Fame (2009)

The Movie Snob offers up a new review.

Fame (C+). Let's say it up front: I never saw the original 1980 movie, nor the TV series that ran from 1982-1987, so I can't tell you if this reincarnation is better or worse than its predecessors. I can tell you that it reminded me of A Chorus Line, albeit a tame, after-school-special version. In the opening scene, hundreds of kids are auditioning to try to get into a New York City high school for the performing arts. Then we follow a handful of those who make the cut through all four years of their high school experience. Given that it's only 107 minutes long, the movie feels rushed throughout. The veteran actors who play the teachers (e.g., Kelsey Grammer, Bebe Neuwirth) have only a few minutes of screentime; most of the movie consists of song-and-dance performances by the young stars, connected by talky scenes to establish two-dimensional characterizations and cliched conflicts. Actually, I was reasonably entertained by the performance sequences, but the Borg Queen saw it with me and said that even they were lackluster. I thought it was okay for a matinee, but I think BQ would tell you to avoid it at all costs.

Pandorum

Another review from the pen of Movie Man Mike

Pandorum B. This Sci-fi/horror film was a little heavier on the horror side than I anticipated. It was extremely suspenseful. I was exhausted by the end of it. The story is set in the future when Earth’s natural resources are becoming rapidly depleted. Earth discovers another far away planet that is about as close to Earth’s own conditions as possible. A space ship with thousands of humans is launched on a multi-year journey to start a colony on the new planet. “Pandorum” is the name that was given to a type of psychological space sickness that seems a little bit like paranoia. The movie opens with flight crew Bower (played by Ben Foster) and Payton (played by Dennis Quaid) waking up from suspended animation to discover that something is wrong with the space ship. Bower heads towards the ship’s reactor to reset it and get the ship going, but he encounters some very unexpected obstacles along the way. This was a thoroughly enjoyable sci-fi film that fits well within this “B” category of films. If you don’t see it at the theaters, it would make a good rental.

9

Movie Man Mike bestows a review on us.

9 (not “District 9”) C+. The theme of this film is a common one—man-made machines take over the earth and exterminate all human life. I was taken in by the film because it (a) is a Tim Burton film, (b) is animated, and (c) had cool music to go with the trailer I watched online. I never heard the same music that I heard as part of the trailer. Visually the movie was captivating. The animation was great. At the end of the day, however, I wasn’t “wowed” by the story. The writers did nothing new with this old theme and the resolution of the story-line left me wanting. I was interested to see that the theater I saw this in was not very full, but it had a mix of children and adults. Yet, after watching the film, I am not really sure who the film’s target audience is. Maybe teens? This one is more of a rental, if you are inclined to see it.

The Informant!

From the desk of The Movie Snob

The Informant! (B). Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting) plays Mark Whitacre, a biochemist and executive at agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland. The company suspects industrial sabotage by a Japanese competitor, and the FBI gets involved. But when an FBI agent (Scott Bakula of Quantum Leap fame) goes out to Whitacre's house to install a recording device on his telephone, Whitacre drops a bomb: ADM is involved in an international price-fixing conspiracy. He agrees to turn informant and help the Bureau build its antitrust case by wearing a wire. But Whitacre has some . . . difficulties with truth-telling, as it turns out, making the FBI's job that much more difficult (to say nothing about the challenge Whitacre poses to his own lawyers). I thought it was an entertaining little film, kind of like Catch Me If You Can. On a side note, one of the FBI people is played by Ann Cusack, sister of John and Joan, and even though I couldn't remember ever seeing her before, there was no mistaking the Cusackness of her voice. Also, old-school comedians Tom and Dick Smothers make cameo appearances.

Freaks

DVD review from The Movie Snob

Freaks (B+). This 1932 film is apparently now considered a classic. Directed by Tod Browning (Dracula), it is a straightforward story of love and deception in a traveling circus troupe. It shocked contemporary audiences, and is still pretty shocking today, because much of the cast was made up of actual "circus freaks": people suffering from various chronic handicaps and deformities, such as Johnny Eck, who was born without legs, and Siamese twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. Anyway, the circus's ballerina seduces a midget named Hans, and when she finds out he is secretly wealthy, she concocts a plot to marry and murder him for his money. But the freaks look out for their own.... It is not a subtle film, but it is still an interesting and effective one.

The Haunting (1963)

DVD review from The Movie Snob

The Haunting (B+). Usually these old movies aren't so great, but this one was a pretty effective chiller. Hill House is a big, creepy house with a dark past -- irresistible to a gung-ho professor with an acute interest in the supernatural. He recruits two women, plus the brash young man who stands to inherit the place, to move into the place with him and help him investigate any unusual phenomena. One of the women, Eleanor, is already a little unhinged when she arrives, and the weird goings-on soon threaten her fragile sanity. Or is everything already all in her mind? The movie is surprisingly scary. Director Robert Wise (The Sound of Music) makes do with minimal special visual effects and virtually no things that jump out and go boo. Camera angles and sound effects effectively create an atmosphere of paranoia and dread. If you like scary movies, this one is worth seeing.

House of Wax (1953)

DVD review from The Movie Snob

House of Wax (C). No, this isn't the remake starring Paris Hilton; this is the 1953 original starring Vincent Price (Edward Scissorhands) and featuring a young Charles Bronson (Crime Wave) as Igor. Price plays Henry Jarrod, a fey and eccentric master sculptor of wax figures who refuses to sensationalize his work so as to pander to the crowds. His business partner wants out, and when Jarrod refuses to let him torch Jarrod's display room so as to collect the insurance money, his partner beats Jarrod senseless and leaves him in the burning building. Soon thereafter, a mysterious and disfigured villain starts stealing bodies from the morgue and terrorizing a young woman who's a dead ringer for Marie Antoinette. Jarrod himself reappears, wheelchair-bound and crippled, to open a new wax museum devoted to shocking and appalling its patrons. But how does he make his new creations so lifelike? It's not scary at all by today's standards, but it held my interest reasonably well.

Funny Girl

Stage review from The Movie Snob

Funny Girl. I'm sorry to report that it is too late for you to see Irving Lyric Stage's production of Funny Girl. I saw the show last night, and I believe it closed today. It was a thoroughly enjoyable show, even for someone like me who had never seen it before. I understand that Barbra Streisand pretty much owns the leading role of Fanny Bryce, but Kristin Dausch, the 22-year-old actress who played it in this production, did an exceptional job, especially with the singing. Based on a true story (loosely, from what Wikipedia says), the musical is the story of Fanny Bryce, a talented singer and actress who made it big in vaudeville, film, and radio way back when. She did not consider herself attractive, so she compensated by being funny--she was, perhaps, the Carol Burnett of her day. Of course there's a love story, as Fanny falls for the handsome gambler Nick Arnstein. It's a fine show, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. If you haven't ever treated yourself to a show by the Irving Lyric Stage, you are missing out!

Mad Men (Season One)

From The Movie Snob

Mad Men (Season One). I don't have cable and had never seen an episode of this show before buying the DVD's. I went strictly on critical word-of-mouth. And I'll say watching the first season was definitely an interesting experience. The setting is Madison Avenue, New York City; the year is 1960. The protagonist is Don Draper, a Korean War vet and one of the top dogs (though not yet a partner) at the advertising firm of Sterling & Cooper. He has a beautiful wife, two kids, and a swell house in the suburbs. He also has a mistress in the City, and a mysterious past that starts to catch up with him from the very first episodes. Most of the kick comes from watching people behave in ways that are just unimaginable now. Everyone smokes all the time (including pregnant women), and everyone drinks most of the time--even (or especially) at work. The casual sexism is astonishing. Even seeing children ride in the front seat of a car (without seat belts) makes you look twice. Draper's wife has the suburban blues that Betty Friedan would soon write about in The Feminine Mystique. Draper's mistress is a bohemian artist type, and some of the funnier scenes are the encounters between Don and her beatnik friends. Anyway, I don't think it's as great as the press led me to believe, but I definitely enjoyed it and will watch Season Two.

Escape from New York

DVD review from The Movie Snob

Escape from New York (D+). I had never seen this 1981 John Carpenter classic, and all I can say is, wow. It is a low-budget cheeseball spectacular. It grabbed me from the first seconds, with the zero-frills opening credits and the soundtrack composed on somebody's Casio keyboard. In the near future (1997, I think it said), Manhattan is a completely walled-off maximum security prison in which the prisoners are dumped and left to fend for themselves. Air Force One is hijacked, and the president (Donald Pleasence, Halloween) unluckily bails out right into the middle of the prison. The government brass decide to enlist Manhattan's newest prisoner, Snake Plisskin (Kurt Russell, Big Trouble in Little China), to try to rescue the prez in time for some big summit with Russia and China. Snake has lots of absurd adventures in the prison, whose inhabitants include Ernest Borgnine (From Here to Eternity), Harry Dean Stanton (Alien), Adrienne Barbeau (The Cannonball Run), and Isaac Hayes (I'm Gonna Git You Sucka). It's kind of fun in a cheesy way, but I'm not going to hurry out and find Escape from L.A.

My One and Only

New review from The Movie Snob

My One and Only (A-). The Dallas Morning News gave this little independent flick a rave review, so I thought I would check it out. It probably doesn't really deserve this A-, but I just thoroughly enjoyed it. Supposedly it is loosely based on the life of the preternaturally tanned George Hamilton (Love at First Bite), and the protagonist is George as a 15-year-old back in the 1950s. His dad (Kevin Bacon, Footloose) is a bandleader, and his mom (Renee Zellweger, Cold Mountain) is a Southern lady who is used to being taken care of. But mom gets tired of dad's tomcatting around, and finally she packs George and his older half-brother Robbie into a car and takes off to start a new life. Basically it's George's coming-of-age story as the trio moves from town to town and his mom looks haplessly for a new husband. I'm not saying it's great art, but I had a good time.

Julie & Julia

Movie review from The Movie Snob

Julie & Julia (B-). This is a pleasant little diversion based on two true-life stories. One is about Julia Child, who famously brought the art of French cooking to America in the years after WWII. The other is about Julie Powell, a modern New Yorker who needs a goal. The goal she adopts is to cook every recipe in Child's book Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. Meryl Streep (Mamma Mia!) plays Child as a generally happy giant of a woman, and it is fun to watch her navigate a Parisian cooking school and wrangle her acquired knowledge into a format that an American publishing company will buy. Amy Adams (Sunshine Cleaning) plays Powell as a bit of a self-absorbed sad-sack, with a soul-crushing job as a cubicle-dweller who spends all day on the phone dealing with claims and complaints relating to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Powell apparently spun a successful blog and then book out of her traversal of Child's cookbook, but the movie left me wondering--did Powell ever get to meet her hero before Child's death in 2004?

Cold Souls

A new review from Movie Man Mike

Cold Souls. (B-). I wonder if my expectations for this film were too high. I like Paul Giamatti. The trailers for this film made it out to be a comedy. After seeing it, I agree that it is a comedy, but it’s more of a dry comedy and it’s also a drama. Ultimately, it was one of those movies where I wanted to laugh, but I seldom did or could. Paul Giamatti plays himself in the film. He’s acting in a Broadway play and he’s having trouble getting his character right because he’s all stressed out by his life. What does he do? He has his soul removed. Sounds like a good premise, but once he had his soul removed, he wasn’t really all that funny. It was only after he was implanted with the soul of another person that he became more animated and more funny, but then it got serious too—because this is a person’s soul we’re talking about after all. Then his original soul gets sold on the black market and he has to go in search of it to get it back. And in getting his soul back, he discovers that things really weren’t so bad to begin with. If you just have to see this, I say wait until it comes out on DVD.

District 9

Movie Man Mike chimes in on District 9

District 9 (A-). Great film! I went to see this movie because it had gotten some pretty good reviews and I wanted to see what it was all about. It didn’t seem like a movie that I would like. I was wrong. This movie has some great acting by new-comer Sharlto Copley, who plays a company agent given the task of relocating a group of aliens who became stranded on Earth and who established a shanty-town near Johannesburg, South Africa . The aliens are reviled by all, including Copley’s character, Wikus van der Merwe. To achieve their goal of relocating the aliens, the humans are willing to employ just about any means from trickery to killing. Wikus gains a new perspective and understanding of the aliens as a result of his efforts. The story is filled with lots of thought-provoking historical, political, and racial parallels. I was pleased to see that the film ends in a way that begs for a sequel. Bring on the sequel!