Jun 20, 2011
(rated R) Moving out of comic success (Analyze This and Meet The Parents) Robert DeNiro returns to what he does best. Superstar N.Y. Homicide Detective Eddie Flemming (Robert DeNiro) enlists a young, talented, pretty boy, N Y Fire Dept. Arson Investigator, Jordy Warsaw (Edward Burns) to team up with him to track down a pair of Eastern European killers (Karel Roden and Oleg Taktarov) on a rampage through the city. Clever, unpredictable and ferocious, the immigrants quickly learn how to use the celebrity of their pursuers to spin their own stardom into an explosion of media and judicial madness. All it takes is watching a lot of daytime television to realize they can come up with a get rich-quick scheme that will air while they’re in jail releasing them as wealthy men. Against type-cast Kelsey Grammar portrays a sleazy talk show host whose ratings mean more than public safety! DeNiro makes for a better active cop than he did in “Flawless” and this movie is laced with a “Natural Born Killers” tone minus the shock, but with the same messages that fame is so bad it’s good. Oleg needs to practice in operating a handheld DV camera making the taped murders more of a headache (literally) for the viewer.
Jun 20, 2011
Fever Pitch
This spring’s ultimate homerun-with-bases-loaded-movie. Ben (Jimmy Fallon) is seven years old when his Uncle Carl (Lenny Clarke) takes him to his 1st ballgame at Fenway Park. And so his serious love affair with the underdog Red Sox is born. Fast forward 23 years later, and Ben, a geometry teacher, inherits season tickets behind the dugout, from his now deceased uncle, around the same time he meets Lindsay (Drew Barrymore). She’s cool, sophisticated, and professional so her friends worry that she’s dating well, a lame school teacher. And besides, certainly if he’s single, there’s something wrong with him. What she doesn’t know yet, is that she’s fallen for ‘winter guy’ because ‘summer guy’ is a Sox fanatic who even uses Yankee toilet paper and spends every waking moment at the ballpark. Seems he’s only perfect in the ‘off season’. After “Stuck On You’, it’s good to see the Farrelly’s back on track and prove that they can do more heart-felt romance (a step up from their usual successful “Dumb and Dumber” or “Something About Mary” farting and burping genre). The Farrelly brothers truly capture a passion previously reserved for only Boston Grandpas who never saw the Sox win the World Series. Even a Yankee’s fan would finally understand after seeing Fallon’s disarming and charming passion for his team. And there lies the movie’s irony. Just as Fallon must choose between the playoffs and Barrymore, (in real life while filming this movie) the Sox go to the Series and win for the first time in 86 years. What are the chances they’d have to alter the script’s ending? A kind of feel good movie New Englanders and everybody else will treasure.
Jun 20, 2011
(rated R, 96 mins.)
A contemporary New York comedy, starring Anna Thomson (Unforgiven) and Louise Lasser (Mary Hartman, Happiness) that follows the romantic twists and turns of the patrons of a Manhattan coffee shop and its over-worked waitress Bella (Thomson). On the cusp of her 35th birthday, Bella allows herself to be set-up on a date with Bruno (Jamie Harris), an irresponsible cab driver and father of two. A story that will have you thinking about if life suddenly presented you with what you never expected.
Jun 20, 2011
(rated PG-13, 107 mins.)
It’s 1950s Connecticut when life is “Leave It To Beaver” meets “Mayberry RFD” for Kathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) and Frank Whitaker (Dennis Quaid). Or at least it’s supposed to be, until one day their cocktails meets society pages lifestyle is challenged by a marital secret and racial tensions from the outside world. Frank is a top salesman at Megnatech while Kathy is the quintessential apron-wearing brownie-baking mom during a time when divorce is unheard of and twin beds are the only way to show sex on television. Both Quaid and Moore never break from these perfectly cast roles delivering deep and complex characters. Reflective of the naïve times of the 50s and so true to its era, Director Todd (“Safe”) Haynes, reteams with Moore moving into the big arena with this Oscar quality story, performances and camerawork, that makes for an almost perfect movie about the dynamics of bigotry. In the end one discovers that trying to be perfect by keeping up with the Jones’s, may leave you with nothing, including happiness.
Jun 20, 2011
You’ve gotta love a fox who wears the same striped tie and orange corduroy suit for the entire movie. But that’s writer-director Wes Anderson for you. The red jogging suits in “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Bill Murray’s diving suit in “Life Aquatic – don’t his people ever change their clothes? Adapting the children’s book by Roald Dahl, Anderson (who co-wrote with Noah Baumbach) makes his debut as an animator, using a herky-jerky stop-motion technique in a way that’s surprisingly charming. Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) is a newspaper columnist by day but a thief by night. Unbeknownst to his disapproving wife (Meryl Streep), he’s stealing squabs and poultry and cider from three local farmers who then become intent on snuffing him out, along with his “Oceans 11”-style crew, including an Opposum (Wally Wolodarsky) and a Badger (Bill Murray). His son (Jason Schwartzman) wants desperately to shine in his father’s eyes, but he can’t seem to live up to his accomplished cousin (Eric Anderson, Wes’s brother) – as always, Anderson’s fascination with bittersweet family dynamics takes center stage. Still, despite the amusingly quaint visuals and the often witty dialogue, this most brilliant of Anderson’s films eventually turns tedious because it’s never emotionally involving. Anderson sets up situations that in another movie could easily absorb and touch us – father-son relationships, husband-wife conflicts, a hero’s self-reckoning – but his tone is so winkingly facetious that the audience is constantly held at arm’s length. And who is that audience in the first place? “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is too sophisticated for small children, who will fidget from the start, and where is the grownup audience for talking-animal animations? Could it be that sly Wes Anderson has outfoxed himself? Three tiaras
