Bait
(rated R, not yet reviewed)
First Jamie Foxx did comedy (Booty Call) and then drama (Any Given Sunday). Now he’s an action hero. In this story he gets caught up in a sting operation involving millions of dollars in gold.
Bad Santa
(rated R) Billy Bob Thornton is a miserable S.O.B. who thought his life was really bad until he had screaming, demanding kids on his lap at the mall. Once a year, Santa “Willie” and his sidekick dwarf (Tony Cox) rob the very department stores that employ them. There is nothing family or gingerbread coated about this movie. Instead, if you’re a hum-bugger-Christmas-despising-Scrooge, you’ll love it – the plot hitting on every commercial annoying moment of the season. While it’s hard to care about a hero who doesn’t care about himself, Thornton manages to spread some audience cheer with his deadpan, dark, cynical, nasty not nice, humor. His one liners bouncing off Cox are a hoot. John Ritter does nicely in his last role as a love-my-(Macy’s-knock off) store manager. Bernie Mac as the store security guard (sort of). Brett Kelly plays “The Kid” who manages to slightly soften Thornton’s Santa because of his genuine childhood innocence and stupidity. As for parents, you better watch out. You WILL BE pouting if kids get near this one that almost scored a NC-17 rating.
Bad New Bears
Billy Bob Thornton takes his “Bad Santa” routine and turns it into what should be a kids movie, except the kids, his little league team, needs to have their mouths washed out with a case of Tide detergent, let alone a bar of soap! Their Potty mouths make one wonder just who the director was targeting this movie for. And so, like the original with Walter Mattheau, the movie has little much to offer than a bunch of uncoordinated kids who are demoralized and only playing because of politics – making them a case study with a black, Armenian, twin Mexicans, white boy, crippled boy and you name it – the United Nations of ghetto kids. With little self-respect for themselves, and less for their coach, who mixes drinks out of a cooler in the dugout, even when the story has its miraculous turnaround, we find little comfort in any of it, despite a couple funny moments. Makes one wonder if director Richard Linklater has kids. And moreso, does he have any values?
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
A remake of the Harvey Keitel film, the Bad Lieutenant sounds like just another Irish- cop-gone-bad movie (like the original, drowning in Catholic guilt) but it’s not. It also drums up the question of why? But then in some zany far-fetched way, it also answers it. And it does it in a way that doesn’t require special effects or even action-punched-shoot-outs. Set against the backdrop of post Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Terrence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) has a drug and gambling addiction and uses his powers to get what he needs. And it’s how he gets what he needs that is both original and amusing (often laugh out loud). In other words, when Nic Cage is on a role just let him go. Stevie (Val Kilmer, who’s come out of nowhere, but welcome back) is his partner. This makes the movie feel circa 1990 with Kilmer and Cage – two of the biggest stars of that era – sharing a screen. Frankie (Eva Mendez) is his effectively sexy and coked-up girlfriend who plays the damsel in distress always looking fabulous with the right dose of cleavage, pouty lips and a hint of sleepy. The movie opens on Cage saving somebody but hurting himself physically in return. This causes an instant addiction to Vicodin which launches the movie into some far-fetched but believable scenes. It’s as if director Werner Herzog (remember “Grizzly Man?”) and Cage teamed to bring the best of each of themselves into a film. Cage is back, the way we loved him in his Oscar winning performances. This is a man down on himself and down on his luck but bullshitting his way through to survive. This is “Leaving Las Vegas” but with wild Herzog twists (avoiding plot spoiler here.) Three and a half tiaras
Bad Education
(rated R) It’s Madrid 1980, when Ignacio (Gael Garcia Bernal of “The Motorcycle Diaries”) an unemployed actor, knocks on the door of his childhood best friend Enrique (Fele Martinez) that he hasn’t seen in sixteen years. Coincidentally, Ignacio has written a script called “The Visit” that Enrique is anxious to direct, since he’s going through a creative dry spell. It all seems perfect until the reading of the script opens up repressed soccer games, twisted Priests from their grammar school, and the distortion of spirit, hypocrisy and fear, in which their faith is challenged. Father Manolo resurfaces both in the film and in their real life only to unfold an unexpected and tragic ending. In this movie, the femme fatale is an “enfant terrible”, emerging slowly in the character of Ignacio, a man cursed in the shape of a woman – a transvestite, hungry for love and an understanding, of where his life went wrong. Directed by Pedro Almodovar, responsible for such dramatic and provocative studies (i.e. the critically acclaimed “Talk To Her”) Almodovar brings us a film that not only continues to deliver until its last scene, but has a sick driving force that comes off as a guilty voluptuous experience.