Review - Epic Movie
MOCK ZUCKER BLUES
A review of the unfortunate parody ‘Epic Movie’
By Robert Newton
EPIC MOVIE
Starring Kal Penn, Crispin Glover and Darrell Hammond; Written and directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer; 86 minutes; Rated PG-13 [for crude and sexual humor, language and some comic violence]
What a world. They lock up Jack Kevorkian after helping a few terminal patients humanely shuffle off this mortal coil, and guys like Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are free to torture movie audiences time and again with painful parodic pap like the original Scary Movie, Date Movie, and now, this travesty of a so-called comedy. Futilely attempting to spoof popular movies like Superman Returns, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Pirates of the Caribbean, the dorky duo seem to have absolutely no idea as to what parody is all about, and their total cluelessness is actually quite amazing.
Good comedy is like good drama, in that [...]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - Blood & Chocolate
BLOOD & CHOCOLATE [PG-13]
It is a fairly common storyline — boy meets girl, girl refuses boy, boy persists until he finds out girl is a pureblood werewolf. This tepid, Romanian-shot, sort-of horror story is about 19-year-old sweet thing Vivian (Agnes Bruckner), who is pursued by starving artist/lycophile Aiden (Hugh Dancy), who is unaware that Vivian is a werewolf. She and the “den” are fully protected by their master, Gabriel (Olivier Martinez), who forces humans who have dishonored any member of their pack on a life-and-death chase through the woods. Working from Annette Curtis Klause’s young adult novel, usually skilled German director Katja von Garnier takes a standard story and makes it even more standard. Lazily filling her world with a too-attractive cast and an obvious rock score, von Garnier seems lost as to where she wants it to go, or even what genre the film is (it only works occasionally [...]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - Catch And Release
CATCH AND RELEASE [PG-13]
Leave it to button-cute Jennifer Garner to make a story about death appealing. The versatile former “Alias” star plays Gray, a young woman mourning the death of her fiancé when she connects with Fritz (Timothy Olyphant), one of his best friends. Further entanglements come when another friend, Dennis (Sam Jaeger) falls for her, and when Maureen (Juliette Lewis), a self-styled holistic massage therapist, arrives with a little boy in tow, who may or may not be the dead fiancé’s son. In her directorial debut, Erin Brockovich and In Her Shoes writer Susannah Grant does a fairly good job making it all play well, even if it all feels a little too pre-fab and uneven in tone. Kevin Smith is funny, even if his character’s suicide attempt is not very believable, but hey — it kept him busy long enough to stave off a Clerks III. The soundtrack [...]
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - Notes On A Scandal
NOTES ON A SCANDAL [R]
Two of England’s best — Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett — flaunt it in Stage Beauty director Richard Eyre’s titillating psychodrama, and it is a pretty dazzling display of skill. Blanchett (Babel) plays a schoolteacher who gets sexually involved with an underage student, and Oscar winner Dench (Pride & Prejudice) is the matronly veteran who finds her out and blackmails her into being friends. While Philip Glass’s score is monotonous and excessive — but when is a Philip Glass score not — the two principals nonetheless play an exquisite cat-and-mouse game that is hard to predict. This Single White Spinster is like To Die For without the body count, and while it may have profited from a little more dark humor and backstory on Dench’s lovable stalker, it is still a joy to watch these two Oscar-nominated actors do their dramatic dance for us. –Robert Newton
Original post by Robert Newton
Review - SciFi.com’s Drive-In (Web)
THE SCIFI.COM DRIVE-IN [NR]
Sometimes, nothing is better than something, as SciFi.com has proven with their slapdash collection of public domain movies at www.SciFi.com/DriveIn. The original sci-fi movie — 1902’s Voyage To The Moon by Georges Méliès — is presented without English title cards, and instead comes with an awkward narration…in French. Fritz Lang’s film school staple, Metropolis (1927), is also a fright to look at, and even the most hypercritical fans of it will prefer the 1984 version with the Giorgio Moroder score (rent the amazing Kino restoration instead). The website interface is pretty nifty, but the content seems to be a cheap afterthought. Delivering the channel’s content with this broadband concept would be nice, not that anyone really wants to watch Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy in any format. –Robert Newton
Original post by Robert Newton
Our Picks For The 2007 Academy Awards
WORCESTER MOVIES WEEKLY’S
OFFICIAL 2007 OSCAR PICKS
[our picks are in red]
BEST ACTOR
? Leonardo DiCaprio - Blood Diamond
? Ryan Gosling - Half Nelson
? Peter O’Toole - Venus
? Will Smith - The Pursuit Of Happyness
? Forest Whitaker - The Last King Of Scotland
BEST ACTRESS
? Penélope Cruz - Volver
? Judi Dench - Notes On A Scandal
? Helen Mirren - The Queen
? Meryl Streep - The Devil Wears Prada
? Kate Winslet - Little Children
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
? Alan Arkin - Little Miss Sunshine
? Jackie Earle Haley - Little Children
? Djimon Hounsou - Blood Diamond
? Eddie Murphy - Dreamgirls
? Mark Wahlberg - The Departed
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
? Adriana Barraza - Babel
? Cate Blanchett - Notes On A Scandal
? Abigail Breslin - Little Miss Sunshine
? Jennifer Hudson - Dreamgirls
? Rinko Kikuchi - Babel
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
? Cars
? Happy Feet
? Monster House
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
? [...]
Original post by Robert Newton
New On DVD - Catch A Fire, The Motel, Lucky Louie, Lies & Alibis
CATCH A FIRE [PG-13]
It is difficult to view any politically charged film today — no matter where and when it takes place — without grafting a modern American political slant onto it, and The Quiet American director Philip Noyce’s latest is no exception. With its themes of intolerance, government-sanctioned fear mongering and terrorism, it is quite easy to look at America’s Iraqi quagmire and see the parallels that Noyce is trying to make to it. The mostly-true story starts in Apartheid-era South Africa, 1980, with family man Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke) wrongfully pegged as a suspect in the bombing of a prominent local coal processing plant. When he is let go, his sense of justice leads him to unite with a group of freedom fighters set liberating the mostly-black South Africa from its out-of-touch white Dutch puppet masters. As auspicious as Luke’s debut in Denzel Washington’s Antwone Fisher may have [...]
Original post by Robert Newton
ATHF attacks Boston!
“It’s a hoax — and it’s not funny,” Gov. Deval Patrick said.
Actually, I beg to differ, guvna.
You’ll have to work real hard to get anything more humorous to happen on your watch. Good luck with that.
And thanks for keeping me safe from mooninites!
Original post by Brendan