The Kid Brother (Ted Wilde and JA Howe) ***1/2

Director: Ted Wilde and J.A. Howe

Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Walter James, Leo Willis, Olin Francis, Constantine Romanoff

Background: Harold Lloyd was one of the most successful silent comedians at the time, having had great success with Safety Last! (which features one of the most memorable stunts in film history), Girl Shy, and The Freshman. Harold brought in eight writers to this one because he wanted it to have more gags than any other film. It is inspired by the 1921 silent classic Tol'able David.

Story: Harold Hickory (Lloyd) is the youngest of three brothers, and his father is the town sheriff. His two older brothers are bigger and tougher, and earn more respect from dad. They also like to pick on poor Harold constantly. One day, a medicine show travels to town, and Harold falls in love with Mary Powers (Ralston), one of the performers. When the medicine show burns down, the proprietor steals money from the sheriff, who is now accused of being a thief. Harold must try to get the money back so he can earn the respect of his father and the love of Mary.

Thoughts: It's interesting that Lloyd wanted this film to have the most gags, because it is actually a pretty plot heavy movie. That doesn't detract from the humor, though. This one might not be quite as funny or memorable as Safety Last!, but it still contains some wonderful comic set pieces. One of my favorites is an extended sequence where Harold is being chased by his brothers. He poses as his father to get away, but they're on to him. However, Harold pulls a clever switcheroo at the last minute and the brothers end up attacking their own father. There are many other great moments, including a cute climbing sequence that brought back memories of Safety Last!. The story is a classic one of an underdog trying to prove his worth, and it's very easy to root for Harold here.

Postscript: The Kid Brother performed well at the box office and is considered one of Lloyd's best films. (It has the 2nd highest score of all of his films on IMDB.) Harold would make only one more silent film (Speedy) before transitioning to the sound era, where he had moderate success in the 30's. He would make a comeback in the late 40's with the Preston Sturges' The Sins of Harold Diddlebock. Jobyna Ralston would have a supporting role in the box office smash Wings (also in 1927), but her career would be over by 1931.

Metropolis (Fritz Lang) ****

Director: Fritz Lang

Cast: Alfred Abel, Gustav Frohlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Brigitte Helm, Heinrich George

Background: Director Fritz Lang had already made a name for himself with early silent films Spiders, Destiny, and especially Dr. Mabuse the Gambler. Armed with a budget bigger than any film of that time, Lang co-wrote the screenplay of his next film, an ambitious science fiction story.

The Story: Lang’s story is about a futuristic city where there is big dividing line between the classes. The privileged planners and thinkers sit high in the beautiful skyscrapers living a life of luxury. Down below, the miserably treated workers toil to keep the city running. Joh Frederson (Alfred Abel) is the unsympathetic ruler of the city. One day his naïve son Freder (Gustav Frohlich) follows a beautiful woman down to the worker’s city and gets his first glimpse of their life. He is horrified and quickly joins their rebellious cause.

Thoughts: It doesn't get much better than this. I'd already seen Fritz Lang's 1921 film Destiny, and was impressed with how the plot moved with so much purpose. But that was a pretty simple 1-2-3 narrative structure. With his ambitious science fiction story, Lang had a much more complex narrative to deal with, and even the impressive sets constructed for Destiny were simplistic compared to what would be needed to fully visualize his screenplay. It's amazing then that not at one single moment does this movie drag or get lost in the intricate plot. Lang moves us through several different story points and fascinating twists, and he does it with a mesmerizing visual flair that stands up as an impressive achievement even today. Metropolis remains one of the most impressive achievements of art direction in cinematic history. The actors should get some credit, too. They all turn in splendid work, especially Klein-Rogge as the classic mad scientist Rotwang. Amazing that the Nazi party was fascinated with the film, considering that they clearly weren't interested in the kind of mediation that was at the heart of Lang's message.

Postscript: Not many people have seen the full version of Metropolis, because it was heavily edited after the German premiere, and the uncut version was thought lost for many years. The version I saw had title cards inserted to explain missing scenes. However, the good news is that a complete edition of the film was recently found and is being set for a 2009 DVD release. Metropolis

Fritz Lang would continue to make movies through the 50's, leaving for Hollywood after divorcing his wife (she joined the Nazi party.) HIs later films had mixed results, but 1931's M is considered by some to be a masterpeice on the same level as Metropolis. The cast mostly continued to work in German films, but none was able to branch out to Hollywood with any kind of major success.

The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland) **

Director: Alan Crosland

Cast: Al Jolson, Warner Oland, Eugenie Besserer, May McAvoy, Otto Lederer

Background: Al Jolson was a very successful theater star. Playwright Samson Raphaelson wrote a play based on Jolson's life. The play was a Broadway hit and Warner Bros. acquired the rights. After failing to get their first two choices, they ended up with Jolson, the person it was based on, in the lead role. The Jazz Singer would be the first feature length film to have synchronized dialogue.

The Story: Jakie Rabinowitz is a talented singer, but prefers singing jazz tunes and dreams of a show business career, while his father (Warner Oland) would rather he follow in the family footsteps and become a cantor. After getting caught singing jazz tunes at a night club, Jakie and his dad get into a huge fight, eventually leading to Jakie's departure from home. The next time we see him is ten years later, performing at a cabaret. No matter how successful he gets (including winning a major role in a Broadway show), Jack is conflicted about his father, especially as the old man gets sick.

Thoughts: The first problem we run into is Jolson's performance. He certainly does do a good job with the song and dance numbers. There's no denying Jolson's musical talent. However, as a film actor, Jolson is definitely lacking. He wears the same earnest expression throughout the entire film, and is unable to convey the complex emotions that his character would be experiencing. Compare that to the exquisite performance from Warner Oland as his father and it's easy to see how Jolson doesn't really belong in the same medium. The story itself if pure hokum, and it would take a captivating actor to make it work. No matter how good Jolson does with his song and dance numbers, that's a minimal portion of the film and the dramatic moments are undercut by his inexpressiveness. Yes, he does blackface at the end, and yes it is distracting (whatever his true intentions were), but the film has enough problems before you even start that discussion. Notable only for inspiring the onset of talkies.

Postscript: The Jazz Singer was the #1 box office performer of the year. The success of the film ushered in the sound era. AFI chose it in their intitial 100 Greatest American Movies list, but dropped it from the update in 2007.

Jolson was now a big box office star and his next film (The Singing Fool) made even more money than The Jazz Singer. After that, his films were less successful although he did receive some critical acclaim for Lewis Milestone's Hallelujah, I'm a Bum. In 1946, a very successful biopic (The Jolson Story) was released about Jolson's life. Director Crosland kept making movies for another decade, but none of them were very notable. Warner Oland would hit it big as Charlie Chan.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (FW Murnau) ****

Director: FW Murnau

Cast: George O' Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston

Background: FW Murnau had already made a name for himself with his German films Nosferatu, The Last Laugh, and Faust. He caught the attention of William Fox, head of the Fox Film Corporation, who invited him to Hollywood and gave Murnau complete creative freedom to make whatever movie he wanted. Murnau decided to adapt a German novel (The Excursion to Tilsit) and the result was Sunrise: a Song of Two Humans.

The Story: A married man (O' Brien) is cheating on his wife (Gaynor) with a woman from the city (Livingston). The woman wants him to move to the city with her, and conceives a plan for him to kill his wife by drowning her. The man can't go through with it, but the wife is now afraid and runs away from him. He follows her to the city, where they spend the rest of their day as he tries to get her to forgive him.

Thoughts: It's not hard to see why this is considered one of the greatest films ever made. Murnau's ability to tell a story without using extensive title cards is very impressive (he previously made the Last Laugh without a single title card). The film really comes alive once they hit the city. The city is portrayed very energetically. For example, I love the shots where the couple crosses the street seemingly unaware of the cars speeding by them. There's also some unexpected comic relief. A sequence where the man chases down a drunk pig would feel right at home in a Chaplin, Keaton, or Lloyd film. Gaynor's performance is particularly remarkable. She portrays the wife as a lonely and then frightened woman who is rejuvenated by her husband's newfound love for her. I did find the ending to be a bit curious. The jarring juxtaposition of the final two scenes suggests that Murnau was going for something darker than most people have attributed. This is still a great film, whatever the intent of the ending.

Postscript: Sunrise was the 12th highest grossing film of the year, and went on three awards at the very first Oscar ceremony (Best Artistic Production, Best Actress, Best Cinematography). It appeared on Sight and Sound's 2002 top 10 list of greatest films ever made, and the updated 2007 AFI list of 100 Greatest Films at #82.

Murnau would only make three more films, none of them reaching the same acclaim as this one. Janey Gaynor continued to be very successful over the next decade, with her most notable performance coming in 1937's A Star is Born. George O'Brien kept acting through the 50's, but was never a notable star.

It All Begins - 1927

The Top 10 Movie Project originally started as its own separate blog. The purpose was a way to catch up with classic cinema. Plus I'm a list junkie, so being able to form top 10 lists after each year added some appeal to the idea. The idea is to watch a certain number of films from each year (20-30) comprising of a mixture of the most notable films, films from directors or actors that I really like, or films that have been recommended.

You may be asking why I started with 1927. I looked through several different years and it seemed to be the first year with enough quality movies (available for release) to form a top 10 list. 1927 is considered an extremely strong year for cinema and it was also the first year for the Academy Awards. It is possible that I will go back to earlier years once I complete the project, assuming more films will be released from that era by then.

The list of films I'm watching for 1927 includes the obvious classics (Metropolis, Sunrise, The General), noteworthy films (The Jazz Singer, Wings), films with big stars (Mary Pickford in My Best Girl, Clara Bow in It, Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford in The Unknown, Douglas Fairbanks in The Gaucho), a film from by one of my favorite classic directors (Lubitsch's Student Prince in Old Heidelberg), some rare curiosities (Josef von Sternberg's Underworld, Marion Davies in Quality Street), some notable foreign films (Bed and Sofa, The End of St. Petersburg, The Chess Player), and many more. The full list is on the right.

Almost all of these are available on Netflix. There are three movies I had to purchase. I bought VHS editions of The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg and Wings, and bought a rare DVD version of Underworld from a private collector.

Films are counted for the year of their US premiere, as long as that is within a reasonable amount of time from their international release year (no more than 3 years.) Otherwise, the film is counted for the international release year. This rule pushes Hitchcock's The Lodger, Eisenstein's October, Pudovkin's The End of St. Petersburg, Barnet's The Girl With the Hatbox, and several other films to later years.

The most interesting movie that is not available is Barbed Wire, starring Pola Negri. I'm looking out for it.

Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green, 2008) ***

Dir. David Gordon Green
Starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride, Rosie Perez, Gary Cole

Judd Apatow is certainly the best thing that has happened to adult oriented comedy in a long time. Not only did his previous films (40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up) prove that you could make money without resorting to cutting everything possible to get a PG-13 rating, but he also proved that you could combine lowbrow humor with sharp, observational character development. Many of his protege's have now taken his lead and have been extremely successful, although recent outings have unfortunately amped up the raunchy elements and disposed with much of the strong character work that was evident in films directed by Apatow. Pineapple Express mostly falls into this trap, although it is still an extremely funny film.

The film follows Dale Denton (Seth Rogen), a process server who likes pot very, very much. One day while getting ready to serve someone, he witnesses a murder. He gets spotted by the killer because it's not that easy to make a smooth getaway when you're high. This sends both Dale and his pot dealer Saul (James Franco) on the run. Going to the cops is out of the question, because one of the people involved in the murder was a policewoman (Rosie Perez). Their day gets worse and worse as it goes along, including a double crossing friend, a car that won't start, a furious girlfriend, her even more furious parents, and a warehouse gunfight.

David Gordon Green is an interesting choice to direct this material. He's a well respected indie auteur who made a memorable debut with the small town drama George Washington. At first, he seems like an odd choice for the material, because none of his previous films have had a hint of humor in them. However, those films were all about disaffected people that didn't really fit in with the rest of society, and that's exactly the case with the characters in Pineapple Express. There's never a hint that he doesn't know how mine humor from a situation, and he seems right at home with even the most outlandish comic moments. The part that eludes him is the final warehouse gunfight. It's an elaborate action sequence with three different sets of people all trying to kill one another, but Green doesn't really know how to stage it properly. There are several cuts at awkward moments and he too often relies on the bad guys taking illogical actions.

Still, the lack of an effective action sequence wouldn't really doom a movie like this, which isn't meant to be taken seriously in the first place. However, that's kind of the problem. Seth Rogen and his writing partner Evan Handler wrote this script, and it runs into the same problems as their earlier collaboration in Superbad. Dale and Saul are likable guys and we want to root for them, but their screenplay would rather tell as many (admittedly funny) lowbrow jokes as possible instead of taking some more time to develop the rest of the characters. Almost all of the supporting characters – the policewoman, the killer, the hitmen, the girlfriend, her parents – are decidedly one dimensional.

This is much different than the films directed by Apatow himself. Both Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin contained a deep cast of characters that were both funny and real. For example, Knocked Up had time to develop a realistic marital subplot in the midst of all the craziness and didn't sacrifice the humor one bit. Another Apatow vet, Jason Segel, got into the game earlier this year with the wonderful Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The differences in the approach between Segel and Rogen are very noticeable. Like Apatow, Segel's crazy comic moments co-exist with warm, human moments and a deep cast of fully realized characters.

Of course, it would be wrong to deny that this is a very funny movie. Rogen and Franco are both terrific in their roles and have a wonderful comic chemistry. It's especially refreshing to see Franco back in a comedic role, as his mumbling dramatic performances have become increasingly interminable to watch. Rogen and Handler's screenplay is littered with one hilarious joke after another, but it is simply missing that extra depth that Apatow and Segel have brought to their films.

American Teen (Nanette Burstein, 2008) ***1/2

Dir. Nanette Burstein

Nanette Burstein’s American Teen is an interesting documentary because of the style it uses to tell the story of five real high school teenagers. People view most documentaries as completely detached form their subject, offering an objective view of the events they are documenting. This is very rarely the case. Even in the documentaries that appear to be completely authentic, you can bet that parts of it were manipulated to get to the end result. With American Teen, Nanette Burstein has disposed with any pretensions of authenticity by clearly staging many elements of her documentary. The result is a surprisingly rewarding film that still manages to capture essence of the lives of her subjects.

American Teen specifically focuses on the lives of four teenagers at a midwestern high school. Each of the fills a specific type, although we learn that they are each far more interesting than that. Hannah is the liberal artist who feels out of place in this town and dreams of going to the big city for college. Colin is the popular basketball player, who wants to earn a scholarship so he can get out of town. Megan is the spoiled rich girl, hoping to please her family by getting accepted at Notre Dame. Jake is the band geek who is very awkward in social situations.


The best documentaries capture real life events that are more interesting than what we'd see in a fictional film on the same subject. For example, Jeffrey Blitz's wonderful Spellbound followed eight students as they competed in the national spelling bee. It was far more exciting and interesting than the fictional Akeelah and the Bee, which was mired in cliche's that had nothing to do with real life. American Teen is an interesting case, because it arrived at the Atlanta Film Festival with an ad campaign comparing itself directly to the popular 80s film The Breakfast Club (although that has curiously been dropped for the theatrical release). The clever poster even shows each of the characters in the same poses as the well known poster from the earlier film. It’s easy to see why Burstein chose this comparison as the underlying themes are similar, particularly the exploration of stereotypes and their effect on high school life.

It’s clear that many of the sequences are manufactured. For example, Burstein will have a shot of someone staring out a window, and it’s doubtful that she just sat there waiting all day for that moment to come up. A relationship between Jake and a cute girl that he likes seems to have been pushed along by Burstein. Colin’s basketball skills seem to have been exaggerated. He’s presented as a big star, but there is little evidence on film to support that fact. A fifth character, popular basketball player Mitch, seems to have been added as a main character after the fact and we never really get to know him well.

However, none of this really hurts the film. Despite all of the interference by the director, American Teen still captures an authentic look at high school life. It’s hard not to root for Hannah as she navigates some major highs and lows throughout the school year. She’s a winning personality, and it’s easy to see why she becomes the emotional center of the documentary. It says a lot about how things have changed since the 80s that the Molly Ringwald character was the central focus of The Breakfast Club, and now it’s the Ally Sheedy character that takes center stage.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of American Teen are the very real moments that it manages to capture amidst all the staged situations. At one point, a character treats his girlfriend so poorly at a party, and breaks up with her in such a humiliatingly mean fashion that he must have forgot the cameras were there. However, what will stay with me for a long time is the startlingly cruel behavior displayed by Megan throughout the film. I think only Daniel Waters could conceive (screenwriter of Heathers) could dream up a character so mean. Burstein may have staged many of her shots, but her film manages to capture a truth that few other documentaries have been able to approach.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Rob Cohen, 2008) *

Dir. Rob Cohen
Starring Brendan Fraser, Maria Bello, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh, Luke Ford, Isabelle Leong

The first Mummy film was hardly great cinema, but it was easy to see what people liked about it. It told a classic adventure story right out of Hollywood's golden age. Leads Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz knew not to take things seriously and delivered fun, tongue in cheek performances. Now here we are with the third film in the series. We have a new director and a new leading lady and it's a complete disaster in almost every possible way.

Rick and Evelyn O'Connell (Brendan Fraser, Maria Bello) are taking a peaceful break from mummy killing. However, their son Alex (Luke Ford) decides he wants to follow in his father's footsteps and starts exploring himself. Unfortunately, he manages to awaken China's Dragon Emperor (Jet Li), who calls forth his terra cotta army to bring destruction upon the world. This brings his parents back into the game, and they are aided by the ageless sorceress Zi Juan (Michelle Yeoh) who had originally cursed the Emperor, and her daughter Lin (Isabella Leong), who has been the guardian of the Emperor's tomb.

The plot is of course extremely silly and doesn't even bother to pretend to attempt anything remotely resembling historical accuracy. That certainly doesn't matter in a movie like this. The back story is good enough to set up an exciting adventure for our characters. The problem is that the rest of the story was very poorly developed, featuring an unnecessary romantic subplot and mostly unimaginative action scenes that fail to liven things up.

One of the biggest mistakes was recasting the character of Evelyn. Maria Bello is a very talented actress, and if you don't believe me, then see her performances in A History of Violence and The Cooler. Unfortunately, she was all wrong for this role. She spends the whole movie seemingly distracted by trying to imitate Rachel Weisz, and her attempts to play things for laughs make her seem heavily medicated more than anything else. It's a disastrous performance that hampers the film throughout the entire running time. If they couldn't get Weisz back, then they should have created a new character instead of trying to force another actress into a role she clearly wasn't prepared to inhabit.

Another serious error is the attempt to draw a romance between Alex and Lin. There is never any chemistry established, and when Alex's mom talks to him about his feelings for the girl, it feels like it comes out of nowhere. There is little evidence of chemistry or attraction between the two characters, and the dialogue written for the pair is just abysmal. This is a badly forced story point and is not helped by the screenwriter's constant stream of unfunny old age jokes directed at Lin.

The special effects are good enough on a technical sense, but not much is done with them to create excitement. The only memorable scene from the movie involves two Yetis who are actually called to protect the heroes. Everything else is pretty much a complete misfire. You'd think a movie where Michelle Yeoh battles Jet Li, it'd be hard to make it dull, but director Rob Cohen has achieved the seemingly impossible. The inevitable fight scene between the two at the end is a disappointingly pedestrian affair.

The problem with a movie like this is when it fails to deliver on its promise to create excitement or campy humor, there's nothing left to fall back on. It becomes an interminable exercise in waiting for the end credits to roll. The film is only 112 minutes long, but as the events of this story slowly worked their way to the conclusion, I couldn't help but think that mummification seemed like a pretty good idea.

The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) ****

Dir. Christopher Nolan
Starring Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal

This has been a good year for superhero movies. Films like Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were solid examples of the genre, and even Hancock was a fun, if not entirely successful, departure from the standard formula. However, nothing prepared us for what Christopher Nolan had in store for The Dark Knight. Even Batman Begins feels like it was made in a different decade, much less the same film series. Christopher Nolan's complex examination of morality in the world of Gotham city is a stunningly original achievement, and qualifies as one of the best big budget films ever made.

In the year since the events of Batman Begins took place, crime is still rampant in Gotham City. Batman (Christian Bale) is determined to finally take out organized crime for good, and his faithful ally Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) is there to help him. Also arriving on the scene is new District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who makes a splash by putting hundreds of criminals in jail by linking them all to one person. Meanwhile, a new criminal called the Joker (Heath Ledger) is starting to make a name for himself, and is soon hired by the mob to kill Batman.

What's so fascinating about The Dark Knight is how Nolan directs it without the slightest hint that he knows he's supposed to be making a superhero movie. This is a bleak and moody story of what a criminal mastermind can do to a city, and it bears more relation to a Martin Scorcese crime pic than the Batman films directed by Tim Burton. This is quickly evident during the opening sequence, which features a precisely edited bank heist that devolves into a classic gunfight. This scene sets the mood so well that you almost expect James Cagney to show up at some point.

Of all the superheroes, it does make sense that this style would work so well with Batman. After all, he doesn't really have any powers. He's just an ordinary guy with superb physical skills and superior technological gadgets, so he's a natural fit for a movie set under more realistic circumstances. The most surprising thing is that Nolan was able to get away with it. There's not one minute of this film that hints of studio interference, particularly in a key sequence midway through the film where a brutally uncompromising plot development occurs that becomes a major turning point for each of the characters.

By setting the movie under these circumstances, Nolan is able to fully explore the complex ethical questions that he raises. Harvey Dent's ability to strike a blow against the criminal underworld becomes an inspiration to the people of Gotham City, and provides hope to Batman that he may no longer be needed. However, the Joker's machinations put a quick end to that, and Batman and his allies are forced to pull out all the stops in an effort to stop him. This includes the use of a high tech surveillance system and an interrogation scene that definitely fits the description of torture.

There have been attempts to link these events to supporting a conservative political message. However, a careful examination of the events shows that such discussion is clearly misguided. If anything, the eventual result of the interrogation scene proves the opposite point. Also, it is a complete disservice to the film to frame the events in such a simplistic manner. This is a movie where difficult decisions are made and easy answers are not found. Batman goes down paths that he would rather not take, and his ultimate goal is not to invade privacy or beat suspects, but it is to protect the image of Harvey Dent, who he feels is Gotham's true hero because he doesn't have to resort to the same tactics.

The only way Nolan could pose such difficult moral questions was to have a villain so terrifying that he forced our heroes to ask them. In Heath Ledger, he found an actor that was on top of his game (having just turned in a brilliant performance in Brokeback Mountain) and completely willing to throw everything he had into his portrayal of the Joker. What we come away with is an inspired take on the Joker as an absolutely demented sociopath devoted to nothing more than causing pain and chaos at every turn. It's a landmark portrayal that will not be forgotten for a long time.

The other key piece to the puzzle is Aaron Eckhart's portrayal of Harvey Dent. Eckhart is an actor that has been around the block, turning in a memorable performance as a cruel chauvinist in Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men. He's turned in solid work since then, but has usually been limited by poorly written roles in bigger budget films. This is where he finally gets to shine, delivering a nuanced portrayal of Gotham's righteous legal crusader. He completely sells the idea that the public would begin to revere him, which is very crucial for Nolan's story to work. As played by Eckhart with an ingratiating eagerness to do the right thing, it is impossible to not believe in Harvey Dent.

The Dark Knight is a long movie, but not one moment of it feels unnecessary. There are several superb action set pieces, including an extended chase sequence involving helicopters and a semi, and numerous fascinating plot developments that keep the movie alive throughout the 152 minute running time. This is an incredible achievement in film making, and should serve as a shining example to all directors and studio heads that dedication to providing original, uncompromising storytelling does not scare audiences away.

Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov, 2008) **

Dir. Timur Bekmambetov
Starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Terrence Stamp, Common


Wanted is a movie with outrageous action scenes that defy any sense of logic or understanding of physics. The filmmakers are clearly interested in freeing themselves from such constraints when devising these sequences. There's certainly nothing wrong with this. At it's best, Wanted is an exhilerating ride, filled with so many spectacular feats that go so far over the top, you're not sure whether to laugh or applaud. That's why it's so strange that the film takes a big detour in the second act and focuses on a series of sequences filled with nothing but unpleasant brutality.

James McAvoy's main character is named Wesley, but he might as well have been named CC Baxter. Not only is he stuck in a dead end cubicle job, but the only sex going on in his apartment is between his girlfriend and best friend. Things change instantly when he meets a beautiful woman who goes by the name of Fox (Angelina Jolie). Suddenly he finds himself in the middle of a gunfight, as Fox tries to protect him from a would be assassin. The extended gunfight and frenetic car chase is an exciting action set piece and gets the movie off to a promising start. Unfortunately, that promise would quickly dissipate.

Wesley learns that his father was a member of a team of assassins with special abilities like bending a bullet. Sensing that he has similar abilities as his father, they have recruited him to join their ranks. Wesley decides that his humdrum life is not worth living and takes up the challenge. The bulk of the second act focuses on Wesley's training and it is here where the film seriously falls apart. What was an exciting, if ridiculous action movie, now became a dark exercise in brutal training sequences. It's as if director Timur Bekmambetov wanted to turn a stylish action pic into his own version of Fight Club. A few moments of this would have worked for the necessary, but it was a colossal mistake to spend so much time on it and to do it in an annoyingly repetitive fashion.

That being said, the film does wake up for a fairly exciting conclusion. The promise of the beginning is finally realized with a series of creative action scenes. Particularly fascinating is an extended cat and mouse game on a passenger train that turns deadlier than you might expect. Unfortunately, there was little reason to care about the ridiculous story at this point, so what we end up with was a nice technical display of cinematic skill, but it was hard to truly care about the fate of the characters, and the hopelessly banal resolution didn't help matters.

It should be noted that the strong cast does what they can with the material. Angelina Jolie's Fox remains a mystery throughout the film, but her stunning screen presence more than makes up for that. Morgan Freeman shows up as the leader of the assassin group, and this is the kind of role that he could sleepwalk through. It's not going to be one of his most memorable performances, but he lends a certain credibility to the story that would have seemed even more ridiculous in the hands of a lesser actor.

Wanted was based on a comic book miniseries of the same name, so it's possible that some of storytelling problems remain from the original source material. That still does not excuse the filmmakers from their poor decisions. If you pick a bad story for your source material and make a film out of it, then your film still has a bad story. Whatever the reasoning, Bekmambetov took what could have been a fun, original action movie and ruined it with a thoroughly unpleasant middle section.

Movies Seen - 2008

Here is a listing of releases from 2008 that I saw, sorted by rating...

****

The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)
WALL-E (Andrew Stanton)


***1/2

American Teen (Nanette Burstein)
The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Nicholas Stoller)


***

At the Death House Door (Peter Gilbert, Steve James)
Bama Girl (Rachel Goslins)
Hancock (Peter Berg)
Iron Man (Jon Favreau)
Nerdcore Rising (Negin Farsad)

Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green)

Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller)


**1/2

Dance of the Dead (Gregg Bishop)
Get Smart (Peter Segal)
The Incredible Hulk (Louis Leterrier)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg)
Make Out With Violence (Deagol Bros.)
Monster Camp (Cukken Hoback)
Towelhead (Alan Ball)


**

Cloverfield (Matt Reeves)
Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov)
Water Lilies (Céline Sciamma)


*1/2

Bohica (DJ Paul)


*

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Rob Cohen)

Films Seen - 1929

Alibi (Roland West)
Asphalt (Joe May)
Applause (Rouben Mamoulian)
Arsenal (Alexander Dovzhenko)
Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont)
The Cocoanuts (Robert Florey, Joseph Santley)
Diary of a Lost Girl (GW Pabst)
Erotikon (Gustav Machaty)
Eternal Love (Ernst Libitsch)
Hallelujah! (King Vidor)
The Iron Mask (Allan Dwan)
The Last Warning (Paul Leni)
The Love Parade (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Love Trap (William Wyler)
Lucky Star (Frank Borzage)
Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
The Manxman (Alfred Hitchcock)
Marianne (Robert Z. Leonard)
Napoleon (Abel Gance)
Pandora's Box (GW Pabst)
Spite Marriage (Edward Sedgwick)
Queen Kelly (Erich Von Stroheim)
Spies (Fritz Lang)
They Had to See Paris (Frank Borzage)

Films Seen - 1928

• A Girl in Every Port (Howard Hawks)
• A Woman of Affairs (Clarence Brown)
• Battle of the Sexes (DW Griffith)
• Beggars of Life (William Wellman)
• Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttman)
• The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick)
• The Circus (Charles Chaplin)
• The Crowd (King Vidor)
• The Docks of New York (Josef Von Sternberg)
• Doomsday (Rowland v. Lee)
• The End of St. Petersburg (Vsevolod Pudovkin)
• The Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein)
• Four Sons (John Ford)
• The Garden of Eden (Lewis Milestone)
• Hangman's House (John Ford)
• The Last Command (Josef Von Sternberg)
• Laugh, Clown, Laugh (Herbert Brenon)
• The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock)
• The Love of Jeanne Ney (GW Pabst)
• The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni)
• The Mysterious Lady (Fred Niblo)
• October (Sergei Eisenstein)
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Dreyer)
• The Patsy (King Vidor)
• Show People (King Vidor)
• Speedy (Ted Wilde)
• Steamboat Bill Jr. (Charles Reisner)
• Street Angel (Frank Borzage)
• Tempest (Sam Taylor)
• The Wedding March (Erich Von Stroheim)
• The Wind (Victor Sjostrom)

Films Seen - 1927

• Bed and Sofa (Abram Room)
• The Cat and the Canary (Paul Leni)
• Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Shoedsack)
• College (James Horne, Buster Keaton)
• The General (Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton)
• It (Clarence Badger)
• The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland)
• The Kid Brother (Ted Wilde and JA Howe)
• Love (Edmund Goulding)
• Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
• My Best Girl (Sam Taylor)
• Quality Street (Sidney Franklin)
• Seventh Heaven (Frank Borzage)
• The Siren of the Tropics (Henri Etievant, Mario Nalpas)
• The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch)
• Sunrise (FW Murnau)
• Underworld (Josef von Sternberg)
• The Unknown (Tod Browning)
• Wings (William A. Wellman)

King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Seth Gordon, 2007) ***

Dir. Seth Gordon
Starring Steve Wiebe, Billy Mitchell, Walter Day

One of the more popular formats for documentaries these days has been following a group of offbeat individuals who have a passion for some unique style of competition. The king of this genre was Jeffrey Blitz’s Spellbound, which followed teenagers competing in the national spelling bee. As the genre has expanded, the competitions followed become more and more peculiar. We’ve also recently seen documentaries about inner city kids learning ballroom dancing (Mad Hot Ballroom), and obsessive Scrabble players who travel the country to play in tournaments (Word Wars). Seth Gordon’s King of Kong is one of the most original yet; it follows the battle between two guys in achieving the highest score on the classic video game Donkey Kong.

Billy Mitchell is the all time Donkey Kong champion, achieving a score that is thought to be unbeatable. He is also an ambassador for classic video gaming and is well revered among enthusiasts in that area. In one interesting segment, he is shown offering encouragement to Doris Self, who was one of the few female players to have achieved a high score on a video game back in the 80s. Steve Wiebe is a married man and father who just got laid off from his job. During his down time (with the surprising support of his wife), he decides to make a run at Billy Mitchell’s high score on Donkey Kong.

King of Kong takes us inside the interesting world of classic video game competitors. These are guys that could care less about the latest high tech gaming system. They’d rather hang out at a place like the Funspot arcade in New Hampshire, playing old school arcade games like Pac Man, Burgertime, Centipede, and of course Donkey Kong in their original versions. One of these people, Walter Day, decided there should be a central resource that verifies the high score on all video games. In the early 80s, he created Twin Galaxies, an organization that verifies high score submissions from people around the country. This organization still exists today and is even endorsed by the Guiness Book of World Records.

Gordon does a really good job of exploring this world, and initiating the viewer in the various intricacies of classic video games. The concept of a “kill screen” (when the game stops because it has run out of memory) is introduced and shown to be the pinnacle achievement that gamers try to reach. There is also a clever use of diagrams that show the patterns in a game like Donkey Kong, and help explain how Steve Wiebe’s engineering background definitely comes in handy. The people that obsess over these games aren’t mindless idiots pushing around a joystick. Casual viewers will be surprised at the level of thought and planning that these gamers go through when attempting a new record.

The film really takes off when Steve Wiebe breaks Billy Mitchell’s legendary record and Twin Galaxies gets mixed up in the fight over the validity of that score. Up to this point, Gordon’s film had painted a very positive picture of Mitchell, but that comes to a screeching halt when Mitchell and his followers attempt to discredit Wiebe’s score. This leads to Wiebe making several attempts to prove his score in person, including direct challenges to facing off against Mitchell in head to head competition. Gordon takes a completely one-sided view of events at this point, and from here on out the film paints Steve as the hero and Billy as the enigmatic villain. Gordon piles it on a bit high to make his chosen hero to look like a saint (despite some obviously poor parenting skills exhibited at one point in the film). To be fair, he does have quite a bit of video evidence to support this viewpoint, but his inability to explore Billy’s motivations for his actions really hampers the overall story that the film presents.

Despite this flaw, King of Kong remains an entertaining film thanks to the colorful and informative presentation of an obsessive hobby not many people know still existed, at least in the format shown here. Like the best documentaries, it uses real life events and fashions them to form a very satisfying story arc that leads to a surprisingly rousing conclusion. It may not reach the heights of Spellbound, but it stands shoulder to shoulder with the other strong works in this genre.

Day Night, Day Night (Julia Loktev, 2007) ***

Dir. Julia Loktev
Starring Luisa Williams

She prays to someone. She could be Christian, or Muslim, or any other religion. The prayers are kept vague so we don’t know. The specific religion is not important. It’s all about the strong conviction she has to go through with the plan. We also don’t know her name or her ethnicity (thanks to smart casting), or her specific political opinions. What’s important is she has a strong belief that she wants to do something. Julia Loktev’s interesting experimental film Day Night, Day Night follows this young woman’s journey as she prepares to be a suicide bomber. This bold idea carries the film pretty far, but the lack of narrative rhythm and a huge misstep in the third act prevent it from being completely successful.

The film starts with the unnamed woman being picked up at the airport. From that point, she is taken to a hotel room where and is told to wait. Time passes as she paces the room, looks out the window (which gets her a warning phone call not to do that), and clips her toenails. Eventually, several men (of various ethnicities) wearing ski masks show up and take her (and us) through the extensively process of preparing for the mission. This sequence is appropriately tedious. Loktev rightly has no intention of make this seem like a thrilling venture.



One of the most interesting aspects of Day Night, Day Night is how it follows the rather mundane tasks of preparing for the bombing. The camera lingers on a blinking turn signal, as the woman is mere seconds from exiting the car to go and complete her task. The people who fit her with the bomb and explain her how to use do so in the most casual manner possible. It’s like they’re teaching her how to correctly use a home appliance. There’s a disturbingly amusing scene where the planners make her try on several different outfits as if it’s an episode of America’s Next Top Suicide Bomber.

This is all very interesting to be sure, but the lack of structure does make the proceedings tedious after a while. This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if Loktev had stayed true to her vision throughout. Unfortunately, she tries to get a little too clever with a sequence in the third act, attempting to inject some unnecessary humor into the film and completely undermining her central character’s plight. This sequence is surrounded by moments of excruciating tension, which lose a bit of steam when we see our usually quiet protagonist coming up with a clever quip like she’s walked off the set of 30 Rock. This brief moment is a huge miscalculation, ruining the consistency of the film’s style, and making the repetitive earlier scenes seem rather pointless.

The film isn’t completely apolitical. While avoiding the baggage that ethnicity or religion would bring, the depiction of the main character is very telling. As played by Luisa Williams, she is a somewhat naﶥ and very nervous, and can be seen snacking up to the very moment where she is expected to carry out the plan. We are given small hints that she was drawn into this because of something that happened to someone she loves, most likely her brother. This is not the typical obviously evil person that can be spotted in a crowd. She has the presence of someone who was that clumsy girl in your sociology class one day. This is a far more upsetting depiction than someone who is confident and more capable, which is why the little comedy sequence at the end is such a big mistake.

This film deserves bonus points for even being made. Unfortunately, it has very little chance of going anywhere. In an era where Hollywood pats itself on the back for the “courage” to tackle racism in the simplistic Oscar winner Crash, there is really no room for a movie about a suicide bomber. Hopefully films like this will get more and more attention and Hollywood will have the nerve to get more daring, but until then scour your arthouse theaters if you want to see films that really challenge you, and not ones where Sandra Bullock decides not to be racist because she fell down the stairs.

License to Wed (Ken Kwapis, 2007) *

Dir. Ken Kwapis
Starring John Krasinski, Mandy Moore, Robin Williams, Josh Flitter,

Sometimes you’re watching a movie and something happens that makes so little sense that you wish the director or screenwriter or anyone involved with the film were nearby so you could shake them and ask what the hell they were thinking. In Ken Kwapis’ License to Wed, this happened on at least a dozen occasions. The film’s inability to maintain any logical consistency is remarkable considering the relatively simple story. This isn’t a labyrinthine David Lynch plot after all. This wouldn’t be such a problem if the film were funny, but despite a handful (for someone with small hands) of amusing moments, this miserable film is uncomfortable and unintentionally creepy for a variety of reasons.

License to Wed focuses on the newly engaged Ben (John Krasinski) and Sadie (Mandy Moore) who are forced (well Sadie forces Ben, but we’ll get to that later) into taking a marriage preparation course so they can get married at her family church. The course is run by Rev. Frank (Robin Williams), who we can tell is an oddball preacher because he teaches children the Ten Commandments utilizing a game show format. He puts Ben and Sadie through a series of tests designed to help them get to know each other better and apparently this will prepare them for a successful marriage, but all it does is seem to drive them apart.

This silly high concept premise suffers from a very major flaw. There is no reason for us to believe that reasonable adults would willingly subject themselves to this nonsense. Some of the “hilarious” things that they have to do include taking care of robot babies, driving blindfolded, or talk openly about sex with him in the room. The entire idea of the Robin Williams character is fatally flawed and downright disturbing. In the game show sequence, they have him delivering sexual double entendres for some of the commandments. Then he spends the rest of the film with a young boy (Josh Flitter, in a performance so annoying that it merits a Razzie nomination) who helps him out with his schemes. At no point is the boy’s parental situation explained and he performs tasks for the Reverend at all hours of the night. In the wake of major church abuse scandals that are still fairly recent, the filmmakers here seem to not have any sense of perspective.

License to Wed marks John Krasinski’s first leading role after doing three seasons of duty on the splendid TV comedy The Office. His work there is some of the best on television and some of that does carry over to this film. Krasinski’s trademark on that show are offbeat facial reactions to the uncomfortable actions of other characters. That asset is on display here, but at times you wonder if he’s reacting in character to Reverend Frank’s actions or if he’s really reacting to the horrible film he’s found himself in. He does have an ingratiating charm that makes him the only character worth rooting for in the film. Thanks to Krasinski, it’s easy to identify with Ben’s exasperated anger at the ridiculous antics of those around him.

On the other hand, Mandy Moore is unable to rise above her blandly written character. She does nothing to make us understand why Ben would put himself through all of this to marry her. The way Sadie is written certainly does not help. At every single moment where Ben tries to explain that he’s uncomfortable with something the Reverend is making them do, she completely ignores him, essentially telling him to shut up and do it. The very worst moment is when Rev. Frank has them do a trust test where Sadie drives blindfolded while Ben is supposed to give her directions from the back seat. Ben clearly does not want to do this, but Sadie yells at him for it, calling him a quitter. This is not rational behavior from any adult. If not wanting to die in a stupid car accident, not to mention potentially kill innocent bystanders, makes me a quitter then sign me up. Ben clearly agrees as would most sane people, but the way the scene is played out, the view of the film is that he’s a jerk. This is the main scene where I would like to shake Kwapis and have him explain to me how that makes any sense.

There are traces of a dark comedy in here. Just changing the tone of the movie and the events of the 3rd act and you could have a pretty interesting film about a nice guy who unfortunately falls for a selfish woman who has a nasty family and creepy pastor. In fact, there are so many disturbing moments that I wonder if the screenplay was originally written as a dark comedy and later changed by the studio. It’s clearly not what Kwapis is going for here. The film features bright colors all the way through and a final sappy romantic gesture that seems stolen straight from an episode of Beverly Hills, 90210. Of course, I’m not sure which is more embarrassing; that this film stole from a scene in that show or that I remember the scene in question.

At the end, we’re expected to believe that what Rev. Frank has done is a good thing, but there is nary a moment in the entire film that supports that. We’re also supposed to buy that Ben loves Sadie, but the five minutes of courtship that we see at the beginning of the film do nothing to make the audience understand that. On top of that, Sadie’s actions in this story are so inexcusable that they would have destroyed even the most solid of relationships. Sadie should be single for the rest of her life and Rev. Frank deserves to be in jail. As for Ben, well I hear there’s a pretty cool receptionist in Scranton that would be perfect for him.

Transformers (Michael Bay, 2007) **

Dir. Michael Bay
Starring Shia Labeouf, Megan Fox, Jon Voight, John Turturro, Peter Cullen

Michael Bay has made a name for himself with big budget spectacles that have become enormously successful at the box office. They’ve also been consistently idiotic and insulting to the audience. In films such as Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, and The Rock (his only decent film thanks to a great cast), he has employed a very annoying filmmaking technique of rapid editing that distracts the audience from the fact thet there is very little going on in the movie. Thankfully, he jettisoned that approach for this update of the classic 80s cartoon series Transformers, but what’s really interesting is the style he decided to adopt. Transformers has quite a bit in common with the silly, sappy, and sometimes unintentionally funny Roland Emmerich blockbusters like Godzilla, Independence Day, and The Day After Tomorrow. It’s definitely a better approach, but not necessarily a good one, as Transformers falls apart due to Bay’s reliance on silliness to make up for logical gaps in the plot.

The story centers around a mysterious cube device called the Allspark. On the planet of Cybertron, the Autobots and Decepticons, waged war over this item which would grant unlimited power to the owner. The Autobots gained possession of it and hid the device on Earth. Now more than a century later they have come back to prevent the Decepticons from recapturing it and destroying mankind. High school student Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) gets involved in this mess because his ancestor discovered the Allspark in an arctic expedition in the 1850’s and whose glasses (that Sam is trying to sell on Ebay) may contain a map to the location. He is aided by an Autobot named Bumblebee, who protects him from the Decepticons while waiting for the rest of the Autobots to make their way to Earth.

This basic premise is not a bad one. They had to come up with a reason for the Transformers to fight on Earth and the Allspark served as a good MacGuffin. It’s clear what Bay was interested in was exciting and elaborate fights with the various robots. The movie is certainly successful at achieving that goal. The special effects are outstanding, with completely convincing shots of the robots interacting with the humans. Also, Bay seems more confident this time around, allowing shots to run for much longer than he usually does, which will certainly nix the huge increase in sales for Tylenol that usually accompanies his films. For the first time in a Bay film, you can actually follow the various players in each action sequence.

Unfortunately, the film runs into problems with a lazy script. The Allspark serves as a good plot device, but when it starts getting explained in detail becomes extremely silly. Midway through the film, there is a clumsy explanation of how the device can be destroyed, obviously setting things up for later in the movie. Unfortunately, this presents some moral problems with the actions of the Autobots, who argue that human life is worth preserving even when it would be necessary to kill one in order to rescue a comrade. If they really believe this, then the movie should have ended a bit earlier than it does because there was an obvious solution. How many humans had to die because Optimus Prime didn’t have the courage to do what he could’ve done much earlier in the film?

Transformers has a heavy reliance on comic relief. It’s always good to have some of that in an action film, but Bay completely loses control with this one. Anthony Anderson shows up in a pointless role just to deliver random one-liners. John Turturro inhabits much of the 2nd half of the film with a bizarre character that seems to have wandered in from an X-Files repeat. The absolute worst part is an extended sequence at Sam’s home as the Transformers hide in his backyard while he tries to dodge questioning from his parents and recover the glasses. What starts off as a mildly amusing joke soon falls to the level of an awful family sitcom (complete with an awkward masturbation joke!) and the scene just keeps going and going for what seems like an eternity. Since the film already had a pretty long running time at two and a half hours, there’s no reason large portions of this scene could not have been excised from the film.

Only Shia Labeouf is able to rise above the screenplay with a strong performance at the center, utilizing his everyman appeal with an offbeat line delivery to create an interesting character. In fact, he’s the only character worth caring about. As the defense secretary, Jon Voight sleepwalks through a role that he’s played countless times before. Megan Fox tries to invest some humanity into the typical hot girl love interest, but all attempts at giving her a third dimension are wrecked by a director and screenwriter clearly interested in something else. Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson show up as military men that battle the Decepticons, but they have nothing to do other than fire guns and yell generic military dialogue. Finally, the worst character is Rachael Taylor (not her fault, though) as the typical hacker that knows all the answers but no one will listen to. The movie tries to sell her as being smart, but then later she’s too stupid to cover her tracks after copying confidential files.

Without much to care for in terms of character, dialogue, or story, the action sequences feel repetitive and dull, no matter how well they’re conceived. Of course, there is little doubt that most audiences don’t really care about the flaws I’ve pointed out. Bay and the studio know their target audience and have hit it well. As a nostalgic fan of the original animated series, even I can’t deny the pure visceral thrill of seeing the live action version of Optimus Prime transform for the first time. It’s just too bad that it wasn’t in service of a more interesting and consistent story.

Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007) ***1/2

Dir. Judd Apatow
Starring Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann

Judd Apatow strikes again with another R-rated comedy that manages to be funny and sweet at the same time. It's refreshing for someone like Apatow to be churning out comedies. In an era where Hollywood tries to trim movies so they can get a PG-13 rating (the latest egregious example being the upcoming Die Hard sequel), Apatow has now struck gold with two movies that don't compromise to this mindset. Apatow’s The 40 Year Old Virgin was a vulgar comedy with a sweet romantic core that came out to surprising success a couple years ago and turned Steve Carell into a star. Now we have Knocked Up, an even more raunchy outing that still remains the core honesty and compassion of Apatow’s previous film.

The basic plot is pretty simple, following two people that are direct opposites and their unlikely romance. Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) is an unemployed slacker who sits around all day smoking pot and working on an adult website with his similarly immature friends. Alison (Katherine Heigl) works as a production assistant for E! Entertainment Television. After landing a huge promotion that gets her the chance to be on the air, she hits a nightclub to celebrate and ends up having a one night stand with Ben. Eight weeks later, she finds out this one night stand resulted in pregnancy.

Knocked Up is filled with vulgar humor from beginning to end. In that sense it’s not much different than American Pie, Road Trip, or the various comedies of that ilk that have popped up over the last decade. Apatow’s screenplay is filled with jokes about pot, sex, What makes this movie work so well is the underlying sweetness that evades any kind of cynicism. This is a movie that is actually serious about the central romance and doesn’t just use it as a vehicle for gross out jokes. In between the vulgar raunchiness, there’s an adorable romance at the center that builds believably throughout the movie. In most romantic comedies there is a forced breakup scene that usually ends up being hopelessly contrived, but in this movie the relationship between Alison and Ben is developed organically and not one moment of it feels forced.

Apatow is also a pro at coming up with a gifted ensemble to fill the background of the central premise. In Knocked Up, one of the main attractions is the somewhat rocky marriage between Allison’s sister Debbie (played by Apatow’s wife Leslie Mann) and Pete (played by the invaluable Paul Rudd). The seemingly happy couple is a nice counterpoint to the central romance. The pressures and fears faced by Pete and Debbie feel genuine, thanks to the well defined performances from Rudd and Mann. Also on board are Ben’s gang of immature friends, filled with Apatow vets Jay Baruchel, Jason Segel, Jonah Hill, and Martin Starr. They all lend solid support, generating a wonderful comic chemistry and are responsible for the biggest laughs in the film.

Knocked Up clearly relies heavily on improvisation, which has been a constant feature of Apatow’s previous projects. This one seems even more heavily improv based than 40 Year Old Virgin, as the structure feels a bit looser and some scenes run on past their obvious ending point. Perhaps the success of his previous film allowed him the courage to take more chances and for the most part it pays off. Rogen and Rudd especially have some terrific moments during their one on one scenes, and a dinner scene featuring references to Back to the Future is a highlight. The drawback are a few scenes that run out of steam long before Apatow yelled cut, including one where drugged up Ben and Pete freak out about chairs, which starts off as funny but ends up dragging the movie at a crucial point.

Seth Rogen is an interesting choice for a leading man as he’s far from the matinee idol type. Most directors or studios would not have the creativity to cast him, even in an underdog role like this one. Rogen got his start on Judd Apatow’s critically acclaimed television shows Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, and then went on to steal several scenes in Apatow’s The 40 Year Old Virgin. In each of those projects he has pretty much played the same character; immature slackers that enjoy drugs, alcohol, and pornography. The amazing thing about Rogen’s natural screen presence is that he invests each of these characters with so much empathy that you can’t help but root for them. In Knocked Up, He proves that someone with this quality can make a memorable lead character in a romantic comedy.

The great news is the wonderful box office success of Knocked Up. Apatow struggled in the TV realm (in ratings, not quality), but is so far two for two with feature films. Hopefully this leads to more daring output from studio executives, who can no longer have excuses for their cowardly decision to cut films for a lower MPAA rating. Judd Apatow is leading the way himself as the producer or screenwriter in several upcoming R-rated comedies. Hopefully his influence will lead to more choices for solid adult comedy in the future.

Spider-man 3 (Sam Raimi, 2007) **

Dir. Sam Raimi
Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace

If the makers of comic book movies don’t study history, then they’re doomed to repeat it. Such is the case with Spider-Man 3, which finds itself trapped in the same murkiness as the subpar Batman sequels. After the success of the original Batman, the series made a mistake by trying to shove as many villains as possible into each film. This culminated in the franchise nadir Batman and Robin, which contained three separate villains. Sam Raimi’s Spider-man 3 runs into the very same problem, and while not as awful as that entry into the Batman franchise, it is certainly beneath the level of quality in the first two Spider-Man films.

The 3rd film in the series picks up by exploring two major developments from the previous installment. Mary Jane now has knowledge of Peter’s dual identity and their newfound romance suffers as Peter struggles handling Spider-man’s fame. Peter’s friend Harry is also aware of the dual identity and is now out to get revenge for his father. Both of these stories would be enough to cover an entire film, and probably demanded such treatment to fully work. Unfortunately, Raimi decides to fill the film with two more villains for Spider-man to deal with, Venom and Sandman. Even at an extended running time of two hours and twenty minutes, there isn’t nearly enough screen time to cover all of these story threads.

The budding romance between Peter and Mary Jane was a strong asset to the first two outing. At the end of the 2nd film they finally ended up together, promising interesting potential story developments for Spider-?Man 3. Unfortunately, Raimi’s idea of developing this romance is making Peter into a complete jerk (with the help of Venom of course), causing conflict for the young couple. The problem with this is we barely get a handful of scenes that show the two of them actually enjoying each other’s company. After spending two films watching them get to this point, Raimi spends the third outing having them fight and bicker for nearly the entire running time. It’s hard to care about a failing romance when there isn’t much romance to begin with.

The direct fault of this is the decision to pack the film with so many villains. Without so much wasted screen time, the Peter-Mary Jane story would have had a complete arc, providing us a happy couple to care about when things went sour. This also impacts the character development for the individual villains. Just like in the Batman series, packing extra villains into one film makes the backstories for each villain feel rushed. Sandman is a particularly great character and is well played by Thomas Haden Church. Unfortunately, his lack of screen time prevents us from really getting to understand his inner turmoil and family background.

At least we finally get a resolution to the Harry Osborne storyline. It was handled fairly well in the first two films, but by this outing it started to drag. Part of the problem is James Franco’s performance His mumbling, sometimes incomprehensible line delivery has been a nuisance from the very beginning, and despite slight improvements here, it robs this important character of the proper emotional impact. However, it’s not just Franco’s fault this time around. The plot developments for this subplot are absolutely ridiculous. A crucial scene where Harry learns a very important piece of information from his butler (no explanation is given for why the butler chose to wait so long to deliver this news) is so contrived that I had to check the end credits just to make sure that this was the same director who had made the intricately plotted thriller A Simple Plan.

Spider-Man 3 is not a complete disaster. The FX work is still outstanding, perhaps even surpassing the excellence of part 2. There is an abundance of CGI used, particularly for Sandman, but none of it looks like fake digital images plastered on to film like you get with lesser CGI work. Raimi shows flashes of his old self with a nifty musical detour where Peter attempts to make Mary Jane jealous. It would also be unfair to ignore the stunning moment at the end between Peter and Mary Jane, which is so well acted by Maguire and Dunst that it almost makes up for incessant bickering that plagued the rest of the film. At least that gives them something to build on for the fourth outing.

28 Weeks Later (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007) ***

Dir. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Starring Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Imogen Poots, Mackintosh Muggleton, Catherine McCormack, Jeremy Renner

28 Weeks Later has probably one of the best ideas for a sequel in a long time. Especially since 9/11, there have been numerous films where the threat of the world ending was looming throughout, and when that threat has been thwarted, the movie abruptly ends. It’s always been a curiosity to find out what happened once the apocalyptic nightmare is over. How many people survived? How do they rebuild? In this superior sequel to Danny Boyle's zombie nightmare 28 Days Later, director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo answers those questions with a frightening and timely story.

Fresnadillo wastes no time, opening with a harrowing scene that takes us back to the time of the original film, but focusing on a different group of survivors, including Don (Robert Carlyle) and his wife (Catherine McCormack). The zombies have come for them, and during the escape Don makes a disturbing moral decision that burns through the rest of the film. Then of course we flash forward to 28 weeks later. The US Army is in London, leading the rebuilding effort. They are introducing the first set of survivors, which include Don’s two children, who understandably have several questions about what happened to their mother.

It seems that every other movie this year has had some kind of reference or inspiration by the current political and military state of the world. While 28 Weeks Later works on the simple level of a zombie movie, it’s impossible to ignore the analogy of the US being portrayed as an occupying force, and an irresponsible one at that. The theme is even furthered by the inclusion of a US Army doctor (Rose Byrne) who is critical of the hasty rebuilding process, and a Army sniper (Jeremy Renner) whose conscience forces him to disobey his orders.

Fresnadillo employs a rapid fire editing style for most of his suspense sequences. In most movies, this tactic feels tired and annoying, particularly in the films of Michael Bay and his ilk. The difference is he doesn’t do this for the entire movie. Fresnadillo actually takes some time for quieter moments, such as the snipers who use their rifle scope to spy on survivors, or the quiet emotional scene where Don explains to his children what happened to their mother. Thus when we get to the shaky cam moments, we haven’t already been inundated with it, and the unsettling experience feels entirely appropriate.

There are some standout moments in this film that surpass anything from the original. Late in the film, one character is forced to lead two others through complete darkness using a night-vision rifle scope to guide them. Several critics who have complained that this scene makes it difficult to tell what’s going on have apparently missed the entire point of the sequence. My other favorite moment, one which makes the Iraq war comparisons hit very close to home, is when the US Army’s rooftop snipers have trouble distinguishing between the infected and the uninfected.

Unfortunately, the team of screenwriters (four are credited) come up with some very lazy explanations to get the plot moving. In a very simplistic scene (if you’re going to strain credibility at least make it fun!), Don’s children are able to breach army security a little too easily. Then later on, Don is able to walk into a room with the only known infected person on the planet, which is conveniently unguarded for a long period of time. I don’t know what kind of idiot was in charge of the security plan, but even Rumsfeld couldn’t have screwed up this badly.

Still, the lack of credibility in these two scenes is not enough to destroy the film. There’s just too much to enjoy here. The screenwriters did do a good job with characterization, making several characters interesting enough to care about: the children, the army doctor, the sniper, Don and his wife and even a helicopter pilot who shows up in the third act. It should go without saying that a thriller is even scarier when you actually care about the people under attack, and that is definitely the case here. The ending certainly leaves open the possibility of another sequel, and I suppose they can keep this going forever: 28 Months Later, 28 Years Later, maybe even 28 Decades Later. If they keep up this level of quality, then I’ll definitely be there.

Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, 2007) ***1/2

Dir. Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror) and Quentin Tarantino (Death Proof)
Starring (Planet Terror) Freddy Rodriguez, Rose McGowan, Marley Shelton, Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn
Starring (Death Proof) Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell, Syndey Tamia Poitier, Rose McGowan

The studios have had it all wrong for years. Instead of embracing the silly fun of the low budget genre pictures that sprinkled through the drive-ins and run down theaters, they went in the exact opposite direction. What we got were bigger, faster, more explosive special effects and stunts. The technology improved at an amazing rate and this certainly led to some memorable films. Unfortunately, Hollywood began to forget what made those genre films such fun in the first place. In response to this, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez bring us Grindhouse, a knockout feature that takes us on a wild ride back to the basic simplistic pleasures of film.

Grindhouse has been advertised as a double feature, but it’s so much more than that. Tarantino and Rodriguez have turned this into a movie event. Surrounding the two feature films from the esteemed directors are trailers for fake low budget horror films. These are mostly hilarious, best of which is Rodriguez’s Machete, a gloriously trashy movie that is rumored to be made into a full length film. The one fake trailer that doesn’t work is Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the SS, which is a little too in on the joke, especially with an uninspired celebrity casting choice at the end that probably sounded much funnier on paper than it played out. Aside from the trailers, the show is spiced up with fake advertisements for nearby restaurants, old-fashioned snack shop ads, and fake damage to the film prints, including missing sections to each film.

The first film is Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, which starts out as a classic zombie film and gets crazier by the minute. A deadly virus is spreading throughout a small Texas town, causing those infected to turn into savage zombies. A group of survivors band together against the zombies, including a stripper named Cherry (Rose McGown), her ex-boyfriend El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez), BBQ restaurant owner JT (Jeff Fahey), Sheriff Hague (Michael Biehn), and abused wife Dakota (Marley Shelton). Things get complicated when the military gets involved, giving the survivors an extra foe to deal with.

This only touches on the surface of the insane plot. Rodriguez is clearly having a blast here, and for the most part, so is the audience. The blistering pace barely leaves the viewer a chance to breathe, and the film is not afraid to shock you with moments that are undeniably disgusting. Fangoria fans will certainly find plenty to enjoy, especially since horror makeup legend Tom Savini shows up in a small role. Rodriguez loses his way a little bit with by veering into self-parody. At times Rodriguez seems to be winking at you, whereas a more straightforward style would have served him better. Also he fails to keep Quentin Tarantino behind the camera, allowing him to chew up the screen in an embarrassing performance that really hampers the film, especially considering it comes towards the end. The proceedings eventually get back on track, coming up with a glorious action sequence that features one of the coolest ways a machine gun has ever been used.

In a smart choice, Quentin Tarantino’s slow paced Death Proof is picked as the second half of the double feature. After the breathtaking action of Planet Terror, the audience gets a chance to catch their breath and look at some cool cars and hot women. The plot is much more basic in this one. It follows a group of female friends, one of whom is a disc jockey, celebrating their friend’s birthday at a low rent bar. The film also follows another set of women who work on a movie set and desire to test drive a car from the movie Vanishing Point. Unbeknownst to them, they are being stalked by the mysterious Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell, playing off his vintage 80s image).

Tarantino's film is the real standout of the double feature. It may make audiences restless on a first viewing, as it takes a very long time to go anywhere. Tarantino spends much of his running time on endless conversations about mundane topics. However, this has become his staple, and his dialogue is as electric as ever. There are plenty of references to both Vanishing Point and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, films that clearly inspired Death Proof. However, Tarantino isn't interested in just fooling around. Once we learn Stuntman Mike's true motivations, the film becomes a blast. The finale is a memorable car chase that doubles back on itself and uses the real life talents of stuntwoman Zoe Bell, who plays herself in the film. The thrilling scene brings us back to pre-CGI days, making it feel remarkably authentic and makes the dangerous situation all the more terrifying

It wouldn't be fair to ignore the wonderful ensemble. Rodriguez and Tarantino have assembled a cast that is perfect for the material. Several B-movie actors are appropriately along for the ride, including Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn, Michael Parks, Rose McGowan, and Danny Trejo. Even the A-list actors are obviously chosen for how well they fit into the rugged grindhouse style. Kurt Russell coolly coasts through his role reprising his earlier mannerisms in films like Escape From New York, Bruce Willis has an interesting uncredited part as a military officer, and Rosario Dawson's stunning screen presence adds strength to her resilient character. The most surprising performance comes from Marley Shelton, who comes out of nowhere with an intense wide-eyed performance to steal Planet Terror from her costars.

As a double feature Grindhouse is a very good experiment with two strong films to support the clever gimmick. It's not an insult to say Rodriguez's output is the lesser achievement, as comparisons to Tarantino would put most filmmakers to shame. Still, Rodriguez's film seems more like a really fun trick, whereas Tarantino's is the one that will stay with the viewer long after the lights come up. The most interesting thing about Grindhouse is that in doing films that were designed to mimic the "bad" exploitation films of yesteryear, Rodriguez and Tarantino have come up with films that far surpass the standard middling mainstream fare. Perhaps a return to the basics is just what the doctor ordered to wake Hollywood up.