 97-minute Zombie flick is both written and directed by Paul W. S. Anderson (Jovovich’s husband) and is based on the popular video game.

Ray Olubowale plays the mysterious and very scary, even for the undead, Axeman. He’s kind of the giant, unbeatable black knight of yore.

The film opens in Tokyo with Mika Nakashima playing J Pop Girl standing in the rain. The camera begins on her sexy, red, oh-so-fashionable high heels, pans up her striped stockings, short shirt, eventually reaching her rain soaked, pretty baby face. When a yummy looking likely victim passes her…he becomes her meal. Take that Japanese monster films.

Frankly, it would be nice if the next movie in the series were more like the first three. This one kind of followed many of the characters in it when they all leaped off the edge of a high building. And enough of these rusted, old freighters. This looks much like the same one used in “Waterworld” and many of the B horror flicks featuring old ghost ships haunting the Bermuda Triangle. So, so trite. Shape up, or ship out! We all expect more after the “Afterlife.”

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No place like home: Toronto film fest opens new HQ

The overseers of the glossy new home of the Toronto International Film Festival have two key aims: to infuse their building with the spirit of cinema's future and the ghosts of its past. The festival, which gets under way Thursday for an 11-day run, opens the doors this weekend to the Bell Lightbox, a $181 million headquarters housing theaters, film lab facilities, art gallery space, restaurants and offices for its staff.

Located a few blocks from Roy Thomson Hall, a huge auditorium where the festival's key premieres take place, Bell Lightbox is meant to provide a focal point for a cinema showcase whose events and screenings are spread throughout the city. The festival began in the 1970s as a local celebration of Canadian film but has grown into a world-class spot for major Hollywood releases and premieres from around the world.

"When we were much smaller, everything used to take place within a few square blocks. It gave the festival kind of a communal feel," said festival co-director Cameron Bailey. "We're going back to that in a way this year."
This year's festival presents more than 300 feature-length and short films, including dramas starring Nicole Kidman, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren, Hilary Swank and Will Ferrell.

While the festival focuses on new films, the Bell Lightbox is stepping back to the past with an exhibit called Essential Cinema, featuring posters, images and props from 100 old and modern films that include "The Passion of Joan of Arc," "The Wizard of Oz," "Citizen Kane," "The Godfather," "Amelie," "The Third Man," "Raging Bull" and "Slumdog Millionaire."

Among artifacts on display are the lens used to create the HAL 9000 computer's perspective in "2001: A Space Odyssey," the bulky camera that shot the Italian masterpiece "Bicycle Thieves" and an elaborate gown worn by Claudia Cardinale in "The Leopard."

Even the site on which the facility is built has a cinema connection. The land was provided by the family of "Ghostbusters" filmmaker Ivan Reitman, whose father ran a car wash there.

Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin — whose films, including "The Saddest Music in the World," have the look and feel of relics from cinema's early years — created two attractions for Bell Lightbox called "Hauntings."

The first features 11 screens on which Maddin projects film segments he shot inspired by lost or uncompleted films by such directors as Fritz Lang and Josef von Sternberg, attempting to resurrect images from celluloid long since destroyed and forgotten. The second features images of people projected at night on the upper windows of the five-story building, ghostly sirens beckoning passers-by into the facility.

When he met with Bell Lightbox executives, "I told them, `Your building is so brand new and so beautiful, but it's just not haunted by anything. It doesn't have any spooks,'" Maddin said. "I offered in a reverse ghost-busting mode to haunt the place for them."

Other works at Bell Lightbox include Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan's homage to Federico Fellini's "8 1/2," which deconstructs the editing room scene near the film's end and projects the various characters on different screens, and artist Douglas Gordon's transformation of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," with the horror classic running both forward and backward on side-by-side screens and slowed to a duration of 24 hours, the two versions meeting on a single image once a day.

"We hoped it would be the shower scene, but it's actually not. Wouldn't it be great if it were on Janet Leigh's eyeball on both screens at the same time?" said Noah Cowan, artistic director of Bell Lightbox.
After Bell Lightbox opens Sunday, some of its theaters will be used for premieres and other screenings for the remaining week of the festival.

The theaters, ranging from 78 to 530 seats, will then be used for screenings of new and classic films and other year-round events. Maddin said some high-minded building projects fail to live up to their utopian design, but the festival's home does.

"I think this utopia has been very well thought out. There are theaters of every possible, different size. It's like going into a boutique shoe store for big- and small-footed people," Maddin said. "You know how every movie has exactly the right size audience? This venue will have exactly the right size theater for every movie coming in."

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Serial killer stalks teens in `Fever of the Bone'

Fever of the Bone" (HarperCollins, $14.99), by Val McDermid: When serial crime fiction is done well, readers can drop into any installment and within a few chapters, understand nearly everything about the primary characters and their relationship with one another.

And so it is with Val McDermid's Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series, of which "Fever of the Bone" is the sixth book. (Readers unfamiliar with the series might know the BBC's "Wire in the Blood," which is based on these novels.)
Hill is a brilliant criminal profiler, if a little socially inept. He knows what's expected of him in conversation and interpersonal relationships, but he isn't always able to give it. This hasn't harmed either his working or personal relationship with Detective Chief Inspector Jordan, who heads up a special investigative team with the Bradfield Police. There's a hint of sexual tension between Hill and Jordan, but it skims the surface of a deeper connection between them.

In "Fever of the Bone" (the title, as with the other Hill/Jordan books, comes from a T.S. Eliot poem), McDermid takes what is by now a fairly familiar (and possibly tired) plot: an Internet predator preying on teenagers — and gives it a good yank.

This time around, a serial killer is using a Facebook/MySpace-like social network called RigMarole (it's both amusing and plausible that Rig is what appears after Facebook's popularity wanes) to pick out a selection of teenagers who don't seem to have any connection to one another — they live in different cities, don't know each other, are different ages and sexes. Yet they're all approached in similar ways by someone claiming to know their big secret, and they're all murdered and mutilated in the same way.

McDermid builds suspense in a few delicious ways. She introduces the victims before they are taken, so readers learn what their family life is like, what they desire and by what means their killer reaches out to them.
These scenes are scattered throughout the book, placed so expertly that just when readers have been lulled into a nice stretch of solid detective work, there's a new kid, and the race to stop another murder begins afresh. Watching Jordan's team catch up with events, done both with high-tech computer wizardry and old-school footwork, is riveting.

Most notably, there is no sort of serial-killer internal monologue, save for the somewhat perplexing brief prologue that will, of course, make sense as the mystery unfolds. Nor do readers witness any crime scene or potential target from the killer's perspective. Readers know only what Hill, Jordan and the police force in other districts find out, and it's both surprising and refreshing in the midst of all the mysteries that do spend time in their villains' heads to note how effective McDermid's approach is in ramping up tension.

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King's Speech wins early Oscar buzz at Telluride

Has Telluride done it again? As the film festival wrapped its 37th year in Colorado's San Juan mountains Monday, the prevailing wisdom was that the event had launched yet another serious Oscar contender in the British royalty drama "The King's Speech."

The film, which stars Colin Firth, Helena Bonham-Carter and Geoffrey Rush, had its world premiere as a sneak peek on Saturday morning, five days before its higher-profile screening at the Toronto Film Festival.

After several additional screenings and a rare standing ovation Sunday night as part of a companion tribute to Firth, who plays King George VI struggling to overcome a stammer to rally his nation for war, the film has provoked talk of widespread awards recognition.

While other films also attracted partisans, "The King's Speech" was seen as having the broadest support across a broad array of awards categories.

Firth rode a similar wave last fall when Tom Ford's "A Single Man" rolled through Venice and Toronto, and the Weinstein Co. picked it up for distribution in December. The company plans a similar late-November release for "Speech," which was directed by Tom Hooper ("The Damned United").

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'The American' reigns at weekend box office

Spy thriller "The American" rocketed to the top of the North American box office to beat out crime action flick "Takers," preliminary figures showed Sunday.

The debut weekend for George Clooney's atmospheric thriller, hailed by critics as a visually captivating but restrained departure for the Hollywood star, took in 12.3 million dollars in US and Canadian theaters this weekend, according to figures from industry tracker Exhibitor Relations.

Last week's winner "Takers," starring Hayden Christensen, Idris Elba and singers Chris Brown and T.I., earned 11.5 million dollars and fell to second place in its second week of release.

In third position was "Machete," mixing violence with a campy tribute to 1970s exploitation movies from directors Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis for an opening weekend take of 11.3 million dollars. Fourth place went to the gruesome documentary-style horror movie "The Last Exorcism," which fell back from its competitive runner-up spot last weekend to take 7.6 million dollars.

The movie, directed by Daniel Stamm and co-produced by Eli Roth, a director known for his bloody thrillers, follows a disillusioned minister supposedly filming his last exorcism for a documentary.

At number five was new release "Going the Distance," a romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long about surviving a relationship where the couples live on different coasts of the United States. It earned 6.9 million dollars in its opening weekend.

In sixth was "The Expendables," Sylvester Stallone's film about a group of weathered mercenaries out to topple a South American dictator, which earned 6.8 million dollars in its fourth week in theaters.

Falling one position to the seventh spot was "The Other Guys," the latest Will Ferrell slapstick comedy, about two mismatched police officers paired on a high-profile crime investigation, which had a 5.4-million-dollar take at the box office.

"Eat, Pray, Love," Ryan Murphy's adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's novel about a divorcee's jaunt to Italy, Indonesia and India, starring Julia Roberts, fell to the eighth position with a take of 4.9 million dollars in its fourth week of release.

Down two places to number nine was blockbuster "Inception" starring Leonardo DiCaprio as an expert infiltrator of people's dreams, which took 4.5 million dollars over the weekend to bring its eight-week earnings to 277 million dollars.

"Nanny McPhee Returns," the sequel to a popular kid's film starring British actress Emma Thompson in the title role, rounded out the top 10 with 3.6 million dollars.

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Movie Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

In Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a flashy, video-gamey film based on the Scott Pilgrim comic series written by Toronto’s Bryan Lee O’Malley, the titular character discovers that he’ll have to fight for his own life to win the heart of the girl he loves.

Being involuntarily forced to leave his ordinary life behind, Scott Pilgrim soon finds himself facing an entire league of evil exes and he’ll need to defeat them all to be with Ramona Flowers, the girl of his dreams.

Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) directs, and he really manages to juggle through genres well – from comedy to action to romance. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World pulls them all off with excellent results.

The main cast is made up of Arrested Development’s Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim, horror “scream queen” Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona Flowers, This Is Wonderland’s Ellen Wong as Knives Chau and The Cider House Rules’ Kieran Culkin as Scott’s gay roommate Wallace Wells.

In addition to these actors, the film also features The Losers’ Chris Evans as evil-ex Lucas Lee, Up in the Air’s Anna Kendrick as sister Stacey Pilgrim, Milk’s Alison Pill as drummer Kim Pine, Superman Returns’ Brandon Routh as Todd Ingram, and Fantastic Mr. Fox’s Jason Schwartzman as Gideon Gordon Graves.

Overall, the cast is very solid, but I have to give Cera special mention for dishing out his best performance since Arrested Development.

The effects in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World are what will stick with most people. By seamlessly combining computer and practical effects, the film feels just like a comic book. It gives the movie a very unique look and it definitely stands out from other movies that try to look as realistic as possible.

Scott Pilgrim’s humour is very entertaining as well, though it may be less so for those who aren’t familiar with video games, comics and other such generally geeky topics addressed in the film. Even so, the film is in no way simply pandering to one demographic and, even if you don’t enjoy the humour, it still has plenty of heart and frenetic action for your enjoyment.

Overall, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a very enjoyable and very experimental film. The film’s tagline sure wasn’t exaggerating when it called this one an epic. It garners an 8 out of 10 for being one of the most enjoyable times I’ve had at a movie theatre in some time.

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The American: Movie Review

Hidden from critics until just before its release, the dirty secret about "The American" turns out to be that it's an "art film." Heavens, no! Director Anton Corbijn has crafted a quiet, haunting European thriller, drained of emotion and moving to its own deliberate pace.

It's the second film from Corbijn, a famed photographer and music video director who's closely associated with the bands Depeche Mode and Joy Division (among others). His first film, "Control," was a beautiful, austere black-and-white biopic of Joy Division's Ian Curtis.

"The American," too, has the bleak fatalism of a Joy Division song, but taut and restrained, it bears none of the rock 'n' roll release.

George Clooney plays an assassin, Jack, whom the film opens on in bed with a beautiful woman, warm next to a fire in a winter cabin. Afterward, they bundle up and take a stroll in the knee-deep snow, where snipers suddenly begin firing at them. Jack quickly and with obvious skill dispatches the threat, and tells his shocked companion to call the police. As soon as she turns, he shoots her in the back of the head. So much for pillow talk.

His boss (Johan Leysen) tells him by phone to lie low in a small Italian village. Arriving there, he takes one look at it and makes a U-turn, settling on the more appealing nearby town of Castelvecchio, a picturesque medieval village in the mountains of Abruzzo.

Jack putts around town — a stone labyrinth — posing as a photographer of landscapes and architecture. Though he has been warned not to "make any friends," the town priest, Father Benedetto (Paulo Bonacelli), befriends him, and he develops a relationship with a prostitute, Clara (Violante Placido).

They both see the darkness hanging over Jack, but are hopeful for him. Clara tells him, "You're a good man, but you have a secret." Father Benedetto warns, "You're American. You think you can escape history."

His past is catching up, too. Someone is shadowing him, reports of his previous misdeeds are showing up in the newspapers and a new job arrives: building a silent, highly precise rifle — a task which he attends to with the care of an artisan.

Though Jack says little and remains largely inscrutable, Corbijn — working from a script by Rowan Joffe, loosely adapted from Martin Booth's 1990 novel, "A Very Private Gentleman" — gives glimpses of his sensitivity. He finds it difficult to deny the companionship of the priest or the love of Clara. He has a weakness, too, for butterflies, with a tattoo of one of them on his back.

The question of Jack's salvation is hinted at by the remarkable opening title sequence (which follows the abrupt shooting in the snow) that simply frames Jack in silhouette as he drives through a long tunnel with a bright light shining at the end.

"Michael Clayton" concluded with Clooney similarly in a car, but fully lit, finally unburdened. Here, with dark gray hair and a sinewy frame, he's again downcast, troubled and full of doubt. He's cast off all hint of his most abundant characteristic: charm.

For Jack, every intimacy carries a threat. The most memorable shot in a film full of exquisite camera work from Corbijn and cinematographer Martin Ruhe is from Jack's perspective as Clara's hands clasp over his eyes — a game of "Guess who?" that feels momentarily terrifying.

Corbijn has said he views "The American" as a kind of Western, and he positions Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" in the background of one scene. But the film has more of a film noir feeling of claustrophobic comeuppance. It has — if we are kind — some of the mystery of Antonioni's "The Passenger" and some of the stoicism of a Jean-Pierre Melville policier.

That "The American" is beautiful to look at is unquestionable; Corbijn's formal mastery is something to behold. What is finally slightly disappointing in the film is the familiarity of its story: another tale of "one last job."

It's difficult not to want Corbijn's mournful seriousness to ease up a bit. But "The American" is nevertheless transfixing in its weary, muted grace. "The American," a Focus Features release, is rated R for violence, sexual content and nudity. Running time: 105 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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