Disturbia

Anyone who has seen the previews for “Disturbia” will tell you that it’s nothing more than a remake of a movie that Alfred Hitchcock did first, and probably did better. This is true, he did do it first, and he did do it better. However if we’re going to start criticizing the stealing of plots, in part or in whole, we wouldn’t have many movies to appreciate. As for doing it better, Hitchcock was the undisputed master of suspense, and the brilliance of his work only grows with time, so a movie that doesn’t do it as well, still might be a pretty good one. “Disturbia” is one such movie.
The Hitchcock movie in question is “Rear Window” and it happens to be the first Hitchcock movie I ever watched. Not that this little detail has much to do with you the readers, but rest assured that as my first Hitchcock film it holds a special place in my heart and the disrespect done to it by a shoddy knock off would be even more insulting to me than usual.
“Disturbia” is not a shoddy knock off; it’s an update of a great story into the twenty first century that retains the most important elements of the original while seamlessly blending in the modern day elements.
A few years back, when home video editing and cell phone advances were really cutting edge, this movie would have seemed like a cheap attempt to market products to every junior voyeur who wanted to catch their murderous neighbor. I get ahead of myself; perhaps I’ll take a step back to fill in those who missed “Rear Window.”
The plot revolves around a young man who is immobilized and amuses himself by observing the people who live around him. In the original film, Jimmy Stewart was the young man, and he’d broken a leg in a photography accident. This time around, Disney Channel veteran Shia LeBeouf plays Kale, a boy still mourning the loss of his father who hauls off and hits his Spanish teacher and is sentenced to three months house arrest.
Some might argue that the sly romantic interactions and interjections of humor have been added in this version, but those who remember the original clearly will recall that in between the nail biting suspense we had Grace Kelly drifting around the screen making eyes at Stewart, and the dry remarks by the house keeper that were, while somewhat darkly so, very amusing.
“Disturbia” manages to update the hero, the girl, and the mood well, but in a movie like this, it would still be a rather pointless cinematic exercise if the villain weren’t spot on. The villain here, I’m glad to say, is more than just spot on, he is a chilling and ominous character who manages to be even more frightful than his predecessor, Mr. Thorwald in “Rear Window.”
Perhaps it is because this time around the camera is free to move outside the room of the observer that basically the same story does not register as a rehash, perhaps it’s because we get a much more detailed view of the killer’s handiwork. Whatever it is, “Disturbia” is excellent entertainment even after I’d seen “Rear Window” about two dozen times, and even though everybody knows right from the get go that the villain is a villain, the girl and the guy will end up together, and any opportunity for a jump scene will be taken.
Hitchcock only ever remade one of his own films, and it wasn’t “Rear Window.” Even so, I honestly think that he would be pleased with this movie because it stays true to the spirit of the story without carbon copying its source. It has the most suspenseful last twenty minutes of any recent film, but it’s never too horrifying and it never goes so far that we check out. We just let our nerves, and our suspension of disbelief, stretch a little further and a little further and fortunately the filmmakers don’t blow their opportunity. Simply put, this movie delivers.

B+

Millennium Actress

I'm tired and I've written like sixty essays today (or it seems like that anyway) so this will be brief. Not that it could really be a long review, because there's not a lot to write about. Actually, there is plenty to write about, but I would either need to be very sparing or extremely detailed because there's no easy halfway point at which to draw the line of description. If that makes any sense to anyone, that is. So this movie is about an aged Actress who tells her life's story to two documentary filmmakers and in doing so they are whisked back through the years as her memories, the movies she made, and the present time are combined into a postmodern story that winds up being a lot more simple than it originally seems. Not that simple is bad, in fact by the end simple works really well. It's a love story, of course, but it's not your usual love story. The girl who would grow up to become the Actress was given a key by a runaway boy in hiding from the government. She more or less spends her whole life trying to find him to return the key, and this search for her true love is mirrored in the movies she makes and in the surreal story arch of this movie itself. Anyway, the back of the box compares it to the likes of "Spirited Away," a movie I haven't done, but need to, a review on one of these days, if only for my own benefit (as most of these really are). It is not as good as "Spirited Away" but that movie set the bar so incredibly high that I don't think it will be any time soon we see its equal. All that said, Millennium Actress is a good movie on its own terms and while I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who does not already appreciate anime, for those who do they will probably find a few things, if not many, to enjoy here.

B+

Blades of Glory

By this point most people who had planned on seeing “Blades of Glory,” Will Ferrell’s latest cinema outing, will most likely have gone. To any and all who planned on seeing it and did, my only recommendation is that you see it again. It’s to the unbelievers I address this review; for I was one of you and, upon seeing the movie, I saw the errors of my previous opinion.
Will Ferrell alone is reason enough to both draw in and drive away audiences. He has outrageous comic appeal, which can be seen by the success of his previous movies, with the odd exception of “Stranger Than Fiction” which was his best work to date.
The outrageousness of his comic appeal is what discourages many other people from seeing his movies at all. There are those, perhaps you, who believe that if you’ve seen one of his movies you’ve seen them all.
The charm of this movie is in the supporting cast and Ferrell’s costar, John Heder. I refuse to reference him by his first film, he’s long since overcome the image of moon boots and sweet moves.
Ferrell and Heder have a great onscreen chemistry even if they are playing through some of the most basic comedy clichés. Ferrell’s Chazz Michael Michaels is all about being a bad boy, and Heder’s Jimmy MacElroy is a goody two shoes, devoted to his adoring fans.
As any preview, and pretty much any poster featuring the two of them dressed in skin tight outfits and skates, will tell you, the movie is about two men who team up to be the first all male figure skating pair. They were rivals before, but upon tying for a gold medal they get into a brawl on the winners platform that results in both being banned from men’s singles figure skating.
They try to make it with regular jobs for a few years but all they know is skating. Some of Ferrell’s funniest moments are during this segment when Michaels performs, drunk, in a kiddy fantasy show on ice. MacElroy’s old trainer recognizes their potential and convinces them to work as a team in order to sidestep their bans and go for the gold once more.
Their only real competition is the brother/sister team of Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg, played by real life husband and wife Will Arnett and Amy Pohler, who use the memory of their deceased parents to emotionally blackmail their sister Katie, The Office’s Jenna Fischer, into helping them plot their competitors’ downfall.
Even if it weren’t a comedy it would be a typical by-the-books sports movie, in other words unbearable. Fortunately for us it is a comedy and the writers/directors miss no opportunity to take a jab at the world of professional skating.
The jokes in the previews are funnier in the context of the film, and for once they didn’t use every punch line as a selling point, so the movie keeps us laughing instead of subconsciously checking off a list of lines and moments we knew were coming.
It’s not a great movie, as in Oscar-worthy, but it is a lot better than it looked like it was going to be, and even with the constant joke making we end up having enough of an emotional investment in the story to be happy when the protagonists finally put aside their differences and work together to win. If you haven’t seen it and want to, definitely go. If you haven’t seen it and don’t want to, you should give it a chance because you might be pleasantly surprised. If you haven’t seen it, don’t want to, and are out there spreading foul reviews of it, please stop; nobody needs or likes a baseless opinion. Seriously though, go, bring some friends, comedy is more enjoyable in a group, and if nothing else, it’s worth it to hear Ferrell sing Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”

B

Sunset Boulevard

Having finally watched what is considered to be one of the greatest of all Hollywood films I can now check Sunset Boulevard off my list of "to be watched" movies. Simultaneously, though, I'm adding it to my list of favorite movies, and pretty high up no less.
It's the story of a writer, Joe, who's broke, with a couple of B movies to his name and virtually no prospects. By the kind of accident that modern audiences probably wouldn't buy, he finds himself in the house of Norma Desmond, a once great star of silent movies who became a forgotten has been when audio revolutionized the cinema.
The condition of Norma's house, dilapidated and filled to the brim with extravagant and elaborate junk (not to mention more pictures of herself than one could possibly count), reflects the condition of her mind. Everything is like it would be in a silent movie. Her eye popping house needs no audio, her exaggerated gestures and overly expressive facial movements require no words to inform anyone what she is doing, saying, or thinking.
She refuses to move forward, she insists that her audiences are craving for her return to the screen and she hopes they will forgive her for abandoning them. So sure is she that she will be embraced by the crowds, the studios, and her director Cecil B Demille, that she has penned a monstrously long script to be her comeback vehicle.
Joe sees an opportunity to make a lot of money by rewriting the script and tightening it up, even though he knows she will fail grandly in selling it to a studio. At first he lives in the spare room above the garage, but it isn't long before he has been moved inside to the grand master bedroom that had been the quarters of her three previous husbands. The butler, Max, hovers around the cavernous mansion always giving the impression that he knows and is more than he lets on.
By the time Norma and Joe have finished the script she is buying him clothes and expensive finery, hosting a new years party just for the two of them, and taking him out for drives in her magnificent old car. Joe receives no money from Norma, rather she looks after him. He is her companion, in her eyes he is her true love, and he hates the position he's in. He cannot bring himself to detach because the setup is easy, a long time contract with no options, which is the way he likes it, even though he's a prisoner.
The story goes from chilling to bleak, but it is never boring, and as Norma speaks her famous last line we are seriously unnerved as only really great movies can make us.
Movies have changed so much over the decades that watching this require a kind of suspension of disbelief in the opposite direction from movies nowadays. In action movies and stuff we have to shrug it off that a hero can jump six stories and land in a roll that leaves him more or less unharmed. With the older movies they had stories to tell, real stories that could not possibly be told completely in an hour and fifty minutes. So we suspend our disbelief at the idea that a broke writer might happen to turn into 1086 Sunset Boulevard where this washed up old silent film star lurks, enveloped in her monumental narcissism, with a picture just waiting to be written.
It isn't really realistic, but neither is the Hollywood industry. So much in the movie is a reflection of what is real though. For example, oh, I don't know, maybe girls who think that a relationship is way more than it actually is, and wind up leeching onto an unsuspecting guy because he returns like the slightest, possibly feigned, interest in what she has to say. Not that I'd know anything about that personally, but then again I'm waiting for the day that a few people I know announce "Alright Mr. Demille I'm ready for my close up."
In all seriousness though, this movie doesn't gloss anything up, it's honest about the sheer impossibility of the very industry that created it. It's as great a film now as it was when it was first released, perhaps it's even better now when you realize how accurate it was and is. It's bested its own leading lady by being the very thing she must have known she could never be; timeless.

A

Meet The Robinsons

Disney is never going to match Pixar in the quality of their computer animated movies but in Meet The Robinsons they come closer than they have before. While it isn't amazing it's still pretty good and has appeal for adults as well as kids. The story is about an orphan boy named Lewis, and how he goes to the future and learns his little life lessons and finally finds a family where he belongs. Not wildly original, but it's executed with a lot more humor and plot than Disney usually incorporates. The score was kind of annoying, it's one of those themes where you follow it and it sounds nice but instead of finishing out how it ought to the main tune suddenly goes down an octave and the tune you thought you'd hear is lost in some lame bridge tune that takes you right back to the start of the theme. Aside from less than excellent music, and a message (about how failure helps us learn) that they push just a little too hard, it was funny and interesting and didn't tarnish the Disney badge. The bottom line is, if you're looking to hate a movie don't go because you will hate it and then act like you were ambushed. But if you want a good time with a handful of exceptionally good bits and a story that, for Disney anyway, has a few unpredicted tricks up its sleeve, you might give it a go and be glad you did.

B

The Last Mimzy

The appeal of a movie like “The Last Mimzy” for college students, or anyone for that matter, is perhaps not very strong. Be that as it may, readers of the short story on which the film is loosely based might be more numerous than expected, and the fact that Rainn Wilson of NBC’s “The Office” plays one of the key characters might lure those who enjoy his weekly neurotic antics.
As for me, following the gore bath that was “Grindhouse,” I felt I needed to look to a more family friendly fare that would provide a blood-free two hours of cinema. Unfortunately my choice of films left me feeling almost as assaulted, only without the fun stuff that made last week’s movie worthwhile.
It’s not that “Mimzy” had particularly offensive part, but the sum total was grandly underwhelming, taking an interesting idea and dumbing it down to a cheap knock off of many other better movies.
As I’ve said, the movie is adapted from a short story called Mimsy were the Borogoves, by Lewis Padgett. The title is taken from a line of the nonsense poem sung by the Jabberwocky in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and what Alice Found There.
While the short story, with strict simplicity even while dealing with a rather far fetched idea, suggests a clever idea about how Carroll might have come up with such a poem, the movie succeeds only in making what was once a simple short story into something about as nonsensical as the poem itself.
Oh yes, to be sure, sub plot upon sub plot has been added, it’s been modernized which is not so much an issue when it comes to the look of the movie, but what ought to be a children’s story is hampered by sudden introduction of topics like The Patriot Act and global pollution. There are movies for these subjects; this is not one of them.
The original story told of a scientist from the future that sent two boxes, filled with his child’s discarded toys, into the past. One of these boxes, so the story goes, found its way to the girl who would be Lewis Carroll’s inspiration for the character Alice. A boy and his sister find the other box. They play around with the contents telling their interested parents that they were gifts.
The idea of the whole story is that the minds of humans are structured around Euclidian mathematics, but a young mind, not yet set in its ways, could be structured around a different sort of system and see the world differently, perhaps even move through dimensions and so forth.
In the end of the story the parents have taken away the toys because they have observed the changes being wrought in their children. It is to no avail, for one morning the father comes upon his children as just as they are slipping away into another dimension and he is unable to follow them. On the ground is Carroll’s book opened to the Jabberwocky’s poem.
It’s actually a somewhat depressing story, but an intriguing one nonetheless. The only thing I was intrigued by, as the credits began rolling, was how anyone ever thought the sad movie adaptation would earn a dime.
The viewers are required to wade through scenarios involving kids talking to spiders, palm readings, meditations, some sort of bridge across the universe, a science fair, talk of the blessed children of Tibet, levitating rocks, and sub par acting. Many ideas from the original work are carried through to the film, but they lose their significance when crowded in with all the additions.
I know these kids are young, and to their credit they look the parts completely, but a movie like this that relies so much on children in the lead roles should invest the time to find kids who can convey emotion.
The thing is, we’ve already seen a much better version of this movie, Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” Young kids who encounter and form an emotional bond with something alien, this is not new. Nor is the invasion of the house by government personal, and “Mimzy’s” attempt at portraying destruction of traditional safety doesn’t hold a candle to Spielberg’s.
The children in “E.T.” could act, and the story wasn’t bogged down with superfluous junk, if you didn’t cry watching “E.T.” you pretty much didn’t have a soul. It was and is an amazing movie. But here comes “The Last Mimzy,” or rather here came “The Last Mimzy,” it’s on the last leg of its short theater run.
Rainn Wilson might have at least provided a character to enjoy in his scenes, but he seems to have succumbed to the boring nature of the film for not once did he come across funny, nor was he particularly dramatic, I think the best word to describe him in this movie is “lost,” he needs to find his way back to Scranton.

C+

The Pursuit of Happyness

It's really quite simple. This story is not good looking enough to be a significant cinematic experience. The story is not quite uncommon enough to be a remarkably original movie. The performance by Smith, while certainly fine, is not excellent enough to write home about. (The only reason he is "so great" in this role is because we've seen him so long being a funny man.) I have to admit that despite his gray hair and seriousness, I still saw the Smith of Men in Black and Bad Boys behind the would be stock broker's glasses. The movie kicks you in the stomach with the story of a man struggling to make a better life for himself and his son. After a while though we get numb, and it totally doesn't help that we all know what's coming in the end. It's not that I didn't feel the predicted connection with the story, it's just that, the whole time watching, I was asking myself, "Why in the world did this ever become a movie?" A movie is art, and some subjects lend themselves better to art than others. This one is one of the "others." It's alternately boring and depressing to watch, though when, at the very end we see that Smith's Chris Gardner got his dream job and after doing so made a boatload of money, we no longer feel sorry for him. They've built a little emotion into us, and then done away with it. After two hours I feel the same way I felt when I started... that I would MUCH rather have just skipped it all together and given, oh, say Children of Men another viewing.

C

Grindhouse

If it accomplishes nothing else, “Grindhouse” will at least go down in history as the fist time ever that movie goers could look to a Quentin Tarantino movie as a source of relief (a safe harbor if you will) from nauseating, violent, lurid cinema. Don’t believe me? Well I’m in print so that makes me right. I suppose getting all arrogant about my position as movie reviewer may not be the best thing to do in the first issue of spring quarter, but you mustn’t hold me accountable for it. I feel as though my heads been run over by an eighteen wheeler of gore, language, pop culture references, and seriously awesome music; in that state I’m liable to say anything.
For anyone who hasn’t seen one of the numerous retro themed posters, or caught one of the exhilarating montages of ludicrous action and one line zingers promoting the film, or films rather, “Grindhouse” is a double feature by writers/directors/best friends Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.
They’re calling it homage to the exploitation films they consumed in grindhouse theaters as children. I’m calling it two masters of film getting free rein to drop the pretense of “art” and revel in the most fully realized examples of cinematic schlock.
Now it’s not that they haven’t both produced their own unique versions of an exploitation film, it’s just that it’s not new. They’ve both been doing this since they got a camera in their hands, but as I said before, this time around they’re coming right out and dropping all the refinement so all that’s left is the gritty unsettling showcase of every kind of disgusting thing two forty-something year olds can imagine.
I shouldn’t be so mean; I’m making it sound like I hated it. In all honesty it was a pretty serious three-hour sensation. And I only accuse them both because it’s billed as their united project and the cross over of their films made it feel like, really, we were seeing two different stories from the same perverted world.
Comparing the works of the two directors here renders the same evaluation that you’d get by comparing the entire bodies of their work. (Excepting, of course, Rodriguez’ “Spy Kids” there’s nothing for kids here. Hear that Mr. or Mrs. Want-to-be-the-cool-and-loved-parent-so-I’ll-take-my-eleven-year-old, I beg you keep anyone under the age of eighteen as far away as humanly possibly!)
Robert Rodriguez makes very entertaining movies, and when you’re watching them you don’t have to do anything but sit back and let it all in. “El Mariachi,” “Desperado,” “Sin City,” they’re great movies because they thrill and appall and leave you feeling used in the theater seat. The first half of “Grindhouse,” a film called “Planet Terror” is easily the more shocking of the two, probably the most memorable, and was used for the majority of the marketing. It’s all about looks. Government testing produces zombies and a small group of courageous accidental heroes bands together to fight the government, the zombies, and fate so they can live through the night from hell.
It’s simple and easy to enjoy. I wanted to throw up for half of it, and throughout it I wondered who was paid and how much they got to give this movie an R rating, but overall it is the kind of thing you’d picture in your mind when you hear the words “exploitation film.”
This one, surprisingly, also gave us a wider set of iconic characters. Tarantino has give us dozens of memorable heroes, badasses, sweethearts, and femme fatales, but you compare Rose McGowan’s Cherry Darling, a go-go dancer with aspirations of being a stand up comedian and a machine gun/grenade launcher for a right leg, with any of the girls from Tarantino’s contribution and you tell me who you’ll remember.
By the time the fake trailers for films too disgusting to imagine have rolled and Tarantino’s film “Death Proof” begins we are all too relieved to have some rest from the gore-fest that was “Planet Terror.” We don’t want to let our guard down too quickly; this is the director that showed us Zed, The Gimp, and the horrific underworld of L.A. pawnshops.
Quentin takes as high a road as he possible could, considering the goal of the movie. His is a hilarious character and dialogue-based movie with only a couple scenes of violence, and a story that is simple, straightforward and pretty well resolved in the end. Kurt Russell, at the best he’s been in years, plays Stuntman Mike, a scarred up stalked with a reinforced car that, supposedly, guarantees the driver his life no matter the speed or manner of collision.
If I had to guess I’d say that most people would like “Planet Terror” more than “Death Proof,” but not me. As fun as the former may have been, it left me feeling distinctly grotesque at the thought that I was supposed to enjoy watching a zombie pop a bulbous growth of pussy infected flesh into a doctor’s eye. Rodriguez has it where we can see it, but Tarantino’s movie has it where it really counts.
I know we’re looking at about a million third-in-the-series movies, at least one fifth movie, and a whole variety of new blockbusters in the coming months, but I’d wager that, this year, you will not see anything cooler than Cherry Darling blasting herself forty feet into the air with a rocket from her leg so she can vault a concrete wall and waste about fifty troops on the return to earth. It’s not great art, it won’t be nominated (for cinematography OR writing), it’s cheap trash cinema, and these made it about as good as possible.

B