Fast and Furious

FAST AND FURIOUS (2009) - July 30, 2009
Another mediocre entry in the Fast and the Furious series; this one features the return of Vin Diesel, out to get revenge for the death of his girlfriend. Unfortunately, even the return of Toretto can't make up for the mediocre script and Justin Lin's shoddy direction. The film actually starts off with a surprisingly well made action set-piece involving the hijacking of a moving truck, but it's all downhill from there. It's really quite baffling how that scene can be so much better than the rest of the film -- all the other action scenes, featuring lots of close-ups and shaky-cam, are muddled and unexciting. The non-action stuff is equally mediocre, and as the film went on I was getting more and more bored. I was thinking that this was slightly better than the other two sequels, if only for the presence of Vin Diesel, but I gave Tokyo Drift two stars, which was probably too generous. *1/2

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

PAUL BLART: MALL COP (2009) - July 26, 2009
A mediocre action comedy about a dedicated mall cop who must defend his mall when it's taken over by a group of really non-threatening terrorists, this was pretty much unfunny all the way through. None of the jokes are particularly funny, and the action from the second half of the film doesn't fare much better; it's pretty much a failure from start to finish, though I was never entirely bored, and all the performances were fine. **

Orphan

ORPHAN (2009) - July 25, 2009
A silly but enjoyable film about a family who adopt a young girl, only to slowly realize that she is incredibly sinister. It was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who also directed the unspeakably awful House of Wax remake -- while far from perfect, this was a humongous step up from that. It was definitely too long at 123 minutes, and there was nothing fresh about it, but for what it was it was quite entertaining. ***

Public Enemies

PUBLIC ENEMIES (2009) - July 25, 2009
A dull film about famed bank robber John Dillinger, and Melvin Purvis, the man tasked with bringing him down. Featuring the flat, jittery, cheap-looking digital cinematography Michael Mann has become infamous for of late, this was an ugly film. Mann's surprisingly shoddy direction didn't help matters; it almost looked like he arrived each day on set unprepared, and simply commanded the cameraman to follow around the actors as close as possible. The whole film looked improvised and cheap. Even aside from that, the movie just wasn't very interesting -- it basically seemed like random vignettes from Dilligner's life leading up to his death. There was no real sense of momentum, nothing really moving everything forward. There were a number of compelling sequences (though not the shootouts, surprisingly enough) and I was never all-out bored, but I was never exactly enthralled, either. It's too bad, because the performances were all top-notch. **

The Sniper

THE SNIPER (2009) - July 24, 2009
A decent film about a disgraced ex-police sniper who aligns himself with a criminal to get revenge on his former unit. The plot was a bit convoluted, and the characters were thinly developed, but it was essentially entertaining and nice and short at under ninety minutes. Dante Lam's direction was a bit over-the-top, but it got the job done; the action, in particular, was quite well done -- the standout easily being the final sniper battle (which was, disappointingly, the only sniper battle in the film, but it made up for it by being super awesome). **1/2

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother

THE ADVENTURE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES' SMARTER BROTHER (1975) - July 22, 2009
A surprisingly dreadful film about the titular brother of Sherlock Holmes, who must solve a case involving a stolen document. Written and directed by the usually hilarious Gene Wilder, this featured jokes which were almost uniformly terrible; the film essentially feels like a poor man's Mel Brooks (from whom it's clear that Wilder took a lot of influence, putting it mildly). Brooks' broad style of humour tends to be hit-and-miss, but in most of his films there are enough big laughs to make up for the failed gags -- here, the humour was ridiculously broad and it never even gets a chuckle. *1/2

Bottle Shock

BOTTLE SHOCK (2008) - July 20, 2009
A really well acted film about a winery in Napa Valley in the 1970s, and a visitor from France who causes a stir. Featuring some top-notch performances from people like Alan Rickman, Chris Pine and Bill Pullman, and handsome direction from Randall Miller, this dragged in a few places but was mostly entertaining. ***

Under Siege

UNDER SIEGE (1992) - July 19, 2009
About an ex-Navy Seal who must stop a group of terrorists from taking over a battleship (ie. Die Hard on a boat), this was solid action film from a time when they were still making simple, effective action movies on a fairly regular basis. There was nothing particularly special about this film -- Steven Seagal was doing his usual cocky, laid-back badass shtick, Tommy Lee Jones was quite good as the flamboyant villain, and Andrew Davis' direction got the job done -- but it was enjoyable throughout, and a reminder that you don't need a lot of flashy camerawork and CGI to make a compelling action film. ***

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009) - July 18, 2009
Awful. About... I don't know, giant robots? The plot -- even more so here than in the first one -- is definitely secondary to the spectacle and the explosions and the seemingly neverending action sequences. Cram-packed with the type of juvenile humour that Michael Bay seems to love (the movie was officially dead to me once John Turturro made reference to a Transformer's scrotum) and horrible dialogue to match, I'm having a really hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that this was written by the same people who wrote the exhilarating Star Trek reboot. I can only assume that Bay himself had a hand in the actual writing of the script. Though I was never into the movie to any real degree, I wasn't all-out bored -- until they arrived in Egypt. Shortly thereafter began an excruciatingly long action sequence which just went on, and on, and on -- I can't even remember the last time I was that bored in a movie theatre. It was brutal. At some point during this scene I came to the realization that a bomb could have dropped and killed every single character, and I wouldn't have cared in the slightest. So awful. As far as Michael Bay's movies go, this wasn't quite as bad as the horrendous Bad Boys 2 -- but it's close. 1/2*

Ghost Town

GHOST TOWN (2008) - July 13, 2009
An enjoyable and well made romantic comedy from David Keopp about a man who gains the ability to see ghosts, and winds up helping a recently deceased man with his wife. The film featured really good performances all around, and was quite entertaining throughout. ***

Fanboys

FANBOYS (2008) - July 12, 2009
Hmmm. This movie takes what seems to be a foolproof premise (four friends, one of them dying of cancer, take a road trip to Skywalker Ranch so they can see Episode I before their friend dies) and pretty much squanders it with a healthy dose of lame humour and a low-rent vibe, mostly thanks to Kyle Newman's flat, styleless direction. I think I might have chuckled twice, but for the most part the jokes all fall flat, despite what must be the record for the most Star Wars references crammed into one film (which mostly just made me want to watch the trilogy again). The film doesn't fare much better in the dramatic moments, which are hackneyed and generally sitcom-level. The movie isn't all-out awful (it's basically entertaining) but as it turns out I guess there's a reason it took so long to come out. **

Face/Off

FACE/OFF (1997) - July 11, 2009
An above-average action film about a dedicated special agent who trades faces with a dangerous criminal (his arch-nemesis, who six years earlier killed his son) in order to get information about a bomb. There's nothing subtle about this movie, from the explosive, slow-mo filled action sequences to the emotional moments (which sort of feel like a slightly dialed down version of the over-the-top melodrama you find in many Chinese films). The movie features pretty much element that John Woo has become known for -- the elaborately choreographed gun-fights, the slow-mo, the dives with two guns blazing, the Mexican standoffs, the doves -- but it never really feels like all these elements are crammed in for their own sake. Somehow, despite the melodrama and the dialed-to-eleven action sequences -- either of which could have been a deal-killer under a lesser director -- it all really works, and is definitely John Woo's best American film. ***1/2

Bruno

BRUNO (2009) - July 10, 2009
Another documentary / scripted comedy from Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles, this time revolving around Bruno, a flamboyantly gay model from Austria who is trying to make it big in the States. Like Borat, this had its moments (I chuckled a few times) and was pretty much entertaining all the way through, though it was starting to wear out its welcome a bit by the end of its brief 83 minute running time. **1/2

The Girlfriend Experience

THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE (2009) - July 9, 2009
An aggressively dull film about the daily life of a high-class prostitute and her boyfriend, a personal trainer. The film doesn't contain even a hint of a plot, which isn't necessarily a problem, as Soderbergh is clearly going for a really low-key character study sort of vibe. The only problem is that the prostitute, her stupid boyfriend and all of the clients are not interesting in the least as characters. The dialogue, which is clearly mostly improvised, sounds authentic enough -- it consists almost entirely of the type of small-talk and random chit-chat that you tend to engage in with people you don't really know -- but it isn't even remotely interesting to listen to. Soderbergh has also assembled the film in a seemingly arbitrary non-linear fashion, which really only serves to heighten the "look how avant-garde I'm being!!!" factor. I guess I can see what Soderbergh was going for here, and maybe he even succeeded, but this film is just not for me. It felt like a succession of random scenes with no real cohesion, to the point where in the last half hour or so I honestly thought that each scene could be the last, and when it finally did end, it just felt arbitrary. Why that scene and not the one before it? Or the one before that? The movie looked very good, I will give it that; I definitely left the theatre with more respect for Steven Soderbergh the cinematographer, but less respect for Steven Soderbergh the storyteller. *1/2

The Shining

THE SHINING (1980) - July 8, 2009 (Fourth or Fifth Viewing)
Oh man, good stuff. A seriously awesome film about a man who takes his family to the remote hotel in which he's acting as the caretaker for the winter, who slowly goes crazy. Jack Nicholson is pretty much perfect as the husband and father who essentially goes completely insane, and Shelley Duvall gives what is probably her best performance as Nicholson's harried wife. And then there's Kubrick's direction, which is... do I even need to say it? Seriously. ****

ROAD TO PERDITION (2002) - July 7, 2009 (Third Viewing)
Wow! This was even better than I remembered it being, and I remembered it being quite good. About a mob enforcer who, with his eldest son in tow, seeks vengeance for the death of his wife and youngest son. I'm not sure if it occurred to me before, but this is essentially a revenge movie, which is probably one of the reasons why it's so good. It's also a mob movie, and a damn good one, as well as a movie about the relationship between fathers and sons. I can't possibly say enough about Sam Mendes' direction and Conrad Hall's sumptuous cinematography; I don't think there's a single frame of this film that doesn't look amazingly good. Thomas Newman's memorable and affecting score complements the visuals perfectly, and the performances are all pretty much perfect (Tom Hanks and Jude Law both give stellar performances playing against type). There's also a few scenes in this film, such as the final confrontation between Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, which easily rank among my favourites. Good stuff. ****