There is nothing redeeming about this movie, which I unwittingly slogged through out of curiosity and shear boredom.  Terrible story, boring action, hammy acting, etc.  For sure there was a good movie to be made, but director Stephen Summers didn’t do it.  Really, if you have to watch this movie, watch it for Joe Gordon-Levitt’s delicious turn as Cobra Commander/The Doctor.

How could Stanley Kubrick see so far into the future to realize that nearly fifty years later we would still be worrying about the bomb? After watching this film for the second time in my life, thanks to the great film series at MoMA and Target’s Free Fridays, I am surprised that we are still here.

This film has so many possible situations that could happen at any moment, the surprise is that we still exist. Sadly, Mr. Kubrick does not. Neither does Mr. Sellers who turned in three of his finest performances in this film. If you walked into this movie without knowing the background, you would not know him in any of his roles.

The quick synopsis of the film is that a loony general, Sterling Hayden in his best role, third down from having control of “the button” has made a move that is irreversible, even by the milquetoast president who should be in charge but is more concerned with being polite to the drunken Russian Premier. General “Jack Ripper” is concerned about the Russkies taking our “precious bodily fluids” in a most uncomfortable scene that comes together at the close of the film. Another loony general, superbly played by the late George C. Scott, seems to be the only sane person in this crew – and this is just after he put his sexcapades on hold for his country. Scarily, he reminds me of Glenn Beck in more ways than one. He makes some kind of sense but you still know he is nuts.

The film was released during the early days of the LBJ reign and before we had gotten to the point of blaming the innocent men and women in uniform for the sins of this country’s fathers. In other words, the men in uniforms below generals come off as just following orders – even if they are dispensing destruction, they are still heroic. It is an amazing piece of filmmaking when a director can make you feel a bond between nameless men in a tough situation. Slim Pickens and James Earl Jones in key roles leave more of an impression than you would expect.

The Dr. Strangelove of the title is probably the most minor role in the film but one that is at once funny and scary. I recommend this film to everyone who has a sense of sarcasm but not to those who feel the “America wrong or right” sentiment that seems pretty tired right now. In the honor of full disclosure, the final scene will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Director: Stanley Kubrick Released 1964
Starring: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, James Earl Jones, Slim Pickens, Sterling Hayden
Museum of Modern Art, NYC film Series

And it isn’t pretty, especially for a movie which is heading towards an opening weekend gross of ~ $60M.

“G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” is a 118-minute animated film with sequences involving the faces and other body parts of human beings. It is sure to be enjoyed by those whose movie appreciation is defined by the ability to discern that moving pictures and sound are being employed to depict violence. Nevertheless, it is better than “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

Movie Web got their hands on three clips from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which debuted at Cannes and opens stateside August 21. 

Slashfilm has compiled some early buzz from the film, based upon Tweets and reviews, after it premiered at Cannes. 

Here are a few examples of what people are saying:

Total Film’s Jonathan Dean : “Much of Basterds felt flat, with a schizophrenic spaghetti western style that blasts Ennio Morricone at the start and then David Bowie later on.” … “Enjoyable? Sure. But for 2 hours and 40 minutes it’s a big ask to keep brattishness exhilarating.” … “well worth watching and admirably ambitious and single-minded,” … “Inglourious Basterds will split viewers.”

empiremagazine: Glorious Basterds, as it turns out… very, very good, subverting expectations at every corner. Should make Michael Fassbender a star – C It’s utterly unpredictable. When it looks like going one way, it twists the other, & the ending… so audacious it provokes giddy laughter. Christoph Waltz, as Jew Hunter Hans Landa, is a revelation. Shoo-in for Best Supporting Nom. Looks like evil Rob Brydon too. All performances are uniformly grand.

Sounds like it’s a good flick, but nothing special, as exemplified by these two remarks:

gkilday Basterds turns out it’s the grindhouse version of “Valkyrie”

TVCalling: Bottom line of Basterds: entertaining but nothing ground-breaking

So Paramount pulled a fast one last night in Austin, Texas and instead of showing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the Alamo Drafthouse treated the audience to JJ Abrams’s Trek reboot in its entirety. 

All in all, it seems as if most people felt this was a solid, breezy summer tentpole movie.  Exactly what you want, but unfortunately nothing more. 

MORE »

Roger Ebert is the first non-internet film critic to fall in love with Zack Synder’s Watchmen.  Why is that significant? 

Because it’s difficult to take anyone’s opinion on this movie seriously if they have a vested interest in it’s success. 

Which means, anyone who grew up reading comic books, wants to see more comic book movies made, who is apart of geek culture, or worships at the alter of Alan Moore, will have their opinion skewered. 

But Ebert?  He professes he’s never even read the book.  After seeing it twice, it’s still a 4/4 movie for him. 

Inside many superhero stories is a Greek tragedy in hiding. There is the godlike hero, and he is flawed. In early days his weaknesses were simplistic, like Superman’s vulnerability to Kryptonite. Then Spider-Man was created as an insecure teenager, and comic books began to peer deeper. Now comes the “Watchmen,” with their origins as 1940s goofballs, their development into modern costumed vigilantes, and the laws against them as public nuisances. They are human. Although they have extraordinary physical powers, they aren’t superheroes in the usual sense. Then everything changes for Jon Osterman, remade after a nuclear accident as Dr. Manhattan. He isn’t as human as Batman, but that can be excused because he isn’t human at all.

He is the most metaphysically intriguing character in modern superhero movies. He not only lives in a quantum universe, but is aware that he does, and reflects about it. He says, “This world’s smartest man means no more to me than does its smartest termite.” He lives outside time and space. He explains that he doesn’t see the past and the future, but he does see his own past and his own future. He can apparently go anywhere in the universe, and take any shape. He can be many places at the same time, his attention fully focused in each of those places. He sees the big picture, and it is so vast that it’s hard for him to be concerned about the fate of the earth.I wonder how many audience members will know much about quantum mechanics. Some will interpret it simply in terms of Dr. Manhattan’s powers. It’s one of those story devices like the warp drive in “Star Trek.” Dr. Manhattan, however, views it in a much more complex way, from the inside, and apparently in terms consistent with current science. So let’s ask what we understand about quantum mechanics. We’ll start with me. I understand nothing.

I’m still skeptical, but the light is slightly brighter.

Yes, Will Wheaton, beloved geek actor/writer (the highest praise I could give someone) saw Watchmen last night and I don’t know why but I trust him.  I do.  He listens to Dungeons and Dragons podcasts and was the star of my favorite movie ever (I suppose we can debate whether or not River Phoenix was truly the star of Stand By Me) and for godsakes he was Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: TNG.  He’s a true geek and he has just calmed me down.

I know a lot of people want to know about Watchmen, so I’ll just cut to the chase right away: It’s the best movie inspired by a graphic novel that I’ve ever seen. It could have gone wrong in a thousand different places, and it didn’t. I’ve wanted to see this movie for twenty years, and it was entirely worth the wait. Hear me now, my fellow geeks: you have nothing to worry about. Watchmen is fucking awesome.

Now, the entire story…

You probably want a few more details than that.  We will try not to spoil it, but it sounds like Zack Snyder has delivered the real deal Holyfield on this one.

Now, listen, I know that we live in a world where we’ve endured Ang Lee’s The Hulk, Spiderman 3, both Fantastic Four movies, and Indiana Jones Gets Raped Repeatedly While We Are Forced To Watch In Horror, so I think it would be really strange if we weren’t worried and apprehensive about something that already means so much to us, but I hope this will calm your nerves until the movie is released: Watchmen is faithful to the book. It respects the book. I swear by the beard of Zeus, it feels like the book. Yes, there are some cuts, but they serve the release and don’t disrupt or betray the narrative at all. Yes, they made a change to something that’s a pretty big deal in the book, but it doesn’t matter; what they did instead accomplishes exactly the same thing, and it does it perfectly. There is some of the Zack Snyder signature slow motion, and though it’s a little heavy in the very first scene (which worried me) it isn’t overdone throughout the movie at all, and I found it to be pretty cool and entertaining.

Lost amid the debate over whether or not Joaquin Phoenix is on drugs, going crazy or having a laugh at our expense is that his swan song movie – another team up with director James Gray – is actually pretty good. 

Two Lovers, writes New York Magazine critic David Ansen, is actually worth watching simply for Phoenix’s portrayal of Leonard, a suicidally depressed Jewish man who moves back in with his parents.  

“Although Paltrow is radiant (and she nails the character’s ditzy sense of entitlement), it’s Phoenix’s movie. He is, once again, stupendous, and stupendous in a way he has never been before: His face is a graceless blob, his eyes searching for something, someone to define him. “ 

If this is his last acting role for a bit, then it sounds like a good way for his career to be remembered by. 

“The picture hits little poetic notes that resonate with truly on the conditions of longing and loss; a shot of Paltrow approaching Phoenix from a shadowed alley way; the look that Leonard’s mother (Isabella Rossellini) gives her son as she bids him a farewell he didn’t know she was expecting; the sight of a leather glove almost getting drawn out to sea by the Coney Island tide,” writes Glen Kenny. ”Turning away from the crime-steeped mileus of his previous features, Gray aims for a kind of deliberately ache-filled romanticism that no other filmmaker I can think of is particularly interested in today.” 

With Phoenix’s antics growing stranger by the week, some are saying the wrong Phoenix brother died.  But the real shame of it all, would be another talented actor from the same family pissing it all away.

Sure, it’s overlong and slightly boring, but it looks pretty.  David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the first time Fincher truly disappointed me. 

A week after taking in the flick, there’s two sticking points I can’t get over.  MORE »

Words can’t even begin to describe the agony in store for you by watching this movie.  At 103 minutes long, it’s 103 minutes too long.  The problem begins with the tone.  There’s a good movie in here, but director John Moore couldn’t decide between a gritty cop drama and a psuedo-Sin City-esque escapist entertainment.  If he choose one over the other, this might have been watchable.

Also?  It’s possible playing the videogames might have aided in my enjoyment of this film.

Sam Mendes’s Revolutionary Road was sorely overlooked at the Academy Awards, especially given that Kate Winslet wasn’t even nominated as Best Actress for her performance (though she was for The Reader).

But it’s a wrenching movie that sticks to your soul, long after the credits have ended.  There aren’t many movies that do that, let alone ones in 2008.  It’s a suburban Kafka tale, about a marriage in crisis.  It begins with Frank and Alice open to the possibilities of love and adventure but that moment is brief; it isn’t long before they are arguing at each other for silly reasons.

Revolutionary Road essentially begins in the middle of a petty squabble and slowly dissolves into an existential battle for the soul of a marriage.  It isn’t pretty.

Mick LaSalle of the San Fran Chronicle outlines the reasons why the movie was his top choice of the year in a succinct and direct manner.  Every point he makes is spot on.  This is a fully realized masterpiece, a movie that begs to be watched in monochrome.  MORE »

Danny Boyle is one of those filmmakrers, who when you look at his impressive CV, wonder how is it that no one mentions him in the discussion for best filmmaker alive.� He might not warrant that title, but he at least belongs in the conversation, right?

With the exception of The Beach and the final act of Sunshine he’s had hardly a misstep to his career, which began with his first feature film in 1995.� Even his lesser films Alien Love Triangle and Life Less Ordinary have a certain charm to them.� But it’s his major works like Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, and Millions which warrent his reputation.� He always manages to go against the conventional grain and breath new life into genre material.

His latest flick, Slumdog Millionaire, which was picked up by Fox Searchlight and Warner Brothers, debuted this weekend at the Telluride Film Festival and has gotten boffo reviews.� The movie took film journalists by surprise, but has left the greatest impression.� Most people were expecting the snippets of David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to knock their socks off, but that movie fizzled.� It seems like Danny Boyle’s movie is at the top of everyone’s list of favorite flicks from the festival.

The movie, based upon the book Q and A by Vikas Swarup, tells the story of Jamal Malik, an illiterate boy from the slums of Mumbai who makes it to the final question of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.� No one believes he could have answered any of the questions without cheating, but through the use of flashbacks we learn how Malik came to learn those trivia questions.� We also learn that he isn’t on the game show for the money, but rather to reconnect with the girl he loves from childhood.� She watches the show religiously.

Slashfilm was surprised he liked the movie as much as he did, writing: “The police arrest and torture the 18-year-old, hoping to uncover some kind of illegal motivation, but instead they get the heartwarming story of his life so far. And that�s why Danny Boyle�s Slumdog Millionaire is really clever. The film is not really about winning 10 or 20 million rupees on Millionaire, it�s a love story, told through flashbacks.”

I’ve been trying to find some bad reviews, but instead I get nothing but lines like this from Alex Billington at First Showing, “However, it’s still one of the most excitingly cultured mainstream films that’s all about life, love, and destiny.”

Or how Steven Zeitchik is comparing it favorably to Little Miss Sunshine and Juno, writing that he wouldn’t be surprised to find box office or Oscar success for the film.

The list goes on and on from Cinematical’s raving review to Variety’s Todd McCarthy writing, “Driven by fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, �Slumdog Millionaire� is a blast. Danny Boyle�s film uses the dilemma of a poor teenager suspected of cheating on the local version of �Who Wants to Be a Millionaire�� to tell a story of social mobility that is positively Dickensian in its attention to detail and the extremes of poverty and wealth within a culture.”

It is both exciting to see that Danny Boyle may have truly hit one out of the park, one that may become embraced by more than just film freaks.� There is no trailer yet for the picture, but it’s scheduled for a November 28 release date.

Perhaps John Cusack should’ve kept only one Stephen King adaptation on his resume, unfortunately, he made this turd of a movie.� If you’ve never watched John Cusack go crazy in a hotel room for two hours, I suggest you keep it that way.

On the bright side there was one moment when Sam Jackson shows up in the hotel minibar and I thought, you know my refrigerator could use a mini-Sam Jackson to hand me groceries and make my lunch in the morning and just, you know, raise the awesomeness of my otherwise condiment-laiden ice box.