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Director: Gary Gray

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Gerard Butler, Colm Meany

The worst complaints I have about Law Abiding citizen are not the ridiculous plot or the tired, overdone evil genius character. The worst part of this project is that it has made alot of money and will encourage more crap to shoot out of Hollywood’s crap machine. Director Gary Gray has put out other weak action efforts like The Negotiator and The Italian Job remake where he wasted so much great talent that he should have been arrested for impersonating a filmmaker. Gerard Butler brings his considerable presence to the project and Foxx is solid enough.

Gerard Butler is Clyde Shelton, an ingenius inventor whose idyllic family-filled life is shattered when a couple of criminal misfits force their way into his home apparently for the main intention of killing everyone there and maybe grabbing a bit of jewellry. When they are caught, prosecutor nick Rice, played by Jamie Foxx, makes a plea bargain that allows the worst of the two criminals to be released in a mere ten years. It appears that Mr Shelton is a resourceful and patient man. He uses those then years to plan elaborate revenge on everyone he sees as being involved in this miscarriage of justice.

This film has found a following of non-discriminating viewers who will doubtlessly defend its glaring flaws with the “it’s only a movie” defense. It is only a movie. It is a bad movie that plays like Death Wish crossed with Saw. It’s unoriginal, over the top result is suitable viewing for fanas of the genre, but likely to be somewhere between nap-worthy and reactionary junk for others.

Director: George Clooney

Starring: George Clooney, Rene Zellweger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Pryce, Stephen Root, Keith Loneker

Is George Clooney going through some kind of middle-aged nostalgia craze? Like The Good German, Leatherheads is a semi-successful attempt to re-capture the charm of a movie-making era long past. This time out, Clooney takes a shot at old-fashioned romantic comedies with one set at the dawn of the modern age of pro football, in 1925. There is plenty of spiffy dialog that loses a little in it’s overly-quick, too polished delivery, and usually results in a smile rather than a laugh. Clooney is, well exactly as Clooney is in most of his films. He is glib and charming and always seems to have a half smile on his face. Rene Zellweger overacts, as she often does and her unnaturally thin frame is really starting to look disturbingly mismatched with her round face. Her friends and family really need to dispatch an ambulance and rush her to the nearest White Castle for a bag of burgers. The story is mediocre formula work, that seems rushed and doesn’t always make sense, but isn’t too bad. Clooney’s direction does a commendable job of creating an idealized, stereotypical 1920s ‘aw shucks’ kind of setting, and is aided by Randy Newman‘s jazzy score. However the pace here is a trifle too fast and the characters don‘t always work, leaving me with the final impression that something was missing.

George Clooney is Dodge Connelly, an aging athlete, as well as some kind of manager/investor, who seems broke at one point, but somehow sells a watch or something and suddenly seems to have enough cash to run a team in the struggling young sport of pro football. His plan for success in this venture hinges on recruiting a college star, war hero named Carter ‘Bullet” Rutherford (John Krasinski), who is represented by a cliched snake of an agent, CC Frazier (Jonathan Pryce). Swishing into the picture, as well is an all too cocky, smirking female reporter named Lexie Littleton (Rene Zellweger) who is out to investigate Carter’s war hero claim. Oh yeah, Dodge also has some kind of issue with the growing number of rules in his evolving game. Leatherheads also offers up some trying-to-be-zany football scenes, but it’s been done before and done better.

Imagine Bull Durham set in the 1920s with a less-effective story revolving around football instead of baseball, and you have the closest comparison I can make for Leatherheads. Its interesting, but not interesting enough and tries to be funny, but isn’t funny enough. In the end, this seems like a film that I should like more than I did, but I don’t so I won’t be likely to see it again and I’m already forgetting it faster than Bullet’s legs and Dodge’s dialog.

Director: Craig Gillespie

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner,

Long time TV commercial director, Craig Gillespie (Mr. Woodcock) took his first stab at directing a big screen feature with this small budget, Oscar-nominated screenplay by Nancy Oliver. The story is quirky, amusing and touching and a standout performance by Ryan Gosling really helped it to work. The movie progresses slowly and carefully, and is just a little bit dark, but never oppressing.

Ryan Gosling is Lars Lindstrom, a socially hopeless and emotionally-challenged small town man, who lives a quiet life that mostly consists of avoiding contact with other people, until he meets someone. I know what you’re thinking. That sounds like pretty standard movie stuff, so far and it would be if his new girlfriend didn’t arrive carefully packaged in a box. You see Lars new dream girl is actually a highly sophisticated doll – the kind with three life-like openings. Yup, Lars has fallen in love with a sex doll. When a doctor tells his brother and sister-in-law that the best way to handle this is to go along with it, the whole town pitches in and does the same. This may sound like a romantic version of Weekend at Bernie’s, but its not. The story is really about the way family and community combine to take care of their own.

Lars and The Real Girl is one of those off-beat, head-scratching movies that some will love, some will hate and no one will completely understand. Ok, ok, some will understand, but it is a strange one that will appeal to those who like to step off the Hollywood highway to mainstream success. This one is different. There is humor, but its not a comedy. It’s disturbing at times, but not repulsive or frightening, and there is no denying that it is interesting.

Director: Ang Lee

Starring: Tony Leung Chui Wai, Wei Tang, Joan Chen, Lee-Hom Wang,

Lust, Caution is a darkly, beautiful Ang Lee period piece set in China during the Japanese WWII occupation. The plodding story and the sub-titles can make it difficult to get into, and to follow at first, but there are wonderful performances and a good story that will eventually draw in most viewers.

Lust, Caution is about a young Chinese woman, Wong Chia Chi, who joins with a group of students to go undercover to bring down a powerful Japanese collaborator named Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chui Wai), whose socialite wife she befriends. This is only the beginning as she is pulled deeper and deeper into the deception. This is a Taiwanese film, and the unedited version has sex scenes that are longer and more graphic than we are used to with North American features, so you probably don’t want to sit down and watch it with your parents, in-laws, grandmother, etc., unless your family dynamic is fundamentally different from mine.

Lust, Caution is an enjoyable, and well-made, foreign feature that should please patient viewers who are comfortable with sub-titled features. It is reminiscent of a similar Dutch feature, Zwartboek (Black Book).

Director:

Starring: Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Michael Pena, Andrew Garfield, Derek Luke, Peter Berg

Take your seats everyone. We are ready to begin the lecture. Yes, director Robert Redford is really that obvious with this Matthew Carnahan screenplay. The film features great delivery from a very strong cast, but the characters are only vehicles to deliver the message that the media and the public share the guilt with American leaders(who are said to be beyond hope) for the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan. Everything in this film is only to drive home this message with the all the subtlety of Paris Hilton’s wardrobe. And, just in case the little speeches didn’t hit you over the head, hard enough, some emotional manipulation is thrown in too.

Lions For Lambs revolves around three interconnected stories, which is very trendy these days. The first story has Tom Cruise as a Republican senator with a bold new offensive plan for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Does the US have troops in Afghanistan? I thought other countries were left to handle the fight there. I thought the US was busy fighting for for the freedom of every barrel of oil in Iraq, and rolling armored vehicles through Tehran to assure the rights of large corporations to make obscene profits from US foreign policy. Sorry, I digress. Anyway, Senator Cruise wants to sell his plan to the public and brings in reporter, Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) to receive the exclusive. The offensive is already underway and we see it through the eyes of two soldiers, who left University to join the Armed Forces, and are probably soon wishing they hadn’t. The third story features Robert Redford as a political science professor trying to motivate a gifted student. In doing so, he relates a story about two gifted former students, who left school to join the war. Yes, it is our same two soldiers in Afghanistan. Wow, there was a clever and unexpected tie in!

This current Hollywood infatuation with self-important multi-story screenplays started with Crash (don’t me wrong, though, I liked Crash), and has continued through Babel, Bobby and several others that don’t leap to mind, right now. This one has some fine performances, but the story is tired, the execution is manipulative and the message is late.

The Last Legion (2007) **
Director: Doug Lefler

Starring: Colin Firth, Ben Kingsley, Aishwarya Rai, Thomas Sangster, Peter Mullan, Kevin McKidd,

I hate to think that this is the best role that Ben Kingsley is being offered these days. This rather disappointing effort reminded me of Eragon as another fantasy film that has translated poorly from its literary roots because of a poor script. While better than Eragon, which was a complete wreck of a movie, this one teeters between poor and mediocre. It features pretty good fight scenes, though some will be disappointed by the complete absence of gore, but its story is a muddled mix of Arthurian legend and Roman history. The characters are wooden and the dialog is stale and unimaginative. There is an out-of-place add-on romantic subplot and the acting, even from the experienced names, ranges from poor to average.

Young Thomas Sangster plays Romulus Augustus Caesar, the young heir to the throne of the Roman Empire, who soon finds himself on the run with a handful of supporters, when his empire is snatched by an ugly and evil army of Goths. His surviving guard is led by Aurelius (Colin Firth), who is joined by the boy’s teacher, a mysterious traveler named Ambrosinus (Kingsley) and a curious warrior played by Aishwarya Rai, a well-known Asian star in what appears to be her first North American film appearance as the best chick with a blade since Kill Bill.

There are undiscriminating fans of this genre that will enjoy this film. They go in with few expectations of story or original well-constructed characters. Many of them will be disappointed in the lack of effects and low budget production values and will not be won over. As for the rest of us, this is just another release hoping to cash in on new fantasy fans created by the Lord of the Rings Trilogy that will be on video before you know it and forgotten soon after.

Starring: Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson,
Simon McBurney, David Oleyowo

Director: Kevin MacDonald

This is a compelling story inspired by true events. Forest Whitaker gives a powerhouse, Oscar-express performance as Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin. The events unfold through the eyes of his personal physician, a Scot named Nicholas Garrigan. This is an enjoyable drama that still has an edge to it, with well-developed characters and strong performances that would have benefited from a faster and deeper story.

Set in the 1970’s, this feature tells the story of Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, played by James McAvoy. Garrigan is a recent Scottish medical graduate who feels the need for adventure, and in a random globe-spinning scene, he chooses to travel to Uganda to work. Once there, he finds himself encountering the new Ugandan President, Idi Amin. His relationship with this erratic despot, whose behaviour becomes more and more dangerous, is what drives the plot forward, but be warned, there are some very disturbing scenes here, but despite these scenes, which almost seem like an after thought, the story is a little bland and perhaps better editing or direction could have given it more impact.

This is a good choice for fans of historical drama and for those who enjoy quality acting performances of all types. Action fans may still enjoy this, but it won’t make their year’s best lists.

Director: Robert Shaye

Starring: Chris O’Neil, Rhiannon Leigh Wryn, Joely Richardson, Timothy Hutton, Rainn Wilson, Kathryn Hahn, Michael Clarke Duncan

The Last Mimzy is a slow moving, overly complex attempt at an E.T. style family drama that somehow ended up with a PG rating. The acting is fine, with the two young leads doing a good job, but the story unfolds slowly and never manages to generate enough tension or humour (there is really no humor that I recall) to hold the viewer’s attention as it does so. There is nothing to draw this effort out of the crowd of films striving for the family film buck

Noah and Emma Wilder are a young brother and sister (Neil and Wryn) who find a mysterious box during a family beach outing. Items in the box soon show themselves to have (and give) abilities to the youngsters, as their parents (Richardson and Hutton) gradually grow concerned. They are not alone in taking note of these changes. Noah’s science teacher, (Wilson) along with his Tibetan Buddhist fiancée (Hahn) get involved, as well as government forces led by Nathaniel Broadman (Clarke). As you may have guessed, having this many characters any real character development and focusing on fewer characters with better dialogue would have improved this film.

If you took Phenomenon and crossed it with E.T., that would give you some idea what to expect here, but without a tighter script it is not worth renting unless one of your kids is holding the box and looking at you like the waterworks are about to start. This movie is so mediocre that I had to struggle to remember it long enough to write a review.

Director: John Avildsen

Starring: Morgan Freeman, Beverly Todd, Robert Guillaume, Alan North, Lynne Thigpen, Michael Beach, Karen Malina White, Jermaine ‘Huggy’ Hopkins

Rocky and Karate Kid director, John Avildsen takes his stand-up-and-cheer style from the ring and the dojo to the halls of New Jersey’s Eastside High School in this true story of the mercurial, and controversial, principal, Joe Clark. Morgan Freeman shines and has a strong supporting cast in this loud and manipulative, but nonetheless effective entry into the educator-hero genre. The story strains credibility and often goes over the top, but the fast pace and great Freeman performance allow this to still be an entertaining film.

Freeman’s Joe Clark is recruited by Superintendent, Frank Napier (Robert Guillaume) for the seemingly impossible task of turning around the violent and out of control Eastside High School School and somehow motivating the staff and students to improve their results on the State Literacy Exam, or else see the school fall under state control. Clark uses a bullhorn, a baseball bat and a confrontational style with his staff and combines it with a tough, nurturing relationship with his students to try to bring this about, while battling alienated staff and angry parents, led by Ms. Levias (Lynne Thigpen) to try to bring about the desired changes.

Sure, this film is far-fetched and overblown and even has a couple scenes that approach unintentional humor, but it has enough strengths to compensate and make it worthwhile viewing for those who enjoy the true story school genre that Hollywood loves so much. Morgan Freeman is always a pleasure to watch and he is very strong here. So get ready to stand up and cheer!

Director: Robert Luketic

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair, Matthew Davis, Victor Garber, Jennifer Coolidge, Ali Larter

Legally Blonde is a well-written, and amusing light comedy that, like its main character, is consistently under-estimated. Reese Witherspoon’s performance is excellent and makes the difference in what could have been a mediocre film. The story is a simple formula, but has enough jokes to keep it going. It’s upbeat mood and a charming main character, help overcome a silly climax to make this a quality comedy.

The interminably cute Reese Witherspoon glows as Elle Woods, a good-hearted, but materially, and pop culturally obsessed sorority girl, who decides to forsake her fashion design undergrad degree to enter Harvard Law School to win back her blue blood, ex-beau, Warner (Matthew Davis). Getting in is a challenge, but is nothing compared to the rude treatment she receives from those who just can’t get past her mannequin like appearance and fashion model mindset. Her fluff girl image is a joke to most, so she, and her little Chihuahua, Bruiser, have a lot to overcome.

This is an upbeat comedy that is pulled off by some decent writing and a standout performance by Witherspoon. The success of this film lifted her star status to a new level and allowed her more power in her choices. Look for a cross between My Cousin Vinnie and The Devil Wears Prada and you will have some idea of what to expect.