I’m taking a break from the Thanksgiving festivities to talk smack on the 15 movies I’ve rented over the past, oh, four months. Read on and get schooled.
RV – A poor man’s VACATION clone, starring Robin Williams as a bumbling father taking his dysfunctional family on a cross-country RV trip. You’d think real comic talents like Will Arnett or Cheryl Hines might save it, but the latter destroys all her CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM credibility by doing a robot dance during the end credits. I did appreciate the scene where Kristin Chenoweth played the tambourine with her breasts, however. The kids wanted to see this one; I relented (and regretted).
MARIA FULL OF GRACE – Or, as I like to call it, MARIA FULL OF HEROIN, since it’s about a poor Hispanic girl who wants to make some quick cash, so she agrees to be a drug mule. This entails swallowing dozens of condoms full o’ smack and then hopping on a plane to New York City. If you don’t cringe a bit when she poops one out and then washes it off, lubes it up with toothpaste and then reswallows it, then I’m guessing you’ve done it before. Catalina Sandino Moreno is sober and sympathetic as Maria, but I saw nothing in her performance that said “Best Actress nomination,” which is what she got.
THE MATADOR – One of the better movies I’ve seen all year, this unjustly ignored dark comedy stars Pierce Brosnan as a hit man and Greg Kinnear as the white-collar businessman who becomes a little too intrigued with the assassin when their paths cross south of the border. Rude, daring and above all very funny, it marks the high point of Brosnan’s entire career. Believe me when I say he was robbed of an Oscar nomination for this one. Oh, and anything with Hope Davis in it can’t be all bad (she’s the new M. Emmet Walsh)!
KISS KISS BANG BANG – And this one’s just as good as THE MATADOR. As much a love letter to old-school pulp as it is to pure unadulterated moviemaking, Shane Black’s Hollywood-set comic-mystery thumbs its nose at all the rules and wins on every level. I don’t remember when Robert Downey Jr. was this likable, and Val Kilmer’s someone I usually can’t stand, but he’s really good here in his role as Gay Perry. But the movie’s jewel is the heretofore unknown Michelle Monaghan – what a find.
AKEELAH & THE BEE – Despite some scenes ringing false, this is a family-friendly film that actually works, without pandering to adults or kids. Akeelah (the very good Keke Palmer) is an inner-city black youth whose only ticket out of her miserable environment (absent mother, gang activity) is her skill at spelling. Laurence Fishburne is commanding as the professor who takes her under his stern wing and teaches her to spell the shit outta everything. If you don’t feel even a tiny surge of emotion during the climactic spelling-bee championship, your name is Osama and the FBI would really like to talk with you.
FRIENDS WITH MONEY – I didn’t believe for a second that Jennifer Aniston would ever be friends with Catherine Keener, Joan Cusack and Frances McDormand. Not only is she seemingly an entire generation removed from them, but her character is a poor, pot-smoking maid and they’re all rich high-society types. But I guess that’s the point of the movie, and I liked it. It’s light, but amusing where most indie comedies are not, and doesn’t go the route you think it will.
STAY ALIVE – This is not only tied with ZOOM as the worst movie I’ve seen all year, but the worst movie ever associated with video games (and that includes SUPER MARIO BROTHERS, mind you). Here’s the story: Youths play a game in which if you die, you die in real life. It’s kind of like a FINAL DESTINATION, but utterly boring and starring kids whose faces you just want to kick in. Root for their deaths. You can rent the unrated version, which just means it’s longer, which just means it sucks more.
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING – Thanks, but no thanks. I’m astounded by all the critical praise being thrown at this one. Some good lines and little else highlight this rather empty satire whose bite is not as sharp as they say. Aaron Eckhart is fine as the tobacco company spin artist who tries to convince Americans to puff away, but the story doesn’t go anywhere. Katie Holmes gives the worst performance of her career (willing wife role aside) as a newspaper reporter. Headline: We don’t like you anymore.
THE OMEN – I’m one of the first people who will defend horror remakes, but even I have to cry foul on this one. Remaking Richard Donner’s ‘76 devil-kid classic isn’t a bad idea, but John Moore couldn’t be bothered to do anything interesting with it, so he goes for a near shot-by-shot remake that’s all high-gloss and tension-free. Liev Schreiber is no Gregory Peck, but Lord, he’s miles above ol’ Circleface (Julia Stiles), who busts the boundaries of credibility as a wife and mother, much less an adult. The kid is horrible (pouts do not equal scares) and the whole thing just pisses me off. You’d be better off watching the made-for-TV OMEN IV, and that’s not a pretty sight, either.
ARE YOU SCARED – No, I’m not, but I am aware that you’ve just ripped off SAW and made no attempt to hide the fact. A melting pot of obnoxious teens wakes up in a grimy factory and get caught in traps that just may mean the end of their lives (in other words, yes). What crazy cracker is making them play this twisted game? He’s not named Jigsaw, but he may as well be. Although this is SAW to a T, it’s not as ingenious (and I can’t believe I just wrote that). For straight-to-video horror, however, it’s a breezy watch. I didn’t fast-forward – let’s leave it at that.
SLITHER – James Gunn’s screenplay for DAWN OF THE DEAD kicked ass. His one for SLITHER, not so much. He also directs this B-movie homage, full of alien worm/slug things that take over human bodies in a bid to take over an entire rural town. Elizabeth Banks makes for an appealing heroine, but the jokes just aren’t all that funny, folks, and after a while, I got flat-out tired of it. It treads the same tongue-in-cheek territory NIGHT OF THE CREEPS did 20 years ago, but this one is not nearly as effective.
FEAST – The third and final season of the PROJECT GREENLIGHT reality show made for fascinating TV as the Miramax/Affleck/Damon team switched gears and decided to make a horror movie this time. Two newbie screenwriters and one very idiosyncratic director later, we get FEAST. And you know what? It ain’t bad. For all his early faults (i.e. thinking he had more power than he did), the man had it all worked out in his head, and it shows. He’s got a great eye for visuals, and hopefully, a continuing career. The script itself is a jokey riff, a 10-minute sketch idea stretched to 95 of them. I don’t see this cultivating the following it so clearly aims to, but GREENLIGHT viewers will get a kick of it, however fleeting. Gulager!
HARD CANDY – An online predator with pedophiliac tendencies gets the tables turned on him by a scrappy, resourceful and quite possibly insane underage girl. Oh, snap! Essentially a two-person play with good turns from both leads (Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson), it makes you wonder just who’s hunting who, and where your sympathies lie. And it has quite possibly the biggest cringe-inducer of a scene for the male viewers. I’m crossing my legs just thinking about it.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III – For his the couch-jumping and Shields-bashing and all-around Scientology craziness, Tom Cruise delivers a real home run with the third M:I flick. It’s just too bad he had to turn so many people off from seeing that. All that crap melts away from frame one, and for the next two hours, you’re hooked on a good-ol’-fashioned continent-jumping spy adventure, high on both action and humor. Each M:I bears the distinctive stamp of its director (Brian De Palma’s relied on a three-act set-piece structure, John Woo’s was utterly soulless and had doves), and J.J. Abrams brings the best of his ALIAS sensibilities to the table and gives it all he’s got. The supporting cast – including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Keri Russell and the aforementioned Monaghan – is terrific. This is fun, fun, fun, and I want to watch it again right now.
YOU, ME & DUPREE – Owen Wilson plays a “lovable fuck-up” who wreaks havoc on the marriage of newlyweds Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson when he temporarily moves in and makes himself way too at home. This is not one of Wilson’s better moments. It’s no outright disaster like THE BIG BOUNCE, but all best parts really are in the trailer, with the exception of Michael Douglas asking his new son-in-law to have a vasectomy. DUPREE will go down in the history as the film that broke up Hudson’s real-life marriage, and it’s fun to watch it from that perspective, because Wilson practically does that in the story as well. You won’t laugh a lot, but at least you won’t cry. Unless you’re the lead singer for The Black Crowes. –Rod Lott
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The new Ronin Entertainment DVD label – purveyors of the recent SONNY CHIBA ACTION PACK and SISTER STREET FIGHTER COLLECTION – just keeps the Chiba goodness coming, with the new three-disc box set THE SAMURAI COLLECTION FEATURING SONNY CHIBA. 
