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April 2008 Reviews By Shawn McKenzie 04/27/2008 Here are my reviews of the movies that were released in April of 2008. Check back later as the month progresses for more reviews. Go directly to my reviews of Nim’s Island, Leatherheads, The Ruins, The Forbidden Kingdom, Prom Night, Street Kings, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Smart People, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, 88 Minutes, Baby Mama, Deception, and Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? 11-year-old Nim Rusoe (Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin) is a girl who lives alone on an uncharted remote island in the South Asiatic Sea with her marine biologist dad, Jack (Gerard Butler.) A whale supposedly accidentally swallowed her mom Emily (Shannon van der Life) long ago, but she is still perfectly content with her life anyway. They use solar panels to get electricity and the occasional cargo ship deliveries for their other needs, and she has few animal friends…Selkie the sea lion, Fred the lizard, and Galileo the pelican. For entertainment, she enjoys reading Alex Rover adventure novels written by Alex Rover himself. Jack decides to go on a two-day expedition to study glowing plankton that he plans to name after her, and he leaves her in charge of helping out the various people who ask him for scientific advice (Jack writes freelance articles for magazines like National Geographic, so people email him questions.) One person that has a question (specifically about volcanoes) is Alex Rover himself. Alex is actually Alexandra Rover (two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster), an agoraphobic and compulsive-obsessive writer who hasn’t left her residence in San Francisco in a while. The only person she talks to is the imagined personification of her books’ hero, Alex Rover (also played by Gerard Butler.) A bad storm practically destroys Jack’s boat, leaving him stranded in the middle of the ocean. When Nim thinks that Jack might be in trouble (they have satellite phones, and he isn’t picking his up), she emails Alex for help. Alexandra musters up her courage and leaves her place to help Nim, encountering many scary things (to her) along the way. Meanwhile, Nim has to play Kevin McCallister from Home Alone to ward off some vacationing tourists who threaten the sanctity of the island. Ever since getting the Oscar nomination for 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine, Breslin has played in mostly ensemble family films or as a supporting character in chick flicks (which, to be fair, was what she was starring in also before Sunshine.) This movie is her chance to play a lead character, and she does a good job of it. It’s just too bad that the movie, co-written and co-directed by directed by Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, wasn’t more exciting. Don’t get me wrong…I liked it, but it wasn’t one that I could see myself picking up the DVD for once it is released. Breslin was spunky, Butler was heroic (at least in his one scene where he did anything physical), and Foster surprised me with her comedic abilities. I’m just hoping that Breslin will stretch her acting chops in the future, though that doesn’t look she’ll likely be doing it anytime soon (her next role will be the title character in the July release Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, the first theatrical movie based off the popular American Girl doll collection.)
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Jimmy “Dodge” Connelly (George Clooney) is the middle-aged leader of the Duluth Bulldogs, one of the last professional football teams left in the league. It’s 1925, and he has acquired the colossally large high school player Big Gus (Keith Loneker) who he thinks will spark some interest, but it’s almost pointless, because their only sponsor, Perennial Starch Kings, have dropped out. He hears that more than 40,000 people attended a recent Princeton game to see its star player and WWI war hero Carter “The Bullet” Rutherford (John Krasinski) play, so he sets up a meeting with Carter’s agent, CC Frazier (Jonathan Pryce), in Chicago. While waiting to meet with CC, he meets feisty Chicago Daily Tribune reporter Lexi Littleton (Renée Zellweger) who has no problems sharing verbal jabs with him. She is there to find out something about Carter’s alleged war hero status, because a witness, Lt. Mack Steiner (Max Casella), says that Carter wasn’t as heroic as he claims. She will get a promotion by her editor, Harvey (Jack Thompson), if she can negate his allegations. There is definite sexual chemistry between Dodge and Lexi. Anyway…Dodge promises Carter a lucrative salary if he joins the team…and he makes sure that alcoholic sports reporter Suds (Stephen Root) gets some hype going to get people to watch Carter and the Bulldogs. Once Carter joins the team, he becomes another person who connects with Lexi (though she is using him for the story.) If Dodge can manage to garner some interest in the league, and try to stay within the rules (there weren’t any rules until Pete Harkin [Peter Gerety], the NFL commissioner, legitimized the sport), he might be able to save his team. This is the third outing for Clooney as a director, and the second one as a co-writer. I loved the movie! It’s a throwback to the old days of slapstick comedy that Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day tried to do last month. This one was better because it didn’t feel like it was an adaptation of a stage show. After the surprisingly boring, Oscar-nominated flick Michael Clayton, it’s nice to see Clooney back in top form…at least in my opinion (unfortunately, it’s not doing as well in the box office.) If I had one complaint, it would be that Krasinski doesn’t strike me as a believable football player. I love him in NBC’s “The Office,” and I even thought that he did a great job in last year’s License to Wed, but I can only give him kudos for his comedy and not for any of his football action. I seem to be the only one who likes Zellweger. She held her own with both Clooney and Krasinski in the slapstick comedy department. Please don’t let the box office failure of both this movie and Pettigrew dissuade you from making more slapstick comedies filmmakers…I will personally welcome them back!
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Four dim-witted American tourists…best friends Amy (Jena Malone) and Stacy (Laura Ramsey) with their boyfriends, Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) and Eric (Shawn Ashmore)…are vacationing in Cancun, Mexico, when they meet German tourist Mathias (Joe Anderson.) After a night of partying, Mathias tells them that he is going to look for his brother Heinrich (Jordan Patrick Smith) who hooked up with a female Dutch archeologist and has decided to accompany her to her dig at an ancient Mayan ruin. The four go with him and Greek tourist Dimitri (Dimitri Baveas) to the remote site. The six of them hike up to the pyramid ruin covered in vegetative overgrowth, but are quickly confronted by local Mayan descendants who aren’t happy to see them. One of the Mayans kills one of the tourists, and the others run up to the top of the pyramid. When they realize that the Mayans aren’t chasing them up the pyramid, they try to figure out a way to escape this situation they have gotten themselves into. Meanwhile, there is a vertical shaft on the top, and doofus Mathias falls down it, breaking his back. The girls are lowered down to rescue him, but they run into a carnivorous plant entity (it looks like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors) that lives inside the pyramid. Their cell phones don’t work and their running out of water, so they need to figure out what their next move is before they are killed by either the Mayans, the plants, their lack of water/food…or their own paranoid stupidity. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Scott Smith, who wrote the screenplay for his own novel, I thought that it was the beginning of what I was hoping for…prestige horror pictures. Basically…movies that are actually scary and created by people who have a proven pedigree of making a movie. My only example so far is last year’s The Mist, written and directed by Frank Darabont (1994’s The Shawshank Redemption, 1999’s The Green Mile) and based off a 1980 novella by Stephen King. That movie had an Oscar-nominated screenwriter/director behind it and was based off a book by a critically acclaimed horror novelist’s writing. Smith is also an Oscar-nominated screenwriter for 1998’s A Simple Plan (based on his own book as well.) Darabont also directed his screenplays, so he had creative control. Smith had Sam Raimi (the Evil Dead series, the Spider-Man series) for a director for Plan, but this movie had a virtual unknown at the helm. Carter Smith (no relation to the author/screenwriter) is a fashion photographer who directed it as his feature debut…and it is just awful. The acting is over the top…and I know that a few of these actors have done better work. Ramsey displays a piece of gratuitous nudity near the beginning that isn’t essential to the plot (but is appreciated.) The locations are beautiful, but that can’t make up for the lame story. The trailers are ironically scarier than the movie itself. It’s possible that the era of “prestige horror pictures” may begin and end with The Mist, because it certainly isn’t continuing with this movie.
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Jackie Chan and Jet Li are finally in a movie together! It’s too bad that it’s not the martial arts spectacular I was hoping for. In the vein of 1984’s The Neverending Story, Jason Tripitikas (Michael Angarano) is a regular kid from South Boston who obsesses about martial arts films. He is constantly hanging out in the Lu Yan Pawn Shop run by Old Hop (Chan in unrecognizable “old man” makeup.) He may like the movies, but hasn’t really picked up too many skills from them, because he is still being harassed by bullies like Lupo (Morgan Benoit) and his gang. One day, Lupo decides that he wants to rob the pawnshop, so he forces Jason to bring them inside after hours. Lupo ends up shooting Old Hop, but in his injured state, he tells Jason to deliver an ancient staff to its owner. Even though he doesn’t know what Old Hop is talking about, he agrees, and runs up to the top of a roof to get away from Lupo and his crew. He falls off the roof, and for some odd reason he ends up in ancient China. Jade Warriors surround him though, but a drunken immortal named Lu Yan (Chan in his middle-aged glory) saves him and gives him the lowdown on the mystic staff. The “owner” is the Monkey King (Li), a skilled warrior who was well liked by the Jade Emperor (Deshun Wang)…so much so that he gave him a heavenly title. This ticked off the Jade Warlord (Collin Chou), so he challenges him to an unarmed duel, during which he tricks the Monkey King turns him into a stone statue. The Monkey King sends his staff off into the distance though with the hopes that “The Seeker” will find it and bring it back to him. The Jade Warlord finds out that the staff has been found, so he sends the white-haired assassin witch Ni Chang (Bing Bing Li) to retrieve the staff so that both of them can live in immortality. The Silent Monk, a.k.a. Lan Cae He (Li again) has also been searching for it, but after a gratuitous but very cool fight between the monk and the drunk, Lan joins Jason, Lu, and Golden Sparrow (Yifei Liu), a girl who wants to avenge her parents’ deaths by Jade Warlord’s men, on their quest to return the staff. Along the way, somehow, Lan and Lu teach Jason kung fu in record time, and of course, Jason flirts with Golden Sparrow. The acting is bad and the wire fu is very goofy, but that doesn’t matter…because Chan and Li are in it together! Noted family film director Rob Minkoff (1994’s The Lion King, the first two Stuart Little movies) helmed this pic, and it’s a bit of a surprise, because it isn’t a family film. The action sequences were choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping (the Matrix movies, the Kill Bill movies), who has worked with both Chan and Li in the past. His choreography is why it looked so good possibly. The special effects surrounding Bing Bing Li’s long, whip-like white hair were impressive. The story was a little boring…but who cares when you have exciting scenes of Chan whipping Angarano around like a rag doll to use as a weapon! The movie is certainly better than Chan’s last movie, Rush Hour 3, or Li’s last movie, War…but I guess I was expecting more out of a movie that finally joined the two titans of martial arts together.
Am I wrong…or shouldn’t a remake of a classic ‘80s horror movie keep the same parental rating? In this version, high school senior Donna Keppel (Brittany Snow) is preparing to go to her Senior Prom with her boyfriend, Bobby (“Friday Night Lights’” Scott Porter), as well as their other friends, Lisa Hines (Dana Davis) and her boyfriend Ronnie Heflin (Collins Pennie); and Claire (Jessica Stroup) and her boyfriend Michael (Kelly Blatz.) Three years ago, Richard Fenton (Johnathon Schaech), a former teacher of hers, became an obsessed stalker and killed her entire family. Now she lives with her Aunt Karen (Jessalyn Gilsig) and Uncle Jack (Linden Ashby), and she finally feels safe enough to go to the event and have a good time…even if snobby rival student, Crissy Lynn (Brianne Davis), who wants to be prom queen, and her jock boyfriend Rick Leland (Kellan Lutz) plan to make things difficult for her. Unfortunately, that isn’t actually the person on who is making her life on this special night a nightmare. Fenton has broken out of his mental hospital and he is on his way to the Pacific Grand Hotel, the location of the prom. Police detective Winn (Idris Elba) and his subordinate, Det. Nash (James Ransone) are watching the hotel and Karen & Jack’s house…but Fenton is already in the hotel, and he is killing people one by one in his ultimate mission to be with Donna forever. The 1980 original was rated R, whereas this one is rated PG-13. Ironically, the new one is slightly more suspenseful than the original…and the kids look like real teenagers, as opposed to Jamie Lee Curtis and cast from the original that all looked like they were in their mid to late twenties (Curtis was actually 21 when she played the 16-year-old Kim Hammond.) Okay…so Snow is 21 too…but the “American Dreams” and Hairspray star looks eighteen. Also, the kids in this one are slightly better actors (sorry Jamie and her movie dad Leslie Nielsen.) There is less blood here…which defeats the purpose of making a slasher film. The plotline is different (even the makers of the movie admit that it’s a remake in name and spirit only), but the fact that we know who the killer is takes some of the shock out of it. The original didn’t reveal the identity of the killer until the last few minutes of the movie. I have no problems with remakes…but if you are going to remake an R-rated slasher film…it really has to have lots of blood and gratuitous teenage sex with nudity. Call me a traditionalist!
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Detective Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) is a disillusioned cop on the Los Angeles Police Force who has developed a drinking problem and a bad attitude ever since his cheating wife was found murdered. He takes his frustrations out on the criminals by either illegally capturing or killing them. His boss, Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker), and his fellow detectives…Sgt. Mike Clady (Jay Mohr), Det. Cosmo Santos (“Prison Break’s” Amaury Nolasco), and Det. Dante Demille (John Corbett)…always cover for him…even though they don’t always approve of his methods. He has a casual sexual relationship with emergency room nurse Grace Garcia (Martha Higareda) who is concerned about him. The movie starts with Tom killing four Korean sex traffickers, but he freed two kidnapped girls…and the action earned Jack a promotion. The action also comes to the attention of Captain James Biggs (Hugh Laurie) from Internal Affairs who is working with Tom’s ex-partner, Detective Terrence Washington (Terry Crews), to take him down. When Tom hears of this, he confronts Washington in a convenience store, but right at that moment, two masked men shoot his former partner dead. Jack arrives and makes Tom take the convenience store’s security DVD to quash any suspicions over Tom’s involvement over the shooting, but, ironically, it fuels Biggs’ suspicions. Tom decides to investigate the murder himself before Biggs does it for him. Besides…he may not have liked Washington, but he owes it to Washington’s newly grieving widow Linda (Naomie Harris.) With DNA evidence found by two suspects, criminals Fremont (Cle Shaheed Sloan) and Coates (rapper/actor Common), linking activity between them and Washington, Tom convinces forensics detective Paul Diskant (Fantastic 4 human torch Chris Evans) to help him track them down. They use the unwilling help of criminals, like Quicks (Noel G.), Scribble (Cedric the Entertainer), and Grill (rapper/actor The Game), to try to find out who’s responsible and punish the killers in his own way. The king of corrupt cop stories, David Ayer, directed the movie. More well known as a screenwriter, Ayer wrote (or co-wrote) the screenplays for 2001’s Training Day, 2002’s Dark Blue, 2003’s S.W.A.T., and 2006’s Harsh Times. With Harsh, he made his directorial debut…and it was an impressive one at that. This one is his first picture that he didn’t have a hand in writing, but it’s not bad. I just think how much better it could have been if he had a hand in the writing. The performances were great all around, though for some, it wasn’t their best. Reeves does one of his better performances, and he is essentially the driving force of the movie. Whitaker doesn’t do one of his better ones, but I forgive him. I can’t forgive Laurie though, because the same man who plays one of the nastiest doctors on TV doesn’t play one of the nastiest IA agents on the big screen. Crews finally gets to do a dramatic role (as little as it was), but I just kept thinking, “That’s Chris Rock’s dad!” The movie itself was fast paced and exciting. I’m wondering if Ayers is a one-trick pony with these corrupt cop stories though. Maybe he and one of the co-writers of the screenplay, James Ellroy…a man who has done his own share of corrupt cop stories…should do a comedy or something…though I bet it might involve a cop doing something above the law.
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay Review Our generation’s Cheech & Chong are back with another movie sporting a title that pretty much sums up the plotline…and it’s almost as hilarious as the first one…2004’s Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Accountant Harold Lee (John Cho) and med student Kumar Patel (Kal Penn) are best friends and roommates from New Jersey who have come back from the White Castle (yes…this movie is essentially the next day after the adventures of the first movie) after finally satisfying their munchies. They want to step it up a notch though…they want to go to Amsterdam, a.k.a. the “weed capitol of the world.” Harold has another reason for going though…to be with the girl of his dreams, Maria Quesa Dilla (Paula Garcés), a model who is doing a photo shoot there. While at the airport, they run into Kumar’s ex-girlfriend, Vanessa Fanning (redheaded “One Tree Hill” bad girl Danneel Harris), who is now engaged to Colton Graham (Eric Winter), who happens to be Harold’s old college roommate. Kumar is understandably disturbed by this run-in, but he goes along anyway and looks forward to the trip. Unfortunately, since Kumar is an idiot who can’t go even eight hours before toking up, they don’t make it to Amsterdam because they are accused of being terrorists. Is it just because Kumar is of Middle Eastern descent? That’s part of it (several characters display racist attitudes), but it’s mainly because Kumar stowed away an invention he calls a “smokeless bong” that is mistaken for a bomb (from a distance, it looks like bomb…but up close, it looks like a male sex toy.) They turn the plane around and ship the two to Guantanamo Bay. Racially prejudiced Homeland Security chief Ron Fox (Rob Corddry), who is ready to practically execute them, and levelheaded NSA official Dr. John Beecher (former “Desperate Housewives” weirdo Roger Bart), who suspects that they are just two normal goofballs who haven’t done anything wrong, interrogate them. While in prison, the friends manage to escape during a prison break and sail to Miami on a raft used by illegal Cuban immigrants. They find their mutual friend Raza Sayed (Amir Talai), who is hosting a bottomless pool party, to hook them up with a car and information on how to find Colton, because he is a White House staffer who has connections to the Bush White House and might be able to help them with their legal snafu. Colton is about to marry Vanessa in Hewitt, Texas, so Harold and Kumar drive one of Raza’s cars through the deep south, where they run into many odd characters. There is a affluent redneck couple, Raymus (“Last Comic Standing 5” winner Jon Reep) and his sister/wife Raylene (Missi Pyle), who have a Cyclops son named Cyrus (Mark Munoz); a Ku Klux Klan rally led by their Grand Wizard (“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’s” Christopher Meloni, once again completely unrecognizable, as he was when he played Freakshow in the first movie); a stoner George W. Bush (James Adomian); and, of course, Neil Patrick Harris (as himself, but credited as “Neil Patrick Harris.”) Castle was my favorite movie of 2004 (though I have to put that in perspective…I didn’t see many movies during the latter half of 2004; check the FAQ page on details about that), so I had high expectations for its follow-up. It’s not that I was disappointed…it’s just that it wasn’t as funny as the first one. It relied heavily on the racial stereotype jokes, which were somewhat funny, but got a little old near the end. Aside from the leads, the standouts were Corddry and Harris. Both were so over-the-top in their roles that they made it hilarious. A scene with Corddry and fellow “Daily Show” colleague Ed Helms as an interpreter trying to get information out of Harold and Kumar’s very American parents cracked me up. Harris essentially brought back the wild, coked-up character that he played in Castle, that he would now fully admit was the thing that landed him the role as the multiple-suited ladies man Barney Stinson on CBS’s “How I Met Your Mother,” which landed him an Emmy nomination for that role last year. While it doesn’t mention “Mother” (since the movie takes place in 2004, and that show didn’t premiere until 2005), it does mention his first role in the 1988 movie Clara’s Heart, his role in the 1997 sci-fi flick Starship Troopers, and, of course, his breakthrough role in ABC’s “Doogie Howser, M.D.” I would easily welcome a third return to the world of Harold and Kumar…as long as Harris came back as well.
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Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is an elitist English Lit professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who is still depressed about the death of his wife Caroline that he takes it out on his students and the public in general. He looks down on his students so much that he doesn’t even bother to learn their names, and he has so much disregard for others that he parks his car crooked over two parking spaces. To top that off, he can’t get his latest academic book published because it keeps getting rejected, and he is vying for the chairman spot of the English department. He has problems at home as well. His son, James (Ashton Holmes), an art history student who lives in a dorm at Carnegie Mellon, is in a relationship with one of Lawrence’s students, Missy Chin (Camille Mana), and really doesn’t like his dad poking around in his life. James’ younger sister, 17-year-old Vanessa (Ellen Page), is a chip off Lawrence’s block though in intelligence and attitude. She has to play homemaker with the absence of Caroline…all while trying to study for the SATs. One night, while chewing his son out about a high credit card bill, Lawrence’s car is towed and taken to the impound lot. When he goes to the attendant on duty, he finds that the attendant, Ben Onufrey (Paul Huber), is a bitter former student of his who gave him a D in the class…so he doesn’t let him get his car at that moment. Lawrence decides to jump over the fence to get his car, but he falls and suffers a seizure. At the hospital, emergency room doctor Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker)…another former student of his who still harbors a little bit of a crush on him…tells him that he is not allowed to drive a car for the next six months. He has to rely on his adopted brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church)…a freeloader who constantly needs money from him…to play his chauffeur. Chuck also moves into their house, and he tries to help all of them get more enjoyment out of life by encouraging Lawrence to ask Janet on a date, while also trying to getting Vanessa to loosen up (with pot unfortunately…though it seems to work almost too well.) The pedigree of acting is excellent, yet the movie is just so-so in entertainment value. Quaid is good as the prickly professor, and he has a tiny bit of chemistry with Parker. Page is good, but is not quite Juno level. Church is fun as the cool uncle who makes them break out of their shells (especially with Page’s character.) Holmes is virtually absent throughout the movie. I wouldn’t pay full price to see it though. The smart money would be to wait until it comes out on DVD to rent it.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall Review My movie critic colleague Reggie McDaniel has a saying that he tells me all the time: You always bring your baggage into a movie every time you go in, i.e. you can identify with a movie if it hits you personally. For him, I think that when it hits home, he doesn’t like a movie (an example is a war movie, since he was in a few wars.) For me, I like a movie when it hits home. This is one of those movies for me. Peter Bretter (Jason Segel) is a composer for the TV cop procedural, “Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime.” The star of the show, Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell), is the Marg Helgenberger of it alongside William Baldwin, who plays Detective Hunter Rush. Peter has been dating Sarah for the past five years…though he has always lived on the sidelines. Aside from the composer job, he has been trying to write an Avenue Q-like puppet musical about Dracula, but it hasn’t really gotten off the ground. He’s happy though…so when she comes home one day while he is stark naked and dumps him, he goes into a depression like no one could imagine. He tries to have a series of casual sex encounters to get Sarah off his mind, but that really doesn’t work. He is briefly concerned that he has an STD, but when his physician, Dr. Rosenbaum (Steve Landesberg)…who happens to be pediatrician…tells him that he is fine and that he should have sex with as many women as possible, he becomes more confused than ever. Finally, his married stepbrother, Brian (Bill Hader), and his pregnant wife Liz (Liz Cackowski) suggest that Peter should take a trip just to clear his head. He and Sarah had planned a trip to Oahu, Hawaii together at one point, so he figured it would be a way for him to move on. Unfortunately, Sarah must have had the same idea, because she happens to be staying at Turtle Bay Resort…the same place he tries to check into while on the island. To pour salt in Peter’s wounds, she is there with her new boyfriend…a flashy British rocker named Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) who sings lead vocals for the band Infant Sorrow. The hotel clerk, Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis), decides to get him set up in their best suite for nothing when she can see how much pain he is going through. He spends the next few days getting to know the various guests and employees of the resort. Matthew (Jonah Hill) is a waiter who’s a big, stalker-like fan of Aldous. Surf instructor Chuck (Paul Rudd)…who prefers to go by his Hawaiian name, Kunu…gives him surfing lessons (though a lot of pot has infected his short-term memory.) Dwayne the bartender (Da’Vone McDonald) is a native of South Central L.A. who is an amateur ichthyologist (i.e. fish expert) that gives advice to tourists. Newlyweds Darald (Jack McBrayer, Kenny the page from NBC’s “30 Rock”), who is sexually repressed, and Wyoma (Marisa Thayer), who is horny all the time, are trying to figure out how to consummate their marriage. While still dealing with his feelings about Sarah, Peter finds himself falling for Rachel. The reason I could identify with the movie is that the woman who I had thought was the love of my life dumped me last December. I had only been going out with her for a year, but in that year, we shared many great times together. She had even moved into my condominium with me. To make things worse, she started dating a guy a few weeks later we had both met near the end of our relationship. The dumping hurt me so extremely bad that I had a hard time dealing with it. Time went on though and I have learned to live without her. I learned that we were a couple who wouldn’t have worked out in the long run, and I have dealt with it now. The movie really touched a nerve in me though, because I was exactly like Peter (with the exception of being able to score several casual sexual encounters or the ability to go to Hawaii…but you catch my drift.) After the surprisingly mediocre Drillbit Taylor in March, producer Judd Apatow has bounced back with possibly my favorite film in his oeuvre. In fact, I’m still trying to decide if I like this movie better than my favorite film of his…2005’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin. It was the directorial debut of longtime Apatow writing colleague Nicholas Stoller, and Segel wrote the screenplay as a sort of therapy for himself. I’ve always enjoyed Segel’s past work with Apatow (in NBC’s “Freaks and Geeks” and FOX’s “Undeclared”), and I currently think that he is one half of the cutest couple on television (with Alyson Hannigan) on CBS’s “How I Met Your Mother,” but I was impressed with his ability to be vulnerable and brave (especially with his extended frontal nude scenes.) I’m a huge fan of Bell’s work in UPN/CW’s “Veronica Mars” and NBC’s “Heroes” (not so much in the CW’s “Gossip Girl”), and she was able to be cold, yet also vulnerable and human as well. I don’t want to spoil the movie, but they reveal near the end the reasons why she dumped Peter that were very valid (and they were very scarily similar to my own situation.) Kunis a cute girl that was able to play a part completely opposite of the one she played on FOX’s “That ‘70s Show” and do it well. McBrayer and Rudd were also memorable in their small parts. While I may not have the time to write my own therapeutic screenplay, it certainly helps me to watch a hilarious movie that I can identify with on a deeply personal level.
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11-year-old Nim Rusoe (Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin) is a girl who lives alone on an uncharted remote island in the South Asiatic Sea with her marine biologist dad, Jack (Gerard Butler.) A whale supposedly accidentally swallowed her mom Emily (Shannon van der Life) long ago, but she is still perfectly content with her life anyway. They use solar panels to get electricity and the occasional cargo ship deliveries for their other needs, and she has few animal friends…Selkie the sea lion, Fred the lizard, and Galileo the pelican. For entertainment, she enjoys reading Alex Rover adventure novels written by Alex Rover himself. Jack decides to go on a two-day expedition to study glowing plankton that he plans to name after her, and he leaves her in charge of helping out the various people who ask him for scientific advice (Jack writes freelance articles for magazines like National Geographic, so people email him questions.) One person that has a question (specifically about volcanoes) is Alex Rover himself. Alex is actually Alexandra Rover (two-time Oscar winner Jodie Foster), an agoraphobic and compulsive-obsessive writer who hasn’t left her residence in San Francisco in a while. The only person she talks to is the imagined personification of her books’ hero, Alex Rover (also played by Gerard Butler.) A bad storm practically destroys Jack’s boat, leaving him stranded in the middle of the ocean. When Nim thinks that Jack might be in trouble (they have satellite phones, and he isn’t picking his up), she emails Alex for help. Alexandra musters up her courage and leaves her place to help Nim, encountering many scary things (to her) along the way. Meanwhile, Nim has to play Kevin McCallister from Home Alone to ward off some vacationing tourists who threaten the sanctity of the island. Ever since getting the Oscar nomination for 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine, Breslin has played in mostly ensemble family films or as a supporting character in chick flicks (which, to be fair, was what she was starring in also before Sunshine.) This movie is her chance to play a lead character, and she does a good job of it. It’s just too bad that the movie, co-written and co-directed by directed by Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, wasn’t more exciting. Don’t get me wrong…I liked it, but it wasn’t one that I could see myself picking up the DVD for once it is released. Breslin was spunky, Butler was heroic (at least in his one scene where he did anything physical), and Foster surprised me with her comedic abilities. I’m just hoping that Breslin will stretch her acting chops in the future, though that doesn’t look she’ll likely be doing it anytime soon (her next role will be the title character in the July release Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, the first theatrical movie based off the popular American Girl doll collection.)
Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey) is a 37-year-old career woman who has just been promoted to vice president of development for a Philadelphia-based organic food company called Round Earth, owned by a New Age hippie named Barry Steingart (Steve Martin.) The biological clock has finally kicked in though, and she’d really like to have a baby. With a million-to-one chance of getting pregnant, and adoption taking at least five years, she consults Chaffee Bicknell (Sigourney Weaver) who, for a fee of $100,000, specializes in matching women like her with surrogate moms (ironically, Chaffee, being much older than Kate, has a newborn already that she conceived in the old fashioned way.) Kate’s disapproving mother, Rose (Holland Taylor), who doesn’t agree with her “alternative lifestyle” (a.k.a. being single at the age of 37), doesn’t like the surrogate idea, while her married sister, Caroline (Maura Tierney), who has two kids of her own, is behind her all the way. After doing an extensive background check, Chaffee pairs Kate with Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler), who is a little white trash, but a relatively nice person. Angie is sort-of married to her common law husband Carl Loomis (Dax Shepard), who is really looking out for that paycheck. Kate’s fertilized egg is then implanted in Angie, and Kate begins baby proofing her apartment. Meanwhile, Kate is opening a new store in a rebuilding neighborhood. While scouting locations in the neighborhood, she meets Rob Ackerman (Greg Kinnear), the former corporate lawyer-turned-owner of an independent fruit drink shop called Super Fruity Juice (the poor guy has to not only compete with the beloved Jamba Juice franchise, but his shop’s name and logo looks a little gay.) After a little bit of flirting, they start dating…but she is struggling with telling him about her arrangement with Angie. Speaking of Angie…she has dumped Carl (he was cheating on her) and moved in with Kate. She becomes a huge slob while staying there…and she feels guilty that she isn’t really pregnant (the first implantation didn’t take, and Carl forced her to lie for the money.) Her only confidant is the doorman Oscar (Romany Malco), who disapproves of her lying to Kate. This was a cute little movie…but somehow I think that it would have been better if Fey herself had written the script. Instead, it became the directorial debut for screenwriter Michael McCullers (“Saturday Night Live” staff writer and screenwriter for the last two Austin Powers movies.) Fey and Poehler have great chemistry together (they had better…since they shared the “Weekend Update” desk together for years.) Martin was a highlight in his very small role, along with Malco. Everyone else was just standard (but essential.) Kinnear played an acceptable love interest for Fey, but the best relationship is still between Fey and Poehler. Poehler hasn’t done a lot of writing, but I bet a collaboration on a future script together might be hilarious. As for this movie, as I said…it was cute and I really liked it…but there was so much untapped potential for more.
Jonathan McQuarry (Ewan McGregor) is an accountant who works as an audit manager for various firms…which is a lonely existence for him. When he meets a charming and debonair lawyer named Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman) one night when the two are working late in the same building, they become fast friends while smoking a joint together. Jonathan accidentally ends up with Wyatt’s phone and vice-versa…but Wyatt can’t get it back right now because he is London for business. He lets Jonathan use the phone in the meantime, and using it comes with a special perk, because it’s filled with the numbers of various members of The List…a sex club where members call others for an evening of casual and anonymous sex, no strings or commitment attached. He is nervous and confused at first, but after having sex with a Wall Street analyst (Natasha Henstridge, 1995’s Species) and another older Wall Street Belle (Charlotte Rampling), he really gets into it. Things get complicated when a woman who calls herself S (Oscar-nominated Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain), whom he previously ran into on the subway, turns out to be a member…he wants to take things a little slower this time with her. After a rendezvous in a hotel room, Jonathan goes out to get some ice, but when he gets back to the room, he finds blood and S missing. He is knocked out, but when he comes to, he tries to tell the police that S is missing. Police Detective J. Russo (Lisa Gay Hamilton) doesn’t believe his ludicrous story, so he sets out to find out what happened to his dream girl. If you’ve seen the spoilery trailers, you know that Jonathan is set up…and I won’t spoil things any further. I just find it odd that a movie that involves a sex club is so un-sexy. Rampling was hot in 2003’s Swimming Pool, but in this one, she just looks old. To be honest, Williams has never screamed “sexy” to me…even when she was playing the sexpot in the WB’s “Dawson’s Creek.” McGregor and Jackman do an okay job, but they are trying hard to act in an erotic thriller that is neither erotic nor thrilling. I think that the only one who was deceived was the movie-going audience.
Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? Review Documentarian Morgan Spurlock decides to put away the McDonald’s hamburgers that he munched on for 30 days in 2004’s Super Size Me and take on a bigger threat… terrorist Osama bin Laden. The reason for doing this is spurned on by the news that his professional vegan chef wife Alexandra Jamieson is pregnant with their first child (a boy who is later born near the end of the movie and is named Laken.) He feels like it’s his responsibility to find Osama to make the world that his new son will be born in a little safer (and besides…he needs to make a new movie to bring in the money to feed that baby.) What he would do if he found him is anybody’s guess…but whatever. He gets all the shots needed before traveling, takes a self-defense course, and takes a language course in Middle Eastern languages. He goes to Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan to search for Osama. He tries various methods to find him, like asking people in malls, asking US military soldiers, and even looking him up in the local phone book…and not to spoil anything, but he doesn’t find him. He does get a chance to point out that the extremists in the Muslim world are not the majority of all Muslims. They are regular people like you and me, according to Morgan’s findings. I’d normally say “no duh,” but I’m sure there are some ignorant Americans who are threatened by anyone with a Middle Eastern heritage. Morgan lays parts of the movie out like a video game, which was entertaining (at least for me, who felt like political documentaries as last year’s Oscar nominee No End in Sight was as dry as toast without butter.) Overall, it didn’t impress me quite as much as Super Size Me or even an average episode of his FX TV show “30 Days” (which finally comes back for its third season in June.) Maybe I just have a bias against political documentaries, because they bore me in general. At least Morgan tries to make it interesting. Like he did with Super Size Me, he tries to make it fair and balanced (though he does discuss the various Middle Eastern dictators the US has been in bed with over the years in the name of trying to achieve peace.) We may never find Osama, but at least I’m be looking forward to Morgan’s next documentary (and the upcoming new season of “30 Days”)…provided it isn’t a political one.
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