Movie Review: Screaming Masterpiece

Movie Review: Screaming Masterpiece (Blogcritics.org)
Written by Duke De Mondo
Published February 28, 2007

With Regards The Setting Of Scenes Prior To The Reviewing Of Screaming Masterpiece
Says a friend of mine to the local pharmacist of an evening a couple years back; "Tell me this, now… Can you perchance supply to me this fine noontide a toxin might feasibly instill within these cells, bones, nerve-endings and such, a sensation akin to that which Mother Mary must've felt when her belly got to swelling with the vapors of The Lord?"

The fellow chewed the lips a time, clucked the tongue, and then; "I have exactly the article for that."

From inside the old suit-jacket he had on, itself emblazoned with any number of Sufjan Stevens pins and Daniel Johnston badges, he produced a compact disc upon which was scrawled, in blue marker, the words Sigur Rós - Reykjavik 2001.

"What's this" asks the punter. "OxyContin?"

"None o' that" quoth the merchant, "None of that at all. What it is, is the music of the glaciers, the sound of the Northern Lights glistening on the waters of Lake Langisjór, the symphonies of the Njarðvík night, the..."

"This is Icelandic music you're givin' me?" the lad interrupts, jerking the head back a touch, cocking an eyebrow. "The felchin' Christ do I want with this?"

"What don't you want with it?" rebuts the merchant. "Iceland, boyo. It's where it's at."

"Since when?"

"Since… like, fuckin', ever. The vocals like they're comin' at you from across the river of Hades, the samples, the beats, the…"

"Beats?" the punter scoffs. "I care less for them than a willy-john cares for the sheen o' the Marble Arch. Samples? I couldn't give a fisted arse I never hear another in all my days."

"Suit yourself, son" the seller shrugs, turning away. "But I tell you this; I put that on for no more than ten minutes and I swear on Noah's ankles it was a month afore I could see again."

The lad bites his bottom lip, his eyes all twitching with contemplation. "Alright" he says eventually. "Alright then, give me the damn disc, and let me see if it's all that, right enough."

He took the disc.

No one saw or heard tell of him until early last December, when he showed up on the banks of the River Bann, bruised of body and famished of stomach and bollock-naked save for a length of sea-otter hide he'd wrapped about his skull like a turban.

Whilst altogether right amusing and beguiling in its own right, this particular anecdote serves also to illustrate here and now the shift occurred in the world of the musicologically minded sometime around 2002, the fourth record by the aforementioned Sigur Rós, got to capturing the imagination of anyone who'd ever spent half an hour on Pitchfork Media pretending to have heard Devendra Banhart years before they did.

What went ahead and revealed to the likes of our giddy-pill-peddler there and his fierce skeptical client, was that something right wicked exciting was going on Iceland with regards the composition of melody and the kicking of notes about a stave.

For sure, everyone with half a drum in the ears knew about Bjork, and knew that her music was as beautiful and complex and evocative as anything anyone had ever even considered going about creating, and that it was as the sighing of the angels upon the frost-stung windows of heaven, or as the twitching of a sparrow's wings 'pon a dew-kissed hedgerow of a winter's morn, or as the swelling of a neon cityscape out the belly of Arcadia. Scarcely a man, woman or child walked the Earth in ignorance of these facts, but what ( ) suggested was that other individuals hidden away in the basements of Selfoss or wandering lonesome about the shores of Keflavík were creating music of a similarly compelling, fascinating, otherworldly nature, which, if not quite as astounding as Bjork's, was at least fit to sit upon the same shelf.

Left and right and hither and thither, folks with immense cravings for sounds not unlike those of violins melting in the guts of the gods, or for melodies akin to the solemn lamentations of dying fauns choking on the fog, there and then they tuned the lugs to Iceland, and lo!, what wonders they found.

These wonders, it turns out, have since been gathered together and stacked arse-to-jowl 'tween the opening and closing of Ari Alexander Ergis Magnússon's 2005 documentary Screaming Masterpiece, or Gargandi Snilld, being an expansive, wide-reaching overview of the contemporary Icelandic music scene, released on DVD by Milan Records on the 6th of March 2007.

With Regards The Cinematic Worth Of Screaming Masterpiece

Screaming Masterpiece opens with a series of shots detailing the kinds of untouched, crystalline expanses I see back my eyes every time I talk to my good friend Maja about her homeland, being the land of Iceland, conveniently enough.

Great towering glaciers and frozen lakes and azure skylines hung precariously in the heavens like a cracked windscreen dangling 'tween the metal frame on God's own Volvo.

Vapors and mists hovering about the ice like opium smoke.

Gurgling, discombobulating wounds on the surface of the earth.

These opening images, they invite a number of loose associations and stereotypes to come jiggering and jiving up front the lobes; desolation, isolation, mythology, the footprints of the Vikings, tiny communities huddled about Lutheran church halls.

In-between the talking heads and the shredded violas and the incredible music and the drunken romping peppering Screaming Masterpiece's hour and a half run-time, we return time and again to those black beaches and silver pastures, mountain vistas and wetland sprawls, the resultant impression being that the creative genius on display every direction is as integral to the country as its topography or its history, and that each element feeds off the other.

Rather than douse the celluloid with a wild amount of analysis or critique or sociology or what have you, however, Magnússon, a noted painter outside of his film work, approaches his subject in much the same fashion as a 15th century artist might have gone about crafting a fresco mural depicting maybe the destruction of Gomorrah, or the life of King David. He incorporates most everyone anyone might deem half-ways relevant, and works hard on establishing a mood (one of self-sustaining community and artistic freedom and cultural isolation), but Screaming Masterpiece serves better as a gorgeous-looking (and sounding) primer to further examination than as an exhaustive, comprehensive stand-alone investigation.

It's more concerned with evoking the feel of the music, the feel of the country, than going into anything in any real depth.

That said, it does at least attempt to answer, to varying degrees of success, a handful of core questions the lay-folk might well have rattling about the skulls soon as anyone might mention that Iceland is near to bowing with the weight of the musical gorgeousity erupting from therein.

It wants to tell us Who The Hell These People Are.

It wants to let us hear What The Hell These People Sound Like.

It wants to at least suggest a couple reasons for Why The Hell Those Sounds Sound As They Do.

For to settle the first concern, being Who The Hell These Folk Are, Anyroad, Screaming Masterpiece gathers about its jodhpurs a pleasingly diverse bunch of artistes and ensembles and assorted scenesters, some of whom share Sigur Rós' fondness for the ethereal, cerulean soundscapes, others who prefer to grasp at the coat-tails of less obviously "Icelandic" inspirations, be they Public Enemy or Nirvana or Sham 69 or whoever.

With regards What The Hell They Might Sound Like, the answer is that they sound like you would expect a bunch of folks who share nowt but a postcode in common to sound like; fairly different from each other.

The likes of Slowblow and Bang Gang, for example, sound like the waves lipping and lapping at the beaches, their semi-orchestral music by turns tranquil and tumultuous, raging and serene, whilst Ghostigital, by way of contrast, bring to mind some sort of amalgamation of The Fall and Atari Teenage Riot, all sneering yelps and stuttering, speed-fried rhythms. The Apparat Organ Quartet, meanwhile, busy themselves with fashioning pump-organ electronica, as crazed a melding as testicles and thistles, or religion and politics, and yet oh so very gorgeous to the hearing-holes. Then there are folks like acoustic nomad Mugison, a fella who rehearses his folk-pop ditties in an old church somewhere in Súdavik, an area on the west coast of the country all but abandoned since an avalanche in 1995.

Hearing this music, one almost gets to mouthing a further question, being Why The Hell Are The Icelandic All So Amazing When It Comes To The Tunes And What Have You, but it soon becomes apparent that, actually, they're not. Just in case you might doubt such a pronouncement, Screaming Masterpiece offers us footage of several fairly fucking diabolical traditional rock band types for to shatter any illusion you might have had about how a man probably can't play a damn chord in any of those 23 counties without giving rise to some hitherto unimaginable symphony of ineffable wonderment.

Now, whilst nobody has ever gotten anywhere worth being by attempting to hold above any group of people, let alone an entire nation, any sort of umbrella fashioned from the threads of The Unifying Traits, it is still fairly evident that the musicians and composers and performers featured herein do share a set of Core Characteristics, even though they may all operate within wildly different musical genres or disciplines, and even though some of them might be shite.

These Core Characteristics, they probably go some way towards slapping an answer 'longside the last of those questions, being, as you'll recall from a wee while back, Why The Hell Do These Sounds Sound As They Do?

The majority of these folks, for instance, obviously harbor a sense of experimentation, of adventurousness. They share a disregard for the rules concerning what might constitute a pop song, or a musical instrument. They also share a sense of community, of self-preservation. Rock bands and hip-hop acts and acoustic jazz-techno outfits play alongside one another, swapping personnel and equipment and audiences when the need arises. It's inspiring as all hell, is what it is, in the same way that the similar situation in, for example, Omaha is inspiring as all hell.

And if that doesn't offer explanation enough for why the sound is so distinctive, then there are plenty other possibilities offered throughout, whether by musicians or historians or cultural commentators or pagan scholars or whoever.

Most likely, the answer lies somewhere in the middle of all the potential reasons one might well conjure out the yap, reasons relating to cultural identity (the reclaiming of such), economic necessity (we had to create these bizarre instruments and fashion music in this manner because we couldn't afford anything else - how different Rock N Roll might've been had The Beatles not been beneficiaries of the welfare state and the advent of hire-purchase…) and a sense of genuine detachment from commercial concerns. As one interviewee has it, the bands become accustomed to the fact that they're probably not gonna get on the radio, that they'll probably play to no more than a handful of people, so why shouldn't they allow themselves the freedom to take their music whatever the hell direction they feel like?

If one were to grab those last couple paragraphs by the neck and riffle about their innards like they were chickens out the olden days, one might well find glowering therein the explanation for The Icelandic Sound.

Then again, maybe Bjork has the right idea, and since she made Medulla and Vespertine, we have no reason to assume she has anything else. What Bjork suggests is that there's no such thing, really, as an Icelandic Sound, that the music is no different to the music being produced anywhere. What is different is the mood of the performances.

The nature of the Icelandic Mood, she poses, grinning of occasion and with the eyes all mischievous and glistening with the fires of creation, that would make for a much more worthwhile discussion.

Bjork also shows up now and again throughout the reams of astounding live footage Magnússon has strung about the run-time. She appears as the 15-year-old frontwoman for Tappi Takaris in footage taken from vintage punk rock doc Rokk í Reykjavik, whilst more recent material has her stood afore a massive crowd in New York, ripping the very particles out the air by way of a couple face-melting performances.

Further performance footage features Sigur Rós in sublime form in New York, Slowblow afire with violin and accordion abandon, Múm spluttering and glitching in incantatory fashion and a group of young fellas by the name of Nilfisk who appear live for the very first time of all ever as guests of the Foo Fighters, of all people.

When the credits have rolled and all's left onscreen is a message about piracy causes bird-flu, what will most likely hover closest to the corner of the brain related to the remembering of things past, is that those performances were fucking incredible.

For this reason alone Screaming Masterpiece would be essential. It's not as comprehensive as a fella might maybe have liked, and is probably best viewed as an introduction to Icelandic Popular Music, rather than as an All You Need To Know type deal, but it does have a staggering performance of All Is Full Of Love, and it does at least name-check the various elements and influences helped create this most astounding of near-Bohemian musical communities, a community thriving on little else but its own sense of adventure and suspicion of convention.

Line it up for a marathon night's viewing alongside Jason Kulbel and Rob Walters' Saddle Creek documentary, James Szalapski's Heartworn Highways and the first couple instalments of Penelope Spheeris' Decline Of Western Civilisation series. That right there is the basis for a truly brain-frying eve of musical wonder, community values, terrifying hair and shockingly underrated genius.

Thanks, folks.

Movie Review: A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

Movie Review: A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (Blogcritics.org)

These days, it seems that everyone has a story to tell; some stories are just more worth telling than others. Dito Montiel's story falls under the latter rubric. Montiel told his story in the 2003 book A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, and three years later he turned that book into a movie. I'm not normally much for the mythology of the self so favored by many neophyte filmmakers, but Montiel's forthrightness and keen sense of observation, coupled with some interesting directorial choices, gives Saints a leg up on the average indie memoir.

Saints tells its spiky coming-of-age story on two temporal tracks. The first dominant thread is set in the early '80s, as young Dito (Shia LaBeouf) navigates the wilds of his Queens neighborhood and finds himself with an increasing yearning to break free and see something beyond what he already knows, much to the consternation of his father Monty (Chazz Palminteri); the second involves the current-day Montiel (Robert Downey Jr.) returning home to convince Monty to seek medical care and maybe attempt to patch up their tattered relationship in the process. It's fairly familiar stuff - true story or not, there's a lot of Mean Streets in this film's DNA, especially in the parts involving Dito's loose cannon friend Antonio (Channing Tatum). The strength of a good story, though, is often more in the telling than the content, and that holds fast for Montiel's tale.

Downey Jr. says at the film's outset, "I want to remember who these people are and what they meant to me - what they mean to me," and it's the second part of that phrase that makes Saints stick. A good deal of "...and we were never the same after that summer" films ascribe utmost importance to the narrow window of time covered in their flashback narratives; Montiel, on the other hand, is smart enough to acknowledge that time marches on and things keep changing even after what would be considered the great formative experience. The present-day segments aren't quite as compelling as the flashback segments, but they do present the idea that coming of age doesn't necessarily make you wiser or better - sometimes it just makes you older. Dito's burnout friend Nerf says about the neighborhood, "Things don't get better around here." Even as Montiel acknowledges that, he also pushes through that the best we can do is struggle to reconcile ourselves with our past; once we've done that, we can then try to force things to become a little bit better.

The past in question provides the meat on the bones of Saints, and it's quite the juicy package. For a first-timer, Montiel's directorial gifts are considerable. Some of his touches seem familiar - a little Spike Lee here with a characters-speaking-to-the-camera interlude, a little French New Wave there with the conscious desyncopation of dialogue and editing. What's important is that he's taken his influences and assembled them into a package that feels fresh by welding everything together with a solid sense of earnestness and street-level realism.

Montiel structures the film as an impressionistic memory piece, all overlapping dialogue and funky jump cuts (i.e. the scene where Dito meets Mike [Martin Compston] on the subway), which is generally an obfuscatory tactic, but Montiel doesn't go that route. Early on, young Dito tells neighborhood girl/eventual girlfriend Laurie (the fetching Melonie Diaz), "I really wanna fuck you," and it's this honesty without concern for glamour or sympathy that allows Montiel to escape the trap of avoidance, thus making his tale all the more compelling.

It also helps that Montiel's packing an incredible cast. LaBeouf proves he's ready to transcend his Disney origins in essaying the young Dito, and he's ably supported by Diaz (the best thing to come out of Raising Victor Vargas) and Tatum, the latter offering a finely conflicted portrait of the kind of mercurial asshole that dominates teen-male social groups, hiding his wounds and insecurities behind braggadacio and physical intimidation. The youthful cast is clearly having a blast with the gloriously juvenile reams of aimless profanity so favored by rebellious teens, as they sell it like it was improvised on the spot.

In the present day, Downey tamps down his natural motormouth mania to turn in a portrayal of a guy who has spent years trying to understand his past without fixing the damage done; in particular, he gets a great scene with Rosario Dawson, who shows up in a vivid cameo as the grown-up Laurie. The center of the film, though, is Palminteri as Monty the patriarch. Rather than the monstrous or ineffectual fathers that float through so many Sundance-approved flicks, Monty is a genial, warm, and affectionate dad who's also willing to play a surrogate for Antonio. His love for his son comes through just as genuine as his fear of losing him does, which makes his bitterness in the modern-day plot all the more caustic.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints eventually hinges on Dito making peace with the legacies left him by both Monty and Antonio - learning how to recognize his saints, if you will. These people still mean something to him, and Montiel wants us to see that so maybe they can mean something to us as well.

Movie review: Glory Road

Movie review: ‘Glory Road' (Metromix.com)

By Michael Wilmington Tribune movie critic

"Glory Road," a stand-up-and-cheer basketball tale taken from real life, is a drama that, almost inevitably, falls short of its subject. But what a subject! This Jerry Bruckheimer-produced movie re-creates one of the great, pivotal games of college basketball: the March 19, 1966, NCAA championship final match between Coach Don Haskins' upstart Miners from relatively tiny Texas Western College and the University of Kentucky Wildcats, a celebrated team boasting future pro stars Louis Dampier and Pat Riley, run by a storied coach, Adolph Rupp, who had already won the NCAA title four times.

It was a thriller-killer game, full of tenacious defense, ferocious jams, deadly outside shooting, great team play and, from first minute to last, a high drama beyond the contest itself.

The 1966 game became legendary because of race. Both teams went into the finals with 27-1 records. But the Miners were an all-black squad (at least for that one night, when because of racist attacks the team had suffered all season, Haskins decided to send out only his black players). The Wildcats were all-white and had been for all the decades of "Baron" Rupp's long reign.With that explosive cultural background--and with a deep cast headed by Josh Lucas as Haskins, Jon Voight as Rupp and Derek Luke as Texas Western's star guard Bobby Joe Hill--"Glory Road" seizes your emotions, fills you with feeling generated as much by the true-life story as the way it has been dramatized.

A quintessential `60s tale, set in the era of Vietnam War protests, civil rights battles and the Beatles, it's about underdogs breaking through and, in a way, about revolution. Lucas plays Haskins as a driven guy from a second-tier arena. (Before getting the job at Texas Western job, he had coached high school girls' basketball, then a career wilderness.) Taking over in dusty El Paso, helped by his assistants, slightly dorky Moe Iba (Evan Jones) and crusty Russ Moore (played by Elvis Presley buddy Red West), Haskins decides to win by exploiting the black talent that racism denies to some of the colleges--including most of the Southern schools--that he has to battle.

The first part of "Glory Road," very entertainingly, shows Haskins recruiting his team--including Hill from Detroit, the enforcer David "Daddy D" Lattin (Schin A.S. Kerr) from Houston, charmer Nevil Shed (Al Shearer) from New York City and Harry Flournoy (Mehcad Brooks) and Orsten Artis (Alphonso McAuley) from Gary--and it's surprising how convincing they all are as players. The bulked-up Lucas comes across pretty well as a hard-nosed coach (if not a very three-dimensional one) and there's a cornball pleasure in seeing the mix of black and white players (including Austin Nichols as defense expert Jerry Armstrong and James Olivard as the huge Louis Baudoin) bond with each other through Motown and slang.

In the latter part of the movie, when Texas Western begins to tear through its schedule, surprising and upsetting team after team, while undergoing racial taunts and jeers on the court and violence and vandalism outside it, "Glory Road" gets its hooks in. If you've seen "Hoosiers," another underdog basketball tale with a less scrupulous factual basis, you know the Cinderella guys structure. And you know the black-and-white sports bonding formula from that previous Bruckheimer football blockbuster, "Remember the Titans." It works again.

"Glory Road" is about how the freewheeling black street players on Texas Western (now the University of Texas at El Paso) outplay the more deliberate, slower white teams, helping change the very conception of the game. But producer Bruckheimer and first-time feature director James Gartner (a commercial specialist) sometimes get too fast, too razzle-dazzle and "showboat" themselves.

They're faking it, in a way; they don't give us enough contrast. Gartner's style is almost too brisk and packed, a post-MTV flash technique that doesn't let you relax into the characters. There are few more exciting games than the NCAA semifinal with Utah, or more significant than that last war with Rupp and Kentucky. But, in non-game moments, the movie often pours it on too hard. Some of the dramatic subplots, such as Haskins' home life with wife Mary (Emily Deschanel) and Willie "Scoops" Cager's health problems, seem raced through or punched too much.

Still, there are lots of good things in "Glory Road"--especially the games, the Motown-heavy period song score ("My Guy," "I Can't Get Next to You") and Voight's and Luke's performances. All the acting has charm and presence. But, though Lucas, Shearer, West and Kerr are also notable here, Voight's Rupp is the one performance that has real depth and surprises. Perhaps that's because, since Rupp isn't being celebrated like the others, the actor is free to be more ambiguous and real.

The movie's great end-title sequence redeems everything. Under the credits, we see and hear the real-life game veterans as they are now--including, movingly, ex-Lakers coach Riley. (The late Bobby Joe Hill is briefly memorialized). For those moments, reality pours in and humanity takes over.

The rest of the film tends to be a series of fast breaks that only score some of the time. But "Glory Road's" credit sequence is a twisting slam-dunk, a high-arching half-court swish shot. It's beautiful; it makes you remember stuff you should never forget.

Movie review: The Abandoned

Movie review: 'The Abandoned' should have been (Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune)

By Erin Meister, Boston Globe

They always say self-discovery can be difficult, but what happens when it becomes a hazard to your health? In "The Abandoned," a dewy, ambitious screamfest from Spanish director Nacho Cerdá, a woman orphaned in Russia and raised by adoptive parents in America is called back to her native soil to claim family land she's never seen.

Although her lawyer tells her she is the only surviving next of kin, Marie Jones (Anastasia Hille) soon discovers there are more than just family secrets hidden in the crevices of her mother's decrepit farmhouse. Trapped in a nightmarish revolving door of flashbacks she finds herself eyeball-to-eyeball with a grisly vision of what seems to be her threatened and dismal future.

With a "Lost"-meets-"The Haunting" plot and a few convoluted thematic twists, "The Abandoned" limps into a nebulous kind of horror netherworld, peppered with painfully long tension-building sequences and unimaginative dialogue. Cerdá has artistic sights but grind-house tastes; atmospheric landscapes and ingenious time-warp sequences are cheapened by unbelievable set design -- the deserted farmhouse is in as much meticulous disrepair as Disney World's Haunted Mansion ride -- and unimpressive special-effects makeup.

While some of the subtler spookiness is mildly spine-tingling, the big shocks are embarrassingly predictable ("Don't open that door!"), and every character suddenly turns into a MacGyver-style survivalist in the face of extreme danger and/or the undead.

Perhaps the worst offense of "The Abandoned," however, is that so little effort is made to make any sense of it all. Simply setting a film in Russia isn't allowance to leave questions unanswered, and doing so makes the film more of an exercise in audience torture than titillation.

"There's no way out of the circle," one of the farmhouse's ghostly residents taunts, but the collective groan from the audience implies that just a way out of the theater will do.

Movie review: Breach

Movie review: Breach (Collegiate Times)

Drew Jackson

The real world of espionage is one very distant from the crisp tuxedos and shaken martinis of James Bond. It's a world of secrets and mistrust, of deception and betrayal. It is this world that "Breach," the new spy film from director Billy Ray ("Shattered Glass") creates with success unmatched in recent years.

"Breach" is based on the unbelievably true story of Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who sold U.S. intelligence secrets to Russia for, I suspect, a sum worthy of high treason. When he's not spying, Hanssen enjoys, unbeknownst to his stepford wife Bonnie, videotaping himself and his wife in the throws of love, then talking about it in chat rooms on the Internet. Oh, and he is also the most openly Catholic man since the Pope. What a piece of work.

After two decades of spying, the FBI has developed a case against Hanssen (played by an inspired Chris Cooper), but want to catch him red-handed. FBI agent Kate Burroughs (a surprisingly bland and purely functional Laura Linney) gives the assignment of spying on Hanssen to newbie Eric O'Neill (Ryan Phillippe).

O'Neill poses as his clerk, responsible for booking his appointments, taking care of his mail and trying his best to keep his lips firmly pressed against the traitorous behind of Hanssen.
The most suspenseful moments of "Breach" don't occur in a dim alley or a smoky room. One happens in a windowless vault-like office, where the bright glow and gentle hum of fluorescent lights detect everything. Here, the scene is more lion and flea than cat and mouse. Hanssen prides himself on lie detection, and O'Neill is trying his best not to screw up in a soundproof cell where no one can hear him scream, let alone a gunshot.

Outside the office, the world is made up of shadows and half-lit faces. Washington D.C. has never looked gloomier, and the foggy streets succeed in reflecting the dark deception of the spy world.
It appears as though O'Neill, or his Catholic background, has gained the trust of Hanssen, as he's invited (expected) to attend Mass with the Hanssens and even return to their house for lunch. O'Neill comes to admire the man, his passion and his character, but never loses sight of his purpose.

Chris Cooper has never been given a leading role, and his interpretation of Hanssen demands an explanation why. He becomes every role he takes, and his mantle should gleam from the four or so Oscars (all for best supporting actor, of course) instead of his solitary one for "Adaptation."
In Cooper, Hanssen's ego and self-righteousness are exposed. We learn to fear him, his knowledge, his anger and above all the discovery of O'Neill. He loves himself and his country (surprisingly), but feels like his genius has been passed over and that his treason is justified as his test of the system.

As with any great performance of a real person, Robert Hanssen and Chris Cooper's portrayal of Hanssen become inseparable.

All Phillippe and Linney can do is try to keep up with Cooper. Phillippe's O'Neill is clumsy and inexperienced, but that's the point. He keeps us always uncomfortable, our sweaty palms gripping the armrest, urging him to get out of Hanssen's office, knowing that sooner or later he will get caught, and Hanssen will use his deadeye shot to put a bullet between O'Neill's youthful eyes.

"Breach's" script sometimes falls victim to the epidemic of awful action film one-liners, but the story always stays afloat and entertaining. It is the realism of "Breach" that makes it so surprising, and quite frankly revolutionary in a genre full of hyperbole and excess. Robert De Niro's "The Good Shepherd," another recent spy movie, received an overly and somewhat undeservedly harsh reception due to the sheer ambition of the work. The movie attempts to tell the entire history of the CIA, but ultimately becomes tedious and monotonous. A lean, clean-cut focus in "Breach" proves to be the ideal route to a viewer's pulse-pounding heart.

Under the wing of a monster is not the most comfortable of places, even seemingly pious monsters and "Breach" is never comfortable. Even though it's widely known that Robert Hanssen is rotting behind bars, a sense of anxious dread and goose-pimpled skin persists from the first fifteen minutes to the rolling of the final credits.

Grade: B+Cast: Chris Cooper, Laura Linney, Ryan Phillippe
Director: Billy Ray
Runtime: 110 minutes
Location: Regal New River Valley 11
Showtimes: 1:20, 4:00, 7:10, 10:00
Synopsis: The true story of the capture of Robert Hanssen, a defected FBI agent who is said to be the most damaging spy against the U.S. government ever.

Rocky VII - Rocky Remax

Welcome to Remax Rocky Mountain House! We are proud to serve our thriving community with professional Real Estate Services. Our team knows the community and surrounding area and share your enthusiasm Rocky Balboa on IMDb: Movies, TV, Celebs, and more Plot Outline: Rocky Balboa comes out of retirement to step into the ring for the last time and face Happy New Year. May the year bring you good luck and good health.Rocky Balboa - Rocky Balboa movie details. Starring Sylvester Stallone and Burt Young. Starring: Sylvester Stallone , Burt Young , Antonio Tarver , Geraldine Hughes , more castThe video will open a new browser window. If you have trouble viewing it, please try turning off your pop-up blocker.Plants. Animals. Climate. Return to Alpine. The Rocky Mountains are located in western North America. They are know for their beautiful scenery with mountains, trees and big gameRocky Balboa: find the latest movie reviews, photos, trailers, clips, news, local showtimes, dvd info, synopsis,cast and crew, awards, movie series info at MSN Movies.30th anniversary ROCKY replica sculptures a. thomas schomberg, sculptor of the original ROCKY statue for the movie "Rocky III", and MGM Studios have created replica ROCKY sculptures in 12 inch The greatest underdog story of our time is back for one final round of the Academy Award-winning The greatest underdog story of our time is back for one final round of the Academy Award-winning United States, 2006 U.S. Release Date: 12/20/06 (wide) Running Length: 1:42 MPAA Classification: PG (Violence, mild profanity)

Movie Review: Because I Said So

Movie Review: Because I Said So (Blogcritics.org)

Written by El Bicho
Published February 25, 2007
Because I Said So, starring Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore, and directed by Michael Lehmann, is a contrived and convoluted story full of cute competent performances. Unfortunately, said performances are not enough to make this work regardless of who says so.

It is impossible to ignore the talent of Diane Keaton even in such a poor vehicle as Because I Said So where she plays an overbearing mother set on marrying off the youngest of her three daughters played enjoyably albeit one dimensional by Mandy Moore. Keaton’s Daphne runs a lengthy personal add and sets out to interview candidates for her daughter. After the standard run through of bizarre characters, she decides on “Jason” the rich architect played by horribly miscast Tom Everett Scott, who needs to find more quirky roles that better fit his look and abilities.

During the process of finding Jason, Daphne also meets Johnny (Gabriel Macht) the musician who is all wrong for her daughter.

So Moore’s character meets and starts dating both, and the majority of you can finish the story yourself, as could the majority of people who see the film since it is quite predictable, and full of clichés that we have seen in far too many superior films.

Lauren Graham and Piper Perabo play Daphne’s other two daughters, who seem to be either dressing or undressing in a number of scenes, and do nothing more than stand around and shrug their shoulders, or smile knowingly throughout the film.

These 109 minutes of film might make four episodes of a decent situation comedy, but as a motion picture, it is too predictable, and wastes the talent of its gifted cast.

Recommendation: If not for the comedic talent of Keaton who reaches the point of virtually mugging to the camera in an effort to make poorly directed physically comedic scenes remotely humorous, and a cute performance by Moore who appears to be developing in to bankable adult actor who needs some help with script selection, this outing would be a complete waste of time. Since the actors work so hard to make a poorly directed script work, this makes for a DVD rental worth a trip to your local rental shop, but not something you should pay to see at the theatre.

Movie of the Week

Movie of the Week (Indiana Statesman)

By Lowell Torres

"Stranger Than Fiction" is not what one expects from a Will Ferrell vehicle. Ferrell has become well known for his outrageous and silly characters, like Ricky Bobby in "Talladega Nights," Ron Burgundy in "Anchorman" and Frank "The Tank" in "Old School," but he takes a completely different approach in this film, which comes out on DVD tomorrow.
Ferrell plays Harold Crick, an IRS agent with a fascination for numbers. He counts the number of times he brushes each tooth, counts the time it takes to reach his bus stop by running at an exact pace and can multiply numbers in the thousands in his head. He lives a very normal, if slightly lonely, life. Then his solitude comes to a halt one morning when he begins to hear the voice of a British woman narrating his life.
At first, Harold thinks he's going crazy, except the voice is correct in all she says about him, and accurately states what he is going to do as well as what he's done. It's annoying at first, and then distracting, and eventually leads to a breakdown. Then one day, while waiting for the bus, Harold hears the narrator speak of his imminent death.
What Harold doesn't know is that acclaimed author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) is writing a novel, about him. Eiffel is a neurotic chain smoker who is fascinated by death, and in each of her novels the hero dies.
She has a problem in that she doesn't know how to kill Harold Crick. Her publishing company sends her an assistant (Queen Latifah) to help finish her novel. Or as Eiffel puts it, to help her kill Harold Crick.
The cast is rounded out with Dustin Hoffman, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Tony Hale.
As said earlier, those looking for an outrageous Ferrell characterization will be disappointed. For one of the few times in his career, Ferrell plays the straight man while those around him are the oddballs.
"Stranger Than Fiction" is a black comedy that doesn't take itself too seriously. It tells the story in a way that makes you want to keep watching, and delivers laughs in a variety of ways while dealing with Harold's impending death. As a result, it's not just a funny movie; it's a good movie.

Movie Review: The Messengers

Movie Review: The Messengers

Written by El Bicho
Published February 25, 2007

If you have seen The Birds, Poltergeist, Amityville Horror, The Shining, and The Sixth Sense, than you have seen pieces of The Messengers done much better. This is an eighty-five minute concoction of other stories thrown together into a haunted house tale that hits every cliché possible.

The kids are attacked by dead people, know one believes them, they continue to stay in the house, and model behavior that know normal person ever would. A character is introduced from out of the blue that is sure to the key piece of the puzzle, and the big reveal at the end falls as flat as the performances in this film.

I would at least like to tell you that this is good brain candy i.e.: Leave your brain in the car, and go watch a movie that will make you jump every ten minutes, but The Messengers even fails on that front.

The biggest problem here is a complete lack of depth. The standard opening segment where we see what happened in the house prior to the arrival of our victim family is far too vague, as are the eventual attacks to the family. We’re not sure who or what is doing the nasty deeds, nor do we understand why. The writer and director fail to understand that part of the enjoyment gleaned from an audience stems from a desire to figure things out while grasping the rafters after being scared out of our seats. There are no such rafter-grabbing moments in this film, nor is there anything worth trying to figure out.

I could mention the special effects, but you have seen the best ones in the commercials. The majority of that which remains is nothing but computer generated clumsiness. I could mention the actors and make further reference to their performances, but there all forgettable, and I’m sure they’ll appreciate no further association with this dud.

Recommendation: Send a message back by not paying to see this mess at the theatre or on DVD. Rent Poltergeist and The Birds for much more fun.

Audio Book Review - Rogue Angel: Destiny by Alex Archer

Audio Book Review - Rogue Angel: Destiny by Alex Archer

Written by T. Michael Testi
Published February 25, 2007

When I first heard about Rogue Angel: Destiny being a graphic audio book I, was skeptical. I have been listing to audio books for over five years now. I average between 30 and 50 per year and I know what works and what doesn't. When I saw the tag line "A Movie In Your Mind", I mean really, who do these guys think they are. It’s an audio book! A movie in your mind, get real!

Boy was I ever wrong. Simply put, this was probably the best-produced audio book I have ever listened to. Period! That is after listing to well over 2-300 audio books. In some ways this is akin to listing to some of the old radio dramas from the golden age of radio. Now if you think of the old radio shows as being like "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century", well this is like "Star Wars" in comparison.

In Rogue Angel: Destiny, you have a narrator who is basically reading the main storyline. When dialog comes in you have actors filling the different voices. This much I have heard in other audio books and many times I have shied away from them because, in my opinion, it becomes a distraction. Here it really enhances the story.

The real power and effect come from the sound effects and background music that encompasses the story and gives it its movie-like quality. It is not the cheesy sound-effects that you may be use to in the old radio shows; rather these are professional quality sounds that you would hear in a movie. When someone falls, gets kicked, or is shot, it really feels like you are there. When the goat gets its neck sliced in the ritual, you hear the screams. (I do not, however, believe that any goats were injured in any way in making this book.)

Now to the actual story; Rogue Angel: Destiny is about Annja Creed, a 20-something archaeologist and explorer who works for a show called "Chasing Histories Monsters" to earn money to do more serious archaeology work. Her fascination with the myths and mysteries of the world lead her in search of the Beast of Gevaudan, a legendary wolf-like creature that killed between 60 and 100 people in the 18th century.

What she discovers is an artifact that will seal her destiny; a brotherhood of monks who are willing to murder to protect their secret; a black market occultist who wants to find millions of dollars in centuries-old blood money and a couple of shadowy figures - she is not sure if they want to help or kill her.

I try to pull myself back and separate the story from the performance, so the latter is not influencing the former. From that stance, I think that this is a good story. Obviously this is the first in a series and, to me, for a series to be good you have to have a minimum of two things; characters that you like, and a story line that both makes sense and is interesting.

Rogue Angel: Destiny has both interesting and likable characters in Annja, Roux and Garin. I assume (and hope) that they will be regulars, since their lives are intertwined together. And the story line is both interesting and informative. It contains historical data, interesting settings and cultural characteristics that give the story more realism.

A couple of minor points with the production were that two or three times when the background music and the sounds were a little louder than they should have been. You could still hear the narrator, but it took you out of the moment a little bit. There was also one item in the story that seemed a little out of place at the time that I heard it, but then the story moved on and I promptly forgot about it. I guess it still was plausible so it did not detract from my enjoyment.

One other point, this story is rated for mature content. They make it very obvious on both the front and the back of the packaging. At least in this story, it is for all the violence and graphic gore that takes place. I commend the company for pointing this out in advance.

The quality of the story and performance are the reason that I will be coming back for the next Rogue Angel, due out in March of 2007. I will also be checking out some of their other series as well. If you want you can down load of MP3 excerpt, or purchase the GraphicAudio Book from their on-line store. The story comes three ways; standard CD, MP3 CD (the version I reviewed) and downloadable WMA with digital rights management.

Movie Review: An Inconvenient Truth

Movie Review: An Inconvenient Truth (Blogcritics.org)

Written by David Desjardins
Published February 25, 2007

A Global Warning indeed. The documentary is quite depressing in the sense that once the viewer is done, he or she will be left with a feeling of despair, a feeling that it's too late for us to do anything about global warming. Despite what Al Gore may have to say about it.

As a Canadian I never knew much about Al Gore other than the stiff, silent and very boring politician he was portrayed to be through American media. I never knew how much of an environmentalist he was until the media blitz surrounding the opening of An Inconvenient Truth. It was only in February 2007 that I got around to seeing the documentary.

Let's face it; An Inconvenient Truth is a glorified PowerPoint presentation with a stage, video cut-ins and a soundtrack. But despite being a PowerPoint presentation and all the boredom that this entails, the producers and the director managed to make it into a completely engrossing and captivating presentation.

The auditorium is a mock auditorium built from the ground up on a huge sound stage, all designed to get the best angles and lighting. It was all planned, rehearsed and re-shot until it was done right as is depicted in the DVD making-of extra. But the viewer doesn't mind this. This is just icing for the movie. This is the presentation he gives all the time across the globe anyway. The producers just wanted to capture it in the best possible light and the reviewer sees nothing wrong with that. What's important here is the message and not the paper it was written.

Believe it or not, Al Gore can actually be funny and entertaining despite the dire emergency of his message. He starts out by quipping "I'm Al Gore, I used to be the next president of the United States of America." the people laugh "I don't find that particularly funny." he says smirking. But the jokes are to lighten up his message which is truly doom and gloom. If we don't clean up our act or should I say, our planet... we're screwed.

And Al Gore has the presence and demeanor to drill it into your head convincingly. If I ever have any reproach to offer to the Greenpeacers of this world - a group of which I am a member - is that they all look the same, the beard, the long hair, the skinny physique. Basically they have the vegetarian pot-smoking tree hugger stereotype working against them. Want to convince the lay people, look like a credible leader. And Al Gore does just that. He comes out like a giant on stage and owns it. And he talks passionately but not obsessively, which also works in his favor.

Then he lays out the truth. The world is going to snuff us out if we don't do anything about and we need to do it now. He does it so efficaciously you just want to sign up to anything and do whatever he asks of you to save the world. This film definitely needs to be seen by everyone. Because I will surely not dole out the gargantuan amount of information expressed in this film, there is simply too much of it for a single review.

The message is clear and repeats what science has been telling us for decades. The earth is warming. The icecaps will melt, the water will rise. The hurricanes will get stronger, the droughts will intensify and it is all due to man made pollution. And all the data is there and the consensus is irrefutable despite what the American government does to re-write scientific data to seed doubt in the minds of Americans so that the economy can perpetuate the damage it does while making the rich richer.

This is one good thing An Inconvenient Truth and Al Gore doesn't do, is start pointing finger at companies and rich politicians. He never makes use of cheap tactics, demagoguery or sophistry. He just keeps the focus on the message, the issue. Not that companies and rich politicians don't need to be lined up and pointed at as the culprits; but the film has nobler intentions, to change the world, not start a spitting contest. The message aims to unite and gather people, not to further divide. Because America surely does not need more division it needs unity in front of this looming catastrophe that needs urgent action by the country to help the rest of the world face what could end civilization.

`Ghost Rider' Tops Box Office With $52 M

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Monday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Tuesday by Media By Numbers LLC are:

1. "Ghost Rider," Sony, $52,022,908, 3,619 locations, $14,375 average, $52,022,908, one week.

2. "Bridge to Terabithia," Disney, $28,536,717, 3,139 locations, $9,091 average, $28,536,717, one week.

3. "Norbit," Paramount, $19,929,662, 3,138 locations, $6,351 average, $62,011,840, two weeks.

4. "Music and Lyrics," Warner Bros., $15,875,471, 2,955 locations, $5,372 average,
$21,404,090, one week.

5. "Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls," Lionsgate, $13,064,075, 2,111 locations, $6,189 average, $18,757,324, one week.

6. "Breach," Universal, $12,261,835, 1,489 locations, $8,235 average, $12,261,835, one week.

7. "Hannibal Rising," MGM, $6,255,564, 3,003 locations, $2,083 average, $22,917,904, two weeks.

8. "Because I Said So," Universal, $6,053,850, 2,446 locations, $2,475 average, $34,311,515, three weeks.

9. "Night at the Museum," Fox, $4,866,933, 2,042 locations, $2,383 average, $238,500,531, nine weeks.

10. "The Messengers," Sony Screen Gems, $4,341,827, 2,183 locations, $1,989 average, $31,050,332, three weeks.

11. "Pan's Labyrinth," Picturehouse, $2,639,431, 905 locations, $2,916 average, $30,486,056, eight weeks.

12. "Dreamgirls," Paramount, $1,967,359, 1,037 locations, $1,897 average, $100,011,336, 10 weeks.

13. "Smokin' Aces," Universal, $1,771,180, 1,107 locations, $1,600 average, $34,421,936, four weeks.

14. "Epic Movie," Fox, $1,672,218, 1,426 locations, $1,173 average, $38,268,898, four weeks.

15. "The Queen," Miramax, $1,609,141, 807 locations, $1,994 average, $51,350,148, 21 weeks.
16. "Letters From Iwo Jima," Warner Bros., $1,272,397, 651 locations, $1,955 average, $11,811,634, nine weeks.

17. "The Last King of Scotland," Fox Searchlight, $1,088,024, 384 locations, $2,833 average, $12,959,378, 21 weeks.

18. "Notes on a Scandal," Fox, $1,030,144, 413 locations, $2,494 average, $15,427,044, nine weeks.

19. "The Pursuit of Happyness," Sony, $883,814, 690 locations, $1,281 average, $162,140,234, 10 weeks.

20. "Babel," Paramount Vantage, $706,687, 305 locations, $2,317 average, $33,218,792, 17 weeks.

Movie Review: Mean Guns

Movie Review: Mean Guns

Written by T. RigneyPublished February 24, 2007

When your mind wanders to the the wonky realm of high-quality direct-to-video releases, one usually doesn't spend too much time pondering the work of Cyborg director Albert Pyun. His films are somewhat lifeless and often quite boring, the latter being the greatest offense any filmmaker can commit. Even as a kid I knew his version of Captain America was utter garbage when compared to Tim Burton's comic book masterpiece. Being an avid Captain America reader, I was disappointed with the film, leaving Pyun's name forever etched in the Mortal Enemies division of my highly-chaotic brainscape. Alas, some relationships are just never meant to be. Weep hard, my pretty little children.

All of that changed, however, upon discovery of his 1997 action opus Mean Guns, starring none other than genre veteran Christopher Lambert, or as I like to call him, the Thomas Jane of the 90's. Mean Guns is so enjoyable, so impossibly fun that I actually found myself forgiving Pyun for such cinematic crimes as Arcade, Omega Doom, and Alien from L.A. He did score a few points with 2001's Ticker, but that's mostly due to the inclusion of a certain rotund aikido master and a self-destructive Hollywood burnout with male pattern baldness. Of course, Pyun needs all the points he can get at this stage in the game.

In case you've never heard of this snazzy straight-to-video title, allow me to regurgitate a generically entertaining synopsis for your viewing pleasure. It seems that a certain underworld conglomerate called The Syndicate is dissatisfied with the performance of a few of its key players. Instead of disciplining these dodgy employees one-on-one, this shady organization has devised a sinister alternative: round up the offenders inside an empty maximum security prison, supply them with an array of weaponry, and let God sort 'em out. To sweeten the pot, Syndicate representative Vincent Moon (Ice-T) has hidden ten million dollars somewhere on the premises, a prize that will be split amongst the three remaining employees.

Included in this free-for-all bullet ballet is troubled hitman Lou (Lambert), a silent but deadly shooter named Marcus (Michael Halsey), a sassy blonde assassin called D (Kimberly Warren), and a mousy little snitch named Cam (Deborah Van Valkenburgh). Their strategy is to team up, eliminate the others, then pick off the weakest member of their respective outfit. Before all is said and done, alliances will dissolve, truths will be revealed, and some silly bimbo's head will become engulfed in flames. The latter, of course, is easily the most entertaining of the bunch, but you'll want to pay close attention to the other details, as well. Seriously.

Blazing through the material like a B-grade John Woo, Pyun pumps up this very simplistic premise with tons of crazy gunplay and plenty of mean-spirited action. Though the film retains the goofy director's penchant for bizarre camera angles and lightning-fast editing, these gimmicks seem to enhance Mean Guns' entertainment quotient by leaps and bounds. All of those weird close-ups and what-not give the film a slightly surreal atmosphere, allowing even the stupidest of events to seem completely natural in the grand scheme of things.

This also sets the tone for the film's many outrageous action set pieces, which take excellent advantage of the story's prison setting. As soon as you grow tired of one setting, the characters are bounding off to another. It also breaks up that feeling of claustrophobia one gets when watching a movie set in one central location. Unlike such films as Trespass and Panic Room, you never feel boxed in, forever confined to a limited number of rooms. It also helps matters considerably that the fights themselves are comically brutal and surprisingly inspired. This is probably the film's saving grace.

Booking a flight on Pyun's High-Octane Thrill Ride(tm) is my personal Lord and Savior Christopher Lambert, a man many people believe to be the skidmark on the direct-to-video market's proverbial underwear. The man practically struts through every scene of Mean Guns, dishing out his patented brand of cockiness served lovingly with a side order of persistent giggling. As soon as something remotely humorous passes across his lips, Lambert is already laughing right along with you. If he could reach out and pat you on the back to enhance the joke, he probably would.

What about everyone else, you ask? Well, they're okay, too. Michael Halsey gets the Golden Co-Star Award, while Ice-T gets the Why Am I Even In This Movie? Badge for his brilliant performance as Vincent Moon, who basically just nods and scratches his chin for roughly two hours. His character's elaborate surveillance system, which allows him to view events as they unfold as though he were merely watching Cinemax, prevents him from having to get his hands dirty by actually contributing to a scene. A stroke of brilliance? I can't tell, really.

For a 110-minute film with essentially no plot, Mean Guns is quite good. Everyone involved seems well aware of what they're making, so you can't really knock the film for being so blatantly stupid. The crude violence and dopey humor may offend those with finer tastes in cinema, but the rest of us will be knee-deep in B-Grade goodness.

Though I doubt I'll continue to investigate the filmography of a certain Albert Pyun any time soon, Mean Guns has certainly made me see this dodgy action director in a slightly different light. Can I forgive him for every single past transgression, you ask? Of course not. Once you've cast Andrew "Dice" Clay in a lead role, there simply is no redemption.

Movie schools - The Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Showtimes, trailers, reviews, articles, interviews, news, and gossip.Spider-Man 3 (2007): find the latest news, photos and trailers, as well as local showtimes/dvd info Peter Parker must face new challenges as the elusive superhero Spider-Man in this third Cookie Dough Bites Chocolate Chip 3.1 oz. $ 30.75Iron Man Movie Logo Revealed New teaser site launched. First brought to light by Jon Favreau on the Myspace Iron Man movie group , the new Iron Man teaser site has launched and the film's logo has Gamespy Planet site for all the alien versus predator games, AvP News, Trailers, Screenshots Alien vs. Predator 2: Survival of the Fittest, directed by brothers Offers classic films from the 1930s through the 1980s along with original series and documentaries.R eleased in 1987, at the tail end of the He-Man craze, "Masters of the Universe" was nevertheless expected to be a success.The Official Web Site for Disney Movie Rewards, earn your way to exciting movie rewards by doing OPEN TO LEGAL RESIDENTS OF THE 50 UNITED STATES (INCLUDING D.C.) 13 YEARS AND OLDER.The Best Storehouse of Great Movie, TV Show, and Cartoon Quotes All sounds on the The MovieWavs Page or linked from The MovieWavs Page retain their original

Movie Review: Arabian Nights

Movie Review: Arabian Nights

Written by Damian PennyPublished February 23, 2007

It seems hard to believe today, but there was a time when Americans thought of the Middle East as a land of romance, adventure, and mystery, not intolerance and violence. Arabian Nights, a 1942 “Western with camels”, newly restored and available on DVD, portrays this world of palaces, walled cities, harems, dancing girls, swordplay, thieves and - most importantly - non-stop adventure. The result is quite dated, but it is also very entertaining.Needless to say, Arabian Nights has very little to do with the epic One Thousand and One Arabian Nights beyond its title, though running gags have Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor (played by Shemp Howard, no less) reduced to working with a traveling circus, boring everybody with endless tales of their unbelievable old adventures.

The plot involves a dispute between the caliph of Baghdad and his brother’s attempts to usurp the throne and win the hand of a sensuous dancing girl. When the rightful caliph is left for dead, he shaves off his beard, hooks up with the circus, and plots his revenge - all the while falling for the fierce, independent dancer, who has no idea of his real identity.

Arabian Nights clocks in at less than ninety minutes and moves at a ferocious pace. The film, one of Universal’s first Technicolor productions, is also stunning to watch. It was an expensive production for its time, but every penny made it into the elaborate costumes and sets. (The matte paintings are less convincing, but I’m willing to forgive that in a 65-year-old movie.) The action scenes, unfortunately, don’t work quite so well. During some crucial battles, director John Rawlins inexplicably seems to be directing his camera toward the sets, with the action as an afterthought.

Male lead Jon Hall - who speaks with an American accent, naturally - is nothing special, but I thought Maria Montez - “the worst actress who ever lived,” according to one reviewer - gave a deliciously fiery performance as the object of his (and everyone else’s) affections. The Indian actor Sabu is charming as the only performer who knows Hall’s real identity, and as the circus leader, Billy Gilbert deserves special mention for the way he uses his ample belly as an effective battle weapon.

It goes without saying that Arabian Nights doesn’t even try to portray the Middle East realistically. (I’m not even sure anyone in the movie speaks with the same accent.) The film is all about showing a heavily romanticized version of that place and time, and it does so in a very entertaining fashion. Some will complain about it being old-fashioned and insulting, but I’d say it’s probably an improvement over what we think of the Middle East today.

Movie Review: School for Scoundrels

Movie Review: School for Scoundrels

Written by Damian PennyPublished February 23, 2007

A critical blurb on the School for Scoundrels DVD case describes the film as "Bad Santa meets Napoleon Dynamite," but I think it's better described as "Bad Santa meets Hitch." Like Will Smith in that film, Billy Bob Thornton plays a "professor" who teaches socially inept losers how to attract women. His advice, however, couldn't be more different: "no compliments, ever," and "lie, lie, and lie some more."

At some point, every guy has complained about the way women seem attracted to men who treat them like dirt, so this is a very promising idea for a movie. School for Scoundrels - sorry, School for Scoundrels: Unrated Ballbuster Edition - does indeed have some big laughs, but it never quite lives up to its premise. Instead of going for humor based on miscalculation, embarrassment, and grossly misplaced intentions, as with either version of The Office, director Todd Phillips (Old School) is content to settle for violent physical humor. Not that there's anything wrong with violent physical humor - I'll admit, I laughed repeatedly during the scene involving paintball guns - but Billy Bob Thornton and Jon "Napoleon Dynamite" Heder are perfectly cast as "Dr. P" and a particularly timid student, respectively.

But some excellent supporting players, including Sarah Silverman, Luis Guzman, and Michael Clarke Duncan, are woefully underused. And then there's the brilliant David Cross, completely wasted in a small part as Heder's best friend. What is it with filmmakers casting people from Arrested Development, and then failing to do anything with them? (Also see Will "Gob" Arnett in Monster-in-Law.) At least Jacinda Barrett, as the pretty Australian grad student over whom Thornton and Heder do battle, gets to use her real accent for once.

I enjoyed School for Scoundrels just enough to recommend it, but it could have been much better had the filmmakers taken the material to the next level. I have no doubt the filmmakers saw Bad Santa and Napoleon Dynamite before shooting began, but maybe they should have paid closer attention to what made them work so well.

MOVIE REVIEW- Dangle-ing participle: Silliness reigns in Reno 911!

MOVIE REVIEW- Dangle-ing participle: Silliness reigns in Reno 911!

By STEVE WARREN FILM@READTHEHOOK.COM

The advantage of not belonging to the National Society of Film Critics is that one is permitted to enjoy a movie like Reno 911!: Miami without lamenting its lack of intellectual content.

As fans of Comedy Central's Reno-bound COPS spoof know, this is pure silliness. Not silliness with a brain, like Borat, nor silliness as a bad role model (unless you aspire to work for the Sheriff's Dept.), like Jackass.

Reno 911! is about a diverse group of imperfect people doing the best they can in an imperfect world, while having all their foibles photographed; and although they usually stay in their Nevada town where there's a limit to the damage they can do, for the big screen they take their show on the road. The crew of eight heads for Miami for "three days of fun in the sun" at the American Police Convention. (The dates are April 7-12, but in a movie like this, continuity errors may be intentional.)

They are four men and four women; four white, three black, one Hispanic; one gay, one lesbian and six presumed heterosexual, though from what we see most of their action is without partners.

Their leader is Lt. Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon), who looks like a Village Person in shorter, tighter pants. Though desired by Deputy Trudy Wiegel (Kerri Kenney-Silver), he puts her off with statements like, "I'm playing for ‘Visitor.'"

"I don't appreciate you insinuating that I'm some lesbian," says Deputy Cherisha Kimball (Mary Birdsong), as half a women's basketball team files out of her motel room. Deputy Raineesha Williams (Niecy Nash) has an eat-your-heart-out-Penelope Cruz fake booty that's visible from space, and Deputy Clementine Johnson (Wendi McLendon-Covey) spends most of the film investigating how she got a "tight tit tat" of an unidentified man one drunken evening. At least somebody's investigating something.

Rounding out the team are Deputies Travis Junior (Robert Ben Garant, who directed and co-wrote with Lennon and Kenney-Silver), S. Jones (Cedric Yarborough) and James Garcia (Carlos Alazraqui).

If there's not much space left for plot details, that's okay because there's not much plot. A mixup in credentials keeps our guys out of the convention center when it's quarantined by what sounds like an old "24" plot. With the local force trapped as well, it leaves Reno 911 to become Miami 911 and save the city from chaos– but who's going to save the city from them?

Along the way you find out why a chicken doesn't cross the road in Miami, and "Who brings a Weed Whacker on a boat?" The latter answer is Paul Rudd, doing his best bad Pacino-as-Scarface impression.

There are guests galore, from producer Danny DeVito to The Rock to Paul Reubens.

Short Movie Reviews

Short Movie Reviews

Miami Vice: I never watched the TV show of the same name but I really enjoyed this movie. It had a nice balance of grit and posh. It wasn't realistic but it was enjoyable. Colin Farrell was good but Jamie Foxx seemed under utilized.

The Guardian: I wanted to like this movie and at points I did but it was so filled with clich้s that it was difficult to endure. Think 'Officer And A Gentleman' meets 'Heartbreak Ridge' meets every other bad military movie. Some good scenes but not worth the time.

Superman Returns: Enjoyable movie that connects well with the Christopher Reeve movies before it. For the genre, I think it was a tad slow, but it was still entertaining and true to the franchise.

Poseidon: This movie had so many things going for it but failed to deliver on every level. The direction, acting, and script all sucked. It was a total disappointment. I loved the original and wanted to like this version but it did not deliver.

Sahara: I had never heard anything good about this movie but enjoyed it nonetheless. It starts off better than it ends but as silly action flicks go, it was fun. Steve Zahn is one of the most under appreciated comic actors.

The Devil Wears Prada: I liked this movie. Meryl Streep was convincing as the demanding boss and Anne Hathaway was endearing. Jayne couldn’t get past Anne having being 'Ella Enchanted' but since I hadn't seen that film it didn't bother me.

Must Love Dogs: I'm starting to dislike John Cusak and I don't know why. I don't know if it's just the characters he's offered to play or if it's some aspect of his personality that's showing through, but either way with every film he comes off as more and more of a prick. Diane Lane is lovely as always but even that couldn't keep me interested enough to make it to the end.

xXx: State of the Union: I had never seen the previous xXx movie staring Vin Diesel and didn't expect much from this. It was halfway entertaining and had some cool cars and pretty girls. In the end it was very dumb and mindless but I kind of liked it.

AN AMAZING STORY: MOVIE REVIEW

AN AMAZING STORY: MOVIE REVIEW

Movie tells of one man's struggle to end slave trade
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 02/23/07

Michael Apted's "Amazing Grace" is an enlightening saga about that rarest of individuals, a morally uncompromising politician. William Wilberforce was a key figure in the 16-year struggle to get England out of the slave trade in the early 19th century.

The film has been created to mark the 200th anniversary of the key vote in Parliament, and is an intriguing historical piece that will almost certainly be as instructive for most viewers as it is entertaining. Don't shy away for fear of a dry bit of educational cinema; "Amazing Grace" is a well-told and very human story.

Ioan Gruffudd stars as Wilberforce, whom we first view after several years of legal struggles have left him weakened and ill. Then, through a combination of flashbacks and flash-forward, we learn the story of a bright, up-and-coming politician who has had a religious conversion, and nearly quits public office. Fortunately, such friends as William Pitt the Younger (Benedict Cumberbatch), convince Wilberforce he can do more good, and remain true to his religious beliefs, if he stays in the House of Commons. As Pitt angles for the prime minister's post, he selects Wilberforce to spearhead the movement against the slave trade. Working with other noted abolitionists, like Thomas Clarkson (Rufus Sewell) and the African Olaudah Equiano (Youssou N'Dour), and a powerful new recruit, Lord Fox (Michael Gambon), Wilberforce carries the battle.

Inspiring Wilberforce is another strong moral force, his former minister, John Newton (Albert Finney), a man of the older generation who had given up the sinful life of a slave trader for the ministry. (As part of his self-imposed penance, Newton has composed hymns, including the immortal "Amazing Grace.")

For many of us, who've long seen the slave issue as an American and African scandal, we now learn the important English chapter, and witness the difficult struggle to end it.

Movie review Reno 911

Movie review You may feel robbed by 'Reno 911'

Big screen - The hapless deputies' romp in Miami feels like an expanded TV show

I'll say this for "Reno 911!: Miami": It plays almost exactly like a longer episode of the "Reno 911!" TV show. (But not that much longer: "Miami" clocks in at barely 80 minutes.) If you're a fan of the show, you'll probably be a fan of the movie -- which mostly retains the "SuperTroopers"-meets-"Cops"-by-way-of-Christopher-Guest-only-not-quite-as-funny vibe.

That said, it gets off to a rough start. The first half-hour sends the Reno deputies to Miami Beach for a convention. After a bioterror attack sidelines every other cop in town, our idiot heroes suddenly are protecting a major U.S. city. And the setup simply isn't very funny or sharp. But once that's out of the way and the cast gets back on the beat, the movie finds its middlebrow groove -- helped by Paul Rudd as a poor man's Scarface and Patton Oswalt as the overwhelmed deputy mayor.

By film's end, you've enjoyed a middle-of-the-road episode of the series, basically. And as usual, Deputy Trudy and Lt. Dangle are getting the best lines while about one-third of the jokes hit their marks.

(84 minutes; rated R for sexual content, nudity, crude humor, language and drug use; multiple locations) Grade: B-

-- Mike Russell