Category: Reviews

  • ‘Dreamgirls’

    (from l. to r.) Beyonce Knowles, Anika Noni Rose and Jennifer Hudson co-star in 'Dreamgirls'
    (from l. to r.) Beyonce Knowles, Anika Noni Rose and Jennifer Hudson co-star in ‘Dreamgirls’

    While currently on an upswing, the number of modern movie musicals remains relatively few and far between. It would seem good, then, that Bill Condon’s film adaptation of the musical Dreamgirls, covering as much territory as it does, should make up for lost ground. And it is resonant — but it often only cuts skin deep.

    The musical premiered on Broadway during the 1981-82 season, the brainchild of choreographer-director Michael Bennett, the visionary who conceived A Chorus Line, with book and lyrics by Tom Eyen and music provided by Henry Krieger. It quickly became legendary for two reasons: It was one of the few successful, tour-friendly shows with an all-black cast, and it provided a star-making role for one of its stars, Jennifer Holliday, who belted out the show’s signature tune, “And I Am Telling You”, to Grammy and Tony success.

    One of Bennett’s aims with the show was to make it more movie-like, in part to address the new Broadway audience as well as to lampoon the use of the movie montages in musicals. Condon, who also adapted Chicago for the big screen, achieves the reverse effect with Dreamgirls, making it more theatrical and subverting the intent of the original.

    Dreamgirls begins in Detroit, where Effie Melody White (Jennifer Hudson), a zaftig woman with an even mightier voice, leads a three-girl group named the Dreamettes. Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles) and Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose) sing backup, though it’s unclear how long they have known each other and how close of friends they really are. After Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx), a local car dealer and budding manager discovers the group, he conscripts them to tour with James “Thunder” Early (a sensational Eddie Murphy).

    Those familiar with either the show or the film will know that the plot, which covers most of the 1960s and 1970s and all of the music revolutions that occurred therein, is based not-so-loosely on the rise and fall of the Supremes, and all the machinations that occurred behind the scenes. In short order, Effie, coarse and unprofessional to a fault, hooks up with Curtis (resembling Berry Gordy, engineer of Motown), only to be replaced by the less talented Deena as both lead singer of the re-christened Dreams and as Curtis’ girlfriend (making Deena a surrogate for Diana Ross, who was married to Gordy as the Supremes dominated the charts). Meanwhile, Lorrell begins a decade-long affair with the narcissistic, married, substance-abusing Early, an amalgam of the late James Brown and Marvin Gaye, among others. (Fun fact #1: 1980s sitcom stars Dawn Lewis of A Different World and Jaleel White of Family Matters make appearances).

    Condon cuts a wide swath, placing these personal betrayals among a much larger landscape, and it doesn’t always work. Too much happens off-screen. We never see a glimpse of Curtis’ relationship with Effie, only hear them talk about it. Lorrell, who insists she will not be a part of Early’s philandering, suddenly changes her mind with no explanation. Deena yells at her, praising the virtues of remaining chaste, and then all of a sudden Effie announces that she is on to Deena’s affair with Curtis. Curtis sings to Deena that he loved her since he first saw her, but cinematic syntax does not say that at all. How can all of these things happen out of the blue? Are we to believe that once Effie is ousted, Deena has no diva moments between her, Lorrell and Michelle (Sharon Leal), Effie’s replacement? Additionally, Condon’s attempt to integrate social change feels sloppy, especially his inclusion of the 1968 Detroit riots. It is not necessary to bring in random real life events. Dreamgirls is not a survey, it should be about the music.

    And a lot of the music is problematic as well. The songs do not reflect a wide variety of the styles it is supposed to represent. While heavy on the rhythm and blues, most of the songs lack soul, concentrating as they do on imitating a certain sound. Dreamgirls includes several new songs, poised for extra Oscar nods, with one success (the Hudson-sung “Love You I Do”) and one that belongs better on today’s charts: the Knowles-sung “Listen,” which poses a real problem for the movie. Throughout, Knowles is little more than a malleable presence, reciting her lines and hitting her marks with accuracy, but never making them seem organic, as though Deena were really under the spell of her Svengali. When she has her big song, Knowles actively breaks character and sings as herself rather than Deena, as though she were merely recording her latest music video.

    Hudson isn’t perfect either; some of her line readings are unschooled, but when she sings, she more than acquits herself. “Telling” is a masterpiece of a song, and the achievement for anyone who plays Effie is in merely getting the role on the first place. She nails the number. Many know of Hudson’s back-story: She was a fan favorite on the third season of American Idol, only to get the boot. In this way, Idol has now graduated beyond a mere reality television theater of cruelty. It no longer creates stars to watch them fall, but to see them resurrected, and now creates mythology as well as music.

    I wish the film, and its publicists, had devoted more attention to Rose, a Tony-winner who has sung at the Vatican the best of the three Dreams portrayers. Hinton Battle, Danny Glover, and Keith Robinson are also great in smaller roles, while Foxx merely relies on his natural bragadoccio and lolls through the film as the increasingly Machiavellian Curtis. (Fun fact #2: Loretta Devine, Broadway’s original Lorrell, has a cameo.) In the end, Murphy owns the movie with his bravura turn as Early. Murphy, a comic genius, has shown his diversity before, not ably in The Nutty Professor, and again he runs the gamut of emotions, singing, dancing, sweating, seducing, and snorting up a storm. There is a word for the work he does here: awesome.

    One of the great ironies of Dreamgirls is that each of the Dreams prefers to hold onto their man rather than “be free.” In different ways, independence finds each of them. And there is no greater dream than that.

  • ‘The Good German’

    George Clooney stars in 'The Good German'
    George Clooney stars in ‘The Good German’

    Self-aware and painstakingly movie-esque, The Good German comes to the big screen having sacrificed much of the heart of Joseph Kanon’s clever novel. Director Steven Soderbergh, whose 2000 Oscar for Traffic seems more and more of an anomaly every day, has adapted it (with a screenplay by Paul Attanasio, who, with credits like Quiz Show and Donnie Brasco, usually knows much better) as an exercise in film study, a portrait of the artist as a poseur.

    Perhaps in an attempt to be irreverent or rebellious, Soderbergh has constructed German as a throwback to the black-and-white epics of Old Hollywood. As a result, German looks ancient, with period camera settings and clean wipe cuts, but it sounds distinctly modern, with language frank and situations dirty enough to merit a late-night schedule on Cinemax. The most recent example of a film made in the mold of an older style is Todd Haynes’ masterful Far From Heaven, but that film used Douglas Sirk’s 1950s as a mirror held up to contemporary society, showing how far our knowledge and morals had come since then, and the distances they had yet to reach. German offers no such reflection.

    Attanasio scoops up Kanon’s detail-rich story about the Potsdam conference, but his ladle has holes in it, and only the bigger nuggets remain in the movie (with one critical plot adjustment late in the game). George Clooney is Jake Geismer, an American reporter who returns to Germany following the end of World War II. He has a history there with Lena (Cate Blanchett), a “stringer” with whom he used to cavort.

    Unfortunately, for multiple reasons, it turns out that Jake’s driver, the deceptive Patrick Tully (a miscast and under-directed Tobey Maguire) is currently involved with Lena. “Of all the people she had to get involved with, it had to be my driver,” Jake mutters at a bar. It isn’t exactly “Of all the gin joints,” but… actually, it isn’t even close. But aim Soderbergh does for Casablanca, with its mix of romance and mistrust against a decadent geopolitical framework. Legend has it that all collaborators wrote Casablanca as production moved along, and German looks like what would have happened if Casablanca director Michael Curtiz had made every wrong decision along the way.

    Chief among them is that Soderbergh opts not to dwell on the story itself, but on the manner of storytelling. He constantly distracts with his emphasis on old-fashioned styles; simply filming in washed-out colors would have lent the film a sense of authenticity. Also, Blanchett, one of the few perfect actors working today, appears instructed not to create a vivid portrayal but instead to play the duplicitous Lena as nothing more than a type, embodying a Marlene Dietrich-style. Why hire one of the greats to play a mannequin? Clooney, as usual, plays stoic and cynical with a sense of remoteness, never giving too much to the character of Jake, even though at times the character feels as though he has everything to lose.

    Second-tier characters emerge in German as suspects complicit in the murder of an American soldier, including Bernie Teitel (Leland Orser), an American Jew in search of Nazis; General Sikorsky (Ravil Isyanov), a mysterious Russian officer; and Colonel Muller (Beau Bridges), an American in control of part of Berlin. Additionally, Lena’s motivations become circumspect as the film progresses. But a lot of the individual scenes lift right out, as one unhinted-at twist or betrayal after another negates what preceded it. Soderbergh appears merely to be amusing himself, paying homage to movies of the past — The Third Man seems to have influenced the director as much as Casablanca — that perhaps inspired him. Still, Doug J. Meerdink’s art direction and Soderbergh’s cinematography (he opted to use pseudonym Peter Andrews) make for pretty filler. It’s just too bad that from a book with such heft comes a film with such little heart.

  • ‘Letters From Iwo Jima’

    Ryo Kase (left) and Kazunari Ninomiya co-star in 'Letters From Iwo Jima'
    Ryo Kase (left) and Kazunari Ninomiya co-star in ‘Letters From Iwo Jima’

    Once again, Clint Eastwood has ended the year with a bang — in this case, a literal, explosive one. Letters From Iwo Jima, which tells the story of the battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers who fought and fell, bookends Eastwood’s American perspective, Flags of Our Fathers, which was released earlier this fall. Where Flags was a fitting tribute, it was pedestrian and narratively clunky. Letters, on the other hand, transcends potential hindrances (it has almost no name stars and is almost entirely delivered in Japanese) to prove itself soaring and heroic.

    Eastwood blends the vivid imagery of violence with the quiet poetry of what remains unsaid, the traits that earned best picture Oscars for his Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby. Ultimately, what Eastwood has done is remarkable because it is so simple: it is the rare example of someone from one country empathizing with the enemy. And by showing that the Japanese soldiers who fought were in so many ways like the American ones, young men with homes and careers, wives and children, fighting a futile war out of piety, both sides truly were the same.

    Letters, in ways more intimate than the more broad-minded Flags did, cuts through the propaganda to show that the Japanese men who fought were themselves divided amongst one another, and conflicted within themselves. Iris Yamashita wrote the screenplay with help from Paul Haggis, who adapted Flags and Baby, based on letters written by the soldiers. These letters, of course, never made it off the island, but were only discovered decades later, as portrayed in the film’s opening and closing moments.

    Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (an astonishing Ken Watanabe), a former chief of the Imperial Guard, comes to Iwo Jima to prepare his soldiers for American conflict. Kuribayashi is disciplined but reasonable; in an early scene he resolves to punish two soldiers not by abuse, but in a more humane way: depriving them of a meal. He also proves to be a bit of a renegade, opting not for beachhead defenses, but instead ordering the construction of caves and tunnels from which his army can battle their foes.

    America, we learn, was not always considered an enemy to these men. Both Kuribayashi and Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara) have spent time in America; the former as an officer, and the latter as an equestrian in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Two other soldiers also form a bond, though one at the bottom end of the totem pole. Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya) is ostensibly the film’s protagonist, a young baker whose wife gave birth to a daughter after he was conscripted. He befriends Shimizu (Ryo Kase), whose past behavior has gotten him stationed on the island. Eastwood puts his audience right there in those caves with the soldiers, enduring their meager living conditions while waiting for attack. Hope for help is futile. There is neither navy nor any reserves. Though a suicide mission, most understand their duty and suffer in silence. One of several particularly harrowing sequences depicts a group of traditional soldiers using hand grenades to take their own life. Clearly, Letters is an unflinching look.

    He also offers an alternate look. One of the biggest blows to the Japanese is when Mount Suribachi falls, and Eastwood shows the famous symbolic flag-raising from the perspective of the other side. Afterward, as more and more of the separated soldiers fall, a schism develops between Kuribayashi and Lieutenant Ito (Shidou Nakamura). Watanabe conveys an enormity by doing so little: compassion, cleverness, bravery, appreciation, humility, rationality. His still waters run immensely deep. Kazunari offers a stark contrast as the more naïve, emotional younger soldier. The attention to detail also should be noted behind the camera; Henry Bumstead and James J. Murakami’s production design and Tom Stern’s cinematography take Eastwood’s audience to a time and place none of them have ever been.

    And Eastwood shows why one no one ever should.

  • ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’

    ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’

    Sacha Baron Cohen in ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’

    You can often learn a lot from one line in the end credits of a movie and Borat: Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is no exception. Any movie with a credit that reads “Mr. Baron Cohen’s feces provided by Jason Alpert” had better be either a very funny comedy, or something I would not venture into the theatre to see. Fortunately, it is the former, and Borat is an exceptional entry into the comedy genre known as the mockumentary. At least that is as close as I can come to classifying it. If Borat were a real person, I would suspect that his home village of Cussick was too close to the Semipalatinsk Test Site (where the Soviet Union tested its nuclear weapons until closing the site in 1991), which is actually located in Kazakhstan. It might also explain some of the villagers we see in early scenes.

    Sacha Baron Cohen jointly penned the screenplay with Anthony Hines (although there are actually four names credited with the screenplay and four names with the story), jointly produced the film with Jay Roach (director of the Austin Powers trilogy) and he stars as “Borat” Sagdiyev, a resident of a small village in Kazakhstan who works as a reporter for government television and is sent to the United States to make a documentary. Once there, he comes across a Baywatch calendar and becomes obsessed with meeting and marrying Pamela Anderson.

    Baron Cohen’s film is funny on multiple layers, some of which the bulk of its audience won’t appreciate but that doesn’t matter. The base level comedy is funny enough. But there are additional layers of ironic humor to be found that make the humorous remarks even funnier. On the other hand, some of it really pushes the limits. One wonders how someone who’s cousin is a famed professor of psychopathology in the psychiatry and psychology departments at the University of Cambridge, would make numerous jokes in a film about “retards”. Then again, since there are many anti-Semitic jokes in this film and Baron Cohen is a devoutly religious Jew himself, I guess there are no limits for him.

    Sacha Baron Cohen and Ken Davitian in ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’

    If you watch the film and you think you’re hearing either Baron Cohen, or his co-star Ken Davitian, who plays the producer/director/cameraman of Borat’s documentary, speaking Kazakhstani, you aren’t. Baron Cohen speaks Polish and Hebrew, with a smattering of Yiddish at various times during the film, while Bavitian speaks fluent Armenian. Oh, and if that Russian folk music sounds a bit familiar, think about those days when you played the video game Tetris and it will all come back to you.

    Borat’s adventures as he crosses America, at a Gay Pride parade, at a dinner party, at a meeting with some feminists, are all funny. Were they all unscripted, encounters with people with Baron Cohen in character? I don’t know and I don’t really care. I only know it all works out to be funny. There is even a moral to this story that comes out at the end, although it is hinted at early on. A funny mockumentary that has a moral to wrap up the story is pretty close to a complete work and Borat fits that description to a T. Or should that be a mustachioed B?.

    Just remember two things before you go into the theater to see Borat. One is that you are going to laugh, a lot. Two is that before you take a drink of soda or start to put some popcorn in your mouth, make sure the action on the screen is at a stage where you aren’t about to be made to laugh loudly enough to spit up on the person in front of you. Then again, they will probably be laughing too hard to notice.

  • You cannot lose by betting big on ‘Casino Royale’

    You cannot lose by betting big on ‘Casino Royale’

    Daniel Craig as James Bond in ‘Casino Royale’

    Casino Royale is the 21st film in the James Bond series (not counting the spoof version of the same title and 1983’s Never Say Never Again); and the first to star Daniel Craig as the British superspy, 007. Martin Campbell directs from a screenplay by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis that is very loosely based on the first of Ian Fleming’s novels featuring the British spy. Some 44 years after Bond’s first feature film appearance in Dr. No, Casino Royale is a new beginning for the character, showing him first earning his Double 00 prefix, his license to kill.

    In this “re-boot” of the character, after having earned the license to kill, Bond finds himself being ordered to take part in a high-stakes poker tournament at the Casino Royale in Montenegro organized by a man named Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen, who played Tristan in King Arthur) who is a major banker for terrorists throughout the world. It turns out that Le Chiffre has engaged in stock market speculation with his client’s money to generate profits for himself and when an attempted terrorist act that Le Chiffre was counting on to improve his portfolio is thwarted by Bond, Le Chiffre’s resulting losses in the market are more than he can handle. Thus, the tournament is organized with the idea that by winning, Le Chiffre can more than make-up the lost funds before his clients come looking for their money. Bond is the best poker player in the British Secret Service and the government is going to provide the ten million dollar stake, although Bond must proceed with the knowledge that if he loses, England will have directly financed international terrorism.

    Please note that this is very similar to the base plot of the Fleming novel, except that in the book, Le Chiffre’s financial difficulties spring from his ill-time purchase of a string of bordellos. The purchase was ill-timed because almost immediately after the purchase, the French outlawed that particular business. The other big difference from the novel’s base plot and the film version is that the game of chance in the book was Baccarat and not Texas Hold-em. Kudos to the writers for taking Fleming’s base story and tweaking it only slightly this time in order to make it modern, instead of making wholesale changes making it unrecognizable.

    In the film, the government is willing to bankroll Bond, but they insist on providing oversight, in the form of someone from their Treasury Department, in the form of one Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) and there are sparks, or friction, or something between she and Bond from the moment they meet. In addition, she and she alone will determine whether or not Bond will receive the backup funding of five million dollars, should he lose his initial ten million dollar stake (the rules of Le Chiffre’s tournament call for an initial buy-in of ten million and do permit one additional re-buy of five million).

    Eva Green and Daniel Craig in ‘Casino Royale’

    The details of the tournament’s play and the aftermath I leave for you to discover on the big screen yourselves. From that fateful moment the first cards are dealt, until the last bullet is fired should be enjoyed by you without description or narration from me or anyone else.

    Craig is the sixth actor to portray Bond on the big screen (again, not counting the spoof version) and his is a different Bond. This James Bond is more physical, less dependent on gadgets and not nearly as suave as Sean Connery. Nor does he dispense a pun every nine minutes and thirty-eight seconds (roughly) like Roger Moore. If his portrayal is closest to any of his predecessors, it is to that of Timothy Dalton who probably displayed the level of darkness within Bond as written by Mr. Fleming. Craig’s Bond violates limits that previous Bonds would not think of exceeding. He displays levels of durability, endurance and resistance to pain that goes beyond anything done by any previous Bond.

    Campbell, who joins an exclusive list of directors (Terrence Young, Lewis Gilbert, John Glen and Guy Hamilton) who have directed multiple Bond films, was also the director for the debut Bond film of the last actor to play the role, Pierce Brosnan. As in that particular picture, Goldeneye, the producers made some changes in the character to fit the new actor portraying 007. Once again, Campbell’s deft touch in the director’s chair nicely handles the transition to a new actor in the lead role.

    The biggest weakness in Casino Royale is the opening credits, which are unlike any of the many Bond films of recent years, devoid of beautiful women and instead filled with guns and bullets. Another mark against it is the absence of the “Q” character or his successor “R” as played by John Cleese. In Live and Let Die, the producers made the same mistake, omitting the character of “Q” and the outcry was so great that he had to be brought back in the following Bond film, The Man With the Golden Gun.  But aside from these two flaws, this is an excellent effort in introducing a new James Bond and re-booting the character’s timeline.

  • ‘Shottas’ doesn’t give you much to care about

    Ky-Mani Marley (left) and Spragga Benz star in 'Shottas'
    Ky-Mani Marley (left) and Spragga Benz star in ‘Shottas’

    To be quite honest, I don’t get gangster or mob flicks. I don’t really have much interest in celebrating criminals, and most of these films are populated with characters I couldn’t care less about. They are bad guys doing bad things, and often deserve the bad things that happen to them.

    That’s exactly what’s wrong with Shottas, about a pair of Jamaican kids who grow up to be killers and thieves. There is nothing redeemable about either of them. In fact, there isn’t one redeemable character in this entire film. As a result, I’m left asking the question: Why should I care what happens to any of them? And if I don’t care, why am I going to watch it?

    Shottas — a Jamaican term for gangster — follows Biggs (Ky-Mani Marley, son of famed singer Bob Marley) and Wayne (Spragga Benz), who in the early 1970s live in the ghetto of Kingston. After stealing money from a local truck driver, they escape to America where each of them have family. Fast forward 20 years later, Biggs returns to Jamaica after being deported for criminal activities in Miami. Wayne meets him at the airport, having been similarly kicked out of the United States several years earlier. Biggs joins with Wayne’s criminal ways, until the pair — along with the maniacal Mad Max (Paul Campbell) — are forced to flee Jamaica. Armed with forged visas, they make their way back to Miami and Biggs quickly reinserts himself into the criminal underworld. But a rival gangster aims to take Biggs, Wayne and Mad Max down.

    There’s an element to what makes a mob-type film work. The hero or main character may be a bad guy, but he must operate with a moral code that places him higher than the criminals he goes up against. A great example of this is Payback, the Mel Gibson flick. In that film, Gibson is a criminal who goes after the organization that stole his money. Gibson’s character is a bad guy, a killer and thief, but compared to the characters he goes up against he’s the good guy. He has a code of honor that guides him, while the other “villains” don’t. In Shottas, the main characters Biggs and Wayne are just as terrible as the people they are fighting. There is no differentiating them from the bad guys they’re going up against.

    I’m not trying to say that characters need to be good people for a film to work. That’s not true. But characters need to be relatable in some way. You have to feel for a character. If you’re going to spend two hours of your life following a person through a story, you have to feel something. Anything. Shottas lacks that, and as such, there’s nothing to hold your interest or encourage you to care at all what will happen to any of the people in it.

    Shottas mainly has two things going for it — strong editing and a great soundtrack. If you put it up against other low-budget action flicks, Shottas looks fairly good. The action sequences are a toss up, but overall it has a nice style. The editing is also slick, more so that other action flicks I’ve seen on Cinemax at three in the morning. And while there’s nothing compelling about any of the people in the film, I have to admit, there was one character that was somewhat interesting. Mad Max, the third man out, who is something of a deranged killer. Campbell offers the film’s best performance, and benefits because his character is actually the most dynamic.

    Shottas has been hit with a lot of road bumps as it searches for an audience. Although it’s finally hitting screens here in the United States tomorrow (November 3rd), the film has been popular with the bootleg crowd for months. I suppose a film like this could find an audience, but I think it would have benefited from a script that was more developed, and characters with more depth.

  • Dane Cook’s ‘Employee of the Month’ works… mostly

    Dane Cook pursues Jessica Simpson in 'Employee of the Month'
    Dane Cook pursues Jessica Simpson in ‘Employee of the Month’

    The first time I actually saw Dane Cook perform in any way was on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. It was a recent repeat and he was promoting something else, but he told several stories and I literally woke my wife up because I was laughing so hard. As a result, I was pretty set up to look for a good time when I caught a screening of Employee of the Month last week.

    It doesn’t take the film long to start in with the humor, and pretty quickly sets Cook’s character up as the likeable slacker, Zack. He’s a box boy at Super Club, a Sam’s Club or BJ’s-type warehouse store where you buy things like soup or toilet paper in bulk. He’s got a posse of misfits as his friends, such as Lon (Andy Dick), who sells eyeglasses at Super Club but has extremely poor eyesight; Russell (Harland Williams), who makes crude and bizarre analogies; and Iqbal (Brian George), a father of about a dozen children. His arch nemesis is Vince (Dax Shepard), the star cashier who has maintained a record of Employee of the Month awards, and is just one month shy of winning a new-ish car and getting on the fast track to a managerial promotion.

    Then along comes Amy (Jessica Simpson), a beautiful new cashier who quickly catches Zack’s eye — as well as Vince’s. Rumors quickly spread that Amy sleeps with the Employee of the Month. In an effort to win that opportunity, Zack changes his slacker ways and sets out to be the best employee at Super Club. Zack and Vince then go head to head, battling for daily gold stars, as well as the affections of Amy. But only one can be… Employee of the Month.

    Cook is instantly likeable, and Shepard is sharp as the jerky villain. But to be honest, much of the film’s humor comes from the supporting characters. Andy Dick actually manages to be subtle and funny, all at the same time. He surprised me the most in this film, because generally he is obnoxious in his roles. Harland Williams is also terrific, rattling off witty comments with clipped timing. Vince’s sidekick, Jorge, is played with innocent charm by Efren Ramirez. Although the role is only marginally different than the one he played in Napoleon Dynamite, he does it so well, it’s kind of hard not to find it funny.

    Jessica Simpson, with Dax Shepard, in 'Employee of the Month'
    Jessica Simpson, with Dax Shepard, in ‘Employee of the Month’

    Of course, we can’t forget Jessica Simpson. I’ll be the first to say that the 26-year-old singer is stunningly beautiful. Drop dead. No question. But can she act?

    Well, I’ll be honest, I thought she was pretty wooden in Dukes of Hazzard. In Employee of the Month, she’s actually more animated. She’s cute, her scenes are done nicely, and she is charming. At the same time, she doesn’t really do very much. In many of her scenes she simply reacts. I don’t want to be hard on her, because acting is a process. Some people can learn and get better. The best example would be Will Smith. He wasn’t terribly good when he first started in The Prince of Bel Air, but over the years he improved. Today he’s a respectable actor and a real talent.

    Will this happen with Jessica Simpson? I’d like to think so. She doesn’t have the advantage of learning on a series that generally plays to her strengths, so she has to do it in these limited film roles. I’m a nice guy, mostly, so I wish her the best.

    As for Employee of the Month, it’s a film that mostly works. It’s funny a good portion of the time, with a good collection of characters that keep it moving and entertaining. It does everything a good comedy should.

  • ‘The Curse of El Charro’ left me feeling let down and cheated

    ‘The Curse of El Charro’ left me feeling let down and cheated

    Mia Hoyos in 'The Curse of El Charro'
    Mia Hoyos in ‘The Curse of El Charro’

    When I read about The Roost, I thought I would end up liking it to some degree, but all it led to was the feeling of being let down and cheated. The opposite happened after I watched Rich Ragsdale’s The Curse of El Charro. I expected complete idiocy, and wound up watching a mildly decent slasher.

    The only trouble is, that only occurred in the final 15 minutes of a 90 minute film!

    The story centers on El Charro (Andrew Bryniarski), a man scorned by the one he loved generations ago. He fell in love with a woman, but basically she blew him off. So, like any jealous lover, he turned around and slaughtered her entire family. Nice guy. The loving towsfolk took matters in their own hands, “Elm Street” style, and killed El Charro themselves. But, before he died, he cursed his would-be lover’s entire bloodline.

    Enter Maria (Mia Hoyos), a direct descendent of said bloodline. Already borderline insane due to her sister’s sudden suicide, she decides to take a long weekend with her three pals in beautiful Arizona. No, not at Lake Havasu City like most spring breakers… they decide to go to some small desert hole-in-the-wall town, presumably to beat the crowds and the exorbitant hotel prices!

    The first hour of this film seems to take an eternity to go by, as chances of developing these characters go by the wayside. Instead, we suffer through a steady diet of obscure flashbacks, transparent college kids, terrible dialogue, and even poorer delivery. However, once El Charro makes his grand entrance, this tortoise of a film turns into a hare of a slasher.

    Andrew Bryniarski is the revenge-seeking killer in 'The Curse of El Charro'
    Andrew Bryniarski is the revenge-seeking killer in ‘The Curse of El Charro’

    When our four (never would be friends in real life) girls return to their spring break sanctuary with their boys for the night, things really begin to pick up. They all split off into pairs and do their own thing… which, being a slasher, I’m sure you can figure out exactly what that is. One by one, El Charro offs these punks in gruesome fashion. We are talking serious amounts of expendable meat here, folks.

    Personally, I was rooting for El Charro not only because I’m sadistic and I always root for the villain… but for the simple fact that I did not like any of the characters. Not even the proverbial “Final Girl” couldn’t get me interested in her well-being. Nope, as El Charro hacked, slashed, sliced and diced his way through these annoying coeds, I cheered for more. My only complaint with El Charro is I wish he had a little more variety to his killings. Bryniarski, who played Leatherface in the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, seems to be stuck on the routine throat slashing and decapitations. Ho-hum gore if you ask me.

    The only other great thing The Curse of El Charro brings to the table is a cameo by Motörhead frontman, Lemmy! While his role as a priest was fleeting, it did elicit a jolt of excitement midway through that first hour.

    Everything else was barely passable for a decent horror film. The acting was very poor all around, and that is not even a product of terrible writing… although the writing was terrible indeed. The story lacked any sort of forward motion whatsoever. Basically we meet these young women… a lot of nothing happens… and an hour or so later, they start to die. Writer Ryan Johnson was definitely not trying to reinvent the wheel here, that’s for sure.

    And, while Ragsdale succeeded in creating some great photography and lighting early on (say, the first five minutes), his continual usage of smash cuts, annoying music, and lousy dream sequences detracted from the rest of the movie. He does show some promise, however, as his short film, Into Something Rich and Strange, was actually quite entertaining. Perhaps he should stick to short films…

    My two-skull rating here is very generous, just like that of The Roost. What can I say, I have been in a giving mood lately!

    …And I apologize for that absurd The Tortoise and the Hare reference. I’ll do better next time.

    Flick Figures: 9 dead bodies; female full-frontal nudity; gratuitous shower scene; car hood antics; throats slashed; multiple counts of various other hacks and slashes; machete-fu; bird-poking; hands roll; heads roll; and lots of twenty-something girls with extremely healthy lungs.

  • ‘Fizzy Days’ make mopeds cool in 1975 England

    ‘Fizzy Days’ make mopeds cool in 1975 England

    Kris Scholes (right) and Scott Whitley dream of getting a moped in Fizzy Days.
    Kris Scholes (right) and Scott Whitley dream of getting a moped in Fizzy Days.

    In the last few years I’ve been obsessed with the idea of getting myself a Vespa. I don’t exactly know why. It started with motorcycles, then moved into the Vespa. They’re getting pretty popular here in New York City, and since I only drive around locally on a regular basis, a nice little motorbike would do me just fine.

    I haven’t been able to afford one just yet. So in a way, I understood the feeling of the main characters in Mark Millicent’s short film, Fizzy Days. Mind you, it’s not about getting laid for me. My wife probably wouldn’t be too keen on that notion. Plus, I can’t quite see myself plotting a collection of rather lame thefts to support this obsession of mine, either. But I did find myself thoroughly enjoying this 30 minute flick from England.

    Fizzy Days follows a pair of teens in 1975 England, as they plot to collect enough money to buy a moped (a.k.a., “fizzy”). This obsession for the motorbike is fueled by the belief that it will get them into the knickers of the local lady folk. Eddy (Kris Scholes) puts his dreams of being a rock star aside and gets a job at the local grocery store, where he skims the goods and sells them himself in hopes of getting cash. But as the summer comes and goes, time is running out, so he plans a heist that will surely get them the moped. Or possibly land them in jail.

    Although the concept of a group of not-so-bright guys trying to pull off a crime is not new, the way Fizzy Days keeps it fresh is the time period in which it takes place, as well as the central obsession of the fizzy. Scholes’ Eddy is a fashion-challenged rock star wanna-be, and while he isn’t exactly stupid, the quality of his crimes is not exactly rocket science. I especially love how the character repeatedly steals goods from the store instead of opting to snatch the more helpful cash. But the idea is to not get noticed, so there’s a logic that makes it entertaining.

    The performances are all terrific, with only one exception coming very briefly towards the end, but even that isn’t enough to cause a problem. Los Angeles-based writer/director Mark Millicent creates characters and a world that are believable and relatable. There’s some flash to the style, with clever cuts and angles, all of which are pleasant and not distracting.

  • ‘Gojira: Deluxe Collector’s Edition’ is a beautiful DVD set from Classic Media

    ‘Gojira: Deluxe Collector’s Edition’ is a beautiful DVD set from Classic Media

    Godzilla terrorizes Japan in 'Gojira'
    Godzilla terrorizes Japan in ‘Gojira’

    Much of my childhood was spent watching Godzilla movies on channel 9 here in New York. We’re talking the early films from the 1960s and 1970s, including that goofy one where Godzilla has a son. I loved those movies. This weekend I sat down to watch the film that started it all, Gojira, the unedited Japanese film that launched that giant lizard upon the masses.

    I have seen the Americanized version called Godzilla, King of the Monsters, but the original Japanese film was something I’d never experienced. But Toho released that original film on DVD today, on a two-disc set that also includes the re-edited American version. The film looks beautiful, and is really far more a parable about nuclear proliferation than a monster film.

    Akira Takarada (center) and Akihiko Hirata (left) work to find a way to defeat Godzilla in 'Gojira'
    Akira Takarada (center) and Akihiko Hirata (left) work to find a way to defeat Godzilla in ‘Gojira’

    There are important things to note about Gojira to really understand it. First is that it was made only nine years after the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The country was forever changed as a result of this, and the film was a response and warning about the continued nuclear bomb testing and growing arms race. Part of the film was also inspired by The Lucky Dragon, a Japanese fishing boat whose crew died as a result of straying too close to nuclear tests on the Marshall Islands in 1954. As a result, Gojira is far more than just a monster movie. It was a commentary on nuclear weapons and the obsession with their production. Much of this was lost over the years, not just in the follow-up films, but most especially in the re-edited American version.

    In this original film, an attack on several fishing boats signals the arrival of “Gojira”, named for a legend from the local Odo Island, where the creature is believed to have come ashore. When scientists visit the island to discover if the rumors are true, they not only discover footprints, they see the creature itself. Soon, Gojira strikes Tokyo, stomping on people and destroying the city, leaving radiation in its wake to kill hundreds more. The government searches desperately for a way to destroy the beast. The answer comes in an unlikely place — a lone, independent scientist doing research has discovered a weapon that destroys all oxygen around it. But the scientist who created it believes it to be even more deadly than a nuclear bomb and refuses to allow it to be used, then replicated, generating another arms race.

    Godzilla makes his first appearance in 'Gojira'
    Godzilla makes his first appearance in ‘Gojira’

    The commentary against nuclear weapons is not subtle. This film is a direct attack on the creation and use of the bombs. In fact, Godzilla himself is basically a nuclear weapon in Gojira. He lays waste to cities and poisons everyone with radiation. The visuals during the attack clearly harken back to the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after World War II. Although the story moves at a slow pace and its pretty heavy handed, it’s impossible to ignore the emotion. This film was made only a few years after the devastation post-World War II, and understanding that brings a rawness to Gojira.

    Much of this commentary is all but gone in Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Re-edited dramatically by its American distributors, Raymond Burr was added in as the American voice talking about his experience witnessing Godzilla’s attack on Japan. Many of the main story points are the same, such as the oxygen weapon, but the smaller character moments and the anti-nuclear weapons messages are basically gone. This is still an entertaining, and nearly 20-minutes shorter version, but the heart that made Gojira so powerful is absent.

    The image quality on both films is beautiful. Sharp contrast and clean images. The two behind-the-scenes featurettes are a little dry, making them hard to enjoy, but include some nice nuggets of information about Gojira. The audio commentaries are very interesting and include a surprising about of details which were both insightful and entertaining. A 12-page booklet is also included with some nice information about the films that help put them in their proper historical perspectives.