Jun 20, 2011
Banking on some “Blair Witch” success, Linda Blair resurfaces. The “Exorcist” is pulled out of the film storage closet in some “never before seen footage” of the 1973 classic. Something beyond comprehension is happening to a little girl on this street, in this house (was the tag line in 1973). Still works for me. A man has been called for as a last resort to try and save her. That man is The Exorcist (Max Von Sydow.) Ellen Burstyn stars as the mother Chris MacNeil to the pea soup spraying-head-spinning-swearing child, Regan MacNeil. Bottom line: They can use all this video-digital-surround-a-sound 2000 input they want. Bottom line. It’s scary and thrilling on a big screen.
Jun 20, 2011
(rated PG-13, 105 mins)
Ivan Reitman may have made “Ghostbusters” a household name, but in Evolution, he attempt to revive those popular Bill Murray days to today’s young audiences, raised on potty movie jokes, with extended scenes like an emergency room probe of Orlando Jones’s colon and a 500 gallon enema given through a huge car-sized vial. Starring Jones and David Duchovny as community college professors of geology who discover microscopic, un-Earthly life forms on a meteorite, how rapidly they divide and wondering if they can save the world. Of course when the U S military gets involved with their own plan, the power struggle begins. Dan Ackroyd stars as the governor who screws up the plan, with Julianne Moore in a vanilla role as an accident-prone doctor from the Disease control unit and Duchovny’s love interest. While Reitman tries to combine his blockbuster ability of sci-fi, comedy and action adventure, this one comes off as a Ghostbuster rip-off with the stars are reduced to delivering lines and jokes that copy past flicks. And, I kept waiting for them to shoot green ooze over each other. Who you gonna call? Not Ivan Reitman.
Jun 20, 2011
Reminiscent of two favorite romantic comedies, it’s part “Only You” (Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey Jr.) and a lot of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” Similar to the latter, there’s alot of unknown actors that are just wonderful. In this, Jake (Jay Jabolnski) has been in love with Isabella (Marisa Petroro) for 14 years. The problem is, she’s not only married, but she dated Jake long before she got married. He just never got over it. Determined to end this crazy infatuation, two guys from the fish market in Boston’s North End, embark on finding Jake a girl. Enter Marisa (Cerina Vincent) in a case of mistaken ethnicity because both of them pretend to be something their not. Italian. The movie touches on everything from soulmates to stereotypes but what’s most interesting is how lame-bachelor-man-child Jake’s dialog is, but in a crafty way. I got to wondering just who’s the guy who wrote the lines when Jake is hitting on the girls, messing up badly and/or professing his love? His botch- ups are so genuine, only a real-life dork could pull it off. His name is Jason Todd Ipson and apparently he knows how to direct a darn good movie, too. 3 tiaras
Jun 20, 2011
The movie opens, reminiscent of “Titanic” with Rose on a raft calling out for “Jack,” except in this case it’s young Ann (Claire Danes) calling out for “Harris.” Then we fade into her lying on her death bed as Ann (Vanessa Redgrave) 50 years later. That’s because Ann is ready to finally divulge her secrets to her daughters (Toni Colette and Natasha Richardson) about the love of her life, Harris (Patrick Wilson) who also happened to be the love of her best friend Lila (Mamie Gummer’s) life. Lila grows up to be Lila Wittenborn, played by Meryl Streep, who, by the way, happens to be the real-life mother of Mamie Gummer the younger version of herself, thus the resemblance. While Redgrave keeps yelling, “Harris and I killed Buddy” we begin to wish someone would kill her as the intercuts between past and present, only interfere with the momentum of the story. The movie is strained, with roles terribly over-acted, right until we get to the obvious secret which translates to sitting through 1 hour and 57 minutes of theatre time. Claire Danes is too good an actress for her role and with a supporting cast this great – even Glenn Close is Lila’s mother – you have to wonder if the problem falls on the shoulders of bad directing by Lajos Koltai. The script is adapted from the novel and written by the same screenwriter, Michael Cunningham, who brought us “The Hours.” This plot is more a reminder of “The Notebook” which two summers ago became an unexpected hit. This one, however, is clearly hit or miss. One and a half tiaras.
Jun 20, 2011
(rated PG-13, 94 mins.)
How can you not cheer for a movie with a premise involving a dad fighting for custody of his kids? Remember “Tootsie” and “Mrs. Doubtfire?” Now add in the element of poor deprived Ireland during the 1950s and you have a tearjerker heartstring-pulling winner. Based on one of the most historic longest-standing family court-laws, Pierce Brosnan plays Desmond Doyle, a desperate working-class father tackling government custody laws to win his children back from an orphanage, after his wife leaves him for another man (insert knife) at Christmas (twist it). Of course initially it’s an uphill battle when he loses his job, spends more time at the local pub and enlists his widowed dad to help with the battle. Evelyn (Sophie Vavasseur) is his feisty daughter of three children and Julianna Margulies plays Bernadette, who part-times it at her Uncle’s pub, advising and cheerleading Doyle on. Aidan Quinn, Stephen Rhea and the show stealing Alan Bates play the legal team in the custody war. “Driving Miss Daisy” director Bruce Beresford is a good storyteller so he manages to make this a save. Brosnan proves he’s got the “luck of the Irish” as he goes from Bond to this underdog holiday flick, even though his performance seems like he has earned his angel wings (overacting the heck out of the role in an almost sappy though acceptable way) before he deserves them. But if one could get away with it, this would be the story to do it.
