Year:  2010
Genre:  Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield, Max Minghella, Josh Pence, Armie Hammer Jr, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones, Joseph Mazzello, Rooney Mara, Wallace Langham
Director:  David Fincher
Run time:  120 minutes

     I must admit that I had some misgivings going into The Social Network, despite all the Oscar buzz that surrounds the movie.  I just had absolutely zero interest in a movie about the founding of Facebook, no matter how much drama surrounded the event, or how big a douchebag Mark Zuckerberg really was.  Of course, I’m on facebook.  Everyone is on facebook.  But I don’t care about facebook.  I use it occasionally, check it once a week maybe, and it hasn’t really changed my life in any significant way.

     That being said, I don’t imagine this movie was made for the people who play Farmville and engage in Mafia Wars and poke others constantly.  There are, of course, people who live on facebook.  To such an extent, I imagine, that they would be less likely to leave their house and rent this movie, much less see it in the theatre.

     As it turns out, the movie is terrific.  It’s a college movie that pits the social outcasts against the babe-magnet jocks – but not in the manner of Revenge Of The Nerds or Animal House.  The Social Network is far more subtle than that.  After all – this takes place at Harvard, not at some invented frat-boy college.  When I saw the orgy-esque scenes of debauchery at the exclusive, elite Phoenix club on campus, I wasn’t sure whether that really was the party, or if it was Mark Zuckerberg’s imagination thinking that’s how an exclusive Phoenix party would look.

     The movie starts out with an incredible, fast-paced and wonderfully written break-up scene between Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and his girlfriend (Rooney Mara).  Zuckerberg is one of those geniuses who just can’t understand why other people don’t just kneel before his obvious intellectual superiority.  He is so smart, yet so clueless in almost every line in the scene that it is obvious why Erica was attracted to him, and why she no longer likes him.

     After he gets dumped, Zuckerberg returns to his dorm room, writes some incredibly mean-spirited things about Erica (still believing she must be crazy to have dumped him), and then he gets drunk and creates a website where students at Harvard can rate the relative hotness of the women of Harvard.  The site is so popular that it crashes the servers, and Zuckerberg becomes an overnight celebrity on campus.  More infamous than famous though, as women all around the school (understandably) hate his guts.

     As the movie goes on, it flashes back and forth between a hearing dealing with two lawsuits against him and the building of the facebook empire.  Throughout, Zuckerberg is a smug genius who sees himself above everyone else, including his only friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield).  The underlying tone is one of class warfare.  Zuckerberg is desperate to be considered one of the elites, to be asked to join the exclusive campus clubs, but he expects that respect to be handed to him.  When Eduardo gets tapped to join the Phoenix club, Zuckerberg reacts with passive-aggressive backhanded putdowns to mask his own jealousy.

     I won’t go into detail about the rest of the movie.  Justin Timberlake shows up as Sean Parker, the creator of Napster, who manages to worm his way into the Facebook inner circle thanks to Zuckerberg’s adulation.  Timberlake is great, portraying a flashy, smooth talking charmer with nothing underneath.  Garfield is terrific too – as he is slowly forced out of the company by Parker and Zuckerberg, he seems more miffed at the loss of his friend than he is at the loss of his involvement in the company.

     But the heart of the movie is Eisenberg.  I have always liked Jesse Eisenberg, but he seems to always play the same character.  Much like Michael Cera, who is very good as well, but rarely deviates from his awkward teenager persona.  In this case, Eisenberg doesn’t change his screen personality all that much – it’s the same socially awkward outcast he usually plays, just with more underlying hostility and rage.  As it turns out, he is just the perfect actor for the part. 

     As we’ve seen in previous years, when a part seems too perfect for an actor, that actor rarely gets the Oscar (see: Tom Cruise – Jerry Maguire).  But Eisenberg deserves serious consideration, as his performance is every bit as good and as convincing as say, Colin Firth in The King’s Speech.  I don’t think The Social Network deserves the Best Picture.  But it certainly deserves the screenplay award, and should get a long look for Fincher as Best Director.

Year:  2010
Genre:  Horror
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Grace Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas
Director:  Matt Reeves
Run time:  115 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     It was a smart idea to cast Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Grace Moretz as the two stars of Let Me In, on DVD February 1st from Alliance Films.  Both Smit-McPhee (The Road) and Moretz (Kick-Ass) are accustomed to playing dark characters beyond their years in recent movies.  And both are wonderful in this film.

     But what most people will be wondering here is not how good the young actors are, but rather how well the film holds up to the international hit Let The Right One In.  Let Me In is a direct remake of the amazing Swedish film.  And the answer is – no.  The American version is not as good.  But…it’s very close.  Thanks to Smit-McPhee and Moretz, and the haunting pace of the film, Let Me In stands on its own as a very good horror flick.

     Young Owen (Smit-McPhee) is viciously bullied at school.  As in most movies of this nature, the bullies are cartoonish – their physical assaults and savage taunts of this boy could not help but be noticed by someone in authority somewhere.  Bullying at school is a problem these days because it rarely manifests itself in actual physical beatings, at which point the schools can do something concrete about it.

     But at least we understand Owen’s bitter, angry outlook at the world.  He goes to school and gets savagely, mercilessly attacked every day.  Then he goes home and his mom seems to barely notice he exists.  She is not exactly an appropriate confidante for this young kid.  I was never sure why she was so unavailable (and almost not in the movie at all – she’s more like one of those off screen adults in a Peanuts TV special who speak in trombone voices).

     So it’s natural that Owen feels a certain kinship with Abby (Moretz), the little girl who has just moved in next door and who wanders about at night just as Owen does.  Abby realizes that they both have another underlying connection – Owen harbours an intense desire to hurt the bullies who are hurting him, and Abby has her own vicious streak in that she’s a vampire.

     Not, of course, a vampire in the sparkle-shitty Twilight sense, or the romantic-ridiculous Vampire Diaries sense.  Abby and her companion-protector (Richard Jenkins) are more like the secretive murderers-next-door in a Hitchcock movie.  They try to protect their secret, but when Jenkins suddenly disappears Abby must make it on her own.  Now she and Owen are pretty much alone in the world.

     The one major problem I had with the American version of the film was that it really danced around one of the most interesting premises in the whole movie.  The idea that this girl appears to be a 12-year-old, but is really much older.  And that Owen IS 12 years old, and of course very curious about sexuality and the like.  All we get here is a couple of shots of him spying on the hot neighbour next door having sex, and a few awkwardly sweet scenes where Abby and Owen lie in bed together or change in the same room.

     In place of what could be a really interesting moral dilemma that haunts the movie even further, we get what American movies always deliver.  Less sex, less uncomfortableness, more violence.  Let Me In is definitely bloodier than its Swedish counterpart, but that does not make it any better.  In fact, it makes it worse.  But it’s still good, and the original is only marginally better.

Year:  2009
Genre:  Horror
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Val Kilmer, Dylan Neal, Paul McGillion, Camille Sullivan, Nels Lennarson, Chris Gauthier
Director:  Michael Oblowitz
Run time:  91 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Val Kilmer just isn’t the marquee name he once was.  He’s like the Petr Klima of the movie world.  For a while, he showed flashes of true genius, and turned in some brilliant performances in some big time movies (The Doors).  After a while though, those flashes were fewer and farther in between, and now he’s already a has-been, working in B-movies that go straight to DVD like The Chaos Experiment and The Traveler, out January 25th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  It’s the movie equivalent of washing out of the NHL and closing out your career in the Russian Elite League.

     The good news for Kilmer is that age isn’t as important in acting as it is in hockey.  So, were he to recapture some of that skill that made him a bona fide star, he could make a comeback much more easily than say, Petr Klima.  Or Allan Iverson.  That being said, The Traveler (or any other movie of its ilk) is not the movie that will make this happen.  This is strictly a paint-by-numbers horror movie, with very little to make it interesting, least of all Kilmer himself.

     As the movie opens, Kilmer walks into a small-town police station in nowheresville, USA.  He announces that he is there to confess to six murders.  But wait – there are exactly SIX cops working there that night!  It quickly becomes very obvious to everyone except the stupid cops that Kilmer is the spirit of a homeless drifter who was once beaten into a coma by…these very six cops!

     Because all we get throughout the movie is a series of flashbacks to the beating of this drifter, we know exactly how each cop is going to die – the one who put a rope around his neck will be hung by a rope around his own neck…the one who cut him with the scissors will…well, you get the point.  And so did I, nine minutes in.  All that’s left is to wait until the cops die, one at a time, in the exact manner in which I fully knew they were going to die, and wait for the end which might provide some respite from the tedium.

     But then it doesn’t.  The end is actually worse than the rest of the movie, as it tries to turn the entire tone of the movie, the nature of Kilmer’s character, and the nature of the cops around 180 degrees.  See, the reason these cops beat (and eventually killed) this drifter was that one of the cops’ daughters had gone missing, and they thought this guy was responsible.  The Big Revelation at the end apparently discounts everything we’ve seen throughout the movie, and might logically have come before all these cops were mutilated and killed.

     Either way, the entire movie hinges on Kilmer, relying on him to be creepy and scary.  He tries to accomplish this by talking softly and being quiet and not moving a lot.  Which is not, it turns out, scary at all.  It’s boring.  And since all the action in the film is telegraphed for twenty minutes before it happens, that’s boring too.  And so that’s what The Traveler is.  About as boring as gory horror movies get.

Year:  2009
Genre:  TV series, Cartoon, Kids
Country:  United States
Languages:  English, Spanish
Starring:  Caitlin Sanchez
Creator:  Eric Weiner
Run time:  98 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
Related reviews:  Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom, Super Babies Dream Adventure, Catch The Stars, Nickelodeon’s Animal Friends, Nickelodeon’s All Star Sports Day, Dora’s Christmas

     I had a moment, watching Dora’s Big Birthday Adventure (out January 18th from Paramount Home Entertainment), that I can describe only as “surreal”.  Normally, Dora has a song in each episode.  Usually, that song is a simple tune with repetitive lyrics, so that even the most functionally challenged children can sing along.  Here’s an example of the lyrics to a standard Dora song:

  “I’m the map
  I’m the map
  I’m the map
  I’m the map
  I’m the map
  I’m the map
  I’m the map,
  I’M THE MAP!!!!”

     That’s it.  Catchy, huh?  Then along comes Big Birthday Adventure and…a really, genuinely terrific song!  And I wasn’t on mushrooms or anything!  I actually, really, enjoyed the song Dora sang about her birthday.  Seriously.  Not joking.  It was a revelation, like seeing a supermodel working at Wal-Mart.  Now, this may have been a case of comparison shopping – let me explain.

     You know how sometimes you go into a McDonalds, and there’s a girl behind the counter and you think, holy crap she’s hot!  And then you realize, if you see her outside the McDonalds, that she’s just average.  But IN the store, surrounded by all kinds of ugly, she looks sensational.  And it could be the case with this song.  It may have just been SO unusual that it appeared better than it was.  I really don’t know.  And I’m not going to watch the DVD again to figure it out because the rest of it was the usual suck.  I’m the map…

     Anyway, if you want to figure out whether or not you agree with me about this particular song, which sounded almost like it could have been written and performed by Lights or somebody good, you’ll have to pick up the DVD.  I’ve searched the internet as best I can, and have not been able to find it.  And now I’m about to delete my browsing history so my wife doesn’t find out that I spent four hours searching Dora the Explorer online.

Year:  2009
Genre:  TV series, Cartoon, Kids
Country:  United States
Languages:  English, Spanish
Starring:  Caitlin Sanchez
Creator:  Eric Weiner
Run time:  98 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
Related reviews:  Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom, Super Babies Dream Adventure, Catch The Stars, Nickelodeon’s Animal Friends, Nickelodeon’s All Star Sports Day, Dora’s Christmas

     Only one major problems with Dora The Explorer: Super Silly Fiesta.  And that is that there is precious little fiesta.  See, fiesta means “party” in Spanish.  Dora told me that.  And Big Red Chicken is going to be hosting a Super Silly Fiesta, where things will be…silly.  But Dora is an Explorer, and she can’t just attend a party.  That wouldn’t fit with the formula the show has worked so hard to perfect.

     No, Dora must find her way to the party, with the aid of the map the map the map the map the map and so forth.  She must sing to a gate (a gate, mind you, that makes a very risque comment about underpants!)  She must also figure out what sound animals make for some reason.  A cow that says “tweet tweet”!  That’s so SILLY!  Well.  At least there’s something silly going on, because we never get to see what happens at the party.

     Dora shows up, see, and Big Red Chicken has misplaced the cake – on her own head!  Or…his own head…I’m not sure.  Anyway, that is the kind of silliness this fiesta has in store for us!  It’s going to be a wingding of immense proportions, and a silly terrific time will be had by all!  Except…the journey was all we got to see.  Sometimes the journey IS more important than the destination.  But if that destination is a Super Silly Fiesta, I think I would prefer to see THAT.

Year:  2009
Genre:  TV series, Cartoon, Kids
Country:  United States
Languages:  English, Spanish
Starring:  Caitlin Sanchez
Creator:  Eric Weiner
Run time:  98 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
Related reviews:  Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom, Super Babies Dream Adventure, Catch The Stars, Nickelodeon’s Animal Friends, Nickelodeon’s All Star Sports Day, Dora’s Christmas

     At least in the Super Babies episode of Dora the Explorer, Dora acknowledges that the bulk of the episode takes place solely in her imagination.  That’s positive…singing maps aren’t real, after all.  But the Super Babies themselves are irritating characters shoehorned into an already irritating show. 

     These babies, being Super Babies, can fly, and can burn holes in people with their laser eyes and can lift elephants and throw them at skyscrapers.  Or something like that.  I remember that they can fly.  And that they can sing along to Dora’s songs, yet inexplicably can’t speak.  You’d think if they were truly “super”, they would have a more extensive vocabulary than “gaga googoo”.

     And that’s what they say.  It’s ALL they say.  “Gaga googoo”.  I have spent time around babies.  They do NOT say “gaga googoo”.  That’s just silly talk invented by television.  And Dora is playing along, reinforcing the stereotype that this is what babies say.  It’s despicable.  Furthermore, the babies don’t really have much to do except float around in the air and watch Dora yell at the TV screen.

     I would like to see Dora expand her repertoire a little bit.  If she’s going to buy into stereotypes such as this one, why not go all the way and do something interesting?  Like maybe she could get kicked out of Arizona and sent to Mexico, and make use of The Map to return to the States so she can find The Backpack that contains The Papers?  That might be cool…

Year:  1991, 1992
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Andy Griffith, Clarence Gilyard Jr., Nancy Stafford, Don Knotts, Julie Sommars
Creator:  Dean Hargrove
Run time:  17 hours 10 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
Related reviews:  Matlock Season Four, Matlock Season Five

     I love me some Matlock!  Season Six, out January 25th from Paramount Home Entertainment, opens with a two-hour special episode that’s all about family.  See, Matlock is going back to his home town for some kind of celebration.  Andy Griffith returns to Mayberry!  Except that this town is far more backward and shitty than Mayberry ever was.  Everyone in the town (including his own family) hate Matlock!  Why?  Well, presumably because he left town and became a big success elsewhere.  Which is EXACTLY why I despise Alanis Morrisette.  You’re either going to be a BIG success HERE, or we disown you!

     Wait – actually, we’re the complete opposite, aren’t we?  We claim any moderately famous person who has stopped by to wipe their ass in Ottawa.  Did you know Matthew Perry was from Ottawa?  And Tom Cruise as well?  Norm McDonald?  Well…not really they weren’t.  They just stopped by with their families, ate a bowl of cereal or two, then moved on.  Maybe this is a big-city vs. small-town mentality.  Or maybe Mayberry has just become bitter and angry in 30 Andy-Griffith free years.  Was he the only person holding that town together and keeping it from being insane?  Maybe…

     Anyway, Matlock manages to show up in his home town in time for a murder, then he uncovers a conspiracy and points out the real killers, and turns the opinion of the town to his favour.  There’s a running gag where every single person in this town demands money of Matlock.  I guess he can afford it, since they make such a big deal of his “more than $100,000 fee!” all the time.  But I guess the denizens of Small Town America became lazy, shiftless freeloaders without a wise, guitar-playin’, fishin’ sheriff.  This must have made the old people watching Matlock in the early 90s very angry.  Almost as angry as it makes Matlock himself!

     There are other two-part episodes, like The Picture, in which Ben Matlock’s family pops up again.  This time it’s his clinically insane rageaholic cousin who has driven her husband away into the arms of a younger, hotter, less loony woman.  Then there is a photograph that leads to an investigation, and an investigation that leads to some murders, the murders lead to more investigations, which lead to more murders and a counterfeit money ring, and eventually to a trial and to Matlock solving the crime and saving the day.  There’s a two-parter called The Evening News, where a scheming bunch of newspeople start with a real estate scam and end with faking their own deaths, murders and payoffs to gangs.

     Then the season ends with another two-hour special (on DVD, a two-hour special lasts about an hour and a half).  This time, it’s family again – only this time, Matlock’s daughter shows up!  Wait…Matlock has a daughter?  Who knew?  The writers of the show were clearly aware that they had never brought up a daughter before, so they made sure it was just as surprising for all the characters on the show too – “Ben hardly EVER speaks of you”!  Which makes Matlock look like a pretty shitty father, and his attitude sort of mirrors the attitude of his lousy small town from the FIRST two-hour episode.  You left and did what you wanted to do and were a success!  That makes me so angry…

     Thankfully, Matlock doesn’t make me angry at all.  It’s a wonderfully silly diversion, and Andy Griffith is so fun to watch that I can put on many episodes in a row.  As I did when I was running on the treadmill for a couple of hours yesterday.  Which is why I know that some episodes are two-parters, and others are two-hour specials.  The difference between the two is that the two-parters have credits run in the middle.  And…that’s it.  Matlock rocks!

Year:  2009
Genre:  TV series, Cartoon, Kids
Country:  United States
Languages:  English, Spanish
Starring:  Caitlin Sanchez
Creator:  Eric Weiner
Run time:  98 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
Related reviews:  Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom, Super Babies Dream Adventure, Catch The Stars, Nickelodeon’s Animal Friends, Nickelodeon’s All Star Sports Day, Dora’s Christmas

     Dora the Explorer’s mom is pregnant!  Dora’s gonna be a Big Sister!  Wait…what?  Dora has a parent?  Dora is certainly smart, and well-versed in the ways of the world, and multi-lingual.  Or at least bilingual.  She can read a map with the best of them, and figure out how to get out of many difficult spots.  Although she always needs MY help.  But all these talents aside, Dora is clearly only about six years old.  And she has spent years traveling around the world, exploring, on volcanos and in jungles and around crocodiles and leopards and tigers, and she has never had any parental supervision!

     But all this time she has had a mother?  What responsible parent would ever let their child go traveling down the Amazon?  Or scaling Everest or diving the Marianas Trench?  Now, to be fair, Dora has never name-checked any of these places, that I can remember.  So maybe the desert is her sand box, and the jungle is the hedge in her backyard, and the fierce tigers are really stray neighbourhood cats.  Maybe.  But I don’t think so.  I think this is just straight bad parenting.

     And now, she’s going to be a Big Sister!  Which means this awful mom is going to be bringing another kid into the world, where she (or he) will be left to his (or her) own devices the moment he (or she) turns five years old!  And Dora, rather than calling CAS, is happy about it!

     There are also three other episodes on the DVD – Dora Saves The Game, A Letter For Swiper and Job Day.  They’re OK.  But I’m very concerned for the welfare of these children.

Years:  2010
Genre:  Comedy, Stand-up
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Dennis Leary, Lenny Clarke, Adam Ferrara, Whitney Cummings
Run time:  99 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Dennis Leary is right.  There is just something about the word “douchebag” that is wonderful.  It rolls off the tongue, it sounds so much less dreadful than what it actually is, and it conveys the exact feeling one has toward someone that one might consider to be a douchebag.  And there are many people on Dennis Leary’s list of douchebags.  Men who wear fanny packs, who wax their junk, who have pony tails (but aren’t in a band).  Also specific people.  Glenn Beck, Al Gore, Rush Limbaugh, Mel Gibson, Larry Craig…the list goes on.  And on.

     Leary opens the show with a rundown of the douchebag behaviour of all those on the list, plus many more.  His bit about Senator Larry Craig and his “wide stance” at the ol’ gay-pickup airport bathroom is hilarious if, at this point, a little dated.  I loved his segment on drugs and their side effects so much I included that video clip in this review.  It’s the kind of thing I have been saying for years, but never have I been as funny talking about it as is Dennis Leary.

     Leary is as caustic as ever.  Actually, I shouldn’t say he “opens the show” with his list of douchebags.  He doesn’t.  That’s just his first extended segment.  The show actually opens with a dubbed introduction by the pope, which then leads into a musical attack on the Catholic Church and the pope personally.  There are a couple of musical numbers in the show, but they lack the impact and humour of the stand-up bits.  (With the exception, of course, of the classic “A***ole” which closes the show.

     There are three guests who each do 15 minutes, and they’re all pretty good.  Whitney Cummings is a comic I’ve seen only on the Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff, and that whole thing was awful.  Here she’s crass and vulgar and talks about sex in a way few female comics do successfully.  Then Lenny Clarke comes on and tones it down with a bit about weight loss and texting.  Then he tries to talk about a donkey show in Tijauana, but comes off as the old guy trying to be hip to the young folk by talking about something filthy and quoting 40 Year Old Virgin.

     Clarke is about the same age as Leary, but seems decades older.  Maybe that’s because he plays Leary’s uncle on Rescue Me.  Or because he’s lived a longer, harder life.  But I don’t think he can get away with the same material Leary can still handle admirably. 

     Finally, we get Adam Ferrara, who mostly talks about his upcoming marriage, his girlfriend and her family.  Familiar ground for a comedian, but Ferrara has a solid delivery and enough fresh jokes to make it worthwhile.  Then Leary takes the stage again, and closes with what has, over the years, become his anthem.

     It’s a fitting end to the show – a song from 20 years ago, sung by an aging comedian in his 50s, but still as timely and caustic as ever.  The whole show sounds like it came from at least three years ago, as one of the most recent references is to Larry Craig, whose scandal began in 2007.  The rest of Leary’s material takes us WAY back, to mug shots of James Brown (1988), Lawrence Taylor (1996), Nick Nolte (2002), and Heather Locklear (2008).  The fact that it still makes me laugh is a testament to the man’s skill.  Which is as sharp as ever.

Year:  2010
Genre:  Drama
Country:  UK
Language:  English
Starring:  Charlotte Rampling, Nichola Burley, Richard Winsor, Rachel McDowall
Director:  Max Giwa, Dania Pasquini
Run time:  99 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     A brief synopsis of Streetdance goes like this…Carly has always wanted to dance. Now she does, with a street-dance “crew” and she’s happy. They are competing with the Best Street Dance Crew In England, and their leader (Carly’s boyfriend) just quit. Now SHE must lead them and they have to share rehearsal space with a BALLET company. The ballet people are stuffy and snotty and too cool for street dance. The street dancers are tough and hip and too cool for ballet. Will Carly be able to use BOTH ballet AND street dance to win the competition?  Will she find love again with the BALLET boy?

     And that’s it.  There is little else going on in this movie.  There’s the requisite I-just-found-out-the-guy-who-dumped-me-is-a-jerk scene, then the requisite dance-on-a-rooftop-scene where she ends up with the right guy, and the incredibly silly (but obviously necessary) scene where the ballet folk and the street dance folk dance at each other to show their mutual disdain.

     So it’s a formula.  The one that exists in every single dance movie ever made, and most singing and boxing and cycling movies as well.  Will Carly get over her ex?  Only if she sees him being a douche.  Will she realize that her crew must do their own thing to succeed?  Only if she has an epiphany.  Will she manage to combine ballet with street dance in time for the big competition?  Of course.  Will the ballet dancers make it to the Big Competition in time?  Of course they will.

     Most of the 99 minute run time here is filler.  And by filler, I mean dancing.  Some hard British rap song pumps through the speakers, then some people flip in the air and pose aggressively, all during a series of jump cuts and changing camera angles and so forth.  The movie was directed by a pair of music video veterans, and it shows.  The dancing doesn’t interest me at all, and the filler is even more boring than the substance of this movie.  I get it.  They pretend to be thuggish and wear their hats sideways.  Now DO something interesting.

     Then there’s the wonderful Charlotte Rampling, who appears to have wandered in from a set next door and become lost in this film.  She seems to be acting in another movie entirely – one that is GOOD.  She plays the instructor of the ballet students, teaching them and molding them and helping them break out of their rigid little boxes with the help of…gasp…street dance!  She fights with the benefactors and administration of the ballet school over this decision, and holds herself with dignity and class.  In a movie absolutely devoid of both.

     I will admit that, although I was bored out of my mind by the dancing and lulled into slumber by the acting and story, I WAS actually interested in seeing the final performance where Carly has managed to incorporate ballet into street dance and vice versa.  It’s gonna be off the chain, yo!  Or so I was led to believe.  This was going to revolutionize street dancing forever, and be totally new and fascinating and…no.  It just plain sucked.  Even the one moment I actually anticipated in this film, the one that was kept under wraps so it could have a Big Reveal, was underwhelming at best.

     The movie itself obviously doesn’t think so.  Like many other movies about thugs and toughs and dancin’ (like the TRULY dreadful Steppin’), it feels that the Big Dance Finale is the high point, and stands on its own.  And so it must end with the Big Dance Finale, and wrap up no loose ends whatsoever.  Do the ballet dancers make it into the ballet school for which they are auditioning?  Does Carly’s team win the competition?  Does her lousy ex feel the sting of comeuppance?  Then again, there are two more compelling questions I was asking – does anyone still care?  And what was Charlotte Rampling thinking?

Year:  2010
Genre:  Action, Crime, Thriller
Country:  Sweden
Language:   Swedish w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Annika Hallin, Lena Endre, Per Oscarsson, Peter Andersson, Jacob Eriksson, Sofia Ledarp, Johan Kylen, Tanja Lorentzon, Georgi Staykov, Michalis Koutsogiannakis, Anders Ahlbom Rosendahl, Mirja Turestedt, Niklas Hjulstrom, Hans Alfredson, Micke Spreitz
Eye candy:  Rapace, Hallin, Endre, Ledarp, Lorentzon, Turestedt
Director:  Daniel Alfredson
Run time:  148 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     The third installment in the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy is good.  It’s a solid, competent finale to a really good trilogy of films.  And it’s far better than the second movie, The Girl Who Played With Fire.  (In that it makes sense, and it’s possible to follow the plot.)  It is NOT as good as the first movie, which was spellbinding.  What sets this third one apart, however, is that it’s the ultimate performance in the series by Noomi Rapace, reprising the role of Lisbeth Salander for the third and (presumably) final time.  She has been great in all three, this time she’s masterful.

     More on Rapace in a minute.  First, a quick deconstruction on the books.  Because I think most people who were interested in these movies first read the books.  The Stieg Larsson trilogy has been hailed as a contemporary vision in feminist iconography.  Some of that makes sense – all rapists, molestors, abusers, stalkers and woman-killers get their comeuppance, and every woman in the novels is strong, powerful, brilliant, and totally together.

     But by the time I got to the third book, I realized a few things.  It all clicked in for me when Lisbeth Salander, almost inexplicably, bought herself breast implants.  Why would this girl, who ostensibly doesn’t care at all what anyone thinks of her appearance, get her boobs done?  Then the rest fell into place a little bit - consider this – every woman in the series is, yes, tough and smart and great at her job and better than most of the men.  But they are also…beautiful.  Every one of them.  And almost every one of these beautiful, powerful, brilliant women sleep with the same man.

     That same man is crusading investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist.  It is interesting to note that Larsson, who wrote the books, is himself an investigative journalist.  And has written a book where the one basically flawless character is Blomkvist.  He is so self-assured and charismatic that every hot woman he meets (and he meets only hot women) comes on to him and hops into his bed.  (It should be noted that they all come after him, he never makes any effort to initiate the proceedings.)  The women know about each other, and don’t care, as long as they can spend some time with this magnificent man!

     Blomkvist is, of course, entirely successful with every woman in his life, and none harbour animosity toward him except for those who fall in love with him.  (And how could they NOT fall in love with him, he’s flawless!)  But he is also successful beyond the wildest dreams of any investigative journalist in his professional life.  He and his magazine, Millenium, are constantly uncovering massive corruption scandals that reach the highest levels of Swedish society and government.  Quite a life, this guy has!

     On an unrelated note, I am currently preparing a series of screenplays that will revolve around an intrepid radio personality who solves crimes through his radio program, becomes a national celebrity with a syndicated program that earns him millions of dollars, and who bangs the hottest women on the planet two and three at a time, only to wake up each morning to see them cooking me – I mean him – breakfast.  It will be lauded by feminists everywhere!

     Back to the movie.  The thing I like best about the transfer of the books to the screen is that the films have (for the most part) done away with this unnecessary plot device.  The second and third movies made it clear Blomkvist was nailing his editor, Erika Berger.  But that’s about it as far as the sex goes.  It actually makes the story better and the movies are much more of a feminist fantasy than are the books, on closer inspection.

     And so now we get the final film, directed once again by Daniel Alfredson, and Noomi Rapace.  Rapace makes the absolute most of her final screen appearance as Salander, a character she has come to define by herself.  I could no longer read the books without picturing Rapace as Salander, and I will not be able to watch the American version of these films, the first one coming out this year, without making the comparison. 

     Although there’s less of a back story in Hornet’s Nest than in Played With Fire, more focus is put on Salander herself this time.  And although she spends time in only three locations in the movie – the hospital, the prison and the courtroom – it’s a welcome change that she gets the bulk of the screen time.  She is as emotionless as ever, as cold and brilliant and intense as I have come to expect.  But when things start going her way, and the evil men in her life start to receive their comeuppance one by one, the veneer cracks just a little. 

     What’s amazing about Rapace’s performance in those moments is that the little half-smile that plays across her face is NOT an indication that she is trying to hold back that emotion.  In most scenes like this, you think the character would be bursting into peals of laughter were she alone, but that she’s repressing the urge in the company of others.  Not Lisbeth Salander.  She is not capable of such subterfuge.  No, Rapace makes it clear that this little half smile is the most emotion Salander is capable of showing.  And therein lies the brilliance of these moments.  And of this movie.  And, to an extent, of the whole series.

     The trilogy is complete with the release of this third one on DVD and Blu-Ray January 25th from Alliance Films.  I highly recommend picking up all three.  Make a weekend of it or something.

Year:  2010
Genre:  Romance, Comedy, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Ryan, John Ortiz, Daphne Rubin-Vega
Director:  Philip Seymour Hoffman
Run time:  89 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Jack Goes Boating, out January 18th on DVD from Alliance Films, is the directorial debut of Philip Seymour Hoffman.  For some reason, that just makes perfect sense to me.  I can’t imagine another actor playing Jack, and I also can’t imagine another actor who would WANT to.  Jack is terribley uninteresting.  He drives a limo at the airport, has one friend, Clyde (John Ortiz), lives alone in his uncle’s basement, and apparently has never had a girlfriend.  He listens to “reggae”, because it’s happy music with a good vibe, but his walkman seems to contain only the song “Rivers of Babylon”.  And that’s about it.

     The movie opens with Jack being set up on a blind date with Connie (Amy Ryan), a co-worker of Clyde’s wife Lucy.  Connie is not much more interesting than Jack.  She works in the coroner’s office, and she has a lot of baggage.  During their first date, Connie spends the whole time talking about her father’s coma and subsequent death, with Jack and Clyde trying awkwardly to participate in the conversation.

    Jack is willing to pursue the relationship despite the strangeness of Connie, presumably because it’s the only chance he has had in a long time to be close to someone.  As he tries to get closer to her, he takes swimming lessons from Clyde (so he can take her boating and fulfill the promise made in the movie’s title) and cooking lessons from a man who until recently was having an affair with Clyde’s wife Lucy.

     This is the central idea of the film – Jack and Connie’s awkward, shy, burgeoning romance takes off just as the marraige of their friends Clyde and Lucy falls apart.  Clyde and Lucy are the most interesting part of the film, with their passive-aggressive relationship almost boiling over several times throughout. 

     Jack Goes Boating is one of the smallest films you will ever see.  And by that I mean that very little actually happens, there are very few different locales, and really only four characters.  It’s bleak, and it’s sad, but also uplifiting in a strange way, and the only reason it succeeds at all is that Philip Seymour Hoffman is utterly fantastic.  His Jack has basically shut himself off from the world, and only once in the movie do we even get the smallest inkling as to why, when he explodes in a rage.

     Also magnificent is Amy Ryan, who plays Connie as a damaged, fearful woman.  Toward the beginning of the movie, she is attacked on the subway, and throughout the film she is constantly sexually harassed by almost everyone around her.  At one point, I wasn’t sure whether the incidents she describes, or even the one we actually see, were really happening, or if they were just an overactive imagination combined with some old, buried trauma.

     In the end, it doesn’t matter.  Jack Goes Boating is small, and well-acted, and touching.  It’s also slow, and drags in spots, and relies too heavily on long shots of facial expressions.  I like it, but it’s certainly not a movie for everyone.  In fact, in many ways, I think this is a movie just for Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Not as a vehicle for his talent, which has been on display in better fare for years.  But rather as a tiny, personal project that is exactly the movie he wanted to make, and exactly the movie he wanted to see.

Year:  2001
Genre:  Romance, Fantasy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Meg Ryan, Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Breckin Meyer, Natasha Lyonne, Spalding Gray, Bradley Whitford, Paxton Whitehead, Philip Bosco, Kristen Schaal
Director:  James Mangold
Run time:  118 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films
Special feature:  Director’s cut (122 minutes)

     It’s easy to be cynical about Kate And Leopold.  And so I will.  The first thing that leaped out at me in this movie is that Liev Schreiber has been in a five-year (presumably sexual) relationship with his own great-grandmother.  I don’t think I’m giving anything away here.  The logical conclusion to this movie is absolutely obvious from the very beginning.

     Now, my own great-grandmother died about thirty years before I was born.  I never met her, have seen only a few pictures.  But were I to time-travel, I don’t think I could bring myself to have sex with her.  It would, of course, be very creepy.  Now, in Schreiber’s defense, he isn’t aware that he is sleeping with his own great-grandmother (Meg Ryan).  But once he realizes, is he not freaked out?  Does this not bother him in any way?  Wouldn’t his skin be crawling like that of Marty McFly when his own mom wants to give him a hand job?  Or are we just supposed to gloss over the whole thing?

     I think we’re supposed to gloss over this entire movie, frankly.  Thinking about it too much will just ruin the whole thing.  Like thinking about how Meg Ryan can go back in time, mother a child who will then father a child who will then mother Liev Schreiber, who will then have sex with Meg Ryan who has been brought into this world by her own mother, a woman who presumably has never had any contact with the Schreiber family tree in any way, and who also produced a brother for her (Breckin Meyer).

     So, anyway.  Kate And Leopold is, obviously, about time travel.  As a time-travel romance goes, it’s somewhere below The Time Traveller’s Wife and above Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time.  It opens with Liev Schreiber discovering a way to travel through time (it involves jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge – don’t think about it).  He goes back to 1867 to follow his great-grandfather around, the Third Duke of Albany (Hugh Jackman).  Accidentally, he brings the Duke back to his own time when he returns.  And silliness must therefore ensue.

     Some of that silliness is quite entertaining.  Usually, in these silly time-traveler movies, the “fish out of water” bits are the worst.  But Hugh Jackman manages to convey haughty dignity and chivalrous charm while doing the most mundane things.  A scene where he refuses to pick up the dog’s business is terrific.  And it’s to the movie’s credit that it doesn’t dwell too much on these details.  It’s to the movie’s discredit that it inserts the requisite chivalry-on-horseback scene, where Jackman steals a horse to chase down a mugger and inexplicably brings Meg Ryan along for the ride.

     I’m not a big Meg Ryan fan.  I think of her the way I think about a cat.  Like, it’s there, and it’s cute, but really it’s just part of the furniture and I don’t think about it much or notice it at all.  A dog, I like.  They play.  They lick you.  They bark and make their presence known.  Like Sofia Vergara.  Whereas cats, and Meg Ryan, are background noise.  And she is just that in Kate And Leopold.  One of her standard career-driven, waiting-for-love characters she has played so many times before.

     So what, exactly, does Hugh Jackman of 1867 see in this woman?  I would understand if he came to our time and encountered Angelina Jolie, or Megan Fox, or Alyssa Milano or Eliza Dushku.  Just listing some of my favourites… But Meg Ryan?  How is she any different from the women of his day, except that she’s a little bit more independant?  No, what has happened here is that she just happened to be the first woman he encountered in our time, and his pompous romanticism took over, whereupon he believed he was in love with her.  I, for one, did NOT believe it.  I was irritated by her.

     So the time-travel story is ludicrous and unbelievable, the central romance is flat, implausible and stretches credibility, and three of the four main characters (including Breckin Meyer) are useless.  What made me give this movie an average, 5 out of 10 rating and not a dreadful one?  Hugh Jackman.  His attitude toward the modern world provides the contrast with the ancient world that a movie like this must provide.  And he alone makes the movie entertaining at times, just watchable at others, even though it’s total fluff.

     One problem here though – none of these movies, ever, suggests that the modern world might actually be better than the old one.  In 1867, men were chivalrous, life moved leisurely, people had honour and morals, and no one insulted a lady.  See – it was better!  Something more could have been made of this film if more were made of the improvements in society since that time – women are now independant.  They can now vote.  They are societal equals.  Segregation is no longer an institutional edict.  The list goes on and on.

     But nothing about Kate And Leopold suggests the film makers are interested in making a point, or doing anything other than getting Jackman and Ryan together.  They SEEM to be making a point about commercialism and the crass nature of commercials, television, movies and advertising.  But sadly, they just prove their own point by making a crassly commercial film that seems to have been created by one of the very focus groups the movie tries to skewer. 

     Anyway, the Valentine’s Day Edition of Kate And Leopold comes out January 18th from Alliance Films, with a nice pink heart-covered cardboard slip case, along with several other movies – The Notebook, Sex and the City, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Backup Plan and Dear John.  Kate And Leopold is better than…half of those.

Year:  2010
Genre:  Comedy, Garbage
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Patrick Wilson, Jeff Goldblum, Juliette Lewis, Thomas Robinson, Caroline Dhavernas
Directors:  Will Speck, Josh Gordon
Run time:  101 minutes

     The three stars I’m giving The Switch are due entirely to Jason Bateman and Thomas Robinson.  Without them, this movie would be unwatchable.  Robinson is terrific as a neurotic little boy, and Bateman is the perfect compliment as his neurotic father.  The scenes where the two are together are the only good ones in the whole film.  However, even this relationship doesn’t make a ton of sense.  To believe it, you would have to believe that neuroses are genetically inherited traits.  Which stretches credibility a little.

     But not nearly as much as the rest of the movie.  Jennifer Aniston wants to get pregnant.  But for some reason, she has never, in her life, met a man willing to inseminate her.  Or, I suppose, one that was good enough to inseminate her.  Or something.  Implausible.  This character looks exactly like Jennifer Aniston.  I think she might be able to find a candidate or two.  So she selects a handsome burly man to be the sperm donor, presumably from a catalog?  Or something?  I understand this process when you go to the clinic, but then…

     There is a big, huge party to celebrate Aniston’s attempt to inseminate herself.  I don’t think anyone has ever done this, in the history of the world.  There are three guests of honour – Aniston herself, the sperm donor (who has, for some reason, been invited to the party with his wife), and his deposit, which is kept in a little cup in the bathroom in one of those things used to chill wine.  Does any of this make sense?  Not really, but it’s the only way to bring about the event around which the movie is based.

     That event is Jason Bateman, Aniston’s best friend, getting totally loaded and knocking over the sperm cup.  Not wanting to be found out, he replaces the sperm in the cup with his own seed.  In order to do this, he needs a visual aid (because, I guess, the scene would be much less funny without one?)  So he finds a magazine with Diane Sawyer on the front of it, and goes to town.  Then he passes out and forgets the entire night.

     This raises at least one more problem in logic.  I have been that drunk before.  I have passed out and forgotten what I had done the night before.  But whenever that happened, those memories are gone.  Lost forever.  You couldn’t walk up to me today and get me to remember a single detail of one of those nights.  And certainly, ten years later, I would have even less ability to recollect the events that took place while I was utterly blacked out.  But this is not only what I’m supposed to believe, it’s the central premise of the movie!

     When Aniston returns to town with her now grown son in tow, Bateman rekindles his friendship with her, and although they both are clearly meant for each other, they can’t get together because the formula of a movie like this dictates that they don’t profess their love until the final scene.  Also, there has to be a Big Douchebag Boyfriend thrown into the mix, so we have someone to dislike while rooting for the good guy.  The Big Douchebag Boyfriend in this case is the supposed Real Sperm Donor, and he’s a cartoon Douchebag.

     Also essential to the plot working out the way it is formulaically supposed to is that Bateman, once he (somehow) figures out what he’s done, he can’t ever actually tell Aniston, even when he is trying to do so.  Oh no – the phone rang, I couldn’t tell her then.  Oh, we can’t talk about this now, I have big news!  Hold that thought a minute…I have to…wash my hair…also if you tell me right now this movie won’t be able to fill an hour and a half!

     Aniston is good.  She’s not a great actress, she’s Jennifer Aniston.  And she fills the role of Bland Hot Chick In A Romantic Comedy nicely.  Bateman is terrific, but his talents are utterly wasted here.  And young Thomas Robinson is a memorable little boy, but when this movie ended, I was remembering the sour taste it left in my mouth more than I was remembering the stellar performance of a little boy.  I hope I get to see him someday in a movie that doesn’t suck.

Year:  2010
Genre:  Comedy, Garbage
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Stars:  Patrick Cavanaugh, Alex Mauriello, Brian Guest, Cameron Goodman, Phil Morris, Pauly Shore, Leslie Nielsen
Eye candy:  Goodman , Mauriello
Director:  Bill Corcoran
Run time:  94 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     I often find the least funny people to be very funny.  Especially when those powerfully unfunny people think that they are funny.  When unfunny people tell unfunny jokes, then laugh uproariously at their own material, I can’t help but find it hilarious myself.  There’s just something so fantastically lame about it that it makes me laugh.

     And if Stonerville were just a movie made by really unfunny people attempting to do comedy, it might work on that ironic (and admittedly very narrow) level.  But it doesn’t even do that.  You see, for me to laugh at a failed joke means that I have to understand what the joke was supposed to have been, or at the very least I have to recognize that a joke has been told.

     And THAT is the big problem with Stonerville.  I didn’t laugh once, and only a few times was I aware that what they were doing was supposed to be comedy.  The rest of the time, I was bombarded with non-sequitor skits about poker tournaments and commercials for fart-deflection products.  I figured they were supposed to be comedy pieces, but without any context or maybe a laugh track, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why they were supposed to be funny.

     A little later, I discovered that these non-sequitor bits were the internet videos being made by the main character, Slam.  And Slam’s girlfriend, and the hot new girl he meets, and everyone on the street seems to have seen these videos and they are SO FUNNY!  He gets 11 million hits per video on MeSpaceTube!  Hahahaha!  But…I’ve seen them.  And they are SO NOT FUNNY!  And they wouldn’t get eleven hits, let alone eleven million.  Because they are terrible, just like the rest of the movie.

     The worst thing about the film is not the fact that Pauly Shore appears every so often as a poker commentator.  This film is actually below par for a Pauly Shore vehicle, and deserves only a cameo appearance by the erstwhile Worst Actor Alive.  No, the sad thing is that THIS piece of shit is the great Leslie Nielsen’s last movie ever.  Now, nothing Nielsen has made in the past ten years has come close to Airplane or the Naked Gun movies.  Superhero Movie?  Slap Shot 3?  Come on.

     But it would have been nice if Nielsen hadn’t gone out with such a spectacularly putrid effort.  We all know Paul McCartney’s final album won’t be Abbey Road or Band On The Run.  But we hope it won’t be an affront to the entire art of music.  And Stonerville is an affront to everyone who has ever put even a modicum of effort into a film.